When her other four friends had gone to their hotel room and Pinkie Pie had been carted away to the hospital with Arils, Twilight Sparkle snapped on a pair of gloves, donned some protective goggles and got to work with the rest of the investigation team. She thought the best place to start would be here in the clinic, all the victims had to have some worthwhile evidence as to what had happened.
As she looked around, she noticed the grey unicorn they had met previously inspecting the oxygen tank and taking notes. Twilight made her way over and peered over her shoulder at her notes. Most of it was nonsense to her; as much as she studied, these acronyms and shortened terms made little to no sense whatsoever. Just as the pencil was about to start a new line it paused and the mare turned.
"Can I help you?" She asked politely, moving her clipboard to the side.
"Sorry, no, just reading your notes." Twilight said, trying not to seem nosey.
"I haven't got much," Noire responded, looking back up at the container. "I can't even ID if the killer is a pony or something else entirely." That much Twilight had figured out, Pinkie Pie had only said "monster" and that term could apply to a variety of species.
"Wait, how do you know it's a killer? The oxygen tank could have just come loose in the crash." The crew member looked up from her clipboard and smiled at the pony next to her.
"Twilight, you're a clever pony," The purple pony grinned sheepishly at this compliment, but the smile faded as soon as she continued, "But you wouldn't make a very good detective. You're basing that statement on what the murderer wants you to see. Heavy equipment, crash, dead pony, case closed. The truth is that you almost never find any solid evidence in a case, you need to use logic and prior knowledge to get through. Take for example, this oxygen tank. The reason it's so big is because of the altitude. If something goes wrong, depressurization could be fatal, so they have something like this in case of that situation." She tapped the canister with a hoof to demonstrate her point. "Now, imagine a while ago, when airships weren't as safe. This would be a big problem, it would be exactly like what you thought had happened. Big, heavy equipment, crash, dead pony. So they developed this." She tapped the chunk of wall that was attached to the end of the tank, connecting the canister to the rubble was a concrete cuff. "A reinforced seal that would keep this thing secure even if the ship flew through a storm.
"Now this ship, being more modern, hasn't seen a crash in a while, so they dropped some of their safety procedures, which explains the fatality rate on this ship being so high. There was one place they didn't want to loosen up on, the medical bay. A sick pony has more trouble running away from a giant oxygen tank then a healthy one. So they kept the seal, meaning that this couldn't have happened during the crash. The dampening effect that the seal has on impact would make the pull from this giant container nothing more than a bit of a tug. The walls are also very sturdy, we've seen almost no damage to them on the rest of the ship. It makes no sense that the trend would break here, with this bit of wall being the only thing that succumbs, all this other equipment didn’t budge because of the same safety precautions." She stopped speaking, thought about what she just said, when started writing down something or other on her clipboard.
"But...wouldn't the tank explode on impact?" Twilight asked, looking over the cylinder. The crew member stifled a laugh and then shook her head, grinning.
"Sorry, but no, that only happens in shoddy action movies, it's actually pretty damn hard to make a pressurized oxygen canister explode. You need to apply huge pressure to just the right places and apply enough to basically crush it." Feeling a bit put down, Twilight nodded and looked around pensively.
"Actually, now that you mention it, there's a ton of evidence to support your theory." She walked over to the bed where Pinkie had been. "Pinkie Pie knew both of the victims had died, which meant she was awake, she knew about the crash, but wasn't awake during it, in fact, she was strapped down...as was Arils. With all the ponies tied down, the whole crash would have taken place with the nurse in her restraint chair!" Twilight hopped over to the two chairs in the room, one had straps unbuckled recently and tossed aside instead of retracted, like the other's unused straps were.
