Sometimes you just blow it (Snowflake Mystery)

Renaultar kept on chugging along, barely able to keep pace by the end of the trip. While he was able to handle himself like a tank earlier, even with injuries, a bit of a walk and time for the adrenaline to leave his system made a perfect storm for his body to just want to give up. But the fact that Nameless, Peach, and Woods were hurt was enough to keep him from falling.

By the time they reached the door, he felt like a nap would solve all his problems in life. Loyal had probably beaten him to the door and he hoped that it would not be long before he could drop off Woods somewhere before collapsing.

"Crystal!" Loyal yelled, slamming on the door with excessive vigour, "Open up!"

For what seemed like ages, the door opened, revealing a panicked pair of faces.

"Loyal! Nameless! Woods!"

The ragtag party was quickly ushered inside the house. Daylight pressed a panic button that was installed in the hallway. A magical signal was sent through interior connections to their private doctor who just lived a block or two away. The installation wasn't cheap, but on the flipside they got (relatively) quick emergency medical help without the need for public hospitals.

White Woods was immediately placed in bed, as was Nameless (despite the filly's protests). Attention was then turned to the two 'guests'.

"Loyal, are the guest rooms prepared?" Crystal Admirer barked. Loyal nodded in confirmation, then hesitated.

"Only one double bed is..." she started.

"Good enough!" Crystal interjected, before there was another knock on the door, "Oh, that must be Remedy! Loyal, escort our guests to the room! Oh dear, oh dear..."

Loyal suppressed a tired sigh. "This way, sir and ma'am," she stated, leading them to the guest room. There was, as previously stated, one double bed. "Lie down," Loyal ordered, "The mistress would have my head if anything bad were to befall you."

Peach Dream Stuck close to Renny. She would have complained about not going to a hospital. But she was to busy putting on a brave face. The gouge on her back must have been deeper then she thought, She had also noticed a few burns.

She was a little star struck at the household. everything moved so fast. She was very quite and just stuck to Renny, not knowing these strange business like ponies.

But she was finally startled out of her silence at the site of the double bed. "Oh my. Ah I, ah..." Her face was on fire. Peach couldn't look at Renny the bed or anypony, she stared at the corner, shuffling her hooves.

Renaultar felt so releived to have some weight off his back. Only a little bit more and he could lay to rest. When they got to the bedroom he barely managed a chuckle at Loyal.

He almost beelined it for the bed, wanting to throw himself on it, but the sound of Peach's stammerings got him to stop and see her most adorably embarrassed face. Looking tiredly to the bed, then back to her again, he resisted a sigh and plopped himself down on the floor. Then he let out a pleased sigh. "I can take the floor...."

"Just lie down," Loyal said, on the edge of civility and irritation, "We are not foals, here. You are both injured and Woods and Nameless have priority. The household always has priority."

She really didn't want for this to drag on.

"Oh, Nononono, I couldn't your are far more injured them me!" Face still burning Peach looked over at Renny.

It was a mistake. She Blushed even harder, if that was even possible. "I, I'm fine really. You did so much, carrying that Filly all this way, while you were still injured!" She forced herself to look at him while she talked. Trying to convince him to take the bed by just staring at him.

Renaultar looked right back at her, wanting to give her a more serious face, but he felt too tired. "No no. This is a game you can't win. Get in the bed. I'm already laying down anyhow and don't have the energy to get up. Crawl in before i fall asleep....Please."

He couldn't help but smile a little. Now he was blushing just by looking at her.

Confound these mares, they drive me to blush...

Loyal stared ahead, trying her her hardest not to make an icy remark on the silliness that was happening before her.

She desperately hoped the doctor would be in soon. Before she snapped.

Peach Dream Smiled waved her horn at Renny. "Well, you need not exert yourself, I got the highest marks in levitation in my class!" She had to concentrate harder then she would have liked. Magic wasn't easily worked under stress. but Her teal glow curled around Renny, Lifting him off the floor.

"Oh....um." She blushed, but she couldn't look away without the chance of banging him into the walls or something. "Should I take off your armor, It must not be that comfortable to sleep in...." She really really wished she could look away. But instead she busied herself with pulling back the sheets to.

She didn't normally relay on her magic this much.

If Renaultar was tired moments ago, he was very awake now. He flailed his legs about as he was lifted up into the air. It was very unsettling.

"H-hey! Put me down! That is cheating! You...wait what?"

Did she just offer to undress me? Several thoughts went through his head, some being thoughts that should not ever be spoken aloud. "U-uhm...You shouldn't. It's uh..Not proper. And you should be the one in this bed." He smiled shyly, losing some steam with the embarrassing situation.

