The fugitive named Bonesaw was…not exactly what I pictured. He was a skinny, medium blue pegasus and wore glasses.
To be fair, the way his eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the sight of me, I probably wasn’t what he was picturing for a cop.
And yes, that was even with me taking off the cheerleader outfit before Hitch and I went down to lock him up.
Bonesaw had come right to the sheriff station. He apparently had seen the wanted posters with his name on them and decided not to drag things out. The bolo we’d gotten on him from Zephyr Heights had said he was wanted for serious crimes, but hadn’t specified what they were.
He made no effort to resist as we put him in the cell. I knew Hitch was also curious about the guy. He was our first out-of-town case after all. “So what did you do to get on the wanted posters?” I asked.
“I stole something,” he said.
I figured it was probably something like that. Equestria didn’t really have violent crimes. Come to think of it, I didn’t think I’d even seen a lethal weapon since arriving here, not even with the Zephyr Heights royal guard.
“What, specifically?” I asked him.
“I steal a lot of things.”
“Have you stolen anything since you’ve been in Maretime Bay?” Hitch asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, badge boy?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why turn yourself in and then start being obstinate?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, badge…uh…” He gestured at me.
I left him hanging and turned to Hitch. “I’ll handle this if you want to go contact Zephyr Heights and arrange the transfer?”
He glanced at Bonesaw with disdain and agreed, turning away.
When he was out of the room, I dialed the phone. I was about to do the worst thing I could think of.
“Hellooo?”
“Pipp, where are you right now?” I asked. “I need your help to meangirl someone.”
“I got you, fam,” she replied, no questions asked.
She got down to the station lickey-split and we started in on the interrogation.
Bonesaw seemed to know Pipp, which would make sense because she was pegasus royalty. The way he got uncomfortable, though, made me think there was something else going on.
“Ew, is this him?” Pipp said as she walked into the station.
“Hey, be nice, he’s here because he turned himself in.” I turned to look at Bonesaw. “I think he just wants the attention.”
“Attention?” Pipp walked up to the bars and gave him a look up and down. “Did your parents not give you any?”
“Maybe that’s why he’s crying out to law enforcement for help,” I said. “As if he actually did anything illegal.”
“Are you really a bad boy?” Pipp scoffed.
“Yes I am!” Bonesaw burst out. “I stole Queen Haven’s ceremonial undergarments!”
Pipp’s disgust was suddenly real. I jumped in. “Some old lady? Would nobody else touch you?”
“But I…” He recovered and said, “I’m so bad I stole the donation box from an orphanage.”
“Like anypony would let you get close to a place with children,” Pipp shot back.
“Thank God nobody will ever have any with you,” I said.
“I can get a girlfriend!” he protested. “I…I would even get one by force, if you know what I mean.”
I glanced at Pipp, and then towards the office door where Hitch was on the phone. I unlocked the cell door and swung it wide open. “Okay. Do it.”
“What?”
I stood in the doorway of the cell. “Take me by force.”
I had a couple inches of height on him, and I’d noticed he’d kept his distance from me ever since he’d met me, plus backup was near at hand, so I wasn’t worried. Still, yeah, this was probably a stupid idea.
“You’re…sure?” he said.
“Well, if you’re asking for consent then you’re definitely not taking me by force, mister hardened criminal.”
He tentatively took a step forward and puckered up, closing his eyes and leaning towards me.
“Ugh, gag me with a spoon,” Pipp cut in. Bonesaw shrank back. I slammed the cell door.
“I didn’t expect the successful apprehension of an internationally-wanted jailbird would be so disappointing,” I said. “Now I know how your mom feels.”
“Please stop,” he pleaded, “My penis has been involuntarily retracted so much that I think I’m getting rhabdo from overexertion.”
Pipp opened her mouth for a finishing move, but I interceded. We didn’t want to kill him.
We’d still broken him, though. Bonesaw told us everything in a monotone. The thing about the underwear had turned out to be true, but small petty thefts since then had been about it. Case closed.
I thanked Pipp for her help. In the meantime, Hitch had gotten Zephyr Heights to send someone. They would arrive tomorrow.
