Advent of Victory

We sat at the table in the dining car, enjoying the breadsticks that were given out complimentary. Well, it would have been enjoyable if several ponies weren’t giving me the stink eye when they thought I wasn’t looking. I get that I am a huge canine, but does that make me less of a person? I sighed and turned back to the delicious starch filled treats in front of me before looking at Deciduous.

He had thought it prudent to bring the interview papers along so he could look over them as we ate. Unfortunately, he had written them in high equestrian and only realized just now that I would be unable to read them. The single waiter that seemed to man the car was making his rounds at another table, which left us plenty of time to theorize as to who Expensive Taste’s killer was.

“You picking up any clues in there, Deci?” I asked as I plopped another breadstick in my mouth. I hadn’t really realized how incredibly hungry I was until we had gotten here.

“Nothing yet. I don’t think I am very good at this at all,” he admitted, putting the papers aside to take a sip from his water.

“Have you ever read a mystery novel?” I asked. Since apparently there weren’t any televisions in Equestria that would have to be the second closest thing.

“A few,” he sheepishly admitted.

“Well then forget everything about that then. Real crime is usually not planned out very well, and occurs in a passion. Ninety percent of the time the one you suspect the most is usually who did it.” Thank you cop shows.

“So were you really a detective back where you came from.” He seemed to genuinely believe that I might not have been lying about that.

“Of course not. If you have picked up anything about me so far it should be that lying and carrying a façade of importance will get you most anywhere right?” I smiled and took a sip from my own water as he rolled his eyes.

“Why would I even ask,” he muttered.

“I don’t know.” I relaxed where I was sitting, apparently pony seats wouldn’t work so well for me so I had to use the floor, which I didn’t really mind. I was insanely scared however that someone was going to step on my tail as they passed behind me though. The approach of hoofsteps caused me to tuck it around me and look over to the waiter that was finally coming back to our table.

He was a grey unicorn stallion of average build wearing a simple black jacket. “What can I get you two?” he asked, looking us over quickly. Fortunately, he seemed completely professional and didn’t have his gaze linger on me longer than he did Deciduous.

“I will have a daisy sandwich,” Deciduous answered, passing his menu to the waiter.

“The same for me, except hold the daisies and add tomatoes or some other vegetables.” I also handed my menu to him but held onto it a moment longer. “I was hoping to ask you some questions if you wouldn’t mind.”

He kept his hoof on the menu waiting for me to release it as he looked back at me, “I don’t really have time right now ma’am. As you can see we do not have a lot of waiting staff on hoof.”

“Which is exactly why I would like to talk to you. You have no doubt heard about the horrid murder that took place in one of the private cars yesterday?” He shuddered at my mention of it, which was all the conformation that I needed. “I am investigating the death and I need to speak with the wait staff here about it.” I let go of the menu allowing him to take it.

He waited a little, longer looking me over. “Let me put these orders in and tell my boss. When I come back with your meals I will be happy to answer any questions.” With that he turned away and left Deciduous and I alone once again.

“How are you so good at that?” Deciduous asked, pulling my attention back to him.

“At what?” I replied, genuinely not understanding what he was getting at.

“Just confronting others and telling them what to do. If you weren’t really a detective then how come you are so at ease and confident faking to be one?” I contemplated his question for a long moment.

It was true that I had absolutely zero experience handling the kind of situation that I now found myself in. Back home I hadn’t ever been the kind of person to take charge so readily, I was more of the reluctant participant who would step up into the role if there was absolutely no one else to fill it. I had always known that I had an affinity for lying and deceit, but I had never employed it to often. But now that I was here, in a world and a body that was not my own I guess I felt like an outsider who could manipulate the environment however I wanted.

Was this the reason I was chosen, because I would just take this new life and do whatever I felt like with it? Because I would lie and cheat in order to get whatever I wanted? Is that why a goddess of victory would scoop me up so readily to be her champion in a game that I still didn’t know the rules of? Would this drive that seemed central to my being by what she would count on in order to win. What she would count on to drive me to kill off the competitors.

