Confidential Cases: Winggarden

by Cartophile

Rating: teen
Tags: Zebra, Equestria at War, Hippogriffs, Death, Alternate Universe, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery, Adventure, Violence
Length: 27826

A private investigator for a defense company travels around different countries for legally dubious cases.

In a world constantly embroiled by strife and violence, there is always some profit to be made on the side.

As an insurance investigator for defense company Crystalstar in Hippogriffia, Azerda Zmamrta is responsible for investigating overseas cases for military assets, with some…corporate legal liberties. Seeing her home lost twice in one lifetime, the zebra only has her eyes for monetary gain – but with each case, she can only hope to make something of herself in a rapidly changing world.

Note: This story takes place in the Equestria at War universe, a mod for grand strategy war game Hearts of Iron 4. While the universe's lore helps supplement the story, you don't need to fully understand it for this fic. Feel free to check out the mod!

Cover art by AAnotherpony

Published 2022-11-03 18:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-10-20 22:38:02 UTC

0: Evacuation

11 Nunember, 188 TI/1013 ALB
Aïn Trotgourait, Arisian Mandate of Zumidia

The skies were surprisingly peaceful that day.

Azerda stood quietly as she waited in a long line among many to get on the landing craft placed against the Trotgourait shore among many other soldiers. The zebra mare was still in her dirt-caked uniform and helmet with her Springtide bolt-action mounted onto her side, hastily tailored and modified for Zumidian auxiliaries who had smaller and much different anatomies than their hippogriff counterparts.

Seven years ago, when Azerda was still a teenage filly, she remembered the hippogriff soldiers marching triumphantly along the streets of Zirta, her hometown. The zebra Kingdom of Zumidia was once a prosperous kingdom along the northern Zebrican coast that was an unfortunate victim to the Storm King's conquest. But the hippogriffs, with some outside help, had beaten back the Storm King's rapidly deteriorating military in a matter of a day at Aïn Trotgourait, ending his campaign of pillaging and destruction.

Although Zumidia was placed under Arisian protection to prevent the country from collapsing into complete anarchy and to solve the major refugee crisis caused by the Storm War, there was still some hope among zebras that they would be able to rebuild from the ashes and restore their country's former glory.

Now, Azerda could see none of that pride – the hippogriffs were retreating in shame at a conflict in which defeat was inevitable. They were facing a new kind of enemy, surrounded on multiple sides by the fascist Wingbardians in Griffonia, revanchist Colthagians, and the hitherto unknown Chiropterrans, who they now learned worshipped for the return of their Nightmare Moon. It was a losing battle, especially against the Nightmarists who had used weapons they have never learned of before.

Zumidia was a lost cause. Their evacuation to the Arisian archipelago where the Anti-Arisian alliance could not hope to invade against their fortified coasts meant that they were abandoning Zumidia on the continental mainland to its fate. Azerda considered her unenviable options: either she would flee with the hippogriffs or surrender to the Colthagians...or worse yet, the Nightmarists who would almost certainly enslave her.

The line moved forward at a slow crawl; Azerda could spot a couple zebras in the nearby lines, looking as tired and defeated as she was. Some soldiers were wounded, wearing bloodied bandages or splints. The bright and sunny weather was completely inappropriate to the sullen setting. She had overheard reports of the Nightmare Legions focusing their attention on eliminating encircled pockets in Zambessa and her now occupied hometown of Zirta further south rather than bombing Aïn Trotgourait.

It took roughly an hour, but Azerda was able to make her way onto the landing craft; the seats were quite large to accommodate for hippogriff body sizes. Aris Island was a bit too far away from the Zumidian coast to see from the bright blue horizon, though she could clearly spot some destroyers holding their positions away from the shore. If not for underwater mines making seapony transformation a death trap, Azerda assumed the Arisians could conceivably swim back to the island.

She quietly took out a pack of cigarettes from one of the rations she still had remaining, holding a match she struck the rough edge of the matchbox. Lacking in claws, lighting the cigarette was a minor challenge of balancing the match with her hoof while the zebra held the cigarette in her mouth, taking a deep inhale to settle her nerves.

"Useless stripedbacks. They're the reason why we've lost to those bastards," a light green hippogriff muttered before spitting at the landing craft's deck in front of her. The saliva narrowly missed her rear hoof.

Azerda looked up at the taller soldier. "Pardon?" she answered in a light Zumidian accent, taking out the cigarette to let out a puff of nicotine-laced smoke away from the landing craft as it took off. She took a short look at the hippogriff, who had two chevrons just like her on the side of his right arm.

"We've spent far too much time on propping up you bottom-feeders is what I'm saying," he replied derisively, taking a short swig from his canteen. "Zumidians like you are ungrateful and undisciplined. Couldn't hold a frontline if your life depended on it. I have no idea why we spent so much griffpower and taxpayer money on defending your land."

She frowned and sat straight up. "You've got feathers for brains, hookbeak? We were outnumbered and didn't have enough air support," Azerda explained, putting the cigarette back in her mouth for another huff. "Should be expected, though. You type of hippogriffs always look out for themselves and not for others. Aris for Arisians, right?"

"Quiet down, both of you!" the lieutenant of the landing craft shouted, holding his Cloudfall rifle against his arm. He appeared to be from a different battalion like the rest of them, but was the highest commanding officer on the board. "If both of you don't shut up, I'll report you both for misconduct."

Azerda leaned back down quietly for the rest of the trip, though the green hippogriff made sure to give her an unpleasant glare as he finished his canteen.

The landing craft stopped on the port-side of the destroyer, the Arisian sailors rushing to the gangway to drop the gangway onto the back end of the boat. Like how the soldiers entered the landing craft, exiting it was done in a relatively orderly fashion, with Azerda waiting for the back of the boat to clear before trotting onto the gangway.

She looked back to the Zumidian beach one last time to see the home that she was never going to return to. Although the Queen had passed a decree formally naturalizing all Zumidian exiles as Arisian citizens, Azerda had never set hoof on the islands before. She was bound for an unfamiliar land with unfamiliar faces, with no friends or family.

Azerda spotted a group of zebras piling up along the shoreline; they were too far away for the zebra to hear their shouts and voices, but she could notice they were not in Arisian uniform. Many of them were apparently trying to push their way through the military guards.

"What's your problem? Move up, zebra," the hippogriff a few steps behind her snapped.

"Aren't we going to rescue those civilians?" Azerda asked the lieutenant ahead of her.

"Didn't I tell you to keep quiet, corporal?" the lieutenant replied with an exasperated look before sighing. "General Greyfeather has assigned additional landing craft for this operation to evacuate non-combatants as well. He will make sure as much of them as possible are accounted for."

Azerda nodded and made her way into the thick metal doors of the destroyer, following the line's way down towards the mess deck. She didn't want to believe it, but she could tell through the officer's speech the reality of the situation.

They weren't returning for those civilians.

1-1: Loss Prevention

13 Maggu, 199 TI/1024 ALB
Winggarden, United Kingdom of Aris

The bell on the clock tower struck for the tenth time.

The skies were consistently clear in the late spring, though the ocean breeze helped kept the port city from becoming uncomfortably hot. The hippogriff city of Winggarden was located on a low plateau within a bay, with breakwaters just off the industrial seaport. Slate-grey skyscrapers scattered the waterfront, though a few unfinished ones could be seen with more glass and steel than concrete. Of course, a keener eye could notice more traditional Arisian buildings with their arched roofs, along with the natural hot springs and lush hills the city was famous for.

A zebra in her early thirties grabbed a hoofful of flax seeds from her paper bag, stuffing it into her mouth. She wore a red plaid flannel shirt and light grey wool socks – one would not expect a corporate detective to be dressing so informally, and yet there was Azerda, trotting down the cobblestone road like she was on vacation. Her mostly dark mane had a thin band of white in the center and went down to neck-length, and her stripes went horizontally just below her amber colored eyes, giving her a tired appearance at first glance. Near her flank was a multi-layered rhombus with a cross in the center.

Azerda put away her paper bag and shuffled through her satchel. 38th month without a smoke now, she thought as she pulled out a lightly crumpled note. She crunched the flax seeds in her mouth, dropping some crumbs onto the paper while she opened it up. A stylized, diamond-shaped "CS" was located on the top of the note. Azerda rolled her eyes. Companies sure loved to put their logos on everything, even case files.

"Dear Miss Zamarata,

We have received the third report since the last month that another military shipment has been marked as missing. This level of asset loss is unacceptable to Crystalstar, and we will appreciate if you would investigate the route of this shipment and its fate, along with the perpetrators responsible.

The route taken for the most recent convoy goes down Coral Street, towards Bayshore Boulevard, and contact with the convoy was lost last night at around 04:00. You will be compensated 600 Shells for the resolution of this incident.

Best wishes."

She rolled her eyes and folded the paper back in half. No griff is going to get my surname right.

The city of Winggarden ostensibly had a police force, one that could be encouraged to look the other way with enough Seashells. Much of it could be tied to the city's recent history, a deep humiliation that the Arisians have tried so hard to erase. The city was formally ceded as a Legation City along with the loss of the Zumidian Mandate under the Treaty of Aïn Trotgourait just over a decade ago, allowing Wingbardians, Colthagians, and Chiropterrans to use the allegedly self-governing city as their personal economic playground. Of course, after they had defeated the hippogriffs, there was nothing stopping them from turning on each other.

The Legation City of Winggarden barely lasted a year before it fell to complete civil disorder. The hippogriffs were more than glad to take back the city, but the power vacuum left behind enabled more criminal, and most importantly, those with enough business acumen, to regain dominance.

Azerda took a left down a flight of stairs and trotted down towards a wider, one-way neighborhood road. Several automobiles parked on one side of the road, planted with linden trees that were barely above head height. The houses likewise didn't look much older, lined with low-rise prefabricated apartments that vaguely attempted to adhere to Arisian building styles. Most of them were hastily erected to accommodate rapidly increasing housing demand in cities.

A couple apartments down, a wrecked truck jutted out onto the local street intersection between Coral and Slough, the hood of the Lightstar K-5 colliding and toppling the immature, staked tree onto the sidewalk. Azerda squinted and grumbled in annoyance when she noticed a slate-gray patrolgriff and an off-white hippogriff with a brown pinstriped waistcoat, along with a black-white Buck Super coupe – Equestrian made, but clearly converted for hippogriff use. Thought Crystalstar had already made sure the police didn't show this time around.

The patrolgriff was busy placing the numbered evidence markers while the well-dressed police detective looked up as he read his pocket notebook to raise his white claw at Azerda. "Ma'am, this is a crime scene. I will advise you to stay at least five meters away from the vehicle."

Azerda impatiently pulled out a card from her shirt pocket, revealing her private investigator license. "Azerda Zmamrta, private detective. As representative of Crystalstar, I am legally allowed to assist in the investigation that involves our property," she replied flatly, taking a brief moment to look at the detective closely. He had a two-toned sky-blue mane swept back, revealing a pronounced widow's peak; most notably, she noticed the lack of a Pearl of Transformation anywhere on his body. Azerda assumed that he may have hidden it somewhere, though she had heard of Arisians heavily favoring one form over the other – the majority of them hippogriffs over seaponies, which were generally more convenient for surface affairs.

"Zema-what?" the other officer interjected.

"She's Zumidian, Spout," he said dimly, closing his notebook with a barely audible thud. "Great that some defense company is suddenly showing compassion for once. This is your company's vehicle? And what's with the dress up? We aren't exactly in Applewood here."

Azerda chuckled. "The shipment of small arms equipment on that vehicle is Crystalstar's, at least. And either the Winggarden PD is seriously underfunded, or they don't have much compassion themselves if they only sent two hippogriffs to a crime scene." she returned, promptly noticing the blood stained front windows and bullet holes through the trunk of the vehicle. Azerda's face straightened, patting the seed crumbs on her gloves towards the curb. "I'm trying to do my job just like you, and we happen to want the same thing. You're going to need some help either way."

"Crystalstar equipment? So we're dealing with auto theft, weapon smuggling, and possible murder," the detective paused and sighed. "Fine. Name's Trace Drizzle. You're allowed to look around, but if you tamper any evidence, I'll make sure you'll be answering to the Crown Attorney behind bars.” Trace closed his notebook and placed it in one of his utility belt pouches, then pulled out a set of gloves.

The gray uniformed officer stood up and waved his right claw a bit clumsily – unlike Trace, his Pearl was visible around his wrist. "Water Spout. Officer Water Spout," he added. He was somewhat shorter than his partner, with a curly lock of his mane showing out of his police cap.

Green officers, Azerda thought, trotting towards the front of the Lightstar truck. A small puddle of blood was forming below the right passenger door, leaking through the door gap and onto the asphalt. An L-shaped lug wrench was found next to the puddle, the middle of the handle being stained red on top of the blood puddle in a clean blob. Near the bottom, the handle was wrapped with blue masking tape, written in black marker: 205B. Azerda knelt down towards the passenger door, her eyes turning to the front chassis. The front right tire was missing, leaving only the rotor intact with a red scissor jack propping the truck up. "When was this vehicle discovered?" she asked.

Trace walked next to the zebra mare to examine the area, beckoning Water Spout with a claw to place another evidence marker. "Neighbors reported the vehicle around seven. Whoever did this must be some petty criminal. An auto-theft ring would have stripped the vehicle in a chop shop," he commented.

"Didn't even take their tools, too. They were in a rush. Or this criminal is a reckless amateur," Azerda added with a chuckle, standing back up to examine the passenger window. Too much blood. We'll have to look from the other side.

"And no license plates," Water Spout pointed out as he flew to the back of the vehicle. "There should be a registration slip in the glove box."

Azerda trotted to the driver's side; there, the scene inside the vehicle was more visible, with a trail of blood that went from the driver's seat to the passenger door. The front windshield had two large holes at the front, more than two centimeters wide, one which went through the bloodied passenger seat. The rest of the tires were still intact, covered in brake dust.

The zebra looked at the blood in more detail, careful not to place her hooves on the blood-stained seats. The stains seemed to lack any splatter, with the elongated droplets facing towards the passenger door. Surprisingly enough, there was no blood on the windshield nor the dashboard. She frowned and pulled back out of the vehicle, wafting her hoof in front of her muzzle to get rid of the metallic odor. "Is there a problem?" Trace asked.

"Besides the lack of a corpse?" Azerda answered flatly. "Whoever did this, it must have been from blunt force trauma, and the victim lost a considerable amount of blood, enough to donate to the blood bank three times over. Which brings up the next question of how they were able to dispose of a corpse without leaving blood smears on the ground. Have you sprayed the vicinity with luminol yet?"

Trace shook his head. "It couldn't have been a blunt weapon. If there was, the victim would have been sitting on the driver's seat and hit from the vehicle door," he argued. "There would have been a struggle. The bloodstain patterns look too clean to have been from a brawl. We think the victim would have been shot."

“If they had been shot, the bullet would have penetrated through the driver's seat, not the passenger seat," she reasoned and took a brief pause. There was no use in bickering over the details when she hadn't seen the full crime scene yet. "Get your cop buddy to fly to the apartment ahead for bullet fragments. I'll check the back."

The white hippogriff muttered something under his breath for a moment. "I'll get the registration slip and remove the jack, then," Trace said, turning to Water Spout to repeat Azerda's request.

Azerda moved towards the back of the truck, where she first saw the two bullet holes. The open truck was completely empty. The holes were more than a centimeter in diameter, going through the cracked rear windshield from the left. A 7.62 Alaudia. Rifle caliber, she thought. The zebra recalled using that same caliber in her service days. They shot the back of the vehicle from a distance. It went through diagonally, from left to right.

Trace shuffled out of the vehicle, taking out a bright yellow registration slip. “Plate Number B4861. Owned by Squall Line Logistics, 233 Bath Street,” he read aloud, going back around towards the removed wheel. “It’s registered by a freight company. We’ll head there after we remove this jack. Let’s see who our tire thief is first.”

"Crystalstar gives out contracts to freight companies to transport the goods," Azerda explained. “You think the thief’s the murderer?”

The hippogriff pulled out the release valve on the jack. “I don’t like to jump to conclusions, but most of the time there’s no grand scheme at play. Read it in a book before; the majority of criminals commit crimes on impulse.”

Azerda snorted. “There are plenty of vehicles here where they could have stolen from with less risk involved.”

“Creatures have killed for food or a couple Seashells before. What makes this so different?” he returned with a shrug. The jack lowered down until it was nearly flat, and Trace Drizzle pulled it out the moment the truck relieved its weight from the equipment. A band of masking tape was on the bottom of the jack, written in black marker: 205B. "Looks like an apartment number. The same number was on the lug wrench before."

Azerda looked around at the prefab low-rises, noticing the letters hung in front of each building, starting with D at the apartment immediately in front of them. “It’s an educated guess,” she said in agreement.

Water Spout flew back shortly afterwards – his flight was somewhat uneven, barely being able to make a flat landing. “I’ve found the bullet fragments, Detective,” he reported, holding a plastic bag of the fragments. “The fragments hit apartment D over there, but didn’t go through the walls. They look like 7.62 Alaudia bullets.”

“Couldn’t have been more than fifty meters,” Azerda surmised, noticing the unconvinced stares from the two officers. “I was a markspony for the Auxiliary Corps, way before you finished high school, college colt. My Springtide bolt-action used 7.62, same as the Cloudfall semi-autos they give to infantrygriffs.”

