Twilight sighed, pressing her cheek up against the cold window of the train. Her breath fogged up her view in puffs as the countryside rolled past. She let her mind wander back over the flurry of events of the day. Too much had happened already. It would have been overwhelming even without a hangover. It all bled together to a muddy blur of images, far too many of which had Basil Bones in them. She tried to collect her thoughts and put the facts she had in order. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have any sort of order she could put them in.
“Ugh,” she muttered, making a spume of fog. “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of pony could invent.”
The countryside changed into a series of stone buildings and cobbled streets rushing past, and Twilight got to her hooves. She straightened her saddlebag as the train slowed down, and she stepped down onto the platform of Canterlot’s train station before anypony else. She headed off in the direction of the royal gardens.
As she traced the well-worn paths she’d taken hundreds of times in her youth, she tried to put the facts in order again. She opened her saddlebag and floated the contents out in front of her, looking over each thing one by one to have some semblance of structure to her thoughts.
“Rainbow’s mug,” she said, looking it over as she spun it in her magic. “Taken from our breakfast table and used with the wheel stolen from the cutie mark crusaders to stage a scene for my benefit, Basil Bones’ benefit, or both.” She nodded and put it back in her bag.
The second mug, this one made of thinner ceramic and without a handle, hovered in front of her. “My mug. Left at our breakfast table, then collected by our waiter and set aside in the restaurant by the register. He said it was the only mug at the table when he bussed it, which he did immediately after straightening up the hay bale that Rainbow ruined, meaning the first mug must have been taken within the window of a couple minutes. Nopony saw anything unusual, other than Rainbow throwing a bale of hay at a world-famous detective.” She smiled lightly and put the mug next to Rainbow’s in her bag.
“The newspaper article.” Twilight flared her horn and straightened out the creases a little. “An older case of Basil’s wherein the accused claimed to have been framed. She probably wasn’t, but considering …”
She slipped the newspaper away and brought the tiny silver serving tray up to her face. “Considering the theft and inexplicable placement of a tiny tea set in a random location, one that perfectly lined up with a character assessment and explanation of why it was there that is known to be entirely false, raises lots of questions.” She dropped the tray inside one of the mugs and heard the gentle tink of metal on ceramic.
Twilight’s expression softened and she rolled her eyes at the box of candy. “Caramel squares for Big Macintosh, his favorite, which he refused to take as an apology for surprise dragon-sitting, claiming Spike is always welcome and it wasn’t any trouble.” She snapped open the wrapping from one of the corners and slipped a piece of caramel out. “Nothing to do with the case at hand necessarily, but a reminder that a lot of things happened last night. Somepony or something stole the tea set out of Fluttershy’s house, several hours before the supposed arrival time of Basil Bones. Which also raises the question that if it were him, why would he have gotten his explanation for the tea set so incorrectly after having been in Fluttershy’s house. Or, if that was on purpose, why he’d go with an explanation so outlandish?” She slurped on the caramel and grinned. “Mmm! I get why Big Mac likes these so much.”
She looked over the last item from her bag, something she’d picked up from her home at the same time as her saddlebag. She cracked open the book and flitted through the pages. “Hex-breaking. The art of locating the traces of magic designed not to be found, identifying its source, intent, and protections, and disabling it.” She slapped it shut again and looked at the fraying cover. “Intermediate to very advanced magic that a pony could spend a lifetime studying. Incredibly difficult to do with any sort of competence, though made easier with the more sources you have. Such as a targeted object—” she rattled the serving tray inside the mug “—and the possible source of the spell.” She put the book away and snapped her bag shut, looking forward at the sharply trimmed hedges sprawling out in the palace gardens.
As she approached, a couple of royal guards stood vigil at the civilian entrance, a white-coated pegasus and a muddy gray unicorn. The unicorn cracked a smile at her. “Been a while, Miss Twilight.”
“Hi, Shieldstruck! It has been a while.” She grinned at the guard, a gruff-looking stallion closer to her parents’ age than her’s, who brought back a flood of memories from her foalhood. “It’s really nice to see you.”
“Likewise. Guard duty hasn’t been the same since you went and grew up.”
“I imagine it’s less stressful now. No needing to find any fillies asleep under a pile of books in the middle of the night.”
Shieldstruck chuckled and shook his head. “Less stressful, but less fun. What brings you around these parts?”