Peach stuttered a few things before she could get out words. she was blushing so hard even her ears were turning a bit pink. "Well, I mean, it-its n-not like we don't a-all go around naked....I-I-I'm n-na-naked..."


She Levitated off his helmet. And laid it to rest on the bedside table. "Are you sure? I don't th-think they will do m-much for your injuries..."

Renaultar couldn't help but giggled a little to himself as he was subjected to this so helplessly. He was blushing as much as she was. All this 'bedroom' talk. If any pony was going to be the death of him, it would be her...Or Loyal with that rather aggravated frown.

"Uhh....I..uh..won't stop you...But really...you should be the one of this bed." He couldn't help but let out a giggle at that thought now that he was floating above said bed. This was getting so horribly out of hand.

Loyal looked to the roof. Where the on the moon was Tender Remedy, anyway? She did NOT have to spectate this weird, bedroom undressing. Desperately, she tried to block out the inane conversation. Her trembling proved a testament to how much she failed in this task.

"Ah No I-I really should go home anyway, I have class in the morning, and Strict Marm will be very angry if I don't show up..." She was yammering, she did that when she didn't know what else to do.

While she yammered she magicked off the rest of his armor, taking care avoid his wounds. "And It will take me a while to find my way back anyway, so i should just tuck you in..."

The last bit of armor clattered in the pile and she now had a fully undressed stallion in her hooves. Her blush came rushing back, it had left her when she had started yammering.

Laying him on the bed she briskly tucked him in. The way she went about it it was more like she was tying him down in bed sheets then tucking him in. That Done she released her magic.

It took so much out of her. She swayed and fell against the bed before righting herself. "Oh my, That took a lot more out of me then I thought...." her horn pained her, as if it was scolding her for using so much magic at once when she rarely ever used it. "I... should be f-finding my way home..."

Renaultar let out a heavenly sigh when she 'tucked' him in the soft bed with her hooves all over him. He was hardly listening to her. Instead he just enjoyed every moment of her being right there. When she moved away and released him, he finally heard what she had to say.

"Go home? Nonono. Your not going. Your hurt. You can't make school tomorrow. Loyal, don't let her leave." He said hastily, not really measuring his words toward Loyal.

Loyal sighed. She'd had enough. She grabbed Peach and 'guided' her to the other side of the bed, making sure she lay down.

"You two are going to LIE DOWN, and REST, until the doctor gets here, okay? If I hear a SINGLE complaint, I'm going to SCREAM at you until you RENDERED SPEECHLESS. Do I make myself CLEAR?"

There was a couple of moments where the room was blessed with silence, then the door opened, revealing the two heads of household and a mare doctor. "They're going to be alright," Crystal said soberly to Loyal, who relaxed instantly.

"These are the other ponies," Herald explained, "We don't really want word of this coming out, so can we rely on your discretion?"

The doctor nodded. "Of course, Mr Herald. So, what have we got here...?"

As he started checking up on the two, Loyal was called to her masters. There was a hushed discussion.

Peach Dream may have remained silent and laid on the bed next to Renny, but all of her energy went to glaring at Loyal. She even shot a little of that glare at Renny, he was the one who lead her to this terrible place after all. But the sight of him so close caused her to turn red.

"You expect me to lay here, and be quite? I don't know any of you, and if tonight was an example of what you do for a living I don't want to! So I don't know how you get off yelling at me!" Peach didn't yell, but as a School pony she had a voice that carried and held the weight of a very disappointed teacher.

As the doctor came in Peach turned on her. "Well Doctor, tonight I got lost, was mistaken for a prostitute and exploded, and now I'm being mareknapped and informed that my class will be left to roam the streets of the slum." Peach didn't know when she started to cry. but as she wound down from her fit she noticed the tears running down her face. Not wanting to look at anypony or have them look at her she buried her head into her pillow and started to cry.

Renny blushed as Peach laid down next to him. That blush only grew bigger when she glared at him. He knew the questions of what happen would come, but he hoped that the previous sillyness would have lightened her mood enough to take it calmly. He had never seen Peach upset like this so he naturally winced and averted his eyes a bit before offering an answer.

"Well...Its not what you think..." Were the first words, words that usually had famous endings. Quickly he tried to fix his mistake. "We were stealing them back. I mean...They stole them first..." He face hoofed and sighed before going on again. Much slower this time. "I weeks ago I first came to this household to investigate a crime. The art pieces called the Snowflakes of Harmony or something like that were stolen. After i was taken off the case i investigated through other sources and kinda got beat up. Hence why i never...umm...called back?" He smiled shyly at her, hoping that maybe his eye patch would give her a clue that it was not a simple injury.

