Princess Cadenza's cup clinked, as she set it down on the table. The Canton of Diplomacy looked much more...civilized than the others. Sure, the Canton of Inquisition looked friendly enough, but everypony knew that some ponies who went in didn't come back out. There was an almost predatory feeling to the place.

The grandiose gardens in the Canton of Diplomacy were far from threatening, aside from, maybe, pricking one's finger on a rose.

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza sat at a table, looking from her tea to Lyra, then waved the servants back. A serving maid, and an android holding a teapot. She had wheels instead of her hooves, enabling her to move quicker, yet her sliding into position behind the chief servant was perfectly positioned, to the millimeter.

That one was very well designed.

Lyra dropped to one knee, resting one hand on the ground, and the other on her raised knee. "Your Highness," she said.

"Miss Heartstrings. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"I believe so. Almost five months since I last had reason to visit, if I do recall."

Cadenza sipped her tea. "Yes, about. Why not come have a cup of tea?"

There was already a teacup set up for Lyra. Basic manners of dining with royalty had her taking the teacup, even though she had never liked the stuff.

It was made from tree leaves, and her taste buds never let her forget that.

"What brings you here this time around?" Cadenza asked casually. "Minotaur immigrants? Another zebra decides to pass judgement on our country? No, what do I have to bet...the gryphons?"

Lyra found herself smiling. "Yes, Your Highness, the gryphons. As it was last time."

"I enjoyed evading unnecessary bloodshed, at least," Cadenza said, swishing her tea. "Though I fear that was only a temporary halt. Is it slavers, again?"

"Not necessarily," Lyra said. "You see, it seems a gryphon in a crime syndicate attacked high nobility. Fancy Pants, if you've heard about his clubhouse being shot up."

"Yes, I have," Cadenza said. "Dear Fleur was quite rattled."

"Mm. Has she adjusted yet?"

"She won't ever adjust," Cadenza said. "She's one of the ones who's simply incompatible. We'll figure that out one of these days."

"It does lead to opportunity, however."

Cadenza raised an eyebrow.

"How will our beloved citizens respond to the knowledge that a gryphon slaver attacked high nobility?" Lyra said.

"I thought she wasn't a slaver."

"That's where my idea comes in. We can say that she was. It's nothing so difficult that we can't make it seem like she's some high-ranked Slaver. Make it seem like they're all in it. The people are ready to believe it."

"You've falsified evidence plenty of times, Lyra," Cadenza said. "Why bring this to me?"

"I need your blessing," Lyra said. "I can make it look like it was some high-ranked Gryphon. People would believe it, but nothing would change. Princess Cadenza, give me your blessing, and I will hand you the tools to purge Gryphonstone."

Cadenza swished her tea around, then took a long, slow sip. She let out a satisfied sigh, setting the cup back down. "I don't like unnecessary bloodeshed," she said.

"And how many times have the gryphons caused it?"

"Gryphonstone is more than the Slavers, Lyra," Cadenza said. "It is the men, women, and children trying to eke out a life in a barren land."

"And they do not worship Princess Celestia," Lyra hissed, leaning forward. "They are heretic barbarians. Princess Celestia, in her boundless compassion, gave them a chance, but their continued existence is a stain upon her beautiful, perfect Equus. Give me your blessing and we can wipe that infernal, bubbling cesspool of a country off the face of Equus for good."

Cadenza stared into her tea cup. The Alicorn's wings shuffled, as she stared at her reflection in the dark-red tea. "You have my blessing," she said. "I will aid you, Lyra."

Lyra let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Princess Cadenza." She stood up, but the Alicorn held up a hand.

"I have a feeling that Fleur is about to start saying some...controversial things about cybernetics. It would be convenient if she was kidnapped by gryphon slavers."

Lyra nodded. "Yes, quite convenient. Are you content letting Fleur be a martyr?"

"To send her to rest in my Aunt's merciful wings? To be personally carried to the heavens?" Cadenza sipped her tea. "That is my final gift to her, dear Lyra."

Lyra nodded. "A magnificent one, indeed." She turned, but stopped when Cadenza spoke again.

"Why are you coming to me, and not Midnight?" She leaned forward. "What did my sister-in-law have to say?"

