Problem Sparkle.
By TheSarcasticJudge
A Problem Sleuth wakes up in her chair. This is a problem. The detective consultant usually never sleeps.
Reader => Be PI
You are now PI. If you are a male, now you are now a female, the PI. If you were female, then you stay a female—The PI. If you refuse to classify yourself as either male or female, which there is nothing wrong with doing, you are now female—The PI. What does PI stand for? Private Investigator but you prefer the term Sleuth. The name makes you appear more savvy, you concluded a long time ago. This long time ago was only two years ago when you stepped hoof into this office.
You are currently feeling particularly hard boiled tonight, you would be standing in the middle of your office with your trusty trench coat with the collars popped up to look as lavishing as always. However, your trusty coat is hanging from the hat rack for some odd reason. And you are sitting down on your office chair with a brooding expression. You figure you must have had a really fun night last night, as you only manage to conjure up blackouts from any memory yesterday. Given that it is nighttime now and you remember it being day time when you tipped back a small glass of wine, you were out all day. From the pounding headache and the unfamiliar socks lying on the ground, you guessed you either got lucky last night or you got yourself a dead pair of socks on the ground and the police were just waiting to bust down your door and arrest you for sock homicide.
Like any noir story worth its salt, it’s raining outside with the occasional thunder and lightning. It was also cold, despite it being a particularly balmy summer night. You can’t see that, however, as the window in the whole office is nothing more than a flimsy poster for some crappy sequel, sequel to a cheesy romance staring a stallion and six mares. There is a tear in the poster, a knife shaped tear that was actually your letter opener. Behind the tear of the poster was an actual window showing it was indeed not raining outside.
Speaking of letters, and openers, there is one stuffed inside of your trusty hat. A letter, that is. There is no such thing as an opener.
PI =>Take Off Lavishly Designed Fedora and Search It.
You cannot search a lavishly designed fedora because you are not wearing a lavishly designed fedora, genius! You feel very stupid at your self-conscious as it starts to give you stupid demands such as searching for a hat you are currently not wearing! The neve these thoughts have sometimes really do make you wonder if your intellectual superiority over yourself is not indeed a brag but rather a matter of fact. You can catch bad guys but you can’t catch a break from stupid ideas such as that one, nice one!
The lavishly designed fedora is on the coat rack. What scoundrel misplaced your trusty fedora onto something as incredibly unlabeled as that piece of trash? You don’t even remember buying it, for all that matter, nor would you buy it because it seems as if you never take off your trench coat. You wash it with you in the shower. It’s not weird.
You retrieve your trusty fedora and place it onto the hat rack. You also take your trench coat off of the hat rack and slip it onto your body. There, now the organization of your wardrobe is complete and now you can get down to business. No point in trying to sleep this nighttime away. You reach into your lavishly designed fedora to find a letter with your name on it, you notice it has a seal. The CPD, or Canterlot Police Department as it is more commonly known, seal. The seal was in the shape of a blindfolded phoenix holding arrows in its beak and a scale in its talons. You flip it around to find your name on it, along with the words ‘no return service’. There is also no stamp.
PI => Enter Name.
Detective Sparkle, Private Eye.
Of course your first name isn’t ‘Detective’, you know for a fact that your first name is Twilight and your last name is Sparkle. You preferred to be called PI Sparkle rather than Twilight or Detective. These guards really know their stuff when it comes to formality and all that jazz, but it also seems like they are very reserved when it comes to spending any of their hard earned tax-payer’s bits on menial things such as forking over one bit for a stamp. You don’t know how it got in your fedora nor could you remember why the letter was taped underneath the hat. Man, you must have been really drunk for anypony having the chance to pull this stunt off!
You don't usually get drunk. Or drink, for that matter. You faintly remember having a water bottle in your office that you would sip from occasionally, from a straw of course. You would never run the risk of having your files and your desk soaked! Do you know how hard it is to request new paperwork from a Police Department that envies and despises you! Of course you do, because you are the one they envy and despise. Back on track, you don't drink any hard liquor. You don't know why yesterday would be an exception. Or if it wasn't, then who slipped you a mickey in your own office.