“Did you snipe any creature?” Water Spout interjected, doing a finger gun gesture with his claws. “Like in the movies. They would tally each kill down on the stock of their rifle.”

The zebra mare rolled her eyes and trotted ahead. “Apartment B should be two buildings that way.”

The other two followed behind her. “So you’ve served in the North Zebrican War?” Water Spout flew next to her after a couple seconds of silence.

“A lot of Zumidians served in the war,” Azerda dismissed.

“My dad was a lieutenant commander in the Navy.”

“Is your dad the reason you’re writing citations in the police department?”

“Officer Spout failed recruit training for the Royal Arisian Navy,” Trace interjected with a smirk.

“Shut your beak, Trace. I just chose to serve my country in a different way."

Azerda approached the second last building on the block. The garages were located on the side of the apartment, though the lack of an address number to the corresponding garage made it difficult to recognize. She looked up at the council apartments; they had large balconies for hippogriffs to land on as a backdoor, and the floors were much taller than the ones in equine buildings. Trace Drizzle glanced at Water Spout, who gave his partner a short nod before flying off towards the balcony.

Azerda opened the door – not without some struggle due to her height – which led to a short stairway that led to the second floor hallway from the inside. The hallway floor was covered in vinyl checkerboard tiling and brightly lit by fluorescent lamps, though the lack of windows made it feel much more claustrophobic than it actually was. Reminds me of my old apartment back in Zumidia. Without all this modern construction junk, that is.

She stopped in front of the door labeled 205, giving it a short rap with her hoof. Azerda took a brief moment to look at the slightly faded nameplate in front of the door: Beacon Flash. Must be living here for a couple years now, Azerda thought. Trace awkwardly fidgeted with his claws as they waited.

A couple seconds later, the door swung inward, revealing a middle-aged orange hippogriff with messy plumage – her eyes were visibly bloodshot. "By An, I'm going to report you election campaign bastards if you-" the hippogriff paused when she noticed the two detectives.

"WPD, ma'am, Detective Trace Drizzle. We're conducting an investigation. Mind if we come in and have a look around?" Trace Drizzle pulled out his detective badge.

The middle-aged hippogriff groaned and wiped her eyes. "Make it quick. I work nights."

"Name and occupation?"

"Beacon Flash. Security guard for ASIC Bank."

The two walked into the living room. Azerda scanned her eyes across the room; it was modestly sized, with two wooden chairs and a large sofa surrounding a console radio and a coffee table, which appeared almost brand new. A framed photograph of an unfamiliar male hippogriff stood on top of the radio, wearing a ceremonial Royal Army uniform with multiple medals on his chest. There was a low bookshelf near the sofa, with multiple textbooks and baseball gear stacked inside the shelves in a disorganized mess.

"When do you work, Mrs. Beacon Flash?" Trace asked, jotting something down on his pocket notebook.

"Midnight to eight," Beacon Flash yawned.

"Do you have any foals?" Azerda interrupted. “No offense, but hippogriffs your age don’t normally play baseball.”

Beacon Flash blinked and sighed, placing a claw to her nose. "What did Spotlight do this time?"

As she finished speaking, a hippogriff barely above Azerda's height appeared from one of the bathroom doors, combing back his mane before dropping his comb in surprise. Almost immediately, Spotlight tried rushing for the balcony door before being stopped by Water Spout, who lightly jabbed the young adult with his truncheon back. "Poor idea, kid," Water Spout remarked.

"Mr. Spotlight, you are under arrest for suspected auto theft!" Trace shouted, pulling out his baton along with a set of metal restraints.

"What in Tartarus? I never stole anything!" Spotlight shouted defensively, raising his arms up.

"What is going on?" Beacon Flash added, her eyes widening and turning to Spotlight.

"Cuff his wings first. We still need him to open up the garage," Azerda suggested and pointed her hoof to the just-mature suspect. "If this is all a misunderstanding, you'll be released by tonight. But we found a car jack and lug wrench that traces back to your apartment number. I'm fairly confident we should find one of those truck tires in your garage. Would make plenty of sense you wouldn't try to steal from a neighborhood car – it would be too easy to track it back to you."

Trace cuffed the restraints around Spotlight's wings before pushing him out of the apartment unit, with Water Spout and Azerda following closely behind, making sure to pick up the key ring near the entrance. They went in front of the garage, where the hippogriff detective placed the key ring on Spotlight's claw. "Open it up, mister."

"T-there's nothing inside there for you to see!" Spotlight protested.

"Do you want to cooperate, or do you want us to open it ourselves?" Trace demanded.

Spotlight bit his lip and walked to one of the garage doors in the center, unlocking it with one of the keys. Azerda trotted beside him, pulling the garage up with her hoof. Inside was a red Kessler Mainline sedan, and the limited width barely allowed one creature to squeeze through. It was an economy car, ones imported from Griffonian Reich; griffon and hippogriff anatomy weren’t too radically different.

Right in the back was a workbench with a set of tools from combination wrenches and ball-peen hammers mounted against a cork peg board, most of them marked with the same 205B as the lug wrench. More obvious was the dust-caked tire placed against the workbench, the hubcap pattern matching the one on the Lightstar truck. However, the military equipment that was supposedly on the truck trunk was nowhere to be found. They couldn't have stored the crates in the garage or sold it without raising some suspicion. Where did the shipment go?

Azerda glared at Spotlight. “Enough nonsense. Your mother was out at work, and you're the only one who could have possibly accessed this garage. If you confess now, then Detective Trace here could put a word for the Crown Attorney to keep you from the slammer and you'll save us the effort of dusting for your clawprints."

Spotlight stared uneasily at Azerda and then Trace before gulping. "Alright, alright! I-I thought the Lightstar was abandoned. Pickups like that come with all-terrain wheels, and I was planning to strip them for my custom car. It-It's not against the law to strip an abandoned vehicle," he admitted defensively.

"Yes, it is," Trace shook his head and placed his claw to his forehead. "Do you know that you are a potential suspect for first-degree murder as well? There's blood on your lug wrench, and Miss Azerda here suggests that a victim was possibly killed by blunt force trauma. You know this looks bad for you, right Mr. Spotlight?"

"Huh? I-I never killed any creature!" Spotlight exclaimed – beads of sweat formed on the sides of his ears. "S-sure, I might have taken a tire, but I don't kill creatures for one. There wasn't even blood anywhere when I was working on the truck."

Azerda raised an eye. "No blood?"

Spotlight nodded frantically. "Y-yeah. The vehicle was empty of belongings on the inside. That's why I assumed it was abandoned. It was around four-thirty in the morning; I have irregular sleep schedules since I finished high school. I was thinking of stripping the wheels before sunrise."

The zebra glimpsed momentarily at the tire. "Go on."

"But the tires were heavy for one hippogriff to carry. I was able to carry one tire back to the garage, but when I was returning to pick up my tools to work on the next tire, some creature...some creature shot at the vehicle!" he recalled. "I flew off as fast as I could. I was planning to get my tools later in the morning, but then you" – Spotlight pointed at Trace and Water Spout – "showed up."

"Did you see the shooter?"

Spotlight shook his head. "No, I didn't. The truck's back was blocking my sight. I didn't bother looking back to check."

Azerda trotted closer to examine the tire, the glisten of the aluminum hubcap being faded from brake dust. "This dumb kid didn't clean the tire. If it was next to the puddle when blood was leaking out of the car..."

"...then there would be blood marks on the tire," Trace finished, crossing his arms and frowning. "Hold on. Does that mean that Mr. Spotlight was removing the tire before the murder?"

"I don't think this kid's the kind to be planning out murders...or performing truck heists, for that matter. And if he’s struggling to haul a tire to his garage, there’s no way he had a strength to haul the body out of the truck. Assuming Spotlight isn't the killer, the victim could have been planted between the time he was hauling his tire to the garage and returning to get his tools," Azerda suggested.

“We should check Squall Line Logistics, like I said before. Maybe they can identify the driver and possible victim,” Trace turned to Water Spout. “Do you mind watching over Mr. Spotlight until backup to transports him to Harbor Division? Don’t want to be wasting an hour writing his paperwork. And get a blood sample from the crime scene. We can try and analyze it back at the crime lab.”

Water Spout groaned. “I have to be with him?” he muttered. “…Whatever, Detective.”

Azerda trotted her way back to Trace’s coupe, with the hippogriff detective flying next to her. “The evidence doesn’t add up.”

Trace blinked and nodded slowly. “Based on my intuition, the whole circumstance seems very suspicious.”

“We were arguing about how the perp would have snuffed the victim, right? But there aren’t any blood smears in the road, there’s no corpse, and the timing is all wrong. When I saw the lug wrench, there was no blood on the bent end, only on the handle. And no claw or hoof smears on that, either.”

Trace flew towards the driver’s side of the police car, opening the door. “And the shot doesn’t match the blood trails. The bullet traveled diagonally through the truck, but the blood splatters are almost straight across from the driver’s to the passenger’s side.”

For a while, we’ve been making one big assumption. I doubted it at first, but…Azerda stopped and placed her hoof down on the car hood.

“What if there wasn’t a murder victim?”

1-2: Overtime

Trace took a right turn onto Bayshore Boulevard, accelerating the Buck coupe as he cleared the turn. The vehicle rumbled briefly when the wheels bumped through the tram tracks on the center lanes. Azerda sat next to him, eating from her flax seed package while kicking the front bench – her rear hooves were too short to reach the carpeted car floor. "Are you finished?" he grumbled, his eyes still on the road.

Azerda chewed her seeds loudly. "What's wrong? Can't a mare enjoy a ride?"

"You're several years my elder, and yet I feel like I'm driving an obnoxious teenager to hoofball practice," Trace retorted, pointing a talon at the zebra mare. "I don't have to bring you along, you know. You're a private investigator and you have no legal jurisdiction."

"If I weren't there, you would have been running circles around that investigation. I heard the WPD likes solving these cases quickly for good press."

"We made progress on that investigation together," Trace corrected, briefly eyeing Azerda as he pulled on the manual gear lever. The apartments and houses gradually transitioned into warehouses and factories, roofed in drab corrugated steel. The poorly maintained concrete and brick walls were covered with graffiti. "And I don't care about good press or making money. All I want is to find the truth."

"Alright, noble detective. Keep saying that when you're begging in the streets," Azerda returned sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Every creature likes to act like they're some altruist, but push comes to shove, they care about their personal gain. At least I'm transparent about it."

"If the crime scene was staged, then that means that our driver for the military equipment is our prime suspect. Our suspect wanted us to assume it was some mob shooting and have us go on a wild goose chase," Trace said, changing the subject.

Trace made another left turn, this time onto Bath Street. The two-lane industrial road was dotted with patches of darker colored asphalt and covered in piles of trash lining against the sidewalk. They stopped in front of a red brick building with wide windows wrapping around the perimeter, connected to a small warehouse. An inactive lighted sign read on top of the door: Squall Line Logistics. A few Lightstar trucks parked neatly side by side in front of the warehouse's loading gates, though most of the parking spots remained empty; the drivers were already out for work. Azerda briefly observed that most of the trucks had flat cushions rather than car seats, much too low and close to the wheel for a hippogriff driver to operate.

He pulled the parking lever and shut the engine off, grabbing the abandoned truck's registration slip on his dashboard. The two got off the police car, and Trace pushed the door open into the building. Azerda followed Trace, but not before the door swung back and nearly hit her face if not for a timely block with her forehoof.

The lobby of the building was floored with pine hardwood, with a few metal chairs next to the entrance tucked together as a waiting area. In front of them was a cerise hippogriff with glasses, eating a tuna salad sandwich while staring at a stack of papers in front of her L-shaped desk. She was dressed quite simply, wearing a coral red sweater vest over a dress shirt. A typewriter, desk lamp, and all sorts of office tools lay near the corner, and the desk fan facing towards the lobby did little to provide relief for the hot and stuffy environment. Behind her was a row of file cabinets, a potted Kirian evergreen which was growing patchy from over-watering, and a map of the city of Winggarden pinned against the wall – the city followed a rough radial grid pattern that surrounded the crescent-shaped bay.

The cerise hippogriff looked up from her papers, standing up from her swivel chair as Trace and Azerda entered the room. "Oh! What can I do for you?" she greeted.

"Detective Trace Drizzle and Miss Azerda, ma'am. Are you in charge here?" Trace asked, ignoring the irritated stare from Azerda.

"Yes, I am. Parcel Post. Is there a problem?" Parcel took another bite from her sandwich.

Azerda patted the crumbs off her flannel shirt and looked straight at Parcel, who stopped chewing. "Are you missing any trucks lately?"

Parcel blinked and swallowed her food. "No? All of our drivers have clocked in like normal."

The zebra leaned her hoof on the table and beckoned the hippogriff proprietor. Parcel shuffled back uncomfortably. "We found a truck with missing plates and a registration slip that goes right back to your company. A freight company like you must have some records lying around here. Hoof over the employee time sheet."

"Erm, sure. But this is very unusual. I don't remember having any worker trouble lately," Parcel muttered, turning around and opening the file cabinet behind her. She took out a sheet of paper and reluctantly placed it in front of Azerda.

Trace placed the yellow registration slip next to the sheet, pointing to the serial number at the top. "B4861," he read aloud the plate number.

Azerda scanned her eyes down the sheet. Jezalla Zatyb. Kanmi Tammuzit. Zyrum Varzel. "Interesting set of names, Parcel. You seem to like hiring Warzenans and Zumidians a lot," she commented, flipping the sheet over and stopping at the top. "B4861. Operated by a Zephon Zaqhatid. Clocked in at around two in the morning."

Trace's eyebrows furrowed as he checked his watch. "It's almost eleven, Mrs. Parcel Post. Your driver should have been clocking out an hour ago."

Parcel adjusted her glasses. "Zaqhatid said he would work overtime. I was going to pay him double when he returns at noon," she answered hastily.

Azerda slammed her hoof on the table, prompting Parcel to jump up with a yelp. "That's the best lie you can come up with, birdbrain? I looked over the time sheet and around half of the drivers on this sheet should be off for work, but more than four-fifths of the trucks outside are still missing. You're full of it," she exclaimed, pointing her hoof only a couple centimeters away from her chest.

"Alright, Azerda. Calm down," Trace placed Azerda's hoof down, tapping the table with his free claw. "Mrs. Parcel, Arisian labor laws limit work days to eight hours a day, five days a week. Demanding employees work almost ten hours a day without overtime pay is a violation of workers' rights."

Parcel gulped and pushed her glasses again, almost out of habit. "They're...uh, they're not employees. They're independent contractors," she clarified weakly.

"You're employing foreign zebra workers as 'independent contractors'? So you can pay them less and force them to work longer, Mrs. Parcel?"

"W-what I did was legal, sir. There's nothing wrong with hiring contractors!"

Azerda's eyes narrowed. I've had enough of this slimy hookbeak. "That's the second time I've heard that excuse today," she snapped, pacing a few steps before glaring back at Parcel. "Tell us Zephon Zaqhatid's address right now! Or do you want me to dig through your company files?"

"O-okay, alright! 1281 Seaforth Lane, at the Communication Hill neighborhood," Parcel sputtered out.

Trace placed a claw to his tie and whistled insincerely. "Sorry, Miss Parcel. I'm afraid I did as much as I could to control my partner here, especially as she isn't under the authority of our police department here. Do you have any delivery records tied to Mr. Zaqhatid?" he questioned calmly. "If you cooperate, I may consider placing a good word for the Ministry of Labor. Perhaps a generous fine to pay your so-called 'contractors' would be more preferable to shutting down your business."

Parcel nodded slowly, staring at Azerda uneasily while she pulled out a beige folder from a different cabinet; Zaqhatid, Z, 05-1024 was labeled on the folder's tab in thin, black marker. "...Here. This should cover his deliveries since the start of the month."

Trace slid the folder in front of Azerda and him, flipping it open to reveal a small stack of papers, one sheet for each day. He split the stack in half, passing one half to Azerda. "You start from the most recent date in descending order, and I'll start from the beginning of the month," Trace instructed, scanning the paper with his claw. "We need to check for any unusual patterns in the addresses and shipments. I have a good feeling Zaqhatid might be involved in the military equipment heist."

The two spent a little more than ten minutes reading through the stack quietly; Azerda had paused briefly to get a paper cup from a water dispenser near the back of the office, earning her a stern look from Trace. "How many times do you see a 325 Barracuda Drive, Trace?" Azerda asked. "I have two for the 11th and the 8th."

"1st, 4th, and the 6th. Mr. Zaqhatid seems to be visiting this address every other work day, at around six in the morning. The shipped packages are all categorized as 'small' as well," Trace pointed out, looking up at the city map on the wall. He walked around to the back of the table, forcing Parcel Post to shift away with her swivel chair to make room for the detective. Trace located a red dot on the map, corresponding to the building on Bath Street the two were currently in.

"That's five times in the last two weeks. He would have been doing another delivery today, but I can't find the Barracuda address for today's schedule," Azerda stated, taking one last sip from her near-empty cup of water. "Not one to jump into conclusions, but these deliveries seem a bit too routine. If I was some creature or business, I would be ordering my shipments in bulk instead of wasting money on smaller shipments every few days."