“Vixen?” I refocused my eyes and pulled them away from the window that I was staring out of. “Are you okay?”

Deciduous was looking at me with some amount of concern, I must have zoned out for longer than I had meant to. “Perfectly fine, and to answer your question, it just comes naturally to me. Maybe lying is my special talent.”

“What would a lying cutie mark even look like?” he pondered aloud.

“I imagine it would look like a lawyers briefcase,” I joked. Unfortunately, it seemed like my attempt at humor had been lost on him. Luckily, it was that exact moment that our waiter decided to return to the table. Apparently sandwiches don’t take that long to make, who knew?

He set the plates down in front of us, Deciduous having his daisy sandwich and my own being a wild assortment of vegetables. No I wasn’t overly fond of eating tomatoes and bread for lunch, but ponies are vegetarian so I couldn’t exactly ask for a BLT. That was when it hit me that I should have just gotten a grilled cheese. Once he finished serving us he pulled out a chair and took a seat at the table as well.

I pushed the sandwich away and motioned for Deciduous to do the same. He immediately understood and gathered a sheet of blank paper as well as his quill so that he could record the conversation. The waiter seemed nervous, more so than I would expect an innocent person to be, but then again he was about to be questioned by a large carnivore.

“State your name please,” I began, trying to be amicable so that I could put him at ease.

“Timely Service.” Of course it was.

“Were you working a shift yesterday, Timely Service?”

“Yes ma’am, I worked a twelve hour shift yesterday,” he replied instantly.

“Can you tell me if you saw anything odd while working your shift yesterday?” I probably should have asked this to the others, but it had slipped my mind.

“Not especially no.”

“Can you recall a mare eating in the dining car yesterday by the name of High Class. She is a tall thin white unicorn mare with a white and red mane.”

“Yes, I remember serving her all of her meals yesterday,” he said with a nod. Good at least this means she wasn’t lying about coming to the dining car yesterday.

“Can you tell me what your impression of her was?”

“Well, she was very quiet and kept mostly to herself. She complimented me on how quickly I brought each of her meals and tipped very well. Why do you want to know about her?”

“No reason for you to be concerned about. Can you tell me what you thought of her demeanor as the day progressed? Were there and significant changes?” It didn’t looked like we were going to get a lot here.

“Not really no, she sat quietly like I said and ate her meals in peace.”

I sighed and dismissed the waiter to go back to his duties. Interviewing the rest of the wait staff would likely be an effort in futility. As I had surmised earlier, if High Born had killed Expensive Taste then she was an excellent actress and wouldn’t have let her façade fall around other ponies. Of course if she was also innocent then there would be no reason for her to have acted differently around the wait staff, so either way they were all going to say that she didn’t do anything out of the normal.

If I was going to find some clue that would give me the answer to the identity of the murderer then I would need to have a thorough look around the train. Maybe my untrained eyes could catch something that the guards had missed. The biggest thing I could still not get over was that whoever had committed this crime had managed to shut out the lights in order to use the cover of darkness.

The problem with this was that they would not only have had to shut out the lights along the entirety of the train, but also make there way back to the car, struggle with Expensive Taste, kill him, and then make a clean getaway. The more I played it over and over in my head it seemed improbable. Of course Equestria had magic so it would make perfect sense if it had been a unicorn and they had teleported to the car to commit the murder. For that reason it would have made perfect sense for High Born to have been the culprit.

Although, I would be remiss to overlook the likelihood of there being more than one killer. It would have been all too easy for one person to kill the lights while the other carried out the deed. Hell, that was probably the more likely scenario than a unicorn teleporting. For a tag team group, the only ponies that came to mind were the two guards that had arrived quickly at the scene, though I couldn’t think of a reason for them to have done it aside from getting paid by someone.

In the end there was only really one pony aboard the train with any motive that I could think of and that was High Born, though I still didn’t think that she had done it. Maybe I was letting my personal feelings get in the way of what the facts were pointing to, but I didn’t really care at the time. I decided to put off my thoughts a little longer and turned back to the sandwich that was before me.

