No More Hoof Measures

The last place in Equestria that Finger Flyer wanted to be was in Ponyville. But he was in Ponyville. His family was in Manehattan, his comrades were in prison, his heart was in Filliedelphia, and Derpy Hooves was in hell. In Ponyville there were the cops, the task force, the gangsters swarming over the corpse of Derpy Hooves fallen empire like scavenger insects on carrion, and worst of all, Twilight Sparkle. He didn’t want to talk to any of these, but he’d been forced by circumstance into talking to the third.

A lot of ponies were in prison. That by itself was not the end of the world. Criminals go to prison a lot. Drug dealers say the prison is the other side of the street. Derpy Hooves was far too intelligent not to plan for an eventuality as predictable as that. The problem was this:

When ponies go to prison, they can either collaborate with law enforcement and snitch on their comrades, or they can stay silent. If they do the former, they get a reduced sentence, but everypony else is fucked over. If they do the latter, they don’t get anything. Strictly speaking, there’s no benefit to not snitching, especially considering it’s practically guaranteed that some other fuck is gonna snitch on the same damn ponies if you don’t, meaning your comrades are gonna get in the same hot water either way. This is why even though everypony not snitching is better for the group than everypony snitching, snitching is in the advantage of every individual pony. This is called the “fucking piece of shit snitch dilemma.”

Resolving this dilemma has been a perennial problem for criminal organizations ever since the first caveponies decided to team up to extort the venerable Boulder Cavepainting out of his precious shiny blue rock that is also pointy. Non-snitchery has traditionally been enforced through cultural means. Exile the snitch, shame the snitch, dishonor the snitch. Nopony wants to be the snitch, even if it means they get to go home for Hearth’s Warming. But this tactic only works if your organization contains no shameless opportunists, willing to throw away their tough-as-nails reputation for personal gain. Some ponies just don’t give a fuck about their honor. For this reason, Derpy Hooves relied on a more effective, albeit expensive strategy.

Every high-level employee (anypony who knew enough about the organization’s inner workings to name names that mattered) had hazard pay. Hazard pay means that if shit hits the fan, you get paid extra for the trouble, on the condition that you keep your head down and don’t squeal. The policy could be described thusly:

Never squeal on the pusher, don’t lie to your momma, just do whatchu wanna, and it’ll be okay.

Except that you will likely have to lie to your momma and you cannot do whatchu wanna.

There were 13 ponies in prison who mattered. I won’t name them, it’s not worth the time, but trust me when I say that they knew shit that Finger didn’t want Canterlot to know about. As long as they had their hazard pay, they could all be trusted to stay loyal, even after their boss was turned into a rock garden, since they all had an incentive not to become blabbermouths.

The problem: there was no hazard pay. Somepony in the financial team had gotten sloppy with the operational security and the task force found a sticky note with the offshore bank account numbers on it. That’s all it takes for decades of work to fall apart. One lazy asshole.

So Finger Flyer needed money, and to get money, he had to be in Ponyville, playing along with this obsequious soft-spoken earth pony named Crusoe Palm, who couldn’t have been older than twenty. He was brown with a blonde mane and his cutie mark was a tropical island with a lone palm tree. No coconut, even though his mother supposedly called him Coco.

“Please, come inside!” said Crusoe, gesturing for Finger to enter his quaint little wood-paneled house. He was wearing a white apron and a chef’s hat.

“Uncle Magic and the others are in the dining room. Denim isn’t here yet, but I think Uncle Magic is just gonna start without him. He doesn’t like waiting. Whenever we go to a restaurant he never waits for everypony to get their food, he eats his food when he gets it. Speaking of which, I’m gonna finish up dinner.” Finger didn’t have much trouble finding the dining room. It was partially visible from the foyer.

