Malignancy

by DoubleDeadline

Rating: mature
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, DJ P0N-3, Dark, Death, Other, Lyra, Original Character, Mystery, Octavia, Violence, Profanity, Gore
Length: 26151

When Princess Celestia disbands Her Government's Security Directorate, what hidden darkness will be revealed? What will be released? And what, if anything, can be done in response?

In the year 988, Celestia is on the cusp of Her most ambitious social reforms to date: the reformation of Her government's intelligence apparatus. The chaos that ensues is sweeping and violent, with one murder case, in particular, taking Lyra Heartstrings and her partner to the darkest depths of corruption among Equestria's elite.

Meanwhile, during the same societal upheaval, Octavia Philharmonica, working, ostensibly, on government orders as well, follows her own investigation to uncover secrets of her own past and the meaning behind her unusual birth and upbringing.

Pre-Canon. Grimdark.

Cover image by Jitterbug Jive and Cyanocitta, by commission

Published 2017-11-24 04:30:11 UTC
Last updated 2018-05-08 08:55:40 UTC

Prologue: The End of a Song Unsung

"The Mare in the Moon: myth from olden pony times. A powerful pony who wanted to rule Equestria, defeated by the Elements of Harmony and imprisoned in the moon. Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the Stars will aid in Her escape, and She will bring about night-time eternal."

-- Predictions and Prophecies, Ninth Edition

(AD 732, re 842), p. 475

Prologue:
The End of a Song Unsung

Canterlot, Lower Temple District,
Saturday Morning (September 16th, Anno Domina 988):

Caesar's train left the station, and Folio slumped. His tense anticipation collapsed into hollow resignation. He lifted his head in time to see the last train-cars disappear down the mountain. Only plumes of white smoke marked the progress of the morning express to Manehattan, and these too were fading from view. Their goodbyes had been brief and terse. "Hold the line, old boy," Caesar had said. "Don't worry, I'll fix this," he had insisted.

Long before Caesar had been raised to knighthood, before he had been made the head of Celestia's Security Directorate, Caesar had chosen Folio Luminant out of the rank-and-file to be his confidant and chief subordinate. He had served Caesar for more than 20 years, first as a soldier, then as an agent, then as the Directorate's Head of Operations. Now, he watched Caesar board the train out of Canterlot, watched that train disappear down the mountain and out of sight.

Folio frowned. "It's been an honour, Sir," he whispered to himself, Caesar already gone. He turned from the edge of the platform and joined the throngs of ponies headed to the station's exit. All around him they were chatting and laughing and hugging each other, happy, or at least content, in their lives – the life of an Equestrian citizen. Free from care or worry or overt danger. Passive. Calm. Oblivious.

Outside the station, cafes and eateries were built straight into the station's exterior, a seamless blending of form and function – as was common in Canterlot architecture. The smells of cinnamon and chocolate and fresh, hot banana-nut bread – exotic spices and foods imported from Equestria's world-spanning trade network – filled Folio's nostrils with their heady aromas, the world's bounty thick in the morning air. Every luxury, every spice and exotic food from around the world found its way to Canterlot, Celestia's "City of the Eternal Sun", Her "Citadel on the Mountain", over which She shone bright and eternal and ever-watchful.

Folio sighed.

"Good morning, Mr. Folio!" Marigold chimed. She was wrapping a dozen white roses for another customer. "I'll be with you in just a moment."

Folio nodded and managed a brief smile for the flower seller.

The customer ahead of Folio was an off-white pegasus, a tourist from Los Pegasus or Cloudsdale. Folio realized he was glaring at the back of the pegasus's head and averted his gaze toward a container of gillies: round white flowers with red tipped petals, sitting relaxed on their cosy bed of green, unconcerned that their innocent blossoms were stained bloody red at the tips.

"What'll it be today?" Marigold was saying. The orange earth-pony had her brightest salesmare smile on for Folio's benefit – a perfect mask matched by her coy, playful posture. The springy red curls bounced and swayed with every movement or the slightest breath of air, ever in motion.

Folio wore his own mask of calm indifference. "Same as usual." The brown unicorn nodded toward the display of woolly blue violets.

"Aw, nothing exciting going on today?" She began wrapping the violets in white paper.

"Oh, no, no," he disagreed. "Every day in Her Majesty's government service is an adventure." His accent leaned away from his muted but still deep Manehattan and toward his "official" government service voice, far more nasal and haughty.

"So you keep saying," she giggled. "One of these days, Mr. Folio, you're going to have to tell me what it is you do for Her Majesty exactly." She kept eye contact, her grin inquiring, as she accepted Folio's bits and gave him a few silver coins change. "You're not a spy, are you?" she teased.

"Oh, of course not," he huffed. But soon the barest hint of a grin curled one corner of his mouth. He leaned in toward her with a conspiratorial expression. "I'm Celestia's spymaster."

"Wha-at?" Marigold laughed. "Oh you! You don't…" she stopped as Folio straightened to his full height, his expression sliding back into his default stare of tired intensity – a glare hiding just beneath the surface of his long cultivated look of dangerous authority. His eyes bored down at her. "Wait, you're for real?" Disbelief still tinged her voice, but her tail, with its curly ringlets, was flicking and bouncing from side to side behind her. "You're serious?"

He gave a small, curt nod. "Deadly serious. Fifteen years as of last month." The bulky brown unicorn flicked his eyes, without moving his head, over Marigold's shoulder toward the two stallions across the street. They were pretending to shop for post-cards, pretending not to be interested in Folio. They were pretending not to be soldiers, thinking that not wearing their uniforms meant they could blend in with civilians. Folio returned his eyes to Marigold. "Today's my last day, though."

"Well… okay! Wow! I had no idea, Mr. Folio."

Folio nodded. "That would be the point. Spies and all."

"Oh, right, yes… well…" her grin became sheepish and she shrugged in agreement. "Well… I mean," she recovered her cheerful composure. "Congratulations! On your retirement, I mean! I'm sure you've earned it!"

"Oh yes," he agreed without inflection, his eyes drifting away from the young mare. He cast another brief glance at the stallions across the street. "I'd like to think so. One should receive what one deserves, and... all that."

"Hm. Yeah, well, um... how are you going to spend your retirement?"

He looked back at her. "I've a little place out in the Unicorn Hills. I may take up gardening."

"Well, I hope you enjoy yourself! Fifteen years is a long time! Thank you for your service to our country, Mr. Folio!"

Folio flinched, caught off guard, his professional face faltering. "Thank you," he whispered down at the young mare's genuine smile of gratitude. "Thank you so much for that." At her look of growing distress he shook off his sad expression and almost succeeded in making himself smile. "I'm late for… something. Have a wonderful life, Marigold. Remember this old warhorse sometimes, won't you?" He took his parcel of woolly violets up in his magic and left the confused mare at her stand.

"Sure! I mean, sure I will!" she called after him.

His back to the flower merchant, he glared at his own sentimentality, wiping his eyes with a pastern. He munched on a bite of the woollies, his regular morning snack for the last three years of his routine. One of the two stallions had fallen into tailing him while the other headed to the flower stand to "talk" with Marigold.

Lost in his thoughts, Folio found he was, out of habit, walking his usual route to his office back at the Directorate. He tsked himself and turned around, backtracking a block and turning instead toward the small private cemetery where his family awaited him. The golden gates were wide open for the public. The manicured grass sweet smelling, the polished marble and alabaster gravestones gleaming in Her Majesty's sunlight.

He stopped in front of his wife's grave, her painted portrait medallion set in the white marble headstone, smiling into eternity. "Good morning, Penny, my love," he whispered, laying a bunch of the woolly violets on her grave. "Well, it's finally happened. I'm leaving the service today. Going to take old Stone-Beak up on his offer, at last... I'm afraid it means I won't be by to visit any longer, but... You'll always be with me." He walked up to the stone and kissed the painted portrait. "Needs must," he intoned, nodding and stepping back.

With a sigh, he turned to the two smaller gravestones beside his wife's. His son, Sergeant Folio Atlas, had died defending Equestria's frozen northern border. His daughter, Captain Lucky Florin, had been part of the Trade Armies, defending the economic interests of Equestria abroad – keeping the trade routes open and profitable. Her grave was empty. Her body was never recovered after the zebra raid on her unit's trade outpost. For the first few years after the attack, of course, he had held out hope that, perhaps, she was still alive. Somewhere. Then they had found the raid's sole pony survivor, and she had confirmed that Florin had died early in the siege, her body left to rot in the desert sun. Folio Luminant laid the remaining flowers on the graves of his heroic offspring and said his goodbyes in silence.

Behind him, there was a muffled cry of surprise as the stallion tailing Folio had his throat slit clean across. Arterial blood splattered against the leaves and the stallion's body hit the ground with a loud thud and a rustling crash.

Flutter Gust stepped over the still twitching stallion and out of the bushes. Folding her blades back amongst her feathers, the pegasus approached Folio as he finished his goodbyes.

"You have them?" he asked, not turning around.

"Yes, Sir," Flutter Gust confirmed. She produced a thick envelope of documents from her saddle bag.

"Good work."

"You've the map, Sir?"

"Yes. You inspected the route?"

"From here all the way through to the other side of the mountain, Sir. It'll take you to a small abandoned mining town in the foothills. There's a safe-house set up in the old general store with enough supplies to see you through to the coast. A griffon ship, the Tail Wind, will be waiting for you at Cat Scales Harbour."

He turned to face her and startled. She was closer to him than he had expected – she had made a career out of moving in silence. Folio took the offered package in his magic, holding it aloft, his horn glowing. "Thank you, Flutter Gust," he whispered.

"Sir..." she leaned up to him. Their lips met. Surprising her, he pressed into the kiss, encircling her with a foreleg in a rough, tight embrace.

Folio broke the kiss but not the embrace, held her tighter, looking down into her eyes, his horn still glowing.

Flutter Gust was panting, blinking and struggling to regain her icy composure. "The..." she cleared her throat. "The entrance is open and ready... thr-through the under-crypt of the mausoleum. I'll seal the tunnel with the charges after you, Luminant," she promised.

He sighed. "No. You won't."

Flutter's confusion turned to shock as Folio stabbed the levitating dagger into the back of her neck, twisting it to sever her brainstem at the base of the skull. He left the dagger where it was and slipped the packet of documents into his own saddle bag. Only then did his horn stop glowing. He released his grip on her and Flutter's body fell to the grass.

Folio stood above her body for a moment longer, making one last silent goodbye before turning toward the mausoleum, toward the tunnels that would take him forever away from Celestia's shining city.

Chapter 1, Part 1: The Pegasus Front

"With such primitive means of spectra production, the Auroral Barrier Stations, then only thinly spread along our northern boarder, frequently went underpowered. With the result that, every few years, wild arctic storm-fronts burst through the aurora barriers. The worst of these so-called 'storm seasons' on record were in Anno Domina 236, 731-33, and 988 – this latter-most year we shall now discuss at length".

-- Prof. Tundra Flurry,

Before the Rainboom: Pre-Reformation Era Weather Management in Equestria (AD 1238), pp. 45-46

Chapter 1, Part 1:
The Pegasus Front

Manehattan Bay Province, East of Manehattan,
Sunday Evening (September 17th, Anno Domina 988):

Summer Breeze tore through the evening sky. Below her, the cloudscape blurred past; the yellows and reds and long shadows of sunset were rendered a dark, burnt orange as the pegasus hurtled through the air. A cumulonimbus cloud-mount rose up from over the horizon, obscuring Celestia's sun, plunging the world into purple twilight in the last gasps of day. Summer charged her flight aura, ignited it and kicked into an aileron roll. Leaving a spiral vapour-trail in her roaring wake, she shot toward the looming cloud-mount. Dim shadows of things moving within the cloud played at the edges of her perception. She pitched up hard, still spinning, her aura wreathed in twirling vapour like the white spiral cutie-mark on her flank. She raced up the vertical sides of the cloud toward the overhanging edge of the plateau.

