The Adventure of the Golden Triangle
I can safely say that of all the cases that I have had the privilege of solving with my boon companion, none have been quite so strange as that of the sinister Golden Triangle.
It was in the middle of the summer, and my best friend and mentor was suffering the malaise that comes when one has a nearly inexhaustible amount of free time and nothing worthwhile to spend it on. She had never enjoyed the long, hot days under the sun, much preferring the dark of the night, when crimes were afoot and she could shine the light of truth upon them.
“Rub the lotion lower, Pip,” Luna ordered, from her chaise lounge. She was flipping through a newspaper, scanning an article about the recent museum heist that had seen several valuable gems lost from the Canterlot Natural History Museum. A week on and no one had yet been caught. “I wouldn’t want to burn.”
I complied gladly, without complaint, and had barely finished before I heard the telltale chime of the front door.
“Ah,” she said, without looking up. “That would be Mister Flash Sentry. If you would be so good as to let your former classmate in, dear Pip?”
Here, I should relate some details about my friend Luna. In all the years I’ve known her, she has proven to have perhaps the keenest mind I’ve ever had the pleasure to make discourse with. She could expound on details and facts of the most obscure and arcane matters for hours, and where she wasn’t an expert, she learned so quickly that she soon became one.
Therefore I was not surprised when I opened the door and found Flash Sentry standing there, though his attire was not what I expected. He was dressed in a uniform, similar to that of an officer of the law, though not of a department I was immediately able to identify.
“Pip?” He asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Miss Luna asked me to get the door,” I explained. “She’s waiting for you in back near the pool.”
He followed me, looking perplexed.
When we arrived, Luna got up slowly and deliberately, exhibiting the grace of a younger woman. “It’s good to see you, Flash. It’s been quite a while since you graduated. I had some concerns you would end up in a more dangerous profession than a security guard, though Beanis Inc has drawn together nearly all of the old Canterlot High crowd. I take it the pay isn’t quite as competitive as you’d like, since you’re still driving that Mustang with one misfiring cylinder.”
She finished her drink, and I took the empty glass from her.
“So do you have the threatening letter with you?” Luna asked.
“How did you know-”
“I do keep up with students that caught my eye. I’m one of your MyStable friends.”
“Oh,” Flashed blushed, and I knew how he felt. Doubtless he thought that she had forgotten him, something I too had once feared. “Wait, I never posted anything about being hired at Beanis Inc on my MyStable!”
Luna chuckled. “You’re wearing the uniform of a security guard, and though your patches don’t state exactly where you’re working, that custom case with a rather distinctive shape hints heavily towards an obvious location, one that has often been in the news of late and whose recent founding means it hungers for personnel. You’ve never been the type to make a social call with a former teacher, and especially not in uniform. Since you haven’t changed, it indicates to me that you came here directly from work, and the early hour you arrive at, and the distance from the building to my house being what it is, something arrived with the mail, as the mail carriers in that part of Canterlot tend to start their rounds just before noon. You aren’t carrying a package, aside from the one at your belt and perhaps in your trousers, so I must assume you have a letter, and one that is enough of a concern for you as a security guard and an employee of Beanis Inc to have sent you to my door, after consulting with Twilight Sparkle.”
“That’s exactly right,” Flash said, shocked. “But how did you know about Twilight?”
“If I may, Miss?” I interjected. She nodded, waving for me to continue while she sipped at a margarita. “It’s well known that Twilight Sparkle is the one running Beanis Inc, and you wouldn’t have left your post, especially not after a threat has been made, without speaking to her. She and Miss Luna correspond regularly, so she’s aware that Miss Luna has no small skill as a detective, as well as a vice-principal.”
“Next you’ll tell me what’s on the letter before you even see it,” Flash said, fishing the envelope out of his pocket.
“If she sent it to me, I doubt it’s anything simple enough to guess at, otherwise she would have given it to the local police department. Therefore I must conclude that whatever this letter contains is urgent enough to need immediate attention, too complicated for the simple-minded but well-meaning Canterlot Police, and possibly involves magic.”
Flash wordlessly turned it over, and Luna opened it up.
