Transmission

BANG.

Blueblood sighed.

That was the fifth tray this week!

...

No, maybe it was the sixth. Or the fourth? He was having a hard time remembering. An incredibly hard time remembering. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he'd gone the week without hardly a wink of sleep, all because of some string of stolen books.

It confused him.

No, it didn't confuse him. It wormed its way into his brain, ate away at the part of his brain that controlled incredulity, logic, and spatial reasoning, and left behind waste that told him that maybe he should go to bed because HE REALLY NEEDED TO SOLVE THIS CASE!

He laid his head to rest on his desk. Any second now, the secretary would come in with a tray, replace that one, and he would try to continue to figure out this case.

"Sir?"

"Lay the tray on my desk. By the flower pot."

The clip-clop of hooves on wooden tiles. "Sir, you don't have a flower pot."

That didn't surprise him. "What happened?"

"The flower's died because you forgot to water them."

Great. He'd need to run by that mare on the street who sold flowers, replace those flowers, then get back to solving this infuriating case. "Just... lay the tray down. And please, get me a glass of water." Clip-clop. "No, caffeine, double-espesso."

"Sir, we don't have double-espresso."

"Normal espreso will do." With that, Blueblood closed his eyes.

One would think that an expert crime solver like him would see connections in this case. One would think that maybe all Blueblood would have to was to pull something out of thin air, quip, then put on a pair of sunglasses while the intro of some old song started up in the background. Really, really, he just wanted this case to be done.

His mind drifted back to the start of this case. Just a couple missing books. Just some stuff about the history of ponies, technology, science, biology, stuff like that. Just five books, from the public library, easy enough to track down, but then it all went down the drain.

An eye, bloodshot and red, cracked open to glare at the paper below it. 'Books Stolen At Canterlot Public Library' it read. No clues, police stumped. An identical article from a newspaper in the Gryphon lands, showing the blocky outside of their capital's public library and the chief librarian. The same thing happened to the Minotaur Republic, and the Federation of Allied Zebras, missing books from all over the libraries in every country.

Not a single smidgen of evidence. The top unicorns underneath him had tried tracking spells, the most effective and long ranged that could probably match the princeses themselves, but even they came up short.

A grim chuckle. Blueblood could remember the black-coated colt with the crescent moon cutie mark, bewildered looking as he stared up at the sky and told them all that he could feel the books in the sky between him and the moon. He'd gotten some crazy looks, but when the rest had tried they'd all come back to the same result. The books were in the sky! Floating! Right near where that weird asteroid that refused to fall to the ground, that looked like a big hunk of metal.

He was going to use some of his vacation days, book a flight to Manehatten, see the sights, relax, try and get some shut-eye when this was all done. Heck, maybe even meet some of the family that he actually liked.

Clip-clop.

"Thank Celestia, my espresso!" Blueblood cried, shaky levitation already reaching out to grab the cheap styrofoam cup and bring it through the doors. "Could never live without this."

He barely noticed his secretary watching him with wide eyes. Why should he? The sort-of lukewarm liquid energy was refreshing, despite the inevitable crash in exactly... four hours? Yes, four hours sounded right. Not three, not five, four.

"Sir, are you okay?"

"Perfectly fine, Secretary, just looking at a case about a bunch of missing books that I can't solve!" Blueblood slammed a hoof into his desk. "Wait a moment!" A bright light came to his eyes, hidden by a fog of deviancy and unrest with a cover of barely-kept up blond mane. "Secretary, I need an outside opinion! Yours will do just fine!"

"Wait, what?" The red eyes of the colt went wide, but then it hit him that this was just another one of Blueblood's antics. He'd play along, if only to get back to his desk job. "If it helps, sir, I'll gladly tell you."

"That's a good attitude!" Blueblood leaned back, "now tell me, what do you know about this case?"

A pause. "A bunch of books went missing?"

"Yes! Correct, one hundred percent, right on the money!" His eyes became deathly serious. "That isn't it, there's something underneath it and I don't know what it is but I want to find out!"

Secretary backed away. "Sir, are you sure it isn't simply a group of pranksters?"

