"I told her. I told her. No more favors. No more bailing her out. She gave me no choice. No choice!" Hitch ranted as he walked around the station. First breaking into Cantelorgic and now freeing a unicorn, while looking right into his eyes! Sunny had gone completely insane.
"All right. We need to arrest her and bring her back to face the full force of the law."
"Question," Sprout said, more focused on the pizza slice on his hooves than on everything the sheriff has just said, "when you say 'we', you mean...?"
"You and I." Hitch frowned. Sprout better not be…
"Uh, I... I'd love to, but, um," Aand here he went again. "I just gotta... clean up my workspace, get my papers in order, and, um…"
Hitch deadpanned at all the littering Sprout just did. Again. In front of his face. Just to get away.
Yeah, maybe it wouldn't be bad to go solo on this one…
Actually, no. Leaving Sprout in charge? The pony who ran away from missions whenever he could? The one who couldn't do even the simplest of tasks like rescuing a kitty from a tree? The one and only reason his office had litter around 24/7? Hitch would return to the bay in pieces!
"You know what? I think you're right. This one's a job for Hitch and Hitch only." The sheriff turned around, flipping his mane and shooting a grin to a mirror at the other side of the room. Hey there handsome.
"Besides, I've been going too soft on you lately."
"You have?" Sprout sounded genuinely shocked.
Yep, he already revoked Sunny's, it was time to do the same for Sprout's childhood friend privileges as well.
"Today's the day you'll handle a mission on your own while I'm out. Keep everypony calm, maintain the peace, be a pillar of strength."
Hitch kept himself from rolling his eyes at the mere idea. He could already imagine the deputy hiding under his desk the whole time.
He started walking towards the door, not noticing Sprout's hopeful grin behind him. "They'll need it more than ever now, a unicorn in town? They must be terrified, the entirety of Maretime Bay will run right into you for answers, screaming and at the verge of turning against each other the moment they hear anything they don't like. We don't even know if they'll listen in the first place, they might jump right into rioting! Oof, I'm tired just from imagining it."
Hitch looked back a bit, a smirk forming on his face at seeing Sprout's eyes growing wide by the second. Got him.
"U-um-"
"Luckily I won't be dealing with that. Catching Sunny? Piece of cake, like a little vacation. I'll probably have time to take a nap over a nice meadow before coming back here." Hitch was grinning more out of amusement than confidence by now. His hoof reached for the knob. "Well, enough rambling. Good luck Sprout! Don't let a war happen while I'm gone."
"Wait, wait, wait! I-I'll go, I-" In his attempt to get the sheriff's attention, Sprout ran head-first into the unmoving door. His whine barely lasted a second before he got up to look at Hitch with pleading eyes(and tears of pain). "I-I mean, Sunny's with a unicorn, you'll need help! And-and what's a sheriff without his deputy, eh?"
Sprout grinned way too widely, Hitch gave him a look. Commenting on how poor of a job he did as a deputy enough to consider a solo mission was temptful, but Hitch wasn't in the mood for arguing(never was), so he limited himself to softly push the door open with his front hoof in silence.
"Alright deputy, to our shared dance with danger!" Hitch yelled heroically, pointing to the dark horizon.
"Uh...Ye- yeah!" Sprout mimicked the pose, but his heroic voice came out quivery.
And with that Hitch ran off, only to realize a few steps after that Sprout wasn't galloping right beside him. He turned around to catch the red pony switching between walking and eating from the pizza box over his back.
"What? It's still warm." Sprout said, mouth full and his muzzle covered in cheese.
Hitch sighed. Both Sprout and Sunny were going to drive him insane as well.
-
If Sprout had to pinpoint the exact moment he realized following Hitch had been a bad idea, that would be when he ran out of pizza. From then on, the red pony spend the rest of the trip complaining about this and that, whining of the weather, sore legs or anything that bothered him, and mostly begging Hitch to please just go back home.
The sheriff remained stoic through all of it.
Yeah, Hitch did say a few words of encouragement at first, but these ended evolving to frowns and rolling eyes after a while. Soon enough, Sprout didn't take long(ish) to notice the sheriff's lack of answers started around the time a pair of cotton flowers ended up stuck on his ears. Sprout glared. The typical so far.
Speaking about pizza, Sprout also regretted eating the whole box when they had to get to the top of that mountain. Hitch had always been in better shape than him, so while the yellow stallion was able to climb flawlessly, Sprout was left behind with only a few 'C'mon Sprout, track's running cold!' as help.
Hitch arrived to the top with bunnies receiving him lovingly with kisses; Sprout barely getting his sore body over the finally plain surface and at the verge of losing his lungs.
"Can- can we-" the deputy coughed out, having to inhale and exhale a few times to catch his breath, "take a, uf…break , please?"
"Litter! I mean, a clue." Completely ignoring Sprout's pleas(again), Hitch removed the cotton from his ears and walked over to inspect a branch. "Hmmm... Unicorn hair."
Sprout lifted himself from the dusty floor to narrow his eyes at the other pony, now monologuing about the crime scene and licking a feather. Hitch always got so weird when he was in the zone.
The red pony took this as a sign to bad mouth him in peace.
"Look at me, I'm Hitch. Everypony loves me, I've got a perfect mane, shredded abs and think my paid-off mortgage gives me the right to drag my deputy to chase after the crazy mare he already told me to arrest too many times to count. Bleh." Sprout murmured, kicking any small rock that got on his path in frustration.
The entire herd of bunnies that had gathered around the taller stallion suddenly cheered at his heroic speech and Sprout groaned.
"Oh! and I always got critters following me around~" Sprout grinned forcedly and battled his eyelashes. "Tch, I can do that."
Looking around, Sprout quickly spotted a a few leaves on the ground and pulled from them, sucessfully guessing it was a carrot. He walked over a big bunny away from the crowd and waved the vegetable in front of its face.
Sprout didn't notice it wasn't a bunny until he started poking it to get a reaction. Whatever it was, it had really pointy fangs and tried to chomp his hoof away. A yelp erupted from the deputy's throat and he was quick to run towards Hitch for help.
"The past matters not! It's justice- Sprout what the-? Woah!" Was all the sheriff could say before he promptly fell to the ground as a screaming pony threw itself over his back.
Both ponies groaned. Hitch didn't bother to conceal his glare, but it wasn't anything new to Sprout. The bunnies suddenly jumping and gesturing with their ears for them to turn around were more worthy of their attention.
Arching a brow at what could be so interesting for the critters, Sprout felt his blood run cold as clouds opened to reveal a golden city behind them.
His fear suddenly stopped at noticing the big screens, where mugshots of both Sunny and that blue-haired unicorn shined bright. Sprout would have laughed at seeing them exactly where they should be if it wasn't for his need to get away from a place filled with pegasus as soon as possible.
"Welp, looks like they are ahead of us. Home it is!" Sprout tried walking away, but Hitch, without taking his gaze off the screens, held him back by his sash.
"Sprout, prepare your best pegasus impression. It's time for a round of play pretend," the sheriff said with a smirk.
"Huh?!"