Let’s visit a crime scene, Twilight had said. It’ll be fun! she’d said.
What she’d neglected to mention, much to Rainbow Dash’s chagrin, was that it was in the middle of a gigantic, featureless rice field. She’d been expecting someplace in a town. It didn’t need to be a tourist attraction, but it needed some scenery. Buildings, an alley, a street, even a forest or rolling hills. Not a flat, half-flooded plain. Booooriiiing.
Twilight had said the ending would make it worth it. Dash thought that was looking more doubtful by the minute.
“It all started with the leader of a gang in Fillydelphia, not too far from here,” Twilight said as they flew over the field, their hooves just barely skimming the tops of the rice plants. “A unicorn named Alca Pony. She’d first gotten there by being very powerful, particularly with levitation.”
Rainbow Dash snorted. “Oh, come on. Levitation? How could that give her any influence in gangs and stuff?”
“Simple!” Twilight said brightly. “If somepony displeased her, she could just chuck them to the other side of the room with a thought. She who levitates is boss.”
Rainbow’s flapping stuttered for a moment. “Did you really just say… Okay, never mind. What happened next?”
“Well, Alca was reeeaaally ambitious. She wanted to completely take over Fillydelphia and the surrounding area, probably more, and didn’t care how she did it. In fact, she turned to necromancy, determined to raise an army of wights.”
Okay, now this was getting good. “Wights and zombies and stuff? Cool! Why didn’t she actually go through with it?”
“Necromancy’s illegal, obviously,” explained Twilight, “but, knowing some ponies are still going to try it, Celestia occasionally puts phony books out on the black market that’re completely wrong just to throw them off the scent. Alca picked up one of these books and had her main scrier and medium, a tiny little pony named Edith, look into it.”
“Edith? What kind of a name is Edith?”
“I dunno,” Twilight said with a shrug. “But the catch was that Edith wasn’t actually a scrier or a medium; she didn’t know that much about magic at all, only managing to get by with some good bluffing. She didn’t recognize that the wight ritual was fake, something any good medium would notice, and had Alca dump a lot of money into it, particularly obtaining a certain pair of gongs that supposedly had the right amount of magic.”
Rainbow’s heart sank. The zombies and wights and cool undead were a lie. Booooo.
“So the right time came for the ritual,” Twilight continued, “and they had all the ingredients, even exhuming a body from the local cemetery. Cost a lot of money, almost bankrupting Alca. She figured it was going to work and make it all worth it. Obviously, it didn’t work, and it was that night that Alca and Edith learned that two gongs don’t make a wight.”
Rainbow Dash groaned.
Twilight didn’t notice. “The moment Edith realized the ritual failed, she ran, knowing that Alca would try to have her killed, especially since her not recognizing the ritual as fake would get her phony scying abilities also noticed. But Edith was a very distinctive pony. I told you she was short, right? Very short. Barely any other ponies that short. She’d never be able to hide in a crowd. Alca just told her ponies to be on the lookout for a small medium at large.”
“Oooooof course she did,” Rainbow Dash muttered, rolling her eyes.
“And, eventually, they found her. A small town on a nearby lake. Levittrot. Edith was hiding out with a baker named Yeast, and Alca offered him money if he gave her Edith.”
“And he just agreed to it?” Dash snorted. “She should’ve chosen a better hiding place.”
“Money had a lot more meaning for him than it does for you and me,” said Twilight, “at least right then. He was an earth pony and he’d just broken his front leg, so he couldn’t mix the yeast and flour into his bread as well, and the quality of his bread dropped. After that, well, people stopped buying his bread, which was bad, because normally he sold bread to pretty much every pony who lived near the lake, and he started hemorrhaging money, especially with his medical bills. In all, thanks to his injury, he kneaded the dough badly.”
“Are you doing this on purpose? I swear you’re doing this on purpose.”
“But there was another factor,” Twilight plowed on. “Besides giving him money for giving up Edith, Alca also threatened to burn down his establishment. He could keep selling bread to the whole lake area, or he could give her Edith. He couldn’t have his lake and Edith, too.”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “You’re making this up, aren’t you?”