You haven’t moved an inch from your chair, you have been doing all wardrobe assortment through magic. What purpose would there be to waste your energy on getting up to move a hat from a coat rack and a coat from the coat rack onto your body? That would be ludicrous, your energy is at a premium because you need to reserve it for busting some cases open for these policemen, it would really seem like they need it like they need to learn how to breath some fresh air.
You look over the letter and decide it’s probably for the best you look through it, given it is your name and it looks important – very important. So important that you must drop everything you were currently doing, which was nursing your headache and wondering if those socks are yours or what, and focus directly on the letter. I mean, it looks really flipping important. Like stop, drop, roll, and light the dog on fire kind of important. The decision of denying or approving a poor mare and her foals her welfare kind of important. The things that are less important gets hanged at the gallows for heresy kind of important. You just feel the importance of the letter radiating off of the bleached white paper, the smell of emergency and bitterness from the coffee cup circular stain.
PI Sparkle => Open Letter
You open the letter by levitating the letter-opener, which is in the shape of a can-opener, and you rip the letter a new one. By one, you were referring to tears in the envelope and not the actual contents inside. The letter-opener is a majestic creation invented by the top minds in Canterlot, although you feel like the object is better used on something more metal-like like a can of daisy soup. Who are you to doubt what those ponies invent and advertise to you? You merely are the consumer, after all.
You proceed to dump out the contents of the envelope onto your desk and you torch the envelope, returning it back to Canterlot City Department. This will teach them to try to skim a single of your taxes by not giving you a stamp on your letter, who do think they are? Politicians? You try not to answer that question, given that you remember busting the Police Commissioner for being corrupt and intermingling with the flow of politics by having officers plant evidence against political opposition that threatened his seat as Canterlot Police Commissioner.
On the desk was a check and the other was a ‘Congratulations on a Happy Retirement.’ Letter. You know these types of letters because they try to send you one of these letters every time you crack a case for them. It’s almost like they don’t want your help, but they so desperately need it with all of this crime happening in Equestria. Just because you gotten popular doesn’t mean you aren’t good at your job! Not at all. The check was an adequate amount of compensation. You refuse to disclose the amount of bits you receive as it is uncivil of you and might provide competition of amateur sleuths.
The case of the retirement is actually true, however. You do plan on retirement. The fame has gotten so bad that you can’t even ask for a cup of joe without everypony thinking you’re going to be swabbing it for DNA and microbes of the cup and the last hundred ponies to touch them from the time those styrofoam cups were recycled to right that instant you asked for coffee with no cream and extra sugar. It’s absurd how much harder your craft is with all the paparazzi snapping pictures of you while spying on a suspected donut thief! You changed your attire and suddenly, no pony recognizes you – they only recognized the white suit and white fedora you wore; now that you wear something as less conspicuous as a chestnut brown trench coat and a fedora to match, you feel obligated to the law, to justice, that you take a step back and retire until the heat dies down enough for you to come back like Haydalf the Gray. But only more purple.
To where you will retire to? You haven’t the faintest idea. It’s only the week before you plan on announcing it, and you don’t even plan on announcing it at that. You will just slip away into obscurity, like a proper and professional sleuth does. What kind of sleuth would you be if you only lived for the fame and popularity that came with it, would you be some kind of movie star and ponies will try to make films out of you? Preposterous, you say. This jig, this career is only pure facts and knowledge – just the way you like it. There is no other way to want your job, unless you plan to fry food for minimum wage like a sucker. Perhaps you will move to a small town, maybe somewhere like Apploosa.
That’s a terrible idea, you are a city-mare through and through. Somepony like you won’t last a day in Apploosa. Perhaps you will move to Ponyville, where the Elements of Harmony currently resides? You don’t know, somewhere that isn’t in the dire need for sleuths such as yourself and in need of some kind of teacher. Now, you know for a fact that teacher role was filled by a mare named Cheerilee, but perhaps you can keep the educational vibe of your future job somehow. Maybe become something no sleuth would ever become, maybe it’ll be easier to blend in that way. A librarian.
