Shadows of the Night

            I was quite pleased with the new clothing, though the new clothing smell had yet to dissipate after four days, especially the new cloak. I hadn’t heard Sprocket put an order in for it, but I was glad to have a new cloak regardless. It wasn’t as form fitting, and the hood was significantly looser than the one enchanted to remain on my head, but it was quite functional and had nice roomy pockets in easy to reach places, as well as a few in the inside lining. Also, I was particularly surprised on just how well the boots fit as I wiggled my toes in their new housing. I still couldn’t place what they were made of, ponies don’t like working with flesh, but it still felt so sturdy, yet supple. Still, it hadn’t been enough to completely take away from the fact that I was walking about in the middle of the day, well, early afternoon due to Sprocket’s sleeping habits. But she needed to get more food, especially with her new tenant who was now squared away in her spare guest room which was still filled with old projects she swore she’d begin to throw away. Still there was enough room for a giant sleeping pillow, basically a giant cushion that could easily fit a pony. I came off the edges if I laid out fully on it, but I didn’t really need to sleep as such so it wasn’t a problem. We had just gotten all the groceries, me carrying them all on account of having a bad case of being raised southern, as Sprocket began to get me more acquainted with the city.

           “... and over there is where the city clock tower.” Sprocket said swinging her head to an Elizabeth Tower look alike in the distance, “it was one of the first buildings to have a massive internal mechanism within it in this city. Ooh, and there’s where you can get the best milkshakes in town,” she said, now smiling in the direction of what looked like a giant chrome plated igloo, “and don’t let the polished metal fool you, they have the truest old time recipe for sodas and ice creams you have ever had.”

           I simply nodded, concentrating on carrying the heavy load, made more so by the fact my clothing did nothing to help against the sunlight. I swear, it made me feel so sickeningly weak and vulnerable. I was just glad that Sprocket had come with her extra arms, she was using an older crystal, a darker blue which she had said would hold a charge for a good three hours. That one had been very time consuming to charge. I could still remember how much of a pain it had been as I faced wave after wave of mild self loathing, unable to get even a spark to show up after my initial success with the first crystal, and it hadn’t helped how my concentration had kept slipping away from me as I tried to think my way through the process of filling up a crystal with “magic”. That word still kind of bothered me. I preferred to use the word energy, which is essentially correct. But honestly, I’d seen “magic” light fires for one unicorn and then enchant a garden hose to go and water an entire garden for another. It would probably be worth my time to figure out the differences between such things, if only for my own benefit.

           Eventually I’d had enough while I’d sat on the couch and out of the direct sunlight and went down to the first level basement, finding Sprocket working what looked like a claw machine, but with thousands of tiny little claw arms as they seemingly picked up each individual in the catch below the mesophase tank. When I’d asked her on how crystals could even hold something inside them rather than having energy simply flow through it she looked at me like I was from another planet, then said, “What sort of idiot are you?” and then continued to give the answer, “Look, everything on Equus can hold a magical charge, it’s just part of nature. It’s sort of like a glass of water, it can hold enough until it spills out, but not all forms of magic are made equally, nor the glass. It’s like the difference between pouring water into a glass and ice cubes into another, one gets filled up more, but the other gets full more. And as for the glass, well, it depends on how pure the gem is to begin with, but how it is expressed in a form of workable magic is what makes a charge either last a week from acting as an open flame in place of a candle, or for a few minutes as a flame thrower. Do you understand?” I’d mumbled something close to ‘yeah’ then headed back up the stairs, not wanting for her to blame me any more than she did already for how I’d made her blow her experiment.

           I hadn’t quite understood what she had said, but I figured she had meant I had to refine my method for energy release, which was a much easier thing to accomplish when I finally figured to do it in my windowless room and stuffed a few of the odds and ends there by the bottom of the door to block out as much light as possible. It hadn’t been entirely pleasant. Still, it had felt good to finishing it, even if I had to spend the entire time in a rather stuffy room. Stuff like that really made me miss my old cloak, knowing it, it could probably have let me charge a crystal in a bright sunny meadow in July, and done it in a tenth of the time too. But I could manage things well enough without my old cloak, I didn’t need it to be competent, and I would definitely get better with practice.

           But walking through the interspecies crowd was an eyeful, for me, as well as a number of others. It still made me feel weird to get all the stares, but I was technically a new species so I really would need to get used to it, but Sprocket’s company was nice enough. Having company made things much more palatable.

           Making sure not to bump into anyone, something made much easier when most of the inhabitant were much smaller and were kind enough to give me the berth I needed, as we continued walking.

           “Oh, and there’s the police headquarters, once we get back you should head over there and go over for an interview.”

           “Don’t I need to fill out some paperwork or application first?”