Summer punched into the overhang, plunging up into the roiling mass, twisting vapour emanating from her outstretched hooves. She drilled her way upward through the dense cloud, straining, panting, her forelegs trembling. Her wings burned as she continued to flap and spin and hold her course true. Higher and higher, flapping harder and harder, fighting the biting wind and the falling air pressure and the electric sting of arcing static and the cold and the damp – her muscles screaming, the magic pulsing from her chest and the pit of her stomach, burning her up from the inside as air shrieked past her ears. She couldn't breathe, and grey darkness began creeping in at the edges of her vision, her body sang with pain, an explosion coiling within her, insistent, edging on desperation, uncontainable, straining-

The world exploded into view.

Release.

She gasped and went limp. As the cloudscape fell away below her, she was lost in the vast stillness of wild sky. Panting, gulping the thin air, her legs and wings heavy and spent, chest and stomach heaving. The icy air cooled her hot, damp, powder-blue coat. Steam curled off her body in sheets.

Gauzy wisps of cirrus glowed like auroras, green and purple-blue amidst the orange sky. Celestia's setting sun returned to her with the altitude. She hung, weightless, neither climbing nor falling, suspended. Equilibrium. Peace.

Summer had just enough time to sigh before gravity caught up with her. She began falling, her mane and tail whipped behind and above her as she tumbled, end over end, wings tight against her sides, down and down toward the broad, flat plateau of the cloud-mount. She stuck all four of her legs out to her sides, the wind tearing at her limbs, slowing her fall but increasing the speed of her tumbling. The wind stole her breath as she fell, further and further down.

She pulled her legs in and snapped open her wings to their maximum length, slicing into the wind, steering herself into a dive. She pitched up sharp, jarring her hard as she levelled out, carrying her momentum forward. Again, she was zooming over cloudscape, the roiling plateau whizzing past beneath her. The sun was again hidden from her by the cloud-mount's own horizon, washing out the sunlit world. Two sunsets in one day – the exclusive gift of flight.

As she flew, the surface of the cloud started to become more jagged and irregular, more solid. As she approached the centre of the plateau, more and more of its surface was made up of cloud-coral, ancient cloud-stuff: dense enough to support the weight of non-pegasi and hold heavy objects. Also becoming more frequent as she approached the centre, she began spotting wispy white ice-brambles, curly thickets of nephele-vines, the occasional lone helicon-shrub with their purple flowers and blue stems, and rainbow coloured coral blooms.

Pumping her wings to maintain elevation, and slow her speed, she approached the hippocrene in the middle of the plateau, shining with rainbow spectra, the edges of the pond thick with purple helicon flowers, scenting the thin air for miles. Flapping to a hover, she landed in a tiny clearing at the pond's edge, between two thick clusters of helicon. She stamped down the dead foliage and hard packed cloud-coral beneath her, and laid down to catch her breath.

Her breathing settled, she dipped her muzzle into the rainbow pool, and drank the sweet and spicy liquid, feeling its magic course through her, reinvigorating and intoxicating. Natural spectra. Nectar of the sky.

In pegasus lore, the First Flock was born from a lake of spectra at the centre of the Great Overcloud at the Beginning of the world. Summer licked the multi-coloured drops from her lips and scooted back from the edge. She rested her chin on her forehooves, sighing.

The sun already below the plateau's edge, the first stars were now visible. From the ground, Celestia's sunlight would still be on the horizon, casting deep coppery tones. High in the clouds, though, the sun hidden from view, blue light and deep shadow ruled, broken only by the spectral glow of the hippocrene. Summer rested by the edge of the pond, thinking, preening her feathers, and taking the occasional nibble at the purple helicon flowers – sharp and bitter but with a peppery heat and a savouryaftertaste that lingered in her mouth and throat. Soon, Celestia finished lowering Her sun and saw to raising Her moon, the other sacred charge of Equestria's monarch.

Celestia's moon crept high enough to allow the Mare in the Moon to glower down on the plateau's sole pony occupant. Summer watched it over her shoulder as it rose over the tops of the helicon. A chill wind rustled her coat and feathers, causing her to fluff up her wings across her sides. It was hard to feel alone with the fearsome moon watching from the sky, intruding on Summer's sulking with it's disapproving glare. She stood and stretched her legs and wings, forcing her fluffed feathers back under control.

She flapped into the air and set off toward the coast.

She shot over the edge of the plateau, the cloudscape falling away below her to reveal the rolling farmland on the outskirts of Manehattan. Leaving the hippocrene, the light shifted to be dominated by silvery lunar light. Here, the evening winds were kind and cool and welcoming until she encountered the first gusts of sea breezes, salty and harsh and cold. Her coat fluffed in the frosty assault, especially around her chest and neck, but her well-conditioned feathers remained locked where she placed them. Soon, the stars faded from sight as the lights of the city came into view, burning into the darkness, rough and joyous and irreverent. She could already hear the bustle of city nightlife. She banked and descended toward the familiar skyline.

The outskirts of the city passed below her, then the bridges and the west river and she was over the city proper. She descended into the vast canyons of skyscrapers, awash in lights. She began passing other pegasi and slowed, flapping and banking around corners. Home – she could see it now. She slowed and descended, alighting on the roof of the highrise. She folded her wings against her body and caught her breath. At the roof access door she rotated out the combination with her hoof. Down three flights of stairs, an immediate right from the landing, and she repeated this with the door to her apartment.

"I'm home," she called, seeing the lights were still on.

"Hey," Gold Leaf called back.

Summer grabbed ten days’ worth of mail from her cubby by the door and carried it under-wing to the kitchen.

"Welcome back." Gold Leaf didn't turn around. She was leaning over a gadget on the kitchen table, her back to Summer.

"Thanks. Are there any cold ones?"

Gold Leaf stopped tinkering and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. After a moment she looked back down to her gadget. "Yeah, I think there are two left. Have one."

"Lovely." Summer opened the fridge with a wing and retrieved one of the two cold bottles of hard lemonade.

"Good work rotation?" Gold Leaf was again engrossed in her work on the small metal box on the table. Strewn out around it were bits of metal, wires, incomprehensible masses of gears and flanges, screws, tools, nightmarish cork-screw blades and rags covered in grease and vegetable pulp. Half a dozen tools were held suspended in the unicorn's magic. An easel beside the table held a large pad of paper with indecipherable scribbles and sketches, which Gold Leaf referenced with quick turns of the head every few seconds.

"Yeah, was alright," Summer breathed. "As good as could be expected. Now only barriers 84 and 102 are letting storm clouds through, and just small ones now, so…" she trailed off as she flipped through her mail. "Weather Command is starting to send the reservists home in small groups. Triple shifts should be over by sometime next week – if the Transportation Directorate ever stops freaking out."

"Mm." Gold Leaf nodded as she disassembled a gearing mount.

Summer set her mail and the bottle on the empty side of the table and sat down. She gripped the bottle with both hooves and levered the cap off with her teeth. She continued flipping through her mail with a wingtip: advert, advert, bill, catalogue, bill, magazine addressed to a former occupant, bill… and a large white envelope with silver bordering and the official wax seal of the Pegasus Tribe. Summer sighed and took a swig of the fortified lemonade. She flipped the pile of mail back on top of the ornate envelope.

"Euphony home?"

Gold Leaf took a moment as she tightened a screw and checked her scribbled diagram. She inhaled a loud, slow breath through her nose and released it as a sigh before speaking. "You know she hates it when you call her that, right?"

Summer looked at the ceiling and took another sip of her lemonade. "That's her name."

"Mm... not anymore. She, uh, had the final paperwork notarized yesterday. She is, legally, 'Silver Euphony' no longer." Gold Leaf looked up and caught Summer's eye. "You really should consider changing your name, Summer."

"You think?"

"I do. 'Cyclone' or 'Spiral' or something. Or... 'Aileron' – that's pretty. Better match to your cutie-mark. Don't see what a white spiral has to do with 'Summer'."

"And yours has to do with gold or leaves how?" She pointed to the hammer and yellow gear on the unicorn's flank.

"It's different for unicorns." Gold Leaf turned back to her gadget.

"Euphony – or whatever her stupid name-of-the-week is now – is a unicorn."

"Yeah, exactly. House Silver disowned her, so she disowned House Silver right back. That's how it works. House Gold still loves me... Except for how I'm always cavorting with plebs and outcasts like the two of you."

"Well," Summer shrugged. "Better cavorting than canoodling."

"Oh yes," Gold Leaf said in a haughty, nasal, high-born Canterlot lockjaw – far more exaggerated than the accent with which she normally spoke. "They'd certainly disown me if they found out I canoodled with riff-raff. That, and all the carousing and mafficking I get up to with the filthy hoi polloi of this mud-pony city. It would put them right off!" She lowered the gearing mount back into the casing until it clicked into place. "Quite."

"Okay," Summer stood up, washing her hooves of the conversation. "And with that, this riff-raff pleb is going to her room."

"Mm-hm. Oh," Gold Leaf continued in her normal voice. "By the way, no, she's not home yet. Just leave the last hard lemonade for her. She'll probably need it for hang-over relief whenever she does get back. Hair-of-the-dog."

"Affirmative. Goodnight." Summer held the open bottle against her body with one wing and her mail under the other.

"Goodnight." Gold Leaf waved a hoof in the air without again looking up from her work.

At the end of the hall, Summer's room was sparse and clean, with a vanity and a large nest of pillows pressed up against an enormous window. Being on the fiftieth floor, the view of the canyon between the tall towers stretched all the way to water, the lights of the ships making the harbour look like another borough in its own right. The clouds, viewed from below, were dull, silver and flat, their features and characters hidden. Summer closed the door and set her lemonade on the floor.

Off in the distance, dark storm clouds rumbled above the horizon. At the "front line", as most weather ponies were calling it, were the wild storms which the entire might of the Equestrian Weather Service could only just hold back.

She dropped the mail on her vanity and pulled out the ornate envelope with her teeth. She threw herself down into her pillow nest and tore the envelope open. The beginning of the first page of the packet was written in blood-red ink, the letters bold and capitalized for an entire paragraph before settling down to normal black lettering. She scanned the form-letter to the bottom of the page and flipped. Her eyes scanned and picked out the important information. She passed over an address a second time, and she mouthed it, committing it to memory. Another page of normal black text, formalities, threats of penalties and punishments if she neglected her duty to the Tribe and the Flock. She sighed and took a long swig of the lemonade.

Setting the bottle back down and sitting up straight, she took a deep breath, determined. She flipped the first three pages off the top of the stack and came face to face with a glossy headshot of a green-eyed pegasus stallion. He wasn't smiling. One wasn't allowed to smile for one's official file photo. He was handsome enough. Forest green coat, periwinkle mane, muscular neck and a strong jaw.

She flipped the photo over. The next page had a series of photos of the same stallion, full body pictures that showed off his physique and wings. She lifted the page to look at the full page of text below – scanned for his height and then went back to look at his full body pictures in context. Another swig from the bottle.

She flipped several more pages, passing dental records, academic achievements, lineage charts. The last page before the next file was a letter written by the stallion himself. She didn't read it and flipped it over to see the next glossy headshot. This stallion was charcoal grey with a white and blue mane. He was shorter than the first, but his wingspan was far more impressive. He'd had braces – did that mean bad teeth ran in his family?

She rolled over and pressed her face into a pillow to muffle her frustrated scream, bordering on a wail – loud enough to hear from the kitchen, but muffled enough to not disturb neighbours in the units above and below through the thick floors. She threw the pillow across the room and flopped down onto her belly, face buried in the soft nest. She tried not to breathe, then held her breath.

She waited for her roommate to come knocking at her bedroom door to ask her what was wrong. No knock came. She waited long enough to hear Gold Leaf's hooves clacking across the kitchen floor, the sounds of the autoclave opening, closing and whirring to life, and then the sound of her hooves walking back to the kitchen table.

