When Night Falls

by sentinel28a

One Bad Day

WHEN NIGHT FALLS
A My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Short Story
By Sentinel 28A

Agent William Collins was having a bad day.
As a senior agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, it was his job to help investigate incidents regarding any of those four items. Usually, this was fairly simple: moonshiners in the backwoods of the South, cigarette smugglers from Europe, gun shops selling illegal automatic weapons, accidents with high explosives. Occasionally, it involved terrorism, especially since the events of September 11. Given that Collins was assigned to the Midwest, the latter was blessedly rare. Most of his duties were, in fact, essentially that of a Federal policeman. He handed out more fines than prison time. It had been over a decade since he had drawn his weapon in anger.
This time, things were different.
He had been awoken from a sound sleep by an emergency call from downstate: an explosion had occurred at a high school. First responders had thought it a gas main explosion, which was terrible in its own right: Canterlot High School was in the middle of its Fall Formal. Since damage to the school was significant, it was feared that there might be several dozen dead and many more wounded. To everyone’s relief, no one was badly injured, let alone dead. That was fortunate. Unfortunately for Bill Collins’ sleep, evidence pointed to an act of domestic terrorism.
A multiagency team was immediately dispatched to Canterlot High, made up of agents from the FBI, ATFB, and Homeland Security, plus state and local police. As he was closest and most senior, Collins took the lead for the ATFB. One look at the school and Collins was stunned that there had been no casualties. Though the other agencies were still investigating, interviews with the student body and teachers present for the Fall Formal pointed towards one suspect: a young woman incongruously named Sunset Shimmer. When agents came to Shimmer’s house, twenty-four hours after the incident, she had surrendered without a fight.
Collins leaned back in his chair, glanced at the pack of cigarettes on his desk, and fought down the urge to smoke. He was trying to quit, but any time he was in a quandary, the nicotine cravings got worse. He threw the pack into a desk drawer and pushed it shut. Then he sat up straight and opened Sunset Shimmer’s file.
Shimmer had invoked her right to remain silent. A cursory investigation into her background turned up nothing suspicious. She had no connections to any foreign terrorist group, showed no tendency towards radical causes foreign or domestic, and had never committed crimes, aside from one instance of shoplifting at a mall a year previously. Her grades were superb and she had been consistently elected to student government, Glee Club, and was princess of the Fall Formal two years running. This was not the psychological profile of someone disgruntled with society, or someone angry with the country’s foreign policy. In short, Sunset Shimmer showed none of the tendencies of a terrorist.
When the FBI had dug deeper, however, then the anomalies started showing up. Shimmer had no friends, and in fact seemed to shun others. She had been disciplined for bullying on several occasions. Flipping through the psychological profile, Collins was struck by the similarity to school shooters: few to no friends, a superiority complex, a hate for authority figures. Not all of those pointed towards a tendency to commit a violent act, but they were part of the classic profile. At first blush to Collins, it was an open-and-shut case: Shimmer was angry about something, and whatever it was pushed her over the edge. She had rigged a bomb—given the size of the crater in front of the high school, probably a car bomb—and attempted a mass casualty attack on her school. A young psychotic, motivated by revenge: sadly, nothing new for the ATFB, though it had never happened to Collins. Shimmer had some background in chemistry and science, not likely to be enough to be able to build something like a car bomb, but as Boston and Oklahoma City had shown, one did not need a great deal of experience or sophistication to pull something like this—and a bomber need only get lucky once. From the bruises, burns and scars on her body, she was by far the worst injured student, which was seen as a smoking gun: it was a botched bombing.
The FBI had dug a little deeper, and instead of the Canterlot Bombing, as it was now known, being a relatively simple case, it had turned into the headache Collins was rapidly acquiring, from a bureaucratic point of view. Sunset Shimmer lived alone, which was unusual for a teenager; records of parents and relatives proved to be forged, though done in a very professional matter: Canterlot High, the school district, even water and power companies were completely unaware that the only occupant of Shimmer’s house was her.
The investigation was far from complete, but it looked very much like a pattern of forgeries and false fronts; attempts to begin a money trail were fruitless so far. It was as if Sunset Shimmer had simply appeared out of nowhere as a teenager five years ago. That was ominous, to say the least. It was something that spy agencies did to insert agents, though it was doubtful that any enemy of the United States would go to the trouble of inserting a spy into a high school at age thirteen. What had the agents assigned to the case worried was that Sunset Shimmer was somehow inserted in deep cover by a terrorist group: she had failed to inflict anything but property damage, but how many more were out there? It was the classic, terrifying dilemma: anyone and everyone could be a suspect.
Collins sighed, took out a stick of gum, and began chewing it. He put down Shimmer’s file and picked up another, this one filled with the interviews of students and teachers at the formal, including the principal, Mary Celestia.
And that was where it got weird.
Every agent worth his or her salt knew that interviews taken immediately after an event were likely to be a little off. Shock would set in and ten people would give ten different versions of the story. Still, it was necessary to get the interviews while memory was still fresh, before news reports and other testimonies colored and changed one’s recollections. Even the tiniest detail could be what blew a case open. So Collins was used to people seeing and hearing things, especially impressionable teenagers…but he had never run into anything like this.
The agents taking testimony were at first stunned, then angered at what the students were saying. The students were given stern warnings to quit trying to be funny, and a few switched their story around. Just as many stuck to their testimony, however. Investigators disbelievingly wrote on notepads and laptops about demons, crowns, magic and seeing six of their fellow students cast spells. The only thing that matched was that all of them had a memory lapse lasting anywhere from three minutes to ten. Agents, Collins included, were ready to call the whole thing a mass hallucination caused by the shock of the explosion, or possibly fumes from ruptured gas lines, or maybe (as one DHS agent had joked), the punch was spiked with LSD. None of this helped Sunset Shimmer’s case any: besides the memory lapse, the only other thing that everyone agreed to was that she was responsible.
He jumped when there was a rapping on his door. “Come in.”
Collins was surprised—pleasantly so—when the door admitted a particularly attractive woman. She was tall, almost at his own six feet, with a long fall of black hair, which he noted in passing was out of regulation for a government employee. She was pleasantly proportioned and filled out the richly-cut women’s business suit and knee-length skirt rather well. Without meaning to, his eyes were drawn immediately to hers: they were a vivid purple, bright, almost luminous.