"But something still doesn't make sense." She walked back over to where the canister was, trying to think of what it was, the crew member following her and scribbling madly on her clipboard. The body had been removed, but there was still plenty of blood, and of course the indentation in the wall..."That's it! The dent! If it had fallen off, it couldn't have made a dent in the wall, we've already established how solid they were. But that makes no sense because if somepony just tore it off..." She trailed off, trying to make sense of it. It was then that something started nagging at the back of her skull. "Hey, what's stronger, the seal or the wall?" The grey mare behind her looked up when she was addressed.
"What? Oh, the cuff, definitely, after all, it has to keep the two together."
"Okay, now, if you wanted to get this tank from point A to point B, and if you didn't know any better, what would you try to pull?" The unicorn paused and put the pen to her chin in thought.
"If I didn't know about it, I'd pull the cylinder itself." She said.
"Great! You said all stress applied to the tank was transferred the cuff, which then dampened it and transferred it to the wall. That does explain why the wall is torn, but it doesn't explain the impact." Twilight stopped speaking and frowned in thought, "Well, it does. But it doesn't make sense." The silver-vested pony tilted her head to look at the frustrated pony from behind her glasses.
"Try voicing it, if I sift through things out loud, it always helps me solve problems." She said, Twilight considered it for a moment, then nodded.
"All right; so right now, we know one thing about the killer, he must have been really strong. He managed to transfer enough strength through the cylinder, through the dampening cuff and still have enough to rip a hole in the wall."
"Problem is, the cylinder has been dusted for hoofprints and there are none." The crew member chimed in.
"That makes a bit of sense, some creatures don't have hooves. Now, they could have thrown the cylinder at the nurse, but then it wouldn't have dented the wall like that, the only way they could have caused an impact like that is to have straight-up charged her and smashed it into the wall." She stopped and considered the evidence. "Now, the wall is perfectly adjacent to the impact spot and there was a lot of force required to both rip out the tank and smash it into the opposite wall. What if the force is the same?" She said, suddenly grinning.
"You mean the momentum from ripping the cylinder out caused that hole?" The grey unicorn asked. "That makes sense, but consider what you said, the cylinder would lose the momentum as it traveled through the air on it's own accord, it might still make an impact, but not one this big. Plus, remember what you said, if the assailant physically grabbed the canister, they would transfer the momentum to themselves the moment they tore it out of the wall." There was that sensation again, the feeling she was missing something.
"Wait, say that again."
"If they grabbed or threw the canister, they'd lose the momentum." There it was, something clicked, it all made sense. Oh Celestia, Twilight loved that moment when it all connected.
"So, what you're saying is that they would need to maintain constant force throughout the entire route from that end of the room to the other?" Twilight asked, already beaming.
"Yeah, but there's no way to-" Twilight's horn lit up and grabbed the pen the crew member was holding in her aura, the grey glow reflexively tightened its grip, but the purple one won out and the utensil went flying across the room, hitting the wall with a smack. The mare's face cycled through emotions, first she looked a bit angry, then confused, then pensive, then her whole face lit up. "Nooooo, really? So now we know what they are! Hey Gare, check the crew roster for any and all unicorns that have alibis matching the attacks." Just as she said this, the nagging idea came up again. "Thanks so much Twi! This explains the crash too, somepony with magic like that can-is something wrong?" There it was. Now it made sense, or rather it didn't.
"Call the search off, it won't make any sense." She looked downtrodden now. "Nopony except maybe the Princesses have enough prowess to cast destructive spells, not to mention they were all lost years ago. Plus, even I couldn't pull that canister out of the wall, and I'm pretty sure no unicorn on the airship can either." Just then, a brown pegasus holding a packet of papers walked up.
"Hey, the only unicorn on the ship that was in medical bay at the time of the crash was...'Guinevere Arils'." Twilight was shocked at this news, giving a sidelong look to the mare next to her who wore a similarly surprised expression. "Hey, what are you guys checking out anyways?"
"Ugh, who blew up the engines and killed all these people. It had to have been a unicorn, only they can cast direct destructive magic!" She rubbed her head with a grey hoof as the pegasus gave her a friendly smile.