Bah, that’s talk for another time.
PI Sparkle => Retrieve Firearms.
You reach into your drawer bottom drawer and pull out two mannequin arms that are eternally lit blazingly on fire. You are unsure why exactly you bought them or what magic spell causes them to become ablaze, but you know for a fact that the bits you spent buying this knick-knack was not wasted at all. It became a hobby to stare into the never-ending flames when you became bored and no crime seemed interesting, which almost rarely never happened.
You pull out a third firearm and twirl the firearms. You have bought exactly three of them for no purpose whatsoever, one was enough but you a part of you wanted to have that punning detective vibe to you early in your career so you bought three of them exactly.
You never got the chance to make that punning detective shtick work nor where you able to make the best joke this town has ever seen in its existence concerning the firearms. You proceed to make them high-five and juggle them to your heart’s content until you made the mistake of letting a small giggle escape your lips. You are horrified, being a Problem Sleuth means you must have a limit of how much fun you exactly have per week. You guess that’s your limit of fun, you sigh as you put back on your brooding serious face and placed them in the drawer with a sturdy, gristly, and gruff clear of the throat to capture that brooding atmosphere you were creating, or at least trying. If it was one thing you noticed about being a Problem Sleuth, it was that you couldn’t exactly force yourself to be any more cynical than you already are—and that ‘cynicism’ you have is mostly condescending smugness with witty quips and retorts.
Most ponies would label you as a ‘hard-flank’ while most of the others simply call you vulgar and inappropriate language so unbelievably nasty that a Problem Sleuth such as yourself will not lower the dignity you have as a mare to repeat the vile and ugly verbal creatures that crawled out of their snout-holes like spiders crawling in your ear when you sleep. It’s amazing, you think to yourself as you chuckle dryly to yourself, that ponies spend more time thinking of insults to throw at you rather than capturing some bad guys.
You cease your dry and silent heckling. This is serious business, being a sleuth is! You have no time for these hot shenanigans! You stand up from your chair and levitate your stylish fedora onto your head and got ready for the best sleuthing of your soon to be ending-maybe-not-but-definitely-put-on-hold career! The day of reckoning for these criminals laughing in the streets as they tarnish Equestria with the scourge that plagues it that is! What exactly is this scourge, this cancer that feeds on your town?!
Well, you don’t know. You’re a Problem Sleuth because there has never been a puzzle you couldn’t solve, never been a lesson that you couldn’t master, yet there has never been anything as exciting as investigating criminals! The rush and exhilaration you feel when you connect the dots on that one colt who you concluded he was committing insurance fraud—he stole the cash from his own hotel safes and laundered the cash through a separate enterprise he works in.
Wasn’t that just exciting huh? Too bad those were the good ole’ days now, even though that case was practically only last week. You only just gotten nostalgia for a case done merely seven days, six hours, and forty-five minutes, and thirty-nine seconds ago and still counting. It’s strange, you finally notice, that you keep newspapers of all of the criminals you busted on a wall where you have thrown darts at their pictures. It’s exciting to do that.
PI Sparkle => Retrieve your gun! There are puzzling cases waiting to be solved!
Gun? What gun? There’s no guns allowed in this office complex! You are quite positive there has never been a gun in your office, and never will be. Frankly, the notion strikes you as reckless and stupid of you and you are offended that your subconscious even had the idea of mentioning a gun out loud where nopony could hear. You tell yourself to stop playing with the idea you might have a gun before you get kicked out of your office!
(You slip your gun into a hidden holster within your trench coat.)
PI Sparkle => Break Through Glass with Hoof to Unlock Door.
In no rational, ever-loving, flying buck of a universe where that would make sense to you at all, to smash your office window in some attempt to escape confinement of your office. While you admit that your office is rather quant and lacking in size, you have no not a single reason to be so rash. Especially something that rash in this completely docile and harmless situation. You don’t even have an iota of a clue why you would even have the unfathomable assumption that your door is locked coursing through your brain. You don’t usually lock the door. There’s no reason for a Dick like you to ever keep the door locked. You, PI Sparkle, kind-a survive on ponies coming through that door.
