Of Broken Hearts and Merciful Hooves

A Chance Encounter

Manehattan, the 5th of the 11th month of 988, Celestia’s Reign--11:33 PM

This was back when I was starting out; back in the early years, back when it was ‘Horus Investigations and Ethereal Consultation Co.’ and it only consisted of me, a lowly young twenty-three year old magus that spent half of his days desiring the sweet release of death. And it was based in what was, for all intents and purposes, a rundown office in Xingtown that doubled as my apartment.

Now let me tell ya.

One early autumn night in the border between Sheol’s Kitchen Manehattan and Xingtown, I was sitting in this diner called Grain’s Diner; the G in the neon sign long burnt out, so the sign nowadays read ‘rain’s Diner’. Such a little detail entailed the atmosphere there; it was depressing, filled with broken hearts and broken dreams, and a refuge for ponies that had a lousy night and wanted to drown it in onion rings and coffee instead of the usual alcoholic poison. Here were ponies that considered that their sobriety was important to reflect on their mistakes.

I was looking into the cup of coffee I ordered half an hour ago, reflecting on the unpleasantness of the last couple of nights; dead ponies, dead dreams, and dead promises filled my psyche with the persistence of a tax collector doing their duty with a bonus on the side. I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in years by this point; the fact that it was becoming business as usual for me was starting to become a problem.

To add insult to festering injury, I had let some lead slip by my hooves. It was a sign that I needed to stop drinking. That was going to be a journey, I could feel it.

It had rained an hour ago; the midnight sounds that the city made were like ghostly whispers of ponies who seek life where there is none. Truth be told, at this time, the patrons that currently filled the establishment were just as dead as the ghouls in the sewers.

The streets and sidewalks were still wet from the downpour an hour earlier. Something I noticed as I looked out the window, and then BAM!

She came in, as beautiful as a bouquet of lilies under the light of the full moon. Despite her looks though, she looked like she had had a rough night. Her mascara had run down her face at some point; not long ago, it seemed. Her eyes were still a bit teary. And what blue eyes they were; they could almost pass for real sapphire. She was white as snow, with a mane that was a rosy pink. I couldn’t see her mark though; she was wearing a dark brown trench coat that pretty much covered everything from neck to legs.

I decided not to keep staring; she seemed to have had a bad night, and she certainly didn’t need some drooling schmuck creeping her out.

That is why I didn’t notice when she started trotting towards me. “Excuse me, can I sit here?” she asked; oddly enough, the place was packed that night.

So naturally I said, “Sure.”

She took her seat and the face that she had was the face of a pony that just had their heart yanked out. Who would give her such a bad time? I didn’t know then, but I ended up opening my mouth.

“I thought I had it bad. What’s your story?”

She then looked at me inquisitively, and rightfully asked, “What’s it to you?”

Naturally, I said, “I’m just making conversation.”

I thought she was going to tell me that it was none of my business, or that I should shove that question where Celestia’s sun doesn’t shine. I didn’t expect what she told me next.

“Sure, but you are going to have to tell me the story behind that black eye.”

Truth is that I had almost forgotten that I had it. I replied with the following.

“It’s a long and sad tale. I don’t want to bother you with the details.”

She replied with the following. “Don’t worry, I have time. The name is Redheart, by the way.”

I actually smiled; back then, I hadn’t smiled in almost a year.

“Folklore, and it’s a pleasure.”

______________________________________________________________________________

A Couple of Days Before That

It was early in the morning when she burst into my office, smelling of tobacco and coffee; the bags beneath her eyes spoke volumes of her stress, and possible sleepless nights. Her long blond mane was slightly stained in black ink.

I was looking from behind my desk holding on to a bottle of whiskey. My greyish-blue fur was musky from my lack of bathing, and my black mane was disheveled. I was in a dubious state of sobriety at the time, much like I had been for the seven months since I returned to Equestria from my service with the Gallic Foreign Legion. Whiskey had become the one thing that I could lean to numb the horror of the memories of my ‘service’.