Trace studied the map further. The red dot was in the southwest of the city against the port. With his claw, he traced the route Zaqhatid's truck would take down Bayshore Boulevard, the main arterial along the waterfront, moving north onto Coral Street where they had found the truck crash. Finally, the hippogriff located Barracuda Drive, three kilometers east of Coral and near the city's downtown. "What's the last delivery location Zaqhatid made around four today, Azerda?"

Azerda flipped over to the bottom-most sheet. "140 Turquoise Street. Delivery was expected to be complete at around 4:15," she said.

Trace tapped his claw where Turquoise Street was, right between Coral and Barracuda. "That explains the crash. Whoever Zaqhatid was working with, they had set up the crash en route for one of his normal delivery routes. Then they could mask the weapons heist with a shootout, and the company would be none the wiser," he concluded.

Azerda closed the folder and pushed herself away from the table. “Are there any notable features that can help identify Zephon Zaqhatid, Miss Parcel?” Trace added, turning to the cerise hippogriff.

“He had hazel blue eyes. I don’t know, a lot of them look the same,” Parcel answered, pausing to anxiously glimpse at Azerda’s scowling face. “I-I mean…he had a slicked back striped mane with a small ponytail. And he’s a little taller than your zebra partner, I guess. Around his thirties like her, too. We don’t keep any pictures of our employees around here.”

Trace nodded. “Thank you for your time. I expect a 200 Seashell payout for each employee by the end of the month. Does that sound reasonable, Miss Parcel?” he demanded with a firm look.

"Will I get compensation for–erm...yes, Detective."

Trace walked out of the building after her response. Azerda appeared to follow him out at first, but stopped in front of the entrance to glance back at Parcel. With a smirk, she lightly bucked the waste bin next to the door, tipping it over and pouring its contents – a mix of food wrappings, stationery, and crumpled paper cups – onto the hardwood floor.

The two quietly got back into the police car. Once Trace closed the driver's door, he looked at Azerda. "We'll head to Zaqhatid's house at Seaforth Lane first. Communication Hill is closer to the industrial park here, and it's along the way," Trace explained, turning the ignition. The engine rumbled to life and he pulled the parking lever down. "I thought you were all about the money. But a cheapskate boss exploiting cheap migrant workers for some extra Seashells is too much?"

Azerda snorted. "All the money that's mine, I at least made fair and square. She's just a leech."

Trace sighed and reversed the vehicle onto the road. "Winggarden could use more investigators like you in the police department, Azerda. The fact that you went off at Miss Parcel for using your fellow zebras means you still have some sense of justice left."

The zebra mare looked out the window, seeing the flat-roofed industrial buildings pass by. "It's Winggarden, Trace Drizzle. A city of broken dreams and a rotten cesspit."

"Well, it's my rotten cesspit!" Trace exclaimed. "I remember growing up here, before the fascists and the Nightmarists ruined everything. It was a great city once, one that wasn't tainted by opportunists and mobsters. I joined the police force so I can clean this place up. Is that too much to ask?"

Azerda sat up and stared at Trace. His claws were tightening on the steering wheel like a vice while he spoke. "...Excuse me," he muttered, loosening his grip.

The rest of the ten minute ride was silent, save for the noise of the engine as the car reached its destination. They stopped in front of a brick row house near the corner of Seaforth Lane and Foam Drive. The row house had seen better days; the front door was made of cheap plywood, likely a replacement due to how poorly framed the door was. Graffiti covered the open side wall facing the street corner and a broken sofa was placed on the sidewalk.

Communication Hill was named after a long gone Arisian fort that was once on the hill, formerly used to signal incoming ships by flag. The area had rapidly expanded after the discovery of a nearby oil field, leading to its eventual municipal annexation by the city of Winggarden. That was before the days of Legation rule; the neighborhood had been vacated more than a decade ago due to the ruthless crackdowns by the Chiropterran-dominated Joint Command, and the Zumidian refugee crisis forced zebras to live in the deteriorating and neglected residences.

"Heard of this place on the radio. Called it one of the worst eyesores of the city, and City Council wanted to replace it with a public housing project," Trace commented, shutting the engine off.

"What's going to happen to all the residents?" Azerda asked, wafting the smell of burning plastic seeping into the car. A short sweep of her surroundings showed a zebra tiredly burning her trash in her front yard, a thick plume of smog leaking from her incinerator's chimney.

"Move them all into the new project, I think. The Royal Advisory Council hasn't approved the funding yet."

Or leave them all homeless. Azerda snorted and trotted out of the vehicle, closing the car door behind her. "Let's see if any creature is home first," Trace added.

Trace flew up to check the second floor windows while Azerda trotted towards the front door, giving it a short knock. Seconds later, the door swung open, revealing a short tan earth pony with a cigarette in her mouth. The mare in her early twenties was wearing a black leather jacket and white shirt, and her flank had a cutie mark of a radio dial. "First time I've seen you around here," the earth pony remarked. She removed her cigarette and took a deep exhale, blowing a small cloud of smoke; the smell of tobacco was familiar to Azerda, though the zebra had quit long enough to prevent her cravings from taking over. "Are you looking for Clock Drift or somepony else? My sister's at work."

Tobuckian accent. The city-state of Tobuck further south was the first victim of conquest by the Nightmarist state of Chiropterra, and it was no secret that the annexed pony-majority "republic" was a smuggler's den for military equipment. Although most Tobuckians fled to Equestria or the Griffonian continent, Tobuckian refugees on the Aris Archipelago was not unheard of. "What's your name? And does Zephon Zaqhatid live around here?" Azerda asked.

"Zaqhatid? I don't remember somepony like that living here," the mare responded with a blink of confusion. "Sounds like a zebra's name, though. Anyways, the name’s Static Noise. We split the rent with four others, including my sister and me.”

Trace flew down next to Azerda and raised an eye. "You've never heard of Zephon Zaqhatid, Miss Static Noise? Slicked back mane, hazel blue eyes, shorter than your average stallion?" he questioned.

"I mean, we have two zebras living around here, and one of them has blue eyes," Static said nonchalantly, placing the cigarette back into her mouth. "That sounds like Izavel. His bedroom is the first door on the left. He shares it with Abirami, some other zebra. Abirami's at work too."

Trace looked at Azerda. "You go check out Zaqhatid's...or well, Izavel's room, Azerda. I'll ask Miss Static Noise here a few questions. Something doesn't feel right here."

A zebra with different names. What gives? Azerda looked inside the row house, which was almost as dilapidated as the exterior. The living room was cramped, with the dining table and pewter cupboard leaving little in the way of walking space. The wooden floorboards creaked as she trotted across them towards the staircase. Reminds me of my old home back in Zirta.

The second floor was dark and musty; the bathroom door right in front of the staircase was open to offer some natural light, showing a leaking toilet and a freestanding tub on missing flooring. The bathroom's wall corners were caked with soap scum and mildew.

Izavel's bedroom was in marginally better condition. Two beds flanked each side, with a writing desk in front of the window facing onto the street. There was at least an attempt to clean up the bedroom; the sheets were neatly folded on top of the mattresses, which were too small for the bed frames. One wall next to the wardrobe near the door was missing part of the flowery wallpaper that covered the entire room and looked thirty years out of date.

Azerda trotted towards the desk. The lacquer was faded, though it was still mostly usable as furniture. On it was an alarm clock, a desk lamp, and a black antique typewriter with rusty keys. Each side of the desk had three drawers – she opened the one on the top right first. Inside were a few books, marked with the name of Abirami Zaladid. A hole was located at the center of the drawer. "So this is Abirami's side," she muttered, turning to the left side of the desk. She could hear the muffled sounds from Trace and Static conversing downstairs.

Izavel's drawers had a wild assortment of items compared to Abirami's, mostly office stationery organized into bundles. Her eyes stopped at a metal L-shaped hex wrench, which unlike the other items, was not bundled with rubber bands. Most importantly, there was no hole in the drawer's center, and Azerda noticed that the drawer dimensions felt significantly smaller than that of Abirami's.

Almost instinctively, Azerda went to feel the bottom of the drawer, her hoof feeling a subtle ridge where the hole was supposed to be. She grabbed the hex wrench and pushed the long end below the drawer and into the hole. The false bottom of the drawer suddenly shifted up, revealing a hidden compartment. Your simple tricks won't work on me, Izavel. I was burglarizing homes growing up as a filly.

The hidden compartment had a hoofful of $20 Seashell bills, along with a small stack of paper and a folded note. She took all of the papers and laid them on top of the table, pushing the typewriter back to vacate more space. A cursory examination revealed that each paper was an acceptance letter signed to different trucking companies: Shooting Star Motor Lines, Fetchflow Trucking, and Squall Line Logistics. The oldest letter to Shooting Star was signed at the first month, and the most recent at Squall Line at the fourth.

The letters were also signed in different names: Zanno Zatrunzor, Azmelqart Zarvadid, and finally, Zephon Zaqhatid. Azerda opened up the note as well, reading the contents.

Crystalstar Shipments
30-01-1024: S300
19-03-1024: S375
13-05-1024: S500
Meet for pay at 325 Barracuda Drive

"So there's some third-party paying Izavel on the side. 500 Seashells for today's heist," Azerda hummed, folding the papers and placing it in her satchel. "He's been using false identities so the companies don't track him down."

She trotted back down the stairs, seeing Trace and Static sit around the uncomfortably tight dining table. The young earth pony had already put out her cigarette stub on an ashtray. "You done snooping around Izavel's room now?" Static asked.

"Static said our zebra of interest's name is Izavel Zatyeb, thirty-four years old. He's been living in this apartment for four years now, but he lost his job around six months ago," Trace summarized, standing up from his chair. "She doesn't know much about where he's working, but he's been truck driving back and forth to pay rent. What did you find, Azerda?"

Azerda pulled out the folded acceptance papers. "Izavel's been working under three different trucking companies under different aliases. Some creature who knows when Crystalstar is moving equipment out is paying him to 'lose' military equipment," she explained, hastily putting the papers back once Trace had a good look at it.

"So our heist ringleader may be a lot closer to Crystalstar than we think," Trace concluded. Static let out a small chuckle.

As he finished, the door suddenly swung open, a zebra stallion with blue eyes in a denim shirt carrying a saddlebag on his back. He was much shorter than the average stallion and barely taller than Azerda, with thick stripes from his jaws almost to the eyes that looked like spikes. Izavel paused as he looked up at Azerda, Trace, and Static in the living room. "You didn't tell me you were bringing friends along, Static," he said.

Trace pointed to Izavel and walked towards him. "WPD, Mr. Zatyeb. You're under arrest," Trace stated, raising his voice.

Izavel bit his lip and stepped back, his face turning panicked as he processed the situation. "Wait, wait! I won't try and put up a struggle..." The zebra abruptly slammed the door shut and galloped off.

“Damn it, the bastard’s getting away!” Trace shouted, pulling the door back open and spreading his wings to take flight. “Azerda, you chase him on hoof! I’ll tail him from above!”

Azerda raced behind Trace, keeping her eyes fixed on Izavel as he ran down the road. Trace was gaining speed on the runaway zebra – flying was much faster than galloping on hoof. Izavel glanced back at his approaching pursuers, and quickly made a turn down the block, into the back alleyway of the row houses; the cobblestone alley was barely a couple meters wide, much too narrow for Trace to reasonably fly through without hitting his wings against the brick walls.

"Azerda, keep tailing him! I'll get to the other side and try to stop him there!" Trace flew ahead towards the other side of the block. Halfway down the alley, Izavel jumped over a high wooden fence into a small backyard, pushing his way into a white-painted wooden row house's door. Azerda swooped up after him, pushing the door before it could close.

She was met with a sudden incoming buck as she entered the house. Azerda dodged at the last moment, Izavel's rear hoof only just missing her chest. With one of Izavel's rear hooves extended out, Azerda grabbed his rear hoof and lunged forward against his flank, locking her hooves against his standing rear hoof to knock him off balance.

Izavel reacted well, rolling onto his back to buck Azerda, hitting her right jaw and knocking the boater hat off her head. She flinched from the sharp pain and swore something in Zonician, ignoring the crimson blood leaking out one of her nostrils.

He took the opportunity of Azerda's brief hesitation to push his weight down on his grappled hoof – Izavel wrapped his other rear hoof around her, attempting to lock her by the neck. Azerda glanced around her surroundings while resisting his headlock. They were in some stranger's laundry room, and her eyes stopped at a towel radiator mounted in a wall just next to Izavel's chest.

Her fore hooves eventually buckled from the weight, forcing Azerda down on top of his barrel. In one swift motion, she bucked the radiator, crushing one of the mounting plates and sending a spray of scalding hot water onto Izavel's shoulder. The stallion's hold on Azerda weakened as he howled in agony.

Azerda stood back up and stomped on his chest, the stallion too busy recoiling from his scalding burn to retaliate. A small puddle of hot water formed on the ceramic tiled floor. "Poor move, Izavel," she growled in Zonician, turning the radiator valve to shut it off.

Izavel groaned, glaring back at Azerda. "Screw you, broodmare!" he retorted in the same language. "Do you enjoy bootlicking for filthy cops?"

Azerda raised her hoof to prepare for a punch to his face before the front door slammed open. "Azerda, that's enough! We still need him healthy enough for questioning," Trace shouted, armed with a baton in one claw and a pair of hoofcuffs in the other.

She panted and looked back at the hippogriff, wiping the blood off of her nose. Azerda spat the blood that had seeped into her mouth; a few drops of blood fell into the water puddle, mixing the puddle into a subtle pink. I was just about done, anyways.

1-3: Wage Bonus

Azerda sat quietly on one of the dining chairs, holding a wad of toilet paper against her muzzle while staring at Izavel; the stallion was cuffed by the fore hooves, which were tight enough to prevent him from bending his hooves down to move beyond a slow walk. Trace carefully trimmed his fur with a pair of scissors along where his scalds were, applying a bandage afterwards.

"Damn zebra bucked me right in the face," she grumbled, placing her bloodied wad on the table and pulling a new strip of toilet paper from the roll on the table. A subtle, reddened bruise had formed on her right cheek. She briefly contemplated using the healing potions she had prepared in her satchel; healing potions were one of the most rudimentary potions a zebra could make. Not worth wasting on such a minor injury.

Static trotted out of the kitchen with an opened can of peaches, placing it on the dining table next to Azerda. "Here. I don't know jack about cooking, so this is the best you're going to get," Static said. "Make sure you chew with the good side of your muzzle."

Azerda picked up the can of peaches and poured it straight into her mouth, angling it to the left to avoid her bruised right jaw. Trace applied a moist bandage onto the shaved burn area on Izavel's shoulder, closing up the first aid kit as he finished his treatment. "Backup will come in a few minutes. Before that, Mr. Izavel, you might as well tell us what you know," he demanded. "We can start by asking why you were running from us."

Izavel looked away defiantly. "Police like you storm our neighborhoods to lock us up. What would you have done when you saw two cops in your home?"

"We have enough evidence to convict you, Mr. Izavel!" Trace exclaimed, pointing back to Azerda. She waved her hoof dismissively as she slowly chewed through the peach slices. "She has a slip of paper that shows you were getting paid for stealing Crystalstar equipment. Add resisting arrest to that and you're looking at four years in prison. Please make this easier for us."

"The twit's just a transport mule for the ring leader, Trace," Azerda commented, placing the can down on the table and feeling her bruised cheek. "My contract requires me to find the leaders responsible. I don't get paid for locking up a driver."

Trace blinked in surprise. "I didn't know you were the sympathetic kind, especially since you were up in that hippogriff lady's face just an hour ago."

"I'm plenty sympathetic when there's a Zumidian involved," Azerda clarified bluntly, tapping her hoof on the table. "If he wasn't stealing for the company I'm working for, then I would be applauding him for trying to make a living. It's either that or starve on the streets."

Izavel stared at Azerda and grunted. "We meet in front of a house at Barracuda Drive for my pay every evening," he explained, kicking the saddlebag on the ground with his free rear hoof. "I just came back from my side-job when you two showed up."

"What's your role in this whole charade?" Azerda asked. "And can you identify the creature you met?"

"Hippogriff, beige coat, yellow mane, swept back like your buddy over there," Izavel tilted his head toward Trace's direction. "He never gave a name. We only worked on a need-to-know basis."

"Well, this is the first time I've heard about a weapon smuggling ring... we had plenty of that back in Tobuck. Who would have thought one of our roommates would be in one?" Static interjected with a short chuckle. "Back when my sister and I were fillies, we used to have a gun runner by the name of Pea Shooter run our country. He made tons of dough from smuggling weapons across the three continents."

Trace glanced at the young mare. "So you have some experience in it?"

"Not old enough to get involved myself, but my mother was a mercenary," she answered more evenly. "They wouldn't be dumb enough to exchange the money in front of their own home or reveal their identity. And more importantly, they might still have those weapons laying around somewhere. They can't sell them immediately without attracting unwanted attention.”

Pea Shooter. Heard of that name before. Azerda thought. He was a well known name in North Zebrica, running a sham republic before they became the Chiropterran Commonwealth's first victims. Of course, he was long gone from the country, along with most of the country's gold reserves. Probably in Manehatten now, snorting drugs off his luxury table...

