Sunset Shimmer was running out of money.

Of course, in some sense she couldn't, not anymore. Her bank account was nearly empty, the last legacy of the gems she'd stolen before running away, all those years ago, finally spent. But she needn't rely on them anymore. She had friends in Equestria now. She could return. Or she could just ask for more. Twilight hardly had need of them. Not only were they worth less in Equestria, but that side's Rarity could apparently find them in vast quantities with magic.

But she didn't want to. She wanted to be a human, for real, without cheating. Unfortunately, it turned out if you weren't a real human, and so didn't have things like a social security number, it was difficult to do very much. Forget going to college, she couldn't even get a retail job. Soon she'd have to give up.

Just as she was thinking this, though, her doorbell rang.

Standing on her porch was Nurse Redheart. No, not anymore, she reminded herself. Just Redheart now. She wasn't sure what the former nurse had left to the school to do.

Whatever it was, she'd either lost all her fashion sense, or had a strange uniform. Despite the mid-July heat, she was wearing a trenchcoat and detective hat like in old movies. She looked slightly different, as well. Her face was still beautiful, if anything more so, pale and framed by the same pretty pink hair. She'd always been very white, of course, but now even in the shadow of the hat, her skin seemed to glow a little.

"Oh hey," Sunset said a bit awkwardly, unsure what to call her. "What's up uh, Ms. Redheart?"

"It's Agent Redheart now," she produced what certainly appeared to be an official FBI badge. "Can I come in, Sunset?" Sunset's heart dropped, even though Redheart was smiling in what looked like a friendly way. Sunset's mind raced, but she didn't have anything illegal in her house - she was pretty sure the potion wasn't regulated. Still, she thought about refusing - didn't they say you should?

"Uh, am I in trouble?"

"Oh! No, sorry. I just want to talk, but it's a bit private. We can go to my place if you're worried."

"Nah," Sunset said, and gestured inside. To her surprise, Redheart still kept her hat and coat as she fell into a sofa.

"Isn't that hot?" Sunset asked.

"Unbearably," Redheart sighed. "But we'll get to that in a bit. I'm here to offer you a job."

"You know I'm an illegal alien, right? Emphasis on the alien? I don't have any papers or anything."

"That doesn't matter," Redheart said. "In fact, it's why I want to hire you. I work for a special branch of the FBI here. I was originally going to go into forensics, but they'd heard about the strange things happening around here, so they offered me this instead. Well, and some other stuff happened."

"Other stuff?"

Redheart removed her hat. At first Sunset didn't know why she'd done it just then, but then she noticed two cute red horns protruding from beneath Redheart's hair. By the time she had, the other woman had shed her coat, revealing a set of red bat wings.

"Wow," Sunset said. "I only had that stuff for a little while. It's permanent?"

Redheart nodded.

"And you're not like, evil or anything?"

She shook her head. "Same as always."

"How'd that happen?"

"It's a long story. I'll tell you if you take the job."

"What's the job?"

"Like I said, we're a special branch. Lots of discretion. Our jobs are to find weird shit, and make sure it's harmless. That's it. We're allowed to kill things if we need to, but we'd rather not. My bosses know that, if they're being peaceful, 'illegals' like you are just people, sometimes useful ones. We're kind of a test. They've had a few agents like this before, but we'd be the first permanent office. We'd investigate, make sure things are okay, build a network when we can. Nothing sinister, at least if we can help it, just make sure we avoid misunderstandings and know people are safe. I need a partner, and we don't want a human." She looked back at her wings. "Or former human. I know you can keep your head in a crisis, and I know you're good at getting on with people. I think we can make a real difference."

Sunset thought.

"You don't have to answer right away, of course. I can give you a card. I need to get started soon, so I can't keep it open forever, but I'd really like to have you. I can't think of anyone better. So I can hold it for a week, maybe two."

Sunset thought some more. But honestly, there wasn't much to think about.

"I won't need it," she said, "partner."

Author's Note

Why yes, this is a sequel hook. We'll see if/when I get around to using it.