Magic Palm was sitting at the far end of a rectangular table. There’s something you really need to know about Magic Palm. He was light brown with a gray mane, an earth pony like all the members of the Palm family. Most importantly, and most strikingly to anypony who saw him, was his cutie mark. I’m afraid that no matter the rating of this fic, I cannot tell you what it is. It was so shocking, so heinous, so horribly, tastelessly offensive, that even a short description would get this whole story deleted off the internet, my house raided by various federal agencies, and several particularly weak-hearted bronies put in the hospital. It was like if a swastika had a baby with the NAMBLA logo (look it up, it’s hilarious), and when the baby grew up it took so many anabolic steroids that its testicles shriveled up into raisins. Even the hardened criminals with whom Magic worked could rarely stand to stomach the sight of it for long, and found excuses to look away. This cutie mark was the true, piercing, crystal clear representation of Magic Palm’s soul. He was a bad, bad guy. When he went to the grocery store, he never put the plastic divider between his groceries and those of the pony in front of him. He just let the cashier work it out. He never tipped more than 10%. He didn’t brush his teeth, he didn’t say please and thank you, and he never ate fruits and vegetables. His drugs were laced with fentanyl, his dealers were paid minimum wage, they sold to elementary schoolers, and he, as a rule, attempted to solve every single problem with violence, resorting to peace only as a last-ditch effort. He was exactly the kind of scum that would never have achieved any sort of prominence whatsoever if the competition hadn’t all died in the span of less than a year. The Shimmers were all dead, the Cloudsdale mafia were all dead, and Derpy Hooves’ continent-spanning empire was utterly defunct. Magic Palm was attempting to pick the bones of the fallen giants like the vulture he was.

“We’re so happy that you decided to agree to work with us. Thank you.” Magic didn’t say. What he actually said was:

“I knew you’d come crawling back.”

This wasn’t a very accurate assessment of the circumstances, but Finger swallowed his pride regardless. He needed hazard pay.

“You know what you’re here for.” Magic continued. “Our customers are getting testy. And we got a lot more than we ever had. My nephew can’t make enough to meet demand, and the shit he cooks is garbage. Even the tweakers notice. We wanna expand, we wanna meet demand, but we ain’t got a network, we ain’t got enough crystal, and the crystal we’re cookin’ isn’t good enough. All the methheads in Equestria’ve got such fucking high standards now. Dragon crank ain’t satisfying them. We need to spread our wings. But not literally. I don’t wanna hire any more of you fucking pegasus cunts than I need to. So hurry up and name names. ”

“For starters,” Finger Flyer began, “if you wanna expand this business, we’re gonna need to start by defining territory. To manage a distribution network, you need to know where your customer base is, where your dealers are going to work, and how they’re going to be organized. The bigger your territory, the more you’ll have to delegate, the longer distances you’ll have to transport, and the more points of failure you’re gonna have in your organization. We’ll start with transportation. Derpy Hooves had contacts in the postal service who helped her deliver large quantities of product across Equestria, and she primarily distributed far away from where the management and production was headquartered, for greater opsec. Our contacts in the postal service have unfortunately been compromised. That means if you want to deliver outside of just Ponyville, which is not a big market, you’ll need to use mules.”

“I don’t hire mules.” Magic wasted no time.

“Pardon me.” Said Finger. “I meant movers. They don’t need to be literal mules. They just need to pull carts and not draw suspicion. Now, I have with me a list of contacts I’ve made over the years that I think will be useful for this project of ours. If you’d like to take a look...”

“Dinner!” Crusoe Palm came in with a platter of sandwiches, assorted fruit slices and berries, and a lovely salad. Then he went back into the kitchen and quickly brought in a basket of nuts and a plate of cookies. It was a lovely meal.

“Crusoe, what kind of paste-eater puts on a chef’s hat to make sandwiches? Why do you do this shit? You insist on wearing goggles to make meth, too. The fuck is wrong with you?” Magic was justified in the first point, if perhaps not in the second. Crusoe took it in stride and removed his hat and apron without complaint. Finger continued to hold his tongue.

“Lemme see that list.” Said Magic, reaching over the table with one hoof and knocking over a bowl of raspberries, simultaneously picking up a sandwich with his other front hoof and chewing it with his mouth open. He gave the list a once-over and then a twice-over, and didn’t wait to swallow his food before he started kvetching.

“You got dealers, movers, money ponies, whatever. Here’s the cooks. Which one of these is Glitter Hawk Lips?”

