“Morning Puss!”
Pussyfoot looked up. “Oh. It’s you again. What is it this time?”
“You know, the usual!”
Pussyfoot sighed. “We don’t have ‘usual’ in this town, Holly. I’m gonna need a few more details than that to get off my flank at this time in the morning.” It was half past nine, but that wasn’t the point.
The young mare walked steadily to the centre of the room, the apple green of her coat flashing almost metallic in the sun. She raised a forehoof and took a deep breath.
“Oh dear Luna, spare me that crap; you’re not running for Mayor.” He met her eyes. He’d seen many scary things in his time, but this one took the cake. “—yet,” he added hastily. “Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
They made a strange pair, the sprightly young mare and the tired old stallion, as they headed across town. Everycreature was about their usual business, whether selling fruit or hauling carts. Puss wasn’t going to stick around in a nice clean place like this.
“Peach Street? Really?” That wasn’t where Puss had been expecting. The Castle, or Sugarcube Corner, maybe even Town Hall. But not that quiet little street of quiet little houses in a quiet little quarter of this quiet little town.
Well, mostly quiet. The parts when it wasn’t didn’t last long.
“Yeah,” said Holly. “It’s been a long time.” She shuffled her hooves somewhat awkwardly. “One of my first jobs was in that street, under the… old guy.”
Pussyfoot winced. The situation with the… old guy hadn’t ended well. Not when Ponyville realised who he actually was. Not when the Bearers had been called back from San Palomino. Not when Celestia had actually flown there to get them due to teleportation anxiety. Not when the battle had destroyed a fifth of Ponyville. Not when the… old guy was currently enjoying the luxurious hospitality of the Hotel Tartarus.
“Look on the bright side,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for the… old guy, you wouldn’t be working for me now.”
Holly gave him a flat look. “I wouldn’t be working for anypony,” she replied. “I’d be a splat on the pavement, same as—”
Puss clapped a hoof over her muzzle, hard. “Leave it. Believe me, it won’t make you feel any better.” He removed the hoof before Holly had the thought or the time to bite it. “We have work to do.”
They trotted toward Peach Street. There was no doubt that it was the right place. Blood and guts and bone and gore covered the street from sidewalk to sidewalk, spreading into the lawns outside the bookstore. A couple of fillies were daring each other to get close. Pussyfoot rolled his eyes and shooed them away.
“Sometimes I really wish Ponyville didn’t have this weird aversion to magic,” he grumbled. “You’d think having been the home of an alicorn Tiadamned princess it might have moved out of the dark ages by now.” He wandered around the site, occasionally poking a long wooden pole into the mess and peering at it closely.
Holly stood back a little. “What’s the pus, Puss?”
Puss glared at her. Holly stood back a little more.
“This was where you had your first job in this business. Want it to be here where you have your last, too?”
Holly raised a hoof in a moderately conciliatory fashion. “No.”
Pussyfoot poked around further, chanting under his breath as he did so. “One, two, three, four, can I have a little gore?” At last he appeared to make his mind up. “Get me a number seven. You use a ten around the edges. This one’s gonna take a while.”
The two of them began their grisly, gristly work. Sweeping. Brushing. Hosing. Scraping. Monster attacks in Ponyville were common enough, yet few ponies ever stopped to wonder why the streets were so clean. It wasn’t because the Bearers and their protegées held back. It wasn’t because monsters didn’t bleed. It wasn’t some magical song.
It was ponies like Puss. No magic, no trickery, just plenty of elbow grease. Tricky for a species with no elbows, but he did his best.
“Not a magical creature, then,” he sighed. He preferred those, especially the ones that just vanished into the ether after being defeated. Whereas these…
Holly gave a sympathetic head-shake, her mouth full of something he—probably she too—preferred not to think about too deeply. Probably intestines. Rule one of gore clean was that you did not talk—wait, no. Rule one of gore clean was that if you couldn’t identify something, it was likely intestine.
She dropped it into her rubberised saddlebag and took a long rinse with the mouthwash. That was one magical thing Twilight had sanctioned, at least. Even she apparently thought it better to use magic than to have Ponyville Hospital overrun with diseases that made Swamp Fever look cute.
A shadow fell across the decreasingly gory scene, and Pussyfoot looked up to see Derpy hovering above. Wings, he thought. Rub it in, why don’t you?
“Here you go, Mister Pussyfoot!” she said cheerfully, dropping the letter into his jaws, which fortunately were now as clean as Holly’s.
“Thanks, Derpy!” Puss opened the letter, which bore the unmistakable royal seal. He slightly regretted that somepony had eventually told Twilight it didn’t mean that kind of seal.
“What’s it say, Puss?” Holly was right up in his face as usual.
Pussyfoot looked up. “New attack. It’s happened.”
Holly’s expression at last grew strained and serious. “What, really?” She skittered a little, almost losing her balance once or twice. “That’s bad.”
Puss nodded slowly, a little colour leaving his cheeks. “Yeah.” He looked down at the newly sparkling pavement. “Kinda like a zombie, just that it doesn’t need skin and flesh at all. The insides can carry on by themselves. More like the Smooze, I guess. Twilight’s finally authorised magical cleansing. Which means—”
“—that we’re out of a job?”
Puss nodded sadly. “I fought the gore—and the gore won.”
