Manehatten: 1004 ANM
“There’s… There’s got to be a link, got to be a link somehow!” A pony nervously muttered to himself as he paced back and forth the floors of his apartment. The wooden floors creaked and groaned with age under every hoofstep. The pony in question, named Question Mark was about fifty or so, brown in fur color with greying hair and stubble on his face. He’d long been dismissed as a kook, crackpot or nut-job, depending on which phrase you prefer to throw at him.
Not that he cared of course. He knew what he’d stumbled upon was big, very big indeed. He’d dare say that this might just shake up the foundations of the upper levels of Royal Guard if this information got out to the public. Trouble was, his reputation was less than stirling thanks to his possible madness, not helped by the fact that he’d been seen in local bars all across the city.
Once, many moons ago, Question Mark was a renowned PI, often helping the police with cases they couldn’t solve. Of course in his now drunk and paranoid mind, that meant pretty much every case, even the simplest of ones that could easily be classified as open and shut.
He didn’t care that the task force, or anypony in the city took him seriously anymore. He wanted to solve just one last case, right before he went. You see, his liver was failing and he knew it. But that wouldn’t stop him. Solving these kidnappings, dating back since 989 ANM would give him back his reputation. Plus, it would give the families that had lost loved ones some closure at last.
Question Mark took a swig from his hip flask, which was engraved with the latin saying "Imple sollicite qui te habeat fiduciam”.
“One more drink couldn’t hurt, could it? After all, it’s not like I’m going to die already from this is it?” He mused sarcastically before he switched the radio on and smooth jazz music not unlike something you’d hear out of a speakeasy of olden times began to play from it. He smiled as the music soothed his weary ears. He’d already written out his will, and although he did not have much to bequeath, he did have one simple request for his funeral which was to play this song.
Question turned his musings back to the case at hand. Before him, on a billboard held up with pins of various colors and connected with strings, were pictures and news reports about various missing ponies. Also, chief in the center of it all, was a newsreport dating a few years back on the First Lieutenant of the Royal Guard, Bradwr Boltstrike calling for more soldiers to defend the regions of Equestria from the Caribou Empire’s enclosing reach on the borders of the Royal Sister’s kingdom. However, both Princess Celestia and the Captain at the time had shot this proposal down, saying that Equestria had more than enough soldiers to defend it’s borders, and that there was no reason to fear the Caribou Kingdom at this time. Actually, she and Lord Tall Antlers were very good friends from what Question had heard from a old contact in the Royal Guard, a fellow PI like himself who at the time worked internal affairs.
Question knew this statement and the kidnapping of ponies had to be connected. “After all, if you couldn’t get official permission…” He thought. All in all, this billboard along with everything on it added along with his general paranoia gave everypony the impression of a conspiracy theorist.
Question didn’t care about that.
Question didn’t care about anything anymore.
All he wanted was to stop this evil before it started and solve this case.
“Now… You, Red Lightning, you were the first to vanish.” Question muttered to himself. “But, next month… a pony by the name of Black Lance goes missing. No relations to speak of. They weren’t family, nor were they dating. There’s… There’s just got to be something I’m missing!”
Question scoured the papers laying around on his desk, each with information on the various ponies that had gone missing over the years. He stared at each of the two’s information for hours, and things became a blur as the night wore on. He became dizzy, and yawned once more. He needed rest, and he knew it. But this case was far more important than his own health. He snarled in frustration and sighed.
“I need some fresh air. Always helped me get a new perspective on things, when I’m not focused on the case. Answers always come then.” He mused to himself and opened up the sliding door to his balcony and let the fresh Manehatten breeze flow through his dark brown fur and smiled before taking another swig from his flask.
Unknown to him, he was being watched. From a long abandoned apartment directly across from his own, a few floors higher was a pony clad all in dark clothing. He opened up a case and began assembling what was inside and set up its stand and lined up his shot.
The shot rang out, and Question fell and tumbled over the balcony and down to the streets below, gravity rushing up to greet him as blood spattered the window of his glass screen door.
