[“You can stop here, Acorn,” said the cat. “What part of Hades’ lair is this that you / Have brought me to, you—” “No, we’re done with the terza rima now. You don’t have to talk in iambics anymore.” “That’s a relief,” said Acorn, relishing the dactyl. Acorn glanced around at their stopping place. The slimy banks of the Acheron had long since transitioned into a forest of dead, white trees, through which the pony and the cat had been walking for what felt like either minutes, hours, or decades. But now Acorn and the god damned cat stood in a small clearing, filled with cold, flat light that filtered down from some unseen source in the uniformly cloud-covered sky. The ground beneath Acorn’s hooves was grey and marshy, and seemed somehow ephemeral, as if it was only ninety percent there. An oppressive mist hung in the sky and over the ground, sending cold tendrils to lick at Acorn’s fetlocks. Silence, stillness. “So this is where it happens?” Acorn asked. “This is where I’m judged by you?” “Well, by me and my two co-arbiters,” Minos said as he leapt off Acorn’s back and sashayed to a broad, low tree stump near the middle of the clearing. He jumped onto the white stump, sat, and curled his tail around himself demurely. “Yes,” said Acorn, “You are referring to your brother Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, the former king of Aegina. The three of you judge the souls of the dead and decide which realm of the underworld they shall inhabit.” “Right. Exactly,” said the cat. “You didn’t have to explain all of that to me, since I obviously know it already.” “I know,” said Acorn. “But this part of the plot’s really important. And so I wanted to make it all explicit for people who don’t know every fucking detail of Greek mythology by heart.” “Fine, whatever. The point is, Acorn, the other judges will be joining us shortly. And then your soul shall be laid bare. For I have known your sins already, known them all— the sins that fixed you in that formulated phrase. And when you are formulated, sprawling on a pin, when you are pinned and wriggling on my wall, then how will you begin to spit out all the butt-ends of your days and ways?” “And how should you presume?” Acorn shot back. Minos shook his tiny cat head. “Acorn, that is not what you meant at all; that is not it, at all.” The cat began licking one adorable white paw, and shot glanced slyly at the defiant pony from the corners of his bottomless eyes. “…So tell me, has it been worth it, after all? Has it been worth while?” ——————————————————————————————————————] “I think we should go back,” said Pam. “It’s the safe thing to do. [Acorn has gone to be judged for his sins, and that godawful cat left with him.”] “I agree with Pam,” said [Pawnee]. She put [the severed head of the ]rapper [Snoop Dogg back into] her saddlebag. “We should go back [to Wiggins, even though that’s still a dumb name for a town.”] “I thought the Pony Pals didn’t give up!” said Anna. [Sparks began to fly from her mechanical arm, and the other Pony Pals heard a horrifying grinding; whether from the arm or from the tortured swarm of brain-gears inside Anna’s head, they were unsure.] “We’re not giving up,” said [Pawnee]. “We just don’t think [that we can rescue Acorn’s soul now that it has been reaped by that fucking cat."] “Anna, it’s two against one,” said Pam [proudly. She had only recently learned to count, and showed off this new skill at every opportunity. Anna was conflicted. She knew that Pawnee was right; Acorn’s soul was irredeemable. She also knew the true nature of that fiend posing as a cat. There could be no revenge taken on such a creature, and if she provoked it, it might well come back to the plane of the mortals and keep fucking with the Pony Pals out of pure spite. Finally, Anna knew that if she went into the underworld, she would never be able to return to this realm. She’d been yanked back from death once, and now the Other Side had a magnetic pull on her soul, trying to drag it back to where it by all rights should be. Her next death, she knew, would be final. But Anna fucking loved Acorn.] #DetectivePony