Nonetheless, you are feeling too hardboiled to come to reason and you eye the glass on your door. It was staring back, challenging you to a duel worthy of the ages. As if the glass had slapped your mother, your brother, and your father too! It made you feel even more tough and cynical, and this glass was going to get the beat down for it. You throw a jab quickly into the glass, sending your meaty hoof glass-ward. Sending the glass shatter-ward as well!
Thud.
A wooden thud echoed throughout the office along with your hiss of pain, you still don’t know what compelled you to do something as stupid as punching wood. After making sure you didn’t break your hoof in that mutual agreement with your meaty hoof and the door, you notice there was never a glass element to the door and instead a piece of paper was just haphazardly taped onto it. This discovery shocks you and then it inquired your understanding of reality for a brief moment before drawing the most obvious and logical answer to your questioning of existence.
Well, two of them at least.
The first part of the answers has to be that you are asleep. Plain and simple, you are sure you noticed exactly when you first got the office there was something as important and noticeable as windows, but then again – you’re a being of magic living in a world, albeit crime-infested and you are the exterminator with your poison gas you call criminal justice, filled to the brim with problems that threaten national security of Equestria being solved by love and tolerance. Maybe your landlord pulled a fast one on you and used illusionary magic, but unless you were really rusty when it came to detecting magic, which is a matter of impossibility given you are a unicorn. Maybe your landlord was really planning on the long-con—but then again, that’s two years’ worth of magic to keep somepony like you. You seriously doubt that is the case, not even you can go through five hours of magical use without needing to stop and take a breather. And that’s if you were rationing your magical endurance, because you know for sure that illusionary magic is energy draining stuff.
The second answer is that you’re going nuts. For a matter of fact, you know for absolute certain that is not the case because you are thinking clearly and rationally by suggesting the fact you are probably asleep before thinking this is a nightmare caused by a lifetime of chasing bad guys, even though you’ve only been a sleuth for about two years, and it’s starting to change you. Suddenly, you feel that you are not in danger but the one who causes the danger. Some pony knocks on the door and the other opens the door; the pony gets shot and you dare think that pony was you?! No. You are the one who knocks!
Yeah, you knew that was reference was going to come across your brain sooner or later after you basically clocked the door. Speaking of the door, you picked up the sheet of paper that camouflaged itself to you as a window. You don’t rule out the fact that this sheet of paper might have been enchanted, but the existence of an enchanter—or enchantress comes at a premium that you can’t really afford as it seems. Affording meaning finding them in the first place, they’ve only been talked about in works of fiction and mythology. In your gut, you doubt it severely, but then you remind yourself that you currently life in a world where national securities that could obliterate everything you know and love or plunge Equestria into a dystopia ruled by literal chaos—and you don’t mean Orwellian government totalitarian, you mean full on chaos like chocolate rain dripping from a moon that suddenly is made of blue cheese—and everything can be fixed with love, tolerance, and gold ole friendship!
PI Sparkle => Enough with the Shenanigans! Just Manhandle the Door!
You decide to quit these shenanigans while you’re ahead and colt-handle the doorknob, because you are getting nowhere but sidetracked in your own mind and very detailed narrator! You grip the doorknob with your magic, you also take this time to notice your horn and that horn sticks out of the fedora with a hole that a ‘business partner’ helped produce. You suspect this ‘business partner’ is a very well talented seamstress or she is a very adequate clothes mater. You don’t know why you keep referring to her as a ‘business partner’ when all attempts of the narrator trying to keep the truth from the reader for reasons of context when you very well know that her name is Rarity—
The door is locked…? I mean—Yes, this door is not open because the doorknob is locked. That’s funny, you don’t remember locking it or having a lock on your door for that matter. For this matter, you need to phone up somepony who knows their ways along the lines of locks. Somepony… with very nimble hooves.
PI Sparkle => Ring up the Royal Locksmith
Duh, what is this, amateur hour PI Sparkle? That’s the first thing a Problem Sleuth would do, like PI 101! You fold up the piece of paper neatly and tuck it away nice and secure in a hidden pocket of your trench coat. You have a lot of these pockets, as it would seem. It comes in handy with a lot of things when you’re a snoopy like PI Sparkle—wait, you ARE PI Sparkle and you ARE a snoopy just like her because you ARE PI Sparkle.
