"Do we have to take your car?"
"Yes."
"It's not like she can't just lay down on the back seat or something."
"Too risky."
"We can put a blanket over her."
"Who says I was talking about the risk of Diamond being seen?"
"Are you still mad at me over that road-trip to Niagara? Seriously?"
"No, I'm not mad at you... Well, maybe a little bit. But it's more that I have a limited tolerance for stress, and dealing with the doorstep filly situation, this clusterfuck of a deployment at work and your driving all in one day is a bit much."
Trevor sighed. "Fine. But you owe me for this, dude, you owe me big. This thing's fuckin' embarrassing."
"Will you stop calling me 'dude' already? You're too old and in the wrong job to talk like a bloody stoner all the time. And my car is not embarrassing, it is exceedingly practical and very, very cool."
"Yeah, if you're an English redneck."
The car in question was a Land Rover Defender formerly belonging to the British Army, still in Arctic camouflage colours from its last deployment in Norway. Shipping it to Canada and getting it registered had entailed a quite staggering amount of paperwork and cost no small amount of money, but to my mind it was worth every cent.
Why? Because Landies are awesome, that's why.
Once we were sure the coast was clear, Diamond trotted out of the front door. To Trevor's undisguised amusement, she regarded the Landy with her best not-impressed face. "Just get in the back, will you?" I grumbled. "There's a rug on the floor if you can't fit on the seats."
It was a five-minute drive to the police station, most of which Diamond spent complaining about how grubby and uncomfortable the inside of the Landy was. I reminded myself for the nth time that I was not her legal guardian and her manners were not yet any of my business and drove in silence.
Trevor directed me to park at the rear of the building, and back right up to the entrance to the underground car park. A short, vaguely pear-shaped woman in her early fifties with steel-grey hair and an expression of grave suspicion was waiting nearby; Inspector Haywood, I presumed. She was't in the usual "brony" demographic, but then again talking about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the expected demographic is a pointless exercise anyway, so...
"Green, if this is some kind of half-witted practical joke that you've cooked up with your English friend here you'll be giving road-safety talks in elementary schools until you're forty," she warned, revealing a noticeable Quebecois French accent. I winced inwardly. For historical reasons too long and complicated to go into here, people from Quebec hate the English almost as much as the Irish do.
Without making any comment to his boss, Trevor opened the Landy's rear door. "Come say hi, Diamond."
"Well it's about damn time!" she grumped, jumping down with obvious relief.
"Tabernac!" Haywood breathed. I didn't know what that meant but recalled vaguely from one of Harry Turtledove's books that it wasn't suited to polite company.
Diamond sighed theatrically. "This reaction is getting way old."
"Can't really help you there, lady," I replied.
Haywood pinched the bridge of her nose and counted to ten under her breath. "Interview Room 3, all of you. Right now." She turned to another officer who was standing nearby with his mouth hanging open. "You! I want the tapes and CCTV footage sealed and on my desk immediately after we finish up there, this is not just criminal evidence but a matter of national security!"
Haywood and a man by the name of Masters, who was apparently something senior in the RCMP, questioned Trev and I in turn whilst a couple of female officers from the Youth Policing Team -or whatever Canadians call it- dealt with Diamond. There wasn't much more to tell than I'd already related to Trevor: I'd woken up at about seven, made breakfast, taken a snow-shovel and a stiff broom to the path outside whilst Becca got the kids ready for school and then come back in to start work by about 8:30. About two hours later, the knock on the door had come and I'd found the box.
"We'll have to interview your sister as well," Haywood concluded, "and I'm afraid I must ask you to remain within the Windsor area until our investigaton is complete. CSIS will also have questions for you."
"C-what..?" I took a moment to parse the acronym; the 'C' wasn't hard to guess, but it took a bit of thought before I remembered what 'SIS' stands for in the UK. Here's a hint: A guy called Ian Fleming used to work for them, back when they were called something else, and wrote some very famous books based on his experiences there. "I didn't even know we had one of those."
"It's fairly new," Masters replied. "Used to be our job." He looked rather put out as he said so, and I made a mental note to look up the story behind this later. (Unusually for me, I actually remembered to do this; I won't go into it here, but suffice it to say that a lot of Mounties were caught pulling some very illegal stunts to hurt the Quebec separatists at the tail end of the Seventies, and some major house-cleaning took place when Parliament got to hear of it. It's not a pretty story and the RCMP are really embarrassed about it these days.)
"At any rate," Haywood continued, "they will have many questions for our visitor as well, and probably want to perform a medical examination. I think it would be advisable for you to tell your employer you'll be otherwise occupied for the rest of today."
Trevor's "suspicious package" story was as good as anything else I could think of to tell my boss. He immediately attributed it to the unpleasantness that spurred me to leave the UK in the first place, which I'd rather not go into just now, and I chose not to disabuse him of the notion.
I ended up sitting on an uncomfortable chair outside the interview rooms, waiting for I didn't really know what. For lack of anything else to do, I dug my MP3 player out of my jacket pocket and zoned out for a bit. Six tracks later, Trevor tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a mug of coffee.
"You lifesaver." I drank it gratefully. "Any news?"
"The MIBs get here in about an hour, with an Army medic. They want you to sit in with Diamond for the exam; apparently, and I quote, the two of you have built a rapport. I think Haywood was actually kinda impressed."
"All I did was make her breakfast and let her watch cartoons," I pointed out, vaguely embarrassed.
"And handled the 'humans are omnivores' thing. And the 'your world is a cartoon' thing. And stopped her beating up Joey."