“Interesting,” she said, and gave it to me. “Tell me what you make of this, Pip.”
“It’s a threat, Ma’am,” I said. “Somewhat rambling. If I might summarize this, the whole thing is something like a page out of a manifesto about how something called a Beanis is an abomination against the harmony of the cosmos.”
“Indeed. Handwritten, you’ll note, and the slant indicates the author is left-handed. The signature?”
“Merely a triangle, though it was drawn in golden ink.” I shrugged.
“Not just any triangle, Pip. A right triangle. And one drawn by hand, using a straightedge, rather than with a stamp.”
I nodded agreement “As you say, Ma’am.”
“What do you notice of the paper this letter is written on?”
I rubbed the edge between my fingers, feeling the rough surface. “It’s recycled, I believe. And the dimensions aren’t right for standard A4 paper.”
Luna smiled brightly. “Well-done, Pip. The paper is indeed recycled, and from the rough texture I believe it was hand-pressed from pulp, not something made for the mass market. The ratio of height to length is also interesting, but the content of the letter and the signature neatly solve the mystery of why our manifesto author would decide not to use a more standard and difficult to trace page.”
“...which means?” Flash asked.
“Have you ever heard of the Pythagorean Cult?” Luna asked. Flash shook his head.
I looked down. “I confess I’ve never heard of them either, Miss,”
“It’s not surprising. They’re rather obscure, and the religion had died out for centuries until its recent revival. They have a small but devout following with a number of interesting beliefs. Among the ones that concern us today are a belief in the harmony of the natural world, or at least a certain type of harmony that demands all numbers be expressed as the ratio of integers. Thus the size of the paper: the standard A4-sized paper’s ratio of height to length can only be expressed using the square root of two, an irrational number and anathema to the Pythagorean Cult. This handmade paper is at a ratio of three to two, which they would find appealing.”
“They sent us a threatening letter because of numbers?” Flash asked, confused.
“Of course not,” Luna laughed. “You see, they also, despite being strictly vegan, consider beans to be abominable. The Beanis, using beans for earthly pleasure, is no doubt offensive to their worldview in the extreme, as this letter would seem to attest to.”
Miss Luna was nothing if not efficient with her time. After seeing Flash Sentry out with assurances that we would look into this for him, she dressed (with my assistance) and we set out to find the cult, or at least answers.
“Where are we going to look, Ma’am?” I asked, as we waited for our Unter to arrive, the hired car app reporting they were only a few minutes away. “I’m not sure where to find a cult in this day and age, if I’m honest.”
“Where would you look were it another time?” She asked, curious.
I thought for a moment. “Well, Ma’am, I’d look for standing stones and blood-stained altars.”
Luna laughed and shook her head. “I’m afraid things won’t be so simple as that. We have few standing stones in the city, and I doubt very much we’ll find an altar when we arrive, at least not one used for sacrifices. They’re vegan, after all.”
“I suppose you’ve already looked on MyStable?” I suggested.
“Unfortunately, while they have a page it’s set to private,” she said. “A dead end, for now. I have some of my contacts working on that, but I believe there is a simpler path.”
One of the great benefits of living in Canterlot over some of the larger cities like Manehattan and even my native Trottingham is that small business continues to thrive. Perhaps the largest proof of this is in the Pavillion, a large open-plan structure near two of the city’s largest parks. Floorspace could be rented there for nearly any purpose, and I often took lunch there from the dozens of vendors selling everything from falafel to pad thai.
“I have a strong hope that we will find the beginning of our path here,” Luna said.
I nodded. “I see your logic, Ma’am. The paper the letter was written on was an artisan good.”
“Indeed, Pip, and even a cult has to make money somehow. Defrauding members only goes so far when one promises harmony instead of wealth or success.” Luna led me through the stalls before something caught her eye. “Aha. That is perhaps unexpected. Come, Pip.”
She crossed over into the next aisle, and stopped at a stand selling baked goods.
“Is this the cult?” I whispered.
“No, Pip, but look at this.” She tapped a finger on a stack of flyers for an animal shelter. I remained confused until she turned the paper to its reverse, and I saw the images there.