The unknown assassin smirked. His deed was done. Now for the second portion of the job to be over and done with.
“Sir, this is Agent Alpha. The Target has been eliminated. Permission for the clean-up crew to do their part?” The unknown pony asked into a headset. A thick Trottingham accent answered him.
“Permission granted. Agent Delta, move in.” The pony ordered, and outside in the hallway that lead to the late Question Mark’s apartment, there lay another pony in dark attire covered from head to hoof. He kicked the door in and began pouring alcohol all over the floor. With a few quick motions, he struck a match against his clothing and lit it before tossing it onto the floor and running just as the whole room was consumed in flame.
“Commander, this is Agent Delta. All evidence has been eliminated. Repeat, all evidence is eliminated.” He said into his headset.
In a unknown location, a dark blue furred pony smirked.
“Good, now that old drunk has been eliminated, all the chains of evidence linking me to this has been dealt with. ...Well, all except you lot. You know what to do.”
Both ponies nodded and took out two pills, one for each of them and popped them in their mouth and crushed them beneath their teeth. Soon, they lay on the floor their mouths frothing with foam.
“Good, now nothing can stop me now. Time to get to work. There’s still lots to be done yet.” He thought to himself with a smirk and turned on a radio and let the sound of Hooftooven's Fifth Symphony sooth his ears...
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Part 1: A Curious Encounter
Somewhere in the void between time and space where nothing, but yet everything happened at once, a strange blue box with the words Police Call Box written on it floated through the darkness. All around it, what could only be described as chaos occurred. Portals that showed various dimensions across the multiverse surrounded the box and displayed their many and infinite wonders. One portal showed a version of the Tenth Doctor wearing a white and black adorned jumpsuit with his trenchcoat with a gold badge pinned to the coat’s shoulder was one of the more notable ones. He stood alongside a spandex clad female with a helmet that displayed a pink heart on her otherwise black visor holding a very big cannon. They stood together, Doctor with Sonic in hand, fighting off various anthropomorphic ponies clad in stark grey armor, the leader of which having a striking resemblance to Rainbow Dash with twin swords in her hands. The backdrop to their fight was a ruined futuristic utopia of a city, burning as a mad mare with charcoal black fur and a burning mane flew above it all and fired blasts of flame into the once proud city.
Another image rapidly replaced this one. Here, it showed a pony version of Ten fighting off a grey pegasus version of himself with a blood red hourglass as his Cutie Mark in a ruined version of Nine’s TARDIS, various mechanisms sparking. The Pony-Ten rolled out of the way to dodge a laser blast from his counterpart’s Sonic Device before he let out a shout.
In another universe, Rainbow Dash rode a giant mechanical bird of steampunk style design with glowing red eyes of pure rage. It plunged into a deep blue sea and smashed through a tower of an underwater city as the bird screeched.
Another universe flashed by in an instance, where a Ten looking mad with power on a London street declared “For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner! That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious!”
The Eleventh Doctor sighed as he observed himself comforting a young tan pegasus arriving in New York on the RMS Carpathia just after the sinking of the Titantic. That event was one he experienced personally, a universe he’d traveled to. All these others, he was just observing. He couldn’t travel to all of these universes of course even as much as he wanted to give the Multiverse a proper fair-well tour. There were varying reasons, some were lost to him and impossible to enter. Others, he had a counterpart and he couldn’t risk himself meeting himself in a manner of speaking and causing a paradox.
Above him, three silver cylinders covered in Gallfreyian Runes ticked and turned away as all around him, shelves of books scattered across the main control room’s walls. Directly behind Eleven, a portrait of a very dear friend of his framed in gold seemed to smile at him. The Doctor never dared to look directly at it, she certainly never smiled at him now. Just looking at it, caused him to feel that old familiar pain of not being there in time to help her when she needed it most.
“Twilight... For the record…” The Doctor began slowly, tears trickling out of his green eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have been there.”
At this, Twilight's emotions finally boiled over and she began to shout and scream at them, magical energy flying everywhere as books lifted themselves off the shelves and flew every which way and the floor began to crack under the sheer magical output Twilight was throwing out.