She nudged her saddlebag and said, “There’s something I need to check in the gardens, if that’s all right. I’m guessing they’re not open to the public today, so I can go around the formal way and get permission from Princess Celestia first if you need me to. I hope I’m not interrupting a private event or anything.”
“Oh, nah, nothing like that, just the usual groundskeeping.” He frowned and rubbed his chin, then glanced over at his fellow guard. “Don’t see any fuss in letting you on in here, considering. Whaddya think, Spear?”
“Whatever you think is what I think, sir,” the other guard said, his voice cracking.
Shieldstruck grinned wryly. “Don’t worry, cadet, I’m sure that spine’ll grow in eventually.” He turned back to Twilight and stepped aside. “Looks like it’s unanimous.”
Twilight grinned and hugged Shieldstruck around the neck. “I’ll try to be quick.” She stepped past the two guards and followed the outside of the hedge maze in towards the central gardens. As she looked around, it was clear that the groundskeepers were out in full force. The trimming was immaculate as always, but everywhere she looked she spotted signs of the wildlife that lived in the gardens, hugging the outside to avoid the ponies at work, but waiting expectantly with snouts held high for when the feeders were filled. Most of the animals darted away at Twilight’s approach, but a single brave squirrel followed along the top of the hedge maze after her, nose twitching. Twilight came close to pulling out a caramel to give to the squirrel, before the twisted, horrified expression of Discord, frozen in stone, came into view. The squirrel took one look at the statue and darted back the way it came.
Twilight let out a long breath through her snout. “Hi, Discord,” she said. “I’d say it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, but it hasn’t been long enough.” She slid the book and the tea tray out of her saddlebag and set them on the grass in front of her. “So tell me, are you Mr. Diamond Acorn?” She lit her horn and started flipping pages.
It was a slow process as Twilight carefully limited her tests to tracing for the hoofprints of magic. She knew she was probably safe, but the last thing she or anypony else needed was for something to go wrong and the statue to start cracking open. She started on the serving tray, and at first pass she could have believed that the only magic to ever touch it was her own, lifting and testing it. Fine tuning her focus and referring to the book, she dug deeper.
“Hmm,” she muttered. “If I’m not mistaken …” She crossed her eyes and looked at the faint flickering of colored motes around her horn. “Yeah … yeah, this was made by forming and pressing a piece of metal just slightly smaller than a tray made for a pony, and then shrunk down with magic afterwards … interesting.” She flipped the tray around and looked at it closely. “Probably to save bits, since it didn’t have to be particularly ornate and would still look really fancy after shrinking.”
She grinned and nodded, feeling more confident. She set the tray down and reached for the statue with her magic.
Pain splashed across Twilight’s horn. She bit her tongue and felt all the strength melt out of her body. Her legs turned to jelly and trembled under her weight, and she fell sideways on the grass, panting out strained breaths.
“Wow …” she moaned. She ran her tongue over her teeth and forced herself to swallow, thankful for not tasting blood. She got a hoof under her head and struggled to raise it enough to look straight on at Discord. “That is … a lot of magic.”
She looked over the statue while she waited for her lungs to stop heaving, searching for any signs of movement. The stone remained solid and stationary, with no cracks anywhere that she could see as she carefully scanned Discord’s screaming face, long body, and strange limbs. When she felt daring enough to stand, she circled around him just to make sure. “Okay,” she said, her voice shaky. “You’re still trapped. That’s good.”
She returned to the front and flipped a few pages in her book. “Wasn’t expecting … quite that much magical feedback …” She shook her head and nearly fell over again from dizziness. “Oof. You probably thought that was funny, if you can sense anything here. You’re right, I’m not examining an object that’s been touched by magic, I’m examining an imprisoned spirit of chaos that’s made out of magic. I should have known better.” She read over a few paragraphs to put her head in order and straightened up. “Okay, let’s try that again, this time with my defenses up.”
She touched Discord with her magic again, ready for the strength of the connection, and looked the statue over again. “… Interesting.” She circled around him, looking at the writhing pattern of magic strands. “There you are underneath, while the stone is … both a completely solid rock all the way through, and also a thin shell encasing your body at the same time. It’s a complex weave of different layers of friendship magic. Cast by the six of us, judging by the colors. The weave appears to be …”
She stepped closer. A network of strands wove in and out and around each other in layer after layer, in a pattern both uniform and too complicated to follow. “It’s like … a wicker basket, if you stacked fifteen baskets on top of each other and re-wove them all together. And—” She scrunched her eyes and looked past the prison, at the writhing mass of orange pulsing in the center, shooting tendrils of power like sun flares to reach out, then twist and tumble back in on itself. “—it both seals you and redirects your force away from the barrier. It’s probably difficult for you to even touch the bottom layers at all.”