“Oh my,” I gasped, blushing. “I wasn’t aware advertising allowed for such.”
“It doesn’t - but Beanis Inc has often skirted the wording, if not merely the intent, of the law. I am somewhat concerned about their long-term plans, but I intend to look into that another time.”
“Yo, hey, it’s Lulu and Piperson!”
I had, to my shame as a junior detective, not even seen the owner of the stall before she spoke. Thankfully, rather than some dangerous cult madman, it was another old classmate.
“Good afternoon, Treehugger,” I said. “Is this your bake sale?”
“Yep,” she said. “Don’t worry, VP. It’s not the good stuff, just the good stuff, if you get what I mean.”
Luna smiled slightly. “I do. I have warned you about your habits, but you aren’t a student at my school any longer. Even when you were, while I disagreed with your choices you always had a good heart. However, these flyers…”
“Aw yeah,” she shrugged. “Fluttershy gave them to me. I saw the animal shelter part and kinda missed the back until after I’d already said I’d help her out. Couldn’t go back on my word, you know?”
“Indeed,” Luna agreed. “Though I suggest you keep the flyers showing the work-appropriate side.”
“Way ahead of you, Lulu,” Treehugger winked.
“Are you the only one handing out these flyers?” she asked.
“Yeah. Flutters couldn’t convince anyone else. She’s nice, you know? But most people were smart enough to look at both sides.”
Luna grinned.
“Do you remember anyone being particularly upset by these?” I asked.
“Oh yeah!” Treehugger grinned. “Sunny was super pissed!”
“Here it is,” I said.
Luna looked back from the conversation she was having with the building superintendent. They’d started speaking of more efficient ways to arrange the stands and I was quickly out of my depth after it turned into a discussion of topology. Thankfully, Mrs. Jubilee was happy to allow us access to their record of rentals, such being public record as the building was ultimately owned by the city. I’d busied myself looking through the most recent books until I’d found it, buried in the middle of a page as if trying to hide.
My mentor looked over my shoulder. “Sunset Shimmer. Very interesting.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why would Sunset Shimmer make a threat against her own workplace?”
“It makes more sense than I’d like,” Flash sighed, staring into the cup of tea I’d poured him. “She’s been really unhappy lately. There was an argument the other day, and she snapped.”
“Has she been in the building?” Luna asked. She sat apart from us with her hands steepled in thought.
“She still shows up for work,” Flash said. “But if you’re right, we’re gonna have to have her arrested or fired. Or both.”
“I believe things are not so simple,” Luna said. “Arresting Miss Shimmer may be premature.”
I blinked in surprise. “But Tree Hugger positively identified her, Ma’am.”
“She did. And I don’t doubt that she saw Sunset Shimmer, but consider this - why would she need to send a letter when she was already able to access the building at will?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to be connected to it,” I suggested.
“Possible, but unlikely,” Luna said. “For one thing, the writer of that manifesto was not the sort to shirk from attention. For another, the post mark on the letter. While there was no return address, the postmark indicated that the letter had been sent from the Red Hook district, which is neither near Beanis Inc, nor her apartment.”
“Couldn’t she have simply driven across the city?” I asked.
“I asked Miss Sparkle about that, and it appears Miss Shimmer has taken to sleeping in her office,” Luna glanced at Flash for a moment, and I saw him lower his eyes in some private shame. “While she could have left, Mister Sentry can check for himself the times she has been out of the office long enough to drive to Red Hook and check it against the date the letter was posted. I suspect quite strongly that the cameras will show she could not possibly have written it herself.”
“But if she’s really part of a cult, she’ll have co-conspirators,” Flash said, glumly. “It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.”
“Unfortunately, you’re quite correct,” Luna agreed. “We will have to investigate ourselves. Pip, if you would be so kind as to secure a car for us?”
Red Hook was, by some measures, an even less reputable part of Canterlot than the vicinity of Beanis Inc. Most of the buildings were old brick and stone edifices of advanced age, crumbling and overgrown with ivy and weeds. Most of the buildings I could see from where Luna directed the Unter driver to stop should have been condemned, and many apparently had been, though even those with notices posted at their door warning against intrusion showed signs of irregular habitation.