Trace nodded politely. “Thanks, Miss Static. You’ve been a great help."

As the hippogriff finished, a police truck slowed in front of the rundown row house, the front wheel almost cutting onto the curb as it parked. Water Spout and a yellow female hippogriff in a clean white, mosaic-like jacket existed the vehicle; the mare appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with her mane pulled back into a ponytail. "I think that's good enough, Officer Spout. At least you're keeping the vehicle intact," she commented, momentarily taking a short glance of the misaligned vehicle before entering the front door.

Trace looked up and waved his claw at the well-dressed hippogriff, with Water Spout approaching behind a few seconds later. "Criminalist Paper Trail. It's surprising to see you outside of the crime lab," he greeted. "I trust it's something important?"

Paper Trail pulled out a small vial of blood from her chest pocket. “Yes. It’s about the blood samples we’ve retrieved from the crime scene,” Paper replied, noticing Azerda and Static, who were still sitting at the table. Her eyes stopped at the zebra mare’s bruised cheek. “Did some altercation take place?”

Azerda nickered. “I’m fine. Your zebra is cuffed up in the corner right there,” she muttered.

Paper handed the vial over to Trace, who carefully pinched the lid with his claws and examined the vial. The blood inside had separated into dark red clumps with the plasma floating to the top. “The blood wasn’t like this when we found the abandoned vehicle,” Trace commented with a frown.

“Blood agglutination,” Paper explained calmly, like a doctor explaining one's symptoms to a patient. Azerda looked at the hippogriff with a confused expression crossing her face. "An antibody reaction to incompatible blood types. It occurs in improper transfusions, but in this instance, it appears that the blood in the vehicle came from multiple recipients, mixed together."

"Mrs. Paper was performing a blood test for the sample," Water Spout added, walking next to her to eye the blood vial on Trace's claw.

"A preliminary one. An extensive blood test would have taken days. It matters little as this sample is unfit for testing anyways," Paper corrected.

"I doubt the suspect would have killed several victims on the same exact spot in the truck," Trace quipped, handing the vial back to Paper Trail. "But how would the blood get mixed up in the first place?"

Azerda tapped her chin in brief thought. "A blood bank, maybe? That's one method of getting plenty of blood," she proposed.

Trace nodded in agreement. "It's likely. Let's check the address at Barracuda first, see if we can get any more leads," he said, turning to Water Spout. "You mind taking Mr. Izavel back to Harbor Division, Spout? Also, have Spotlight arranged to be released by tonight. I'm thinking a few months of community service after being locked up would teach that kid a little lesson."

"Alright, Trace," Water Spout saluted hastily and removed the cuffs tying Izavel to the table, closing it back afterwards and guiding him towards the truck. "Spotlight was making a big fuss in his cell, anyways."

"Oh, and she's coming with us, Criminalist," Trace added, pointing to Azerda with the thumb of his claw. "Azerda's a PI working for Crystalstar. She has some experience and has helped us with the case."

Paper furrowed her brow. "PI? The WPD's had enough of them nosing into affairs," she remarked dimly. "She can come, but I'm keeping my eye on her so she doesn't contaminate any evidence. Barracuda isn't too far from here, so you two can drive while I fly to the scene of interest."

Azerda snorted at Paper's comment and stood up, crumpling the tissue into a bloody wad and throwing it into the trash bin. Her nosebleed had cleared up by now.

It was a short five-minute drive to 325 Barracuda Drive – Paper Trail had already arrived at the location, Trace's Buck Super being slowed down by traffic. The house was in Marina Heights, one of the eastern suburbs of Winggarden, tailored towards a more respectable, middle-class demographic than Communication Hill. Barracuda Drive was right next to a tramway, with an occasional tram bell breaking the silence of the otherwise quiet neighborhood.

Trace stopped the vehicle near an empty lot, opening a paper map of the city to verify the address. In front of the two was a stone-veneered ranch-style house, defined by a freshly painted white picket fence. A red sign stood on the front lawn, reading: FOR SALE – S10050, only S2000 down! Contact CV3899 now!

“Empty address,” Azerda grumbled as she jumped out of the vehicle.

Paper Trail was surveying the driveway as Trace parked the vehicle, pointing to a set of faint skid marks – they were quite wide apart, and the bright noon sun made it difficult to discern at first glance. “All-terrain wheels, judging by the diagonal treads,” Paper stated, kneeling down in front of the marks to get a closer look. “And they’re spread too far apart to be from a passenger vehicle.”

"So it came from a commercial truck. That matches Izavel's earlier movements and Spotlight's testimony," Trace added, flying towards the porch to scan the house's interior from the front windows. The living room and kitchen were completely empty, save for the built-in birch kitchen countertops and sink. A thin layer of dust formed on the counters. "Doesn't look like any creature has been inside the house, either."

"What about outside?" Azerda suggested, pointing her hoof at a riveted metal garbage can. "Do empty houses normally take out the trash?"

The zebra mare opened up the can; it was barely used, with cardboard boxes cut apart into smaller pieces and empty tin cans. Her eyes stopped at what appeared to be two empty rifle cartridge cases and three blood bags stained crimson red. "So there's where the missing casings were," Azerda muttered, making sure to put on a new set of clean hoof gloves before tilting the garbage can sideways.

"I know we're scouring for evidence and all, but you could at least clean your hooves before fishing through the trash!" Trace remarked with a slight grimace.

Azerda tilted the trash can at an angle, extending her forehoof deep inside to pull out the casings and blood bags. She examined the casings closely, the caliber instantly being familiar to her. She hummed. "7.62 Alaudia. I'm sure this would match the bullets we found at Coral Street."

She then turned her attention towards the three blood bags, flipping them towards the front. Each one indicated a different blood type: A(a), C, Q(b). Azerda tapped her hoof at the address at the bottom: Collected by: Southern Aris Blood Center, Winggarden. Manufactured for: Crystalstar Corporation, Starfield. "We have these blood bags for private security," Azerda added. "So our suspect is closer to the corporation than I thought after all."

Paper Trail looked beside Azerda and nodded. "We can take these two pieces of evidence back to the crime lab for analysis. We can match the casings' ballistic markings with the bullets bagged near Coral Drive," she commented. "We can determine the location and range from where the bullets were fired as well."

Azerda grunted and handed over the evidence to Paper Trail. "Careful enough to pick up their casings before fleeing the scene, but not enough to dump it in some random bin. Now we know where they got the blood."

"Southern Aris Blood Center's Downtown," Trace interjected, pulling out a small travel map from his jacket pocket. "We can check the records there, see if there's any creature from Crystalstar collecting the blood packs."

"Since both of you are going downtown, you don't mind if I take the vehicle, yes?" Paper Trail asked, placing the bullet casings and empty blood bags into separate plastic bags. "Officer Spout has already taken the other one, and it would be inconvenient to fly back with these evidence bags. These locations should be fairly close to the Central Police Station. You two can get a different vehicle there."

Azerda pulled out a small, bright red card with a slight smirk – it was a weekly transit pass, already partially punched. "Guess this would come in handy."

Trace stared at Azerda incredulously. "We could just call the nearby police station for a new vehicle. Do you just take the tram for every case?"

Azerda shrugged. "Don't have a driver's license, and hippogriff vehicles are too uncomfortable to drive in. Plus, I can't imagine who would want to drive through Winggarden traffic."

The hippogriff detective sighed and placed his claw to his forehead. "Alright then. Guess we're taking a bit of a tram trip."

The Winggarden tram network was one of the few features of Legation rule still left over; although the city already had an existing tram system, it had not aged with grace, and prior to the Legation takeover there were plans to scrap the network for a cheaper bus system. With a bright red and white exterior, Winggarden's trams were some of the more modern ones on Aris Island.

Azerda and Trace disembarked from the tram's rear doors in front of a clean, white brick building near a busy downtown street. The Southern Aris Blood Center did not have many windows and had an almost industrial appearance, with an unassuming flat roof and a simple International Red Heart logo.

The two briefly exchanged glances as they approached the building. "Could have tried making this place look less clinical than it already is," Azerda commented with a nicker.

The glass double doors opened up to a modestly sized waiting room, covered in vinyl wooden tiles in a checkerboard pattern. Sterile, light blue chairs with thin legs lined up around a coffee table, with a small stack of magazines at the center. A white hippogriff nurse sat behind a sleek wooden counter, her light brown eyes scanning through a newspaper report from the Daily Fish.

Trace strode towards the counter, waiting for a few seconds before promptly tapping the bell. The nurse sat straight up, putting her newspaper down. "Nurse Field Care. Are you here for a donation?" Field Care greeted in an artificially cheery tone.

"Detective Trace Drizzle. We're looking into an investigation that involves a withdrawal of blood bags from this location for Crystalstar Corporation," Trace replied firmly, straightening his neck collar. "Do you have any records from this month that we can check?"

Field Care hummed and bent down, pulling out a small leather book from the counter shelf. "Yes, we do. Every blood bag is meticulously cataloged."

"Do you recall seeing a beige hippogriff arrive to pick up blood from this center in the past few days?" Azerda asked, flipping open the book impatiently. She swiftly ran her hoof down each of the lines, her hoof stopping at one of the lines: 12-05-1024, 19:50. x4 300mL, types x2 A(a), x1 C, x1 Q(b). Withdrawn by request from: Crystalstar Corporation, Winggarden Branch Office. 15 Stratus Road, Winggarden.

The nurse shook her head. "No, at least not during my shifts. I work from 8 to 14, weekdays only. Only a part-time nurse," Field Care answered.

"And are you sure these records are accurate?" Azerda questioned further, tapping her hoof on the book. "I see four blood bags in these records, but during our investigations we only found three blood bags, and no blood type B."

"Like I said, we take into account every single blood bag. Those records are completely accurate and show a withdrawal of four blood bags," Field Care returned insistently, with a look of mild irritation.

“So there’s one blood bag missing from the trash can,” Azerda concluded to Trace, flipping the book shut. “The address tracks to one of our branch offices downtown. If I remember correctly, they have a clinic inside the building where we can look. The office is just down a few blocks.”

Trace bowed his head in front of Field Care. “Thank you, Nurse. You’ve been a great help. We’ll head to Crystalstar's office and see where this lead takes us.”

Field Care nodded and glanced back down on her magazine, frowning as she tried to find the page she had earmarked. “No problem, detectives,” she muttered with a short grumble.

The two trotted out of the building, and in a few minutes' walk, approached the office further down the street. The Crystalstar branch office was located behind a small parking lot; unlike most of the traditional, white brick Arisian buildings that defined the downtown, the building was largely a block of glass and steel, roughly five floors high. Azerda swerved around a few parked cars while Trace landed next to her in front of the building's glass doors, which were locked by a number pad. The zebra hummed and punched a set of numbers, the door responding with a soft click.

The main reception room of the office building was spacious, if empty of activity; Azerda surmised that most of the employees were busy at work in the upper floors. "The clinic should be on the first floor. Easier to rush in injured employees when it's close to the entrance," she reasoned, pointing to the doors on the right. One of them was still open, revealing a near-immaculate white tiled room. Her stomach growled gently, reminding the zebra that she had yet to eat a proper meal since morning beside the occasional snack. Azerda impatiently trotted ahead of Trace into the clinic.

Inside, a freckled yellow hippogriff examined an illuminated board, staring at different x-ray panels before glancing back at Azerda. He blinked and pushed his glasses, placing down his clipboard on the steel counter. "I can't say I've seen you folks around here in the offices."

Trace walked in behind her, taking a short scan of the rest of the clinic. A few hospital beds lay in the corner, next to a shelf filled with medical supplies and a large fridge. "I'm a Crystalstar investigator, doctor. What's your name?" Azerda stated.

"Lemongrass," the doctor answered, creasing his brow in concern. His eyes wandered towards Azerda's bruised cheek, the hippogriff grimacing at the sight. "Is something wrong? Besides your face, that is. We do have medical supplies around here to treat these kind of injuries."

Azerda grunted and put her hoof on her cheek. It still ached, though the injury was less painful than before. She wondered how Paper Trail and the nurse from before hadn't mentioned it until now. "I'm fine, doctor. More importantly, have you made a withdrawal of four blood bags lately?"

Lemongrass tapped his claws onto the table. "I make withdrawals from the blood bank all the time. It's normal for my profession," he answered defensively.

"If you don't mind, Dr. Lemongrass, may we look at your fridge?" Trace added. "There was recently a withdrawal from the South Aris Blood Center that traces back to this clinic."

"You are free to search inside, but please keep the fridge door closed as much as possible," Lemongrass said. "The bags spoil quickly at room temperature."

Trace opened the fridge, inching his head closer to search through the different compartments. "You familiar with any beige hippogriffs lately?" Azerda pressed further.

"There are a few hippogriffs with beige coats that come into my clinic," Lemongrass returned before pausing briefly. "But since you mentioned the South Aris Blood Center, you may be talking about a particular Brack Marsh. He came in yesterday to pick up medical supplies for a job abroad in Karthin. The clinic here isn't big enough for him to pick up all the supplies he needs, so I gave him written permission to get his supplies there."

Yesterday...that's the same date on the blood center records. "There are some A(a) blood packs in here, Azerda, but none of them match the date," Trace muttered, closing the fridge. He rubbed his forehead in frustration. "Lemongrass doesn't seem to be missing any stock. I don't know if we can find anything useful here."

"We've got a name. Brack Marsh," Azerda declared, turning to Trace. "According to one of our suspect's testimonies, he's still in Winggarden to give him some shells. So unless he's found a way to be in two places at once, this Brack Marsh seems to have a skill for fabricating stories."

"We appreciate the help, Lemongrass," Trace continued, closing his notepad and trotting out of the clinic.

As Azerda followed behind him, Lemongrass raised his claw before pulling out a small metal ointment case. "Oh, and before you leave, you should probably apply this to your cheek if you don't want more creatures giving you strange looks."

Azerda stopped and trotted back to grab the case, opening it momentarily to check the inside; it was a faded yellow cream, one that looked oddly familiar. The zebra mare stared aimlessly at the ointment. It's the same kind of cream the apothecaries would give back home at Zirta...

"Are you alright, detective?" Lemongrass added.

Azerda blinked and closed the case, placing it into her saddlebag. There I go again, thinking about the past. "Erm, thanks," she answered, nodding awkwardly at Lemongrass before rushing out the door. Lemongrass shook his head and sighed.

Trace was waiting outside the door, leaning against the concrete wall and crossing his arms. One of his claws had tightened against his elbow. "Can't believe that we have all this evidence and it all leads to a dead end..." Trace grumbled. "We've got our suspect's name, but without any leads there's no way to track him down."

"We still have one lead," she corrected.

Trace blinked in confusion. "What lead?"

Azerda smirked and tipped up her hat. "Maybe we need to pay Izavel at the police station a visit."

1-4: Clock Out

Azerda glanced up at the Central Police Station as they crossed Pearl Street onto a brick plaza. Blooming trees dotted the perimeter, and near the corner of the eight story concrete structure was a tunnel leading to an underground parking lot. The side of the boxy building was covered in steel scaffolding and tinted windows with thin louvers wrapped around each floor. The flag of Hippogriffia and the city of Winggarden sagged along the poles near the front entrance.

The Glass House. You can see out, but you can't see in.

"Hopefully they finish the station by the end of this year," Trace commented, taking a short glimpse at the building exterior and pushing the glass doors open. "Would prefer not to stare at a bunch of tubes while working in the office."

The interior was almost entirely a flat gray, with reinforced steel doors around the lobby. Just across from the front doors was an enclosed counter, reading "RECORDS AND ENQUIRIES" – below that was the Winggarden PD star with a simple "Service and Integrity" written above the logo. A cerulean-coated hippogriff officer stood behind the counter, pouring a small amount of milk and stirring a mug of coffee.

"Sergeant Wave Shoals," Trace greeted. Shoals stopped stirring and looked up. "Where's Izavel Zatyeb locked up?"

"He's in Interview 4-1. Fourth floor," Shoals pointed to the elevators to the left, flicking the stick into the trash bin. "Who's the zebra? Seems like the thuggish type if she's all beat up like that."

Azerda opened her mouth to respond before Trace bumped her shoulder with his claw. "She's an Zumidian interpreter," he interrupted evenly. "Zatyeb may be more comfortable being interrogated in his native tongue."

Shoals took a short sip. "Just don't get into trouble. Tiamat knows how much the Hills on the west side contribute to urban crime nowadays," he grumbled, glancing at Azerda.

Not the first time I've been treated like a thug, and it won't be the last. She huffed and trotted towards the stainless steel elevator, already open on the first floor. It was one of these new attendant-free elevators that were being advertised by developers in recent years. Azerda pressed one of the numbered buttons after Trace followed her in. "Don't you hippogriffs normally fly to the floors?" she asked as the doors closed.

"Security reasons," Trace explained, his eyes idly wandering up to the row of numbers – the light gradually climbed its way up to 4. "It's to prevent trespassers from entering and prisoners from escaping. The windows can't open wide enough to fly through, either."

"Every creature is building glass boxes these days," Azerda mumbled. With a ding, the elevator doors opened up to a beige-carpeted hallway. Trace trotted forward, gesturing to a closed door on the right, labeled 4-1. A familiar gray patrolgriff stood next to the door, chewing on a granola bar.

