fly hard

1:23 MLT
Mane Fair Hotel, High-Rises, Manehattan, Equestria

Carmen scanned the keycard and the door unlocked. He was not going to like it here.

The door swung open to Shining Armor playing solitaire. He looked past one of his cards at the PI. “Oh, hey Carmen! Long time no see.”

“Hello, Captain Armor, sir.” Play it cool. He shook the captain’s hoof for good measure.

“Alright, so Claire told me that we can start investigating before her.” Shining got up and magicked a map to Luther, who snatched it out of the air. “The red X is our 1st lead. I’ll fill you in on the way there.”

Carmen scanned the map. There. 16th Street. Eight blocks down, easy walk or fly. Carmen considered it one of the friendlier neighborhoods, but that was because of all the young faces.

Carmen was skeptical. “That’s too easy. What’s there that could help?”

Armor pointed to a newspaper clipping. The headline was Odd Markings found in Backalley of 16th. “They’ve closed the place off to police. The whole shebang.” The picture was taken by a Ponyroid, so the actual markings were hard to see, but they appeared to be a hexagon of some sort.

"The apartment building vandalized, interestingly enough," Armor added. "is where Sentinel and Gray Area lived."

“I suppose, if it’s anything related to the Athraithe,” speculated Carmen. “it’s worth checking out.”

“Well then c’mon, Recruit,” Armor played at Carmen, but he was not in the mood to reply.

As they started to exit, a black shape moved across the floor under the room window.

Somepony was eavesdropping!

"Captain, seize that pony!" Carmen yelled.

A swirl of magic. Whish! Clank! Carmen reacted quickly and pinned the figure to the ground.

The Earth pony turned his head. "Get off me, you fackuh!"

"Who are you working for?" Carmen held his hooves firmly to the blue stallion.

"I ain't talkin' ter you, so getcha hooves offa me!" He flipped over and used his powerful back legs to push Carmen off of him.

He caught his breath. "I don't work for no pony you'd know, so I reccomend..." Carmen was flung back by magic, a sensation he recognized. But where was the unicorn?

"...you get the fack outta my bizness!"

And with that, the stallion blinked away with a green aura.

Carmen stood there for a second and scratched his mane, panicked that the apparition -or whatever it was - would return, but it didn't.

"I'm going to need to report this," said the Captain, porting in an empty scroll. "Whatever that magic was, whoever was casting it, I can smell on the wind: that's blackjack. Illegal magics to spy on ponies... We can't have that stuff here."

"Whoever that pony was, he sure seemed to not be the ringleader." Carmen started towards the stairs. "Somepony out there knows we're doing this."

That's dangerous, Carmen thought.