"Don't be ridiculous, there wasn't any destructive magic involved with the ship crash! We found a burnt-out explosive device on each one of the engines." He looked very pleased with himself but the other crew member just gave a frustrated sigh.
"Dammit Gerry! Well, at least we know they can use magic." She turned to Twilight, who looked just as confused as she felt. "All right, we'll still need to check Ms. Arils out, give her an alibi, we'll do that later of course, she's not a very prime suspect and this place needs way more investigation." She then nodded and gave the purple mare a satisfied smile. "You did well, I have to admit, I didn't think you had it in you. Go see the chief over there, I think he could use someone like you."
She jabbed a hoof in the direction of the other cadaver, where the burly earth pony known as "Chief" was heatedly arguing with another pony. Twilight nodded, and was about to head in that direction when she stopped.
"Hey, I’ll see you later?" She asked the grey pony, who turned and grinned.
“Of course, I’m your boss aren’t I?” She gave a final wave before she turned back to Garry.
As Twilight walked over to the other bed, she heard the last bits of the argument.
"I'm telling you, the doc is coming! It's not all that easy to get somepony like that on short notice, good thing we're in Manehattan, anywhere else and it'd take even longer than this." He stopped talking when he saw Twilight walking up. "Hey there Ms. Sparkle! What did you come here for?"
"Hey, Chief! I just came to see if there was anything I could do to lend a hand over here." The Chief cast an angry look at the pony next to him who seemed unimpressed.
"This stiff won't let me get close to the body as long as our forensic scientist isn't here. I told him she's coming but he still won't let me through." After throwing another dirty look at the pony in question, he turned back to Twilight. "If you want to help, go check things out with the engine crew."
"All right, thanks!" She waved to him and started away, but as soon as she set foot outside the room, she got that twinge of annoyance again, the one telling her she had forgotten something. Going against her better instincts, she ignored it started towards the engine room.
-----
"Twilight!? Heyyyy, what’s up?" Yelled a yellow pegasus mare with a turquoise mane. She wore the standard silver vest of the emergency crew and was currently waving at Twilight Sparkle with much vigor.
"Raindrops? What are you doing here?" Twilight walked up and shared a quick hug with her fellow Ponyville resident.
"Helping out, Derpy went over to Fillydelphia for the summer and suggested I come here." Twilight knew about the tighter-then-steel bond between the resident mailmare of Ponyville and the weather pony.
"Why didn't you go with her?" She asked.
"I don't like Fillydelphia for a hive of reasons. Besides, I thought she should invite Carrot Top, who was more than happy to go." She shrugged then flew over to the engine. "Those two haven't spent too much time together since Derpy moved out, so it was a win-win."
"So why are you on the emergency crew?" Twilight asked, jabbing a hoof at the reflective vest she wore.
"I heard about the crash and decided to help out, I have some background work as a mechanic so I decided to check out the engines, and since no one else really wanted to help with that, they just gave me these digs instead of yours."
"I'm guessing gloves, goggles and booties don't help much with engineering huh?"
"Yeah, not so much. Anyways, what are you doing on the flank end of this pile of junk?" Raindrops asked, flying up and sitting on one of the engines.
"I'm with the biological team, we recently found out the suspect has magic. Then, subsequently found out he didn't use that magic to sink the ship." Raindrops nodded, flying over to a corner and coming back with a thick black chunk of something.
"This is the detonated bomb from engine two, this sad little shell is all that's left. Not that we can compare it with another defunct one since is the only one we recovered, all the others flew out of the airship once the engine blew out." She tossed the dead payload to Twilight who magically grabbed it and brought it closer.
"You said this is the only non-functioning one you found, does that mean you found a working one?" She asked, not expecting a positive answer.
"Yup! Let me go get it!" Raindrops flew off, leaving Twilight with a charred casting in her hooves. She looked from the chunk of rubble to the engine in front of her. When the pegasus returned, she was juggling a large black box, tossing it from hoof to hoof. When it went too far on one toss, the box fell and she fruitlessly tried to grasp it as it tumbled through the air.