“Keep your eyes open, my young friend,” Luna warned.
I nodded. The place had me on edge already, and I hardly needed her warning, though the fact she was more cautious than excited spoke of the seriousness of the as-yet-unseen threat.
“I suspect what we are looking for will be within walking distance,” Luna said, her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “There’s a particular type of flower, Leucanthemum vulgare, the ox-eye daisy, which is sacred to their cult.”
She took her phone from her pocket. On it was pictured a rather common looking flower, exactly what one might think when picturing a daisy, a yellow center surrounded by thin white petals.
I nodded my understanding, and we began canvassing the streets. I kept close to my mentor, each of us watching for the other’s safety almost as much as we searched the streets. It was beginning to approach sundown when we finally found what we looked for.
“Behold, Pip,” Luna said. She pointed to the long rows of daisies leading to a black door, notable not just for the flowers we’d been looking for but by the obvious signs of care, the flowers radiating out in neat formation like a sunburst with the door at its center. That any care was taken at all to preserve the property was unusual for the area.
“Good show, Ma’am!” I congratulated her. “You were quite correct about the flowers.”
“And about the leader’s need for recognition. Observe, Pip, how the flowers are arranged. Not just neat beds, but in a shape that says, to the believers, this is where the sacred center is located.”
“Shall we knock?”
“No, Pip, I fear knocking will just be met with a request to leave, if the door is answered at all. Then they will be on guard and we’ll find nothing. I’m afraid that we must seek an alternate entrance if we are to investigate.”
A moment’s work by my friend, and a door at the rear of the building yielded to the persuasion of a calm hand and slivers of spring-steel.
“Good show, Ma’am!” I congratulated, as she pushed it open an inch.
“Sometimes, even the skills learned in an ill-spent youth can come in handy, Pip,” she whispered. “Residential locks like this are hardly difficult. It’s in such poor condition one could nearly open it with a spoon. Come along, Pip.”
She crept inside, and I followed her, trying to match her stealth. The hall was nearly-pitch black, and it was long minutes before my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I was able to see what was around us.
When I heard it was a cult, I expected decadence of one sort or another. It was a word that conjured visions of gilt lilies over a rotten core. Instead, the inside of the home was spartan, everything meticulously clean and the walls whitewashed, making Luna stand out starkly even in this dim light.
She stopped, her hand touching my chest to ensure I didn’t walk past her. I didn’t dare break the silence to ask her why she’d halted when we were so dreadfully exposed, as I feared my voice would carry to whomever was the custodian of the building. Thankfully, she made her intentions obvious, and pulled open a door that had been invisible to me in the monochromatic hall, revealing a closet lined with white cloaks.
“Help me dress, Pip,” she whispered.
I leave it to the imagination of the reader to what happened in the next few minutes, but suffice it to say that a gentleman does not speak of such things, and when we were finished both of us were appropriately attired in white robes, far better camouflage in the austere surroundings about us.
We made our way from the back of the house to the front, following a flickering light that, when we arrived at its source, proved to be a number of tall candles, all as spotlessly white as the walls.
“Note the lack of electrical appliances,” Luna whispered. “It’s likely this building isn’t connected to the power grid. They may well be the type of separatist sect that tries to create a self-sufficient stronghold based on slave labor and fanaticism.”
We crept through the lit area, finding a press that must have been a century old, along with what appeared to be dozens of wooden frames stacked in neat columns. Luna picked one up, and I could see the square shape was supporting a sheet of cheesecloth stretched tight like a canvas.
“Tools for making paper from pulp,” she whispered.
“At least we’re in the right place, Ma’am.”
Luna smiled at that, her grin a crescent moon against the shadows of her hood. She examined another of the frames and froze in place, head tilted. After a moment, I heard what had caught her attention, the distant sound of a human voice, muted somewhat by a strange music unlike any I’d heard before.
She motioned me forward and adjusted her stance to seem casual, employing stealth of another type, one that was much more effective when we turned the corner and found two men, in robes similar to ours, standing at attention near the front door. Our casual nature and appropriate dress did well to conceal us, where creeping like thieves would have been met with instant suspicion and likely capture.