She stepped back and looked at the statue as a whole. “… Probably not impossible though, and the parts you touched would have its pattern naturally broken, order falling into chaos. It’s … almost surprising this can hold you at all …” She frowned and stepped back further, tuning and refining her senses. “Oh, I see,” she said, settling on a swirl of energy extending away from the barrier and into the air. Not an active spell, but the signs of a magical connection leading back somewhere else. “The pattern is self-healing. It’s powered by the elements of harmony and their connection to us. That’s how you managed to escape before, the elements were no longer connected to Princess Celestia or Luna, so your cage stopped getting fixed.”
Twilight smiled in satisfaction and circled back to her book. “That tells me you’re probably not behind this, but I can’t discount the possibility that you might be able to squirm your way through the pattern, if only a tiny amount. And a tiny amount is probably all you’d need for all of this, isn’t it?” She clenched her teeth and shifted focus again. “Rrgh …” she groaned as she went from one spectrum of energy to another in a search for anything strange. The appearance of the statue changed with each shift, like she was cycling through a series of sunglasses with different types of lenses. The pattern changed to a hazy glow, then to pitch blackness, then to a shimmering dance of energy, all while Twilight grinded her teeth and looked for any signs of Discord leaking out. “Not … seeing … anything …” She released the spell and pulled in a deep breath.
“Hoo … I understand why wizards charge so much for this.” She rubbed her forehead and sat down. “You might be innocent, for once in your life. One last thing to check. If I’m even capable of checking it.” She turned back a few pages in the hex-breaking book, sat down, and read through the magical theory doubtfully. “I understand how this is supposed to work, but … well, I have to try.”
She lifted the serving tray in her magic. “Okay. I know this was stolen by whoever or whatever is doing all of this, and if you’ve ever cast a spell on it, I should be able to tell. I hope. If the seal doesn’t interfere too much.” She steeled herself and connected to the statue again. Moving the tray, she floated it around Discord’s head and arms, spinning it like a gyroscope and holding her eyes wide open, her mouth pressed into a thin line. She flared her nostrils as she worked, looking for any connection, however fleeting. After a few minutes, she let the tray drop to the grass and bowed her head to take several deep breaths.
“Okay …” She wiped the sweat from her brow and held her chest as she sat down. “To the best of my ability … I’ve ruled you out. I can’t say it’s impossible that you’re behind this, but I’m close to certain that you aren’t. And at this point, I think I just have to take that as the answer, or else I’m in conspiracy theory territory.”
Twilight inhaled deeply and let out a long and steadying sigh. She felt light-headed and shaky, like she’d just sprinted the last quarter of the running of the leaves. She doubted she would have felt any better if she were in top form, but the day felt longer and more draining than ever. She rubbed her eyes. Her eyelids felt hot and sticky.
“Ugh. So with you ruled out, that means it can only be … oh, I don’t know.” She grumbled and shrugged, letting her hooves drop to her lap. “I’m tired. I’m tired, and I don’t care. This is Basil Bones’ problem, not mine. I’m going to go home and not think about this anymore, and Basil will do whatever he does until he leaves Ponyville and the only time I’ll ever have to think about him is when one of his articles comes out in the paper. And if it’s all a big con game for bits and glory, more power to him. I’m done.”
She stood up, slid open her saddle bag, and stuffed the book and tray away next to the coffee cups, then turned back towards the entrance where Shieldstruck was waiting and she could thank him. Maybe she could even stop in and find Rarity in town before she headed back—the newspaper was gone.
Twilight stopped and frowned in irritation. She slipped the bag open again and looked, pushing the book aside one way and then the other. She rolled her eyes and pulled the book back out, looking for where the newspaper had slipped down towards the bottom of the bag. She shifted the rest of the contents around back and forth, clinking the mugs together, but the newspaper hadn’t settled down to the bottom as far as she could se. She set the book on the ground, floated out the pack of caramels and mugs, then upended the bag and shook it.
