4 - I Know You Know
"Aw, it's ok. Everything turned out alright, right? I just wish I could have met the Wonderbolts when they were awake." said Rainbow Dash.
"Princess Celestia, I am sorry I ruined the competition. Rainbow Dash here really is the best flyer in Equestria."
"I know she is my dear. That's why for her incredible act of bravery, and her spectacular sonic rainboom, I'm presenting the grand prize for best young flyer to this year's winner, Miss Rainbow Dash!" said Princess Celestia.
"Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!" said Rainbow Dash.
And the government agent smiled, turned the page of his memo pad, and continued his notes of this sixteenth episode of the first season.
The constable who stood guard in the bedroom door glanced at him as he sat on the suspect's bed before the TV, watching little cartoon horses bouncing on and off the TV-set. He wrinkled his nose, waiting for his federal superior to do something useful instead of watching some children's programme.
Agent Fitzgerald looked up at the policeman, shook his head understandably and waited until the credits appeared.
'So, this is Rainbow Dash?', he thought, 'And 'Celestia'? Princess Celestia? Does she really look like this?'
He knew it was a highly absurd thought to derive the visual profile of a single, lone voice from a cartoon show.
Still, he was more than happy to be able to put a face to the voice. The same for Rainbow Dash. Some of the images he saw in the album were a bit unfortunately framed and blurry. It was a nice feeling to be finally able to see Rainbow Dash in all her - flash-animated - glory.
The agent threw another aside glance at the waiting policeman, slowly realising how awkward this all seemed. The credits flashed began rolling, and the cheery melody filled the room. Slowly, Fitzgerald lifted himself from the suspect’s bed, and clicked off the TV. Slowly, he bent down and eyed the DVD set as he stuck the disc back into its cover.
Again, his thoughts were lost in speculation and doubt.
How could this all fit together?
It was a show, a children’s show based on a decades-old toy genre.
It was a show with script writers, with voice actors, with the creativity of maybe a dozen normal humans behind it.
What the hell was he thinking?
What he heard, on the same side of that door, it could simply not have been any more than a two massively dedicated cosplayers, two fans of the show. Princess Celestia… Rainbow Dash… bullshit. The agent slumped to his knees on the inside. He chided himself, reprimanded himself, teased himself for even supposing for a minute that any of this had a foot in real life. It was not just fantastic, it was absurd, an immature, fruitless waste of time and thought.
His thoughts echoed the words of his superior, advertising the professionalism, objectionalism and pragmatism that his office had held oh-so-dear.
And yet… there still were the photos.
Those bloody photos. The best photoshops he had seen in a long… ever. It were exactly these images that made him believe everything he had seen and heard. The voices on the other side… they were the perfect imitations of the voice actresses of the show. How could that be? Wouldn’t both be, what, forty or fifty by now? More than ten years after the fact?
“Mr Fitzgerald, Sorry there, but a certain Dr Matheson of the FS just came and said that he wanted to take a gander at a certain room.”
Without looking up, the agent sprawled up to his knees and placed the DVD case on top of the TV. In a matter-of-factly tone, he answered,
“Matheson, yes. Tell him its through that plywood door right there.”
As the constable made note of the portal into the supposed 'office', Fitzgerald slid the booklet of the DVD case into his right pocket, right next to his notebook.
As he strode out of the bedroom, passing the policeman in the doorway, he tried to defeat the constable’s doubtful stare, to somehow justify himself before he would go down in that man’s mind as ‘that crazy fed who watches My Little Pony’. Unfolding the booklet once more, he academically skimmed through the colourfully printed pages, seeking out the cast list, printed inside a big brown box on page two, and tipped on it.
“Constable, do any of these names ring any bells?”
Dubiously, the policeman shook his head.
“No. No, they do not.”
Fitzgerald nodded in acceptance, and then proceeded to designate two of the names.
“Look: Ball, Ashley. Oliver, Nicole. Can you go and phone the records department to check out these two identities for me? Their occupations, their residential addresses, their whereabouts in the last 48 hours, et cetera.”
The constable just stared blankly at the page, distracted by a portrait of six ponies and a mare posing in a flowery meadow with a big castle in the background printed on the next page. Right underneath it, there was a very budget-minded advertisement for collectors’ toys, of every single of the featured characters.
“Uh, Just refresh my memory… which agency do you work for again? Please, we got enough shit around here to work around with. Lay off the collectors’ items pranks for the forensic guys.”