Water Spout hastily gave Trace a quick salute. "Izavel's in the interview room, Detective," he said.

Azerda pointed to Spout's granola bar. "Where did you get that? I've barely eaten anything today."

"There's a vending machine in the break room-"

The zebra dropped two Seashells onto his claw. "Good. Help me get a bar, too. I'll talk to Izavel."

Water Spout blinked in confusion and accepted the coins, walking awkwardly down the hall. Trace eyed Azerda with uncertainty. "Are you sure Izavel will agree to this? If he doesn't, we're back on a wild goose chase for more leads."

"Zumidians have a history of cooperating with each other," Azerda deflected, opening the interview room door.

"I see. Is that why you were bucking each other a few hours earlier?"

The zebra hesitated. "Usually, they do."

The interview room was a simple square room with a one-way mirror on the white brick wall opposite to the door – below the mirror was a wooden table with metal chairs. A security camera hung against one of the ceiling corners, adjusted in such a way to cover the entire room. Izavel sat uncomfortably on one of the chairs, pressing the ice pack against his bandage-wrapped left shoulder and neck. He frowned and put his ice pack down as Azerda entered the room. "What do you want, mare? I already told you everything you wanted back at home."

"I'm not here to interrogate you, Izavel," Azerda answered. "My name is Azerda. Are you willing to strike a deal?"

Izavel sat up. Trace silently leaned near the entrance, closing the door behind them. "What kind of deal? I barely have any money. I was going to get my pay from those gun runners before you two showed up."

Azerda smirked. "So that means those gun runners are still expecting you to show up tonight at Barracuda Drive," she reasoned, sitting down on the chair opposite to Izavel. Suddenly, she changed to her Zumidian tongue. "Mani g tzdyd, Izwel – where are you from, Izavel?"

"Aïn Oulmene. Right along the Warzenan border. At least, where it used to be."

"Zirta," Azerda replied. Trace gazed at the two; he couldn't understand Zumidian, but the city names stuck out. "I'm from Zirta. Perhaps we've fought in the same war against the Nightmarists, then."

"I fought under the Zumidian Auxiliary Corps. 15th Engineer Battalion. But none of that matters anymore. My hometown is lost and some of my family is still there, the Nightmarists doing Za'al knows what to them. Even if I go back, I don't think I'll be able to see them again. Now? I'm just trying to make enough shells to make ends meet. So what are you going on about?"

Azerda leaned forward. I was never that great at convincing others. "Look, I'm the last zebra you want to hear moralistic junk from. The Storm King took everything from us – friends, family, homes. We all have to do what we need to in order to survive," she reasoned. "Trace and I will get you released so we can lure the gun runners out and capture them."

Izavel smacked his hoof on the table. "Are you crazy? You're asking me to risk my life so you can capture a smuggling ring? What will I get out of this?" he hissed indignantly.

Azerda pulled out a small paper slip – it was the payment note that she had taken from the apartment. "I'm not with the Winggarden police. I'm a private detective. I haven't given this piece of evidence to the police department yet," she continued. "If you agree to the plan, I'll destroy this. You would just be a zebra driver threatened into transporting smuggled weapons, not one complicit in a smuggling ring. I just don't want to see another Zumidian rotting in prison. How does that sound?"

Izavel mumbled something inaudible and sighed. "Can I trust you?"

"I hope you can. We were even when I bucked you in the face. That makes us aytma – kinfolk."

The door opened once again. Trace raised his ears and turned back, seeing Spout with two granola bars in his claws. "I've got your food!" Spout declared, walking in his awkward gait and handing the bars to Azerda. He paused and glanced at the two. "Erm...am I interrupting something?"

Azerda shook her head and grabbed the bars, promptly opening one by tearing the wrapping with her mouth. "No, you're not. By Za'al, I could use a meal," she replied, hurriedly scarfing down the granola bar.

"I'll do it." Izavel interjected. Azerda stopped chewing the bar "I'll be a part of your plan."

Azerda squinted her eyes at the Buck Super's center console clock, barely making out her hooves in the darkness. It was five minutes before eight in the evening. Trace's vehicle was parked on the driveway a few houses down from 325 Barracuda Drive, inconspicuously located in front of a garage shed. The house's lights were off, and the mailbox was filled with junk mail – she assumed that the homeowners were away on vacation this time of year.

"If we're going to be catching Brack Marsh and his gun-running gang, they're going to be packing plenty of heat," Azerda said, swinging the cylinder of her Littlehoof Model 1021 revolver open and inserting a moon clip in. She glanced at Trace. "You've ever fired a gun on duty?"

Trace tapped the wheel, one of his claws combing through his mane. His revolver was still holstered behind his waistcoat. "Not outside the shooting range, no," he responded after a brief hesitation, his eyes fixated at the empty ranch-style house down the road.

"Then it would be a trial by fire," Azerda answered bluntly, strapping the revolver to her hoof and tugging firmly on the handle to make sure the weapon was fixed in place just behind the fetlock.

"You could at least give some words of encouragement before we get into a potential gunfight," Trace grumbled and leaned back against the seat.

"What do you want me to say? I learned how to shoot at creatures the hard way during the war."

"I would prefer if we can talk them into giving themselves up first," he argued before detecting a bright red Lightmotor 88 station wagon driving down the road. Trace's eyes followed the car as it pulled over onto the empty ranch house's driveway; the Lightmotor was totally occupied in every seat, and he could spot a beige hippogriff sitting on the front passenger side. "Brack Marsh is here. Let's wait for Izavel to show up before we give the signal."

A few minutes later, Izavel trotted down Barracuda Drive from the left, approaching the empty house and surveyed his surroundings uneasily. The zebra had been dropped a few blocks from Barracuda Drive onto an arterial road by Water Spout. "Izavel's stuck to his part of the plan," Trace added. "At least he didn't try to make a run for it."

Brack Marsh exited the vehicle, raising a claw to get Izavel's attention. He was dressed quite plainly in a khaki bush jacket, and while it was too far away for the zebra mare to spot, she could notice something black holstered on Brack's side. "Something doesn't feel right here," Azerda said.

Trace turned to Azerda. "What's wrong?"

She pointed to the car. "If this is just a normal meeting, Brack Marsh doesn't need to bring so many grunts with him. You don't bring a full team out, unless..." she paused and sat up straight. "Damn it, we're sending Izavel straight into a death-trap!"

Trace bit his lip. "I don't want to get civilians killed. But if Izavel doesn't get closer, we can't catch their guard down. There's a chance they could get away," he retorted.

Azerda took another glance at Brack's vehicle, which was aligned just behind Trace’s Buck. It’s unorthodox, but it could work… "If you don't mind the police department having one wrecked car, I might have an idea."

Further down Barracuda Drive, Izavel trotted towards the red car, pulling the straps around his saddlebags. A beige hippogriff beckoned one of his passengers, a pale green hippogriff mare, to trot out of the vehicle. "Zargon be damned, I can’t believe I’m doing this," he murmured under his breath.

“Izavel! Nice to meet you again,” Brack greeted, idly tossing and catching a thick roll of shell bills with his claw. The grunt stood next to him, carrying a familiar Thundersplash submachine gun – the same kind that had been used in the North Zebrican War.

Izavel halted some distance from the two, briefly glancing around at the nearby houses. He estimated that he was a good five meters from one of the house's walls. "Looks like you've got my pay," the zebra remarked, his tone barely hiding his suspicion, "but I'm confused. What's the armed backup for?"

"Well, how do I put this...this might be the last shipment we're getting from here in a while. The defense corpos are catching up to our antics," Brack explained, pacing a few steps forward towards Izavel. "Fortunately, I know a couple of griffon associates in Talcara where we can continue our operations once we get the equipment onto the next ship north."

Brack beckoned with his claw to the grunt next to him – on command, she leveled her submachine gun at Izavel's chest. "Oh! I nearly forgot to mention," he added as he unholstered his M981 pistol, flicking off the safety and pointing it at the zebra. "You're not coming with us."

Izavel inched back and glared defiantly at the two. He had that nagging feeling that the arms dealer was going to backstab him, but the area was too open for him to plan out his escape. Even if he did escape, Izavel had doubts on whether he could outrun a flying hippogriff.

The sound of a police siren pulled him away from his thoughts as the zebra noticed a roaring car barreling its way down and towards the Lightmotor, leaving behind a blur of red and blue from its rotating lights. "What in Tartarus?" the green hippogriff shouted, reflexively spreading her wings and jumping back to get away from the police vehicle's path.

The other two henchgriffs in the vehicle were less fortunate; a rosy red hippogriff frantically opened the right car door to jump out, but was much too late; the speeding car smashed into the Lightmotor's left broadside in a flurry of glass and scrap, the front crumpling into the driver's side of the Lightmotor. The red hippogriff was slammed out of the vehicle, scraping himself on the ground as the impacted vehicle skidded several meters onto the road. The other peach-colored passenger had much less time to react, taking the brunt of the impact and slamming his head onto the seat with an unnatural crack.

"An be damned, what's going on?" Brack Marsh exclaimed, his head darting around as three other police vehicles rushed down the road with their sirens blaring. He noticed Izavel galloping off behind the wall of a nearby house. With an angered growl, he fired his pistol twice at Izavel's direction, missing both shots before the zebra managed to reach cover.

Down the road, the green mare fired her submachine gun wildly at the wrecked Buck, peppering the cracked rear windshield until the pane finally shattered into pieces. She stopped firing and chuckled, the leather seats now riddled with bullet holes. But her face turned to suspicion and then shock when she flew closer to the vehicle, noticing a complete lack of blood coating the interior, much less a lifeless body lying on the driver's wheel.

She was only able to catch sight of a satchel wedged against the gas pedal when she heard three gunshots behind her. The gun jerked out of her claw as if it had been kicked, and after a sharp, agonizing pain, the mercenary subconsciously raised her claw to feel the fresh wounds on her chest. Her wings ceased flapping, and she fell face down onto the pavement.

"I was wondering when you would finish," Azerda muttered, quickly popping her head back up from the stone fence to see a red hippogriff crawling out of the vehicle, while Brack Marsh had retreated back behind the Lightmotor for cover, grabbing an automatic rifle from the car trunk.

"WPD! Get on the ground and put your claws behind your neck!" Trace shouted from the rooftop of a house, armed with a semi-automatic rifle. "You're surrounded, Brack Marsh! How long do you think you can hold out?"

The red hippogriff lying on the road was quick to comply, but Brack Marsh responded back with a barrage of bullets from his Breeze automatic rifle towards Trace’s general direction. “You come any closer and you’re dead!”

Trace shot back in retaliation, one of the bullets nicking Brack Marsh on the right claw. He heard a sharp groan of pain from Brack, who retreated back behind the car. The red hippogriff nearby desperately covered his body, trying his best to be as small of a target as possible. "Watch your fire! We've got civilians around here!" Trace added.

"I overheard your entire conversation," Azerda snorted, crawling behind the stone fence to get closer to Lightmotor. She swiftly unloaded the half-used moonclip, replacing it with a new one. It's definitely a Breeze automatic. I know that report from anywhere. "You think those Wingbardian gangsters would harbor you? You have nowhere to run!"

Brack fired back again, this time at the zebra mare, though it didn't take long for the automatic rifle to run out of bullets with an audible click. And I know they had a tendency to run out of bullets fast, Azerda thought, shooting back twice at the hippogriff – however, both shots were unable to find their mark.

Brack grumbled while attempting to inspect the rifle – he had only managed to grab one magazine from the trunk, and exposing himself to grab another was not an option. With little choice, he pulled out his pistol and awkwardly reloaded with his non-dominant claw.

"How many bullets do you think you have in that?" Azerda added with a snort. "You're outnumbered, what, eight to one? There's more of us than you can possibly shoot down. Let's try being reasonable here!"

The zebra mare held her revolver at the Lightmotor until she saw a pistol and rifle being thrown out from the side of the car. "Fine, fine! I surrender!" Brack yelled back. Azerda huffed and kept her revolver trained at the car as the officers carefully approached the vehicle. At least the fool had a sense of self-preservation.

Azerda sat idly on the sidewalk as she saw an ambulance pick up the injured hippogriffs in front of the collided vehicles. She opened the satchel which had a bullet hole punctured through it – fortunately, the two healing potions inside were undamaged. She had contemplated using one on the hippogriff mare she just shot, but if the arrival of a coroner’s van a few minutes later was any indication, it was much too late for her unfortunate victim to be saved.

She snapped the last 11mm round onto her moonclip and slung her satchel – which had a bullet hole punctured through it – on her back. Trace flew toward her, landing with a deep sigh. "Medical Examiner Clear Cut's at the scene. Two injured, one severely injured, and one dead," Trace stated. "Does killing creatures ever get to you?"

Azerda closed her eyes momentarily and put the moon clip back into her pocket. "I don't do it unless I have to. I stopped feeling shocked about it after the first one," she returned. "Plus, she was dead before I can use a potion on her. Where's Izavel?"

Trace turned his head, spotting a puddle of blood near the crashed cars with a grimace. A zebra stallion stood near the driveway. "Izavel's fine. He's near the wreck and Spout is keeping an eye on him. Their articles are in the police van's trunk."

"Good. Check their belongings first," Azerda stood up and extended a hoof. "Gloves please."

After putting on their gloves, the two approached the back of the police van. The trunk was already open, with an assortment of items bagged and clipped with a yellow numbered tag. She could spot four wallets, two pistol holsters, and a small stack of shell bills tied with a rubber band. "Damn. I could use the extra money right about now," Azerda commented, her eyes fixed on the wad of cash. "For safekeeping, of course."

"Azerda, focus," Trace snapped, pulling out a wallet and opening it up. Inside were two ~~S~~1 bills, a Crystalstar employee card, and a driver's license. He scanned with his claw over Brack's license:

License #: M602682. Expires: 17-09-1026. Full Name: Brack Marsh. VETERAN
Street #: 416 Driftwood St. City: Winggarden.
Gender: M. Height: 188cm. Eyes: Green. Mane: Yellow. DoB: 12-06-989.

"He's a hired gun for Crystalstar. Mr. Brack had been backstabbing the company for a while now," Trace observed, tapping his claw on the address. "It's in Tidewater, one of the new suburban housing developments they're building near the airport. We can get some officers to check out his address. He could be stashing some weapons in there."

"Likely a lone operation if he's targeting convoys. If he was being helped by a higher-up, he would be targeting Crystalstar armories. Subtler that way," Azerda replied, her hoof stopping at a wallet with a drop of blood on it. She opened it up to see a picture of the green hippogriff she had just killed, with her ID on the left reading her name: Kelp Meadow. She was twenty-eight, only a few years younger than Azerda.

The zebra mare hurriedly closed the wallet and put it back in the bag, her eyes becoming distant for a moment. Best not to dwell on the dead. I've made that mistake before one too many times.

Her attention focused on the holsters, which still had two pistols in them. One of them was Brack Marsh's M981, and Azerda surmised that the other one was from one of his henchgriffs. She picked up Brack's pistol to inspect it closely; the gun was unloaded, and she racked the slide to make sure. "K8512. It's not part of Crystalstar's weapon stock. Must be his own gun."

"You can tell by the serial number?"

Azerda nodded and put the pistol back in the bag. "Firearms produced specifically for Crystalstar use start with CR. Makes it easier to keep track of stock," she explained, closing the trunk back up. "We still need to figure out where they're stashing their weapons. Brack Marsh was with his gang – they had to be going somewhere."

Trace moved towards the crashed vehicles and rubbed his forehead. The police Buck had collided against the Lightmotor's left side with such force that the front hood had folded into the car doors. "By An's name, I'm either going to get a pay raise or a disciplinary citation after all this..."

Azerda trotted behind him, waving her hoof at Izavel and Water Spout along the way. Izavel returned with a scowl. "Thanks for almost getting me killed, 'aytma'," he deadpanned.

She put down her hoof. "We didn't know they came armed. I had to think of something fast," Azerda defended before taking off her hat; her tone was more sincere than normal. "Samhi, Izwel – sorry. I don't want civilians getting killed."

Izavel huffed. "What about the payment slip?"

"Consider it gone," Azerda responded. "Only Trace and I know about the truth, and we promised to stay quiet. I can't guarantee that you won't get punished, but the Crown Attorney could give you a much lighter sentence for helping us."

"Thanks, I suppose," Izavel said less severely. "Anyways, Miss Azerda, I saw a paper note on the front passenger seat. Must have been knocked out when you crashed into it. Be careful with the glass."

"Good eye, Izavel," Azerda commended, trotting to the right side of the Lightmotor. A cursory look at the back showed a bloodied spot where one of the unlucky grunts had taken the brunt of the crash.

Trace was already at the trunk, packed with several firearms from light machine guns to shotguns and most disturbingly a white body bag. "Military-grade equipment. Imagine if some thugs got their claws on that kind of firepower," he muttered, picking up a Cloudfall rifle to examine the top of the chamber. "CR8746. It's one of Crystalstar's guns, Azerda."

"It's only a small fraction of what they stole," Azerda stated, opening the relatively intact front right door. The paper note Izavel had mentioned before lay on the seat with a few shards of glass scattered around. She cautiously picked up and read the note.

