My head was pounding. I opened my eyes and squinted into bright sunlight. [i]Sunlight?[/i] The last thing I could remember was the house I was fumigating. I had been tracking [i]blatella germanica,[/i] the German cockroach, one of the most cunning creatures known to man. For hours our game of cat and mouse had gone on, until finally I had the bastard cornered in the cellar. We faced off. I remember he'd waved his antenna in defiance, mocking me to the last. I admired his courage. I pulled the trigger of my spray wand and let him have it. Poison spewed forth, a thick miasma of toxic death, slowly filling up the basement. I remembered my head started swimming, it was getting harder to think straight. I'd turned to the side...I remembered seeing my reflection in a mirror... My head throbbed again. The poison. That had to be it. I must have passed out from the fumes. It's happened before. Damn crafty roaches, always hiding in unventillated basements. [i]How did I get outside, though?[/i]

Chapter 1 - Easy Money, Right? A whistle sounded. On a podium stood a biege mare with a pink and blue mane and tail. Her eyes were obscured by black sunglasses. She looked tough. A row of eight fillies set off along each other on a obstacle course. They crawled under barbed-wire, climbed a wall with a rope, balanced over a small drop on a pole, and swam across a pool. Among them was green earth pony filly. Her eyes shone a sharp emerald sheen. Her mane and tail were black and had no style to them. They were simply combed and nothing more. She was lithe like gymnast but strong like young bull. Her muscles took up little volume on her boyd but what was there was visibly defined. She was in the middle of the pack during the obstacle course. She caught glimpses of how the others were ahead. Only one other earth pony was ahead of her, the rest were unicorns or pegasi. They uses their magic respectively wings to aid them in the obstacle course. Sometimes it help a lot, like flying over wall, yeah, it really wasn't fair. But life wasn't fair, as the green filly's mentor and gurdian liked to remind her of. She threw a glance at the mare in the sunglasses. She didn't want to fail here. It's my whole that matters. Remember, capitalize on your strengths, compensate for your weaknesses. I will get my chance. All I gotta do is wait. The green filly thought to herself as she dove into the pool.

Chapter Nineteen: ...And Fall [i] "Who are you?" The filly sits alone on a rock. All around her is an endless gray landscape of stone, broken only by craters. The sky is a cold expanse of stars. Across from her, a figure materializes. The figure of an adult. An alicorn. Her coat is black, her mane and tail a dark blue starry cloud. She is wearing some sort of armor. She looks great and terrible, like a Queen. "Who are you?" the filly asks again.

Chapter Fourteen: So Much for Pathos Pyx sat in her dark little cell, feeling lower than a bow-legged caterpillar. There was little to do in here except stare at the walls, so that is what she did. Then, suddenly: [i]Kill them, Pyx![/i] She sat bolt upright. This was the first time the voice had spoken since that night in the woods, the night she couldn't remember. The voice that sounded like Mommy's sometimes, and sometimes like somepony different. "Why do you keep saying that?" she asked aloud. "Who are you? Who exactly do you want me to kill anyway, desu?" [i]All of them, Pyx! They've all betrayed you! Kill them all![/i]

"This is bad, Spike!" Twilight paced nervously back and forth across the main room of the library. "This is really, really bad!!" Spike sat in the corner in his favorite easy chair, smoking his bubble pipe. Usually, Twilight's freakouts were one of his few sources of amusement, but today she was actually starting to worry him. To her credit, Twilight had managed to keep it together long enough to finish getting Pyx ready for school. However, as soon as the door had slammed shut behind her, Twi had gone straight for the Pone's Farm and started ranting.

Chapter Six: Friendship is Trickier Than it Looks The bell rang, and all the little fillies and colts trotted outside for recess. So far, Pyx was surprised to discover that she enjoyed school, especially history. She'd really liked the part of Miss Cheerilee's lecture about the evil pegasus queen who had murdered thousands of earth ponies and tried to take over Equestria. She wondered briefly what it might be like to be an evil queen; it sounded like a fun job! A few days ago at breakfast, Mommy Twilight had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, but she hadn't known how to respond at the time. She was a little perplexed by the concept of recess, but once she'd gotten into the groove she discovered she enjoyed that too. Thus far, her life had mostly been spent in a series of rooms and basements, with the outside world existing as an ethereal dimension she only caught brief glimses of while traveling. However, as soon as she started romping about in the sunshine, she realized that it was actually a lot of fun out there! The grass, the sky, the air, the birds, the butterflies--all of it was brand new and full of wonder! Suddenly, a glob of mud hit her in the face. Everything went dark for a second, and then she remembered that she could cast a lot of complicated spells for some reason. Her horn flashed, and the glob of mud vanished to the cornfield, though her glasses were still a bit smudged. "Ooops, sorry about that~~!"