Summer rolled over and sighed. She chugged the rest of the lemonade. Then she got up to turn out the light. On her way back to her nest she kicked the stack of papers, sending them flying around the room, half a dozen glossy head-shots and information packets and personalized letters fluttering to the floor. She didn't clean them up until morning.

Chapter 1, Part 2: Live Without Regrets

Chapter 1, Part 2:
Live Without Regrets

Manehattan, Hay-Packing District,
Monday Morning (September 18th, Anno Domina 988):

"Alright, Constables!" the Sergeant called out. "I see most of us are here, so let's get this started." Sergeant Constable Blue Carbuncle tapped his levitating notes on the lectern. He was a large, moustachioed unicorn with a dark brown coat and a deep parade voice that resonated with authority. Looking up from his notes, he ran through K-division's first shift roster in his head, completing the roll call. "Okay, as many of you know, Constable Steel-Hoof's wife went into labour earlier this morning and delivered a healthy little colt."

There was a round of applause, the gathered constables pounding their hooves on the floor in solidarity with their brother in blue and his new child.

Sergeant Blue even joined in by wrapping his hoof on the lectern. "I've given Steel-Hoof the rest of the day off to be with his family and assigned Hayseed to station duty." He nodded at Hayseed in the second row. "Tell your partner, when you see him tonight, we send him and the wife our best wishes."

"Will do, Sarge," Hayseed nodded back.

"Which brings us to item one: we're a little short for today's patrols, so I'm going to need Agnet and Gardner, as well as Magarac and Palfrey, to each cover half of Steel-Hoof and Hayseed's beat today."

"Not to complain, Sarge," Gardner said in a careful tone. "But couldn't Furlong and Acre take over the beat since Hayseed will be helping you with station?"

"Those are your assignments," Sergeant Blue stressed. "Acre and Furlong have other duties that need to be taken care of ASAP. Understood?" He met eyes with all six of the constables involved, who nodded in acknowledgement of their assignments. "Item two…" the Sergeant sighed. "There is a very angry beaver loose in Reed Park. Some joker managed to get a bright green sweater on the poor critter with the words 'PET ME' knitted onto the back of it. It's bitten five park-goers in the last twenty-four hours, one of whom needed thirty-three stitches on his foreleg. I suspect college students." He cleared his throat. "As a result, Constables Destier and Blazer, before you head out, go down to equipment and requisition yourselves some animal snares and nets. And no bellyaching! A police constable's job is to protect the public! Be it from criminals or from dangerous animals."

"Yes, Sergeant," Destier and Blazer groaned.

"Okay, item three: Central Plaza wants us all to be on the lookout for a parole violator. Female pegasus, name of Wind Whistler. She is described as having a powder blue coat and greying light-pink mane and tail with magenta eyes, standing approximately 1.2 meters tall and weighing approximately 12 stone. She was last seen leaving a pegasus mare's clinic last Friday. She's 76 years old but is said, according to her parole officer, to be in surprisingly good shape and is to be considered dangerous."

"What sort of 'dangerous', Sarge?" Blazer asked, mirroring the puzzled looks and comments from the assembled constables.

"Uh…" The Sergeant flipped through his notes. "Doesn't say. Just says to use caution and 'follow-and-report' procedures if you spot her. Is everypony clear?"

A round of nods and quiet agreements went around the room.

The Sergeant nodded. "Good. Item four… As you know, Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, will be gracing our fair city with her presence this Wednesday and Thursday for the Knights-" Another round of clacking applause from the constables started as soon as Celestia's name was mentioned, accompanied by a few patriotic whistles and shouts. The Sergeant waved the applause down. "Okay, yes, it's very exciting. The point is – and it pains me that I need to say this again – but apparently, some of you just didn't hear me the first three times! But, with how crazy it's going to be this week, with all ninety-nine Knights coming into town for the Knights Summit, and the Princess's military parade down Sixth Avenue on Thursday, all time off requests and vacations, even those previously approved, have been suspended until the Princess's departure after the conference on Thursday. Stop submitting request forms! And just as a side note, if you try to pull a sick day this week and aren't either having a foal or on death's doorstep, then you had better see the station doctor for approval first, or else you'll be cited for dereliction of duty and I will, personally, make you eat your own notebook!Do you understand me?"

"Yes Sergeant!"

"Good! Now, item five: Noise complaints. There has been a band of some sort rehearsing at all hours of the night and morning in the warehouse district near the waterfront. It's a different warehouse every night and the neighbours are screaming bloody murder to whoever will listen, including the commissioner's husband, whose favourite restaurant just so happens to be near that neighbourhood."

"Where's that, Sarge?" Agnet called out from the back of the room.

"Mort's Place?" Joe Magarac drawled with his usual dry wit. There was a titter of laughter around the room when the seedy dive was mentioned.

"'Nouvelle's Nook'," the Sergeant read off his notes with a smirk. "The Commissioner and his husband are stallions of refined tastes, and, I'm certain, both of them will be extremely grateful to whichever of you all find these delinquents and restore the sanctity of their favourite establishment. I, of course, suspect college students. Moving on!

"Item six: The Constabulary Oversight Office has issued an all-points bulletin to be on the lookout for a suspected traitor and murderer believed to be fleeing Canterlot for the coast. His name is Folio Luminant. Male unicorn, brown coat, light brown mane and tail, brown eyes, 1.8 metres tall, weighing over 24 stone. And, I'm led to believe, that's muscle mass, given his service record – over twenty-five years in elite military service. So watch yourselves, constables. He's wanted for the murders of two fellow employees of Her Majesty's government."

"What makes them think that he's headed for Manehattan, Sarge?"

The Sergeant shrugged. "They think he'll try to flee the realm, so all ports are on alert. Understood? Good!

"Moving on… Item seven: Clean your food out of the fridge, ponies! Seriously! The facilities staff are still giving me complaints that food is being left in the refrigerator and forgotten about. Don't take up our limited space with food you don't intend to eat! It's both common courtesy and common sense!

"Item eight: That gang of purse snatchers struck again last night on 11th Avenue between twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth. If it keeps up there may be an opportunity for overtime-"

Half the ponies and Joe Magarac, the only donkey constable present, shot their forehooves into the air, volunteering.

"Overtime helping out third shift."

Several of the hooves lowered, accompanied by groans of disappointment.

"That's what I thought," Sergeant Blue harrumphed. "Those still interested, keep your evenings open for a while and I'll update you all on the situation in the next few roll calls.

"Item nine: Prisoner transfer. As many of you know, Baltimare Constabulary have a number of class six and seven prisoners that were due to arrive at Hoofton Yards last Thursday. Since the storms have made that impossible, the ship transporting these prisoners was forced to make port in Trottingham. From what we can tell, everypony is fine, but they aren't going to arrive until Wednesday at the earliest. Rouncey and Easterly, you two are still assigned to the transfer detail. Wednesday you're on station detail until we hear more specifics of when the ship is due in."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Alright." Sergeant Blue returned his notes to a file folder and laid it on the lectern. "That's all I've got, Constables. Now remember: Let's be careful out there."

"Yes, Sergeant," first shift said as they stood.

The members of the K-division day shift broke into a dozen separate conversations as they milled out of the briefing room and into the bullpen area of the station. The morning light through the high frosted windows cast the open space in yellows and browns, the varnished wood of the walls and desks gleaming with polish. The huge Equestrian flag along one wall fluttered as two patrol pegasi departed through the open skylight door. Senior Constable Swift Rouncey and his partner, Senior Constable Easterly Gale, made a beeline for the coffee machine. Third shift had a tradition of strong, expensive coffee and, out of professional courtesy, left first shift the remains in the airpots rather than pouring it out. The result was a coffee made even stronger by its long, insulated stay in the stainless steel dispenser. Even the dregs tasted of quality and made for a powerful eye-opener if one could stomach the bitter, acidic flavour.

Rouncey took the dregs and allowed his partner a cup almost free of sediment.

"Thanks, Swifty," the sky blue pegasus said, raising her cup to him.

"Cheers," he acknowledged before knocking back a swig of the thick black beverage. "Ooo! That is potent!"

"I still think you two are crazy for drinking that swill." Constable Blazer, a wiry red unicorn, opened a cupboard and extracted a bag of first shift's cheap freeze-dried coffee.

"You'll understand when you grow up, Blazer."

"So, when I hit Senior Grade they're going to surgically extract my taste buds?" Blazer quipped.

Easterly snorted and returned to drinking her coffee without further comment. Blazer loaded the coffee machine. After another few sips Easterly noticed her partner was staring off across the bullpen. She followed Rouncey's eyes to a group of ponies standing around Senior Constable Jasper's desk, chatting. In particular, his gaze was focused on Constable Honey Meadows – golden feathers preened and glistening, her voluminous light brown mane cascading down her neck and shoulders, silky locks flowing with every breath and slight turn of her head. Her partner, Jasper, said something that made her laughter ring out high and crisp.

Easterly smiled with narrowed eyes at her partner's dopey little grin and sipped her coffee, thinking.

In another few moments, Rouncey turned, saw Easterly looking at him, and frowned. "What?" he said, defensive, flustered – guilty.

Easterly tittered and shrugged. "Nothing," she crooned.

"You have something to say?" Rouncey glowered.

"Hm... somepony's got the feather-fever," she teased.

Rouncey harrumphed and turned his head to hide his blushing.

"Well, yeah, duh," Blazer said as he turned away from the coffee machine to let it percolate. "You pegasus mares are hot! Who's got the crush on you, Easty?"

"Not me," Easterly guffawed, her feathers fluffing. "Rouncey's mooning over Miss Meadows over there."

"Oh, hots for the new transfer, eh?" Blazer looked from Rouncey to Meadows. "Yeah, I'd go for it."

"Well, that's not saying much, Blaze, you have no standards."

Blazer wheeled on Easterly, glaring. "I do so! You never see me hitting on your mangy ass, do you?"

"Well, you know I already have a fillyfriend, one; two: you know I'm not into non-pegasi; three: you know I'm not into stallions; and four: you know that, objectively, I am way out of your league."

"She is a bit out of your league, kid," Rouncey agreed, rejoining the conversation.

Blazer made a rude sound and rolled his eyes.

"You should go talk to her," Easterly encouraged Rouncey. "All joking aside, I did ask her out once – back when she was with R-division."

"What were you doing hanging around R-division?"

"Hush, Blaze. She very politely told me she wasn't into other mares, but we went out for drinks anyway. All night we commiserated about our past relationships." Easterly leaned in so she was whispering into Rouncey's ear. "All her past coltfriends were earth-ponies."

Rouncey's eyebrows cocked and he turned to look at his partner. "Seriously?"

"Dead serious. Go on, do it now and live without regrets."

"I gotta agree with her, Swifty. If you don't go over there and make your move right now, I'm gonna give it my shot as soon as my coffee is done brewin'."

"W- I mean... what do I say?"

"Oh! Okay, okay… say… say you're going to Shamrock's after shift with me and Lilac and ask if she wants to come along. You can point over here and I'll wave and nod if you need."

"How come you're never my wingmare?" Blazer whined, jealous.

"One, because you're not my partner, you should go ask Destrier-"

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen."

"And two, you're a creepy little jerk and I hate you. Anyway," Easterly turned back to Rouncey. "Go on, go now, she and Jasper are getting ready to head out. Go!" she shoved Rouncey bodily in Meadows’ direction, Blazer taking his coffee mug from him with his magic.

"Okay! I'm going, I'm going," Rouncey tsked and straightened his blue tunic, falling into a casual lope as he crossed the bullpen.

"Oh my goodness!" Meadows was laughing at something either Jasper or Hayseed had said. Her voice was like a morning breeze in spring: cool, fresh, sending chills up and down Rouncey's neck and made his chest and sides tighten. He felt dizzy.

"Good morning, all," Rouncey managed.

"Good morning, Swifty," Meadows said, gracing him with a smile that made Rouncey's knees tremble.

"Hey, Swifty," said Jasper.

"Howdy, Rouncey," Hayseed drawled.

"Oh, hey," Rouncey addressed Hayseed with a wave of his hoof. "Give Steel-Hoof and Carbine my best."