"THAT'S DAMN WELL RIGHT! YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE DOCTOR, IF YOU EVEN DESERVE THE TITLE!" Twilight roared, her voice output reaching The Royal Canterlot Voice levels of volume. "I TRUSTED YOU, AND YOU TOOK THAT TRUST AND THREW IT AWAY LIKE AN OLD STUFFED TOY! SPIKE WAS MY SON AND YOU LET HIM DIE ALL BECAUSE OF SOME DAMNED DEMONS, WHO COULD HAVE BEEN DEALT WITH AT ANY TIME YOU VERY WELL LIKED!"
“The Doctor…” Twilight snarled bitterly. “The Stallion who makes ponies better. That was your promise wasn't it? Well, you've certainly done a good job in upholding THAT.”
The Doctor sighed and took out a flask and drank it dry. The TARDIS made a soft humming sound, almost as if it were disappointed at how far he’d fallen.
“Yes… Yes, Old Girl,” The Doctor muttered. “I know how it is. But honestly, I think we all reach a point in our own lives where we question what we were made for. Me… All I end up leaving is destruction and ashes in my wake, so I think I’m allowed a drink or two once in a while don’t you think? Time… Time rots everything, including me.”
The TARDIS, all on it’s own then displayed a image of a pony in a grey trilby investigating a dead body with a bullet hole in it’s head with a magnifying glass in hoof and muttering to himself. The Doctor groaned as he got the message the Old Girl was trying to send him.
“Alright… Alright, I suppose you do have a point. Time to lend a hoof one last time, eh?” The Doctor muttered before throwing a switch…
Manehatten: 1004, One Day Before Question Mark’s murder...
Two ponies stood over a body lying in one of the many alleyways that were scattered throughout the constantly bustling city of Manehatten, the blue hued light of a police carriage illuminating the dark alley. The first pony was a simple police officer, no different than any other beat cop you might find in this city. However the second was a different story entirely. His name was Phillip Finder, a well renowned PI and a former investigator for the Royal Guard. Quite recently, he had solved a case in the small town of Ponyville involving the pony Time Turner and his marenapped wife Derpy Hooves which had led him to the long abandoned Cloudsdale Rainbow Factory and a band of changelings. Now, he’d been summoned to Manehattan by his old friend Question Mark to help with a series of mysterious kidnappings, only to find that his comrade was missing as well, and there was a dead body that called for closer investigation.
“What happened? I’d say he jumped out of a window considering bankers do that all the time every time share prices drop, but this isn’t Wall Street,” the cop joked with a dark chuckle.
Philip gave him a look and the cop shut up at once.
The body was the late Bag-of-Bits, a banker of about middle age. He lay on the ground, ripped and torn to shreds. Two coroners walked up and began shaking their heads sadly. Then, they loaded the body into the back of an ambulance before hauling it off. Philip noted the presence of a puddle of oil on the ground. He pulled out a small jar and carefully put some of the oil into it before giving it a sniff.
“Curious…” Phil muttered to himself. It smelt like machinery, the kind you’d use to power a steam powered device. “But why would a banker be even near such a thing?”
“And then there’s the other things about this mess… Celestia above, I said I wanted an interesting case before things got too boring but this isn’t what I meant at all.”
A few hours later, Philip stood over the body lying on a cold piece of metal in a Manehatten morgue. The body had been heavily torn up and cut to ribbons, almost in an animalistic fashion. But that wasn’t the really strange part. The pony in question had been bruised heavily in an unknown manner as well, and as far as Phillip knew, no known animal on record could do that.
“Well, I suppose if you count us ponies as animals you might be able to argue that. And we are animals technically so these bruises mostly likely came from a pony,” Phil mused to himself. He adjusted his signature gray trilby. “Course, if you really want to be speculative about this, you could say a Yowie did this. But anypony who believes in that old myth really should have a blow in the bag in most ponies minds as there is no proof that the creature exists. The only reason why it’s such a popular piece of speculation is because of that roll of film taken a while back. Personally, I don’t believe it’s real. That creature looked too much like somepony in a customized gorilla suit.” Phil grunted to himself and inspected the body with his magnifying glass before he turned to a redheaded female in a lab coat.