Prelude: One Angsty Winter Night A single blood-red leaf detached itself from the gnarled, skeletal finger of a tree and drifted slowly downwards, the last clinging ember of autumn burning itself out at last. Pale and ghostly moonlight drifted across a murky sky, illuminating a unicorn's face as he gazed mournfully into the reflecting pool before him. Haunting strains of [i]Disintegration[/i] by The Cure bled from the cone of a nearby record player, drifting off into the night like a lost, sad spirit in search of a hug. The unicorn continued to gaze at his image in the pool; at his worn and haggard features; at his dark and lonely mascara-lined eyes. Eyes that had lived so long; seen so much horror, and so much pain. "Sadness," whispered the unicorn into the darkness. "Infinite sadness." His horn aglow, he quickly levitated the quill pen down to the parchment spread out on the rock before him, and scrawled out the final line of his poem. He brushed the mascara-tears from his eyes, and gave his work an appraising glance.

Chapter 2 I got to Canterlot by airship, and by the time I landed it was almost sundown. I had dinner during the flight, some kind of vegetable soup. The food here is all vegetarian; one of the hardest things I've had to get used to. I don't mind it so much anymore, but there are days I could kill for a decent cut of steak. The rest of the ride I spent going over the case so far in my head. It seemed straightforward: young mare gets knocked up, wants to track down the rich father and make him pay. But that was the problem. The job was too simple. She didn't need to come all the way out to Applewood, any other detective could handle a job like this at half the price. Why hire me, specifically? Who gave her my name? Maybe you're just overthinking it, Marlowe. I found a room at the Hotel Coronet, not far from where I got off the airship. A long time ago it might have been a classy place, but now it was a worn-out shell with dirt between the floor tiles and chipped paint on the walls. The clerk was a tired old unicorn stallion with a dull brown coat and a red-brown mane the same shade as the countertop. He was the kind of guy who looked like he'd fade into the background if he stood still long enough. He took my name and passed me the room key without so much as a word. His daughter had a little more personality, and was easier on the eye. She had the same light brown coat and red-brown mane and tail, but on her the colors made me think of chocolate mousse instead of dusty old countertops. She didn't give a name; she just introduced herself as "the bellmare." She looked the part, too: she had on a bright red vest with a white shirt and black bow tie, and a little red cap on her head. Her cutie mark was a pink heart with a call bell in the center.

Chapter 1 My office is at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in a reasonably shabby building that might have been new back when Star Swirl the Bearded wore short pants. Did Star Swirl ever wear short pants? Did he ever wear pants at all? I have no idea. Well, never mind about that. I do pretty good business out here, believe it or not. I could afford a better office in a better building. But if a man like me gets too accustomed to living posh, he starts to forget what line of work he's in, and for a man like me that's no good. So I stay right where I am, in my shabby little office in my shabby little building in shabby little downtown Applewood. The story of how I came to be living in a land of magic and colorful talking horses is long and complicated, and it's nowhere near as interesting as it sounds. I'm not the only human around, but I'm the only one around here. Took some getting used to at first, but I get by. At this point I'd probably get jumpy if something tried to talk to me that didn't walk on four legs. A city is a city, and whatever city you're in, people are the same: full of secrets and lies and duplicity and malice. Why should a city full of talking magical ponies be any different? Well, never mind about that. On the day she walked into my office, it was hotter than Celestia's...well, never mind about that either. The sun was high and the sky was cloudless; would have been a beautiful day if I didn't have to spend it on the inside of an oven. I was sitting behind my desk, moving a pen around on the blotter and trying to forget that I was slowly being roasted alive. I looked up when I heard the door rattling.