Lyra grimaced. "Princess, allow me to be honest, and...just slightly heretical. Only Princess Celestia is perfect. Unlike the rest of your subjects, I am aware than most that the Alicorns are not perfect. I watched Twilight grow and mature, until eventually, she became Princess Midnight. And yet, I can't help but see the same bumbling, dorky nerd who would never shut up about some experiment, or the latest Shadow Spade novel. I also know for a fact that she still reads those books. I have not told Princess Midnight my plan. If it goes right, I won't tell her until the Wonderbolts are landing. I don't think she has the heart to make the order to do this. So this will be...my final gift to her, I suppose, before I retire."

"You're retiring?"

"I'm getting a touch old for all of this," Lyra said with a sad smile. "Figure it'd be best to quit while I'm ahead. Go out and buy a farm." Her hand tightened around the edge of the table. "See Bonnie again."

Cadenza met her eyes, then nodded. "I see. Then you have my well wishes, Lyra."

"Thank you, Your Higness."

Indigo checked the schedule she'd been given again. This afternoon's rain was happening earlier than they'd planned—some moron at the local Weather Factory had, apparently, left it running over his break time and now they had a dozen or so extra clouds that didn't fit in the factory.

The automated wind turbines were releasing the clouds, and a few Pegasi were moving them into better positions. They were dark, swollen things, full to bursting, and, she knew from her own experience at Crystal Academy, soggy. She'd helped out the Volunteer Weather Teams once or twice, and it was distinctly uncomfortable to shove your hands til just past the wrists into a freezing, or near freezing, dark gray mass that would electrocute you if you didn't handle it properly.

Thinking about it made her tighten her jacket around herself as she stepped into the Manehattan Police Department. It was a good jacket, too. She'd made most of the design herself, actually, but mostly so she could fit all her pistols beneath the jacket. It wasn't quite as big as a proper Praetorian greatcoat, only coming down to just above her knees, but it was warm and thick. Of course, it was dragonscale, so it wasn't as warm as it could have been, but sticking extra padding under it would have been too heavy.

It was instead lightweight, almost luxuriously soft, and bullet-proof. Though, as Minuette constantly said, bullet-proof merely meant bullet-resistant.

Minuette stopped by the front desk. "Lancelot?" she asked.

"In his office," the mare at the desk said, barely pausing to check Minuette's badge.

Minuette and Indigo strode into the office without pausing. Lancelot was, as usual, going through notes, with a large evidence board set up behind him. There were a half-dozen criss-crossing red lines strewn across it, and a few photos pinned to it. One was a gryphon, in a brown jacket and trousers, and...no shirt? Some minotaurs went about shirtless, but she couldn't quite tell if the gryphon was muscular or not.

Indigo leaned in close to the photo. The gryphon was sparing a glance over her shoulder, small eyes looking around, moving through a crowd. At least, Indigo thought it was a her. She could swear that the face looked feminine, and she thought those were breasts under the jacket. But with the feathers in the way, it was somewhat hard to tell.

"Gilda?" Indigo asked.

Lancelot grunted, looking up. He was an elderly pegasus, but still muscular, and quite fit. He had a few cybernetics, namely the prosthetic red eye that glared at Indigo. His mane was combed back, kept short except for a thick bunch along the top of his head, almost like a mohawk.

And, of course, the snazzy Paretorian jacket that Indigo loved. Thick, grey, with his lightning-bolt badge on his chest, and the wrist cuffs folded back slightly. He looked to the photo, then nodded. "Yeah, that's her. The photo was taken the day of the shoot-out. Any word on Octavia? I still think she knew the shootout was about to happen."

"Something more important came up," Minuette said apologetically. "Sorry, Lance, but we've stopped looking into Octavia for now."

Lancelot snorted. "Alright," he muttered. "Fancy doesn't seem too inclined on telling much. Anything important, he either didn't catch, or isn't talking. We found a few crooks, all of whom seem to belong to Gilda's gang, but they aren't talking. Any chance you could use your Right of Force, here?"

"If I have the time," Minuette said. Inquisitors—or at least, the Class Two ones, like Minuette—had a few special perks to get their job done. One was the Right of Force, enabling them to go to extreme measures to extract information from criminals. Praetorians didn't get that, though, if Indigo remembered, the Wonderbolt captains did.