Nonetheless, you move away from the door and examine the rotary phone on your desk, which sits next to a file with a paperclip inside to hold a pony of interest. The pony of interest is irrelevant at this point when you notice that the rotary dial and the receiver cord are both missing. The ports of the phone also look badly damaged, accidental from the random scuffmarks you found. Somepony tore this out, because you can clearly smell the scent of saliva present on your desk.
No, it’s not yours. You know exactly what your drool smells like because it should smell faintly of you, and the fact you don’t drool because you don’t sleep and when you do get a gracious blink of it—it’s usually short lived. This is not your DNA on your desk, so that means somepony was here previously but who was in your office? Scent isn’t enough to get a name, but this information concludes that the intruder was not a unicorn for that matter. Unicorns would never risk giving up their DNA that easily if they were smart, and most of them are.
PI Sparkle => Try Teleporting Out of The Office.
For starters, you are knowledgeable in the field of magic but that does not mean you are a mage. You are a Problem Sleuth. The magic you were ever taught were ways to sleuth some problems and catch bad guys. The reason why the advanced magic you DO know only because is because you have an inside-mare in The Royal Archives, however since ponies don't know that, there would be no reason why any unicorn will look at you, PI Sparkle, and think you know anything regarding spells fit for a mage? You swear, sometimes you feel like this whole magic stuff was just meant for you. Meant for you to use it and catch more bad guys, that is.
On a unrelated note: The advance spell that you continuously do on the regular is a spell that's favored by many college students. The spell keeps you awake as you sleuth some problems. You laugh at sleep, sleep has became meaningless to you. You think you haven't slept in a month straight by using that magic, excluding last night because you were drugged.
Secondly, you don't remember that magic nullification spell you did in your office to prevent unicorns from robbing you and your wall safe blind? Now it's come around to bite you in the flank, like setting up an impossibly hard password on a computer you never used until today. You were so scared of ponies seeing what kind of fanfictions you were writing, you wrote yourself a safety-net in regards to continuity for the rest of the story prompt!
Good job!
PI Sparkle => Search the Entire Office for Missing Phone Parts.
You search your entire plethora of pockets and they yielded nothing, one of them had a bag of sweets but you were quick to discard them into the rubbish bin for you had no idea how long they were in that specific pocket. After searching your front pockets, you found a small sheet of paper that had the words ‘PI’ on it. It was written with ink, black, and from a ballpoint pen. A cheap one at that, because there is a line break between the ‘P’ as if the mysterious note-maker had run out of ink midway of writing ‘P’.
PI Sparkle => Open folded Piece of Paper and Drop the Key under the Desk.
You unfold the note to find a key inside of the loose-leaf lined paper. The key dropped to the floor and bounced underneath the desk. You groan and get down onto the floor to reach under the desk until your hoof brushed by paper taped to the roof of your desk. You pulled the note out and gave it a gloss over before reaching back underneath for the key that dropped.
Almost…
Hold on…
You think you got it…
Ah blast it! You accidentally pushed the key further away from you.
You decide to focus on the note rather than the key for right now. “Hmm… ‘Sparkle’,” you read out-loud before flipping it over to the back. This time, the ink was written in red. This ink looked like royalty compared to the black ink, calligraphy and everything. It was either two ponies who wrote this message or it was one pony who wanted you to THINK that it was two ponies. “‘You know what needs to get done…’.” You flipped over the lined piece of paper and back over again. You reread the note again and again, you have to. It was hard to figure out what exactly happened to lead to this being slipped into your pocket, but no matter how many times you worded the question and you answered it with different theories… you didn’t like it. Not one bit.
You examine your desk and you find a photo of you in your chair, face contorted in anxiety. Fear. You were having a nightmare. The sun shone brightly in the office. You looked at the top-left frame to find a timestamp. You cleared your throat as you read the date one more time, just to make sure it was completely right. You blink as you reread it, that date was yesterday. There’s a camera in your house, or there WAS a camera in your house and this creeper had a photo of her already. The camera was positioned in the corner furthest from the door, over your shoulder.