“Glitter Hawk Lips, unfortunately-“

“Good afternoon, boss!” A blue earth pony who was presumably the previously mentioned “Denim” showed up with a bottle of liquor. Magic made no delay in jumping over, snatching the bottle of liquor, and then smacking the poor stallion in the head with his hoof.

“Don’t interrupt us. Sit over there. Finger Flyer’s about to tell us about Glitter.”

Finger Flyer continued after a beat.

“Glitter Hawk Lips, unfortunately, is retired. She is no longer in the business. However, I can put you in contact with many cooks with decades of chemistry experience who-“

“Nope.” Said Magic, who threw the list onto a plate of pear slices, staining it very slightly. “No Glitter, no deal. I want her meth. Stop wasting my time.”

“Glitter Hawk Lips is no longer interested in-“

“Don’t care. Bring me Glitter.”

“I can vouch for these-“

“Don’t care. Bring me Glitter.”

Magic Palm proved to be uncooperative. Finger made a long sigh, but was careful not to sound too disrespectful.

“I’ll see what I can do…” he said. He knew deep down that it had been naïve to think Magic Palm might accept not having Glitter Hawk Lips. Time for plan B.

Rainbow Dash was so incredibly crossfaded that Finger didn’t even need to move to dodge the empty bottle she threw at him, even though she was only a few feet away.

“Go fuck yourseffff!” she slurred out.

“I understand. Do you-“

“I never- I never wanna see you- I never wanna see you again biiiiitch! Fuck outta here! If- If that- If that fucking Twilight sends, like, if she- bitch! If she tells another fucking one of her- if she-“ Rainbow Dash vomited violently over the floor of her apartment building’s hallway. “Fuuuck. Do you know whem my onion rigs are getting here? I ordered them like an hour ago…”

“Do you know anypony else who can cook Twilight’s formula?” Finger wanted to finish this conversation before Rainbow Dash remembered that she was angry.

“Uhhhhh…” Rainbow Dash laughed. “She didn’t teach it to nopony. She was- She was fucking. She never teach it to nopony. Fucking tight as a loooock. Minty knew and she- she was- Only I knew. And Twilight. Twilight knew and Twilight and I knew.”

“Thank you for your time. I’m sorry for interrupting.”

“Yeah fly bitch! Run away- Fly away! Ha ha ha haaaaa… fly awayy… run biitch…”

Rainbow Dash went inside without closing the door behind her. Finger made care to step over the vomit and broken glass in the hallway as he exited. That was plan B and C shot. The only option left was his last resort. He really really did not want to do this, but the only other option was prison. He had no other choice. He had to do the unthinkable.

“May I speak to Twilight Sparkle?”

“Are you a criminal?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you. Go away.” Spike slammed the door on him but Twilight’s hoofsteps audibly crescendoed behind the wooden door. She opened it up no more than ten seconds later.

“Finger Flyer!” she exclaimed. Spike smashed his own head against the wall.

“I knew it!” he said.

“What’s up! Is there a job! Is there a new boss? Do you need me for something?”

“Yes.” Finger Flyer said, using all of the strength in his body and mind to not go apeshit. “I may in fact… need you to cook again.” Twilight practically pranced.

“I’m in.”

“Great…” It had gone even worse than Finger Flyer had feared.

There were not a lot of old ponies in the game. Not many ponies made it that long. By middle age, most either quit, got iced, or got a dime dropped on them and ended up in the slammer. Somepony like Finger Flyer was truly exceptional. He excelled at organization. He had Magic Palm’s string of lowlives and lumpenproles singing like a steam train in months. He assembled a network of traffickers, a tree of distributors with clearly defined territory, and he had contacts in the chemical industry who could deliver pure reagents in bulk with minimal overhead costs. Profits were astounding, and arrests were down. Everypony was happy, except for the one pony who was never happy.

Twilight fucking hated her new partner. Rainbow Dash had never killed anypony she hadn’t been explicitly told to. As of minutes ago this was no longer true of Crusose Palm.

“Lift him up by the scruff of his neck. Try to get him in headfirst.” Twilight said, a little muffled because her mouth was holding the bodybag.

“He’s bleeding a lot.” Crusoe said after he got the corpse’s front legs into the bag.