He realized she had caught him looking at her. She smiled to show she took no offense. “Agent Collins?” She stuck out a well-manicured hand. “My name is Tina Mattson.”
Collins came out from behind his desk and shook hands. “Miss…?” he hesitatingly began. At her nod, he continued, “Miss Mattson. I got your call only an hour ago.”

“Yes; sorry for the short notice. The agency called me in on the Canterlot bombing only this morning, so don’t feel bad.”

He motioned to a chair and resumed his seat. He opened up a small refrigerator. “Coke?”

“Certainly.” The accent was hard to place, Collins thought; there was just the hint of a British accent, but it was more Middle Atlantic. Ivy League schooling, then. She was wearing a security badge, but already had her identification out. He checked it, then her paperwork that she withdrew from an inner pocket of her suit; he noted in passing that she did not carry a firearm, or if she did, it was not in the customary shoulder holster. He whistled softly when he read the paperwork: Agent Mattson had a higher security clearance than he did.
“Washington said you were a specialist,” Collins said, returning the paperwork and shoving the Shimmer files over to her.

“That’s right.” She opened the folders, frowned, withdrew a pair of reading glasses from another pocket, and scanned them.

“In school, um, incidents?”

She looked at him over the top of her glasses, which made her even prettier, Collins decided. “Actually, no.” She took off the glasses. “For lack of a better word, I would say…weird happenings.” She laughed a little. “In fact, my branch of the agency was originally going to be called the Weird Happenings Organization, but it turns out that it’s trademarked. So they settled on Agency Zero.” She rolled her eyes. “Makes us sound very ominous, but really it’s pretty mundane.”
“So what is it that Agency Zero does?”
“Investigates crimes that don’t make sense, basically. Someone reports seeing a UFO, the Air Force can’t or won’t verify that it’s a load of bull, you start getting calls to the mayor or governor or whatever, and someone calls us. A lot of the time it turns out to be nothing: someone saw a military plane over central Nevada and immediately assumed it was aliens.” She shrugged. “If I had a dime for every time I’ve interviewed someone who turned out to be a drunk redneck with too much moonshine on board, I could retire.”
“Ever actually found anything you couldn’t solve?” Collins didn’t expect to get an answer, and was mildly surprised when he did.
“Oh, certainly. I would say a good third of our cases remain unsolved.” She smiled again. “A plane disappears over the Bermuda Triangle. We get called, we can’t prove foul play or anything else, so the case remains unsolved. Anyone with a brain knows that some moron just flew his Cessna 172 into the water on a moonless night, but without a body or evidence, we have to leave it open. Next thing you know, some crank is calling midnight talk radio to say that they were abducted by aliens and saw the missing person. It’s sad and stupid, but there you are.” She replaced her glasses. “If you don’t mind…”

“Right.” He let her read the file in silence. When she was done looking over what little was known of Sunset Shimmer and the interviews, she put her glasses away and sat back, taking a long drink of soda. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, to be honest.” She tapped the folders. “We have the entire façade of a school blown off and a crater fifty feet deep by sixty feet wide, with the leaves blown off the trees and most of the windows shattered. Classic car bomb scenario—except there’s no car, no parts, not even a hint of explosive residue.”