You look up at the corner to find a wall. With your history of these kinds of ponies, they hide stuff in plain sight all the time. You approach the wall and start to grope the corner until your hoof pushes against something. Breaking and voiding the contract of your lease by property damage later, you find another note. The same M.O as the other one, black cheap pen with PI written on top and on the front side whilst the side with the calligraphy fountain pen, you guessed from the absurd amount of red ink, was the back.
“Disregard the key,” You read out loud again. “Look outside the window.”
PI Sparkle => Look Out Below.
You are still PI Sparkle and you are looking out the window. You move away that stupid poster and you look for what this Note-Maker is talking about. You call this mystery pony Note-Maker until you know exactly what to call this pony. You look outside the window and you find nothing… but you do notice you’re in a higher floor than you normally are. You were only on the third floor. Judging the distance from you and the ground shakily, you come up with the guess you are at least on the fourteenth floor. The only thing on the ground is a black tar street and ant-sized ponies from your point of view. You do not look like a god to the ponies below. Just a regular PI. You do a double take and realize you are back on the third floor.
You turn and grab your lucky—I mean ‘mysterious’—socks and you stuff them into a drawer where you will never find them again.
You turn away from the changes in office to come to the quick conclusion that the Note-Maker is playing mind games with you. So the Note-Maker IS a unicorn. The Note-Maker is one of those ponies, you take a stab at the dark as you continue to read the notes they left you, one of those ponies who takes pleasure in controlling others in a manic want or delusion of power. A megalomaniac. You cannot say with accuracy but you are sure the Note-Maker wants control of Canterlot’s best Problem Sleuth; such a thing is ludicrous but it’s the only indication of an idea you have.
You notice a strange thing on the wall. Something that wasn’t there before and has no place of being now. It was a safe on the wall. How could you forget about the safe on the wall! Although it is not your safe, you think with the whole floor change. You aren’t sure. You feel like you want to have another look at the enchanted-probably sheet of paper.
PI Sparkle => Pick Up The Key Using Magic
You pick up the gun.
The grip is cold against your hoof. This is your only friend in the world right now. It's gonna be a long night.
PI Sparkle => Have Another Look at Enchanted-Probably Piece of Paper.
You look on the back of the piece of paper that acted as a faux window. Eureka! It was a sequence of numbers! Forty-one, Twenty-Three, and Sixty-six. You wonder what those numbers could mean, you think to yourself as you smugly look back up to the safe on the wall. You slip the enchanted-probably piece of paper back into its rightful pocket and you mosey on over to the safe.
PI Sparkle => Crack that Sucker Up!
You touch the safe with your magic and the safe’s façade falls to the ground with a mighty metallic thud. Upon appearing underneath, you are sad to inform yourself that the ‘sucker’ that you were going to ‘crack’ was a fluke and all there was a picture of a sad clown. Not even crying, or actually sad, a clown just frowning at you – as if you called his red nose stupid.
PI Sparkle => Look underneath the desk.
There is a flask of apple cider under the desk. That’s all there is to say on the matter.
PI Sparkle => Get ye flask.
You fail to see why the hay not and you picked up your flask of apple cider. You tuck it into a hidden pocket.
PI Sparkle => Drink the cider and remember the good ol’ days.
No! There is no time for recollection of your career! It has only been two years, two whole years! There’s nothing to feel nostalgia about nor is there time to be getting drunk off your hindquarters, PI Sparkle! You disregard your subconscious and continue trying to figure out a way to escape your office-maybe-not-office and locate any more traces of the Note-Maker. Your apple cider stays in its flask, which stays in its hidden pocket, which stays within the interior of a Problem Sleuth, PI Sparkle.
PI Sparkle => Slap Yourself Silly for Even Thinking About Drinking Like a Failed Netflix Detective Show.
Self-Loathe x923231 Combo!
