Bait 'n' Switch Codology

"Okay miss, please, for the record. Can you state your name, occupation, and cutie mark in that order?"

"Bullseye; one word. I work as a private investigator outside of the New-Manehatten Skylines. My cutiemark is an eye, the same as my own, with a magnifying glass instead of an iris."

"Let the record show that Bullseye is a light green mare, with a lighter green mane, almost turquoise, but with a white tint instead of blue. Her eyes are a milky gray, as are her marks. For the transcript, she speaks with an old Manehatten accent."

"So, Miss Bullseye. You obviously know why you're here."

"Yes."

"Would you state that for the record please?"

"I'm here as a potential culprit, or otherwise witness for the murders that took place at Tul'foht's recently."

"Thank you Miss Bullseye, woul-"

"I'd rather for you to just call me by Eye. Or Iris, if you want."

"If you could please not comment during the intervie-"

"Interrogation."

"..."

"The rest won't talk to you, huh?"

"We cannot comment on any state of being of any creatures in or not in our custody."

"You heard me say I was a P.I. right? I know this little song and dance. I have power here, so I wan-"

"That's... not exactly how this works. Though, as your lawyer, I'd recommend against it.."

"Gerald. Please."

"..."

"He's right though, we can make you tell the truth with magic."

"Guess that's my own fault."

"If we could please stay focused."

"Sorry G, Iris? Could you just start at the beginning? You were at the... tofoholt? man-"

"Tul'foht. You have to roll a silent 'H' in the middle, old Manehattenite accents."

"You were at the mansion that night... why?"

"I was there to kill Origami."

"The Syndicate head. We've got a lot of details on that, but if you can clarify, how exactly did you even get close to him?"

"It was dumb luck. I was investigating a case, tailing a tail, you know how it is. I track this stallion down to an apartment east of the three fifty seven phaseway, just under the 'stalks near western isles road. I go lookin' yeah? Bust up some info. I got to his apartment and smell blood. One breaking and entering charge later, and I find this poor bitch dead as a doornail, icer bolt straight through her left eye. I was searching her crap for any info, numbers or ID, and I found a letter. I-"

"I'm sorry, stop for a second please. Where was this?"

"You know that griffonia cuisine knock off restaurant down past fifty five?"

"How do you know it's a knock off?"

"Been to Black Rock Castle myself, they don't even get the searing even a little bit right."

"Gerald, that's not the question we should be asking her."

"Right, sorry."

"This whole other crime then? What did you do with the body, and why didn't you report it?"

"I was getting there. So I found this letter right? It's an invitation to the Tul'foht mansion, in two days, this poor bitch was-"

"Please refrain from using vulgarities for the recor-"

"Ay-ay, no, you got it wrong. She was a bitch. Literally, a diamond dog, they don't appreciate that name anymore though."

"Oh... Well, continue."

"As I was saying... This letter for her, it's an invitation in two days' time. Some kinda business deal. Turns out, she knew somebody up top, somebody Origami knew. Origami wanted to meet her, possibly talk business, make connections, that sorta deal."

"But she was dead."

"As a doornail, like I said. Thing was, I knew of Origami. He... He offed my father when I was young. My daddy was a professional boxer, real top of the line stuff. Origami told him to throw a fight, he didn't, and that was that."

"Are you... admitting to the murder of Origami?"

"Origami ain't even his name, and what's it matter to you?"

"We're..."

"I'm joking. So, I figured, 'now's my chance'. I had one of those shaping charms back home. Good for a single night, if you know what I mean, all I had to do was make sure Terri's death didn't make it back to Origami or his goonies, take her place, and strike as soon as I was close."

"You casually jumped into a premeditated murder plot simply because the means just fell into your hooves? Just like that?"

"Yeeeup."

"That's kind of impressive."

"Gerald!"

"Sorry."

"If you're trying to convince us you're innocent..."

"It's more complicated than that. Plus, not like anybody's gonna care; or miss the rich, sideways, hat wearing bastard for that matter."

"...?"

"Slang honey, ignore me, so anyways. The letter had a specific time, just after Queen-T lowered the sun for the night. I get there, and it's spooky as all get out right? There's this creepy stone pathway up through the gardens-"

Bullseye, or in this case, Terri, plodded her way up an angled hill. The terrain around her was thick with shaped trees, shrubbery, stone sculptures, and any random rich person knick-knacks that one would simply throw money at until it all ended up in their yard. The overhanging, white painted, vine toating arches around the path she was walking under mostly blocked her view of the sky, and the gray overcast clouds above it.

Looked like rain, and soon.