She was this greyish-white unicorn mare; she was nervous and jittery and her mark was rather odd, for it looked like a golden sword. I’d never seen something like that in Manehattan. But then again, sword marks are rare in Equestria; they are more common among the Gallic and the Anglos though.

She then talked. I was rather groggy, but I still managed to listen.

“Look, I’m being stalked; there is this strange stallion with a blank expression following me around. I don’t know what to do, but I want you to track down this pony and tell him to back off. Rough him up if you have to.”

I looked at her with that ‘I’m pretty sure you are pulling my leg sweetheart’ look that one encounters so rarely outside of Manehattan. To be fair, I was having of a hangover, and this seemed more like a cop problem than my problem.

So naturally I replied with the rehearsed, “Look sweetheart, if this is serious, please go to the station and talk to the coppers; they might be able to get a stakeout near your place and catch the creep in the act. Get him out of your hair for good.”

She visibly got angry at me; her left eye twitched as she gritted her teeth and her green eyes were staring daggers at me.

“Already did; they told me that without evidence they weren’t going to move a muscle. That they had bigger problems to deal with than some obsessed kid with some crush. Things like the Slavic Griffon gangs and the Ax Gang in Xingtown going to war for example.”

It was then that I grunted in annoyance; I had been avoiding the news--and almost everything as of late. I concentrated more on minor cases and the occasional job in the Fairy Market under the Brickling Bridge; I worked mostly to eat really. I was more interested in finishing my Ph.D. than running my rather paltry enterprise at the time. Add that to the fact that I was still finding it difficult to stay sober, and you have an investigator that can make a great many mistakes.

I got up with dubious control of my coordination. Groggy and with a sore neck, I said the following.

“All right, all right, I’ll do it. Let me get ye a contract first, lass, and don’t worry yer pretty head over some pervert. I’ll probably have this done by tomorrow.” To emphasize my point I threw my bottle to the bucket at the side of my desk and cracked my neck in a somewhat futile attempt at regaining a moniker of alertness.

I then hoofed her one of contracts that I kept in in my filing cabinet.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said with such giddiness that it made me think that she rehearsed before coming here. Truth be told, maybe I had grown grim in my expectations of my fellow equines, but a thank you is something that I rarely heard in my line of work.

Of course, she wasn’t stupid; she read the whole thing in a matter of ten seconds. I could tell she actually read it by looking at the way her eyes moved while looking at the paper.

I give her a pen and she signed it a soon as she could.

Her name was Sunspark.

She left in a hurry, practically galloped out of my office, and slammed the door behind her. I gave an odd look at that and decided not to give it a second thought. I grabbed my black fedora out of the coat rack and took my flask out of my black trench coat.

I then went to my desk and took out a brand new whiskey bottle. I then bit the cork off and spit it out to my right, proceeding to fill the flask to the brim with the whiskey.

After that, I left through the door, coat and hat on and not much else. I honestly thought that a bit of magic was all I needed. And had I been sober, then maybe that might have been true.

But it seemed like I was going to get a nasty wake up call.

________________________________________________________________

10:00PM

I did the expected thing: a stakeout at her apartment at night. I was drinking my whiskey nonstop, waiting for the perp to make his appearance. I was on the roof of the building next to the one she lived in. Both buildings were separated by a couple of meters, both buildings being ten floors in height; she lived in an apartment on the ninth floor with a window that led to the fire escape, and her lights were on, indicating that she was home. It was in Brickling, the night was cold with the downpour that was forecasted by the Weather Factory that morning. The rain was a great thing to take advantage of if you wanted to sneak in. If the perp wanted her, he would sneak into her apartment, and he would do it that night.

It was what I was waiting for: a simple catch and testimony. I catch the perp, she gives her testimony at the station, and he goes to jail. Something like this wouldn’t even be brought to court. There wouldn’t really be a point to it. Sure, he had a right to a lawyer, but breaking and entering and then being caught red-hoofed is as straightforward as it gets really.

At best, he would get a reduced sentence with a public lawyer. If he had the cash to afford a private one, though, he might even get away with nothing but a slap in the snout.