The jail rarely held anyone overnight. This was Maretime Bay, after all. The place was probably secure enough, but both Hitch and I were a little too cautious to do anything more than sleep lightly that night.
Screw you, Bonesaw. Hitch and I had been just about to have a moment until he showed up. That was why I’d vindictively called in the big guns for the interrogation.
In the morning, we rid ourselves of Bonesaw when a transport showed up to extradite him back to Zephyr Heights. He looked almost happy to see them.
However, before I could get back to getting back to Hitch, the girls called us from the Brighthouse.
We arrived to find that Sunny had been having episodes with her new alicorn magic. Apparently, she’d blasted the shared bedroom with glitter in her sleep. I was so glad to have moved out.
Sunny’s magical addition of wings and horn were going haywire. I wished I could help, but didn’t have any helpful observations to make about magic. I still wasn’t sure what kind of special magic I might have, if everyone was supposed to have some.
“We should give you a makeover,” Pipp suggested to Sunny as if it would somehow help her magic control issues.
“That’s your solution to maybe ninety percent of all problems you face,” I said.
“And it solves at least sixty percent of them,” she retorted.
Wait, really? I didn’t say that, though.
Hitch and I declined the makeovers and went for a patrol of town. I again wanted to restart the previous night’s activities, but couldn’t think of a logical segue to the topic. Still, it was nice walking with him.
After making a walk through town, we swung down by the beach. Sunny was there, looking dejected. Her magic was still on the fritz. She had a horn, and wings, but they were asymmetric and different sizes. Also, something had happened to her mane and it looked like an off-season Christmas tree. Some makeover.
“It’s been a complete disaster,” she sighed as she saw us walking over.
“You okay?” Hitch asked.
“Everypony else seems to be growing so fast. I just feel... stuck.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. Maybe in controlling her magic.
Hitch said, “You helped everypony believe in magic. Now it's time to believe in your own magic, Sunny.”
“That was pretty poetic,” I said.
“You think so?” he replied.
“It was. Thanks, Hitch.” said Sunny.
Just then, as we sat there on the sand together, a wave offshore started to build. I had no idea where it had come from, but it looked like it was going to break at least twenty feet high. A tsunami!?
“Oh no, the foals!” Sunny shouted, pointing to a few kids who were building a sandcastle just down the way and completely oblivious to the wave bearing down on them.
I might have been first to move. At any rate, I didn’t see anyone in front of me, and that was even temporarily forgetting I had wings in the heat of the moment. Measuring the distance as I accelerated, I thought I might beat the wave, but it was going to be close. There was no more time to think as I reached the kids, grabbed them and gave a push out ahead of me. I wasn’t sure what that much water bearing down was going to do, but wanted to make sure they had the best chance of escaping as they could.
Fwoomp.
What? That was definitely not a splash. G-glitter?
“My magic finally worked to save somepony!” Sunny said. “I mean, not quite the way I intended…”
She’d transmogrified the whole wave into shiny red glitter, thereby polluting the ocean with microplastics but I had to admit it was slightly better than getting crushed by a rogue wave. Though, if she herself had not also gotten totally covered in pounds of glitter, I might have been angry at her. As it was, I didn’t dare open my mouth for fear of inhaling some. It had gotten everywhere! This was basically everything I'd ever told Izzy not to do, but a thousand times worse.
Well, at least the kids were safe.
Hitch was in a similar predicament as me. The two of us trudged back to the station to clean up.
“I can help you in the shower,” I offered. “If you’ll help me. It’s also probably better than having one of us dirty and standing around waiting for the other to finish.”
To my surprise, Hitch actually bought that. Maybe the pony lack of nudity taboo helped. We went into the bathroom together.
We’d tried to brush off as much glitter as possible before getting into the shower, but this was still going to be a lot going down the drain. I hoped the sewers could handle it.
It was a little tight. Pony bodies being horizontal, the shower was crowded. Still, I was going to make this work despite any discomfort.
True to my word, I helped scrub Hitch. Glitter was the herpes of crafting supplies, but we managed to get it off. He started in on me.
“What do I have to do with these?” he said, tentatively holding one of my wings.