“Which is impossible,” Collins added.

“Exactly. Which means that either the ATFB has missed something…” her voice trailed off, watching his reaction. He shrugged: it was possible. “Well, it’s only been 72 hours. In Sunset Shimmer’s case, we have someone who doesn’t appear to have existed six years ago. We have a birth certificate, but it’s forged. The parents named convienently died in a car wreck ten years ago, and there’s no record of a foster family.”

“The forgeries were professionally done, too.”

“Indeed,” Mattson answered. “Everyone in the city was fooled. It was only because the FBI ended up suspecting forgery that she was even caught.”

“Okay, but did you read the weird stuff?”

“Oh my, yes.” She shook her head in wonder. “Sunset Shimmer became some sort of a winged demon after putting on the Fall Formal crown. She then transformed two other students into demons, tore the front off the school, and did everything in the Cartoon Villain handbook, up to and including the cackling laughter. All we need is thunder and lightning.” She sniffed a laugh. “Then everyone has a massive memory loss. They wake up, as it were, with a crater in front of the school and Shimmer back to normal, curled up in a ball and crying her eyes out. End of testimony.” She sighed. “That’s what about half of them say, anyhow. The others claim seeing Shimmer parking a car out front and setting off a bomb. There’s even one person who insists that Shimmer intended to kill everyone at the formal because she lost out to this…what was the name?”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Collins supplied. “What is it with parents giving their kids weird names? They didn’t do that when I was growing up.” He reached over and pulled the Shimmer file back to him. “It gets freakier. There’s no record of Twilight Sparkle in school files, but the principal, several teachers, and some kid named Flash Sentry insists that she’s a real person. It’s like she showed up out of nowhere too and disappeared just as quickly.”

“You think she was killed?”

“We haven’t found anything like body parts—not even skin. It would take a bomb a lot more powerful than that to vaporize someone. No one’s filed a missing persons report either.” He finished the Coke. “Now according to the kids, she was palling with some other kids…” Collins checked the file. “Your agency interviewed these six, and they don’t know a damn thing about a Twilight Sparkle. They were at the Formal, and their testimony doesn’t match up. Amy Applejack holds to the demon story; in fact, she’s pretty damn detailed about it. Riana Verdunnt claims that she showed up late and missed the whole thing. Fluttershy Everfree—you know her parents were hippies—broke down crying; best we could figure out was that she’s sticking to the demon story. Rainbow Dash, which has got to be a nickname, started screaming about her rights and finally told us she didn’t see a damn thing other than Sunset Shimmer causing trouble. And this Diane Pinkamena…” Collins closed the file. “She talked so fast the agents couldn’t get anything out of her. What they did get made even less sense than anything else.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. “Is Sunset Shimmer being held here?” Mattson asked.

“Yeah, downstairs. She’s been quiet. We Mirandized her, so she knows her rights. Given the evidence, she’s being charged with a ton of counts of forgery and mail fraud. We’re holding off on any terrorism charges until we get something more concrete, but the paperwork’s already there. She’s going to jail for sure, but the question now is if she goes for ten years for fraud or life for attempted first-degree murder.” He paused. “Or death if it turns out she knocked off this Twilight Sparkle character.”

“Can I see her?”

Collins got up. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Author's Note:

That didn't take long, did it? I actually got the idea for this story right in the middle of working on "Blood On the Moon," thanks to a discussion I had with another fan on Derpibooru. The discussion centered around "What happened to Sunset Shimmer after Twilight Sparkle went back to Equestria?" We agreed that, given the damage done to the high school at the end, you can bet that there would be law enforcement all over the place trying to find what happened. Sooner or later, Sunset Shimmer would find herself in very big trouble. This story explores that.

The story assumes that the world of EQG happens in ours (minus there being a show called "My Little Pony," apparently), and therefore is going to deal a lot with "mundanes" having to deal with magic and humanized talking horses. It's not going to be very long, and there's going to be quite a few twists to the story.

I changed some of the names of the Mane Six, since it's doubtful that there would be anyone with the single name of "Applejack" or "Celestia" running around in the modern world. Old time anime fans might get the Bill Collins reference; indie comic fans might also get the use of the name "Agency Zero," which I'm borrowing from another comic with rather weird happenings...which shall remain unnamed for now, because it's a big clue as to what's really going on. Sort of.

Hope you bronies and pegasisters like it.

Comments

[Some random Rapidash]

I was a little doubtful about it at first but this is amazing

[Breaking News]

I've been waiting for someone to write a fic like this. Good luck with the paperwork on this one boys...

[DualKitsune]

2923336 In triplicate!