An acorn plopped down on the grass.
Twilight’s eyes widened. Her mouth went dry and she spun in place, looking for anypony around in the gardens. The yard stretching up to the castle was open and empty, and the hedge maze stood bare and still, with the closest opening to the inside several dozen yards away. “Wha … who …” She slapped at the clasp of her bag, trying to remember if she’d closed it all the way when she started work or not. “How …” She sat down hard.
“It can’t … nopony could have …” Panic shot up her spine. She shook her head violently and swung around to her things. Everything else was still there and she loaded them back into her bag, looking around wildly for some sign of a thief ready to snatch something else away. She snapped the bag shut tight and held it closed with a hoof. The single acorn stared up at her from the grass, and shaking, she lifted it in her magic, trying to focus and find some sign of a spell, trace it back to something that made sense, but her thoughts wouldn’t quiet down and she couldn’t concentrate. Her horn flared twice, and the acorn burst into flames.
She eeped and snuffed out the fire. She let the ash fall and slumped against the hedge. “Calm down, I have to calm down.” She almost felt like she’d grasped hold of Discord’s magic with her guard down again. “Freaking out won’t solve anything. Just breathe.”
Several long and steadying breaths later, she stood up and looked back at Discord. “… If I could blame this on you, I would.” She glared and clenched her jaw, knowing she couldn’t. She turned around and marched back towards the garden entrance. As she went, her speed increased.
“I have to think about this logically,” she said. “How and who I can figure out later, it’s the why that’s important right now.” She skidded out of a run as she passed the guards long enough to call back over her shoulder at Shieldstruck, “I’m all set thanks for everything we’ll have to have coffee together next time in town but I gotta go now byyyyye!” before running full force back into Canterlot’s town square. “That was definitely to get my attention. And taking the newspaper article was a statement. Was the statement that I’m on the wrong track suspecting Basil Bones of running a con, or was it Basil Bones trying to cover his hoofprints? I hope the trains are timed right, I need to get back to Ponyville as quickly as possible.”
“Twilight! Twi!”
Rainbow’s voice carried from overhead and she screeched to a halt over the cobblestones. She looked up and saw Rainbow Dash circling around and searching block after block. “Rainbow!?” she called.
Pulling up, Rainbow spun towards Twilight, then dove down to the street. “There you are! I gotta talk to you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Huh? Oh, Fluttershy told me you were heading here.”
Twilight nodded and rubbed her face. “Well it’s not that I’m not happy to see you, because I really am, but we need to get back to Ponyville as quickly as possible.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story, we need to get to the train station.” She turned and headed back along the street at a brisk pace. Rainbow sputtered and followed, catching back up with her in a few moments. “How long ago did your train get here? Do you know if it’s heading straight back?”
“Train? I just flew here. Listen, I—”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” The crowd of ponies thickened and she had to slow down. “Did Fluttershy tell you why I came here? No, nevermind, of course she didn’t, I didn’t tell her why I was coming.” Rainbow grunted as she was forced into Twilight’s side by the milling crowd. Twilight pushed forward, angling them both in the direction of the train station, but it was like trying to swim upstream.
Rainbow grumbled and slipped back behind Twilight so they could walk in a single file. “Where the heck did all these ponies come from? It’s like a movie just got out from everywhere.”
“I think it’s time for the evening work-shift change, so it pretty much is exactly that. Come on, we’re almost there, hopefully we can catch the next—” a steam-whistle howled in the distance “…train.” She groaned and stopped pushing forward, letting herself get jostled.
“Twi, listen,” Rainbow said as she tried to move up next to Twilight, before getting knocked back into their single file. “I really gotta talk to you about something.”
“Can it wait?” Twilight charged into the crowd again, half wanting to generate a snow plow out of magic and hold it in front of them. “I’m not trying to blow you off, I swear, this is just really important.”
“…Yeah, it can wait.” There was another sputter of annoyance as a crowd of school foals poured around them. “This is dumb, hold on.” She opened her wings and lifted off the ground. She scooped Twilight up around the middle and rose several feet above the multitude. “There! That’s better.”
Twilight smiled and held onto Rainbow’s legs as they flew over the cacophony of the street and touched down on the train platform. She scanned the board behind the ticket salespony, then drooped her ears and whined. “That was the train to Ponyville. The next one doesn’t leave for an hour.” She rubbed her forehead and sat down.