The agent groaned. He had expected this kind of response. Without wasting time on letting the constable finish, he interrupted his snark forcefully,
“Just do it, okay? This is part of a criminal investigation. I am serious, give the RD these two names.”
The policeman replied with a grimace that was practically oozing with sarcasm.
“Yeah, sure. I’m right on it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake – get out of my way, I’ll just do it myself!”
Yanking the booklet away from under the constables wandering eyes, Fitzgerald brushed past him with an annoyed flinch, squeezing his way out onto the corridor, right into the arms of a few waiting familiar faces.
A man in glasses and a puffy white overall, and a woman in a purple blazer and brown hair that was tied into a bun.
“Helen?”
“Fitz?”
"Matheson?”
“Fitz?”
“Good to see you, Matheson. Just go right in and turn left.”
“Okay, I’ll go and get my guys.”
He turned to Helen, his long-time partner in the field. Helen started, nervously adjusting her hair bun.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine, just dandy.” Fitz mumbled, surprised to see his long-time colleague arriving so soon.
“Where did you come from?”
“Linlithgow, Fitz. I was keeping Fisher company.” she stated cleary and slowly. She glared at the agent, and inquired, in a hissingly whispery tone,
“Speaking of which… why did you opt to blow the cover? I nearly had him, Fitz. He had important information he wanted to share with me!”
“How important exactly?” Fitz caught on, raising his eyebrows in interest.
“Well let’s start with: Fisher had a daughter during his time in Fort Pleasance.”
Helen anticipated Fitz’s reaction to this statement. She awaited a mighty ‘No way…’ or something similar.
Fitz however, stood there, still looking at her, contemplating what she just said. So it was all true. There was a daughter. Nodding slowly, he said,
“Oh, I know.”
Helen was surprised to hear that. “You do?! How did you…”
Without shedding another thought, Fitzgerald lifted the booklet, and tipped at the image of Rainbow Dash.
“I know… this may sound strange…” he started, but Helen interrupted him right away, sensing a connection to her and Brian’s conversation earlier that day. Three words she had found especially interesting earlier on floated up from her mind, lying on her lips, ready to be pronounced…
“My little Dashie?”
“How did you…”
“Fisher told me.”
Again, the agent nodded,
“What else did he tell you? Did he tell you about the letter? Or the photos?”
“Hang on now, don’t jump the gun. What is this, Fitz? What photos, what letter? I just told you that he had a daughter, how is this connected to…” she took the booklet and looked at the two names Fitz had underlined, “… My Little Pony?”
“Well, uhm…” Fitz scratched his nose in anxiety, and then quickly looked left and right. He saw how Matheson and two of his colleagues in white overalls hauled a pair of heavy suitcases through the bedroom door, banishing the loitering policeman out into the darkened corridor.
“As I said, this may be a bit hard to explain… just come with me. It’ll blow you away.”
.
The photo album lay downstairs meanwhile, completely abandoned on the cleared coffee table.
Police officers and agents were scattered bustling throughout the room, clearing out drawers, sifting through stacks of documents, taking pictures and dusting doorhandles.
Nobody had yet cared to turn one’s attention to the photo album before it was snatched by Fitzgerald, holding his wondering partner in tow. Carefully, he dusted off the top and solemnly opened to the part with the magical photos. But for all the ‘magic’ they had to offer, they were indeed still there when Fitzgerald lifted it up to the height of his eyes.
He had expected them to be suddenly gone like they were never there, as this was what always happened in fairytales and movies and the such. But no, these pictures were still present, clearly to see for everyone with eyes.
“So Fitz, what did you want to show me? What’s in the album?”
The agent hesitated.
He bit his lip, being overcome with a sudden feeling of doubt. Was this… absurd thing not a bit too much for his colleague to handle? Hell, was he himself even enough to handle this?
He thought about what would happen if this all did in fact turn out not to be just a mere hoax; and when he would give it into the hands of his colleague...