“That’s what happens when you shoot somepony.”

“It’s making a mess.”

“Well you should have thought of that before you shot him. Help me lift up the bag and shake. That’ll get the rest of him in.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Sparkle, but-“

“Doctor Sparkle.” Twilight corrected him. She was not a doctor in any way, shape, or form, but she thought that she deserved to be, and of course he didn’t know.

“I’m sorry, Doctor Sparkle. I didn’t see any other way to deal with the situation. I saw him, I had to make a decision, I took action.”

“You took action all over our lab. Look, there’s blood in one of the graduated cylinders. What are the odds of that. One in a million. It had to fly out at just the right angle. We’re gonna be in here late cleaning this up.”

“Sorry, Doctor Sparkle.”

“You didn’t have to shoot him. We could have… I don’t know. Detained him and called Finger. Something!”

“I’ll start cleaning the floor.” Crusoe never wasted any time trying to get work done. Twilight didn’t join in to help. She needed to plan.

The more ponies know about your meth lab, the worse the operational security. That’s what Finger had said. In the laundromat, the ponies who worked there knew there was an area they weren’t allowed in, but they didn’t know what it was for. It was the same system in the ice cream shop.

Push Pop was a sweet old pegasus who had a history of not asking questions. Ever since his younger brother died, he had regularly received large amounts of money in the mail, enough to keep his ice cream shop afloat. It had been Push Pop’s lifelong dream to run an ice cream shop, but he had always had a hard time making a profit. He insisted on only the most high-quality ingredients and the most affordable prices. He was beloved by the foals of Ponyville for his good-natured attitude and excellent frozen desserts, but a few months ago the money stopped coming in the mail, and he once again began struggling to pay his bills. His mysterious benefactor must have fallen on hard times.

Push Pop had been desperate to keep his business afloat, which is why he agreed to let a few ponies use his basement space, under the condition that he not be allowed in. Push Pop was more than happy with the arrangement. He had decades of experience in minding his own business and not asking where money came from. If opportunity fell in his lap he wouldn’t bat an eye. He wouldn’t look a gift pony in the mouth. Push Pop didn’t have a suspicious bone in his body. Unfortunately, he was also quite forgetful, and one afternoon, he forgot about one of the rules. And now he was in a bag.

“Oh, this is bad, this is so bad! Who’s gonna run the store now? He signed for the deliveries, the bills are all in his name, he’s the legal owner of the property! Now the store’s gonna be… well actually I don’t know. But I don’t think it will be good for us!” said Twilight.

“What do you think we should tell Mike?” said Crusoe.

“Nothing. We don’t- Wait. Who’s Mike?”

“Sorry, I mean Finger.” Crusoe had a hard time remembering Finger Flyer’s name. What even was a finger?

“Nothing. We don’t tell anything to Finger. We take care of this. We’re gonna get away with it, and the first step is to deal with this body.”

“You wanna bury it?”

“Believe me, that’s easier said than done. Burying bodies is hard work, and I think it’s gonna be just about impossible for us, since I don’t have magic anymore and you have a bad knee.”

“Sorry.”

“In any case we’re in the middle of a busy square. We can’t really carry a rotting corpse outside without attracting any suspicion. If we want to get the body out of here we need it more… manageable.”

“I could cut it up.”

“That’s a good start,” said Twilight, “but I have a better idea.”

Hydrofluoric acid is not a necessary ingredient in methamphetamine, but no decent chemistry lab would be found without it. Indeed, Twilight Sparkle had requested HF on day one, as she knew someday she would likely need to melt something. She would like to say she didn’t imagine she might use it to melt a pony, but honestly, the thought had occurred to her quite a few times before. HF is just really good at melting things.

It took over an hour to chop up the body, put the pieces into two big barrels, and pour over a dozen gallons of HF into the barrels. At first she had estimated that they could get the job done with just two gallons, but that had turned out to be a gross underestimation. The smell was unbearable, it needed to be stirred numerous times to introduce the deeper parts of the body to the acid, and the barrel overflowed a few times during stirring. They were both wearing hazmat suits because they weren’t stupid, but it was still really gross and required a lot of cleanup. The acid mixed with the blood and dissolved bone and tissue to create a pink slush. It had the appearance of a strawberry and banana smoothie.