“What’s the big rush, anyway? What happened, Twi?”
Twilight huffed through her snout, and looked at Rainbow. “There isn’t much of a rush anymore, I guess. Anyway, I came here to check on Discord.”
Rainbow’s brows shot up and she opened her wings. “Discord? Is he—he isn’t out again, right?”
“No, he’s …” Twilight looked at Rainbow’s wings. “Rainbow … how tiring would it be to fly me back to Ponyville?”
“Eh?” She frowned, then shrugged. “No sweat. You barely weigh a thing.”
“I’m going to hope that isn’t you trying to flatter me. Come on, let’s go. Better for me to hold onto your back, or for you to carry me?”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What, like, right now?”
“Yes, right now! We need to get back to Ponyville and talk to Basil Bones.”
“Ugh, that guy again? I thought we were done with him.”
“I’ll explain on the way, now come on, do you want me on top or bottom? I didn’t mean it like that, stop snickering!” She glared at Rainbow, who covered her mouth.
“Okay, okay, jeeze. Here, climb aboard, just don’t grab on around my neck.” Rainbow turned around, sat down, and spread her wings.
Twilight hugged Rainbow around the shoulders and pressed into her girlfriend’s back. A sly grin tugged at the corners of her mouth and she leaned forward to whisper into Rainbow’s ear. “Now call me daddy.”
Rainbow’s wings faltered as she burst into laughter.
Twilight tried to swallow her giggles. “Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help myself, come on, let’s go.”
Rainbow stuffed her hoof in her mouth and reined herself back under control. “Wow, thank Celestia you said that before I took off, or we would’ve crashed. All right, here we go, daddy.” She lifted up off the ground and carried them above the buildings, banking in the direction of Ponyville.
Twilight squinted against the wind. She repositioned herself to be comfortable, trying to stay out of the way of Rainbow’s wings and being careful to keep her grip from being a strangle. She noticed she was still smiling. It felt like a weight had been taken off her and a lot of her panic and worry had gone with it. She nuzzled Rainbow’s mane. “Mm, you smell nice.”
“Eh?” Rainbow’s head turned for a moment, then snapped back forward. “Can’t hear you, Twi. So what’s going on? What’s up with Discord?”
Twilight raised her head and spoke louder. “He’s still trapped, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t behind this at all.”
“What’s ‘pretty sure’ mean? It is Discord we’re talking about here.”
“Sure enough that it’d be crazy to try and blame him without any new evidence first. He’s trapped inside the statue by a web of magic that pulls its strength from the Elements of Harmony, and I wore myself out trying to find any sign of him getting through it by even the tiniest amount. And what’s more …” She moved a hoof to open her saddlebag, then thought the better of it and grabbed back onto Rainbow’s chest. “What’s more is while I was casting spells and looking for any sign of him getting free, Diamond Acorn stole something out of my bag.”
“What?” Rainbow stopped short in flight, jittering up a few feet. Twilight slid forward across Rainbow’s back and she squeaked in alarm. Rainbow flinched and sped up again, settling them both down. “He stole something? And we’re using that dumb name?”
“For now. And yes, I had the newspaper article that you showed me in my saddlebag when I got to the gardens, and when I was leaving, it was gone, and there was an acorn in its place.”
“I’ll be damned. Did you see anypony who could’ve taken it?”
“Not at all, which was the most worrying part. The gardens were closed to the public today. I didn’t see anypony besides the guards, and the groundskeepers weren’t working anywhere near me. I basically had the place to myself.”
“Could the guards’ve taken it?”
“N…” Twilight frowned. “I don’t think so? One of them was Shieldstruck.”
Rainbow glanced back again for a moment. “That name supposed to mean something to me?”
“No, no, Shieldstruck is just an old friend. He’s been a guard at the palace since I was a filly. He’s kind of like an uncle to me.”
“And you’re not feeling like accusing your uncle of stealing from you, and also being a nutbag thief who leaves acorns everywhere?”
“Not feeling like it, and also the thought of it being possibly true makes my head hurt. He would have had to be in Ponyville to steal your mug and the crusaders’ wheel, then have gotten back in time for guard duty before I got there. And he isn’t a pegasus who could have flown to and from.”
“So not impossible, but really, really dumb.”