Either, she would take a look at it. She would gasp. Then she would run off to Ian, and Ian would take a look at it, then gasp and send it off to his superior at the Ministry of Defence in the capital. He would take a good look at it, gasp, and phone the Defence Minister, who would then proceed call the HOS personally. That’s what would happen. Oh dear, what kind of implications it would bring…
It would go beyond just terrorism or anything like it. It would challenge the very human perception of what was possible and what was not. What was real and what was not. It would go beyond Fitzgerald’s own authority, or that of Ian, or even that of the head of state. When combined, the photos, the letter, Brian, and the whole damn 2014 bombing affair would imply that, somewhere out there, the creative ideas of other people, of screenwriters and animators, made up entire realities, whatever that would be, alternate realities or otherwise, realities populated by cartoon horses. Horses with immense physical powers and a nigh-human level of intelligence. Able of speech, of flight, and the creation of physical phenomenons that explicitly mirror the effects of nuclear devices. It would be a risk able of putting all of world peace to ruins.
Or...
Helen would take a look at them, and shrug them off. As photoshop works of an overly motivated fanboy. In fact, that was the thing he, in terms of his job’s capacity, should have concluded. Nobody would hinder him of doing so. Nobody would ever penalise him for not investigating into this affair further. Just say; photoshopped, case closed. Anyone can do mistakes, so what would be stopping him from doing that?
Sure, it would set up Brian personally for the whole explosion thing, but then again, he should have paid closer attention of what his ‘daughter’ would be capable of. This whole thing could be swept under the rug oh so easily. It would save many more people headaches than cause them. But still… could he afford of sending one man off to prison to pay that price? And what if everyone else but him would conclude that there was more behind it? He could have his ass demoted for being neglectful. It was his job to investigate further into things like these. And doing so may earn him a promotion.
“Fitz… what is this all?”
He turned to his colleague.
But to his despair, she had long crept around him as he thought things through again, and was looking him over the shoulder. It was too late. With eyes as big as peaches, she glanced upon the pages with photographs of Brian and is Dashie, laughing, working and playing.
“What is this supposed to be?”
Her voice suggested a faint premonition of what these pictures contained. Her eyes were serious, skimming the book without the grin or the ridiculing eye-rolls that would have been made by any other person. She treated this seriously, critically.
Fitzgerald quickly tried to explain it to her, in the most harmless intonation he could muster,
“I found these in his bedroom. He certainly likes his cartoons, doesn’t he?”
“Mhmm…”
Helen looked at the photos, slowly feeling over each one of them with her hand, as if to find glue strips of colour markings on the surfaces of the images. She was thinking about Brian, and the affection he felt for his daughter, and how much he liked to compare her to Rainbow Dash. She briefly looked up at Fitzgerald, and then at the booklet he still held in one hand.
“Fitz… do you know what this means?”
Fitzgerald scratched his head, awaiting his partner’s judgement.
“Tell me.”
“Well… his daughter,… and Rainbow Dash…” she begun, but stopped in mid-sentence, thinking of a way best to summarise it.
“…are one and the same?” Fitz asked.
She rubbed her forehead in realisation. It wasn't necessarily the same as Fitzgerald's, though. Instead, she saw a distinct problem Brian may had with his mental state.
“It all makes sense now. The poor bastard.”
..
Brian closed his eyes as he turned his face towards the sun in the sky. The wind played with his clothes, and the water in the icy creek played beneath his feet. The poorly paved country lane smoked a little as he tread on, feeling a lot lighter and more content than when he came into town. He wanted to go home and change his clothes so he could, dunno, go for a hike in the woods or maybe even follow the road by the creek down several miles. He had never done that before. So why shouldn’t he do it now? A very refreshing, agile burst of adrenaline flowed through his feet, and he needed to think of a way how to best spend the energy.
He had to admit, it felt good to be among others of his kind again, and the acquaintance he made at the pub today proved it all the more. This was what he needed; a much-relieving talk with someone who knew professionally how to converse. Maybe he should visit her practice and talk to her again, just as she proposed it. Psychiatric help would really help him in his state. He wanted to make amends with the things he had to go through in the last two years. He wanted to make clear that this time of sorrow and mourning – which had essentially been the depression that had caught up with him after these 15 years – had gone for good.
So, how about Wednesday? He had time on Wednesday. He had time all week! He could really take himself a week or two to re-organise his existence into a more presentable form. Who knows… maybe Ingrid could be a part of this new start.
However, as he rounded the corner to walk up his coarse driveway that led uphill to his house, he felt that his past had summoned all its momentum to give him a mighty punch in the face.
In his driveway, somebody had parked his car sideways, blocking the path to everyone else intending to enter the property.