"Sure will, pal!" Hayseed nodded. "The three o' them were doin' real good when I left 'em at the hospital this mornin'. Though Steel-Hoof is lookin' the worst out o' the three o' them, I'll tell ya! Guy's lookin' like he just did a long stretch of bad country with a worm-eaten plough! His missus is lookin' ten times as steady as her mister. Well, I'd even say-"

"It's good to hear they're all doing well," Meadows interrupted.

"Sure is," Jasper agreed. "I need to go over some expense requests with the Sergeant – meet me out front in fifteen, Meadows?"

Honey Meadows nodded. "See you down there."

"Well," Hayseed began after watching Jasper leave. "I need to get onto the front desk m'self before the third shift desk jockey throws a fit – gooood mornin', everypony." Hayseed waved and left through the double doors to the reception area.

Without warning, Rouncey found himself alone with Honey Meadows. His breath caught in his throat and he hiccoughed and coughed, pounding on his chest with a hoof.

"You alright there, Swifty?" Meadows asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Yeah-" he coughed again. "Just... particularly strong coffee today."

Meadows laughed, and Rouncey's knees weakened again. "You Senior Grades and your coffee! I don't know how you and Jasper drink that stuff!"

Rouncey gave a lopsided grin and shrugged. "It's an acquired taste."

"I guess so. So, how's the Theatre District beat treating you and Easty?"

"Well there have been a-"

"And why is Easty waving and nodding at me?"

Rouncey followed Meadows’ eyes and turned to see Easterly nodding and waving at Meadows from across the room, confirming an expected question which had not yet been asked.

"Uh..." Rouncey fought off the urge to hyperventilate. "Oh right. Easterly and her marefriend invited me out to Shamrock's tonight, we were wondering if you would like to come along?"

Meadows eyes snapped from Easterly to Rouncey. "Oh." She blinked several times. Then she looked off to the side and down at the floor.

Rouncey's stomach flipped and he held his breath, his face blank.

"Sure." Meadows faced Rouncey again, grinning.

Rouncey blinked. Then he remembered to exhale.

"What time were you thinking? I have some errands to run after shift so... five thirty, you think?"

"Perfect," Rouncey beamed. "Lilac doesn't get off shift at the hospital until five so she won't be there until closer to six, but Easterly and I will be there when you get there."

"Great. So we'll all be there for the last half of happy hour."

"Great," Rouncey parroted. "So have you heard-”

A crash of breaking glass and a clatter of something metal bouncing across the floor made Rouncey jump and spin around, backing into Meadows as he moved away from the soup-can shaped object. "Sorry," he said in reflex, turning to make sure he hadn't knocked Meadows off her hooves. Her wings were fluffed, her eyes wide, and getting wider, and fixed on the canister, which was now leaking white smoke with a hiss. Her wings shot out to their full extension. "GET DOWN!" She hugged Rouncey's neck and wrapped her wings around them both just as the canister exploded in blinding light and deafening sound.

Shock from Meadows throwing her forelegs around his neck, more than the explosion, kept Rouncey's knees locked and the both of them upright. The world was white and his ears rang with a painful shrill. He tried to talk, tried to shout, but he couldn't hear himself. He could still feel Meadow's strong forelegs wrapped around his neck and shoulders, her soft, powerful wings wrapped over his face and body. This close, she smelled of heather and fresh hay. He tried to say "Thank you," but still could not hear himself.

After a moment, a sound returned to him as the ringing dimmed and his ears popped. A loud, rhythmic clattering of metal. Meadows retracted her wings but didn't let go of him with her forelegs. As the ringing grew dimmer, the clattering grew louder and louder. He blinked his watering eyes, blurring the burnt-in afterimages on his retinas, and could just make out dull shapes swarming around him.

One of the shapes stopped in front of him and he felt a stiff, hard shove against his chest. He staggered back and Meadows released him and dropped back onto all four hooves. The wide wooden object hit him in the chest again and he could distinguish the solidifying shape was shouting something at him, though it sounded far away and muffled, drowned out by the high pitched keening still ringing in his ears.

Rouncey took the hint and backed up, each step uncertain, his head swimming, his legs rubbery and unsure. He felt the wall on his hindquarters and leaned against it, spreading his hindhooves along the base of the wall, bracing himself upright. He felt Meadows' body bump into him, beside him, leaning against his body. The world snapped back into colour, blurry and indistinct, but visible. Ponies in gold armour were flooding through the bullpen, wielding halberds, shouting, surrounding blind and deaf constables, herding them into small clumps along the walls.

"BACK UP!" they were shouting.

"What in the world..." he muttered, and discovered he could now just hear himself.

As sight and sound returned, and shock gave way, he began clenching his jaw and glaring at the gold-armoured soldiers storming the station. "What is going on?"

"Shut up!" One of the soldiers whacked Rouncey in the side of the head with the staff of his halberd. He staggered and fell on his rump, limbs flailing, head rolling on his neck.

Meadows pulled Rouncey to his hooves with surprising force for a pegasus.

Shaking his head, Rouncey refocused his eyes and saw Blazer attempting to get Easterly to her hooves on the other side of the bullpen. Meadows' foreleg pressed insistently against his chest as he tried to move forward toward his partner.

He looked at Meadows and saw her calm, cold face staring straight ahead, looking at nothing, waiting, her ears were pressed down against her scalp, her eyes hooded. She sighed.

Rouncey pulled back from her, unspoken questions jostling around inside him.

Her eyes flicked toward him, sad eyes, tired eyes.

"What-?" he started, but her eyes turned away from him once more.

"Scanners out!" a mare shouted, and dozens of multicoloured lights floated out into the room through the double doors. As one of the glowing, levitating crystals approached Rouncey, it blinked green, then left him and floated beside Meadows' face. She glared at it, teeth bared in disgust. It flashed red.

An instant bolt of magic shot out from the crystal and hit Meadows in the jaw, forcing her mouth open, and the crystal flew in, bracing itself between the roof of her mouth and her tongue.

"We've got another one over here!" shouted one of the soldiers surrounding Rouncey and Meadows.

"In a minute!" called a mare's voice from somewhere out in the crowd.

"Leave him... leave her... leave him." A beige unicorn with black-rimmed glasses was walking through the crowd, floating dozens of glossy photographs around herself and checking them against the faces of the constables she passed, pointing at each constable and issuing orders. "Take that one!" she said, pointing at Constable Acre. The earth-pony stallion hadn't yet regained his senses and the gold-armoured soldiers had no problem in hefting him to his hooves and half dragged him out through reception.

Beside him, Meadows was sputtering and gagging on the gemstone propping her mouth open, struggling against the magic that was holding her jaw and chin in place. Rouncey reached out a hoof, but stopped. What could he do? Could he get the gem out of her mouth without slicing her tongue in half? What could he do against the magic? He put the hoof on Honey Meadows shoulder, uncertain. She looked at him with one wide eye filled with panic.

"AGAINST THE WALL! " a soldier barked, prodding Rouncey in the chest.

The beige mare walked up to them and appraised them over the tops of her angular glasses, her face critical and disapproving. She cycled through her floating photographs until she found two which she held beside Rouncey and Meadows. She made marks on both photographs and put them into separate folders in her saddlebags, then said, "Leave him," while pointing at Rouncey. "Wait for the dentist to take care of that one, then take her. COLGATE!" she shouted over her shoulder.

"IN A MINUTE!" came the response. "Shit!" The unseen mare's voice was dripping with agitation and anger.

The beige mare sighed and moved on to the next cluster of constables. Two gold-armours followed her, and a soldier smacked Rouncey in the chest with a green paintbrush and Meadows in the chest with a red one, marking them both.

"What is going on?" Rouncey asked.

"SHUT UP!" a soldier bellowed back, raising his gold shod hoof above his head-

A blue unicorn wearing safety goggles pushed her way past the soldier, pushing him aside before he had a chance to strike Rouncey. "Okay, I'm here, what do we – oh." She stepped toward Meadows.

Several metal surgical instruments, held in the mare's blue magic, floated into Meadow's mouth: blunt hooks that pulled her lips back; a spring-loaded, crescent-shaped instrument replacing the crystal holding Meadow's mouth open, with straps that the blue mare fastened around the back of Meadow's head like a bit-and-bridle. The crystal floated out of Meadow's mouth and into a pocket on the blue mare's white, blood-splattered lab-coat.

"Okay, let's see what we've got here..."

"Is it safe?" a soldier asked, leaning in to see.

The blue mare shoved him out of her way again. "Probably not, get out of my way."

Meadows' wings were flapping, her hooves stomping, trying to get away.

The blue mare grunted. "Hold her still!" Her horn flared and the blue magic holding Meadow's lower jaw glowed brighter as the pegasus attempted to struggle.

Rouncey was shoved aside as two soldiers flanked Meadows and grabbed her, holding her by the wings and shoulders.

The blue mare, holding a long, narrow tuning fork in her teeth, inserted the two skinny prongs into Meadows mouth and began tapping the teeth of the pegasus' lower jaw, each in turn, until she got to one of Meadows' molars. She tapped the molar again and slumped. The mare then yanked her head back and replaced the tuning fork in her coat. She extracted a pair of padded pliers from the same pocket.

Seeing the pliers, Meadows gurgled a scream, thrashing against the soldiers holding her.

"Is it safe?" one of the soldiers said again, this time levitating a dagger against Meadow's throat, looking to the blue mare for confirmation.

"No!" the blue mare said. "Hold on! I've got this." She levitated a scalpel into Meadows' mouth along with a tongue depressor. "Alright," she sucked air between her own teeth. She met Meadows' eyes with an apologetic grin. "This is going to hurt like crazy." She cut into Meadows' gums.

Meadows' eyes bulged in their sockets and her jerky, ragged breathing sent trails of saliva and blood spraying out at the blue mare, leaving stains on her already soiled white lab-coat.

Rouncey strained to get up to his hooves, to charge the blue mare. One of the soldiers pushed him straight over with a prod from his halberd staff, sending him thudding to the floor. The soldier gave him a kick in the stomach with a gold shod hoof.

"COLGATE!" the beige mare called from the other side of the room.

"SHUT UP, RAVEN! I WILL END YOU! I AM CUTTING OVER HERE!" the blue mare shouted back. She shuddered with anger. She took a second to collect herself, took a deep breath and smiled as she returned her attention to her patient. The pegasus’ cries of pain had degenerated into pitiful, choking, gurgling sobs; the soldier was still holding the dagger to her throat, blood trickling from a tiny point where he had broken the skin.

Rouncey was numb. He was sitting on the floor where the soldiers had knocked him. He could just manage to keep his head upright and muster his forehooves to prop up his front half. Looking around, he could see the beige mare strolling through the office, doling out judgements on the other police constables of K-division's first shift. She reached the coffee area and compared Blazer and Easterly to their pictures. Putting the photographs in separate folders, she pointed at both of them.

They were both marked, Easterly with green and Blazer with red. Soldiers grabbed Blazer and one of them managed, using only hooves, to struggle a cold-iron ring over the constable's horn, unable to hold the magic-resistant metal with his telekinesis. They dragged Blazer out of the bullpen as he cursed and made threats. Blazer snarled, "Caesar will kill you all for this! You shit eating pieces of-"

One of the soldiers punched an armoured hoof into the side of Blazer's head with a meaty crunch. They dragged his limp body through the doors to reception.

A wet, tearing, ripping sound was accompanied by Meadows' gurgling scream. Rouncey turned to see the blue mare inspecting a bloody extracted molar, holding it in the pair of floating pliers. The tooth was... cracked. Like porcelain.

"Is it safe?" the soldier asked again, though he had sheathed his dagger and was no longer threatening Meadows' life.

"The inner rubber seal isn't broken," the blue mare confirmed. "Trust me, Corporal, you'd know if it were broken while outside of her mouth. For starters, we'd all be dead, or at least choking on our own liquefying lungs – that's the first sign to watch out for, the whole death thing." She nodded at the tooth, satisfied. "Containment!" A soldier levitated a metal box, bearing a chemical hazard symbol, in front of her and she deposited both the tooth and the pliers into the box and locked it shut.

