Red and Black 2

Patient could feel the color being drained from his face as Sakuya uttered those words. His mouth clacked, yet he could not will himself to speak. However, somepony else was all too happy to fill in for him.

“What,” Charlotte said in a flat monotone.

"Purple mane and coat, ribbons in mane, book cutie mark?" Remilia groaned in exasperation, spreading a wing and slapping her face with it in lieu of her own hoof.

Patient took a deep breath. "Well… she's in the Reedpipes house, currently. I… helped care for her back when she was wounded," he said, his utterance causing Remilia and Sakuya to halt in their tracks.

"She was… wounded?" Remilia uttered slowly, turning to look at Patient with her eyes growing as wide as dinner plates. Patient nodded affirmatively.

"But she's on the path to recovery. I saw to it," Patient replied. “Would you care at all to hear about what happened before then?”

Sakuya shook her head. "I think she should tell us herself, thank you kindly." Her horn started to gather light, and in a small burst of magic a pocket watch appeared next to and hovered at her side. "I will take us all there, at once." Seconds before they vanished and reappeared in Sapphire's living room, Patient could have sworn the world flashed in four mute shades of inverted gray, and everything—breath, touch, even sight—stopped.

Within an instant, their sudden appearance caused a shrill scream to permeate through the air. The four whirled to the source as she sat on the couch, finding Sapphire staring at them with wide eyes and a pale face. "O-oh… um…" Sapphire stammered.

Sakuya held up a hoof. "We heard a dear friend was here, and teleported over as soon as we were able. Sorry for the inconvenience." She dropped her hoof, and gently lowered Patient and Charlotte to the floor.

“Fucking what…?” Patient began, but he was stopped when Remilia spread a wing and waved it in his direction.

"He told us our dear Patchouli was here," Remilia stated.

“I mean, I did. I’ve just… never been teleported before.” Patient frowned when Sakuya looked at him.

"Understandable; not many of those in the strike teams have experienced it," Sakuya stated in a rather understanding tone. She turned back to Sapphire, who had taken a few deep breaths and lifted a hoof to gesture down the hall. "Thank you." With that, the four bounded down to the hall, and veered into the guest rooms within a matter of two hours.

*********

A pink filly with a striped purple and white mane huffed as she and Filthy Rich trotted through the garden of one of the many noble estates surrounding the palace of Canterlot, a feeling of dread settling into her gut. The sky was clear, the flowers smelled fresh, the hedge figurines were perfectly trimmed to the last square inch, and yet something was still wrong. "Daddy, why did Mr. Bar invite us?" she groaned as they trotted to a mansion sporting thick iron bars visible from inside the windows.

Filthy shrugged in earnest. "I don't know, in all honesty. But I'll do my best to ensure he doesn't get you dragged into it, my precious princess," he replied, his face settling in determination. "I heard all about what one noble said about somepony else's daughter, and I swear by Celestia I will not allow the same rubbish to be spoken about you." The filly nodded and sighed ruefully, but her father lifted a hoof to pat her on the withers. "Don't worry Diamond. We'll just tell Mr. Bar where he can stick it and go home."

Diamond smiled at that and nodded, envisioning the look on Mr. Bar's face as her daddy told him off. They did not speak until they reached the doors to the manor, whereupon Filthy knocked thrice. Silence greeted them. "Mr. Bar? Are you there?" Filthy called at the top of his lungs, yet for a full minute after that he received no answer. He knocked again, perhaps sensing that Mr. Bar might need a little more encouragement to come down and open the door already.

The doors flew open before Filthy could call out a second time, revealing a pale-faced servant clad in a standard maid's garb. She galloped past the guests, hyperventilating, only further setting her silver coat and gold mane in matted tangles as she passed with such speed Diamond wondered if her hooves had caught fire. "Guards! Guuuuaaaaaarrrrds!" the maid shrieked as she vanished after rounding a sharp corner at the gates.

Filthy frowned, and trotted into the living room with Diamond falling in step behind him. "Daddy? Don't we have to find a servant to escort us in?" Diamond asked.

Filthy shook his head. "It seems they have other duties to attend to…" He spared a glance at the doors. "I wonder what that poor dear got herself in a tizzy over…"

"I dunno. Maybe she forgot to get honeysuckle tea for her master," Diamond suggested, frowning as she realized she didn't sound terribly sure of her own words. She took a cursory glance around the living room, seeing massive couches, a few tables, ottomans, and… other than that, it was barren. No paintings hung the rather gaudily-painted walls, which would have made the resulting eyesore of oversaturated yellow more bearable to look at. No decorations hung from the gaudy pink ceiling, save a sole chandelier that had seen a good three layers of dust rather recently. The floor was a pleasing marble, yet no rugs covered it to provide even the slightest comfort.

