//------------------------------//
// Sheriff Hitch Investigates 
// Story: "This Isn't Happening!" 
// by Mockingbirb 
//------------------------------//

"I'd LIKE to have lunch with you, of course," Sheriff Hitch said. "But duty calls. I have to investigate a suspicious death."

Sunny Starscout said, "That sounds dangerous. I don't think you should go alone."

"Very funny. I'm an experienced law enforcement officer."

"And I'm a pony with alicorn magic. I can protect you from danger three times as many ways as anypony else can."

Hitch rolled his eyes. "Fine. You can come along, just to save time arguing over it. But if you get bored out of your skull by watching me do paperwork, don't blame me."

***

Sheriff Hitch knocked on a door. "I'm here from the sheriff's office, to investigate a report of somepony found dead."

After a minute in which nopony answered, he said, "This is serious. I have to ask you to open the door. Or at least talk to me."

Glowing, insubstantial magical wings appeared above Sunny's back. As the wings flapped, she rose alongside the building. When she reached the second story, she said, "Hitch! He's up here!"

Hitch looked up. "WHO'S up there?"

"Somestallion who's inside the house. Here, let me give you a boost." She descended enough to grab Hitch and lift him up to the window. "See? There's a pony in there. He's STARING at us."

Hitch waved one foreleg. "Is he really staring? I don't think his eyes are tracking." Hitch pulled a small piece of metal out of his belt, and tried to jimmy the window. "Sir?" he said.

The window popped open, and the stallion slumped forward. Hitch reached out with both forehooves to stop the pony from falling out the window. "I need to push him back in!" he said, grunting. "Fly forward a little, to give me more leverage."

A minute later, the unmoving stallion lay on the floor inside the house. Hitch bent over him, examining him closely. Soon Hitch said, "Dead."

"What killed him?" Sunny asked. "Was it a knife? A gun? Poison?"

Hitch pointed under a table. "All of the above, I think. See, there's a bloody knife, an empty bottle of aspirin and another empty bottle of sleeping pills, and a pistol that's still hot." Hitch gingerly turned the stallion over, exposing his front. "See? Two stab wounds, blood coming out of his eyes and nose like he'd taken a massive overdose of blood thinners, and a gunshot wound in his chest."

"Who would do all that?" Sunny gasped. "It seems like...overkill."

"Somepony who REALLY wanted that pony dead."

Hitch and Sunny wandered through the house from top to bottom, finding three other ponies who'd also been killed very thoroughly, mostly in similar ways.

"I don't get it," Sunny said. "I've never even heard of a real murder in Maretime Bay. And now we have FOUR of them, in the same day, in the same house? It seems very suspicious."

"Murders are suspicious by definition, aren't they?" Hitch said. 

"But we don't know these were all murders," Sunny stomped her hoof. "Maybe there were suicides, too."

"But why would so many ponies commit suicide in the same day?" Hitch shook his head. "This is going to take a LOT of investigating. I suppose I'll have to ask Deputy Sprout to help."

"But isn't he still in jail, for smashing ponies' houses with his big...bulldozer robot thing? And for inciting a violent riot? And for aggravated jaywalking?"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Hitch resolved. "It's time to let him out. On work release."

***

Hitch stuck a key into a keyhole in the iron grillwork behind which Sprout cowered. "Sprout, you're free to go. That is, if you spend all your free time helping investigate the Cedar House deaths."

Inside the jail cell, Sprout backed up against a stone wall. "But I LIKE it in here. It's safe. I can't go crazy and hurt anypony, if I'm locked up in here. Not like the last time you left me in charge of protecting Maretime Bay."

Hitch smiled. "Sprout, I have a lot of experience getting to know who's a dangerous criminal, and who's an innocent law-abiding citizen. And I have confidence in you."

"You're sure I won't commit any dangerous crimes?"

"Not if you know I'm in town keeping an eye on things. You're too much of a coward to hurt anypony, as long as I don't leave."

"Well...if you're sure." Sprout slowly walked forward. He stuck his nose outside the cell. "I'm outside the cell! And I haven't hurt anypony, or abused my deputy powers at all! I'm cured! I'm a cured pony! I'm not mad with power anymore!"

"Um...you'd better come the rest of the way out of the cell."

"I think this far is enough for today. Baby steps."

"Sprout, there might be a dangerous maniac running around Maretime Bay killing ponies right and left. This is the threat to earth pony life and limb that you've been preparing for. This time, the danger is REAL."

"Will I have real bullets in my gun?"