"Anyhow, me and a few buddies got a lead that they were selling and moving them. Crooked cops were involved so we couldn't make it official. We decided to just try and take them. Then the 'maids' show up and start blowing things up."

The doctor looked at the three members of the household inquisitively. It was Daylight Herald that replied, in a surprisingly cold voice, "If you want to leave the house, miss, we won't stop you. However, I was under the impression that you came here under the power of your own hooves, so it really cannot be called a marenapping. Furthermore, Remedy, is she fit to go out of care?"

Tender Remedy looked over the school teacher. "Damage to the back, possibly the spinal cord, complete and utter exhaustion in general, really don't think so. Plus since you're a unicorn you've probably depleted most of that energy through magic. No proven cure for that 'cept immediate rest I'm afraid." She nodded nervously. The household, though eccentric in their own way were at least not as...outgoing as some of the other ponies in Manehattan. To have four critically injured patients in one go...well, that was a sign of something seriously going wrong. "And sir over here, has, well a piece of metal..."

"Work on them," ordered Daylight, walking to the front of the bed looking sternly at the two. "It's seems I've been told conflicting stories. Deputy, you say my maids, two of which can't even work an oven properly {When he said this, Loyal looked down at the floor} somehow engineered explosives to, for some reason yet unexplained, 'start blowing things up', despite the fact that they were also in the vicinity so blowing stuff up would be rather stupid.

Now, my maid, who is both Loyal by name and nature, tells me that the explosions were started by one of your own party. This version of events has its own discrepancies. It share the same problems that it would be really really dumb to detonate explosives whilst in the vicinity and the fact I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would want to do that sort of thing. Her version of events is more believable both because it suggests a third party and she had the time to explain to me what happened in detail."

He pulled up a chair and sat down on it, waving Loyal and Crystal away with his wing. He started speaking again when they left.

"Now, I'm not forcing you to tell me what happened. I've got neither the magic or the force to do that. I can get a pretty good idea why you want to keep this all hush, and I understand if trust is in really short supply. What I have got is two maids badly hurt, the other on the verge of relapse and a confused and scared wife. This is a situation I do not like, namely because I do not know what in Celestia's name is going on."

He fell silent.

Peach Dream didn't react or reply to any of them. She would have had some words for Herald, and Renny and Loyal for that matter. But her sobs had slowly died as she fell into unconscious. The Magic withdrawal taking it out of her. Casting that little healing and manhandling Renny into the bed had exceeded her capacity.

Renaultar wanted to comfort Peach. Seeing her in tears really did make him feel like garbage. But he hesitated since they were already taboo enough in bed together, and he had passed out before he could say anything.

Way to score Renny. Let her cry herself to exhaustion. Nice one.

His frustration combined with Peach not being in the conversation anymore only made him feel more free to express his feelings on what happen tonight. Rather angry feelings.

"Now Mr. Herald, first i would not lie to you so simply. I don't know who set off those explosions. But I do know things started going wrong when they showed up. I won't say they did it, but there are SO many things wrong here!" He growled at Herald. "I got two of my best friends out there MIA, maybe even one dead. We both are in the hole on that regard."

"The fact you sent your 'maids' out tells me you not only don't trust me, but are possibly using me. Never mind the fact most your maids are proven killers. And the one you sent that wasn't a killer was a FOAL! How could you send a foal out to do anything even remotely dangerous?"

Renny took a deep breath, not doing much to calm himself down. "I'm out there trying to do my job. What the hell are YOU doing? What kind of a house is this? And who could you possibly be mixed up with to get robbed by ponies that are filling boxes with explosives? I'm the pony that doesn't know whats going on here. It should be you who is telling me!"

Herald took a deep breath, closing his eyes in thought. "Dear Mr Herald and Mrs Admirer,

I regret to tell you that due to a lack of leads and other priorities leaving us short staffed that we have decided not to pursue the robbery of your luxury items any further. For further inquiries, please contact the law administration office in the city hall. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Our gravest apologies,
Manehattan City Watch."

