The Kill Box

SO! Ms. Sparkle; as you can see, there is a LOT of shit in this room that has great potentiality to kill you. So if you could listen up and pay attention, that would probably be quite useful for your survival.

Rolling her eyes, Twilight looks to the nearest camera, places one hand on her hip, and makes the traditional "go on" gesture with the other.

Ah, yes, glad to see that you've adapted so well to this little "event" of ours; but onto the CHALLENGE! Within this room, as you can see, are a host of spinning blades of killer death, attached to expanding/compressing pistons coming from the ceiling. Your mission, which you have to accept, is to get this- a small panel in the floor near the center of the room opens up, -key while traversing this- sections of the floor rise to create 10 ft high barriers all-throughout the room, -maze. Hope you have fun!

Now before we begin, here's a quick montage of other people trying this challenge, a blooper reel of sorts. ENJOY!

With that, the PA system clicks off, and the room defaults to a "normal" blood-stained vacancy. At the far end, a projector and screen extrudes from the ceiling, and a series of videos showing the attempts and thus deaths of many, many people who got sliced, diced, and overall minced when trying to get to the key.

Watching it all, Twilight bears a face of disgust and horror at what is such a blatant disregard of life; but it is all a mask, and through the carnage that is onscreen in front of her, she makes out how this whole fucked-up system works. "It could have been worse, you know." Her sub-conscious reminds her, "We could have been one of the early kills, and not had this...wonderful...display in front of us."

Shrugging her shoulders at her own self wondering, she sits down near the entrance. Stifling a yawn. Twilight leans up against the door to watch the looping footage from a more comfortable position. Or, at least as comfortable as you can get watching death over, and over, and over.

Again.

And again.

and again

and aga...snore

Desolate Suburbs, somewhere in Ponyville

“Well this is what I call a prime location for our unsub.” Blaze said, kneeling to inspect the floor, “narrow walkway, secluded spot, and when it gets dark, no way you’re seeing anything in this alley.”

“Right, but look up at the windows; they’ve got clothes and flowers hanging about, giving plenty of places light could seem down from.” Shining replies, “It’s not possible that he’d get through unseen on a week day. That then means 2 things, 1: he can stalk and strike with unfathomable precision, and that could mean hunting or military background.”

“Or he was seen as a local, and then we’re walking right through his territory.” Blaze finishes, “Let’s think back to the past abduction sites; were there any witnesses?”

“No; the locations were too secluded, and the only possible witnesses were junkies and prostitutes.”

“Exactly! They wouldn’t report more than that one of them had gone missing. Now think about Winter Storm’s disappearance: leaves work; flies home with a friend; makes it home, but when the friend turns to leave, he thinks he hears something; he looks, finds nothing, and leaves; next morning, Winter never shows up.” Blaze states, so how was she potentially taken?”

Shining ponders for a moment, “He was probably waiting right inside or outside the house. An outside route would explain the noise and why there were no signs of forced entry. Incapacitation via a hand taser or garrote wire would make an attack silent.” He noted, “Same goes for the Lightning Flash incident…that makes 3 different events potentially linked together; not counting the ones we can’t investigate.”

“I’ll call back into the station and swap findings.”

Shining nodded, “Good idea, hopefully the Sargent has got something of use by now. Meet me at the entrance to the first door next to this alley; let’s hope that these locals could give us something of use.”

Back at the Station

“So I gotta know, why is he trying to attract attention now?”

Flash and the recruit, who had adapted the nickname “Moon Blade”, were sitting across from each other whilst organizing the case files.

“He has gotten away with what he’s doing for what has to be years!” Flash continued, “He could very easily just keep on killing discreetly; all the while, we’re frantically running around trying to find something to pin him with! So why does he suddenly choose a high-profile and high risk target? It doesn’t make any sense.”

After a moment of silence, Moon Blade sorted the last file in his stack; looking up at Flash, he asks “Permission to speak freely, Sir?”

At this Flash chuckles a bit, replying, “No need for ‘Sirs’ with me or the squad, rookie. The only people you need to call a ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ would be the ‘Asshats upstairs’, and the Princess’ Luna, Celestia, Cadence, and Twily.”

“The ‘Asshats upstairs’ si―I mean―Flash?’

Raising an eyebrow at Moon Blade’s confusion, his expression quickly returned to one of exclamation, “OH! Right; you don’t know them. They’re the idiot execs up at the capital who think they ‘know everything.’”

Upon seeing Moon Blade’s nod of acceptance, Flash continued “Yeah; so just remember, no need for formalities for us down here. We’re like one big family! One great, fucked-up family that investigates murders.”

Blinking once at what just was witnessed before him, Moon Blade shook his head a little bit. “Well alright then…Uh, anyway.” He cleared his throat, “I believe that he his mocking us.”

Now it was Flash’s turn to look confused “How so?”

“Well look at it like this: you’re the unsub; you have gone for years with abducting and killing―though your targets of the homeless has caused your efforts to go unnoted. All of a sudden, it hits you: choose a target that not only gets you noticed, but guarantees that they’ll never overlook you: a princess.