The ridged cut stone path was tight, but efficient. None of the rocks shifted under her weight, and there weren't any cracks where her lower paw toes could catch and cause her to tumble over. She'd practiced for the last two nights, standing on her back hooves, it was far easier when you had the spine for it; though Bullseye still hadn't figured out the gait yet, she was stuck to slow waking.

The path was winding, weaving up the hill, back and forth, to make the slope more manageable. Where it ended, Bullseye could see lights, and her now even more sensitive ears could pick up the low sounds of conversation over the wind. As she approached, she made out through the glare of the setting sun over the ridge of the island, a group of ponies standing at what looked like a front door. Most of them were silent, but there was some light conversation.

As she approached, the majority turned to look at her, though one, a gray black stallion, barely old enough to be one, wearing a hacksaw like black Mohawk turned to what looked like a maid standing at the door. She was a unicorn, pristine ivory fur, and a low cut pink mane. "Ay, see, there they are. Can we go inside now?"

The maid shook her head. "I'm sorry master Telephone. We're still waiting on one more arrival."

"Cow, please." The teenager took another step forwards, "It's bloody cold out here! Just let us in, you can wait out here for 'em yourself."

"Lay off her, Wire. She's just doin' her job." Said another, a stallion with a leather duster. One that hung all the way down to his hooves and covered his cutiemark. He was tall, with a darker orange mane than his sunny red fur.

"So, they were all just waiting outside?"

"I'm getting there bird brains, you gonna let a mare tell 'er story? Or arya gonna keep pestering me?"

"I think, what my partner is getting confused by, is the timing of all of this. Could you describe what you know about them all now? First?"

"Actually, could you also describe Ms. Terri? The... bitch you had stolen the shape of?"

"Terri was a petite thing, tall, with gray fur, darker highlights where it was thicker, but only if you were lookin' real close. Flat chest, dainty little paws, but damn was she tall. 'Bout twice as high up as you our me. She had one of those smoother faces, probably descended from one of them Gem Hybrids."

"Thank you Iris."

"Ah sure. Now, Telephone Wire, the colt tryna be a stallion. He's just a punk, far as I knew at the time. The unicorn stallion that could've hidden a body in that coat? I never learned his real name, or if he lied to me, but he called himself Immersion. Then there was the maid herself, pretty little thing, with a cropped tail way up high, so obviously she wasn't just a maid. Her name was... Snow Cone- yeah, that was it. Then the big guy, I'm sure you've seen 'em already. Goes by Johnson- a Western name-"

Despite the conversation, Bullseye's eyes were drawn towards the hulking, nearly chest height brown stallion without a mane. He had a blonde tail that ran down his back legs at the normal pony tail length, which on him, made it look barely enough to cover his backside. When they met gazes, his neutral frown upturned at the edges, and he inclined his head gently in her direction.

A real gentlepony. Bullseye thought while drinking in the form that probably could have folded her into several separate sections if applied correctly. Before she had the chance to embarrass herself more by gawking, a snow white griffon with strikingly blue eyes approached and jerkily lifted a talon for a handshake. She spoke with a near Prench accent, if Bullseye hadn't learned Prench when she was growing up, she would have missed it. "Verglas Ley. I'll tell you this, it's good to see another non-pony around. I thought I was going to be the only one."

"You know Prench?"

"..."

"Right, sorry, please continue."

Bullseye reached for the talon, hoping not to mess up the first real test of her practice with the new form. As far as she could tell, the gesture went swimmingly. She gripped tightly, shook once, heftily, and the griffon chick smiled. "Good handshake. I like you already."

"What's... what's going on here?" Bullseye said, gesturing out to the lingering crowd.

Verglas turned to look, and nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I got that too. Apparently Origami invited an entire gaggle of people. We're all supposed to wait outside until everyone's here."

This had spontaneously become three times harder. She figured she'd have to deal with sneaking around the staff to poison or gut the guy herself, but now with five other people in the mix, with one yet to arrive...

Bullseye knew she probably wouldn't get away with it. She knew she'd probably get caught, even a shaping charm didn't cover up a magical signature, as soon as Origami was dead, big wigs, mages, everything. They'd find her. Actually killing the prick was all she cared about, and now, the path forwards was skewed even further than: "Just wing it".

"Help me understand something Iris."

"Shoot."

"You knew you'd get caught, you're a smart enough P.I. to know that regardless of how you did it, you'd leave a trail."

"Yup."

"So why? Why go through with it at all? You don't seem like you're frothing at the mouth like you're mad. You seem too stable to just throw your entire life away for revenge. I've read your case files, just skimmed through them. Reunited families, solving advanced dead cases, bringing peace to loved ones? You do good. Why give all that up?"

"..."