"Catch it!" Twilight yelled, panicking and diving for the bomb as it descended and falling only a few feet short, she could only watch as it tumbled to the ground and-
-hit it with a slight thunk. "Chill out, this thing is probably more likely to hurt you with the panic attack that you just had then with an explosion." Twilight straightened up trying to look dignified and levitated the bomb over to her for closer inspection. There was no timer, only a few red buttons, a blank screen and a mess of wire on the side.
"So it's a plastic explosive?" She observed, flipping it over and looking at the bottom.
"Yup! A good old completely-almost-harmless-unless-it's-armed-and-if-it-is-then-oh-buck-we're-screwed plastic explosive!"
"This is the one that didn't go off then?" Twilight asked, passing it back to Raindrops, who resumed juggling it as she leaned back in mid air.
"So it is, I'd say you all owe your lives to this little box right here." The cerulean-maned pegasus said, giving the bomb a flip on the next haphazard toss.
"Can you show me the engine that didn't blow off?" The purple mare requested, assuming there would be something helpful at an area where the trend was broken, Raindrops saluted and flew out of the room.
"Hey, Raindrops, I have a funny question." Twilight said, catching up to the enthusiastic pony.
"Hopefully I'll have an equally funny answer." She landed next to the unicorn and faced her, indicating her attention was captured.
"Have you seen anything green at any of the engines? There's a pretty obvious trail of green appearing wherever the culprit goes. Raindrops thought for a moment, then a hopeful look came across her face, that look was smothered quickly and replaced with one of disappointment.
"Well, we did, the one good bomb was completely covered in green, little dots or smudges of it, i'd guess all the other bombs were too, but the stuff got burned up in the explosion."
"Why didn't the good bomb have anything on it then?" There was that look, a bit embarrassed, a bit annoyed.
"Well...we put it aside for evidence, but some pony named Gerry washed it all off, saying he was 'just trying to help'. Reminded me of Derpy way back when, she could manage to destroy everything she touched and still remain adorable." Raindrops rolled her eyes, but stopped mid-roll, then focused the blue orbs on Twilight.
"Woah! How could I forget! I wanted someone from the forensics team down here! I did find something else." She flew ahead, turning down a side hall, which by the plaque that read "Engine #2" was where they were headed anyways. Twilight galloped around the corner and found Raindrops frantically pointing at a long jade smear that ran across about half the hallway.
"Wow! Thanks Raindrops, let me just check this out." Twilight pulled out a magnifying glass out and adjusted it until she could see a much larger version of the substance on the wall, which turned out to be-"Germs. This is 100% bacteria. That's disgusting." She lowered the magnifying glass and reached out to touch it, then thought about her observation and pulled her hoof back.
"What? What kind of bacteria?" The yellow mare, suddenly wide-eyed asked, holding her left hoof as far from her mouth as possible.
"Nothing awful, just a huge cocktail of about a million different kinds, you won't die, but you'll probably get pretty sick from touching it..." This isn't what affected Pinkie Pie, I should look somewhere else. Twilight thought to herself, trying to tear herself away, but having a feeling she had forgotten just what. "Tree stuff." She said out loud.
"...okay, tree stuff."
"No, Pinkie Pie told me about this substance before, she said it looked like 'tree stuff' which I now know meant lichens, a fungus composite that grows on trees, they're mostly comprised of bacteria, and it does look like the stuff here, but this substance is old. I'm going to need a fresher sample then this."
"Oh...ooohhh. You meant ANY green stuff?" Raindrops asked, looking a bit disgusted.
"Yeah, any and all. Why?" Twilight looked over her shoulder and found the pegasus giving her a weird look.
"So you mean even the vomit?" When the unicorn just continued staring, Raindrops explained. "We found the stuff everywhere, big green stains on the walls and floor, grossest thing I've ever seen, the bugs go freakin' nuts for it, flies and maggots and stuff absolutely love it, so we just unanimously decided to forget it ever existed."