48 Winggarden Airport, Terminal A
292 Spring Plaza Hotel
△ ADJUST -2

"They don't appear to be addresses...they're POIs. Too busy to stash any weapons without getting noticed. What do the numbers mean, then?" Azerda murmured to herself. Her hoof extended into the vehicle to pull the glove box latch; a map and a protractor were inside.

"What did you find, Azerda?" Trace asked as she exited the vehicle.

"A paper note, map, and a protractor. The last one doesn't seem like something gun runners would usually carry," Azerda answered, unfolding the map open and placing it on the ground. It was a map of Winggarden, colored in shades of yellow and white with lines drawn almost parallel to each other. “Not something you would usually find in a travel guide.”

Finding both locations was easy enough for Azerda. Winggarden Municipal Airport was northeast of the city, located on undeveloped land. It was formerly a Royal Arisian Air Force base up until Legation occupation, and once the foreign occupiers had left it was repurposed into a civilian airport. Spring Plaza was located just west of downtown – it was an imposing, 20-floor luxury Art Deco hotel with Karthinian Revivalist elements, seen in its clay-tiled exterior and flat roofs covered by cornices. The hotel had a rooftop sign that was lit at night and visible from almost anywhere in the city.

"It's some kind of coded message, I'm sure of it," Azerda continued, pulling out a pencil from her satchel and marking both locations with a dot. "Brack wanted to make sure whoever got their claws on the note wouldn't be able to decipher it easily."

"They aren't addresses, so perhaps the numbers refer to the distance in some kind of unit?" Trace suggested. "We can always go to Seashore Medical Center to question Brack Marsh."

Azerda shook her head. "No, the locations are too far away to be in meters, or yards as those Equestrians love using so much. We can argue about less common units, but it doesn't seem likely," she reasoned. "And if we go to the hospital, that gives the remainder of Brack's lackeys too many hours to move the guns around. They'll start getting suspicious if Brack doesn't show up."

"I've seen these kinds of maps before," Izavel interrupted behind them. Azerda looked back. "It's a topographic map. I've used those when I worked as a military engineer for surveying. First thing you learn is how to read them."

Azerda showed the paper note to Izavel. "You have any clue what this says, then?"

Izavel grabbed the note, briefly scanned it, then gazed at the map afterwards. "I can make a fair guess. The numbers look like bearings. On the field, you only need a compass and two landmarks to figure out where you are."

"Triangulation," Trace summarized, snapping his claw as if he had made a revelation. "That explains the triangle symbol we found on the note."

Azerda gave Trace a befuddled stare. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"You form a triangle with three points: your current location and two other locations in the distance," Trace clarified. "The two angles from those measured points always converge onto one unique point."

"Great, I feel like I'm back in high school again," Azerda groaned, planting a hoof on her face in exasperation. Maybe that's why I skipped classes. "What's the 'adjust' line at the bottom, then?"

Izavel tapped his hoof where the two arrows were at the bottom, with the arrow on the left written "2°03' W". "That would be declination. We'll have to subtract two degrees from both angles to account for true north. That's 46° and 290°. Make sure to align the angles with the northern arrow."

Azerda grumbled as she measured the angles with the protractor and drew the lines. The two lines converged onto a building indicated by a black rectangle along Reed Street. "That's near the industrial rail yards east of downtown," she pointed out. "Next time we get one of these maps, you draw the lines, Trace. I just remembered why I hated math again."

"I know that place," Izavel added. "That's Midtown, a few blocks down from where I work. Lots of warehouses and factories there."

"So now we have two addresses to investigate: Brack's home and the industrial building," Trace recalled. "Both seem like plausible places to hide weapons, especially if Brack was trying to hide the second address. Which one should we go to first?"

"Both," Azerda replied, folding the map back up. "They might have comms with each other. If we target one location, that gives them time to react in the other. We'll split up and target both. I'll go to the Reed Street building."

"So you're calling the shots now?" Trace questioned.

Azerda waved her hoof dismissively. "Screw you. Tidewater's several kilometers outside the city limits and I can't drive a car. At least there's a tram to Midtown that I can catch in about ten minutes."

Izavel looked at the two. "Do both of you normally argue this much?"

"I just met her, Izavel. She takes a little getting used to," Trace rolled his eyes. He was going to need a new ride.

1-5: Graveyard Shift

Trace glimpsed up at the rear view mirror as he drove down the road heading out of Winggarden. The vehicles on the road dwindled down late in the evening, which gave him a few minutes to adjust to the handling of his Kessler Mainline that he had to borrow from a fellow officer.

The detective glimpsed at a sign on the road, reading in clean white text: "Tidewater City Limits: Est. 1018". The borders between the two were beyond mere administrative lines on a map – as he drove past the sign the road widened and was more brightly lit, fronted by gas stations and strip malls with ample space to park one's vehicle. It felt like an entirely different place, almost like the seediness that permeated Winggarden never existed in Tidewater.

Trace turned onto a local road, pulling over onto the side of the road to check the marked map. Rivermark Street was a quiet neighborhood street with houses spread out in generously sized lots, even larger than the ones in suburban Winggarden neighborhoods like Marina Heights. The painted exteriors and slight variations in doors and windows did little to break the houses' uniformity. The neighborhood's inconspicuous enough to hide a smuggling ring. Perhaps that's why it was beneath notice for so long.

He grabbed the radio mic and pressed down on the side button. "WPD Detective Trace, 2434, requesting a Code 6A to available TPD units for a 487 ongoing investigation."

A few seconds later the radio speaker returned a female voice, faintly interfered by static. "Message received, Detective. Backup will arrive in a couple minutes."

Afterwards, he turned off the engine and exited the car, locking the doors. Trace promptly pulled the Army Special from his coat, loading the cylinder with all six bullets. The house of interest was just down the road, a plain red single-floor house and one car garage. Only one of the windows was lit and had their curtains closed – Trace did not want to risk attracting attention with his vehicle.

Trace took a deep breath and approached the front door, giving it a short knock. He heard hoofsteps from behind the door, and a few seconds later the door swung open. A short, teal hippogriff looked up at Trace, widening his eyes in surprise.

"Hello, citizen. This is Detective Trace Drizzle. Your house is a major point of interest to an ongoing investigation," Trace introduced calmly. He glanced down at the hippogriff's apparel, spotting a faint bulge near his elbow. "Are you familiar with a Mr.Brack Marsh, by any chance?"

The hippogriff glanced away momentarily. "...Not that I know of, no."

"And you're living alone in this house?"

"Yes, sir," he answered more quickly.

"I see," Trace focused on the room behind him – the living room lacked furniture and decoration beyond a few wooden crates and chairs. A radio sat at a nearby end table. "I did a brief check on this house before I came here and the records say this house has been vacant for weeks. I'm afraid I have reasonable suspicion to conduct a full search of this house."

"Sure thing. Come right on in," the hippogriff replied. He trotted a pace back before suddenly swinging his arm to pull something below his shirt sleeve. Trace widened his eyes. Damn it! Before he could pull out the suspicious bulge out, a shot rang out from Trace's revolver, hitting him squarely in the shoulder. The suspect dropped his pistol onto the wooden floor. "Aaagh!"

"I had my gun ready on you this whole time. It's all about reaction," Trace added as calmly as he could, walking into the house and kicking the pistol away. He trembled subtly as he noticed the hippogriff's fur staining with blood below his shoulder. "You shouldn't have made things difficult. You're with Brack Marsh's gang, aren't you? What's your name?"

The hippogriff grunted and swore something beneath his tongue. "Screw you, bastard! Get me a doctor!" he shouted.

"If you want treatment, you better start answering some questions," Trace retorted, stepping on his back and restraining the suspect's wings and rear hooves. He scanned at the crates a second time; upon closer observation, the front of the crate was stenciled in bright yellow: "ARISIAN CARBINE, CALIBER 8mm". More smuggled guns. "Brack Marsh and his friends are in custody. You're not going to be getting any money from them anymore."

"Ngh...Seasmoke. Brack Marsh hired me to stay back in our hideout...didn't trust me to go out with him for bigger jobs," Seasmoke answered with a pained grunt, pressing his shoulder in an ineffectual attempt to stop the bleeding.

Trace trotted to the bathroom adjacent to the living room, returning back seconds later with a rag. He threw it in front of Seasmoke. "Who were your gang selling the weapons to? You've got enough here to arm a whole company."

Seasmoke grabbed the rag and pressed it against his wound. "Look, I'm a lowly henchgriff for Brack Marsh. Why don't you ask him?" he replied.

Trace slammed the crate. "Don't play dumb with me. Surely in the months you've been with him, you would have heard some chit-chat here and there. I can assure you, some officers won't be nearly as nice about gathering information."

"The...the Passerinis. They’re one of the four big Wingbardian families. They would get their guns from the Tiger Syndicate in Colthage, but the Tigers are as good as gone. Brack Marsh had been working as a Passerini informant since the Legation, but now he's interested in putting his claws in the arms trade."

I've heard of those Colthaginian cartels before, but that's the first time I've heard of that family. Trace unloaded Seasmoke's pistol and stored it in his bag. He then pushed open the crate lid; the crate was filled with multiple service rifles, carbines, and pistols, and he promptly spotted the CR serial numbers on the guns' chambers. "Do the Passerinis have a foothold here in Winggarden?"

"Not the button griffs, no," Seasmoke said, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. His neck and face were covered in cold sweat. "The family is based in Feathara. You ain't gonna catch them. But they might have associates planted here. That's all I know."

Trace huffed and looked at the radio on the end table. It was a rather simple radio set with a transceiver attached to it on a cord. "In Brack Marsh's vehicle, I found a map that led to two different locations. One of my partners is on their way to the other location near the rail yard. Mind telling me what your gang was doing there?" he questioned.

Seasmoke leaned back against the wall. "I never saw any map...it sounds like something only Brack Marsh's eyes would see."

Trace pointed to the radio. "And this? I'm not convinced you had this to listen to amateur radio." The hippogriff detective grabbed Seasmoke's injured arm, jostling it to aggravate his wound. "I don't want to do this, but my partner's life is on the line. Tell me who's at the rail yard!"

"A-agh! I get it!" Seasmoke exclaimed as Trace let go. "It's one of our other hideouts, the one where we store most of our smuggled equipment. We keep some of them here as a contingency, but if we bring too many weapons here, the residents nearby would notice. It's in a storage warehouse, a bit off the road. There aren't that many at the warehouse; I think most of them were with Brack Marsh. We use the radio to communicate with each other on a regular basis."

"Do you have their frequency? What time do you usually contact them?"

"...910 kilocycles. And around eight in the evening."

Trace picked up the transceiver and flicked on the radio; it abruptly came into life with a barrage of white noise, mixed with the faint sounds of conversation and music. He turned the dial clockwise and looked at the small clock on the radio. 7:54.

7:54. Azerda rolled her sleeve down over her watch and sighed, strapping the revolver onto her hoof. The last tram home comes at 10. The sooner I can get this over with, the better.

A freight train blew its horn as the locomotive slowly trudged its way through the rail yard. Long chains of railcars sat empty on the maintenance tracks, covered in dust and tagged extensively with graffiti. In front of her stood a faded white brick warehouse with boarded-up windows and a faded blue sign reading: "Blue Sea Fruits". The building was surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire extended all the way to the building’s walls to deter would-be trespassers from flying over the fence. The gate was covered in a thick padlock with a bold white board warning: "PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT".

Azerda gently shook the gate, giving the lock a short tug. Cheap padlock. She sat down and grabbed the padlock firmly with one hoof before slamming her other hoof onto the lock body, jostling the shackle open. The zebra mare threw the lock away and removed the chains bounding the gates in place, slowly pushing the gate forward to allow just enough space for her to slide through.

She trotted down the side of the warehouse's featureless brick wall, bending her hooves slightly to muffle their clopping. As she approached the corner, Azerda could hear the faint sounds of creatures' conversing. She took a quick peek past the corner, noticing a set of two steel garage doors with one wide open. Two hippogriffs sat at a round table with a pile of playing cards on the table below a fluorescent lamp – a Greaser submachine gun lay against the table leg. She let out a huff. Some backup would have helped.

"Wonder what's taking Seasmoke so long," the light orange hippogriff mumbled, knocking his claw on the table and placing his cards on the table. "Show your hand."

The violet hippogriff showed her hand. "Ugh. That's what, 16 points? You win this one, Alcove," she said, picking up the cards and shuffling them into the deck. "He's always late when it comes to those radio transmissions."

"Brack Marsh hasn't come back to the warehouse yet. Those Wingbardians are going to check out our gun stash by tomorrow night. We need to get all of the guns here now," Alcove complained. The radio suddenly buzzed behind them. He stood up from his chair. "Wait. I think that's Seasmoke."

The two hippogriffs turned to focus on the ham radio. Azerda loaded her revolver, trotting slowly into the warehouse and making her way to the front of a parked freight truck. On the wall opposite to her was a fuse box next to a metal door. She closed her left eye. "...any creature...bzzt...update on the convoy..." a garbled voice came out of the speaker.

Alcove grumbled and adjusted the dials on the radio sets. "Damn! Useless piece of junk."

"Could be interference from other broadcasts," the violet hippogriff said.

"Shouldn't have set up so close to downtown," Alcove snorted and squelched the transmitter. "Seasmoke, is the housekeeper with you? He hasn't come back home from work yet."

"Not with us...could be late..." the radio voice responded after several seconds of silence.

Alcove frowned. "Cascade, get one of the vehicles ready. Whoever this is, it doesn't sound like Seasmoke. He doesn't know our code."

"What are we going to do? Brack Marsh isn't with us," Cascade asked concernedly.

"Forget him. We're going to pack up whatever we can and get out of here."

The lights suddenly switched off as he finished his sentence. Alcove abruptly picked up his submachine gun, flicking off the safety and charging the handle. "What's going on?" Cascade exclaimed.

"Guns down and claws behind your back," Azerda ordered. The stallion aimed the weapon at the direction of the voice in the darkness.

"Got some nerve coming in here alone. Should have known that the cops would have caught up to Brack Marsh's scheme sooner or later," Alcove remarked. "You've walked into your funeral, flathoof."

“Really? Could have shot you while you were busy playing gin,” she retorted, her voice coming from a different direction. “Not going to ask again. Guns down. Claws behind your back.”

A flurry of gunfire cracked out from the table, illuminating the two hippogriffs' faces with abrupt flashes. Azerda reflexively ducked down and trotted away from the metal shelves; the crates stacked on the shelves were peppered with bullet holes. "Aaagh!" the zebra shouted with an agonizing groan, the sound of something clattering on the ground followed by a heavy thump.

After that followed seconds of silence, followed by a gurgled cough. Azerda let it die out sickeningly, like the life being snuffed out from a dying soldier. She could hear the two hippogriffs laughing to each other while she slowly crawled her way out of the spot. "What an idiot," Cascade cackled as she lowered her rifle. "There's only one switch in this place. Did she possibly think we wouldn't know where she would be?"

"She's not dead yet," Alcove said, abruptly firing a short burst into the shelves, narrowly whizzing just past Azerda's hooves and ricocheting off the concrete floor. He slid the box magazine out from his submachine gun, reloaded a fresh one into the magazine well with a soft click, and cocked the handle. "Turn the lights on. We need to get rid of her body."

Azerda held her breath and opened her left eye, dilated from the lack of light. She could hear the soft flapping of wings and a darkened silhouette hover in front of her, close enough for her to get a clear shot.

Cascade swung open the fuse box and grabbed the switch before hesitating. "Say, I didn't here her sh–"

The Littlehoof strained against Azerda's ribs as she unloaded two bullets onto the hippogriff's back. One tore through Cascade’s chest, then another went through the back of her head, spraying a streak across Azerda’s cheek that left a slight metallic taste on the edge of her lip. A sharp yelp came from Cascade before she collapsed onto the ground, the darkness sparing Azerda from the grislier details.

She had little time to focus as another burst of gunfire flew towards her, forcing her to swiftly jump out of the way. “Cheeky bitch!” Alcove shouted, retreating back behind a nearby canning machine for cover.

Azerda blinked from the gun flashes and stood back up. The surroundings blackened around her vision. Adaptation’s gone. Going for the switch was out of the question for her; she would be exposed and vulnerable the moment she turned the lights on. I'll have to go blind.

It was a little more than a decade ago, but Azerda knew well about how the Chiropterran Legionaries fought – they were primarily composed of Thestrals who had natural night-vision, and their soldiers had a fanatical devotion to the Nightmare that made them ruthless in combat. One had to adapt to how they fought if they wanted to survive in the Nightmare Front.

Azerda did more than just adapt.

A faint click sounded in the dark. Fifteen meters, two o’clock. Azerda raised her revolver in that direction and fired. The bullet bounced off the canning machine's metal plating.

Alcove fired another burst at Azerda's direction – one of the bullets grazed through the mare's rear right hoof. She grunted as she barely stumbled behind a stack of wooden pallets. "I saw your face, zebra. You're not one of the coppers, aren't you?" the hippogriff said with a chuckle. "Would make a getaway a whole lot easier."

Azerda closed her eyes briefly and took a deep, strained breath. A red streak trailed down from her hoof. The wound wasn't deep, but the pain was affecting her ability to focus, much less make a gallop away. Damn it...too rusty! His voice visualized a rough area in Azerda's mind where she should be aiming; he was no more than twenty meters in her twelve o'clock direction.