“Am not. So Yeast gave up Edith’s location, but he also told Alca about two things Edith had gotten: a small brass minotaur statue that was supposed to protect the owner as long as it stayed in their possession, and a bodyguard named Starry Skies. Take out either one of those, and Edith would panic and leave herself vulnerable. Now, Starry Skies was big.”
“Like, bigger than Big Mac big?”
Twilight nodded. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. He had a reputation as being one of the baddest, fightingest stallions in not only Levittrot, but also every city for fifty miles around. On the other hoof, the safe was barely guarded, and Alca had plenty of safecrackers in her employ. Easy. Given how tough Starry Skies was, she went after the safe instead, deciding better safe than Starry.”
“Blaaaaaaaaah.”
“Hey, don’t blame me! I am not making this up!” protested Twilight. “This is all one hundred percent true!”
“If you say so.” Rainbow Dash was getting so skilled at rolling her eyes that she would’ve gotten strikes in bowling.
Twilight glared at Rainbow Dash, cleared her throat, and continued. “So she broke into the safe and stole the figurine. Edith freaked out and bolted, leaving Starry behind. She eventually took shelter in that abbey, right over there.” Twilight pointed at what was essentially the only other building for miles around: a smallish stone complex of the religious sort. It looked old, but the solid kind of old that’d stood for several centuries already and would keep standing for centuries more with minimal upkeep.
“Manetrose Abbey,” Twilight said. “Famous for its rice wines. Edith tried to shelter with a group of griffon nuns.”
“Nuns,” Rainbow Dash said flatly. “Griffon nuns. Wine-making griffon nuns.”
“Hey, don’t knock them,” Twilight said, wagging a hoof at Rainbow Dash. “This far from Fillydelphia, things can get dangerous. Besides the protection of religious sanctuary, when you’re living out here, you get to be tough. And they were old enough to have been living for quite a while, so they were even tougher. She thought they could protect her. Old habits die hard.”
Rainbow Dash started chewing on her tongue.
“The griffons agreed to take her in,” continued Twilight, “on one condition: that Edith be subject to all their own strictures, to keep order in the abbey. They were big on strange forms of corporeal punishment, primarily smashing wine bottles over wrongdoers’ heads to symbolize how a mistake could render a lot of work — such as making wine — meaningless. Desperate for protection, Edith agreed, even under the threat of grievous bottle-y harm.”
Rainbow Dash’s stomach turned over. But at least from the sound of things, it was almost over. “Okay, so then what?”
“Alca had loads of ponies combing the hills all over.” Twilight waved a hoof around. “But Edith kept her eyes open while working and bolted to the abbey if she recognized one of her old allies. Alca wised up, though, and brought in outside help. A sheep, I can’t remember her name.”
“A sheep as a hitmare?” Dash asked. “Oh, come on.”
“A-ha! But that’s why you’d never suspect a sheep!” Twilight said with a smirk. “In fact, that’s what did Edith in. The sheep tracked Edith down — who, of course, didn’t know she was working for her old gang — went to meet her while she was working out her, and showed her the old minotaur figurine. After Edith recognized it, but run she could bolt, the sheep beat her to death with it as a symbolic kill, showing that it didn’t protect her. Perhaps unintentionally, she also showed that ewes, and only ewes, can prevent bogus scriers.”
Rainbow Dash’s brain wanted out. But they were right at the end. Just a bit longer… “So what happened next? With Alca?”
Twilight sighed. “In the long run, the death didn’t help Alca at all. She got arrested in the next few weeks on completely unrelated charges. Edith’s murder was one of a number of unsolved cases that got closed.”
“And… and that’s it?” bellowed Rainbow Dash. “Oh, come on! That was the lamest story I’ve ever heard! I don’t care if it’s true, it didn’t make sense, it jumped around at random, it just sort of ended, and it all seemed to be prepa-”
“Oh, calm down, Dash, it’s not that bad,” Twilight said, waving a hoof dismissively. “And could you lighten up? After all, it’s not every day you get to visit the location of Equestria’s only knick-knack paddy whack.”
“…I hate you so much right now.”
Author's Note
Basically just a set of ten puns I had bouncing around my head. I hope at least one of them made you laugh, and I apologize if no pun in ten did.