It was late at night when they finally finished the job.

“Alright. Chemical waste pickup is in five days. Until then, we keep these barrels sealed up and kept in the corner. Good night, Crusoe.”

“What are we gonna do when ponies want ice cream tomorrow?”

“They’re gonna find a closed store and go about their day. They’ll be disappointed, but they won’t call the cops.”

Twilight’s prediction came true, and although there were some disappointed fillies and colts that morning, nopony got too suspicious or made a fuss. It was winter after all. (AN: I had to check to see what season it was in previous chapters, and I just noticed that in chapter 1 I referred to the current season as both spring and summer. I have since corrected the mistake. The story now began in spring, and the current moment as of this paragraph is in late winter.)

“Sorry, Ms. Sparkle.” Said Snails, “The great and powerful Trixie has told us that you are no longer a client anymore. We can’t let you in to see her.”

“Tell her it’s an emergency.”

“Well, I would.” Snails hesitated, “but uh… I won’t.”

“And why is that?”

“Because uh… it doesn’t matter if it’s an emergency? I still don’t think I can let you in to see her.”

“Fifty thousand bits.”

“Oh great and powerful Trixie! It’s an emergency!”

Trixie cracked open her office door to peak her head out, and Twilight opened it up all the way and stormed in.

“Aiiiieee!” Trixie exclaimed. “What part of ‘we’re done’ do you not understand! Get out of here!”

“We’re done when I say we’re done.” Said Twilight. “Can you forge a will?”

“I can and I won’t! Get out! Snips! Snails!”

Twilight closed the door behind her.

“I don’t have time for this. I need you back. I’ve gotten into trouble and I want to pay you large amounts of money to fix it like you always do. It’s easy money. Just work with me on this, it’s been months.”

“Oh, no. Absolutely not.” Said Trixie. “I told you, and I meant it when I told it to you. I’m not working with you anymore. We are done!”

Twilight got up real close and put her hoof to Trixie’s throat.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” She said. “We’re done. When I say we’re done.”

“But I don’t even know anypony named Crusoe Palm!” Soda Pop protested. Push Pop’s only living relative, she had made the trip out from Cloudsdale to see her dead father, only to discover that not only could she not see his body, but he had left all his property to some young earth pony she’d never met, nor even heard about in one her father’s letters, and he was a prolific letter-writer. She was feeling quite upset.

“I’m feeling quite upset!” she said. “Who the heck even is this?”

“It’s never easy to say this.” Said Trixie. “He was your father’s lover.”

“WHAT‽ But that’s impossible!”

“I know he probably kept it a secret from his family. He was scared of being honest about his sexuality”

“No, I mean my father couldn’t have sex anyway! He had a botched circumcision!”

“Well, then he must have been a bottom. Right Crusoe?” Crusoe nodded but kept looking at the floor.

“Wait.” Said a purple pony by the door. She looked like the town librarian, but much… sicker. “If your father had a botched circumcision, how did he have you?”

“It was an adult circumcision.” Soda Pop explained.

“But-“

“His will expressed his wishes very clearly.” Trixie steered the conversation back on track. “You get the money, but you’re not allowed to step foot in the ice cream store. He left it to his lover, Crusoe.”

“I can still go there for ice cream, right?”

“No. It won’t sell ice cream anymore.”

“Then what will he do with the building?”

“That’s Mr. Palm’s business. As for you, you’re sitting on five grand.”

“This is outrageous! I won’t sell my father’s legacy to a stranger for five grand! I don’t believe my father even wrote this will at all!”

“Ahem, uh, Mrs. Trixie?” said Twilight. “I think you may have misread the number. It was actually fifty thousand.”

“Well… Maybe…” Soda Pop began to reconsider.

“I mean one hundred thousand.”

“One hundred thousand bits!” Soda Pop exclaimed. “He’s not gonna have a funeral is he?”

“No ma’am.”

“Good. I’m going to Las Pegasus. Nice to meet you, Mr. Palm. I trust my dad knew what he was doing. By the way, where do I pick up my money?”