"Doctor Colgate!" a husky male voice shouted as he burst through the doors from reception, dragging another stallion by the foreleg. It was Sergeant Blue, his eyes rolled back in his head, white foam – blotched pink with blood – bubbling out of his mouth. "We found him in the bathroom!"

"OH SHIT!" The blue mare floated a large rubber bag out of her saddlebag and slipped it over the Sergeant's head, pulling drawstrings around his neck and tying them tight over his windpipe. "You!" she pointed to a random soldier. "Get this body out of here and into a tub of water and DO NOT tear that bag! Make sure its fully submerged. YOU!" she pointed at the burly gold-clad soldier who had dragged in the Sergeant. "Shove this up your nose, squeeze the bottle. Breathe deeply!" She floated him a bottle with a rubber applicator. The soldier did as he was told.

Rouncey turned from the Sergeant to Meadows. The blue mare had released her magical grip on Meadows' lower jaw but the metal device was still holding her jaw open, two soldiers still held her upright by the shoulders. Her head was lolling side to side, tears streaming down her cheeks, blood drooling from her mouth to puddle on the floor. Her eyes were fluttering, half closed.

The soldier the blue mare had instructed began dragging away the Sergeant's still-twitching body.

Rouncey struggled to get up. "What's going on? Will they be okay? What's wrong with them?"

"COLGATE!" the beige mare shouted again.

"Hit him," the blue mare hissed through clenched teeth, pointing at Rouncey. "ALRIGHT! I'M COMING!" she shouted out into the bullpen. "Shit!"

Just as Rouncey managed to get to his hooves and tensed his muscles to leap after the blue mare, the blunt metal side of a halberd cracked him in the back of his head. Everything went black.

Chapter 1, Part 3: A Decent Cup of Tea

Chapter 1, Part 3:
A Decent Cup of Tea

Manehattan, Upper East Side,
Monday Morning (September 18th, Anno Domina 988):

Octavia Philharmonica tried to get to her hooves before she was fully awake, and banged her head hard against the underside of the table. Her swearing was rapid, vulgar and creative as she fell back to the soft white carpet, forehooves clutching her head.

Her insides burbled and groaned again as she crawled out from under the table on her hocks and elbows. As soon as she was upright, she bolted for the bathroom, knocking over an expensive vase on her way. It shattered on the floor.

In the bathroom, answering nature's urgent call, Octavia's cursing was again as vulgar as it was creative, though less rapid, and said with far more effort for breath.

She flushed the toilet, twice. Her guts groaned and she lurched to the sink and smacked at the fixtures with her hooves, filling the sink and drinking with greedy slurps. She slumped against the basin and fumbled at the fixtures again until the tap was off.

She took a deep breath. In. And out.

She looked up at the mirror, at the state her mane was in, the dried remains of last night's meal staining her face, neck and forelegs a dark, reddish brown. She licked at her chin, but it was completely crusted and dried into the short grey hairs. She sighed. "Dirty girl," she teased her reflection. "Greedy little piggy." She released the basin and backed away from the mirror, stretching her legs and flexing her hardened earthy muscles, cracked her neck.

Hopping into the tub, she ran herself a hot shower, multiple jets of water rushing over her, melting the caked on glut of the furious evening out of her coat and mane. Steam filled the bathroom and rolled out the open bathroom door into the swanky flat. "Never again... never again..." she lied to herself, relief dripping from her voice like the revitalizing water dripping from her mane. As the hot water soaked through her coat to warm her skin and tired muscles, a wave of euphoria began spreading through her, radiating outward from her stomach and the back of her neck. She couldn't suppress a smile, and, in the privacy of the steam and the warmth, she didn't even try.

She scrubbed herself free of the reddish remnants and swayed in the warm jets, luxuriating in sensation.

The door buzzer wrenched her from her revelry, and she turned off the water with another sigh. Shaking her coat, she climbed out of the shower, grabbed a fluffy white "Hers" towel from the rack, and wrapped it around her mane. A matching "His" towel wrapped her tail well enough. Still dripping, and crunching the broken shards of vase under her hooves, she answered the ornate, inlaid wooden door.

"Sorry to catch you in the shower, Miss Octavia."

"It's no trouble at all, Porter. Come in."

Porter tipped his hat and pressed past into the living room. Octavia nodded at Porter's apprentice and held the door open for her as well. But the young mare hesitated just outside the door. Octavia realized she was still smiling in joyous abandon, and pulled her lips closed over her unusual teeth.

"Sorry," she said with her hoof held over her mouth.

The apprentice, a blue and green unicorn with an archery cutie-mark, gave her best attempt at a smile and pressed past after her mentor. Octavia watched the apprentice assess the living room before moving on to the kitchen, letting the swinging door close behind her.

"Where's the other one?" Porter was saying, pointing a hoof at the single cello case in the middle of the living room.

"They're both present and correct," Octavia reassured him. She crossed the room and tapped the locked cello case with her hoof. "Disassembled, of course."

Porter tugged on the rigid cello case with his forehooves. It held fast where it was. Porter let out a single bark of laughter and nodded. "You are, by far, my favourite supplier, Miss Octavia."

"Oh hush, you're going to make me smile again. And I've already scared your new apprentice half to death," she teased.

Porter took several deep, quick breaths, then took and held a deep breath and lit his horn. A powerful aura blazed around the cello case and the stallion grunted as the case's ponderous mass lifted into the air. Once it was up there, though, he had a better time of it and was panting with relief. "There we go. Oh, don't take her wrong, Miss Octavia. Brilly's no squirm. She started out on the production side of things all by herself. Locals put us onto her and we gave her 'the choice'."

"Extraordinary."

"Just what her cutie-mark was telling her, Miss. Now," he spurred the heavy cello case to movement. "If you'll excuse me, Miss."

"Thank you, Porter House." She watched him float the case out of the apartment to take down to the delivery cart outside. She took the opportunity to finish towelling off her mane and coat and tail, discarding the wet towels on the white angora carpet where she stood. Her violin case and saddlebags were sitting on the torn, stained, cream coloured sofa beside the toppled bookcase. She walked over the smatterings of flung books, and the spilt tray of uneaten hors d'oeuvres, and fished a brush out of her saddle bags. She strapped the brush to her hoof and was using it to tame her coat when Brilly re-entered the living room. The apprentice was levitating a broom, a dust pan and numerous spray bottles, sponges and towels. "Hello!" Octavia chimed.

The unicorn didn't jump or shy away – she didn't even pause or slow her work. She did turn her eyes immediately toward Octavia, making and keeping eye contact – her expression tight and neutral. "Hello," she said in even tones without inflection.

"I'm afraid I've left somewhat more of a mess than usual. It was a long... wonderful night."

"It's fine," she huffed. "I'm not above a little manual labour."

Octavia blinked. "That's rather defensive. I certainly didn't mean to imply you weren't capable of doing your job."

"Of course not. Apologies." She shrugged and began sweeping up the shards of broken vase. "Mr. Porter House says I'm overly defensive too. Back home, earth-ponies sort of dominate this industry. Before Mr. Porter House, I'd never met another unicorn processor."

"He is a very special sort. Rare even. Do the other apprentices and journeymares tease you? For being a unicorn in a 'dirt pony' profession?"

"Yes. They do."

"Well, if it means anything, my sisters and I were teased quite mercilessly in the beginning as well for our… unique differences."

"You?" Brilly stopped working and stared. "Somepony... teased you?"

"For a time. Her Majesty kept us all on rather short leashes in those days. My older sisters especially. For... obvious reasons. But, believe me, time, quiet dignity, dedication and brutal precision can solve any problem."

"Yes, Miss Octavia."

"Oh, no, don't do that," Octavia laughed. "Porter House calls me that out of nostalgia, mostly. It was his coping mechanism when we first met. He used to be in Service, you know – that's why you hear him 'Miss', 'Ma'am' and 'Sir' all over the place – not that that's a bad thing, mind," she clarified. "You can call me Octavia. Or even Monica, if you'd like."

"Monica?"

"Short for Philharmonica. My given name."

"It's... nice." Brilly returned to her sweeping.

Octavia continued to brush out her mane, smirking at the unicorn. "You seem... nervous?"

"No!" Brilly blurted. Then laughed. "No. I'm just-"

"Of course you are. You've never met one of us before. Have you?"

"I've met your older sister, Melody, actually."

"I see." Octavia returned her brush to her saddlebag. "And tell me... 'Brilly'..." Octavia crossed the room toward Brilly, careful not to walk over the large, still congealing bloodstain in the middle of the carpet.

"It's short for 'Brilliant'. My name is Brilliant Dawn." She made a point to make and hold eye contact with the approaching mare – those wide, purple, penetrating, unblinking eyes.

"Brilliant," Octavia tried the word on in her mouth, her coarse tongue curling into the L and R sounds, scraping against the jagged sides of her pointed, interlocking teeth. She smiled a wide, toothy grin as she approached Brilly. "Tell me, Brilliant," she rolled the Rs and enunciated the Ls in dramatic fashion. "Did she – Melody, that is – did she scare you?" Octavia pressed her face very close to Brilly's, her many sharp, oft-hidden, off-white teeth bared.

"Oh... yes," Brilly breathed. "Very much."

Octavia gave a single bemused, wooden laugh. "And she should have." Octavia opened her large eyes even wider. Stretching their lids back, her pupils constricted to vertical slits. "The key... is not to give clear signs of your fear, to not stimulate the responses fear generates in... others..." A low, soft rumbling came from deep in Octavia's throat. She pressed her face closer still, her gaze boring into Brilly's eyes. Their breaths mingled, Brilly's short and fast, Octavia's deep and slow and smelling of foul deeds done in the dead of night, hot enough to curl Brilly's hair.

Brilly did not move or flinch, or even wrinkle her nose. She did not shrink away or engage in prey behaviour – as she had been trained to avoid doing. Brilly kept her face passive, looking straight into Octavia's wide open, iridescent purple eyes. Octavia stretched her lips and cheeks into a taut rictus of a smile, wider than a pony's face should have been able to stretch, showing off rows of wet, stained, dagger-sharp teeth to either side of her dainty, white, normal equine incisors. Her eyelids were peeled so far back that they exposed the throbbing veins and healthy pink flesh holding her eyes in their sockets.

Octavia flared her nostrils, snorting, and the rumbling sound became a snarl, issuing from the back of her throat, slow at first, but soon pitching up and rising in intensity until it was a full-on growl. Brilly could feel it resonating through her hooves and stomach and skull and molars. Brilly fought to stop her eyes retreating away from the slit purple orbs pressing closer in toward her face.

Octavia snapped her jaws with a crack! Brilly winced and jerked back, ears flat against her head.

Octavia's growl became a hoarse chuckle and she let her face snap back to a terse little grin. She took a step back and heard Brilly release the breath she had been holding. "You'll have to excuse me. I'm a bit of a tease when I'm in a good mood. You did well." She returned to her violin case and saddle bags, throwing the case around her neck and the bags over her back. "You've been well trained. You did well," she repeated, readjusting the straps and checking their balance. "Have a lovely day." She left the apartment, Brilly's eyes following her as she left.

She met Porter in the stairwell as he was coming back up. "So," he said, pausing half way up the stairs. "How'd she do?"

Octavia tilted her nose up into the air and looked down at him from the landing above. "I have no idea to what you are referring."

Porter raised his eyebrows and once again began climbing the stairs, never breaking eye contact. "So, then, you didn't just back my new apprentice into a corner and snarl in her face to see if you could make her pee herself a little? Or whatever it was that made the last one quit?"

"Of course not!" Octavia broke eye contact. "There were no corners involved."

"Hah!" Porter huffed as he reached the landing to stand beside Octavia.

Octavia lowered her chin, her eyes level to his. "I would say she's a keeper. She didn't back up a single step or signal... many prey indicators. Still a bit young and stupid, but then, weren't we all?"