“Cold, how long did this body take to get processed?” he asked.
“About, oh, five or six hours after you found him. It took quite a while before anyone could process this one. There’s been a lot of bodies dropping lately. You wouldn’t imagine the paperwork we have go through…” the mare said before trailing off letting Phil give her a curious look.
“What, what is it?” Phil asked impatiently.
“It’s just…odd. Some vanish, seemingly before they ever reach us. It’s been running everypony ragged.”
Phillip hesitated for a moment. “Was Question Mark amongst those bodies?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.
“No, not that I know of,” Doctor Cold Slab, replied as Phil went back to checking over the body and muttering to himself.
“Phil, let it never be said I understand you. Sure, you’re a good PI but anypony ever tell you that your investigative methods are sometimes a bit off?” Cold remarked dryly.
“Never failed me yet,” Phil remarked. While it was true the claw marks were probably more important, every little bit helped in any case.
“Hmm… something with claws, yes. That much is obvious. A blind pony could see that. But why the bruises as well? It makes no sense unless... ” Phil mused to himself, filing away a thought for later. “The attackers are getting smarter, or at least more violent in their work.”
“Obviously,” Cold Slab deadpanned before a thought struck her. “How do you know it wasn’t a bear or a lion that escaped from the Manehatten Zoo? I did hear a news report a few days back about that happening.”
“It’s a possibility I haven’t put out of my mind yet,” Phil commented. “But it’s low on the list. I just can’t see a lion punching somepony out. They’re more likely to rip their victims limb from limb. Besides, I think anypony would have noticed something like that prowling around a big city.”
“Point,” Cold said. “Phil, not to be rude or anything…but this attitude of yours, it’s like you’re treating the victim as a thing, not an actual living pony. Remember, he did have a family at one point and right now they’ve just gotten the news that their only son is dead.”
Phil had the decency to look somewhat ashamed of himself before he stiffened up. He couldn’t care about emotions right now. Emotions interfered with the job at hoof. They made you care and worry about who you were supposed to be helping, and led to slip-ups.
“I’ve had that happen to me once before. I’m not repeating it,” Phil thought sadly. “Ponies get hurt when they’re around me. Twilight…honestly I don’t know why I’m beginning to care for her and her friends. I suppose it’s just because they’re…likeable in their own ways, odd as they are.”
At that moment, both ponies stopped dead in their tracks and their ears twitched when they heard something crawling through the vents above them, the metal thudding with every hoofstep. Phil grunted to himself and reached into the pocket of his green fishing vest, pulling out an extendable baton and flicking it open.
Suddenly, the lights went off and something opened with a creak. Cold’s voice came out in a scream before it was quickly silenced with a gurgling sound. A moment later, the lights turned on, revealing Cold Slab’s body lying on the floor, throat sliced wide open. Blood was pooling onto the floor. There was a flicker of movement above as something leapt right back up into the open vent faster than the eye could see.
Phil snarled and his eyes narrowed. He ran out of the morgue’s door and kept his ear trained to the vents, every so often making a turn down a corridor to keep pace with the hoofsteps. He ran up a set of stairs, whirled around a corner and then up another flight till eventually he was on the roof, steam hissing out of vents and air conditioners. The sprawl of the Big Apple lay beneath him, but despite all the shouting of ponies and rushing of carriage traffic coming from below, he still kept his ears trained to the sound. And then, from out of a vent burst a creature.
It had a gold face mask obscuring its facial features, and wore a tattered black fur cloak all over its body. Oddly, Phil noted the sound of a ticking clock but there was no obvious place for it to be coming from. The creature let out a low growl and ran towards him but Phil rolled out of the way as it took a swipe at him with a metal claw.