Herald opened his eyes again, staring at the guard. "I may have missed out a sentence or two here or there, but gist of the letter given to me by your superiors has remained intact. I don't know why, but you're doing this out of altruism, somehow convincing your friends to do the same. Amazing. You hardly see acts like that here anymore. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, you were never put on this case past the initial discovery, yet you still made it your personal mission to retrieve a snooty rich family's trinkets. Now on my side of the board, something was stolen from me, police gave up, am now using my resources, which include Prudence, Woods and, yes, Nameless. They are, in the end, servants of this household, and they do have a duty. All of us do, us being the household. None of us care who we were in the past. All that matters is each other. Nameless understands that. That was why we trusted her when she volunteered to go along. Anyway, they were supposed to figure out who was selling them, not attempt to retrieve them on account on possible conflict with your plans. That went out the window when the first box blew up. Now I have no idea who would bombs in those things. I don't the buyer, the seller or any middle ponies. I didn't even know there was a black market for fine art. Until recently, I thought this was an honorable hobby."

He sniffed at this, then tried to remember what his point was.

"This house tries to be what all houses should be; a place to live. Even with such broken ponies... it was working so perfectly, despite everything. Then this happens, and everything falls apart." He narrowed his eyes. "I don't seem to recall when precisely it fell apart, but this house hasn't been the same since. You...have accelerated this, I feel. I should hate you for it, even as you insult the ones I love most. What I'm trying to do is damage control, deputy. And I have realised that Snowflakes aren't worth losing what has been so hard to build. You can stay here until you recover, then you must leave, with your mare, and forget about the Snowflakes. I don't want to get involved with ponies who blow each other up, and neither should you."

Herald stood up. "I know you've taken a shine to little Nameless. Celestia knows she's taken a shine to you. But if you do pursue this case further, she will be forbidden to talk to you. Hypocrisy? Maybe. But I think of it as realising the stakes. Loyal wanted to cut ties when you got beaten up. Terrorist activity is my limit. Of course, if you do just continue your life as usual, Nameless will be able to talk with you. Not about the snowflakes, but as a friend. Now I know Loyal, who is eavesdropping right at this moment, will not believe you will give up this case, but I have hopes that your kindness will triumph over stubborness. Come in, Loyal!"

Hesitatingly, the door opened and said maid did enter.

"Keep an eye on our guests while Tender Remedy treats them," Herald said, walking out, "They're probably going to want someone to scream their frustrations at, and you have already drawn the ire of our guard, from what I've gathered. That said, I give you my full permission to speak your mind, though actual physical harm is out of the question. We want our guests to live, don't we, doctor?"

Remedy smiled and nodded nervously, as Herald left. "Um," she started, "I'm going to remove this piece of metal, okay? Though magic will mask most of the pain, you are going to feel a strange sensation. I will ask you to stay as still as possible, um." She turned to Loyal, "I might ask you to hold him still if he move too much, okay?" Her voice was very timid after the conversation.

Loyal nodded, not saying a word.

There were so many things going through Renaultar's mind. He never knew about the case closing out. He didn't want to bring any risk to their house. He didn't know that he was causing such a rift in their home.

There were no more words from him for Mr Herald. Renaultar just looked down, expressing a mix of frustration and loss. He wasn't prepared to speak out against all of this. And who was he to do so? Mr Herald had a house to protect. Maybe leaving things as they were was the best course of action.

You might have gotten your friends killed, if one is still alive. All for what? Some art? It makes perfect sense to just cut your losses.

But in his mind, it still stung him. He wasn't sure if it was the injustice, or just wanting to prove something. Something down in his core stirred at it. There would be no sooner answer for what it was, but he would have a lot of time to think about it.

He regarded Loyal as she entered the room, not giving her much a kind expression. Renaultar just as soon looked away, expecting to hear her yabber all about his inadequacy and errors.

"Just make it quick Doctor. I can handle some pain." He grumbled.

"It's not pain I'm worried about," Remedy muttered, as she cast a charm on the guard. Then she began the process of extracting the shrapnel. It wasn't as if would hurt, for the feeling of pain took a back seat to the sensation of things being pulled out of you. The lack of pain, where pain was expected, was what made the experience a strange one.

Loyal simply stood and paid attention for any assistance she might give, but she did have faith in the doctor, having been treated by her many times in the past. A bit skittish, but almost a part of the household in her own way. Probably the closest one could get to the household without being a member of the household.

"All done." Remedy nodded to herself, then started working on Peach Dream.

Loyal said nothing. Just stared ahead.

Renaultar did have to admit, it was a very disturbing sensation. He was not even aware it was that deep. Despite the pain being very manageable, he had several pained expressions for the whole process. Other than that, he gave no trouble at all.

Once the work was done, he laid his head down to finally try and relax for a moment. At least he tried to, but Loyal standing there unnerved him to no end. He knew that made was thinking. The fact she was not talking was starting to unsettle him more than when she talked.

"....Well?" He said, finally turning to Loyal after many deathly silent moments.