           “A little,” Sprocket said, making me wonder what exactly little meant, “but this city is pretty starved for cops, we live in a decent enough part of the city but other parts are basically dead zones to most cops. But someone of your particular talents might just be able to do something about it” she said, lowering her head some.

           “Everything alright?” I asked, grunting a little as I shifted the bags on my left shoulder.

           “Er, yeah,” she said, turning her head enough for me to see half a grin on her face, “now let’s get these things stored away. I still want to go over some of those new writings on artificial prosthetics.”

***Later That Evening***

           ‘Goddamn, I hate paperwork’, were the words that kept cycling through my brain. Sprocket hadn’t been kidding when she said the police would readily accept me, but as for how little paper work there was, I could only shudder at what she compared it to. Apparently it had been an abnormally slow day as each piece of paper and interview went right on from one to the next as I was shuffled from room to room. It all started to blur until they brought me to a medical examination room.  There were so many machine in there it would have made Twilight squeal. I was hooked into helmets and strapped into what looked like stocks and was continually asked questions about my prior health. Hell, I could have been put through a lie-detector while I was in there and not have noticed it. Still, it could have been worse, I’m just glad that guns hadn’t been invented here yet because I’d have had to have been sent to the range for weeks to become competent. The last thing I had to do was basically beat one of the other officers in a small sparring match.

           As I step out into the ring, I noticed how there were lots of, what looked like, cardboard cutouts. Some of ponies, a few big ones were of buildings or dragons, and a handful of them were actually attached to a pulley system. I wasn’t able to look around at the poorly lit “cityscape” when a rather burly earth pony wearing his short mane in a ponytail came out from the opposite end and give a small chuckle, “So they really let one of the weirdoes up and join the force. Heh, sorry champ but that height won’t do you any good with a slight build like that,” he said as he took a step forward, his yellow eyes glinting off the single overhead light bulb that cast the entire room in shadows.

“Look, I don’t like picking on tiny guys so I’m going to make this quick, okay? Then you can go, do some training, and come back when you might be of some use as a punching bag,” he said in a lighthearted mocking tone and then stepped into the nearest shadow and began to make his way toward me. I’m sure he thought he had the advantage on me, but as my eyes kept track of him as he made his way nearly silently, my hearing having gotten much better as I stood in a deep shadow, he took note of how my head moved with each of his steps. Giving a grunt he gave a flat charge, which, despite his small size, was rather intimidating, considering I’d once seen a red horse pull an entire house behind him and was half the size of the one charging at me now. But I kept my head, and took a step through the shadow I was in and appeared just behind the earth pony, who screeched to a stop as his head whipped back and forth to try and figure out where I was. I took a silent step towards him, and clasping my fists together I struck him behind the head, just under the skull and he crumpled to the floor. I ended up busting my knuckles too, but thankfully they quickly stitched together and took away the pain with them.

           I was soon given a badge and given the low ranking duty of being a night cop. The cushy jobs were apparently for those who had done their time to see daylight. It was fine by me, and I was soon given to Sgt. Ragtime. He was a brown earth pony with black mane and tail and what looked like a patchwork pony doll on his flank, not anything too noteworthy, but for his eyes which held a white iris in his left and a black iris in his right. He was a right congenial guy, aside from the eyes, which I found rather… distinguishing, but then again, who am I to talk. Since a basic rundown of my abilities had been gone over in the test, as well as my willingness to follow the orders of superiors, I was given a badge, no uniform as I was too big, and sent out onto the street to follow Sgt. Ragtime on his patrol so I could learn to get a handle on how things were run.

           We hadn’t gone very far when Ragtime turned his head to look at me. It wouldn’t have been an event to make note of except for the fact I was walking directly behind him, his head having moved a perfect 180 degrees. “So what made you decide to join the force?” he said with his eyes half lidded as though this sort of situation were perfectly natural.

           “Scum bothers me, and I needed an appropriate outlet.” I said after thinking for an appropriate answer, but mostly to keep calm at the body still in motion in front of me.

           Ragtime’s face reoriented itself, something which caused me greater discomfort as he simply completed the circle. “Well that’s an interesting answer. But lots of crazy creatures having been popping out of Tartarus knows where, I suppose a few would have a conscience of some kind.”

           “Um, well, thank you sir, but can I ask what I need to be looking out for. I’m afraid they weren’t too clear at what that should be back at the station other than to follow you.”

           “Well they were right, but here’s where you begin. See this corner, you are going to stand there,

and keep watch while I go to the other corner two lefts back on the same block, so then we’ll have a nice line of sight along the whole thing. And if you see anything that looks suspicious you just give a shout down this alley and the noise will hit me. Same for you if I call for help.” At this he turned and began to walk through the alley, “I’ll come back for you when it is time, understood?”

           “Yes sir-,” was all I had time to say as he rounded a corner in the alleyway and was lost from sight.