“It’s just skin. Probably easier to clean than hair.”
Hitch gave good scrubs. Gentle, but effective. Technically it could be counted a massage, I guess. I relaxed and let the water pour over me. That wasn’t to say I wasn’t still paying attention. I couldn't afford to be totally tuned out, not if I wanted to accomplish something here.
“You were really cool today,” he said. “That was a real hero move, saving those kids. I mean, even though Sunny took away the water. I think that’s at least twice now I’ve seen you throw yourself into danger to save a life.”
“You would have done the same.”
He started to say something, but I cut in. “I know you would, Hitch. I’m sorry if I sometimes…I don’t know, steal your thunder or something, but-”
It was his turn to interrupt me. “I don’t take any offense. I couldn’t ask you to stop and wait for me to handle things instead.”
There was silence for a moment. I said, “Hitch, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“While we’re being emotionally vulnerable…I really like you. I know I’ve been hanging on you like a fangirl for a while now, but I just wanted to make that clear. I know we’re going about this a weird way: we’re sleeping together, we had our first kiss during the magic mayhem a few days ago, and now we’re showering together…”
Deep breath. Time to take a leap of faith. I briefly turned my face into the shower spray - this was an extreme thirst.
I turned my head to look back at him, and lifted my tail. “Do you want to take another step with me?”
Hitch gulped. “Are…are you sure?”
“Hitch, I’m literally begging you for it.” I tried my best to sound needy instead of commanding.
He wavered for a long moment, but then took a deep breath, met my eyes, and put his hooves on my hips.
“As long as you guarantee you’re totally clean!” I said. “I am not getting glitter in there.”
In the morning, Hitch and I lay in bed. He was the big spoon.
His stupid bird alarm clock woke us up. I didn’t move. Neither did Hitch.
“Hey,” I said. Long pony necks meant that I could turn my head most of the way to at least see him behind me.
The look on his face was expected: second-guessing on the morning after. I wondered which way it would go.
“I’m sorry if I-” he began.
“Don’t apologize.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if-”
“Hitch, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Was I…okay?”
“You were amazing.” Not that I had a lot of experience, but I had definitely enjoyed myself.
I kissed him. His big brown eyes widened in surprise, but then drifted closed. We both came up for air a few seconds later.
“Coffee?” I said, getting up from bed and stretching.
“Sure.”
Things were a little different between us now. I could feel it as we had breakfast. But not a big difference. I mean, we’d already been sleeping in the same bed.
Things were much different in my own mind, though. This was it. Nobody could deny we were in a relationship now, least of all me. How far was this going to go?
Married? Kids?
Much as I was thirsty, was I ready for commitment?
Well, for starters, I had no idea if contraceptives existed in Equestria, so…
It was just once, right? I had no idea what my cycle even was. This would probably be fine.
Oh, and speaking of kids, I’d forgotten until now that we’d left Sparky with Phyllis. I cast a subtle glance at Hitch, but it apparently hadn’t crossed his mind.
As we were eating, Hitch glanced at the clock. “Oh, we’re going to be late. Pipp had something going on today.”
I doubted I wanted to know what it was, but an invitation was an invitation. We headed down to Mane Melody.
When we arrived, Pipp was frantic. Sunny and Izzy had somehow been transformed into foals. Zipp showed up just then and was just as dumbfounded. “What happened here!?”
“I don’t know!” Pipp moaned. “It just happened after the spa treatments!”
If Izzy had been a handful and Sunny was having trouble managing her magic before, the two of them as kids were an order of magnitude worse. I suddenly decided that maybe I wasn’t ready for my own just yet.
Using her multispectral goggles, Zipp searched around the store for a while while the rest of us tried to keep the kids contained. Zipp eventually figured out that Pipp’s new facemask treatment had mixed de-agifying ingredients with Sunny’s mysterious magic glitter. The glitter apparently retained magic, and that combined with the rest of the stuff designed to make someone look younger had created a compound that could literally make it happen.
“Well, I’ve never made an aging treatment before, but I guess it’s theoretically possible to reverse this, then,” said Pipp. She got to work.