“I gave it to Ms. Sparkle over there, in cash.”

Twilight didn’t carry around hundreds of thousands of bits in cash, so she sent Crusoe Palm to her treehouse to get the money. It wasn’t the first time she’d sent him to her house to pick up money. Both of them were rich beyond belief, so Crusoe had no reason to steal, and Twilight had no reason to care if he did. Twilight hated the commute home. Her cancer was getting worse, and physical activity was taking more of a tax on her every day. She preferred to never walk more than she had to, so she often sent the (relatively) healthy and spry Crusoe Palm on little fetch quests for her. Spike had given up trying to antagonize Crusoe long ago. He was a meth cook but at least he was polite. Spike certainly liked him better than some of the other ponies that sometimes showed up at the house. He was a little bit off-putting, but Spike liked that he called him ”sir”.

“100,000 bits?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She must be in a lot of trouble. Yesterday she promised somepony 50,000 bits.”

“Oh, it’s just business. Would you rather I take it from the crawl space or the refrigerator?”

“The refrigerator filled up, but the crawl space has plenty of space left. Take it from the refrigerator.” Spike enjoyed watching Crusoe struggle with the refrigerator. It had been very easy for Twilight to unscrew the door and take the cash inside the empty space back when she had magic, but now it was practically impossible. Crusoe had to remove the door from its hinges, and then unscrew sixteen different screws, which is extremely difficult if one doesn’t have fingers or thumbs. Also, keeping the refrigerator open for that long led to a blast of cold air, which froze up Crusoe’s joints and made it even harder. He never complained though. He had a lot of gumption.

Crusoe’s phone started ringing.

“Can you get that Spike? Wait, no!” he said, dropping his work to pick up the phone.

“Hello? Oh, Spike. Can you leave the room for a minute? It’s business stuff. Thank you. Hello?”

“This isn’t a secure line.” Said Finger. “I need you to call me from the lab phone. I called but you didn’t pick up.”

“I’m not at the lab. I’m at-“

“It’s not a secure line. Don’t say where you are. I have a bag at the lab and I need you to pick it up and bring it to me at you-know-where. Rendezvous number one. Speed is important here. The bag is in the rightmost locker in the laboratory.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Said Crusoe, even though he wasn’t sure how. Finger hung up after that. He was not interested in chit-chat.

Crusoe was far from the lab, and even further from the rendezvous point. (AN: Hey, rendezvous. That’s a funny word. It’s definitely French, but I wonder about its specific etymology. It looks like a verb phrase scrunched into one word to me. I bet the ‘vous’ at the end might be the formal you ‘vous’. Okay I looked it up and I called it. It is indeed a scrunched-up verb phrase, which means “present yourselves”. So a rendezvous point is the point wherein people present themselves. Interesting.) It would be completely infeasible for him to leave Twilight’s treehouse with the fridge door still ripped off, travel kilometers to the ice cream store, retrieve a bag, take it to the rendezvous point, go all the way back to the treehouse, remove the money, and then go BACK to the ice cream store. No way. He had a bad knee. Instead, he did what any other pony would have done first, and called Twilight.

“-have a bad knee. Can you please take it to him? I’m still struggling with the fridge.”

“I wish I had never thought of that damn fridge idea. Yeah, give me a few minutes, did he say where the bag was?”

“It’s in the rightmost locker.”

“Okay, thank you. Goodbye Crusoe.”

“Goodbye.”

Unlike Finger Flyer, Twilight always made sure to say goodbye before hanging up the phone. She knew the bag he was talking about. That was Finger’s go-bag. She rummaged through it her first day in the lab, because she’d been told not to. It had papers, a bunch of cash, and a gun, among other less important things. If Finger wanted it, it meant they were in trouble, and he was heading out, which was good, because she had no idea how she was going to hide Push Pop’s death from him.

The rendezvous point was at the edge of the Everfree forest. A lot of very shady business happened over there because the law didn’t really try and control it. It was a sort of semi-wilderness where normal social mores were more relaxed, and ponies who existed outside of polite society could congregate, much like the Great Dismal Swamp back in the 18th and 19th century Southern United States, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. Twilight left Trixie to keep Soda Pop occupied. She was an entertainer. She was good at that sort of thing.