***

           Nights in a port town are really pleasantly cool, unless you get yourself stuck in a building locked section of the city where the wind doesn’t penetrate to. There is just so much that I’m willing to tolerate and even accept, but I simply despise humidity.

           A mere three hours later from my sparring match and I was now standing against a building corner, waiting for an indeterminate amount of time, and working to keep from succumbing to boredom. I suppose it comes down to how your perspective. It’s one thing to stand at a street corner just out of the direct light of the lamppost and stand there with nothing to do or really look at for no good reason, and then another entirely when you are there to make sure nothing untoward happens so that the innocent won’t have to deal with it.  Still, it could have been worse. At least I was in a rather well-to-do looking part of town. The streets were clean, and many of the residential buildings sported beautiful curlicue brass workings seemingly melted into the grooves they were in rather than having the rock itself carved out and then metal screwed in. I also had clear standing orders of: Stand there and watch for suspicious activity. It was simple. A very high speed low drag sort of order. That wasn’t to say as I kept my eyes trained upon every little shadows and patch of darkness that I wasn’t keeping myself busy. Part of me worked to pull at the darkness leaving what looked like his lower half was surrounded by a small patch of black fog, and if you looked at it long enough you would just be able to make out what looked like little wispy spirits with tiny stick thin arms and massive knifelike claws. But that grew old after awhile, and eventually I had to lean against the building behind me as my feet had begun to hurt even though the boots themselves remained quite supple.

           It’s times like this that I really wished I had a watch. And now that I thought about it I could probably find one with relative ease in this clockwork town. I really wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed. Initially I had been thankful for the buildings blocking out the moon, but now I would have at least had an idea on the hours passing. Still I knew I had spent enough time to know that I was in a relatively well off part of town with a particularly new sidewalk that showed no signs of cracking, and that the empty machine shops, as best as I could manage to guess since I didn’t recognize nearly half of the things I saw through the windows lined the street down my left and business buildings of some kind lined down the street to my right.

           I had thought about leaving my post a few times just to check up on my sergeant and suggest that just maybe our time might be better spent, not that I really had plans to act on those thoughts, but with little more than a few bugs crossing the street the thought was certainly entertained.

           I had just leaned further into the building, getting as close to a sitting position while still technically standing that I could when I heard what sounded like the scrapping of stone above me. I slowly looked up and saw the sparkle covered hooves of a white horned unicorn doing some stick-to-walls spell. That was all I could say about him as the rest of his body, save a closely cropped white mane and short tail, was covered in what I could only describe as a midnight-blue ninja get-up. The only other distinguishing feature was a pair of goggles that glinted red off of the lit horn. I couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or not with his mouth completely covered, but his apparent lack of movement meant I had done something to garner his attention. We both stood in silence for a little longer until I noticed the small saddle bags just behind him. Craning my neck back I saw the third story window had been opened.

           “What say you return that yeah?”

           The unicorn gave, what I thought, was a thoughtful looking turn of his head. He then took a breath and said, “Sure.” I almost jumped when I heard the feminine tone as she gave a smile that pushed through the sides of her face mask and turned around, her horn flaring up a few more degrees, making the sparkling mist around her hooves come into better focus and shape up into a set of very wicked looking claws.

           As I continued watching her progress the simple thought of ‘wow, that was easy’ flittered across my mind. I couldn’t help but smile, the thought that maybe my benighted form would be of use for its spectral appearance made me smile. Though I couldn’t help but feel a little bad that I really couldn’t tell genders very well unless I could see a pony’s unobstructed face., and my smile began to fade as she continued passed the third story window, simply climbing around it then moving back down as she had planned before. Before I managed to say anything else she gave a small sigh and smoothed a bit of her exposed white mane with a magic tipped claw to push it back. The jostling however, only made a small metallic sphere fall from it, traveling half a second before erupting with a brilliant flash of light, robbing me of all my senses of sight as the shadows balked and I began to rub at my tearing eyes. The next thing I heard was the tinkle of a magical aura. My eyes were just getting over the purple eye spots to see a very heavy pair of saddlebags hurling at my face as they dropped from the mare, sending my sight spinning, but I still held my ground, and let out a small groan as I tried to steady myself.

           The thief had reached the sidewalk and was attempting to gallop away, her hooves beating loudly against the silence of the night. As soon as I stepped out of the light of the street lamp my mind became completely focused as I spotted the target and began to shadow stride after her, ponies are fast, no doubts there, but shadow striding is faster. Once I was upon her I began grabbing at her saddlebags. I had almost wrapped my fingers around it as a blast of red energy was flung at me as she twisted her head towards me. It ate away at the shadows and struck me square in the face. I lost my grip, the force of the blast made me teeter back a few steps and that was all the thief needed as she shot another blast at me, hitting my chest. Pulling out another item, seemingly from her mane she flung it at my, it stung, but when no immediate light flashed before my eyes I attempted to take a step through the darkness to her but was stopped as my leg went ramrod straight, I had just enough time to realize what the little “joy buzzer” had done as the tiny thing sent enough volts through me to burn through my entire body. Worse, it felt like the entire burning agony was flowing into my face, and I could have sworn I saw smoke.

