//------------------------------// // Tell Your Tale: Maretime Bay Day 2.0 / The Game Is Ahoof / Dumpster Diving // Story: The Second Dream // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// Me, Hitch, and the baby dragon were back at the station.  Nobody else wanted to deal with a kid, and between Hitch and I being law enforcement and Hitch being nicer than anyone, it sort of fell to us to handle this. I mean, as thirsty as I was for Hitch, the thought of children had crossed my mind, but not now, not without any kind of warning. “What are we even going to name this kid?” Hitch worried.  He’d been doing a lot of worrying lately.  So had I, and I wasn’t even the kind of person who usually did. “I think we have bigger problems, like what dragons eat, and if it might be us when he gets bigger.” “Dragons don’t eat ponies.  I don’t think.” That was going to have to be good enough, because Hitch was the town’s foremost expert on animals and even he until recently had thought dragons were extinct.  Not that dragons were considered animals, but they definitely weren’t ponies. Hitch glanced at the wall clock.  “We were supposed to be over to the Brighthouse soon to help with Pipp’s blogging.” Little as I wanted to do that, I wanted to deal with what was right in front of me even less.  By the tone of Hitch’s voice, he might have been thinking the same. But just then, the dragon yawned and a few motes of flame came out of his mouth. “So…maybe we shouldn’t leave Sparky here by himself,” I said. Hitch sighed.  “Yeah.”  He glanced at me.  “Sparky, huh?” “Well…?”  I kind of gestured vaguely at the dragon. He shrugged.  “It works.” We figured out a way to carry the dragon kid around and headed out for the Brighthouse. Pipp was working on a desktop computer for once, sifting through photos taken during the Maretime Bay Day event where everybody had gotten their magic, or at least gotten it back. “I even got a pic of the moment it happened!” she said. Hitch and I joined the others already gathered around the computer.  Pipp showed us some clips.  Even I had to admit, she was doing a good job of it. Izzy leaned closer to the computer, hooves on the keyboard.  “It’s so cool!” Everyone seemed to get nervous all of a sudden.  Pipp said, “R-right!  Buuut, it kinda took me all day to put together, so just be-” Izzy grabbed the mouse and started clicking it rapidly. Pipp tried again.  “Seriously, Izz, you're gonna press-” Files erased, said the computer. “-the delete button,” Pipp finished weakly. “Um... Don't worry!” Izzy gasped.  “I know how to fix this!”  She went back to clicking. Files gone forever. “It’s…okay,” Pipp said, sounding hollow.  “We’ll just do it again, next year.” I lifted my phone to show her.  “Or you could just use my pictures.” Pipp suddenly looked extremely torn, but gave in.  “Sentra, you’re a lifesaver.” “Oh, okay, I was all set to have to launch a max-effort Pipp cheerup operation,” said Zipp, giving me a pat on the back. “We still could,” Hitch said.  “I was going to do a cheerleading dance and everything.  I got us all outfits, just in case, for something like this.” “My contribution is usually just ‘smoothies for everyone,’” Sunny said.  At least she was honest and in touch with herself. Speaking of being honest, I made a mental note to never let Izzy touch anything expensive or dangerous.  You might say she was developing a record. Though circling back to the cheerleader outfits…hmm.  Might have to remember that one for later. While we were still at the Brighthouse, Sunny invited us to watch a movie.  “It’s pretty scary, if you’re all up for it.” This should be amusing, seeing what ponies thought was scary.  “I’m in.” The movie turned out to be a knockoff of Frankenstein, except colored horses.  Well, this wasn’t very stimulating, and even my internal mirth petered out after a while.  Sensing that if Sparky was going to be around the station later that night, I might not be able to get any sleep then, just as I hadn’t on previous nights, I took the opportunity to fall asleep on the couch, even crowded in alongside the others. I’m not sure how long I slept before everyone startled me awake by screaming.  We’ve already established that this isn’t good for my nerves, but unfortunately I’m usually ready to rock as soon as it happens.  Though, that had never been an issue in Equestria, it was usually people just screaming. As I leaped up, I noticed I hadn’t heard Hitch’s voice in the catacophony.  Maybe, getting used to me, he had decided that horror movies weren’t so scary anymore.  