Porter shrugged. "I suppose. We'll see... You didn't squeeze your take into there, surely?" He pointed at Octavia's violin case.

"Hm?" Octavia looked down at the case hanging by its strap around her neck. "Oh!" She laughed. "No, this actually has my violin inside."

"Then where...?" He craned his neck to look at her saddlebags. "If you don't mind my asking?"

"The usual place," Octavia grinned as she patted her stomach with a foreleg.

"No!" Porter snorted with blatant disbelief. "There were... at least forty kilos missing! You couldn't!"

"I'll admit it was a bit excessive, even for me."

"'A bit excessive' she says! Miss Octavia-" He realized how loud his voice was getting and forced it down to a whisper. "You should be bulging left, right and centre out to here!" He made an expansive gesture with his foreleg.

"I think you're getting dangerously close to making a comment about my weight, Porter," she tsked.

"I'm commenting on your eating habits, surely."

"Well, I shall thank you to stop doing so now." She continued descending the stairs. "Have a lovely week if I don't see you before then, Porter."

"And you, Miss Octavia," he sighed.

Octavia left the brownstone apartment building and set out in search of a decent cup of tea.

Chapter 2, Part 1: Harvest

—Royal Equestrian Post and Telegraph Service—

TO: Sr. Constable Swift Rouncey, 13th Street Constabulary Station
FROM: Sr. Constable Lyra Heartstrings, Dolphin Hotel, Rm 636
SENT: SEP20 988 13:56

"FINALLY ARRIVED IN CITY -(STOP)- MET GOLD ARMOURS NOT YOU AT DOCK -(STOP)- HOPE ALL IS WELL
-(STOP)- PRISONER TRANSFER DONE -(STOP)- TWO DAY LAYOVER IN MANEHATTAN -(STOP)- HOPE WE CAN BOOZE AND BROTHEL THURSDAY NIGHT IF YOU ARE FREE"

Chapter 2, Part 1:
Harvest

Manehattan, Theatre District,
Wednesday Night (September 20th, Anno Domina 988):

"I'm home," Summer groaned, letting the door swing in and bang against the wall. She tromped in and kicked the door closed behind her. Her stomach rumbled as she trudged, limping on her front left leg, into the kitchen. She slid her bags down her wing onto the half of the table free of Gold Leaf's mechanical detritus. "Leafy?" she called. There was no answer.

She checked the fridge where four frosty bottles of juniper beer awaited her. "Oh thank rainbow-shitting goodness," she breathed. Taking one of the bottles of beer and a half empty bottle of salad dressing, she returned to the table and began unpacking her bag. A 'Deluxe Everfree Autumn Salad', wrapped in a flimsy foil to-go tray, greeted her with purple arugula, sweet yellow onions, fresh slices of ripe tomato, crunchy carrots, chewy raisins, refreshing celery, roasted pumpkin seeds and bits of chilled, chopped, colourful, juicy Sweet Apple Acres brand Zap-Apples. Summer inhaled the heady bouquet. It made her eyes swim and her stomach grumble so hard she could feel the vibrations through most of her aching body.

She gripped the bottle of salad dressing with both forehooves and shook. Then she bit down and struggled to undo the cap with her teeth. The bottle was sticky from drops of the lemon-thyme vinaigrette that had dribbled down the neck after each use, which made her hooves gummy and slick. The cap wasn't budging. She jerked her head to the side, trying to wrench the cap loose, and only succeeding in yanking her bandaged foreleg at an odd angle. "Ow!" Releasing the cap from her teeth, her forelegs, which had been pulling down on the bottle, slammed into the table. She screamed and fell over sideways, landing with a meaty thwack and a frantic flapping of feathery wings.

She groaned and sobbed and swore on the floor, cradling her foreleg. She checked that the punctures under the gauze weren't bleeding again. The intern at the clinic had stabbed her with the needle three times before hitting the vein dead-on. And when they began taking her blood it felt as though they were intent on having it all, filling up two large phials before telling her she could unclench her eyes and her teeth – that it was over and she could go have a cookie and a glass of orange juice.

Her stomach protested at the memory of the bland, dry oatmeal cookie and the warm, sticky, pulpy orange juice. "Ow, ow, ow, ow," she moaned, gripping the back of her head with her good forehoof. The fall hadn't done her hunger headache any favours. A new pain in her flank caused her to yelp and roll away from whatever was sticking her. The motion caused her to knock into the table, which in turn caused all four metal legs to screech across the floor and a shower of little metal things – Gold Leaf's screws, flanges and tools – to fall off the table and clatter down to the tiled floor. The sound of something rolling across the table only just had time to register in her mind before it too crashed to the floor, the glass bottle of juniper beer shattering and its contents rushing outward into an expanding puddle. The bottle of salad dressing soon followed. "No! No no no!" It smashed onto the floor and its contents, a slow, viscous blob mixing with the beer.

"Aaaargh!" Summer wailed in frustration, scrambling up onto her two good legs, hopping and flapping for balance, her tail flicking itself dry, splattering juniper beer everywhere. She turned to inspect her stinging flank. It was bleeding. Blood spread through her coat, across her cutie mark and dripped, hot and wet, down her hindleg. She kicked the now wet leg, sending the blood flicking off her, mixing with the spilt beer and dressing. She turned around to see what had cut her, hopping on her one good foreleg and one good hindleg, her wings flapping in furious bursts to keep her upright.

It was one of Gold Leaf's blades. One of the curved, spiral blades that had been custom forged to her exacting specifications for the whirring guts of one of her prototype machines.

One of the blades that she scrubbed, autoclaved and detailed at the end of each tinkering session.

One of the blades that she kept in a padded, locked case which she, in turn, kept locked inside the heavy, metal fire-safe that she hid behind a false wall in her bedroom closet.

The blade was lying on the kitchen floor, wet with blood and beer and something brown and crusted.

Summer straightened her neck and looked around the kitchen, flapping to stop the quick motion from sending her toppling to the floor again. "Leaf?" she called out. "Eu-Euphony?"

There was no answer.

The padded case was sitting open on the counter. The keys were hanging from the case's magic-proofed, cold-iron padlock. The coffee machine was on its side next to the sink, its glass carafe shattered. There were cabinets hanging open, their contents strewn about the counters and floor. There were cracked and broken counter tiles and the stove was dented.

Eyes wide, her salad forgotten, Summer began backing out of the kitchen on all four legs, ignoring the pain in her foreleg and flank, her wings standing straight up, feathers bristling. She held her breath, ears darting about, straining to hear any signs of movement. A shuddering breath forced its way out of her mouth. "Ah!" she yelped as her backside hit the wall by the door to the living room.

Her sides were heaving, her breaths were quick and shallow, cold sweat dripping down her neck under her mane. She tried to swallow. She craned her neck to look into the half-lit living room. The lamp was lying knocked over on the floor, dark.

She turned and crept through the living room toward the front door, trembling, her heart a thundering drum attempting to burst free of her rib-cage.

She reached out a hoof and pulled down on the latch. The front door came open.

There was a pop-flash and the door slammed shut, wrenching her foreleg forward. A heavy hoof, belonging to a huge red stallion, was pressing the door shut. He was wearing a black robe and hood, and towered over Summer, unmoving.

Summer balked, rearing up on her hindlegs and wheeled her forelegs, shrieking and backing away, wings flapping, pushing herself back. The hood was blown back from the unicorn's face, revealing the blue, glowing holes in his head where his eyes should have been.

Pop-flash; another unicorn in a dark robe was standing beside him.

Summer turned and ran. "No-no-no-NO-NO!"

Pop-flash; a third unicorn in black robes blocked her path. She leapt over him, her wings scraping against the ceiling and walls of the hallway. Her hindhoof clipped him in the face and she landed hard, careening into the hallway table and pitching over in a heap. Pop-flash, pop-flash. A unicorn tripped over the table she'd kicked away from herself and, flailing her limbs, Summer managed to struggle into the first open doorway she could reach. She kicked the door closed behind her before she crumbled to the floor, gasping.

She struggled back to her hooves, spun around and strained against a bookshelf, toppling it and blocking the door.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…" She couldn't breathe. Not enough air. Not enough space. Trapped. Closed off. Fly! She needed to get out. Fly! Her wings were flapping and stuttering, her feathers tense and rigid, she couldn't-

"Leaf!" Between the bed and the nightstand, Gold Leaf lay splayed, her hindlegs lit by the puddle of light spilling in from the window. Summer turned on the light. The orange unicorn mare's body was lying where it had been dumped. She was still, pale, her limbs bent at odd angles. Her throat was a raging split of exposed muscle and dried blood, the hollow of her larynx gaping up at Summer. Her eyes were open, milky, unseeing.

There was a bang against the door.

Summer bolted for the floor-to-ceiling window and bucked it with her hindlegs. Spider-web cracks radiated out from her hooves, but the glass held.

Pop-flash. The hulking red stallion was in the room with her. She charged the window a second time, spinning around at the last instant and slamming her hindhooves toward the window just as another pop-flash placed a unicorn between the window and Summer. Her hooves, carrying all the force of her kick and her full body weight, connected with his throat, crushing it. He went flying backwards, shattering the window and shooting straight out into the night and down to the street fifty stories below.

Summer fell to her belly with a bone-jarring thud, skidding toward the edge of the window, wind tearing at her tail and mane. She struggled to get to her hooves, flapping her wings and turning toward the freedom of the open air. Pop-flash. Strong limbs forced her back down, hard, to the floor. A hoof connected with her face. Once, twice, a third time – and there was only blackness.

Chapter 2, Part 2: Disillusion

Chapter 2, Part 2:
Disillusion

Manehattan, Midtown, Majestic Solar Tower,
Thursday Morning (September 21st, Anno Domina 988):

"And, while We have considered the petitions to the contrary," Her Most Effulgent Majesty, Princess Celestia of Equestria, concluded, "We hold that this is the best course for the Realm. And, with the same grace and honour of which We know you are capable, We shall expect Our Knights Council to carry out Our wishes."

"So sayeth the Sun and Moon!" the Princess's gold-armoured sergeant-at-arms bellowed.

The auditorium of ninety-nine knights all stood, their purple armour rattling. "The Knights hear and obey!" they called out in unison.

Her Majesty swept Her eyes across the crowd. "You are dismissed with Our continuing gratitude and blessings."

"Glory to Celestia! Peace to the Tribes!" rang the ninety-nine voices.

Her business completed, Princess Celestia turned from the podium and, with her escort of gold-armoured First Lancers, departed through the side door to the hall.

A sigh of release washed over the crowd as their monarch left them to their own devices. The drone of dozens of conversations rose like the swell of the tide to resound throughout the hall. Knight Commander Caesar, however, spoke to nopony, but headed for the exits at the rear of the hall, his dark purple armour clanging as he ran.

His subordinate, Knight Captain Fleur de Lys, followed in a hurried rush to catch up. Pressing through to the lobby, Fleur found Caesar leaning against one of the lobby's gold-inlaid alabaster pillars.

"Breathe, Caesar, breathe," she whispered as she approached him.

Caesar held up a hoof to silence her as he focused on collecting himself. The grey earth-pony's eyes were shut tight and his face was downturned. Through his nose, he took deep, steady breaths. "I'll be fine," he managed to whisper through clenched teeth. Another deep breath in and out. "I just need a moment to think."

The doors from the auditorium began opening again and Caesar forced himself to stand up straight and to unclench his jaw. Other knights began filling the lobby, their conversations blossoming into the high-ceilinged room, echoing off the white and gold pillars and solid platinum statuary. The diamond chandeliers tingled with the vibration of dozens of steel-shod hooves treading on the lush carpeting below.

"Are you alright, Caesar?"

Caesar's gaze snapped toward Knight Captain Garnet Glitter as she approached. He plastered a practiced smile on his face. "I'm fine," he assured her.