As quickly as she could manage, Twilight s'est rendue.

“Why did I have a feeling it would be you who showed up.” Said Finger.

“I was closer.”

“Well, tell Crusoe that I’m out. He and you should be getting out too. The task force raided my home a few hours ago. I don’t think the ring’s gonna last much longer. They’re bringing the heat down on everypony. Tell Trixie too. She wasn’t at her office.”

“I’ll tell them. Who’s gonna run distribution if you go?”

“Nopony. It’s over. They know everything. You gotta get out. My prison contacts have their hazard pay, you have more than enough money to last you the rest of your life no matter what the hell you blow it on, everypony you have a grudge against is dead. It’s over. The only thing left to do now is leave town. We knew this couldn’t last forever. Trixie knows somepony who can make anypony disappear. Get in contact with her. If you stay, they’ll catch you.”

“I can’t leave town. I have friends. I have connections. I have a life. Unlike you.”

“Suit yourself.” Finger took the bag from Twilight and turned to walk away. “You know how they say, ‘it’s been a pleasure’? Well, it hasn’t. Goodbye, Twilight.”

“So that’s it?”

“Yep. That’s it.”

“So what am I gonna do? The task force is ‘coming down on us’ and you’re just gonna leave us? This is the first I’m hearing about any of this! How am I supposed to deal with them?”

“You can’t deal with them. Not this time. Applejack knows, Twilight. Not just about the ring. About you. Get out before she finds proof. That’s the last advice I’ll ever give you.”

“Bullshit!” Twilight screamed at him. “You’re lying!”

Finger Flyer was a humble pony. He was good at keeping his cool. But the sight of Twilight’s face contorted into irrational rage was intoxicating to him. For just a brief moment, and for the first time in twenty years, Finger Flyer failed to swallow his pride. And he smiled.

“You called Crusoe at all in the last few days?”

Twilight said nothing.

“That’s what I thought. The phones are tapped. Applejack knows your voice, Twilight. She knows who you are. And something tells me that when she catches you, she won’t show lenience.”

Finger paused to let the tension hang in the air for a beat. “You know, considering you killed her sister.”

“MOTHERFUCKER!” Twilight leapt at Finger and tackled him to the ground, striking him in the head. He dropped the bag from his forelegs and frantically kicked up at Twilight, hitting her repeatedly. She gasped and coughed violently as she stumbled back.

“THAT’S RIGHT, SHE KNOWS ABOUT THAT!” Finger gloated, unable to stop his own words from coming out. “APPLEBLOOM HAD AN AUTOPSY YOU KNOW! APPLEJACK KNOWS IT WASN'T RICIN! THEY ALL DO!”

“YOU LYING TRAITOROUS PIECE OF SHIT!” Twilight yelled back at him. She dived for the bag. Finger reached for it but she headbutted him with the stump of her horn, cutting his face in two places, and causing him to jerk back in pain. She unzipped the bag and reached for the gun. Finger’s hoof collided with her face, but she managed to keep the gun in her mouth. Finger didn’t keep trying to fight. He took off without hesitating and flew into the air, but he wasn’t fast enough. Twilight fired six shots, three of which made contact, and Finger plummeted back down to the ground before he had made it four meters into the air.

The only sound for a while was the two of them gasping desperately. Twilight’s lungs felt like they were filled with sand. Finger made the most horrible noises as he choked on his own blood. One of the bullet holes was in his airway. When Twilight finally regained her strength, she spoke. This time, calmly and softly.

“I’m sorry, Finger.” She almost whispered it. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, you know. It wasn't supposed to be enough to kill her. She was supposed to get better. I didn’t want it to end up like it did.”

Finger continued gasping.

“Applejack still doesn’t know where the lab is.” Twilight said. “I made sure to never say the address. I was never tailed either. It’s not over yet…”

“Twilight...” Finger Flyer said, in between breaths.

“Yes?”

“Shut the fuck up and let me die in peace.”

Three days later, the chemical waste pickup crew picked up four unmarked sealed barrels from the ice cream store.