No, it wasn’t the green car from that thug in the suit from earlier today. Even worse; it was a police car. Behind it, a constable stood by its door and conversed with his shoulder radio.
Brian stood frozen with shock, daring neither to breathe nor to talk. In all those years, he had hoped never to see something like this. Never had he hoped, that Rainbow’s and his secret could be imperilled by policemen knocking on his door, for whatever reason.
Now however, they were in his house…
He broke into a panicked jog up the road, approaching the road block, squeezing his hands and breathing erratically. He knew that he had to get in his house and get rid of all the proof of Dashie as fast as possible, before the police could catch on.
How would he ever be able to explain any of that?
The constable looked up, “Sir, this is a crime scene. Can I ask why you are here?”
Brian went up close to the car, frantically looking for a way around.
“What do you mean, why I'm here? I live here, for Pete's sake!”
The policeman nodded acknowledgingly and pressed a hand against his walkie talkie.
“You must be Mr Fisher then. Please, follow me.”
“Follow you, what! What are you talking about, I live here! That’s my house behind there! Can I ask why are you here?! What happened?”
With a distancing, soothing hand directed at Brian, the policeman explained,
“There has been a break-in. The perpetrator may still be near. Please, come with me. We have been waiting for you to arrive.”
Brian froze at the mention.
"A... break-in?"
He unlocked the passenger door on Brian’s side.
“Come, I’ll drive you up.”
But Brian saw how the policeman slowly pulled up the walkie talkie to his mouth, eyeing him actively all the way. If they would take him in for some sort of questioning, he would never get a chance to snatch the photo album before it was found.
“Bullshit! I need to get to my house!”
Brian snapped, very much in panic. He jumped over the police car’s cooler and swept past the constable, heading straight for his front door. The policeman ordered him to stop, but Brian knew he had to get into the house now, before it was too late.
...
Helen shut the album, still wound up in thought.
Fitzgerald told her his view on the whole situation.
“Either, Helen, we have a case here of a strong imaginary friendship...”
“I know.”
“… or Rainbow Dash... is in fact his daughter.”
Expectedly, Fitzgerald earned himself an askance, if somewhat delayed, stare from his long-time partner.
"What was that?"
"Helen... The daugther... I spoke to her. She was in this house, surprised me in the bedroom."
Helen was in awe.
"You... you spoke to her?! Dear God, Fitz. Fisher insisted that she was dead. Couldn't you have told me that any earlier?"
"What would that have changed? At least now we know now that our friend Fisher has a daughter who is both real and alive."
Helen eyed him awkwardly.
"But didn't we just establish that his daughter was Rainbow Dash?"
Fitzgerald sighed. What now?
He answered, as dryly and sarcastically as possible,
"Well yes. Yes, Helen. His daughter was Rainbow Dash."
His partner knew she couldn't exactly follow. Unsure of his intent, she rolled her eyes and asked slowly,
"As... in the show? In My Little Pony, as in the booklet you're holding in your right hand?"
"Yes... the one as in the booklet I'm holding in my hand, Helen."
She didn't know what to say. A worrisome look on her face betrayed the doubt she got in her partner's well-being...
"Okay, Fitz. Are you... feeling alright? Maybe you should just... you know... sit down..."
He swept away her worries with a determined gesture of his hand.
"I'm okay, Helen, I already told you! Fact is, I spoke with this 'Rainbow Dash' character. Then I spoke with someone called 'Celestia'. Either you tell me if that name tells you anything, or you can wait outside."
"Celestia?"
"Or Princess Celestia, if you will."
"Like in..."
He grinned manically,
"Like in the show, Helen. I spoke with two cartoon characters! Does it still all make sense to you?"
"Fitz, you know that what you're saying is that Rainbow Dash is real. A cartoon character who is real."
"I know. But you know what, I don't care. I really don't care.
What I do care for, however, is the fact that this Rainbow Dash, whoever she is, cartoon character or not, said that she was there, at the site of the explosion! Er... no, even better, she said it was her very fault to boot!
Helen pulled a hand through hair, finally understanding what Fitzgerald meant. Not that it made any sense...
"So you say the explosion was..."
He waved his hand impatiently,
"...her sonic rainboom. Come on Helen, why so slow? I thought you were the expert on this field."
She shook her head quickly, "What? No..."
"Oh please, the whole department knows you're into this show. Go on, prove my facts right. Remember that I have hardly ever seen this show before, so I couldn't have possibly made it up. Right?"