"No, pranksters would leave a mark! Something to tell that it's a prank! Besides, after a month, pranksters usually undo the prank but not with this one! The books are still gone, so where could they BE!"

Once again, Secretary paused. "Look at the photos of the crime scene, sir."

"Yes, good idea." A folder scattered open on the desk, showering the files and papers on it with little square images of libraries and the innards of libraries. Blueblood scanned over them. "I don't see anything, do you?"

Secretary trotted over, taking a look at a couple of the pictures. One of them caught his eye. "Do you see that one?" he said, the tip of his hoof on the aforementioned photo.

"Yes, it's just an odd track. Why should we be concerned?"

The fact that the Secretary for the Canterlot Investigation Agency knew a lot more about tracks than Blueblood was apparent to the Prince. This fact was forgotten at times, then rediscovered. Right now, in the dusty, overworked insides of his cranium, this fact was being excavated, and in three exact seconds, it would be unearthed.

"It's an odd track! We have all the right to be concerned!" Blueblood whirled around to face Secretary. "Tell me what you know."

"Sir, I know that this isn't any track I've seen before. It looks like gryphon, but it's got a pattern like a minotaur or a diamond dog. That's all I know."

Blueblood racked his brain for anything that might fit the description of two legged gryphon, but nothing came to mind. "Do you have anything?"

"No sir."

"Well then we're still at squar-" he stopped. "Wait a minute!"

"Al-" A hoof to the mouth interrupted him.

"Stop being stupid for a second." Blueblood looked to the ceiling. "If the books are in the sky and the tracks aren't known, plus there's an odd anomaly that I'm fairly certain isn't natural between us and the moon, what does it mean?"

Secretary removed the hoof from his mouth. "Sir, as far as I'm concerned, that hunk of something in the sky is just a hunk of something in the sky."

"Hold on!" There was a flash, and another folder appeared. "Look in here. Actually, don't. This is a report we got from a local police station in Ponyville about some crazy red eyed two legged skull monster with gryphon feet. Now, it's from an upstanding and perfectly sane citizen, so I'd put some salt into it, plus we have sketches done, so that's good too, but have you put two and two together yet?"

He paused. "Wait, I still don't get it."

"Aliens, my boy, aliens."

"What," was all Secretary could say. "Sir, you need to get to bed."

"No, it makes sense! That anomaly in the sky is totally the alien space ship! You know that thing they saw was an advance force, and they're stealing books to research us!" Blueblood made a noise that Secretary couldn't quite place. "We need to tell the princesses!"

Secretary facehoofed. "Sir, the monster near Ponyville was sighted near the Everfree. Chances are, it was simply some being native to the Everfree. The hunk of something in orbit is just a hunk of something in orbit, not a space ship as some would believe. These books are just being stolen because someone wants to steal them."

When he looked back at Blueblood, the crazy prince had put on his best puppy dog eyes impression.

Despite his self-proclaimed hard-boiledness, Secretary knew that Blueblood was incredibly manipulative, might've been crazy, put on multiple facades, and it would just be easier to play along with whatever craziness he had cooked up for that day. The memories of the Sixty-Three Incident were still fresh in his mind. Even fresher were the Grand Galloping Gala memories, wherein Blueblood had gotten cake slammed into his face and humiliated by that small-town mare who had dreams of being a princess.

Blueblood had told him it was because most would just try and marry him to get money, position, or power, and he was trying to avoid that kind of problem, but Secretary had an inkling of a shadow of a suspicion that Blueblood just liked to be a dick for being a dick's sake. He'd probably start a war and end ponykind with that, but in the now, Secretary just wanted things to get back to normal.

"Fine, there might be aliens, but you need to get to bed!"

And getting back to normal would involve playing along with Blueblood.

"Oh, alright!" Blueblood then fell down, scattering bits of paper. A second later, Blueblood was snoring incredibly loudly.

"Sir? Are you faking it again?" Secretary poked Blueblood. He got no response. "Sir?"

When he lifted an eyelid, all he got was an undilated mess that didn't focus on anything.

"Fine, you're asleep. If you need me, just ring the bell."

With that, Secretary trotted out.