“Extremely.” Twilight drew her brows together and tilted her head. “There was another guard there I didn’t recognize. He was a little younger than me, and a cadet, I think Shieldstruck said his name was Spear something.”
“Pegasus, unicorn, or earth pony?”
“Pegasus. Which doesn’t make him any more likely than Shieldstruck, honestly. Cadets don’t have a lot of free-time.”
Rainbow didn’t say anything for a moment. “… So … do we think this guy’s a pegasus?”
“Oh, uh. Not really.” Twilight sighed. “I don’t think we have enough information to think anything yet, though I think it’s probably unlikely that it’s a unicorn, or if it is then they’re not using magic in their thefts.”
“Why? You got some sorta anti-magic thingie going on with your saddlebag?”
“No, nothing like that. I just spent a long time looking over one of the dishes from Fluttershy’s tea set to see if there was any trace of magic still on it from somepony casting a spell, and I didn’t find anything. I can’t say for sure that I didn’t miss something, since I don’t have a huge amount of experience with that type of work, but I’m pretty sure that nopony’s touched it with magic in a long time.”
“Huh. Yeah, that probably makes it super unlikely that it’s a unicorn. You ponies can’t even brush your teeth without making everything fly around the room. No offense.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how jealous I am that you can brush your teeth with a hoof? I’d end up stabbing myself in the eye.” Twilight smiled, then frowned in thought. “Those are levitation spells, though.”
“Does that matter?”
“They don’t affect objects in a meaningful way, it’s more like picking something up with a hoof than casting a spell on it. Any trace of a levitation spell would probably be gone in a matter of hours, if not minutes.”
Rainbow slowed down and looked over her shoulder long enough to make eye contact with Twilight. “And, uh, you don’t think that picking stuff up and making it float through the air with nopony needing to be, like, at the scene of the crime, like where you could see them in some gardens or something, is the type of spell a unicorn would use to steal something?”
“… Shut up.” She smiled despite herself and shook her head. “No, you’re right, I guess it doesn’t rule out a unicorn at all, just a more advanced form of magic like summoning or duplication.” She pursed her lips. “Though if we have a suspect, I could probably tell if they interacted with the dish before, having a subject and an object makes tracing that sort of thing a lot easier.”
“Is that what you were doing with Discord?”
“Yes, exactly.” She crinkled her snout. She had an itch but was afraid to take a hoof off of Rainbow. “Hold on. Don’t freak out.” She leaned forward and rubbed her face on Rainbow’s neck.
“Augh, stop that, I’m trying to fly here!”
“That’s why I told you not to freak out.” She grinned and looked down past Rainbow’s shoulder at the green expanse beneath them. She glanced back and the shrinking silhouette of Canterlot against the mountains. “We aren’t far from Ponyville, are we? That was fast.”
“Of course it was.”
“Did we pass the train? I’m not even sure where the track is, related to us.”
“Over to the right. And we passed the train ages ago.”
“Good, that’s good. That makes this better in some ways.”
“Eh?”
Twilight straightened up. “Part of why I was in such a hurry to get to the train before it left was to find out if Basil Bones had followed me to Canterlot. Trains to and from Ponyville don’t run constantly, if he had followed me and stole the paper, he would probably be taking that train to try and get back to Ponyville without having been noticed as gone.”
“Ah, I gotcha, you were hoping to search the train for him, and now we can be there before it even gets back.”
“Right. It wouldn’t rule anything out if we don’t find him taking the train, as he could have followed and gone back using some other way, but if we do, that makes things a lot more clear.”
“So you think he’s really the pony behind all of this?”
“I have no idea.” She sighed and drooped her head against the nape of Rainbow’s neck. “It doesn’t make much sense that he would also be Diamond Acorn, but it doesn’t make any less sense for Diamond Acorn to be somepony else. I think all we can do right now is to try and eliminate as much of the possibility that it is him that we can.”
“So step one is to try and catch him getting off the train?”
“Yes, though I think step one is I try to catch him getting off the train, while you try to find him somewhere else in Ponyville before the train arrives. That way if you do find him, we don’t have to worry about checking everypony getting off the train to see if they might be Basil Bones in disguise, and also make it even less likely that he followed me. I doubt there are many sources of long-distance travel that would take less time than flying with you.”
“You know it.” Rainbow dropped into a dive for a few feet, making Twilight gasp. “Good thing you found out he took—eh, I guess I mean somepony took the paper, like, just after they did it.”