“What the hell is this thing?” Phil pondered as the creature rushed towards him again and slashed at his face. Phil grabbed the foreleg rapidly closing in on him and gave it a twist flipping the creature onto its back. The creature recovered instantly and flipped back on its hooves. It lunged and took a slash at Phil again but Phil countered the attack with his baton before whirling around and bucking the creature across to another rooftop with his powerful hind legs. The creature recovered once again and started to take a run for it.
“Oh no you don’t,” Phil said and took a running leap across to the other rooftop. He reached out and grabbed a fire escape, pulled himself up onto it and began climbing up the stairwells and onto the rooftop. However, by the time he got up to the roof, he could only witness the creature leap off the rooftop and jump to the streets below. Phil rushed to the roof’s edge, and saw the creature disappear into the shadows of an alleyway.
“Damn!” Phil swore.
Later that night… Philip Finder’s Hotel Room:
The soft sound of jazz played through a radio on Philip’s nightstand, his hat and coat hung up on a nearby coat rack. The sun set behind him over the Manehatten skyline, casting an orange and red glow through the balcony window as a cool breeze blew through softly ruffling the curtains.
Phil himself pondered over the creature he had encountered only hours before. He had watched its every move, it’s every attack and analyzed its behavior. It couldn’t have been a pony, not with the way it moved. It was far too fast, far too quick on its reflexes to have been anything but an animal. Oddly, it had hooves on its hind legs, but yet had claws on its forelegs. It was like somepony had took a mish-mash of creatures, put them through a blender and see what came out of it as a result. And then there was that strange clock ticking sound, coming from an area where a clock had no right to be. Phil growled to himself as he slammed a hoof up against a wall in frustration. He didn’t like not knowing things.
With a sad look on his face, he reached into his vest’s pocket and pulled out a photo of a mare with a light gold coat and a mane of mixed grey colors.
“You’d solve this in a instance, wouldn’t you Daring?” Phil thought to himself. “Bloody Hell, you’d take down that creature and you wouldn’t have let it get away wouldn’t you?”
Phil scoffed. That was a long time ago, he didn’t need her help to solve this. Besides, Daring had made it very clear long ago that she worked best alone, and that they could be co-workers, nothing but.
“This isn't working, is it?”
”This…you and I...us.”
“We travel around Equestria, find ancient treasures, solve crimes, catch criminals...what's not working?”
“Never mind.”
“What? What is it? I don't understand.”
“Of course you don't.”
Phil shook his head to clear himself of the memories. They were just that, memories of an old life. Something that he could never have back.
“Oh please Phil,” a voice that sounded exactly like Daring teased him. “You’re attracted to me, and you know it. Might want to maintain that professional relationship, but let’s be honest with yourself. You love me deep down, despite all of your denials.”
“Shut up!” Phil mentally argued back. “You’re not her!”
“Am I?” the voice mentally asked, still in that teasing tone. “That’s the mystery you’d have to figure out for yourself. No helpers this time for this case, sorry to say.”
Phil sighed to himself as he fell back on the bed, exhausted from the day’s events and eyelids growing heavy. He let them shut by themselves and allowed the soft sound of the saxophones carry him off to sleep...
A few hours later, Phil’s eyes shot open, his ears detecting the blaring of sirens and the crackle of embers burning. He shot straight up like a rocket in his bed and leaped out, grabbing his hat and vest and rushing out to the balcony to see smoke and flames rising from a part of the Manehatten skyline. His encounter today with the mystery beast, a building in the city now set alight. They all had to be connected. A lesser pony might have brushed them off as just coincidences, but Phil had long ago learned there was no such thing.
“I’m getting old…” Phil muttered to himself before he began running down the stairwells, his mind now solely focused on the burning apartment block. Phil’s Crime Sense was getting the feeling there was something larger at work here and he’d have to get on the case.
Elsewhere, in a back alleyway there was a wheezing groaning sound and a blue box materialized out of thin air, before with a creak its wooden doors opened and out stepped a grey furred stallion. The Doctor smiled before thinking to himself as he breathed in the city’s air one single word.
“Geronimo.”