"Have you found anything about our shape-shifter friend?"

Lancelot grimaced. "Nothing. No reports of anything where someone caught it. No reports of people acting weirdly, then doing something extreme. I set some people checking the cells, just to see if maybe, someone got caught because of something the shape-shifter did. But if that's the case, then they've already been moved, because we haven't found anything yet."

"Keep looking. And you changed your passwords?"

"All of 'em. And I sprinkled a few fake passwords amongst my people. If our friend tries using any of them, we'll catch it that way."

"This thing fooled us, Lance," Minuette said, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think it's going to fall for that."

"If it works, it works, and if it doesn't, no harm done," Lancelot said with a shrug. He fell into his seat, the rickety metal chair creaking beneath him, then pulled out his handgun. A magnum, a few sizes bigger than what civilians were allowed to carry. He started polishing it, rubbing it with a rag. "What do you two think it is?"

"You know I'm not allowed to share that kind of information with you, Lance," Minuette said apologetically.

"So you don't know," Lancelot chuckled.

Minuette grimaced. "No. Lyra said she was going to ask around with the Princesses. If nothing else, Princess of Information should have access to some of the really old records, so there might be something in there. If not, then we're dealing with an entirely new kind of crazy in our world."

Lancelot grunted. "I never like new."

"What about new inventions?" Indigo countered. "Like bigger, better cybernetics?"

Lancelot shook his head. "Any time that happens, a bunch of low-tolerance people get cyber-jolted, go crazy, and there's a big new crime surge. I've seen it time and again, kid. Anything new means a lot of work for a lot of people." He paused, then set down the gun. "Back to the point, though, we did get a video that may have been the shape-shifter."

"Or just some punk who decides to spray-paint 'Disc0rd' on the side of a building," Indigo muttered.

"Eh, you might want to give it a watch," Lancelot said, pulling out a tape and sticking it in his computer. Indigo stepped around, standing at his side.

"It happened the day of the big firefight," Lancelot said, opening up the recording. "Someone shut down all the cameras at the Trendsetter."

"Trenderhoof's place?" Minuette said. "A whole host of people want to see him dead. We'd never be able to pick one out, let alone deduce if one was the shape-shifter."

"Eh...you'll see," Lancelot said. "Our friend seems to have made one tiny slip. One of the camera's audio was still operational. So we get to see Trenderhoof's last words on film."

He turned on the recording. It showed the popular Trenderhoof, sitting at a desk, flipping through some art pictures.

"Hey, that dress looks good," Indigo said, squinting. "I mean, kinda slutty, but I'd still wear it."

The video feed shut off. There was a moment's silence, before Trenderhoof spoke. "Hairpin, would you go out and figure out what the commotion is? I'm still in the middle of this, and can't afford distractions."

"U-uhm, yes sir," a slight, shy voice said. The creak of a door sounded, following by a light click as the door shut.

Then, a second later, another click, as someone locked the door.

"Hairpin...? Why did you--" A gasp, followed by the sound of something heavy being kicked. "Guards! Guards! Help!"

"They can't hear you, sweetheart," a discordant, constantly changing voice rattled. Indigo found a shiver running up her spine. Some sort of completely synthesized voice. An android? Or someone who wanted people to think he—or she—was an android?

"Who are you? What do you want—oof!"

Another kicking sound, followed by a metal desk sliding across the floor. "I want justice," the voice rattled.

"Justice? What justice? What are you talking about?"

"We know what you've been doing, Trenderhoof. We know how you've been treating your employees. We know how you've been treating your androids."

"I-I don't know what you're talking about! Get out—hey! Let me go! HELP!"

"I told you already, sweetheart. They. Can't. Hear. You."

"Who are you?"

"I am vengeance incarnate," the voice rattled. "I am terror. I will rise."

"You're making a mistake! I have friends! They won't let you live!"

"I look forward to meeting them." BANG! The recorded gunshot was loud enough that Indigo jumped. "Sweetheart."

The recording played on for a moment. Then, the sound of a door rattling. "Huh? Mister Trend...um...I guess he's...with someone now...I...I shouldn't bother him."

Lancelot turned off the recording. "It was almost five hours before somepony thought to open the door," he said. "He'd been dead for a while by that point."

"So, um," Indigo said. "Not many people say 'terror, arise' unironically, right?"