"Can you take me to one of the puddles?" This request was met with a strange look and a nod of compliance. After a bit of walking, they found a large green stain on the floor, mostly dried up and gone. "This is no good, I'm going to need one of the more recent ones for a real investigation."
"Urgh," Raindrops groaned as they trotted away, "This is why I signed up for mechanical work, no one asks to look at this stuff at the engine room, engines don't throw up." As they had reached a corridor that was apparently familiar to the yellow pony, she pointed around the corner and flew up, her wings twittering nervously.
"Aren't you coming?" Twilight asked.
"Uuuh, no, if this trip has been an indication of anything, it's that I'm squeamish." The unicorn shrugged and rounded the corner, looking at the puddle at the end of the hallway. The area had about six huge flies buzzing around it. Fat black specimens, they buzzed everywhere, though they were mostly centered on the pile of muck. Also wallowing in the filth were a pair of plump, thick maggots.
The puddle was something else, the corrosion on the floor was astounding, it had melted a sizable puddle in the floor and was still sizzling. Twilight took out her magnifying glass and peered through it, what she saw almost made her gasp. A bacteria completely absent from the smear on the wall was definitely present in this recent sample.
She rummaged through the pocket of the coat she was wearing until she pulled out a syringe, once she had extracted a sample, the walkie-talkie at her side started growling something incomprehensible. She stored the sample and pulled out the radio.
"Hey Sparkle, the Doc just got here, you wanna haul flank and watch her work her magic?" She pulled the radio out of her pocket and brought it to her mouth.
"Okay Chief, I'll be right over." Her attention was a bit taken by the fatter of the two maggots, which had a frowny face drawn on it in black marker and was currently inching it's way towards her hoof. She frowned down at it and shoved it to the side as she spoke into the receiver. "Over and out."
She placed the radio back into it's pouch and walked out from behind the corner. She saw Raindrops trying to stay away from a large fly that was patrolling the corridor and continually straying around her head. "Uuugh, Ihatebugs, Ihatebugs, Ihatebugs, I HATE BUGS!" She yelled as she, yet again, ducked to avoid her insectile dive-bomber. Just as it came in for another pass, a purple glow surrounded it and tugged it away.
"I should head back to the clinic, thanks a lot for your help Raindrops." Twilight said, shoving the fly back around the corner.
"No problem Twi, I hope you enjoy Manehattan!" She said, turning and flying back down the corridor.
-----
Twilight Sparkle was just outside the medical bay when she discovered what was bothering her. The stain outside the bay was just like the one before, but instead of a blue-green, it was a solid, if a bit faded, emerald. She stopped, pulled out her lens, and looked closer. Unlike the previous stain, she found the enzyme that the vomit contained, but it was subdued, looking less healthy. She took it in as a sample and turned to walk into the clinic.
Doctor Oxyde was a funny sort of mare. Sometimes literally, considering she claims to have worked as a clown for several years. She also enjoyed discussing her work as a pediatrician, which was equally interesting considering her height. Dr. Nitrous Oxyde was slightly bigger than Sweetie Belle, with her maturity level rivaling the filly's also. Unlike Ponyville's favorite resident crusaders though, she had her cutie mark; a laughing green canister of gas spraying a small pink cloud out of it’s funnel. The pink-haired mare was looking at the cadaver and poking at it in various places that looked quite random with a huge grin on her face.
"How long has she been doing this?" Twilight asked, walking up next to the Chief.
"About twenty minutes, she hasn't said or done anything." He stopped and put a hoof to his chin, "Scratch that, she's asked for, like, ten lollipops."
"Aaaand done!" She said, her voice matched her appearance, cutesy and kid-sounding. "Welp, I sure feel sorry for this guy. He wasn't dead when he was cut open, no anesthetic, but probably a pain-dampening spell or two to keep him from dying too early!" She sounded thrilled by this news, delivering it with an enthusiastic grin. "Of course he did die after a while, but only when the guy was good and ready, he was alive for about an hour after this happened." She gestured to the large slash across the stallion's belly.