“Though not just any princess; one that you could subdue and sneak away with relatively minimal effort. Celestia is most likely way too powerful; plus, her and her sister are both swarmed at all times by Royal Guardsmen. Cadence is all the way in the Crystal Empire, and there’s no feasible way to get there, back, and brave the cold all the while, on top of evading the Guards that are looking for you.”

One deep breath later, he continues, “By going after Princess Twilight, you not only show that you can get at Royalty, but you make a personal blow to us here at the station who protect her to a degree. She’s your girlfriend, and Captain Armor’s sister; that’s too good of an option for him! Not to mention that she just got back from some trip to the Crystal Empire; she’s so defenseless at that time, that the ‘target’ was wide open for an attack.”

As Moon Blade finishes with a flourish, Flash’s eyes go wide with realization. Speaking in hushed tones, “And to think that he could have been right under our noses this whole time.”

Taking some time to take some deep breaths, Flash continued, “I swear, Moon Blade, you’ll make quite the investigator; get on the phone and call Blaze and Shining in the field, update them that we’ve finished here, and tell them of your theory; it could help with what they’re trying to do.”

“Right si―fuck, I did it again. Right.”

hellooooo.

Wake uuuuup.

Oh for fucks sake…

WAKE THE FUCK UP YOU CUNT!

Her eyes shooting open, Twilight jolts awake. Looking back up at her surroundings, she noticed that the projector and screen were gone; probably extruded back into the ceiling.

AHA! Good, you’re fiiiiiinaly up and about! Now, I do hope you remember the rules and procedures of your first challenge, ‘cause I’M not gonna repeat them. If you need a refresher, just look back near the top of the page.

Twilight wore a confused mask on her face, “The top of the what?”

Oh never mind about that; it had nothing to do with you. UNLIKE THIS MAZE HERE! This has EVERYTHING to do with you! And it’s about time, as it’s the 3rd BLOODY―see what I did there―chapter! UGH! This guy, I tells’ ‘ya, is so FUCKING lazy.

Throwing her face into her palm, Twilight motions at the camera/PA system in the room, “I’m going to go on a limb here, and say that you’re just going insane now.”

Twilight could almost feel he judgmental gaze that was undoubtedly being shot her way through the camera. And after a moment of awkward silence, the Caretaker spoke again, Well I for one think that enough chit chat has been spared between the 2 of us. LET’S GET THIS GAME ON!

And with that, the saws, pistons, and key all made their return into the room. Taking a tentative step forwards, Twilight started to traverse the maze. But any thoughts of going ‘exploring’ were quickly banished, as every step forwards Twilight took, the ceiling behind her would collapse.

“Ok Twilight, you can do this. Just stay calm and focus…or something like that.”

Exhaling a large breath, she thinks about how to navigate around with the memory from the ‘murder cams’ from earlier. Taking unsure step after unsure step, she slowly, but quite surely made her way around the first 2 ‘rings’ of the maze. Smiling inwardly to herself, Twilight thinks, “Well now this isn’t too hard. Good thing that I have an eidetic memory!”

All the while, becoming oblivious once again to the cameras always watching her; though, then again, that’s probably for the best. I mean―who really knows what’s actually going on the other side?

We turn our way into the control room where our great mastermind behind this all is sitting. Yeah you probably saw this one coming, as―you know―that not so subtle comment in the paragraph above really gave away what was going to come next. But anyway; our villain…

Feet propped up on a table, he’s looking to his left, into one of many monitors viewing various cameras, (wonder where THOSE are), eating a small bag of popcorn. Looking a little bored, he pushes his glasses up onto his face, and gets up from his chair. Going into the kitchen of the apartment he lives in, he grabs a beer from the refrigerator, and begins to wander around his house.

He lives nicely; not a high-end apartment by any means, hell, it’s an apartment in the suburbs of a relatively mid-class town. Though what he has isn’t anything to laugh at; the desktop in his room is military grade, with his own private servers and proxies, and he has everything that he needs to live and more. Though he doesn’t have what he really desires, and that’s—

“Oi. Those twats on the other side don’t need to know that.

Yeah maybe, but—

“No buts; we all know that I’m likely to be dead or jailed by the end of this story, and we don’t need these arseholes getting all sentimental over me.”

Fine. But I’m still going to force a cliché encounter with the police where they look into your room and check to see if you’re doing anything ‘shady’ whilst interviewing you about the ‘disappearances’.

“Huh, thanks for the reminder about that; though cliché is fairly strong coming from ‘Mr. Edgelord’ himself.”

Wait—what?

“You wear black to school, look like an emo, and main Reaper; what the hell else am I supposed to call you?"

How about Mr—SHUT THE FUCK UP! THIS IS MY STORY!

"Stop your whining; I’m pretty sure that the audience is getting tired of this banter, and you have a ‘cliché interrogation scene’ to narrate.”

Sure enough, just as his internal ramblings ceased, 3 hard knocks came at the entrance door to his apartment. Shrugging his shoulders, he quickly hurried back into his room; placing a slightly stained bathrobe over his shirt. He hears another 3 knocks at the door, and yells back “Hold on, I’m coming!”, while fumbling around behind desktop.

His hand grabs, and quickly yanks on a lever, hiding his computer behind a wall. Dashing to the door, he places his glasses askew on his head, and takes a deep breath as he opens the door.

“Good evening officers, how may I help you?”