"Nothing to say, huh? Should have known you stripebacks don't know how to fight," Alcove taunted before a bullet hit the crate next to him. He smirked as he peeked out of the pressing machine to aim his submachine gun. Idiot. Her muzzle flash is exposing herself. You're good as–

Three more shots went out. Alcove felt his grip slacken on his Greaser and instinctively felt the two fresh punctures on his chest, caking his claw in crimson. The pain soon followed as he collapsed, dropping his submachine gun with a clatter.

Azerda flicked on the lights, revealing the incapacitated hippogriff stallion. He struggled to get up and tried to cry out, but only managed to cough blood onto the concrete floor. "Save the trash-talking when your target's actually down," the zebra said coolly, dumping the empty shells and reloading a new moon clip into the revolver as she trotted towards him. "Should have taken my offer."

Alcove sluggishly crawled towards the submachine gun, seemingly ignoring the zebra."Really? You're still going to try that?" Azerda rolled her eyes and bucked his claws. He convulsed and collapsed again as his claws buckled, lying face upward to reveal his bloodied chest. The hippogriff heaved and sputtered violently.

Drowning on his own blood. He'll die in minutes without treatment. The zebra glanced at the unconscious Cascade nearby, who was still breathing despite her head wound. Something made Azerda hesitate, as for a moment, instead of seeing a hippogriff, she saw the dying body of a young tan thestral lying on a forest clearing. The Chiropterran mare lay there, glaring with hate at Azerda as she pulled back the bolt of her Springtide rifle to chamber a fresh round.

There might have been a time where the young zebra mare would have felt sick to the stomach. But now, she felt nothing as she aimed her rifle point blank at the thestral's muzzle. Eleven.

Azerda blinked as the thestral suddenly disappeared. A vague sense of discomfort washed through her. She let out a sigh and retrieved a single healing potion and a set of plastic cuffs from her satchel, restraining Alcove's wings and claws. "Drink up, hookbeak," Azerda snapped, uncorking the bright red healing potion. The hippogriff stared at her in confusion.

After several seconds of struggling to swallow the potion fluid into his throat between his regular gasps for air, the hippogriff's bleeding magically began to slow. Azerda stopped pouring after the potion was half full. "This won't come close to healing your injuries, but at least you won't be dead before the cops show up," Azerda explained, standing up as Alcove could finally breathe once more. "Now it's your friend's turn. And if you know what's good for you, you'll shut up unless I ask you something."

Azerda trotted to Cascade afterwards to do the same thing, restraining her with cuffs and pouring the remainder of the potion into her mouth. Once she finished, she sat down next to the body and rubbed her forehead. "Now's not the time to have one of those memories, Zmamrta..." Azerda muttered, taking slow breaths from her nose. She pulled out the second potion from her satchel and a small bottle of alcohol, being sure to disinfect her graze wound before swigging the healing potion in a few gulps; healing potions merely accelerated a creature's natural healing, and Azerda had learned of the nasty effects of internal wound infections.

The mare stood back up once her wound had stopped bleeding, trotting towards the table to pick up the radio. A key ring with three keys lay next to the transceiver. Whoever was on the other side, they didn't sound like one of Brack Marsh's henchgriffs. Azerda picked up the transceiver and clicked the button. "Any creature there?"

She waited a few seconds before a response came. "Who's asking?"

"A private detective. You're not Seasmoke, aren't you?"

Trace sighed. "Azerda? What did you find? I found some smuggled equipment at the Tidewater house."

"Nothing yet except two injured thugs," Azerda said, picking up the key ring. "Get some griffs in blue and some paramedics here before they need a coroner."

"Well, I've got one injured here too. I'll arrange one in a couple minutes."

Azerda cut the transmission and did a swift search around the warehouse. Most of the building had abandoned canning machines and empty tin cans and jars. Fortunately, she didn't find any moldy fruits – she couldn't stand the smell otherwise. Azerda unlocked the metal door with one of the keys; she assumed the other two were for the chain fence gate and the truck.

Azerda pushed the door open slowly, keeping her revolver drawn in the off-chance that there was some other waiting behind that door. She lowered her gun once the room was cleared. It was a simple office converted into a makeshift storage room, with several crates of Crystalstar equipment. Azerda opened one of the crates to check; inside was dozens of pistols, submachine guns, and rifles, worth at least several Shells by her estimates. Enough for a long summer vacation to the Les Meridiennes. Looks like my job is done.

She prepared to close the crate's lid before seeing something stick out of the lid's corner. Azerda paused and pushed the lid all the way, spotting a slip of paper taped to the lid's bottom. Or maybe not. Azerda carefully peeled the scotch tape off the note, making sure not to tear into the paper. Once the note was fully removed, she read the scribbled contents:

Blue Fuzz: 04-03-24 S100 | Overdraft: 22-03-24 S80
Spot Light: 02-04-24 S70 | Cordon: 26-04-24 S100
Sweetwater: 03-05-24 S90

Azerda checked the rest of the room for any hidden evidence. Not finding anything else of interest, she trotted back down to the stairs to show the slip to Alcove, who managed to recover enough to sit back up. "Alright, got any ideas who these names are?" she interrogated.

Alcove groaned and tried to catch his breath. "You...got that from Brack Marsh's office? Could be a list of bribes. Or money he got from the Passerinis. Other than that, I have no clue."

Azerda folded the paper in half, hearing the faint, approaching sounds of police sirens. Interesting. It's irrelevant to the case, but now there's another piece of evidence I need answers for, she thought as she stuffed the note into her front pocket. "The Passerinis. One of the Wingbardian families. That's who you're working for?"

The hippogriff nodded his head. "I guess you're one of Crystalstar's hired hooves," he said, smirking weakly. "So you're familiar with them."

"At least that explains how Brack Marsh was able to plan this out. And they only targeted Crystalstar shipments. My guess is that some rival company wanted to undermine the profits from the company that I work for," Azerda surmised. "But I have no proof of that."

"Now...a question from me. Why did you save me?" Alcove questioned.

Azerda hesitated. "I'm a detective, not a mercenary. No point in finishing off some griff who's not a threat anymore," she answered as the policegriffs landed in front of the warehouse doors. "Plus, I can't question dead suspects."

She began to trot away, noticing a familiar patrolgriff stallion who was quick to greet her with a salute. "The two thugs are right behind me, Spout. And the rest of Crystalstar's missing equipment," Azerda said. "Tell Trace that I'm calling it a day."

Water Spout blinked and lowered his arm. "You're...not going to stick around to see Trace?" he asked.

"I've got a late night tram to catch," Azerda answered. "And I think we'll be seeing each other soon."

The trip lasted almost an hour.

Azerda sat quietly on a bench near the back tram door. The tram interior was virtually empty, besides a few drunken hippogriffs sleeping in the rearmost seats. The tram suddenly came to a stop along a busy intersection, next to Good Neighbor Pharmacy. The pharmacy's doors and windows were barricaded with metal bars to deter burglars. Further down the pharmacy's wall was a filthy zebra mare rummaging through an overflowing trash can. "Royal and Mayfair," the driver announced, and with a hiss, the tram doors opened.

The Near North wasn't nearly as economically deprived as Communication Hill, but here the roughness still showed; zebra and pony refugees populated the majority of apartments in the Near North, though they were able to eke out a modest living and founded their own local shops, theaters, and restaurants. Those who weren't so fortunate, however, were consigned to sleeping in tents or on the benches of bus stops.

Azerda trotted off the tram and looked at the homeless mare. She pulled out a Shell coin from her satchel. "Get yourself some food, Jezella. The liquor store doesn't close until midnight."

Jezalla stared at Azerda with her faded blue eyes and unkempt mane before accepting the coin. "...Thanks. Good night, Azerda."

Azerda continued trotting down the road, making a right turn onto a narrow residential street. After trotting past a few low-rise buildings and bungalows, she unlocked the metal gate of her three-floor apartment: 232 Hope Drive. The corners of the yellow stucco apartment were laid with stone brick and roofed with terracotta tiles in a vaguely Arisian style – the sides of the apartment were much less picturesque, however, being dedicated to car parking with windows periodically spaced along a plain wall.

Azerda then opened the front door and climbed up the stairs to the third floor. The narrow, wooden-floored hallways had a few burnt light bulbs that hadn't been replaced in weeks and the faint smell of mothballs. She stopped in front of the door for apartment 36 and unlocked it, flicking the lights on inside. Home sweet home.

It was a simple one-bed unit with four rooms. The living room had a creamy beige armchair next to a bookshelf and an end table with a telephone and lamp, along with a small square dining table with two seats. A radio set sat in the opposite corner, and on top of it was a black cat lying idly with his paw laying over the radio's edge, staring at Azerda. "Hey, Spectre," she greeted with a yawn before noticing an envelope on the ground, presumably slipped through from the bottom of the door. The top of the box was stamped in a purple, diamond-shaped "CS".

Spectre let out a long meow. Azerda rolled her eyes, picked up the envelope, and trotted into the kitchen. The kitchen had an old gas stove, a metal sink, and a refrigerator just below her height; there wasn't much room for cabinet storage. The zebra mare searched the shelves below the sink and pulled out a packet of cat food. Spectre continued to meow incessantly all the time until she dumped the dry pellets into a bowl. "By Za'al, you are one annoying cat..." she grumbled.

Azerda then took out a paper knife from one of the drawers and cut open the envelope. Inside she found a check, signed from Crystalstar to her name with ~~S~~600 as promised in her contract. More than enough money to pay for food, utilities, and rent for the next three months. It would be a while before she got her next case, but for now, her personal finances weren't a problem.

She placed the check on the dining table and trotted into her bedroom. The room was economical in space, including a sky blue single bed, a nightstand, and a wooden work desk. A wall-mounted closet was tucked next to the door, with a small mirror and drawers for her clothes.

Azerda took off her clothes, placed the check on the nightstand, and lay onto the bed. She couldn't be bothered to take a shower, at least not until she got some rest. The zebra glanced at the dimly lit ceiling and took a long breath.

What was that thestral I saw?

15 Yennayer, 186 TI/1011 ALB
Zirta, Arisian Mandate of Zumidia

"You know, we don't take delinquents."

The pale green hippogriff military mare put down the enlistment papers and stared at the eighteen-year old zebra. The zebra took a puff of her cigarette, filling the room with nicotine smoke. The post office of Zirta was a minority of buildings left unscathed after the Storm War, being converted into a recruitment office for the Royal Arisian Army. The young zebra's cheek had a dirty bandage below her stripes where she had recently gotten into a fight with local thugs.

"I thought you hippogriffs needed more bodies at the front," the zebra snorted, dabbing the spent cigarette into the ashtray. "My papers show I'm healthy. So what seems to be the problem, Mrs. Breeze?"

"We need griffs and ponies who are loyal to the Arisian cause, Miss Zamarata!" Gulf Breeze exclaimed, pounding her claws onto the table. "Not naive teenagers who think they can play mercenaries!"

Azerda let out a fleeting cough and leaned forward. She would have corrected the officer, but the Arisians had misspelled her surname on her identification papers, and it was too late to change it now. "You're ruling over our lands, and you expect us Zumidians to show loyalty?" she retorted and took out another cigarette from her pack. She needed another smoke. "My dad was killed by the Storm King. The hometown you're standing on was burnt to ash years ago. And I may have skipped class and stolen food. But I did all that because I needed to survive."

She flicked her lighter and lit her cigarette. "And this is still my home. And now, those thestral bastards and Zarcid rats want to take it all from me again," Azerda finished, taking another deep inhale from the thin tube. "So please, ma'am. Let me do something with my life for once."

Gulf Breeze stared at Azerda silently for several seconds before finally speaking. "You sure you want to join, Zamarata? We have limited information on these Chiropterrans, but from what we know from ponies and zebras fleeing from Tobuck, they are brutal and merciless," the recruiter warned. "You may not survive...or worse, you'll be captured for whatever cruel experiments they have in mind. I want you to be aware of the risks involved."

"I'll be dead anyways if I don't do anything."

Gulf Breeze pulled out a stamp and pressed it onto Azerda's enlistment sheet. "Welcome to the Zumidian Auxiliary Corps, Miss Zamarata."

2-1: Into the Fire

20 Yunyu, 199 TI/1024 ALB
232 Hope Drive, Winggarden

It was too early in the morning for the phone to be ringing.

Azerda struggled in her bed as the ringing in the living room continued, feeling an unexpected weight on her stomach in the dark. Her hooves stumbled onto the nightstand lamp. As the room illuminated, her eyes struggled to adapt to the suddenly brightened room; she saw Spectre suddenly stand up from her bed and jump off onto the floor.

Glad to know I'm still alive, at least, Azerda thought, glancing at the clock with a groan. The hands read 4:28. She had a good feeling that if anyone would be calling her at this time of the day, it had to be Crystalstar. This better be good.

Azerda sluggishly trotted to the living room, careful not to walk into Spectre along the way. Spectre's dark fur blended easily in the dark, and it was difficult to spot him if it weren't for his bright, topaz-colored eyes. She hastily flicked the light switch there and put the telephone hoofset near her ear. "Who's this?" she grumbled, slumping onto the beige armchair.

"Miss Zamarata. Apologies for the unexpected call, but the company requires your service urgently," the voice said. The caller had a firmly uniform and neutral voice, making it difficult to distinguish their gender, much less their nationality. Must be some kind of voice-altering crystal. Crystalstar likes to hide their tracks.

"What kind of case are we talking about here?" Azerda asked.

"An important figure of Crystalstar Corporation, Sirocco, has been found dead, along with an unknown cadaver in a house fire. The company suspects foul play. Winggarden PD officers are already at the scene. 142 Bay Drive. Your compensation will be ~~S~~1000. The company will reimburse any transit fees incurred."

Arson and murder, most likely. Azerda generally avoided making assumptions before examining the scene, but the company must have been confident about the crime if they wanted to call her. Spectre idly walked in front of her, pressing his black fur against her hooves. "Fine. I'll head there in an hour. Just give me time to get ready," she replied before placing the hoofset back on the telephone.

Azerda looked down at Spectre and gave him a brief stroke on the head. It was going to be a long day. She needed a good cup of coffee, some shakshouka, and a day's worth of food for her cat. "Damn trams don't even run this early in the morning," she muttered to Spectre. Azerda pulled away the curtains and peeked outside the window; outside of the lampposts, the street was black and devoid of activity. She sighed and picked up the phone again. "Guess I'll call a night taxi."

Echo Gardens. Should have expected a rich corporate executive would live in a place like this. The neighborhood was near the eastern borders of Winggarden, located just west of Tidewater. Despite technically being located within the city, Echo Gardens felt isolated from Winggarden; the Dry Creek Parkway split the neighborhood between the more modest Marina Heights on the east side.

Azerda made sure to stop the taxi near the main road at least a block away from Bay Drive; the last thing she wanted was some nosy taxi driver to get too curious about one of her investigations. The narrow tree-lined street was paralleled by charming bungalow courts and generously sized Middle Sea Revival estates, their front windows masked by hedges and shrubs. Each house had its own side driveway, closed up with wrought iron gates, with roughly a quarter acre of private space. It was too nice of a neighborhood to have bad habits in.

As Azerda trotted towards the address, she saw a small crowd of hippogriffs crowding behind a gated driveway, barricaded by yellow fences that read: "WPD CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS". A policegriff stood idly behind the fence, while another stood next to a police car and Harvester fire truck with two hippogriffs next to him. A sky blue hippogriff and a beige one sat next to the police car – both of them wore faded khaki fatigues and were armed, though they didn't look like police officers or firefighters.

She looked up at the clean white residence in front of her. It was another two-story Revival mansion, with rounded arched Aquileian windows and doorways, an ornately tiled red roof, and thick stucco walls. Baroque columns lined the corners of the house, and the entrance was dominated by a grand porch, embellished with a quatrefoil window. The mansion was surely almost as big as the apartment Azerda was living in.

It would have looked nicer if a third of the mansion wasn't smoking and charred black.

Azerda pushed through the small crowd to the yellow fence. Her work was made easier by how a few hippogriff civilians simply stood out of the way, not used to seeing a zebra in such a neighborhood. "Zmamrta, private detective! Let me through," she muttered before blinking and stumbling, momentarily blinded by the flash of a camera.

The grey hippogriff mare behind her lowered her camera and growled. "Out of the way, stripeback! Don't get in the way of my scoop," she spat. A press pass for the Winggarden Examiner was tucked snugly in the front pocket of her tweed sports jacket.

Azerda glanced back. "Thought you hippogriffs would have come up with more creative insults by now."

The press reporter looked up at her face. "Oh. So you're Zamarata, the Zumidian war hero, huh?" she sneered. "How's it feel to not live in a dirt house for once? Don't know why the Queen insisted on taking you all. Bastards like you should go back to where you came from."

"Are you done, miss?" a voice interrupted. Azerda turned around to see a familiar white hippogriff, dressed in a blue waistcoat with a flashlight on his left claw. Trace gestured with his light towards the reporter's vehicle. "You've got your headline and you've got your pictures. Move along."

The press reporter hesitated for several seconds, then nodded her head. "Y-yes, officer. I'll be on my way," she finally replied and flew off towards her car. Azerda saw the hippogriff mare glare back at her as she left. Don't let them get to you.