You slap yourself silly and you fall over your desk, knocking a few things off of it onto the ground. You feel better, a little bit better after coming to your senses and finally agreeing with yourself on something for once. You blink wearily as you pick yourself up, you slowly become un-silly-‘d slapped. You pick back up your fedora, which was next to the phone with the missing pieces. You didn’t notice that the phone had something taped underneath it.
PI Sparkle => For the love of god, PI Sparkle, Pick Up the Key!
You re-equip your revolver into your hooves so you can blow a hole in the lock to open the door. It looks like your revolver only has one bullet left. Are you sure you want to use it in this way? You might need it in case you have to off yourself later. Later could become now, should you wish to persist.
PI Sparkle => What’s on The Bottom of That Phone?
As you stoop to look at the bottom of the phone, your trigger is accidentally pulled and you blow the lock off the door. That’s one sure-fire way to blast the door, now if only you didn’t break the rules of ‘No Guns’ policy of the office building – you might’ve been able to stay for the rest of your on-hold-hiatus career.
PI Sparkle => Forget About It, What’s Under The Phone?
It is a business card for "Busts-R-Us". Probably a brothel, considering the lame double-negative vibe that you get when reading all of the suggestive words in the slogan, and the phone number, which if turned upside-down, spells "BOOBIES". You decide not to call the number for right now, given as you can't even call the phone number if you wanted to.
You take the card and shove it into your pocket. You also turn the phone upright, in case any potential citizens need a problem sleuth which they ALWAYS DO. Not to mention, the absolutely atrocity that your office is in! You will take a moment and clean this mess up right this instance, you don't care how long it takes to clean up this pig-house you call a place of professional business! It took an instant because magic is awesome.
PI Sparkle => Well, The Door’s Open. Walk Out and Prepare for the Zerg Rush of Security Guards.
OBJECTION! The door still will not open! Could it be that it was possibly never locked in the first place? Impossible, you conclude, the doorknob wouldn’t budge before you shot the hole in the lock. Perhaps something must be obstructing the door’s path? You will not prepare for the storm of security batons striking your skin and Tasers lighting you ablaze with electricity.
You took a look through the new bullet hole and peer in to see what is blocking the door. Lying on the floor appears to be an unfortunate bystander, an employee of Busts-R-Us. He was polishing the bust right in front of your door for some reason. Directly in front of you was a statue of a ponified Gibby from iCarley, with all of his bipedal human goodness turned right into pony for PI Sparkle to reveal in his glory by being blocked from going any further.
Infuriated, you sprint at the door with all of your might and try to buck the darn thing down! You only manage to slightly hurt your left hind leg, more damage than you inflicted on that wooden bloody door. You groan as you walk away from the door to peer outside of the window. You enjoy the window, because it allows natural sunlight to flood your office. You find this quite queer, as it is currently one o'clock in the evening.
The piece of paper that PI Sparkle swore was glass falls on the unfortunate employee of Busts-R-Us. It offered him small comfort while allowing you, the reader, to know there's a key taped outside of the door.
PI Sparkle => Gaze Outside.
It's the view from your third floor office. You gaze abstractedly at the commotion below. Same scene, same faces every day. It's like it hardly ever changes. Not that you can afford to pay much attention to scenery, with your mind wrapped around the latest problem to sleuth, and your lips, around your flask. The Apple Cider tasted hints of vanilla and cinnamon.
On the window sill, outside of the window, was another folded note with a black outline of a heart but filled red. You open the window and pluck the note from the window. You peer through it, unfolding the note, only to find two words that completely supports yet debunks your megalomaniac idea this character was. It seems that their problem wasn't trying to be better than you, PI Sparkle, but it was an invitation to play Detective with the stranger. You'll bite, but only on your own terms.
The Note-Maker is interesting and worth looking into. Not criminally, although the crimes they've done was breaking and entering your place of profession which is kind-a a felony. The Note-Maker managed to outfox you, magically keeping you confined to your office and you found that very intriguing. Nopony has ever outsmarted you, but this didn't make you angry but instead interesting.
You will continue to think about the Note-Maker, meanwhile, you got to get out of this office.
Author's Note
The Art