"... Daddy?" Diamond began, her frown deepening at the overall lack of decor.

"Yes?" Filthy queried, turning to his child with a brow raised.

Diamond looked back and sighed. "I get the feeling Mr. Bar's a boring stallion," she replied, making sure her tone was as innocent as could be, though she could not keep the venom from her voice.

Filthy took a look at the room as Diamond lifted a hoof to gesture around it, and though he noticed a flight of stairs in the far corner and another hall opposite of those stairs, he could see what she meant. After that, the two turned to the steps, where another harried maid had just leapt from. "O-out! Sh-shoo! Nopony's welcome!" she yelled, galloping down with her horn lowered.

Diamond simply raised a hoof and stopped the charging maid by moving to clutch her snout once she came close. "Whoa! What happened?!" she asked as the maid pulled back, tail quivering.

“G-get… out… get out…" the maid muttered, foam already pooling in her mouth.

"What's wrong?" Filthy asked, staring into the maid's wide eyes to find bloodshot whites.

"W-we're… we're… do-done… f-for…" the maid stammered, legs shaking with evident straining. Diamond backed away from her, and so did Filthy, as her horn sputtered to life in a feeble glow. She collapsed before casting any sort of spell, however, as her hooves and magic simply failed her. With eyes turning glassy, and magic dying, she croaked one last time, "G-go… get… out…" With a final twitch, she lay there motionless.

Diamond and her father exchanged looks, before trotting around the maid and heading upstairs. They did not need to rush out and call for help; one of the staff had already taken that task on her shoulders, and they didn't need to exacerbate her woes. They reached the top of the stairs in a gallop, glancing around to figure out where to go and what was wrong. Finding themselves at a hallway spanning to both sides, the pair paused to take stock of what it held.

Left side, perfectly pristine; doors and carpets almost sparkling as if they were brand new. Right side, not so much; maids slumped against doors, half foaming at the mouths and the other half with their brains messily splattered along the sides of the walls and floor. The blood was still glistening and running in rivers from where it was splattered; this had to have been very fresh. Diamond and Filthy paled; no wonder the first maid ran. Poor dear was likely the only survivor of this travesty, Diamond mused with no small amount of pain and distaste welling in her mouth.

At the end of the left side of the hall rested a set of double doors, blood staining its ornate wood frame as one door hung by just a single hinge. Silence held, save for the dying gasps of a few maids as life left them. Trotting slowly to those double doors, father and daughter spared the deceased ponies but a few glances, trying their best to avoid looking at the gaping head-wounds that littered half the household staff gathered here. Aside from their hoofsteps, the manor had fallen eerily silent.

Diamond's gut twisted further at the distressing scene. "What… what has happened?" Filthy muttered, though his daughter didn't respond. She had no response to give; not for the moment. After all, they'd just stumbled upon the grisly crime scene, and answers were not forthcoming anyway since the manor staff were currently predisposed with dying at their hooves. They strode to those doors without even the slightest iota of interruption, and the closer they came to those doors the more the stench of death flooded their nostrils.

Diamond wrinkled her nose and tried her best to avoid making a face as the fresh notes of urine and excrement hit her sinuses as soon as she and her father had stopped at the double doors. Coupled with blood, the stink was reaching unbearable levels that she had only heard about from the specialized groups and individuals who were still dealing with the alicorn conundrum that was sweeping the world as of late.

She and her father shared looks. Then Diamond reached forward and opened the door.

She winced as a creak met her ears, and forced herself to suppress a gag as she unveiled something that would only happen in King Sombra's wet dreams: a mess of gore sprawled all around and in front of her. It was so thick and palpable that chunks were still dripping from the ceiling and the furniture strewn about therein was unrecognizable. A few pieces of what she assumed were table legs were forcibly shoved into what may have been orifices never meant for, much less biologically built to handle that gruesome purpose.

Heads were split, legs bent at unnatural angles, intestines fashioned into nooses… it was almost as if one of the strike teams had besieged this place; to an extent it almost seemed comical, the level of brutality displayed by the grisly visage that was the massacre before her. Who was who, and who did what before death, she couldn't say; it was little wonder her father was already gagging at her side, struggling to keep his own vomit from adding itself to the grotesque tableau.

“We...need to go!” Filthy struggled to say, choking back the tumultuous feeling in his gut. He pulled Diamond away from the scene and galloped past the now dead maids and estate staff and down the other side of the hallway. Up another flight of stairs they went, Diamond looking on at the aftermath of the grisly scene behind her as she was ushered on.