"Glad to see you again, Azerda. Should have at least called me before you headed back home," Trace greeted, turning to the light orange patrol officer next to him. "She's with Crystalstar, Sunshower. The vic's involved with the company. And she's a good case mare."

Sunshower looked at Azerda, unconvinced. "If you don't let me in, Crystalstar's going to be sending a firmly worded letter to the Chief. How about we save some of the trouble?" Azerda added.

The officer sighed and shifted the fence open. "Alright, Zamarata. No touching any marked evidence. Detective Trace will handle it."

Azerda followed Trace down the driveway, which split off into a detached two-car garage. The driveway was clean save for a half-dozen blue-tipped cigarette butts left near the garage door. The faint smoke of tobacco reminded Azerda that she was on her 39th month sober. One of the garage doors were open, with a sleek red Eldorado convertible parked inside, worth as much as what the zebra mare made in six months. Maybe those Reds do have a point. "So how did the PD decide to put a detective like you on a case like this?" she asked.

"I've made Homicide," Trace answered succinctly. He trotted up the porch stairway and opened the white double doors.

"Heading to the major leagues now, hm?"

The two entered into a short foyer, with the rooms divided by white arches and floored with earthy red terracotta tiles. A glass chandelier with light bulbs shaped like candles hung on the ceiling. On the left, however, Azerda can spot some of the fire damage, which had burnt part of the hallway down and covered the rest in black soot. The air smelled faintly of smoke. "You can say that. I did three years in Financial Crimes. Mostly just investigating break-ins and nighttime burglaries," Trace said. "Guess that heist case showed what I could do. With a little help from a private sleuth, of course."

"Detective Trace. Don't mind me cutting the chit-chat, but I'll like to get on with this," a mauve hippogriff stallion interjected, dressed in a clean white suit jacket. He had a set of rectangular glasses that hung from his beak in front of his bright green eyes and a short, braided magenta mane.

"Medical Examiner Clear Cut," Trace raised his claw and lightly tapped Azerda's side. "She's one of Crystalstar's detectives, Azerda Zamarata. I don't believe you two have properly met each other yet. She was at the scene for the Barracuda Drive shootout."

"Nice to meet you, Azerda," Clear Cut pushed her glasses and took out a notebook. "Follow me down the hall. I hope you two have strong stomachs."

Trace gulped briefly as the three trotted down the partially burnt hallway, which ended at a spacious study room with a low beamed ceiling and beige colored plaster walls. The open windows were drenched in water and covered in ash, but were otherwise intact. Mahogany bookshelves lined the wall; the fire damage was extensive and had burned much of the books. One of the walls had a decorative Kirian screen, though the embroidery on it had burned off without a trace. Below it was a set of red and white pottery covered in soot. A reddish brown hippogriff with firefighter hat on top of his faded yellow mane was kneeling down near the burnt furniture, placing evidence markers on the ground.

But Azerda's attention was focused on two charred corpses in front of her. The hairless bodies were charred black with the occasionally exposed brown muscle and bone. Any facial details either body had on them were completely unrecognizable, but she could identify one as a hippogriff and another as an equine around her height. with a burnt satchel wrapped around their barrel. The hippogriff's claws and rear hooves had contracted upwards, as if they were trying to shield the victim from a blow.

"O-oh, Tiamat..." Trace heaved and staggered over to the side of the wall, covering his mouth with his hoof to heave to himself.

Azerda grimaced and scratched on her shirt collar. "What in Zargon's name are those bodies doing?" she finally asked after a lengthy pause.

"Best you talk to Back Draft about that. He's the expert around here," Clear Cut replied, pointing to the brown hippogriff.

The brown hippogriff stood up and gave a brief, firm nod. "Back Draft, fire investigator for the WFD. What you're seeing here is pugilistic attitude. The muscles and tendons contract due to dehydration caused by extreme temperatures," Back Draft stated factually, unfazed by the bodies. He put on a set of gloves and pointed to the hippogriff corpse. "Look here. The burns on the victim's rear hooves show signs of blistering and inflammation. I'm almost certain the cause of death is from burn injury, rather than asphyxiation from smoke. It's the same story for the other body."

"You're telling me they burnt to death," Azerda said. Out of the many ways a creature could die, that was one of the nastier kinds the zebra could imagine. "You've got a name for both of them?"

"I can't positively ID the equine. The burns on the equine's body are too extensive; they cover their entire body, in fact. Only thing I can deduce is that the equine victim must either be an earth pony or a zebra with a lack of a horn or wings," Clear Cut said. "The hippogriff victim is almost certainly Sirocco. Forty-two years old, 175 centimeters tall. His claw marks are a perfect match. Two of the security guards outside heard screaming in the house and spotted the fire at around a quarter past midnight and called it in. The body temperature on the body matches the time frame given by the witnesses."

"There were guards outside the mansion? For such an influential hippogriff, Sirocco's unusually light on the security detail." Azerda questioned further, raising an eye. She gestured to the open windows. "And did the firefighters break their way in? I don't see any broken windows."

"The guards were both patrolling around the perimeter of the mansion. A patrol officer is outside keeping watch on them until they're ready for questioning." Clear Cut responded. "And no, the study room windows were already open before the firefighters came here."

"It's like they've been set on fire," Back Draft added with a perplexed look. "This is a highly unusual case. In almost every instance of arson, there are traces of ignitable liquid residues on the site. But I haven't found any. It doesn't make any sense."

Azerda knelt down next to the body and put on a set of gloves. Her eyes stopped at a pair of small glass vials next to the empty satchel, one empty and another with red powder inside. The powder inside was flaky and coarse. She carefully picked up the vial, wafting the vial with her hoof. A sharp smell stung her nose, and Azerda instinctively scrunched up her muzzle in response. "Is this...chili powder? What's this doing here?"

Trace finally recovered from his retching fit and stumbled back next to Azerda. "How can you tell?"

"I happened to be eating some shakshouka this morning," Azerda said. "Much like most of North Zebrica, we use plenty of spices and hot peppers in Zumidian cuisine. Though this powder is much stronger than anything we ever use for cooking in Zumidia. And it hasn't burnt up like the rest of the things here."

"Do you think it's been planted here after the fire?"

Back Draft shook his head. "No, you can see that there's flakes of ash and soot on the vials. It must have been here when the fire happened. It didn't look like anything was taken out of the satchel either, or the ash would have been disturbed. So it only had those vials inside."

Azerda raised an eye. "So you're telling me that one of those victims was carrying the powder when they died?"

Clear Cut took the glass vials. "It seems like it. I can look into what kind of powder this is at the forensic lab. There could be some magic at work," he added.

"Mind if I look upstairs at the vic's room?" Azerda asked.

"Sure. It should still be intact. We haven't touched it since we got here."

"I'll take a look around at the study room and the other rooms downstairs," Trace said. "We'll cover more ground if we investigate separately."

Azerda nodded and trotted up the stairs, going through the rooms one by one. The room furthest to the right of the landing had a tag on the front of the door, with the name Show Stopper. A pony name, Azerda deduced and swung the bedroom door open.

The bedroom was simple, and functional, unlike the rest of the mansion, and undamaged from the fire. A full size bed lay near the center of the room, with the pale-striped bed sheets neatly folded. A mahogany dresser with a circular mirror lay on one side of the wall. On the table were a toiletry bag filled with personal care products and a framed monochrome photograph of an earth pony mare. She wore a set of glasses, had her mane tied up into a ponytail that went down to her neck, and looked to be in her mid-twenties. No sign of forced entry, and there's no dust on the end tables. They must have been cleaned recently.

Azerda paused as she spotted a small green booklet sticking out beneath the toiletry bag. Lifting the bag slightly, she was able to slide it out and opened the notebook. On it was something all too familiar to the zebra: a payroll not too dissimilar to the slip she found at Izavel's room. Azerda scanned the notebook.

Wage: S150/mo Rent: S45/mo Expenses: S60/mo
Current savings: S1505.08

"Zargon be damned. She's not making that much, especially in a pricey city like Winggarden," Azerda muttered as she put the payroll slip in her satchel. The rest of her room and bathroom had nothing of note to find, so she moved onto the other rooms. She took a short look at the other two bedrooms, a billiard room, and finally Sirocco's master bedroom, combined into a small office and attached to a sleeping porch.

As she entered, Azerda noticed that Sirocco's bedroom had been partially burned and drenched with water – his bedroom lay directly on top of the study room where the fire had taken place. Despite the damage, the bedroom's opulence was still in full display with its coffered ceilings, patterned wooden floors, and wide windows. A double bed lay in the center of the room with a badly charred mattress and frame, with a peculiar hiltless sword hanging on top. Opposite to the fire damage was a grand oak desk with a set of blue Kirian pottery and a set of rice wine bottles placed neatly along a wine rack. A soot-covered white folder lay on the table. Azerda flipped the folder open and read its contents:

Pre-Silence Door Panel with Cross Lattice Pattern: S240 ✔️
Vermilion Red and White Dragon Vase, 130cm: S200 ✔️
Carved Coral Glazed Fishbowl with Stand: S120
Red Mahogany Display Table: S80
Round Hoof-Painted Wall Panel with Cranes and Orchids: S100
Black Inlaid Pearl End Table: S140 ✔️
Arrives at end of month

Rosewood's Gallery
1521 Palm Avenue, Winggarden

Sirocco's a stallion of high tastes. That explains all the Kirian furniture and antiques. Palm Avenue...that's at Little Zumidia in Midtown. Azerda took the folder, then knelt down to try each of the drawers on the work desk; most of them had nothing other than stationery and office equipment, but the bottom drawer had a locked steel safe inside with a wheel combination lock. The safe was much too thick to bother prying open and too heavy to carry around on her own, and Azerda had to leave the safe where it was. She ran her hoof over the sticker on the side of the safe. Firebrand Security. Model No. F4, Serial No. 198268. "Trace could track down the combination," she murmured, writing down the information on a small note.

With nothing else of note to investigate in the bedroom, Azerda exited the room and headed down the set of stairs. Trace stood idly at the base, scribbling something on his notepad before closing it up. "You find anything up there?" he asked.

"We've got two leads. First is on Show Stopper. We don't know where she is, but she could either be one of the deceased or a possible suspect," Azerda replied. "The other is Rosewood's Gallery. Sirocco's been buying furniture recently and the owner there could give us something to work on."

"Rosewood's Gallery? I found a price tag that survived the fire on one of the screens that has the same name. He must have just bought it."

Azerda took out her note and handed the note to Trace. "Yeah. I found a safe in Sirocco's desk, but there's no way to open it up. Can you trace the serial number?"

"I'll see what I can do," Trace said, scanning the note and pointing to the kitchen down the foyer. "I know how our perpetrator came in. One of the windows in the kitchen at the back was open. The window stool had depressed hoof marks, size 5s would be my best guess. They must have put a lot of weight climbing through. But there were no signs of them forcing their way in. No broken glass nor damaged window frames."

"The windows could have already been open before the perp showed up. Sirocco's study room windows were open, too," Azerda surmised. "Summers here in Winggarden can be brutal. He could have been letting air inside. You said the kitchen was at the back of the house, right?"

Trace nodded. "Yeah. You should go talk to the guards and see what they know. I'll call Records Units and see if they can track down the safe's company."

"Right," Azerda said, exiting from the front door with Trace behind her. The two split ways as Trace flew to a nearby police car, pulling out a car phone from the vehicle. It was still dark outside, but she could spot the faint reddish glow of the sun below the horizon. She saw the two guards still standing near the police car. The blue one was conversing with a green hippogriff officer, who scribbled something on a sheet of paper before folding it up.

"...Just give the detectives your story and you'll be alright," the patrol officer said to the beige hippogriff.

"What have you got?" Azerda asked.

The officer turned her head. "You’re the Crystalstar detective, aren’t you?” she asked, then hesitated for a moment. “Patrolgriff Typhoon Gale. I’m just getting a statement from these two. The blue one is Calm Waters and the beige one is Pearl Glitz."

Azerda looked between them. Calm Waters looked roughly Trace's age and had a clean appearance. The young hippogriff's clothes were freshly cleaned and ironed, and his wandering gaze suggested that he was new to the job. Pearl Glitz was older, roughly in his early forties, with dull eyes and a bored look. His khaki shirt smelled of nicotine. Azerda noted the teal star-shaped badge on his sleeve. “The Zumidian Star. You were in the Army at Ain Trotgourait?" she asked.

Pearl Glitz nodded. "Yes, I was. Did you serve?"

"Every adult Zumidian did," Azerda answered flatly. "And you smoke Estates cigarettes."

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. "What?"

"That was the brand put in Type K rations. I used to smoke them every day," Azerda explained. "You get used to the taste, the texture, and the smell. And your shirt smells like Estates. Your partner's shirt, too."

"I'm sorry, Miss Zamarata, but please ask questions that are relevant to the investigation," Typhoon interrupted.

Azerda nickered in reply. "Right. Let's start from the beginning. When do your shifts start for you two?"

"Around eleven. We get off at seven in the morning," Calm interjected.

"And did you spot anything suspicious before and when the fire happened? Did any creature enter from the front gate?"

Pearl shook his head. "No. No creature came in or out. We were keeping watch all night. Around 00:15, we heard screaming that sounded like Sirocco. We rushed into the building, but the fire spread and the doorknobs were hot to the touch. That's when I called in the firefighters."

"Oh?" Azerda let out a short laugh. "Because I noticed about six spent Estates cigarettes near the garage. It must have been there for a couple hours, judging by the faint smell. Each cigarette gives you about five minutes. I'll say you two were spending about fifteen minutes on your smoke break instead of patrolling the mansion. Fifteen minutes that a suspect could have snuck in."

The older hippogriff grumbled and sighed. "We were out having a smoke near the garage. This kid here never tried cigs before, so I gave him a few to smoke. He was coughing up a lung."

"There was evidence of some creature sneaking in from the back. There was a good time window where they could have snuck in without being spotted," Azerda continued. "I suspect foul play. Do you know any creature who would harbor a grudge against Sirocco?"

"Now that you say that, I did remember some creature coming to Sirocco's home four days ago. A rose red kirin stallion," Calm Waters responded, raising his claw. "It was around midnight, during my shift. I couldn't hear what they were talking about clearly, but it sounded like they were arguing."

"You think this kirin stallion could be responsible for the fire?"

Calm shrugged. "They go nirik when they lose their temper, right? It keeps them from thinking straight."

The zebra mare frowned and glared briefly at Calm Waters. I guess zebras aren't the only race hippogriffs like him make assumptions of. This all sounds very convenient... "And what about Show Stopper? Have you seen her lately?" Azerda pressed, ignoring his conjecture.

"Show Stopper is Sirocco's secretary. Usually she comes back late at night, but not this time. I didn't see her room window light up."

"Either of you have any idea where she would normally be at night? A friend's house, a bar, a nightclub?"

"La Costa Cafetería is my best guess," Pearl Glitz answered, taking out a fresh Estates cigarette from his half-used pack. Azerda glanced at the pack and subtly smirked – her memory didn't let her down. "She frequents there at around eight in the evening, before our shift."

"This cafe have an address?"

Pearl flicked a lighter and lit his cigarette. He took a brief drag before exhaling to the side. Azerda's eye twitched at the smell. "1240 Palisades Avenue," he said.

Azerda jotted the address down on a note. "Okay. Thanks for the help. I'll see where this information leads."

"Not like Sirocco is alive to pay us anymore," Pearl Glitz muttered and continued smoking.

Azerda trotted away from the two and spotted Trace returning from the police car. The crowd in front of the mansion gate had thinned up, with only a couple needy reporters still behind the yellow barricades taking pictures of the burned mansion. Azerda scanned the crowd; fortunately, the Examiner reporter was long gone. "Any luck, Trace?" she asked.

"I found the address for Firebrand Security, but it's a Howlington address. It'll take a few hours to track down the phone number," Trace said. He trotted towards the gate and beckoned Azerda to follow closely behind. "In the meantime, we should head out and follow our leads. Should we head to Rosewood's Gallery first, or do you have another place in mind?"

"I do. We head to La Costa Cafetería first," Azerda proposed, showing Trace the written address once they had moved through the crowd. "Maybe some creature there would know where Show Stopper went."

"Where she went?" Trace stared at Azerda. "You're talking like she's still alive."

"She could be," Azerda reasoned with a smile. "When I was examining her room, I noticed something...or well, the lack of something. I couldn't find her hoofbag. The fire didn't reach her room, so it couldn't have burned away. It's difficult to imagine she was the dead equine carrying the satchel, too. There was nothing inside the satchel besides the vials, not even a wallet or ID card. Like Back Draft said, nothing was placed into nor taken out of the satchel, so they couldn't have been stolen. And finally, the guards said they didn't see her come back. So there's a chance that she's still out there."

"Alright, I'll take your theory. If we're going to spend a long day working on a homicide case, I guess some liquor won't hurt," Trace quipped and stopped next to a black Buck Super parked on the side of the road. He opened the passenger door. "Hop on in. And if you're wondering, the police department's got me a new car. Hopefully you don't wreck this one this time."

Azerda hopped into the coupe and closed the door. She looked out the window to see the sun rising from the horizon, letting out a yawn before leaning back on the seat. It was a new day and a new case, and she needed a fifteen minute nap.