"As for the injections, he targeted organs that were responsible for combatting illnesses and basically anything that attacks disease. As for the stuff pouring out of the eyes, I'm guessing our suspect just got bored and wanted to see if he could get the green stuff to leak out of his eyes."
As soon as she had finished, a crew member entered the small room and handed her a dozen lollipops, she beamed at him and sat back down unwrapping one and sticking it into her mouth. She leaned back on her stool looking quite pleased, taking in the sweet, sticky flavour. "The stuff he was injected with was a cocktail of a heaping plotload of antibiotics, like some guy wanted to cure-" She was cut off as she opened her eyes and noticed Twilight raising her hoof. "Yup! Purple mare in the back-left next to Chief."
"Perhaps it was this they were trying to cure?" Twilight reached into her coat and pulled out a syringe containing the enzyme she found in the vomit. She handed it to the beige mare, who beamed up at her as she took it. She then reached into her coat and pulled out a small circular device that looked like a pocket-watch. The doctor inserted the needle into a small hole on the left. The machine buzzed and displayed something nopony else could see.
"Mmm-hmm?" She pulled the lollipop out of her mouth and rubbed her chin, smearing sugary saliva from the sweet all over her it as she displayed a puzzled expression. "Mmm-hmm!" She lifted the lollipop again and smiled at the device. "Welp! I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. The good news is that I've determined that this chemical will kill you! That wasn't a joke by the way." She plopped the lollipop back into her mouth and sucked it a couple times. "The bad news, however, is that I haven't the foggiest smidgen of an idea what this stuff is. It kinda looks like a combination of every single disease mixed in with something I've never even seen before!" Twilight raised her hoof again and had the lollipop jabbed in her direction.
"What do you mean? Is it a new type of disease?" She asked, pulling out the second syringe and handing it to the doctor, who scrutinized it for a moment then turned back to Twilight.
"Well. Maybe. This is...something else." The goofy smile was wiped from her face as she drew out the circular device again and inserted the syringe. "That's interesting, this sample is almost semisolid, it's dried and flaked, causing the unknown element to die out. It thrives and multiplies in liquid form, but can't function once it's dried out. All that remains now is the rest of this stuff, which won't do much of anything." After a moment of coherent speech, her volume lowered to the point of obsessive muttering. After a few moments of near-silence, Twilight spoke up again.
"Excuse me, what did you mean by the compound doing nothing?" Dr. Oxyde looked up and put the device back on the table.
"Exactly what it sounds like, that lethal-sounding combination of illnesses won't do much of anything, there are only little traces of each illness and they would have to already exist in an organism to flourish. The only deadly thing in this sample are the unknown bacterium cells that were present in the other sample you handed me." Once she stated this, her demeanor shifted back to the bubbly child that was present before.
"I've decided to help with this case, this thing is really bothering me and I want to figure out what it is." She hopped off the stool and started towards the door skipping out of the room happily, lollipop in mouth. "Oh, and by the way, don't touch anything green unless I've checked it first."
"Wow, she's something...how old is she?" Twilight asked the Chief, who was approaching the body and looking it over.
"She says she's twenty-five, but she got in the way of a haywire spell when she was little and it stopped the maturing process."
"That would explain the sweet-tooth and behavior."
"Yeah...I don't buy it, I think she's just some genius eight-year old filly that somehow conned her way into that position." He ran his hoof across the wall until it came to a deep, green gash on the bed-rest.
"I'll fill you in on the murder weapon later." He said, "The doc told us more about it before you came in."
"I forgot about that, that information would be really helpful in the process of finding out who did it." He looked over at her, nodded once then turned to walk out of the room.
"Let's head outside, we got a couple of crew members on the case already, they may be complete idiots, but they get the job done." He gave a quick pause then grinned. "Unless the Doc is already outside, in which case she'll want to give a presentation."