That hadn’t been my intention; I wasn’t trying to scare him, I was just like this.  Still, if it helped him raise his standards. “I’m only gonna say this once.  Who.  Took.  My.  Sunglasses?” Zipp demanded, apparently the source that had startled everyone into startling me. Everyone else was apparently as surprised by this as I was and nobody replied. “Let’s start with our first pony of interest,” Zipp said, rolling in a board with red string connecting a bunch of data and pictures.  “Whaddya say, Hitch?  Remember this morning at the beach, sheriff?  You said, ‘Another bright sunshiny day in Maretime Bay!  Too bad I left my sunglasses back at the station... I'll just steal yours, Zipp!  Mwahahaha!’” “Objection!  That is not what I said!” Hitch rightly protested. “Seconded,” I added.  “I was there with him, and that is definitely not what he said.  What’s going on with you, Zipp?  This is totally out of character for you.” And it was.  Zipp was smarter than any of us, and definitely not one to jump to conclusions or distort facts. Zipp wavered, and suddenly ducked her head.  “I don’t know, I just have never lost anything before.” “Never?” “Like, never,” Pipp said.  She rolled her eyes.  “Zipp’s so organized, and has so little stuff of her own to even lose, that she probably hasn’t ever misplaced anything before.” “Sorry I overreacted,” Zipp said.  “I do wish I knew what happened to my sunglasses, though.” “Well, I can’t help you with that,” said Izzy, “but here ya go, Zipp!  I made these for you.”  She pulled out an electronic visor matched to Zipp’s coloring. “Whoa!”  Zipp put them on.  She clicked a button on the side a few times.  “Night vision!?  Heat vision!?  X-ray!?” “Wait, what?” I said.  “Izzy, you made that?” “Yep!” I couldn’t believe it.  Not to talk bad about someone who literally grew up in a treehouse recycling trash, but I’d seen very few things I could praise about Izzy, and for someone who’d accidentally deleted all Pipp’s computer files, it seemed astonishing that she could build some kind of cutting-edge multifunction goggles. Zipp was still having fun with the visor.  She kept clicking back and forth.  “Night vision, heat vision, x-ray!” She looked at me and suddenly made a face.  “What the hay is with your body, Sentra?” It was the next afternoon.  Down at the station, Hitch and I had made it through another semi-sleepless night taking care of Sparky, and were each a few cups of coffee deep in trying to make it through the day after.  Living with a dragon was like balancing on a razor’s edge - things could go badly very quickly, and you never knew when.  This was wearing a little thin on both of us and I could tell Hitch was probably lacking even more sleep than me. Aside from that, I had a lot of other things on my mind. I still had no idea what Zipp meant when she said there was something abnormal about my body.  Sure, I knew that, but I was concerned when it might be something else that was only visible through thermal or x-ray.  I’d meant to ask Zipp directly, but Sparky had set something on fire just then and Hitch and I had rushed him out of the Brighthouse.   I was also thinking about the unsolved cases on my plate.  Bonesaw, the guy we’d gotten a bolo about, plus a few others that had come in now that Maretime Bay, Zephyr Heights, and Bridlewood were starting to share notes. A raccoon ran in.  In any other setting, this would have gotten a reaction from me, but Hitch was Hitch and this wasn’t unusual.  The raccoon said something to him, chittering. “Dumpster diving?” Hitch said.  “Izzy!?” Well, here we go. “I mean, no, it’s not illegal,” he said.  “Weird, but not illegal.  I also don’t think she’s going to be eating anything out of there.  I hope she’s not going to be eating anything out of there.” Apparently reassured, the racoon left. I glanced at Hitch, raising my eyebrows.  His newfound ability to directly talk to animals was coming in handy lately. He sighed and gestured after the raccoon.  “Izzy’s digging in the trash.  I decided not to ask why.”  He sighed, tiredly. I nodded in agreement.  And just like that, my opinion of her was back to somewhere south of mediocre. Sparky spit some sparks, though I don’t think he was actually following the conversation or anything. Hitch regarded the dragon glumly.  “We should get some sort of community babysitting going.  Not that I don’t like this little guy, but there are times that both of us need to be someplace.” “Yeah,” I said.  “I think I’d start with the girls.” “Sure, but what if we all, as a group, have to do something magic-related?” he said.  “Or even just hanging out?” “You got parents, Hitch?” A brief look of panic went over his face, which didn’t directly answer my question, but was answer enough.  Maybe if we asked them to babysit our adopted dragon kid, he might have to explain his deal with me.  “Er, I was thinking on the order of Auntie Phyllis.” “‘Auntie?’” “I mean, since her son Sprout went on the run from the trouble he caused, I think she’s been lonely.  And I’ve known her a long time, back when I was a colt and friends with Sprout.” “Maybe worth considering,” I agreed. We went up the hill to Canterlogic.  It was no secret that we had a dragon in town now, but some people still stared.  Or maybe they were looking at me, I never could tell. Phyllis agreed.  Almost too easily, I thought.  “Why, certainly!  I’d love to take care of him for a while.” Hitch and I traded glances.  We were both probably thinking Phyllis was going to use Sparky for some sort of experiments, but doubted any harm would come to him. “One night of rest,” Hitch mumbled as we walked back to the station, the evening shadows coming on.  “I’m looking forward to it.” “You want dinner and a show?” I asked. He glanced at me, still tired but apparently not so tired as to be totally uninterested.  “What did you have in mind?” “You may have forgotten, Hitch, but I’m supposedly a performance artist.” “‘Supposedly-’?” “And I know you’ve tasted my cooking.  Sit back and relax, I’ve got this.” Back at the station, I shooed him out of the kitchen and got to work.  I made spaghetti.  It’s pretty hard to screw up boiling water and opening a jar of sauce.  I didn’t even have to make meatballs on account of there not being any carnivores around.  Not to say I couldn’t have done more for dinner, but I’d lived with Hitch long enough to know what he liked, and this was no time to try an experiment. Though, what really got his attention was how I served him.  His jaw literally dropped when I walked into the dining room with the two plates.  “Where did you get that outfit!?” “The cheerleading outfit is yours, you know.  I borrowed it out of your closet,” I said.  Smile, wink.  “You said you know Phyllis, and boy does she know you.  She told me all kinds of stories about what you got up to in high school.” Sure, Hitch was a dude, but he was also the centerpiece of the pony pyramid.  Huh, now that I thought about it, it was strange that Hitch was secure enough in his masculinity to be a cheerleader, but still felt threatened by me.  Maybe this little stunt would change that.  The borrowed Maretime Bay Junior High outfit hadn’t originally come with a skirt, but it was easy enough to get Pipp to match the fabric.  She just made me promise a video. I did a spin where I stood.  I was on two legs, so I had two more to hold the spaghetti.  I did set the plates down on the table right after, though, in order to free myself up for the rest.  Hitch’s eyes were wide.  I wasn’t sure if it was because the uniform clashed horribly with my coloring, that he couldn’t believe I would do this, or if in pony society not even cheerleaders usually cavorted on two legs.  In my case, I didn’t actually know how to dance otherwise.  And I liked to think I was a good dancer, between DDR and nobody in this world knowing what a bad bipedal dance looked like. “Hey Hitch! That’s you! I’m gonna show ya what I’m gonna do!” Pom-poms, twirls, the whole bit. “You’ve got- The stuff! And everybody thinks you’re super tough!” “You’re cute, You’re hot, I really, really like you lots!” Final pirouette into splits. “Please look, Please see, I want you to be the one for me!” A slight blush had come to Hitch’s face and he subtly leaned forward over the table.  I suppressed a smirk.  Got him.  I’d finally figured out what he was into, and it turned out to be something normal like cheerleaders.  Well, maybe I could do something about that. I stood up gracefully and sauntered over to the table.  “So can I get you anything else?”  I reached across and touched his hoof and his face went a shade redder.  “You look tense.  Maybe a massage?” “I, um-” he stuttered. The phone rang just then.  A couple of seconds passed as Hitch and I looked at each other.  I knew I didn’t want to be interrupted, but thought that by the look on his face maybe he felt the same.  Was my approach actually working on Hitch this time, only to be interrupted? I sighed and reached for the phone because it was closer to me and it gave Hitch the benefit of the doubt that maybe he didn’t want to stand up just now. “Maretime Bay Sheriff Station.” “Hello, my name is Bonesaw.  I want to turn myself in.”