Luna stopped next to one of the men and glanced back at me purposefully. A flash of understanding passed between us and I nodded, understanding her plan in a moment.
On my oath, I am not a violent man, but I have made sure to learn certain skills so to better defend my friend after the near-disaster of our first investigation, which nearly ended with me spending my graduation in a wheelchair. A year of classes on self-defense and how to harmlessly and temporarily dispatch an adversary meant I was well-equipped to handle myself. While I could not knock out the guard next to me with the same precise strikes Miss Luna used, I quickly had him in a choke-hold, keeping the struggling man silent and compliant with my advantage of leverage and surprise until he fell unconscious.
“Good work, Pip,” Luna said, patting my back. “Let us place them somewhere they’re unlikely to be stumbled across and then we’ll investigate further, now that the front door will serve as an egress.”
I nodded my assent and we bound and gagged the two, finding them to be rather thin and poorly-fed under their concealing robes. The hallway closet served as an easy place to store them.
“No radios, and they were armed with clubs,” I noted. “If they’re not even using firearms are they truly so much of a threat, ma’am?”
“Unfortunately, in my experience hatred is far stronger than prohibitions from above.” Luna closed the closet, locking it. “I believe that our cult is likely to have something considerably dangerous, and the Golden Triangle or whomever it is that wrote the letter has decided that the ends justify the means.”
We moved back towards the music and speech, the odd tonality of the music striking me again, almost like some kind of string instrument but somehow more resonant and fragile.
“A glass harp,” Luna whispered. “Tuned to the perfect fifth, important in Pythagorean customs.”
Following the sound led us to the core of the house, an open area that had been several rooms, the structurally unimportant walls removed to make a parlor into a grand hall, surprisingly large for the size of the building. It was clear that the hallway we’d gone down, and the rooms we’d seen, made up half of the house, and this single room filled the other half.
Somewhere between three and four dozen robed figures surrounded a central figure, and I gasped in surprise when I saw the pendant around her neck, a golden triangle hanging from a white ribbon. Behind her, an altar was covered with gauze and cut daisies, and another figure playing the glass harp, as my companion had identified, stood off to the side.
“They are the greatest moral threat to this world,” the Golden Triangle said, in the middle of a speech and apparently not noticing our entry. “We are uniquely posed to see and deal with this terror before it consumes the good and light around us!”
I watched silently, wondering what my companion made of this zealot.
“When I saw that flyer I thought I had merely found another source of degeneration in this world, one sign among hundreds that society was corrupt.” She held up the flyer, and even from this distance the images made me blush, the flickering lighting somehow making it seem even more lewd simply by forcing my mind to fill in the details.
The congregation around us murmured, many of them making odd signs with their hands that I couldn’t identify.
“One week ago, I had a true dream, and I saw something terrifying. Something so horrible I knew I had to act. I saw a vision of the future. A future where beans have destroyed everything we love.”
That seemed unlikely in the extreme, but the cult members around us certainly seemed convinced by their leader’s testimony.
“And it will all be at the hands of one person,” the Golden Triangle continued, throwing the flyer down. “The world will end because of Beanos! I have seen the horror rise to power, and the only way to stop it is to destroy Beanis Inc before it can spread like the plague it is! Bring in the ruby!”
I glanced at my companion, but her expression, shadowed by the hood, bespoke sudden understanding and fear. While I suspected she believed in this ‘Beanos’ as little as I did, the mention of a ruby in conjunction with the threats being made had surprised her.
A wooden box was brought forward and opened, and inside was one of the most beautiful gems I had ever seen, nearly the equal to my companion. It was as big as a man’s fist, and seemed to glow from within with a light like a forge.
“An Akkadian Fire Ruby,” Luna identified in a shocked whisper. “They’re incredibly rare! Mining them is almost impossible as rough handling causes them to detonate violently.”
“I see we have a scholar among us,” the Golden Triangle said. Luna covered her mouth, realizing she’d spoken out of turn. “You’re absolutely right, and not one of the faithful.”
Luna lowered her hood, knowing that continuing the deception on her part was pointless.