I picked up my meal and bit into it and was pleasantly surprised at how well prepared it was. I wasn’t sure exactly what they had used to substitute the daisies, but it was blended perfectly with whatever sauce they were using. I quickly ate the sandwich with my brain working in the background, trying to figure out something that I was missing. It didn’t take long for me finish and stand from the table.

Deciduous who had finished his own sandwich long before me stood as well; collecting the various papers that he had been looking over as he did so. I dropped a few bits on the table as a tip and immediately started back towards our car. The main passenger cars were located towards the front of the train while the private ones were at the back. There was an engine attached to the back of the train to pull it in the other direction in case it was needed, and that was where the conductor I had spoken with was. The car with all of the electrical equipment in it that kept everything running was just behind that engine car. The dining car was in the middle of the train, separating the first class and coach. I guess that way none of the elite had to rub elbows with the riff raff.

We exited the dining car and started along the hallways that lined the private cars. One thing that was most certainly not first class was the state of the floors. I don’t think that I have ever seen a hallway with so much grime along the bottom of it. There wasn’t a single clean spot along the entire way as we headed towards the electrical car.

Once we arrived at the giant wall of circuits I asked Deciduous to go retrieve the conductor, which he did without a word. We all stood in front of the electrical circuits for a while before the elderly stallion finally broke the silence.

“Why did you call me here?” he sounded a little more aggravated than curious.

“Can you tell me how all of this works?” I asked, without looking back.

“Nope,” came his immediate reply. I think I heard Deciduous snicker a bit behind my back.

“Can’t or won’t?” I asked.

“Won’t, to tell you how all of this worked would take up way too much of my time. Why don’t you ask me something simpler so I can answer you and be on my way.” Well at least he was upfront about it.

I looked back over the dozens of flashing lights and knobs that stood before me. It really seemed that this entire thing was as complex as an 80’s supercomputer, and since I had no idea how even one of those worked I wasn’t going to figure this out anytime soon. Might as well put off the investigation into Equestrian technology until later.

“What happened to this machine that caused the lights to go out?” I asked after a moment.

“Well that is quite simple,” he said, stepping forwards so I could see him for the first time during this meeting. “If you look here you will see the fuses that keep the lights along the entire train on.” He motioned to a set of switched along the side of one of the panels. “What happened is pretty simple, they all turned off. It was a simple matter for me to walk back here, feel around and flip all of them back on.” It sounded simple enough; I know that I have had to flip the circuit breaker more than once.

I continued looking over all of the paneling a while more, and something suddenly jumped out at me. I had been so preoccupied with all of the electronics that I hadn’t really paid attention to anything else but now that I looked up a little more there was a faint bit of red that was sticking out to me. Mainly, what appeared to be blood smeared on the corner of an air vent.

“Was that there before?” I asked, motioning to the air vent and the blood that was coating the cover.

The conductor followed my gaze to the vent and his eyes went wide, “No, that is the first time that I am seeing it.”

“We need to get that open then,” I stated as I stepped forwards to do just that. The bolts that held the vent in place weren’t screwed on that tight, but I couldn’t get a grip on them with my apparently useless front paws.

“Let an earth pony handle that,” Deciduous said, stepping forwards and easily twisting the bolts off of the vent cover. I was amazed at how easily he did it, but then again when your dexterity is nil it is easy to be amazed by things. He finished unfastening it and pulled the cover off.

I immediately was in front of the vent as he put the cover aside and found that there were two items hidden away inside. The first of which was the golden pocket watch that had been stolen from Expensive Taste’s corpse. The two initials that were engraved into the piece were a dead giveaway of that. The far more interesting item though was the bloodied handkerchief that the pocket watch rested on.

I grabbed the watch and tossed it to Deciduous before taking a hold of one of the clean corners of the handkerchief and pulling it out of the vent. I had it up in front of my face to give it a close inspection, but that wasn’t really necessary. The corner that I held onto had a half moon eclipsing the sun, and the other had the initials HB. It didn’t take a genius to figure out whom this bloody garment belonged to. I now had some very strong physical evidence pointing to High Born for committing this murder.