The pair walked outside into the stale, smoky air and saw that the Chief was right, the two bodies were already on tables and Dr. Oxyde was examining them. This time though, instead of the cool, controlled demeanor they saw inside, she was frowning, muttering to herself and banging her head against the table.
"Is that normal?" Twilight asked, a bit concerned, eliciting a chuckle from the yellow stallion beside her.
"Sort of, it's characteristic of her to throw tantrums when she's confused, but then again, she's very rarely confused." As they walked over, Raindrops, Detective Noire and several other crew members were already in a small crowd surrounding her. Every time the filly started to look relieved, she then thought for a moment, growled, hit her head on the table a few times and inserted another lollipop into her mouth. The current number being seven.
"Colgate would HATE her." Raindrops whispered to Twilight who giggled, remembering the long-lasting feud between Pinkie Pie and Ponyville's dentist that would doubtlessly extend to the mare in front of her.
"All right, now, what is the current murder weapon?" Dr. Oxyde asked, sitting up and running a hoof through her mane.
"This scalpel we found on the ground, it was the only item missing from the clinic's inventory and-" The pegasus that had spoken up had to fly a few inches lower to avoid a lollipop that was just flung at him.
"Wrong!" Said the Doctor, looking even more frustrated then before. "Yes there were traces of the blood of both knife-killed victims on the scalpel, but this gentlecolt right here died from poisoning, poison that we found on the stab mark in the clinic, poison that we found in the body of the stallion in the clinic, poison that was NOT on the scalpel, poison the does not exist apparently." She groaned again and massaged her temples with her hooves.
"Excuse me ma'am, I've studied poisons before, maybe I can help." Twilight walked to the front of the crowd and smiled at Nitrous Oxyde, who immediately perked up.
"Initiative! I love that! Let me just show you this..." She pulled out the circular device and showed it to Twilight who was confused at the chemical makeup.
"But that's...that poison was banned, and every sample was destroyed over-"
"Four thousand years ago. I'm aware." She placed the device on the table and spun it around. "All the slash marks on the walls, and stabbing marks on the victims were much deeper than this scalpel could ever go, plus we found no hoofprints on the knife itself, normally I'd attribute it to gloves but-"
"Err, excuse me, we've determined that the subject has magic, maybe that would explain the lack of hoofprints." Noire walked over to where they stood and handed her clipboard to Dr. Oxyde, who looked at it from her position on the table and perked up her ears, still looking downtrodden.
"No. That's impossible." She grabbed the clipboard and rifled through it, her eyes growing wider with each page.
"Why would you say that?" Twilight asked curiously.
"Because," Said a stallion in the back, "He's a pegasus, look at these!" He produced a few green feathers and held them out. Noir and Twilight looked stunned, but the tiny pony behind them was bouncing with excitement.
"Do you know what this means!?" She jumped up and stood on her stool. "Some kind of green alicorn is coming to fight Celestia and Luna and try to take over Equestria!" Despite the allusions to a horrible battle, she looked absolutely elated. She continued bouncing and talking about prophecies and explosions until she grew tired and flopped back onto her seat panting heavily.
The crowd greeted this event with complete silence until someone in the back chimed in. "We are so bucked." This was greeted with a few bursts of laughter. But mostly mutterings among the crowd. After a few seconds of nervous twittering, a piercing whistle broke out over the crowd and the Chief stood up.
"Doctor Oxyde's overactive imagination aside-”, “Hey! I resent that.”, “we need to figure out who actually did this." The statement was met with nods from the crowd and a few committing shouts. "Ms. Sparkle, Detective Noire, and Dr. Oxyde are going to head over to Manehattan hospital to interview the one witness and suspect we currently have." He nodded at them and turned back to the crowd. "Everyone else, this case is solvable, and I guarantee, won't end with Equestria's destruction. Now, everyone get back to work."