Hiding in the Background

Twilight strode forward, walking towards the group of ponies ahead. A few of them wore the stereotypical detective getup, Twilight noted,  but the majority just seemed like they were your average run-of-the-mill ponies. One similarity that they all shared, though, were their cutie marks. One mare had a hoof-print cutie mark, while another had that of a magnifying glass.

As she reached the group, one of the mares standing to the side called her over, motioning towards herself with a hoof. The mare had a long, light brown mane and a light grey, almost silvery coat. Her cutie mark was five dark-blue dots surrounding a lone, electric green dot, the same color as her eyes. She stood tall with a look of authority.

Twilight came over to the mare and proffered her hoof. The mare readily accepted it with a polite shake, much more professional than when Twilight had first met Applejack.

“Hello,” the mare spoke with a civil manner. “Twilight Sparkle, I presume?” Twilight nodded her head. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Lieutenant Clue Stone, but you may call me Clue.” Clue pointed to the ponies beside her. “These are my colleagues.”

Her colleagues didn’t respond, continuing to review the crime.

“Ahem.” Clue cleared her throat.

The ponies in question muttered some half-thought out greetings to Twilight before returning to their discussion. Clue sighed.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to introduce them myself. This right here is Magnifying Glass,” she said, pointing at an older, cream-colored unicorn mare with a light-blue mane and a cutie mark of her name. She looked at Twilight with bright, green eyes.

“You can call me Mags!” she said, smiling. Twilight couldn’t help but smile back.

“She’s sergeant under me, and she directs many of our investigations--  not that we have too many investigations these days.” Twilight couldn’t help but hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Continuing on, this here is Analog.” She pointed a hoof at a stallion with a light gray coat and a messy brown mane. He had dark brown eyes and a cutie mark of an upright microscope slide casting a small shadow. “He’s mainly our blood splatter analyst, but from time to time he finds himself at smaller crimes such as this.” She paused, scratching her head. “I’m not sure why.”

Clue motioned towards a couple of other stallions in the group. “These are our lead detectives, Search and Seizure.” The two stallions were unicorns with light brown coats and blue-green manes. They even shared the same cutie mark, a trail of hoofprints. The only difference was that one had light blue eyes, while the other had gray eyes. “They were born twins, as you can probably tell.”

Twilight nodded in response.

“Oh, and Search is the one with blue eyes,” Clue hastily added. “Seizure has gray eyes.” She looked around for a moment, as if searching for somepony. Eventually, her eyes settled on a pony walking up to her. As the mare came up to them, Clue wrapped her forearm around the pegasus.

“And lastly, this is Derpy Hooves,” she said, holding a cross-eyed mare with a blond mane and a gray coat. “She’s our foreign-substance analyst.”

A look of confusion passed over Twilight’s face. “So her cutie mark means…”

“She specializes with substances in gaseous form.” Clue quickly filled in. Twilight’s eyes widened as her mouth formed an ‘o’ shape.

“Most people assume they’re just bubbles for the sake of being bubbles,” Derpy added, “but they don’t realize that this is my job outside of being a mailmare.”

Clue murmured to Derpy for a moment before pointing with her hoof.

“Yes, Mam!” Derpy shouted, her tongue stuck out in determination as she saluted Clue. She turned away from the two and began making her way in the direction that Clue pointed.

Twilight looked at Clue, confused. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her to do some tests on the broken statue,” Clue said, watching the gray pegasus trot away. “She’s probably the best in her field.”  She tore her gaze away and faced back towards Twilight.

“So now that you’ve met my team,” she started with a smile, “Would you like to learn some details about the case?”

“Please, I’m dying to know what happened!” Twilight eyes sparkled with anticipation.

Clue let out a short chuckle. “Well, we haven’t gathered too much evidence yet, we’ve only been here for about 30 minutes, but from what we’ve gathered so far is that the statue was broken by a large detonation, its origins currently unknown.” She paused to take a breath in. “We haven’t cataloged any evidence as of yet, but Detective Search found out that the perpetrator is likely a pegasus.”

“How’d he figure that out?” Twilight asked eagerly.

“Well, the evidence is merely circumstantial, but Search was questioning ponies that were nearby at the time of the explosion, and he was told multiple times from various ponies that they had seen a pegasus darting away from the location of the crime.” Clue cleared her throat. “Although, as I said, this evidence is purely circumstantial. Until we find hard evidence that the crime was done by a pegasus pony, we can’t rule out all possibilities.”

“Well, I guess it would make sense if a pegasus committed this crime,” Twilight noted.

“Why would you say that?”

Twilight deeply inhaled, preparing to lecture Clue.

“Well, you see, along with it being much easier for a pegasus to flee a crime scene than it would be for any other type of pony, except for a unicorn, perhaps, Mayor Ornate Portrait was well known to have an extreme prejudice against pegasus ponies, for whatever reason. She went as far as trying to sneak in laws banning pegassi from land establishments throughout Equestria. So that’s another reason why a pegasus could’ve done this crime. Maybe they didn’t think that Ornate Portrait should live forever in stone.” Twilight concluded her speech.

“Well, I guess that does make sense,” Clue replied, looking towards the sky. “But still, destroying a national monument? That’s quite a drastic measure.”

“I guess so.”

Twilight joined her in looking up.

The two mares stared at the clouds in thought.

A loud cry startled the two, causing them to leap high into the air. After landing on their hooves, Twilight and Clue glanced around, concerned.

“That didn’t sound good,” Twilight said, looking in the direction the sound had come from.”Hey, did that just come from—”

“Twilight?” Clue interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your pink friend?”

“I’m not sure, probably at the statu—”

Twilight froze. Her heart stopped beating.

“Oh dear…”