"Nope," Minuette said slowly. "There's a possibility that that's our shapeshifter. If not, then...that would be the Diamond Duster."

"I didn't think it was real," Indigo said. "Think it's actually an android with a pony's heart inside it? I mean, that's not possible, right? Right?"

"Well...hold on..." Minuette stopped to think. "Maybe, but I don't think it would do anything."

Indigo stared at her.

"With our current Princess of Research, anything is conceivably possible," Minuette said. "But I doubt this is some sort of mechanical abomination that broke out of one of her labs again. Or...maybe it's the shapeshifter. Like I said, lots of people would want him dead. If it was among them, then it wouldn't be hard to fake who did the killing." Minuette scratched her head. "Hey, Indigo. Think you could see about getting information out of the thugs? I'm going to stay here and work with Lance."

"A'ight," Indigo said, stretching her arms over her head. Technically, only Second Class or First Class Inquisitors had the Right of Force, but Minuette could extend it to her subordinates.

Unfortunately, she couldn't just give it to Lancelot, meaning that Indigo personally had to do it. She closed the door, stepping out into the main room again.

Police stations still gave her weird feelings. On the one hand, she outranked everypony here. On the other, there hadn't ever been 'good' reasons to go into them before. Hell, there still weren't, really.

She strode back over to the desk, waving to the clerk. "Hey," she said.

"Yes, ma'am, what can I do for you?"

"I need to know where the prisoners are," Indigo said. "Specifically, the ones Lancelot mentioned that seem to be affiliated with the ponies behind the shoot-out."

"The ones we know worked with Rough Tumble?" The mare frowned, then looked up at Indigo. "Um--"

Indigo pointed to her badge.

"Right, uh...give me a minute here." She frowned. "Hmm. Odd, I thought...I thought we had some records on Tumble here..."

Indigo blinked. Damn, the girls at the Canton of Info work fast. "I wouldn't have expected that," Indigo said, leaning on the desk "We catch the real bad guys pretty quickly."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Weren't you only hired like, what? Three months ago?"

"It was four," Indigo said defensively.

"Right. It was on the, uh...Cottonpuff case, right?"

"Yeah," Indigo said, blushing. Sweet Celestia, that was my first mission. She recognizes me from that? Ohhhh, now I feel embarrassed.

"You took down Anansi, right?"

"Well, helped," Indigo said. "Minuette dealt the last hit, but...she wouldn't have caught him without me!"

"Uh...huh..." The clerk frowned at her for a minute, before pulling out the papers. "Let's see, we have three in custody, currently. One is under guard at the clinic, after you--"

"Well, I already asked him," Indigo said. "And the buddy he was with, I believe. You guys still got Muleton?"

The clerk nodded. "Yeah, he's one of the three, if you want to...'chat' with him again."

"Mm, probably not," Indigo said. "I don't have all the time in the world, y'know."

"Hmm, yes. Neither do I," the clerk added under her breath. She handed the papers over. "Cells five, seven, and eight."

Indigo nodded, choosing to ignore the rudeness of the clerk, before turning around. She looked up, and watched as a pony and an android walked outside the police station.

Something about the pony made her pause, however. She was stunning, but Indigo doubted that was it. Her mane...her mane curled in a very particular way, and was a deep, rich violet. She wore a casual blue blouse and skirt, but still made it look like a beautiful ensemble. She swung a white purse casually off one arm, with her android marching in step with her.

It was an expensive-looking custom model in a blue jacket and short, blue mane. It had a casual look about the way it walked, with its hands in its jacket pockets. Its eyes, notably, were a set of goggles with...those...dancing bar-thingies that moved with the music. What were those called again? 'Synthwaves' or something like that?

Indigo turned, and headed back for the office. She pushed open the door, causing Minuette to jolt up in shock. "Indigo, what are you doing back?" she demanded.

"We just hit jackpot. Looks like Octavia's going to pay for her droid."

Author's Note

And here's the first chapter almost exclusively from the inquisitor's point of view. Originally, the end cut back to Sunset and Octavia, but I decided to save that scene for next chapter.
On that note, this is also the last chapter I currently have written. The next one is partly written, but the updates will probably not be weekly anymore. I will post the new ones when written, every Wednesday. Til then, God bless!