Twilight let out a long sigh. “Maybe. I don’t know exactly when it was taken. I know I had it when I was going through all of the things I had with me right before getting to the royal gardens, and I discovered it was gone right as I was about to leave. I’d like to think that it only could have been stolen during my tests when I was really distracted, but I honestly can’t discount either Shieldstruck or Cadet Spear Something as innocent beyond it not making sense for them to have taken it. They very well could have, or somepony else could have taken it at the same time without them noticing, somehow. I assume thieves are pretty good at taking things without anypony noticing, if they stay thieves for long.”
Rainbow grunted. “How long are we talking about, then? If somepony took it right after you saw it last.”
“I don’t know, half an hour to forty-five minutes? I’m not entirely sure what time it is now.”
“Don’t look at me, I dunno.”
“Hmm.” She rested her chin on Rainbow’s back for a moment. “Thinking through it, I know that my train arrived in Canterlot at a quarter past four and the walk to the gardens is maybe ten minutes, and that train we missed left the station at five thirty. That’s a window of an hour and five minutes.” Twilight squinted in the direction of the sun, sinking through the sky and growing orange. “How long have we been flying now?”
Rainbow shrugged under Twilight’s hooves. “Maybe fifteen minutes? Also we’re here.” She angled down and swooped into a spiral.
Twilight looked towards the ground and saw the Ponyville train station swinging in and out of view. “Wow, we definitely beat the train.”
“Yeah, we got plenty of time.” She touched down on the platform.
“We do, and so did Basil.” Twilight slipped off of Rainbow’s back and gingerly touched the ground with her hooves, feeling unsteady. “Oof. That wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either.” She shook her head and wobbled off-balance.
Rainbow snickered and jittered her wings before folding them to her sides. “Yeah, I’d rather fly long ways like that alone, if it’s all the same to you. “
Twilight smiled, then scratched her snout with a hoof. “Oh, Luna, I needed that. Anyway, four twenty-five to …” she looked at the clock above the ticketing booth. “Five fifty. Meaning Basil had an hour and twenty-five minutes at the most, which wouldn’t be difficult to do.”
Rainbow turned and squinted at the timetable above the ticket salespony’s head. “He couldn’t have taken a train, unless he ran and got back on the same one you two got off from. The one we missed’s the only train since then.”
She looked over the timetable and nodded slowly. “It’s possible he could have gotten back on the same train, but that’s a very tight window. And even if he didn’t, there are other ways he could have come back that would fit in the schedule. A taxi could get him here without too much trouble.” She shook her head and touched Rainbow’s shoulder. “We’re wasting time. The train will get here in about ten minutes, let’s try and find him before then. You try to spot him from above, I’ll see if I can find somepony to ask. The crusaders may have decided to follow him, and Pinkie probably knows what he’s been up to, so I’ll try and—”
A familiar voice floated from around the corner of the station. “For the last time, Madam, I don’t do card tricks.” Basil stomped by, followed by a merrily bouncing Pinkie Pie. “I am not a magician, I am a detective.”
“A detective, eh? Pull a rabbit out of a hat!”
“Do you not know what a detective is?”
“Oh, do I know what a detective is!”
As Basil disappeared from view, making a strangled growl of impotent rage, Twilight sighed and lowered her head. “Well, that was easy.”
Pinkie’s voice carried the question over to them, “How can you be so bad at blowing bubbles that they turn into smoke? That’s gotta be magic!” and Rainbow hid a snicker behind her hoof.
“Okay,” Twilight said and straightened up. “New plan. You ask Pinkie if she knows what Basil’s been doing for the last hour and a half, and I’ll deal with him.”
“All right, but if ‘deal with him’ means kicking him in the stomach, I’m gonna be angry you stuck me with Pinkie.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “No, no kicking. I’m afraid dealing with him means something you’re really not going to like.” She let a long breath out through her snout and stepped off the platform to follow Basil and Pinkie into town. “First step is verifying as best I can that he had nothing to do with what happened in Canterlot, or anything else that Diamond Acorn has stolen.”
Rainbow kept pace with Twilight and nodded. “And step two?”
“If we decide he’s innocent, I’m afraid we have no other choice.” She pressed her lips together in a thin line. “We have to team up with him.”
Rainbow groaned. “You’re right, I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.” They sped up and headed into the town square.