Alas, there was no reprieve for them on the second floor of the manor; decapitated heads filled to near-bursting with white, congealing spaff lay discarded at the front of every door. Their corpses were strewn through broken windows, blood still gushing and spurting from torn arteries; some were hanging on by a thread and others hacked into pieces prior to impalement on glass only barely large and strong enough to support them. How they hadn't noticed that from their approach, Diamond could only wonder in horror.

Interestingly, impaled into one of the doors was an overgrown set of hedge shears, having torn a hole through the wood and dripping with fresh blood and jism. Diamond's gut cartwheeled, and her brain concocted a very unfortunate and wince-worthy image of somepony masturbating with the shears. Perhaps that was the Beholder's thing, she mused, but not even the Beholder would do something quite like this.

Diamond's mind flitted back to the maid who foamed at the mouth before she fell. Some part of her started to entertain the notion that maybe the staff was poisoned… she hoped that the first maid that made it past the doors was able to get the guards in time if that were the case. She turned to her father again, who was once more suppressing a distressing series of dry heaves that threatened to turn into full-blown retching.

She turned down the stairs and trotted, her father following her without a word spoken between them. The less said about this tragedy, the better; it was energy spent for more productive things, such as holding onto hope that the guards would get here sooner rather than later. Returning to the first hall, then the ground floor, was swift and silent save for their hoofsteps.

Scanning the foyer again, Diamond was looking for something—anything—to take her mind off of the senseless death and desecration upstairs. She shuddered as she turned to the hallway on the other side of the foyer; from where she stood, it didn't look that… defiled, but there was no telling on the other side of its doors. She didn't have Luna's dream walking and Celestia's clairvoyance, after all, and certainly not a few more useful skills like what the other strike teams had at their disposal.

She turned to her father again. Something in her gut stirred, telling her to take that brave step forward—quite possibly, at her own expense. "I... " She struggled to gather her words, frowning contemplatively. She halted when her father began to speak.

“I...I need to find a…” Filthy began, only to see an open door nearby, which was thankfully an unblemished bathroom, and galloped towards it. Sounds of hideous retching and cries for mercy from the gods of every creature on this forsaken world began to rush from the bathroom as Diamond herself winced.

She took the opportunity to slip away, at least to satisfy her own growing, yet morbid, curiosity. Down that hall she went, steps light and silent. As with the upstairs, the closer she came to a set of double doors at its end, the stronger the stench of death grew. However, it was comparatively tame; no bodies were strewn about, no blood adorned this set of enclosed walls that she could see.

The doors were not ajar when she reached them. Rather, they were splintered and warped, bowing towards her in a way that suggested brute force had been used within. The knobs were melted and flaking, with whatever keyholes they once had filled in with more of themselves. Even like this, though, there was nary a crack to peek through; with a sigh of resignation and dread, she lifted a hoof to peek the old-fashioned way.

The right door opened with a wobble that suggested its hinges were on its last legs; a grating creak met her ears, tumbling down the hall until it faded with distance.

Within, Diamond could see the room was immaculately decorated; vast reliefs of Equestrian history and Neighponese calligraphic scrolls covered much of the walls while finely crafted furniture was left mostly untouched, par the blood. There was a lot of it, and many bodies to have produced it, all sitting upon a bed with curtains thrown wide open. Most were mares, albeit piled into a strange ball-like shape that held despite the myriad of slack legs and necks. In the center of this mass, which she could only see thanks to a gap in the tangle of limbs, was a stallion… with his extremities stitched to his forehead in place of his horn.

If her father had seen this, he would have cringed in sympathy before bailing to fetch the guards, or preferably Celestia. Diamond wanted to both look away and peer closer to see what had happened, and though she stood for some seconds thanks to indecision, ultimately the morbid curiosity won out and made her approach. With legs on autopilot, she moved, being careful to step around the blood puddles that lead to this legion of carcasses.

As she came closer, though, Diamond began to notice irregularities with this legion: namely, stitches. Some were long, seemingly spanning from one mare to the next, while others only stopped short of limbs and groins. On top of that, there were irregularities with the furniture; a grandfather clock of what was possibly Prench origin stood before the left wall, next to a shelf laden with various knick-knacks that would scarcely be seen in the palace dungeons, much less a noble's bedchambers.