I had meant to ask Zipp what exactly she saw when she looked at me through her goggles. She’d once commented that something strange was going on.
But speaking of something strange, if the magic glitter was to blame for this, what might it have done to me and Hitch? I cast a worried glance at him and could tell he was thinking about it, too.
He didn’t look like he was about to bring it up, though, because that would have meant admitting to the others that we were now a sex-having couple.
That was another thing to look up, if sex out of wedlock was seriously frowned upon in Equestria.
Hoo boy, I’d gotten what I’d wanted, but sure opened a can of worms along the way.
The next morning, Hitch and I awakened in each other’s embrace again. I had to say, I liked it.
Getting up and getting ready for breakfast, I happened to glance out the window. “Uh, Hitch?”
“Yeah?”
“Do giant flowers grow around here?”
“What are you talking-wow!” He came over to stand beside me and looked out the window. “No, I’ve never seen anything like that before.” We stared at several that towered as tall as trees around town. They seemed to have grown overnight.
“Where do you think they came from?” I asked.
“No idea. Maybe somepony’s special magic?”
Plausible. However, as we watched, a slight coastal breeze blew across the town. A light yellow dust seemed to shake off the flowers. Could that be pollen? Did giant flowers have giant pollen? Oh no…
In Japan, after World War Two, a lot of the country needed to be reforested to make up for all the wood used to rebuild after the firebombings. A lot of the trees that were planted were cedar. A few decades later, when the trees reached maturity, it was discovered that a lot of Japanese people are allergic to cedar. I suddenly had a really bad feeling about these giant flowers.
Out on patrol that morning, we saw Sunny. She was excited. “Hey Hitch, hey Sentra! You’ll never believe it! I helped Dhalia find her special magic, and it turns out she’s really good at making flowers grow!”
I had seen a frontal system moving into the area, and sure enough the wind chose that moment to pick up. A gust carried across town, and suddenly every giant flower within view snapped off and came tumbling down.
A huge wave of yellow pollen rolled across the city.
“Gas!” I shouted. “Back to the station, shut down the ventilation, seal the cracks!”
Sunny flew off somewhere, probably back to the Brighthouse or maybe trying to prevent the spread of the pollen. I wasn’t sure turning it into glitter was a better solution, though.
At any rate, even though we managed to get back to the station before the pollen cloud hit, Hitch began to sneeze almost immediately. He started coughing and hacking so hard that he had to back away from stuffing towels into the cracks under the doors.
I realized I was fine. Huh, what a pleasant surprise.
Hitch continued to sneeze and drip fluids from his nose and eyes. “Let’s get you in the shower,” I said, taking him by the shoulder to lead him because I wasn’t sure he could see. “Do you have any antihistamines?”
“Bathroom cabinet,” he wheezed.
I had him take a steamy shower, gave him the pills, and had him drink some water. All that seemed to help, plus it looked like Sunny and some immune ponies like me were outside already starting to clean up.
Hitch was still suffering, but I thought the worst might be past. He seemed to lean on me as I cared for him. I almost felt like his mother or something, which brought to mind the issue of kids again, but I powered through it for his sake. I brushed his mane back with my hoof. “Let’s get you feeling better.”
I did the cooking that day and kept Hitch cared for. Later that evening, by bedtime, he was mostly back to normal, though his nose was still running. We got into bed. I’d already placed a box of tissues on the nightstand.
“Sorry,” he said, still a little stuffed up. “I wouldn’t want to drip all over you when we were…together.”
He was still a little uncomfortable saying the word sex, but this would have been the third day in a row we’d done it.
Maybe there was still a way. “Just lie back,” I said, guiding him to the pillow. “I’ll take the top and-”
“The top?” he said.
“Hitch, how many positions do you think there are?”
“Uh, I’ve never heard of a pony…”
I didn’t kiss him because his nose was running, but set to work.
Despite some inconveniences, it worked out. We both came away satisfied.
Well, in the back of my mind, I knew I should find some condoms or something if we were going to keep doing this.
Hitch snored that night, because he couldn’t breathe through his nose. That was nothing compared to what happened in the morning, when he woke up and promptly rolled over to vomit into the bedside trashcan.