I groaned. "Trust you to take Becca's side." There's an ongoing debate in our household about whether or not I'm good at looking after small children. Becca swears I am, I disagree rather vehemently, Joey and Isaac are on the fence.
"I just call 'em how I see 'em, dude."
I sighed heavily, and wondered idly if the bars were open yet. Then I realised that this would mean letting Trevor drive my car and thought better of it.
The arrival of the Men in Black turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax. Only one of them was a man, neither of them wore ominous black suits and they arrived in a gold Mazda hatchback rather than a sinister black SUV. They introduced themselves as Mr White and Ms Green (which I sincerely doubted were their real names) from CSIS and Captain Hawthorne of the Canadian Forces Medical Service.
After a brief exchange of introductions and -yet again- describing the events that led up to this point, we were ushered into a sort of family-friendly interrogation room, brightly painted and containing a couple of couches and a few battered children's toys. Diamond was idly flipping through a magazine with Disney's latest teen idol on the cover, wearing an expression of bored disdain, and didn't bother looking up as we entered the room. I cleared my throat gently.
"Diamond, there's some people here who need to talk to you."
The CSIS agents shared a solemn look but didn't otherwise react, whilst Hawthorne was visibly surprised but kept his composure well enough that his exclamation of "Holy shit!" was barely audible.
"So," Green said in measured tones, "you'd be Diamond Tiara, I take it?"
"Yep," she said absently, still glued to the magazine.
"Put the magazine down, please," I said firmly. "These people need to ask you some questions, and Dr Hawthorne needs to give you a check-up to make sure you're not sick or hurt."
With noticeable reluctance, she dropped the magazine and trotted over. "So, whadda ya wanna know?"
"Well, let's start with some basic stuff. Is Diamond Tiara your full name?"
"Nope, full name's Diamanda Christine Richford."
"Nickname comes from your cutie mark, huh?"
"Something like that." She shrugged. "Been called it long as I can remember, just kinda happened I guess."
White scribbled something down in a spiral notepad, but said nothing. "And your date of birth?" Green persisted.
"Louvember twelth, 2105."
"Uh..."
"I'm thirteen in three weeks," Diamond added.
"I guess we'll come back to that."
They continued in a similar vein for about a quarter of an hour. Father, Filmore Richford, occupation venture capitalist and apparently very good at it. (No prizes for guessing where he got his nickname.) Mother's name, Christine Richford. Parents divorced, father has custody; mother's status uncertain, no contact for some years. No siblings.
Hawthorne took her into another room for an examination, accompanied by a female police officer and leaving me with Green and White. "So, Mr Ellis... Can I call you Bob?" White began, a little awkwardly. I nodded. "Bob, we're going to have to tell you some things that are very, very definitely not for public consumption..."
I snorted. "Do you think I have anything to gain by this being plastered all over tomorrow's Windsor Star? Or Equestria Daily for that matter?"
"Sorry, I had to ask. Anyway, to make a long story short... You aren't the only person who found a filly in a box today."
"‽" I replied, eloquently.
"Yeah, that's pretty much how one of our agents reacted when he found a nine year-old unicorn called Symphonia trying to kick her way out of his mailbox. We suspect there'll be more, but so far you're the only one who decided to call the cops."
"No prizes for guessing why," Green muttered, in obvious reference to that fanfic.
"We won't pretend to know how or why this is happening," White continued, "but we have some guesses. There's aspects to this that I can't talk about in a lot of detail, but I take it you're aware of the concept of parallel universes?" I nodded mutely. "Well, I don't know all the details and wouldn't be allowed to tell you if I did, but a number of governments have taken passes at going beyond pure theory."
"At any rate," Green interjected, "all we can tell you right now is that we've got people working on the problem of getting this kid home. Unfortunately, it's anyone's guess when or indeed if they'll get any useful results. Which leaves us with a problem..."
Diamond was back in the interview room, reading the same magazine as before and sucking a sugar-free lollipop she must've got from Hawthorne. "So," I said slowly. "Did they tell you what happened?"
"Some," she replied tonelessly. "Am I staying here?"
"Here as in on Earth, or here as in with us?"
"Both, I guess."
"Well, as far as staying on Earth goes, the scientists are working on it. There was a way to send you here, so there's got to be a way to send you back, right? As for staying here with us... Well, I suppose that's really up to you. If you really don't want to stay with me, Becca and the kids then there's always that other guy who got a pony in the mail."
Diamond shrugged.
I sat down beside her, and very tentatively placed a hand on her shoulder. "You alright?"
Diamond looked up, glaring at me. "The hell do you think?" Despite the ferocious scowl, I could see unshed tears in her eyes, and I made an abrupt decision. To hell with whether or not I had the right to do this to someone else's kid. I put both arms around her and pulled her into my lap for a hug. She sat stiffly for a fraction of a second, but then something gave way and she curled up against me and started to sob. I held her for a long moment, stroking her hair (mane? Whatever) until she cried herself out.
"I wanna go home," she said miserably. "I wanna see Daddy again, and Sylvie, and Miz Debonnair an' Bonnie from the candy store and..." She sighed heavily. "This never happened, 'kay?"
I snorted. "Kid, if anyone's earned the right to a good cry right now..."
"I'm serious! I've got a reputation to maintain here!" she protested, with such utter seriousness and conviction that I burst out laughing. Diamond made an inarticulate growling noise, yanked the lollipop she'd been sucking out of her mouth and stuck it into my hair.
"Gah! Oi! You brat!" I yelped.
"And don't you forget it!" she retorted, and then she started laughing.
I sighed. "This relationship is clearly something we're both going to have to work at."