The crimson-coloured unicorn's face was a mask of concern, but she only nodded once in acknowledgement. She turned to Fleur and smiled, extending her armoured hoof to the taller, white unicorn. "Fleur darling, it's been too long. You're looking well."

"Thank you, Glitter dear," she extended her own hoof, touching it to Knight Captain Garnet's. "You wear your promotion well. Congratulations." They lowered their hooves and moved in to stand on either side of Knight Commander Caesar. Fleur towered over both Garnet and the grey earth-pony due to her highland unicorn heritage, but Garnet, as a lowland unicorn, stood just a hair shorter than Caesar.

"Thank you." Garnet's head gave a quick little bow, accepting the compliment, though her eyes were scanning the room full of knights. "Look at them all," she breathed.

"Mm," Fleur hummed.

"When was the last time Her Majesty assembled the entire Knights Council?"

"Years," Fleur shrugged.

"Seventeen years, nine months and eighteen days ago," Caesar grumbled.

Fleur caught Garnet's eye. "Before our time." She winked. Her tiny, mischievous smile was infectious, and the other mare returned the expression.

Garnet resumed watching the other knights milling about the room, bunching together in small groups or large circles of discussion. "How many of us, do you think, were here the last time the entire council met?"

"Twenty-one," Caesar answered right away.

Garnet turned back to Caesar, her smile wavering, her ears pressed down against her head. She drew breath to speak... but faltered, her comment dying on her lips. Caesar wasn't looking at her. He was looking out across the room, his eyes unfocused, distant. Garnet tried again. "I'm so sorry, Caesar," was all she could manage. "I'm sorry it had to come to this. I know what-"

"I'm fine," he said in a clipped tone, only just keeping the anger out of his voice. His face remained neutral. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment. Upstairs, in his office, the sealed letter locked in the upper right desk drawer, written on four sheets of his own official stationery, began: If you are reading this, I am either dead or disappeared. Let it be known that I died with no regrets, that I did my duty for Crown and Country. Whatever they may say about me…

He let the breath out slowly. "Sincerely, Garnet." He met her eyes, his expression softening. "I'm fine."

She couldn't hold his gaze for long, looked away. "Mm." She gave a single perfunctory nod. Her forehoof was pawing at the carpet, digging a rent in the plush material. The three of them, the earth-pony stallion and the two unicorn mares flanking him, stood without speaking for a moment. Garnet drew breath to say something but stopped when two loud pegasi walked past.

"I'm not saying Cloudsdale isn't grateful for the business," said the purple pegasus knight to the other. "But I think there are several industries and guilds that've become dependent on the weather factory running at 100% capacity. If productivity were to drop by just-"

"Yes!" The grey pegasus knight agreed with emphatic nodding. "This is what I've been saying for months now! We're just weeks away from the new spectra facility coming online, and with the reallocation of resources-"

"It'll finally show those Canterlot bureaucrats what we've been warning them about all these years."

As the two passed, in the direction of the buffet table, Garnet cleared her throat. "Have you been informed how the transition will be effected?"

Caesar nodded. "Beforehoof, Her Majesty informed me that, should I be… should another Knight Commander take up the position, as it were, that I was to assist in the transition by bringing the new Director up to speed as soon as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if Her Majesty has already informed Shining Shield of the... broad strokes." Caesar became aware that there were many pairs of eyes watching him from around the lobby, all of them looking away as he spotted them. He shot a few of them withering glares.

"Here he comes," Garnet whispered, seeing Knight Commander Shining Shield's approach.

"Caesar," Shining said, his tone formal.

"Knight Commander," both Fleur and Garnet greeted the tall, white, highland-unicorn stallion, bowing their heads.

"Captain Garnet, Captain Fleur," he returned with slight, respectful nods.

Caesar turned to look up into Shining Shield's eyes. The blue-maned unicorn was almost twice Caesar's size, and he had grown a blue, pencil-line moustache since Caesar had seen him last. Caesar remembered watching Shining Shield on the day of his graduation from the Equestrian Military Academy, how he had wondered whether this promising young colt was worth nurturing and forming, like clay, or whether he should crush him before he became a threat. Caesar nodded up at the colt turned stallion, the cadet turned Knight and usurper. "Shining, good to see you. Congratulations. This has been a long time coming... as I understand."

Shining waved this off with a hoof. "No need to congratulate me for this, Caesar – I know what this work meant to you. I'm sorry it worked out this way."

Shining was already referring to Caesar in the past tense – to his face. "Of course," Caesar cleared his throat. "Still, you'll share a drink with me in my office upstairs, perhaps? We can toast to the new Director and go over a few pressing matters right away? Get the ball rolling, as it were?"

Shining's brow furrowed, followed by a look of concern that caused the bile to rise in Caesar's throat. Caesar choked it down and struggled to keep his own expression neutral. "There's… uh," Shining started. "Really no need to get things going so fast, old boy. I need to return to Canterlot and-"

"I'm afraid some of these matters really will not wait. There are a lot of factors in motion at the moment that will define the remainder of your time as head of the Security Directorate, or whatever we're calling it now. And besides... I have a lovely bottle of nearly hundred year old brandy I've been saving for... an occasion."

"Well... That is, if you insist-"

"I do." Caesar gave a half-shrug. "Give me this, Shining. I'm eager to get this... on with." The pity returned to Shining's expression – Caesar ground his back teeth together and pretended not to notice.

"Understood," Shining said. He held out his hoof to press against Caesar's. Caesar pressed his hoof into Shining's in a brief gesture. "Agreed." The word hung between them for a moment.

The moment dragged on.

Fleur cleared her throat and cast her eyes toward the buffet table.

Shining gave a strained smile down at the smaller stallion. "Should we say three thirty?" He half turned to leave.

"Of course. And feel free to bring your staff if they're not rushing off after the summit."

"I'm... not sure they all have clearance to, uh... be briefed quite yet, old boy. Knight Captains Shard and Gypsum should be available, though."

"Wonderful. I'll see you there, Shining."

Shining nodded and departed, walking into the congratulations of another group of knights half way across the lobby.

"Well," Fleur began. "You've certainly succeeded in confusing the crap out of him."

"Caesar, you do know he probably now thinks you're planning some sort of elaborate murder-suicide, don't you?" Garnet put a hoof on his shoulder.

"I hope so," Caesar muttered.

"I…" Garnet started, but stopped when she saw a Manehattan Senior Constable come running into the lobby.

The constable, a brown earth-pony stallion, scanned the crowd of knights until his eyes fell on Knight Captain Garnet. He bolted in her direction.

"Oh shit," Garnet whispered. "Excuse me." She stepped away from Caesar and Fleur and ran to meet the constable half way.

Fleur sighed in the direction of the buffet table. She snapped her gaze back to Caesar. "We're not planning on killing Shining, are we?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Sadly, that ship has sailed."

In the middle of the lobby, Garnet was shouting orders at the constable, sending him running back out of the vaulted room. Garnet ran over to a group of pegasus knights, singling out the Warden of the Everfree, Knight Warden Wind Striker, and broke him the news.

"Here we go..." Fleur whispered to Caesar, not looking at Garnet and keeping her eyes fixed on the buffet table.

"Hush," Caesar whispered back. "What have you heard from your associates?"

Fleur turned her eyes from the buffet to the drama unfolding between Garnet and Wind Striker a few moments longer before turning her attention back to Caesar. "According to my military contacts, the Princess's First Lancers stormed the remainder of all Directorate facilities, on-the-books safe-houses, and police and government buildings under our control at about the time you were giving your address at breakfast this morning. They've arrested everypony even suspected of working for the Directorate. Hauled them off to Canterlot for 'debriefing'."

"Nothing we didn't anticipate," Caesar murmured. Both he and Fleur watched most of the pegasus knights form up on their Knight Warden and run out of the hall, Garnet trailing behind them with two of her own Knights flanking her. "But the timing..." He sighed. "I can't imagine a worse confluence of events."

"So... does this change-"

"This changes nothing," he snapped. He shook his head and calmed himself. "What have you heard of Folio?"

Fleur suppressed a sharp laugh behind a cough. Caesar glared at her before turning his glare back to the rest of the room. "I inspected both Flutter Gust's body and Folio's office before I left Canterlot. Her wounds were definitely consistent with Folio's preferred methods. His office was squeaky clean. I don't think he intends to go back to it."

"Oh Folio…" Caesar sighed. "All you had to do was maintain your nerve..."

"Should we be trying to find him first? Should we be concerned?"

Caesar shook his head and began making his way toward the buffet table. Fleur fell into step beside him. "Now that he's run we can't save him. He'll be trying to make it to the Free Cities during the lull in the storms, the fool... Put numbers 42 and 47 on it. They're good girls."

Fleur levitated a plate and began filling it with food. "Yes, Sir. I'll head out as soon as I'm– as we're finished here."

Chapter 2, Part 3: Laying Out the Carpet

Chapter 2, Part 3:
Laying Out the Carpet

Manehattan, Lower East Side Docks,
Thursday Afternoon (September 21st, Anno Domina 988):

Octavia Philharmonica had been awake for hours, but she was enjoying her spot in the sunlight far too much to move. Lying with her forelegs folded under her head, the bare, worn floorboards of her room were warm and familiar under her belly and chest. Her breathing was slow and deep and the late morning sun on her coat forced her mouth into a dreamy grin. Her idle tail swished in wide, lazy, dragging sweeps across the floor, and her ears swivelled and pivoted of their own accord, following the shouts, laughs, clacking hooves and scratching talons of others moving about the building beyond her room. Down in the bar, Lanky was playing his squeezebox and Sour Talon was harassing the ivory keys of his out-of-tune piano. For a time, Petunia was singing with them, but now Octavia could hear her singing privately for a client in one of the bedrooms on the next floor up.

The sweet scents of roasting pork and frying fish wafted up from the kitchens directly below, tingling her nose with a heady bouquet of fat and protein and smoke. Griffins delighted in cooked meat and, since ponies often complained at the slightest whiff of burning flesh, tended to cluster in enclaves where their pony neighbours were less discerning. The docks, for example, were filled with enough stink to make any argument against the griffin practices moot – garbage and ammonia and brine and bird shit, mingling into the unmistakable harbour smell. Octavia did not eat cooked meat, of course, but adored the aromas, and even the sounds, of meat cooking, of the fat bubbling out of the flesh, of the cartilage crisping and of the marrow swelling and sweating in the bones.

Octavia licked her teeth and yawned. Half way through closing her mouth her eyes snapped open and her head perked up, ears forward. A griffin was coming down the hallway. She waited for him to knock. "Come in." Speaking caused her to yawn again and she stretched her forelegs in front of her, arching her back.

Reggie poked his beaked face into the room. "Sorry, Tavi, did I wake ya?"

"No." Octavia settled herself back down onto the floor and shook out her mane. "You did not. I'm just having a bit of a lie-in. How are you?"

"Not complainin'. Ya feelin' fiddle-fit yet?" Reggie opened the door the rest of the way and padded into the room on paws and talons.

"Very well, thank you. What day is it?"

"F'ursday."

Octavia scoffed. "Well then I truly must be doing well. I slept right through Wednesday."

"Yeah ya did." He looked around the room. "Sure ya don't want a bed or somefink in 'ere?"

Octavia rolled over onto her back and looked at the ceiling. "Thank you, but... it's not how I was raised. I'm comfortable with the floors in here. They're well-worn and smooth."

"Ya might like a bed." His eyes fell on the three closed slop-buckets by the door. He tapped the closest one with a talon and listened to the sound it made.

"No, thank you." She stretched her legs into the air above her, rolling her forehooves on her fetlocks, cracking the joints.

"D'is from today?"

Octavia flopped all four legs to one side and craned her head to look where he was pointing. "Mm, no. Not that one."

Reggie turned and shouted down the hallway: "Plum Stone! Get yor flank in 'ere!" Reggie shouted again, this time with threats and curses, and the sound of hooves came running up the stairs and down the hall.

"Yessir?" said the dark blue colt on the edge of stallionhood.