"So you say none other than Rainbow Dash is the key to the whole explosion."
"It all boils down to it, so yes. If we find Rainbow Dash, we find the cause for this explosion. Only then we can determine, if Brian Fisher is guilty as suspected! We need to find out about the whereabouts of Rainbow Dash, preferably from Fisher himself..."
Bang!
Speaking of the devil, an exhasperated Brian Fisher had bounced open the terrace door, and stood panting, glaring at the two investigators. Before he could take another step, two policeman sprang up behind him and nailed him against the doorframe, searching him while squeezing his arms against his back.
"Fisher!"
Brian needed a minute to identify the two people who stood in his living room. It were the man in the green car and Ingrid Tremblay, the psychiatrist from the pub.
"Mr Fisher..."
Brian felt like the ground was sagging away from under him. It were the same red cheeks and brown hair that had given him new hope today, ensured him with a sensible voice a new future, a break from his catharsis. She was a symbol of his newly-found peace.
But there she was. Standing tall as one of the people he had wished not ever have to face his whole life with Dashie. He could have teared up. But then there was the smug-faced guy in the suit. Brian chastised himself for not suspecting it sooner. He was loitering boldly in his driveway, with a pair of binoculars. Of course he wasn't an estate agent. Of course he was a cop. And he, Brian, did not see the obvious, even after watching all those movies. He looked back to 'Ingrid', but did not put any effort in appealing to her for a favour. He stared at her in an accusing manner. Even as the police had him pinned against a wall, his stare maintained its power. Helen looked away, she had not expected to have to reveal her real work to him like that.
In the awkward silence that ensued, Fitzgerald looked back and forth between his partner and the suspect. He saw what was going on here. He tapped Helen on the shoulder, silently suggesting that she should go and join Matheson upstairs. Slowly, she turned around and walked away, turning around not once for Brian.
Fitzgerald stepped forward, putting on his most affable smile as he approached the entrapped young man. 'Mayhaps I don't know when enough is enough' he thought, 'but I am going to get to the bottom of this mess anyway. Because if this really is what I think this is... then Fisher is going to tell me.'
He turned to the constables.
"Leave Mr Fisher alone. It's his home, after all."
Brian unsnapped himself as the police officers eased their grasp. Fitzgerald extended a hand to greet him, in the hollow hope that it would be shaken.
"My name is Anthony Fitzgerald, FIS. Nice to meet you."
Brian did not shake it. He was too angry, too anxious, too scared, too uncertain.
He would have preferred to punch that agent for being inside his house. But then again, with two policemen standing behind him, he reconsidered swiftly.
"Welcome home." Fitzgerald said, with a sarcastic intonation.
He looked for a reaction from Brian, a reaction that would determine whether he had something to hide within the vicinity of this house. It was a simple test, but a highly revealing one. He sought eye contact with Brian. Brain avoided it; he didn't notice it himself, but he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, trying to judge whether they had found something in his absence. He looked on the ground, fearing the worst. Fitzgerald followed his stare. He saw it; Brian's mind was as heavy as a sack of bricks. By breaking into his home, they had stepped right into his intimate sphere, and in their profession, that usually meant a lot.
"Well, Mr Fisher. I regret to inform you that your house has been invaded. A petty burglary. We are doing our best to find the perpetrator."
Brian believed it not for a minute. Not after seeing two such familiar faces.
Whatever they wanted here, they wouldn't get it. Brian knew he was clean. Whatever they were looking for, even if it be Dashie, they wouldn't find anything thanks to Celestia's magic.
Except for the photos.
But where were those photos?! Upstairs, surely!
"Mr Fisher I just ask you to come with me for a second to process some formalities? You know, for the insurance coverage, to determine if anything is a..."
Brian's objection came immediately.
"What if I don't want to go with you?"
Fitzgerald let out an artificial sigh.
"Well, what would your little Dashie have to say to that?"
'My Little Dashie?'
Brian froze at the mention. The agent saw also this. Brian shook his head slowly, unsuccessfully trying to object,
"I don't think I know what..."
"We mean your daughter, Mr Fisher. Your little Dashie."
Brian suddenly felt a bit faint. He hid his shaking hands beneath his waist. Did he just... was that it? Did he find the photos? Or the letter? Had they... had they caught on? After all those years?
"Well, would you like to sit down now for a moment, Mr Fisher?"