"Um...let's not go too far. No."

"Good," Sprout said. "In that case, I'm your pony." He gingerly walked the rest of the way out of the cell. When Hitch closed the steel door behind him, Sprout hardly even flinched. 

***

Outside the sheriff's office, Hitch and Sprout walked side by side to meet Sunny Starscout. "You're here!" Sunny said. "It's so nice to see you, Sprout!"

"You see me every day, when you visit Hitch at work."

"It's so nice to see you without having to look through iron bars." Sunny smiled. "With you out here helping, I know we'll find out in NO time why all those ponies are dead."

Hitch said, "I know four ponies SEEMS like a lot. But do we really want to call them ALL THOSE? I don't want to make things seem worse than they really are. I don't want ponies to panic--"

"Too late," Sunny said. "Hitch, JUMP LEFT!" 

"What?"

Sunny grabbed Hitch, pulling him forward. Behind Hitch, a terrible thud sounded as a pony hit the pavement.

"What was that?" Hitch shouted, spinning around. He looked upwards, noticing an open window three stories above him.

"You didn't want ponies to panic?" Sunny remarked. "I'm afraid it's too late. Ponies are killing themselves left and right."

"Nooooo!" Sprout said. "This can't be happening. Even when a real unicorn came to town, even when we did go a little crazy with fear, we still kept anypony from dying of it. But now--"

"Sprout, MOVE RIGHT!" Sunny shouted. Sprout obeyed unthinkingly. To his left, another body hit the sidewalk. 

"You see?" Sunny said. "This is really serious."

"Uh-huh," Hitch agreed, already checking the bodies for clues.

***

In the lighthouse, the three ponies looked out the high windows at Maretime Bay, watching for the next pony to stab and poison themself, leap out of a high window without even trying to uselessly flap their forelegs, or run while carrying TWO pairs of scissors.

"You see?" Sunny said. "It really is serious. And worst of all, I don't know how to use the newly recovered alicorn magic to do anything about it."

"Mmm," Hitch said. "Maybe this isn't an alicorn thing at all. Maybe this is just a job for good old-fashioned police work." He shuffled a forehoof through one of a few dozen cardboard boxes with labels like "Clues, Victim # 28, Marble Rose."

Sprout lifted a broken mobile phone. "Look, everypony," he said. "I think I found a clue."

"What's that?" Hitch asked. "I don't think you can even see any clues on that phone. It's broken. It doesn't work."

"It IS broken." Sprout agreed. "And that's the point. Almost ALL of these phones are broken."

"Jumping out of a building CAN break your phone, if you have it with you," Hitch said. "That's kind of...to be expected."

"You would think so," Sprout replied. "But even with a lot of different causes of death, would EVERYPONY'S phone be broken? Practically ALL the victims have broken phones. It's almost like somepony wanted the phones to be broken, and killing the ponies was just a side effect."

"A side effect? A side effect of what?" Hitch said. "What do you mean? How would that work? What would be the motive--"

A phone with a web of cracks across the screen played a little song. "Look at this corn!" a stallion's voice sang from the phone. "Look at this corn!" 

"Don't look at me!" Sprout said. "The song isn't my fault! Ponies are natural herd animals! I was just...doing the same natural thing as any other frightened pony would have done!"

"I wonder if we should answer it?" Hitch asked. 

"Mmmmmmmaybe?" Sunny said. "I wonder if it's connected to why all these ponies are dead and their phones are broken?"

"Or it could just be a coincidence," Hitch replied.

Sunny levitated the phone with her alicorn magic, and held it up near her face. She booped it with one forehoof. "Hello?" she said. "Anypony there?"

"You have ONE new video!" a marelike voice said. "If you want to see your new video, press or say ONE."

"With the screen so messed up, I think we'll barely be able to see it," Sunny said. "But I'll at least try. ONE."

The screen went black. A dim, blurred spot of light appeared in one corner of the screen. The dull, yellowish-brown light spread towards the screen's center. 

"It only has two legs!" a filly shouted in the video clip. "What is it?"

An older mare said, "I don't think it can be real. There's no such thing as two legged monsters." But near the top of the screen, a disc appeared, with colored lights flashing on its edges as it spun.

"Don't worry!" the mare said, "It's just a hoax. A trick. Somepony put flashing lights on a pie tin, and hung it from a piece of fishing line. They just want us to think UFOs are real. But we know they aren't."

"How do you know they aren't?" the filly asked.

"They aren't. I just know."

The filly didn't seem reassured. "Then what was that two legged thing, walking through the cornfield like nopony's business?"