“Unless I miss my guess, this is the gem reported stolen from the Canterlot Natural History Museum. I had been awaiting with some eagerness a mysterious fire or explosion at a pawn shop when some unwary fence attempted to cut the gem without the proper equipment, but I see that my assumptions about the nature of the crime were incorrect and it was stolen for its volatile nature rather than in spite of it.”
“One does what one must to keep the world safe,” the Golden Triangle said. “Violence is always a last resort.”
“It is only a last resort because once it is initiated, returning to a debate or discussion becomes impossible,” Luna said. “A lesson hard-learned on my part. However, it has not come to that, yet. If you return the gem, perhaps we can still resolve this like reasonable people.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wouldn’t you prefer that, Sunset Shimmer?”
Golden Triangle chuckled and lowered her own hood, revealing the red and yellow hair that I still recognized from my days at school, first as a terror to be avoided and much later as a heroine. The eyes, though, those I did not remember at all, heavily bagged and glimmering like gimlets, madness making them nearly glow in the low light.
“I’m not surprised you know who I am,” she said. “It isn’t as though I hid my identity.”
“No, though certain circumstances would lead a casual observer to believe otherwise. After all, you aren’t the only Sunset Shimmer involved, and I doubt the other one knows you exist – but you’re very familiar with her, aren’t you?”
Sunset frowned, and I saw my mentor had struck true.
“You’re left handed, where she writes with her right hand, giving your handwriting a different slant, difficult even for someone trying to disguise their words. I had thought it was merely someone using Sunset Shimmer’s name, perhaps a former classmate or victim, until I saw your signature. Not the golden one you used for your threat, but the one you used when reserving a place for your stand. Your signature is identical, save for the tilt. If you were truly hiding you would have used a different name, and if you were trying to disguise your handwriting your signature would have been completely different. You wrote it unaware that anyone might come looking, as you hadn’t begun plotting your attack yet.”
“I hadn’t had the dream yet,” Sunset clarified.
Luna nodded, allowing the correction. “You have a MyStable page, despite the lack of electricity here. I suspect you use the computer at a public library to update it?”
Sunset nodded.
“The other Sunset Shimmer had a rather extensive online presence with her friends. I can’t imagine you weren’t familiar with it.”
“I was,” Sunset admitted. “But I didn’t want to interfere with her life. There are stranger coincidences in the world than two people sharing a name and face.”
“And she doesn’t post anything about her current job on her own pages,” Luna said. “Which means you were blissfully unaware of what she was involved with until you were already incensed, motivated by the flyer you found to look into what you saw as blasphemy. Your anger at what you saw was so great even Miss Treehugger remembered it, and I have known the girl to forget if she’s wearing shoes or not.”
“I am trying to save the world!” Sunset protested. “My dreams were real!”
“I’m very familiar with the motivating power of nightmares,” Luna said. “But I would never allow a mere dream to cause me to take such drastic action. I suspect you wouldn’t either. Pythagoras was a proponent of logic and non-violence. You would have spent more time researching and trying to understand what was going on if you were motivated so altruistically. But with the date you saw the flyer, and the speed of our local post, you could not have spent more than a single day between learning of Beanis Inc and dedicating yourself to their destruction.”
“Swift action is necessary.”
Luna shook her head. “You found something so personally distasteful that you had to take action.You saw, on Beanis Inc’s main page, that not only did someone named Sunset Shimmer work for them in an executive role, but that she was the employee of the month! If your followers learned about this heresy, how long before they left you without the power you crave?”
“You don’t know anything about me!” Sunset yelled.
“I know the other Sunset Shimmer quite well. She was once like you, hungry only for power and earning respect through fear.”
Sunset Shimmer grabbed the fire ruby, holding it over her head. “You have no idea what it’s like! It’s not about power! It’s not about fear! It’s about being able to look myself in the face! That doppelganger is a weight on my soul! How am I supposed to live my life when she’s dragging me through the gutter with her?!”
“Put the ruby down,” Luna said. “One that size will destroy this whole building.”
“I know,” Sunset said. “But I’ve seen what’s coming, and I can’t live being a part of it. If I can’t stop her, I’ll end things on my own terms. It’s better than what will happen to you, and the fools who allow it to rise!”