"That was alotta nice stuff you just said about me, so I'll treat you to an honest answer. Filly, you grew up somewhere nice, somewhere where you didn't have to worry about your daddy getting his head caved in 'cause the guy at the show that night wanted a certain kind of spectacle. Out here? Under the 'stalks? We gotta do the right thing. Ain't nobody, talon, claw, paw, hoof. They won't stand for the gobbledygook Origami was toatin’. He came from up where you were born. Brought all his money down to lord over the small people. You're right. It wasn't about revenge. It was about respect, honor. Any real people who know what livin's like? They'd take out a pony like him the first chance they got. It's about showin' people like you what people like me will and won't stand for, even when the law's too slow to show it, or too ignorant to care."

"..."
“It just so happened to be personal.”

“...”

"Please continue Miss Bullseye."

"So what's your story?" the griffon chick asked sideways, looking out towards the rest of the group. They were removed, enough that their conversation would be audible, but not intelligible to the rest of the group.

Bullseye raised her eyebrow, at least, she thought she did. It certainly felt like she did. "What do you mean?"

"All of us are here for a reason." She stated before putting a claw over her chest feathers. "Me? I got called in because of my art, apparently it caught his eye. You?"

Bullseye spun in place. She'd practiced a single pirouette hours ago when she used the shaping charm. The dress she was wearing was an off navy, meshed in with her fur along proper color theory. It stopped just above her chest, and was tightly fit under her arm so as to not fall without shoulder straps. It had an open back, and hung all the way down to her legs, with a slit near the side to show off... enough. She had a deeper blue scarf hung over her arms to complete the look.

Verglas smirked, "Ah. I see. Honest work then?"

"As honest as anything else." Bullseye realized her slip back into her personal accent, and quickly asked another question to cover it up. "What about the rest of them?"

She lifted a talon to point, not directly, but politely. "The big guy? He's tight lipped, nobody knows his story. The coat? He's a crooked cop, here to trade stories or what have you with our host. The kid? I dunno. He's part of some gang or cult. He's really proud of it too." Verglas stopped, having come to an end of the descriptions.

Bullseye lifted one of her gangly arms and gestured towards the maid before letting it drop. "What about her?"

Verglas' beak twisted in a confused expression. "What about her?"

"Well she's here isn't she?"

Verglas waved a talon, though her tone remained inquisitive, rather than dismissive. "Sure, but she's just the help."

"Absolutely, but look." Bullseye gestured to the side of the mansion. The structure itself was opulent, but in a word, simple. It had pillars, wood overhangs, ornate stone carvings and colors that meshed together beautifully in the dusk sun. That being said, each section of wall was a copy of the last. It was geometric, isolated, and repetitive. Each window had the exact same window shutters as the last, and they were all evenly spaced. "The windows? All of them are dark. Nobody else is home. If we're here for talk, or if Origami lived here full time, surely there'd be some lights on, right? If he's got a full staff, then where are they?"

Bullseye gestured behind her, "No groundskeeper either, nothing. Looks like it's just her."

As Bullseye talked, Verglas raised a talon to her beak, thinking, and slowly started nodding along while Bullseye continued. She waited, politely, until Bullseye had finished before nodding again and speaking. "That's an incredibly astute observation. If that truly is the case, then I do wonder why this maid in particular is here tonight. Surely there's a reason...?" She trailed off looking to Bullseye for conjecture.

"Well... I don't want to be presumptuous..." She said in the way that gossipers do when they absolutely want to talk smack.

"But...?" Verglas waved a talon in a 'go on' gesture.

"Real maids don't wear dresses like that." Bullseye tilted her head in the direction, not pointing, but definitely trying to get Verglas to look. "See how the skirt goes up at the back instead of down? See how she's got a cropped tail, and the way the dress pinches her sides?"

Verglas snorted and rolled her eyes, looking back to Bullseye. "Seems like Origami has some... wide reaching tastes."

"Fine tastes." Bullseye humorously corrected while using a paw to push some of the fur around her head into place. She had to keep her story believable, despite how the nature of the person she was pretending to be irked her.

Verglas chuckled and shook her head. It was then that the sound of hoof steps on stone reached Bullseye's ears. She turned to spot the next pony walking up the path. Another mare, dark lilac fur, watermelon red mane. She had cutiemark of a yellow parasol on her flanks. She walked up the path and stopped when she noticed all the looks.

She turned to look over her shoulder, noticed nobody was behind her, then looked back to them with a frown and asked, "What?" She said it with haughtiness, the kind that marked one easily as a noble mare wannabe. Her question sounded far more like: 'Whhaght?' A classic butchering of a 'supposed' higher tongue.

The doors opened behind the maid and Telephone Wire vocalized his satisfaction. "Finally!"