Diamond's heart began to climb in her throat as she approached the bodies, halting only when she was snout to snout with the furthest mare outwards, whose head had slumped to hide the stallion's face. Her once-gorgeous face was now riddled in stitches, preserving only her glassy eyes and bloodsoaked mane. She lifted a hoof to gently move the mare's stitched skull aside, peering closer into the abyss that the stallion lay within.

His eyes were glassy as well, and stitches ran all across his trapped body. Nothing was sacred with him; hooves were attached to shoulders attached to legs attached to groins… in fact, he himself was barely recognizable amidst the patchwork he was part of. She could not see his cutie mark, or even his front hooves; poor bastard was buried up to his withers and then some with mares. It was a miracle she could see him at all, given his current state.

Her mind ran in circles. Who would be twisted enough to make this gruesome gallery of patchworked putrefying ponies? She had to admit, though… the last time she saw something similar to this in nature was when she got a hold of some freak strain of poison joke some years ago and used it against a few wannabe tryhard alicorn menaces for shits and giggles. Even now, that memory seemed distant and dead compared to what she was looking at.

The closer she peered into the stallion's lifeless eyes, though, was the closer she got to being buried in corpses. Diamond slowly backed off, seeing a very faint trace of familiarity within the central carcass's thousand-yard stare.

Suddenly, a creaking floorboard from on high startled Diamond, who gasped and shot backwards in a panicked hurry before regaining control of herself. Such a thing did startle the mare’s body to force it to move somewhat, slumping forward with the grace of a sack of raw meat. As that occurred, the grandfather clock groaned to life, tolling the new hour, which set one of the knick-knacks rolling off the shelf… and down several more shelves that Diamond could not see past the legion of bodies. The knick-knack rolled with a drumming beat, almost bouncing along its journey until it fell on to the body of the mare whose head she had moved aside.

Diamond could barely hear it, the thud of the knick-knack on deceased flesh followed immediately by the faintest ticking. The bodies moved all in unison, their skin stretching suddenly and without warning. Heart starting its rampant pounding in her throat, she turned on her heels and galloped out, turning back around to slam the door shut behind her just as the sound of tearing meat and flying objects spilled from within. She held her whole body against the door, wincing as its mate flew off its hinges entirely to let flashing silver and crimson follow it quite a few doors down, where it landed and skid against the marble with an amplified shriek.

She could barely suppress a gasp of horror at what she witnessed, and wisely waited until the crimson-silver ceased movement entirely before daring to open the door she used as a shield. Alas, when she pulled away from it, it dropped off one of its hinges and rocked on contact with the marble, swaying ever so gently in a nonexistent breeze. She looked up, breath halting in her throat and heart almost stopping completely in her chest at what she now bore witness to.

Diamond silently stared at the macabre bramble bush that sloughed through the other door. It was an amalgamation of razor wire, piano wire, barbed wire, and hunks of torn, ragged meat all coiled messily into a neverending tangle that hurt her eyes immensely to look at. Therein, sputtering and smoking, sat a motor spinning several emptied spools uselessly. Only inertia kept it going, and soon enough with a series of pops, it died and stilled.

Only one question left her mouth there and then, unanswered by all in the world and as unheeded as the ramblings of a madmare trapped in the basement: "Who… what… could have caused this?"

With that utterance, she turned to collect her father and leave as soon as she could. Doing this would be risky she knew, but she was in Canterlot—Guard Central for all the world to see and care. Until the culprit was found, this simply wasn't her mess to clean up—nor her place to overstay her undue welcome.

***************

Shining Armor could only look on in bemusement as a mare in a maid's suit charged through a platoon of guards with enough force to knock the unprepared ponies flying in all directions. He only had enough time to set up a shield with a flick of his horn before wincing as the maid ran face-first into it with enough speed to audibly crack her snout. Fortunately, this was sufficient in halting her, and she sat on her rump to nurse the new wound with her front hooves.

He turned to his ponies-at-arms, sighing as they got up to look around for themselves. Some nursed bruises, and one had a dented breastplate, but luckily there was nothing serious—unless he counted the mare who forcibly broke formation with her reckless running and her bloody nose. And speaking of, he turned to her as she looked at him with pain flashing in her eyes. He lowered his shield and asked, "Do you need a medic?"

The maid shakily nodded, hooves still firmly clutching her face. "P-please… go to…"

"Speak no more," Shining said, approaching slowly in case it was his turn for a sudden flying lesson. The maid jolted when his hoof touched her withers, and her head shook.

"P-please… m-my master, Earl… Earl Silver Bar…" The maid's expression turned wild as she stared into Shining's eyes, lips quivering and tail twitching as her breathing labored.

Shining's brow rose. "What about Earl Silver Bar?" he asked, confusion twisting his features just the barest bit.