But honestly, if that bastard could afford that, why would he be sneaking around and stalking a mare for? He would have approached her first, and once he was rejected, then he would have resorted to something like that. Maybe that is what happened--she rejected him and now she has this mess in her hooves. I didn’t consider that it was my problem though; I was only in it for some quick bits.

I sat there waiting for close to four hours; I had already drunk all of the whiskey that I had brought along with me and I had downed a couple of opiate pills to take the edge off. I was waiting there, somewhat disoriented and impatient. Then I heard the breaking of glass and wood.

I looked to see that the window had already been broken into. I backtracked and took a running jump from my building to the fire escape of the next. I barely made it as the rain had made the metal particularly slippery. I then practically galloped through the stairs into the broken window. Inside the perp was already on top of my client wearing some sort of skintight suit made of black cloth. As I galloped towards them, Sunspark slugged him with her left hoof, but the bastard didn’t even flinch.

I tackled him off of her and we both ended up to her side as I struggled to pin him down. I heard her as she galloped away, probably into the kitchen for a knife. As I failed to actually hold him in place, we both quickly got up and he bucked me in the chest before I could get into all fours. It felt like I got hit by a fucking cannonball as four of my ribs fractured with a resoundingly grim crunch and I was sent flying through the window into the guardrail of the fire escape. I held on for dear life, disoriented and confused.

Then I saw him charging at me, and before I could react, he tackled me right through the guard rail, causing the steel rail to break under the sheer force of the impact.

Then we both began to fall into the alley below.

I don’t know if it was the adrenalin kicking in or some sort of muscle memory from my days training with Master Pai Mei, but I managed to turn him over in midair, forcing him to face the ever-approaching pavement in the hopes that he would take the brunt of the impact and cushion my fall even if it would probably kill him.

Then within that same second, we landed, his head hitting the dumpster with a resounding clang, leaving an impression the same size as his head.

I still held on despite feeling my right shoulder dislocating and noticing faintly that my fedora was no longer on top of my head as I felt the relatively large raindrops fall on my mane.

I then got off the newly acquired fall cushion and immediately fell to the ground due to the sheer pain of my dislocated right shoulder; as a result, I screamed, “Son of a bitch!”

I began to crawl in the wet pavement; I saw Mister Black-Cloth-Fall-Cushion literally trot past, crack his neck, and then run to the right.

I stared in disbelief that that Earthen had survived that.

And then I decided to snap out of it. I got on my back and began concentrating, my mind working in overdrive now that the adrenaline of the pain and the fall had restored some of my sobriety. I charged my magic from my horn into my right shoulder and forehoof, then I violently snapped it into place with telekinesis, causing me no shortage of misery. I screamed, “MOTHERFUCKER!” as a result of my bootlegged attempt at first aid.

I then got up, still feeling the downpour on my head. Soaked from head to hoof, I began limping after Mister Black-Cloth-Fall-Cushion.

I suddenly started feeling groggy, my disorientation returning with a vengeance. I sat on my hunches and I used my left forehoof to feel my chest and my abdomen.

Then I noticed a small knife--tiny really--on the right side of my chest. I pulled it out and noticed that, along with my blood, it had small quantities of some sort of green substance.

I had been poisoned, and I reacted as anyone would in that circumstance.

“Oh, crap…”

Then I fell backwards on the pavement, my vision blurred, and my mind fell into an unwanted slumber.

______________________________________________________________________________

Time Unknown

I don’t know at what time I awoke; all I know is that it was bright and that it was morning. The sun was shining above and ponies were milling about on the street in front of me, going about their business.

Me?

My head was pounding like it was being hit by a jackhammer. I was naked, musky, and from what I could tell in a completely different part of Manehattan. Particularly, I was in Sheol’s Kitchen. I was home.

“Oh crap.”

I got up and shook my head, my vision blurry for a reason that I couldn’t fathom at the moment. It was then that I began my long trot back to Xingtown and to my office, where I hoped I would get a chance to lick my wounds.