"I'm sure it was just a big ape, escaped from a zoo somewhere. That's all it was."

"But those ponies were wrong," a deep voice said in the video file's audio track. "In this genuine documentary footage, the two legged alien monster and the horrible unidentified flying pastry dish were all too real. The filly and her mother didn't know it, but they were already doomed. The only evidence of what got them was THIS VIDEO, found as a recording on the filly's mobile phone."

Just from hearing the voiceover, Sprout already quivered with fear.

"What does the video look like?" Hitch asked. But he didn't come any closer, or make any effort to see the screen for himself.

"What I'm seeing is mostly just a broken screen," Sunny answered. "But I wonder, if I could see it clearly...how would most ponies react? I mean, I've seen a lot of stuff these last few weeks that most ponies would think is really, really weird. Ever since I met a unicorn, and I traveled around to all those different places, and I got to know a lot of different kinds of ponies and make friends with them....maybe I'm just not as easy to scare as most other ponies in Maretime Bay are."

"Mm-hmm," Hitch said. "So you think you're...different from other ponies?"

"Maybe? I don't know! I mean...AAAAAAAA!" Sunny screamed, throwing the phone across the room. It landed face down, and the audio stopped playing.

"What was it? Hitch asked, running towards her bravely. "What happened?"

Sunny laughed nervously. "I think it was just a stray cat. It jumped out from behind a garbage can in the video, leaping right at the camera. Some kind of feral animal, I don't know. It was dyed purple."

"I think I get it," Hitch said. "Blurry video of something that looks like a weird two-legged creature from another world. Probably fake, but ponies think it looks real. Then a UFO, like some kind of sci-fi movie. And then a scary animal, a feral creature that you think might rip your face off, and make blood and gore fly everywhere...even though that would never really happen. But frightened ponies don't think, they just react."

"Huh?" Sunny asked.

"Already once before, just a few weeks ago, ponies got overwhelmed by too many weird things all at once."

Sunny scoffed. "They saw a unicorn. One unicorn. That's all it was!"

"For the ponies of Maretime Bay, one unicorn was already too many weird things. Maretime Bay has RULES against terrifying, unexpected surprises like that for a reason. It's because ponies are easy to scare. And the more scared ponies get, the less they can think. Until finally, they get so scared, they would do anything to try to make it stop."

"I see," Sprout said. "Somepony is sending out videos that are so scary, just to try to make it stop, ponies are breaking their phones and killing themselves. I believe it. I mean, I almost did that myself. Just hearing that video without even seeing it, I really wanted to jump out the window to get away."

"Ponies would really do that?" Sunny asked skeptically. "Get so scared they die of fright? Jump out a tenth story window to escape, stab themselves to try to make it stop?"

"They might have been trying to stab the phone, and missed," Hitch said. "The same with the gunshots. And maybe some of them wanted to throw their phones out the window, and they just threw TOO hard, and the pony's whole body went along with it."

"But what about the pills?"

"Maybe they hoped an overdose of pills would make them fall asleep so they couldn't see or hear the video anymore."

"They would do that?"

Both sheriff and deputy nodded. "Yes!" 

Hitch added, "Ponies really can be that stupid, when they get really, really scared. You've already seen how ponies can get, how they can form a mob."

"Well...I suppose," Sunny said.

From the carryall bag slung over Sunny's withers, a mare's voice said, "You've received three new video messages! Would you like to watch them now?"

From the belt holster holding Hitch's phone, a little tune played. "Sounds like I have a new video message too," Hitch said. 

The ponies looked down at their phones. They didn't reach to check their messages.

They weren't sure if they would ever answer their phones again.

That's how much damage fictional depictions of human beings, 'sci-fi,' and even just the merest hint of generation 4 MLP characters can do. A gorefest is also bad.

Sprout's phone chimed. "Excuse me," he said. "Gotta answer this." Without thinking, he put the call on speaker.

"Hey, babe," a mare's voice said. "I'm sick of taking care of this foal all by myself. Now that you're out of jail, why don't you come home after work and help out for once. If you help change her, when she falls asleep I might even--"

The phone exploded. "Hey!" Sprout whined, glaring at the smoking pistol held in the sheriff's forehoof. "Be careful where you point that thing! A couple inches to the side, and you could have taken my foot off!"

"Sorry," Hitch said, reholstering his weapon. "I just had to be sure. Deputy, your phone and social media privileges are revoked. Just like I'll have to do with everypony else in this town."

Sunny nodded. "It's really for the best."