Reggie smacked him in the back of the head. "D'is bucket's been 'ere since Tuesday! Wot do I pay ya for, you rancid puke pustule!" He smacked the colt again. "Pick that up and gitit outta 'ere!"

The colt leaned down and grabbed the wooden bucket's metal handle. Lifting it, he almost toppled forward and staggered into the room toward Octavia, his eyes going wide with horror as he saw her looking straight at him with cattish fascination.

Octavia waved a hoof at the dirty little colt as he backed away, his sides heaving and nostrils flaring. He rushed out of the room and down the hallway.

"Lazy little git," Reggie muttered, watching the colt scamper away to empty the slop bucket.

"My, but... he has been growing recently."

"Hm." Reggie nodded, distracted.

"You must be feeding him well."

"Hm?" Reggie furrowed his brow and met Octavia's eyes.

Octavia raised her eyebrows at Reggie and clacked her teeth together three times in quick biting gestures, her grin suggestive.

"No!" Reggie waved a claw at her. "None o' that."

Octavia pouted and looked away. "You're mean," she teased.

"Not in my establishment!"

Plum Stone returned and placed a fresh bucket on the floor of Octavia's room, grabbing the next one in turn and running out again.

"Yes, because this place is so reputable."

"I said no."

Octavia caught his eye again. "I will chew your face off."

"Fine," he countered. "I'm charmin' enough to get by wifout one."

"Ha! You wish…"

Plum Stone returned with a second empty bucket and took the third with him as he scampered back out.

"Now, did you want something? Not that I don't enjoy your company, but..."

"Oh, yeah." Reggie's attention snapped away from Plum Stone's coming and goings and back to the matter at claw. "Is you expectin' company?"

Octavia sat up straighter. "No...?"

"Lookouts say that 'orned mank is comin' up Crab Street. She's wearin' 'er purple armour an' all. Doubt she's 'ere for a piece of strange."

Octavia's laughter was dry and mirthless. "You'd best hope not. Trust me, Reggie, never, ever let Fleur de Lys alone with anypony, whore or not. Poor Holystone will be scrubbing blood and viscera off the ceiling and walls for days. Assuming Fleur doesn't get overexcited and burn the whole place to the ground or teleport huge chunks of it into the sea. She's inconsiderate like that."

"I'll take yor word fer it. You want me t' send 'er up or-"

Plum Stone ran in again and dropped off the last empty bucket. Octavia eyed him as he backed away. "Thank you, sweet child," she crooned. He ran out of the room. "Such a well developing little stallion," she commented. "I promise I'll clean up the mess. You know how discreet I can-"

"No!"

Octavia harrumphed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, please send Knight Captain Fleur de Lys up."

"Yeah a'right."

"Could you also have some tea sent up? The Halcyon. And some of Magnolia's favourite biscuits? I'll compensate her."

"Sure," he turned to leave.

"Reggie," she called to him.

He stopped in the doorway.

"Don't antagonize the Knight Captain. Last time she showed remarkable restraint. Well, for her, at least. Just..." she sighed. "Please? Just have everypony keep out of her way?"

Reggie met her eyes. He nodded once.

"Thank you."

He tipped an imaginary hat to her. "Of course, m'Lady."

"Seriously, I will chew your face off," Octavia laughed.

"I look forward to you trying," he lied.

As Reggie closed the door behind him, Octavia stood and dug her brush out of her saddle bag. A few quick brushes through her mane and tail and she was laying out a small rug and table in the middle of the room. Her possessions, though few, were functional. The little table was carved, painted wood, made for picnics on the grass – a gift from her sister, Viola. The rug, silk with intricate floral patterns, had been taken from her mother's study, saving it from the inferno that had marked the end of Octavia's youth. Also in Octavia's rented room were two cellos, eight violins, one double bass, two violas and one rebab. The instruments hung along the left-hoof wall, their cases were stacked along the right-hoof wall. There were more cello cases than were needed to hold her instruments, and these extra cases cycled in and out as "production" work demanded. Her other possessions were small enough to fit inside her saddle-bags – two heavy-duty affairs made of double-stitched canvas. One of the bags bore an embroidered copy of her cutie-mark on the flap. The other bag bore the number 47 in faded white paint, now almost unreadable.

Octavia situated the table so it sat between her spot under the window and the rug, which sat between the door and the table. There was a knock on her door. "Enter."

Magnolia, her layered red mane bouncing with each step, entered bearing a tea-tray in her mouth.

"Please don't step on the rug," Octavia directed as she dug two bits out of her saddle bag.

Stepping around the rug, Magnolia placed the tray on the little square table. "This is my last tin, Miss Octavia – you owe me more than money." She took the bits all the same and slipped them into the shoulder pocket of her dress.

"That's... three favours I owe you?" Octavia splashed water on her face and took a quick drink from the pitcher-and-basin in the corner of the room.

"Sure. Just so you know, I'm cashing those in next time my drunk-ass ex-husband comes staggering in here."

"Noted," Octavia agreed.

Magnolia made a hasty retreat back to the kitchens.

Octavia wiped her face dry with a foreleg and sat in her spot in the sun, her back facing the window. She lifted the lid off the teapot and inhaled. She checked the creamer and was checking the sugar bowl when Knight Captain Fleur de Lys entered. Magnolia had left the door open, and the tall, white-coated, purple-armoured unicorn walked straight in to take her place on the well-maintained silk rug. "Hello, Octavia." She took off her helmet and set it beside her, her long, silky, pink mane cascading down her neck and shoulders in ripples.

Octavia answered by grasping the wicker-wrapped handle of the tea-pot with her teeth and poured for her guest and then herself.

"I seem to have garnered something of a reputation since the last time I was here," Fleur mused aloud.

Octavia took up the tea-cup between her pasterns. She closed her eyes and let the steam wash over her muzzle, inhaled the hot, frothy odour.

Fleur levitated two spoonfuls of sugar into her tea and stirred. One of the biscuits floated in front of the unicorn's face for inspection before she took a tiny bite. "Mm," was the only comment.

Octavia was silent still.

Fleur tapped the spoon on the lip of her tea-cup and set it down on the tray. She floated the cup to her lips, blew on the steaming liquid, and took a small sip.

Only then did Octavia take a sip of her own tea.

"Hm. Not bad," Fleur allowed before taking a second sip. "Where is it from?"

"Knight Captain," Octavia bowed her head. "It is a blend from the Holy Halcyon Empire, Knight Captain."

"Interesting." She took a third sip and then set the cup back upon its saucer. "If you have any questions of a personal nature you may ask them now," Fleur allowed.

Octavia bowed her head again. "Knight Captain, thank you. Knight Captain: is there any news regarding my mother, Knight Captain?"

Fleur took a full bite of the biscuit, chewing and swallowing before meeting Octavia's expectant eyes. Octavia averted her gaze downward. "Yes." She finished the biscuit before continuing. Octavia contented herself to sip her own tea.

"Your mother," Fleur continued. "Was spotted three days ago in Vanhoover, boarding a freighter. There are... a number of options as to where she may be heading from there. We assume she is well. Though, reports… differ. As always. We believe she is keeping herself very busy, judging by how much equipment, and how many supplies, she's been... acquiring. Though none of it appears to be intended for anything expressly forbidden, so you may be assured Knight Commander Caesar will uphold his part of the agreement. You may thank me now."

"Knight Captain, thank you, Knight Captain."

"Good girl. And, speaking of Caesar... uh..." Fleur frowned. "I've just come from a summit of the Knights Council. Her Majesty, in Her infinite wisdom…" Fluer's voice bordered on sarcasm, "has announced that She will be dissolving the Security Directorate entirely... and replace it by establishing at least two new 'ministries'. Neither of which will be headed by Knight Commander Caesar, according to Her Majesty's currently stated intentions, so..." she shrugged. Fleur levitated a thick bundle of file folders out of her purple and blue saddlebags. "So," she continued, sighing. "I've a mission for you."

Chapter 3, Part 1: Alive

--Royal Equestrian Post and Telegraph Service--

TO: Sr. Constable Lyra Heartstrings, Dolphin Hotel, Rm 636 13th Street
FROM: Sr. Constable Easterly Gale, 7th Ave. Royal P&T Office
SENT: SEP21 988, 16:10

"LYRA AND DENNY -(STOP)- SWIFTY RECOVERING FROM WOUNDS IN HOSPITAL -(STOP)- 53 W 23RD STREET MANEHATTAN GENERAL -(STOP)- COME AT ONCE -(STOP)- YOU OWE US"

Part 1:
Alive

Unknown,
Thursday Afternoon (September 21st, Anno Domina 988):

Breathing hurt. Her eyes burned. The darkness hurt, drilling back into her skull. Lights played on the inside of her eyelids. The weight in her head and her chest sent shocks of pain, electric and jagged, shooting through her torso and the back of her neck. Her foreleg wouldn't stop shaking. She took a shuddering, deep breath and her lungs cracked and tore as though scraping over shattered, heated glass.

Summer Breeze whimpered and her whole body began to shake. She couldn't feel her wings.

When Summer was a little filly, and her older brother was home from the Academy for the Summer Sun Celebration, her whole family had gone to the White Tail Woods for a picnic. It was the last time they were all together. Exploring by the tree line, Summer had found a black mass by the base of a tree. A single patch of white bones protruded from the blackened, rotting pelt of the dead possum. It was the first time she had seen death.

For years afterwards, the memory of the fleshy, tube-like tail and it's peeling skin returned to her. Whether she was stressing over an impending school exam, waiting to hear back from the doctors regarding her mother's illness, the image came to her mind, the smell of rotting, rancid, black and peeling flesh wafted up from the depths of her memory. The night they burned her mother on the funerary pyre. The day before her graduation. The day her brother came back from overseas missing a leg. She recalled the rotting dead thing, squirming with fat, white and red maggots, no head, stripped of everything that separated living things from objects.

The memory returned to her now. But the smell, she realized, was not some half recalled memory, it was pungent and real.

Her eyes cracked open. Another breath inflated her lungs – a tearing pain as if they were full of needles and glass. Her head was pounding, heavy, floating, sharp. She couldn't feel her wings.

She groaned, the pain shooting through her jaw and neck. Her foreleg kept shaking. Sharp pain returned to her tail and she realized she had been lying on it. She struggled to pull it out from under her. The effort pressed the side of her face harder against the muddy ground, getting filth in her eye. Had she fallen? Had she been asleep? Had she been drunk? Had she hit her head?

Her head throbbed. Breathing hurt. Her one open eye was coming into focus. A light, cold and blue. Dark walls and shadows. She tried to lift her head. There was a metallic clinking sound. She put her head back down, in the mud. She was lying in mud. Her eye focused enough to see the source of light - a dim crystal embedded in the wall. The light caused jagged, angular shadows to flicker and dance across the rough, wet walls and ceiling.

She tried again to lift her heavy head. The sound of metal, the weight of a collar over her neck and throat. She blinked her other eye, the mud stinging. She focused on another shape nearby. A dark green shape, another pony, lying in the mud, a metal collar around its neck. A stallion, chained - leashed - to the wall with heavy chain. He looked back in her direction. His breathing was laboured and irregular, and shook his whole body with the effort. His head swayed, unsteady on his neck. His expression was desolate. His mane hung limp and stringy. His coat was falling out in patches. As Summer's eyes came into sharper focus, she could see the sores covering his body, how one of his eyes was swollen shut. She could see clearly the wriggling, fat tails of worms waving from the sores in his skin, burrowing into him. She could see the stubs on his back where his wings had been hacked off.

She couldn't feel her wings.

Sharp, tearing, unbidden breathing overwhelmed her. She couldn't get enough air. She coughed and strained against her unresponsive body. She looked down at her shaking left foreleg - it wouldn't stop shaking. She looked at the worms burrowing into the sores on her trembling, spasming leg, wiggling their red and beige bodies at her. She screamed and her lungs burned, crushing her chest in on itself.

The screaming consumed her.

Chapter 3, Part 2: Patterns and Crossed Paths

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."