The maid pointed a shaking hoof in the direction she had come blazing from. "He… he… he and my c-c-colleagues…"

"They what?" Shining pressed, brow furrowing slightly as confusion transformed into a flash of suspicion that sparked in his eyes.

The distraught maid continued to nurse her wounded snout, still wide-eyed like a deer under the sights of a gryphon. "They all… something horrible… u-u-unspeakably vile… P-p-please…"

Unspeakably vile? That made Shining's gut clench harder than a freshly-convicted prisoner's anus after they dropped the soap. "Who did it?"

"They looked…" The maid began to hyperventilate as horrid memories, only hours old at best, resurfaced in her mind. "I… I didn't get a good g-glimpse… but everypony… h-h-has…"

At that point, another guard stepped in. "Sir, I think we should take her to the infirmary," he said bluntly.

Shining nodded. "I'll take a look-see at the estate myself while you dress her wounds and yours." He turned to the small platoon of guards who still hovered around the maid and sighed. "You lot, take her to the infirmary at once. I'll be off to do a little investigating." Without bothering to wait to see if the guards would follow his commands, he trotted around the whole lot of ponies and galloped away as soon as his hooves were clear of them.

He had a strange feeling he would know what he would find as his hooves took him to his destination. What he had not expected, though, was to find the passage of time oddly… slow as he came nearer and nearer to it. It had felt… wrong… defiled... tampered with. One part of his conscious piped up with his already-known knowledge that at least two ponies of two different strike teams had time-tampering abilities, but he shelved the concern with the decision to talk to both of those parties at a later time.

Something equally unexpected was the already-opened gate—with hindsight taking a vacation to another alternate world where such tragedies didn't happen, and even more surprising was Diamond Tiara and Filthy Rich standing in front of the doors, both paler than Discord's goatee. Shining skid to a halt before them, taking a moment to glance them over. Besides their expressions, and the little bits of blood adorning both sets of hooves, they seemed alright and yet disturbed. "What happened?" he asked.

Diamond lifted a hoof and gestured inside. "It's… a massacre in there…" she muttered.

Shining turned to Filthy Rich for further explanation. "Almost all the household staff… they died…" Filthy lifted a hoof to point at the still-parted gates. "Only one scrambled out, ignoring us entirely."

Shining's brow furrowed, and his gut clenched harder than that one time he was propositioned by two drunk ponies who really, really should have stayed clear of the alcohol that night. "And the owner of the estate?"

Diamond turned around and gestured for Shining to follow. Without words, she lead him into the house and down the right hall, all the way to the catastrophe that was now a ruined bedchamber. "This…" she said, pointing at the spools which had stopped spinning, "almost did me in."

Shining trotted around Diamond and to the anomaly. Peering closer, he could see the barbed wire still strewn amidst torn, unrecognizable flesh. "And why did you and your father come here?" he asked, turning to Diamond.

"To tell Mr. Bar what size dildo he should shove up his ass," Diamond said bluntly. "We didn't expect to… well, enter the aftermath of an alicorn snuff film."

"So… the deaths already happened."

Diamond nodded. "The spools were surrounded by bodies, but…" Her eyes gravitated around the room, not rolling but more tracking which scraps of meat still clung to the ceiling and which ones were going to drop next. "Then the spools triggered…"

"Were the bodies surrounding the spool dead?"

Diamond nodded again. "And stitched to each other, worse than that metal-legged pony on one of the other strike teams," she confirmed. "I couldn't recognize anypony in the ball of legs."

Shining sighed, briefly reminded of more ponies that came from another world and became a strike team. Seemed like he was going to have to hire one of those sorry bastards to do the myriad of autopsies here. And maybe that pony's wife, too. And possibly that pony's arch nemesis. "You didn't see fit to fetch any of us?"

Diamond shook her head. "That one maid came out running and screaming for the guards," she said.

Shining held a nod; his face, however, hardened slightly. "You and your father are spending the night in Canterlot. I'm not sure who did this—" He gestured to the dead spools and mechanisms that had powered it, "—but I am not taking chances. I'd suggest staying with the Reedpipes; they seemed to have a lot more guests lately."

Diamond nodded. "I'll go tell Daddy," she said, and with that, she trotted out of the room. Shining sighed and turned to the spools again, taking a long moment to study the workings of the mechanisms. First, it was Thorax's hive getting blasted with some brand new holes in its rockface, then the alicorns start piloting airships, and now this?

It seemed like somepony, somewhere, had messages to send. The severity of it, however, would not become apparent until the next day.