           “Aww, looks like another stiff bites the dust,” I heard her say, I think she might have laughed too, but I was quickly occupied by the feeling of every nerve ending screaming in pain, continuously regenerating in the dead of the night to feel, with unchanging intensity, the electric sparks arcing across my muscles until my mind gave in to the pain and I blacked out.

***

           A hard hoof backed by a well muscled foreleg slammed against my cheek, then another, then another, then I was quite suddenly made very aware that my face was being tenderized and that somepony was shouting at me to wake up and something about not on my watch. My eyes came open just shortly after that as the very angry face of Sgt. Ragtime greeted me as my vision and hearing came back into focus. The pain in my face quickly leaving me as they swiftly healed in the darkness of the night as I was pushed against the wall and out of the street lamps direct gaze.

           “I come to check on you, not thirty minutes from the end of our shift, and I find you lying prone across the sidewalk. Why the TARTARUS did I find you sleeping on the job!?”

           His own anger was then dwarfed by my own, mostly at my failure, but also at the fact some thief had just gotten away while I was on guard. The immediate air around me was quickly overcome as waves of darkness rolled off of me and began to eat away the light of the street lamp as phantasmal claws and jagged maws flitted about the edges of the expanding shadow mass.

           “I failed,” was my very cold, and controlled, response. Ragtime only gave me a slightly quizzical look, but it still mostly held anger, which probably helped keep away any hint of fear from my, so far, only insubstantial outburst. “Third story window, heard the thief as she made her way down side of the wall, wore all midnight-blue, had a small bag with her. I let my surprise get the better of me and she took complete advantage of it.”

           Once said Ragtime began to look up, then looked over as he saw the opened window. Trotting over he was then able to better see a few dusty hoof-prints moving directly down from the window itself. A long soft sigh then passed through his clenched face.

           He made his way over to me, still stern, but no longer holding the same feeling as before. As he came closer he swatted away one of my shadows that came too close to his face, his eyes hold a bit of a distant quality to them, as though he was looking a great distance past the building just across the street as he took a seat next to me.

           “You know, I still remember my first failure on the job. It was going on my first year on the force, it was much a disgustingly humid night like this, but I didn’t let it bother me when I came across a crime in progress. Just as I had passed the alley, just 3, 062 paces from where we are now. I just turned my head to see a young earth pony mare have a knife thrust into her from a rather large pegasus and crumple to the ground,” Ragtime said as he faced up the street, away from me.

           “You caught the guy though right?”

           “Heh, not at all,” Ragtime said with a slightly depressed laugh, “and for all I know he could be living off in some far corner on Equus living out a contented life far away from his past mistakes.”

           At this point my shadows had completely vanished, they were bottled up in me, as well as a breathe that was just beginning to worry at my chest.

           “It actually caused me such a great deal of shock that I didn’t realize that I was still staring at the scene by the time the medics came by. I later learned that a passing officer had come by and tried to get my attention but had failed. It wasn’t until the body was moved that I was able to register the world around me again.”

           Again he paused, and I was unable to think of much else besides how I was defiling the mood by letting my breath escape me as air again slowly filled my lungs. I didn’t have any response that I could give, and I don’t think I ever will, but something inside of me felt very burnt and blacked, if only slightly from the story.

           Ragtime gave a snort then slowly stood up, his hooves clicking against the sidewalk as he kept his balance. “Well, the point of this story isn’t to try and act as some way to one up you, or make light of what happened to you tonight. The point is to make you understand that there are just some things that fall beyond our control in life, it is how we learn from these experiences that show what sort of person you really are.” Walking over to me, his small pony form towering over my hunched sitting form he then said, “So tell me, what did you learn from what happened tonight?”

           I sat there, the gears in my head slowly getting in place for me to think as they tried to move passed what I had just learned of Sgt. Ragtime, but after a few moments I said, “I learned that if I really want to stop criminals from getting away, I need to learn how to act quickly and not let myself be taken advantage of.”

           Ragtime sat there for a while, a pensive look of thought covering his face until he sighed and stood up saying, “that will do, for now. Now come along, our shift is ending and we need to send someone over to this apartment once the owners are awake, or return, so they can file a report on what’s missing.” I followed behind him, making our way to the station, the first clouded edge of the sky turning a pale violet as the darkness traveled just behind it, ready to swallow it whole.