“Put it down!” Luna yelled.
“BEANOS IS!”
Sunset threw the ruby down, smashing it at her feet. I reacted instinctively, grabbing my companion and turning to run, a wave of heat hitting us. I didn’t dare look back, the crackle of flames and screaming filling my ears.
“The ruby was held in a stable environment for decades!” Luna yelled, as she held onto me, both of us running from the growing light behind us. “It appears as if the museum’s attempts to store it safely are slowing the release of geothermal energy!”
“Can we outrun it?” I asked.
Luna barked out a laugh. “What choice do we have but to try?”
We hit the front door at the same time, our shoulders popping the old lock from the half-rotten wood, the whitewash covering up the poor condition of the doorframe. The cooler air from outside was a relief, until Luna grabbed me and threw me to the ground.
Air rushed in through the new opening, and fire blasted from the windows, our egress providing fuel for the flames to grow.
“Your robe, Pip!” Luna yelled, and the heat on my back made me instantly aware of what she was warning me of. I tore the white cotton free, tossing it aside. Either during our initial escape or the explosive finale embers had caught on the cloth and had started it ablaze.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.
“Come, let’s get away from the smoke,” Luna said, taking off her own blackened garment. "At least like this, we should attract enough attention to get a ride."
"Right you are, Ma'am," I agreed, trying not to stare.
“We were unable to get a full count, but most of the cultists escaped the blaze before the building collapsed,” Luna said, later, when we’d assembled in Twilight Sparkle’s office at the Beanis Inc headquarters. “The threat is over, for now at least.”
“The other Sunset Shimmer is dead?” Twilight looked a little sick.
Luna shrugged. “It would seem so, but our Sunset has surprised us before, and I wouldn’t immediately write this one off as lost. Not until a body is found, and perhaps not even then.”
“I’m just glad it’s over,” Flash said. “Could that ruby really have brought down this building?”
“All but the basement floors,” Luna said.
“We don’t have basement floors,” Twilight corrected.
“Is that so?” Luna smiled slightly. “I’m sure you’d know better than I.”
Twilight looked annoyed for a moment but quickly changed the subject rather than get into an argument. “I’d prefer if you three kept this from Sunset. She’ll be happier not knowing about the threat, and especially not knowing who made it.”
“Yeah,” Flash agreed. “That’s a good idea.”
“Mash, can you see them out? I’ll send you all a check from our expense account for your trouble.”
"It's Flash," Mister Sentry mumbled, with the tone of someone used to being abused.
Luna stood and shook Twilight’s hand, and we left. Before the door even closed, I saw Twilight Sparkle setting the envelope containing Golden Triangle’s letter on fire and dropping it into her wastebin.
“What did you make of Miss Sparkle?” Luna asked, after we’d gotten back to the house. She was relaxing in the hot tub, while I made her another margarita.
I considered the question while I poured. “What do you mean, Ma’am?”
“Nothing. Just a stray thought,” she said. “Forget I asked.”
I placed the drink at the edge of the hot tub, and Luna took a long sip.
“You know, Pip, I’ve always been of the mind that dreams are a way that the subconscious tries to tell the conscious mind certain things. It’s why so many dreams are shared - forgetting clothing in public, teeth falling out, driving from the back seat. I can’t help but wonder about what the Golden Triangle said.”
“About Beanos?” I chuckled. “It seemed like the ramblings of a madwoman, Ma’am. She was hardly a model of stability, if I might opine.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Luna admitted. “But I think we will be keeping our eyes on them. Just in case they have other enemies, of course.”
“Right you are, Ma’am.”
She smiled slyly. “Now why don’t you join me, Pip? The jacuzzi is quite nice for soothing sore muscles.”
And of course my lady was correct about that, as she was about so many other things.
Author's Note
I know, I know. Not as funny as most Beanis things. To be honest I just ended up powering through a bunch of Holmes stories in a hospital waiting room and had the style on my mind. I might do one up in Equestria proper, but I find I rather like the Pip/Luna dynamic that ended up happening here. Maybe I'll try writing another with fewer beans as filler.