"If all of you cou-" the maid tried to gesture everyone in, but nobody waited for her to talk. She frowned, and the look of stress piled up in her eyes as she tried to step into the foyer in front of everyone. It didn't work. "Wai-" She did a tiny little jump and then rushed forwards. "Please wipe your hooves before-"

Telephone trotted past her, "Yeah, whatever."

Her ears folded down, and she seemingly gave up.

Bullseye called out to her from the door, and the mat she was on meant for said hoof wiping. "Hey, girly!" She smiled and waved as the maid looked up at her, and went through exaggerated motions of wiping her paws before stepping in. Verglas followed suit, as did the mare that had shown up last. The maid took that as an invitation to speak, and crossed the short distance as they all entered the foyer.

The interior held the exact kind of ambience Bullseye was expecting. Posh-wooden-nighttime. It was red flickering chandeliers on dark oak colored walls and art that was probably more expensive than she was.

The doors shut on their own as the large stallion stepped in after the coated stallion.

"Thank you." The white mare said, "You must be Mistress Terri, Mistress Verglas Ley, and Madam Violaceous Wave. I am Snow Cone, the on-site staff. Anything any of you require, please feel free to ask me, and I'll make sure your needs are tended to." The word 'needs' was lilted as she said it, a clear implication.

Bullseye refrained from cringing. My needs are fully satisfied, thank you very much.

"Yeah, actually. I've got somthin'." Telephone Wire turned away from one of the eclectic paint smear paintings on the wall. "Where's the food? I thought we'd be getting grub."

Snow shifted, taking a step back and then walking backwards towards another door that opened as she got close to it. "If you'll all follow me, I can take you to the dinning hall. Master Origami will be down from his study soon, and dinner is already set out for you all, once he arrives."

Bullseye took a glance around, and winked towards Verglas as she broke towards the opposite side of the group where the stallions were following. She took the spot at the back, and tuned out Snow talking about the history of the various pieces of art dotting the hallway as she leaned over to the sunset-esc unicorn. "So?" She said, empty of meaning.

"So?" He responded, confused.

Bullseye took another step daintily, shifting her weight to match her tone. "What do you think of all this? It's not what we expected, right?" Stallions love to talk to a stupid girl. Go on, spill the beans bucko. The hall itself was deceptively similar to outside. Sure, things were spaced around isometrically, but the floorboards, the spires going up the walls, the walls themselves, they were all copy pasted. Every few strides Bullseye noticed the repetition again, like the interior was thrown up as a distraction from how dull the structure actually was.

"You keep mentioning that. Is it important?"

"Heh, you're the detective, you tell me?"

"Miss Bullseye-"

"Iris. Why yougoin' backwards girl?"

"..."

"Because I respect you."

"..."

"Alright, fine. Yeah, it's important. You see, top of the line housing isn't cheap past the islands. Under the 'stalks, we get stuff cobbled together like it was in the older days of Equestria, read a book, you'll see. Ponies who pay for mansions like that, and let's be honest, it's only ponies with that kinda money, they don't buy 'magically generated' structures. That mansion looked like it was thrown up in a month. You tell me, if you had the money to build a mansion, would you pay twenty percent less for it all to be cookie cutter copies all the way around?"

"I'll admit, it's weird."

"And you'd be right, Origami had way too much cash to burn to buy something so cheap, what kept catching my eye is that, yeah, sure, some rich wiggins think that spartan is better, squares with no texture down to the horizon, but those houses are obvious. Somebody who buys an all-white box and likes it, wants it to look like a cheap as dirt, all-white box. This house was cheap, but the décor was trying to hide how cheap it was. If he really liked geometric repetition like that, why leave it on the outside, but cover it up on the inside? I figured it was because the gardens were meant to be the disguise, nobody but me even noticed, even when I pointed Ley to the windows, I don't think she saw."

"Which still begs the question of why it was built that way."

"I'll get there, hold onto your feathers for now buddy."

"I think it's odd." He said slowly. "Got this nagging feeling."

"I know what you mean." Bullseye responded before holding out her paw. "I'm Terri, by the way."

His orange horn lit with magic, and an aura surrounded her paw, shaking it loosely as she moved with the magic. "Immersion."

"Charmed." Bullseye snarked, "What's your story then?"

His response was clipped and confident. "Plain clothes detective. Origami pays my checks, so I work for him. I don't know why I'm here yet, I just follow instructions." He sped up a little, after he was done talking. Clearly he was done talking.

Bullseye sent a look towards the big brown stallion, watching from just off to the side with a smirk. They met eyes, he shrugged at the same time that she did. Bullseye turned her attention back towards the front of the group, and followed on in silence.