It's a Cinch!

The door slammed open and Cooper came into the principal’s office lugging a large, cloth covered cage.

“What on earth—” The woman behind the desk lept to her feet. “Cooper!?”

He dropped the cage onto the floor.

It yelped.

Cooper backed away from the cage, glaring daggers at it all the while. “Miss C—Principal Cinch... you are never going to believe what I found.”

Principal Cinch switched between the cage, which was rattling and yelping, and the man who had brought it in. “W-what is the meaning of this, Cooper? I told you—”

“You want your evidence? I got you your damn evidence!”

Her demeanor changed from anger to intrigue. “Evidence?” She smoothed out business skirt and readjusted her glasses before clasping her hands together. “This had better be worth my time. I thought I made it quite clear that if you had evidence you were supposed to contact me beforehand, so that we could rendezvous far away from here.”

“Cinch, with what I got you, you’ll be a national icon by tomorrow.”

Principal Cinch only raised her eyebrow in response. She walked over to the cage and gave it a cursory once-over before pulling off the sheet.

“...Interesting... very interesting...”

Inside of the cage was a small equine. Cooper struggled to call it something more specific. He was tempted to call it a pony but it just looked wrong. With its large blue eyes, curly tan mane like some sort of dessert and dark brown body, the creature looked like it belonged in a children’s coloring book rather than locked up in a cage. That wasn’t even getting into the weird ass-markings it had—of candy. Of course it was candy, because why the fuck not?

Right now the creature was rattling the cage and glaring at Cinch.

“Fascinating...” Without taking her eyes off of the creature, she asked, “Cooper, you found this on the Canterlot High premise, correct?”

“Yeah...” he muttered.

“You don’t sound very sure of yourself.”

He grunted. “Yes, I found that... thing on Canterlot High grounds. She was in somebody’s car. Who’s car? I don’t know. But she was on their property so that’s all the matters to the press.” Cooper hoped she ask any more questions about the car. He knew who owned it... had an idea at least. But why its owner was down in California? That was a whole other can of worms he did not want to get into.

“Let me go! Grrrrr—when I get out of here I’m gonna... gonna... well, it’s not going to be nice!” the creature exclaimed with another thump of hooves.

Cooper jumped backwards, banging his hip on Cinch’s desk. “Oh Jesus, fuck! It talks!”

Principal Cinch bent forwards and the creature shrunk back. “Hm, so, you can talk. This is fascinating, truly remarkable. Tell me, do you have a name?”

The creature gulped. Visibly. Then she blew a raspberry right into Cinch’s face, spittle flying off of her tongue.

Cinch straightened up. Cooper was going to imagine one of her eyes twitching, but when she turned around he didn’t have to. With a hand, the principal collected her glasses and some tissues off of her desk and began cleaning them off. “How quaint,” she muttered.

“Cooper!” She put the glasses back onto her face and faced him.

“Yes, ma’am?

“You’re to keep watch of our... new friend here until I get back,” she said, the word friend laced with venom. “It’s going to take a while to convince the right people to come down to meet her.”

“W-what? You want me to watch that—”

“Yes, I do.”

“Fuck, just looking at it gives me the heebie-jeebies. No way! I did my part—I got you your evidence. Now you pay up!”

Cinch sighed. “It’s not going to hurt you or anything. It’s locked away in a cage, for goodness’ sake.” She went behind her desk and started to collect her things. “Besides, you’re not going to get my recommendation for the FBI until she’s been taken care of. You might not even need it now, now that we have such an astounding piece to show off. Once we do, we’ll both get what we want—I get to ruin Canterlot High and get revenge on Celestia, that disgrace, and when I spin the story in such a way as to make it seem as though you went in and extracted her, people will be so dazzled by it that they’ll give you whatever you like.

“I imagine being the one who exposed alien creatures to the world might carry some weight in the upper echelons,” Cinch said as she wrapped her black scarf around her neck.

“I...” Cooper glanced at the cage. The creature had given up on trying to whine her way out. Instead, her eyes switched between the Cinch and him. Cooper grit his teeth. By noon tomorrow he’d be national news; all he had to do was make sure the thing didn’t escape. “Fine.”

“Good.”