One late night

After keeping her past a secret for an entire year, a light red pegasus mare with a hot pink mane and tail walked into the Ponyville Guard Station, ready to tell somepony - that could help her - of that dreadful night exactly one year ago. The mare looked around nervously until her bright green eyes settled on the receptionists' desk. She slowly made her way over to the desk and looked back out the door with a small amount of fear in her eyes, expecting him to be watching her. There wasn't anypony there but the small number of ponies going to their jobs due to it being the early hours of the morning, possibly 8 in the morning at the moment. The mare turned back to the receptionist and tapped her hoof on the top of the desk, causing the light brown unicorn mare with a black mane and tail to look up from her work. The red mare smiled to her and began speaking, "I-I need to speak to somepony. Possibly a detective?"

The unicorn nodded her head and used her magic to contact Ponyville's best detective, he arrived less than a minute later and motioned for her to follow him into his office. The pegasus mare thanked the receptionist and followed after the detective quickly, going into his office to find him sitting calmly behind his desk. The mare looked around for a moment before sitting in the chair near the door. The detective started speaking to her in a smooth, but masculine voice, "Hello, miss...," The detective trailed off, not knowing the mares' name.

"It's Scarlet. Scarlet Harmony, but my friends just call me whatever they want.." The mare gave him her name, blushing a little as she looked him over. The detective was a dark gray stallion with a charcoal black mane and tail. He had caught her looking and smiled warmly.

"As you may have noticed by my color, I'm the twin to Ms. Octavia Philharmonica, our parents didn't want me to be known in the family due to me being their second earth pony. To make matters worse, they preferred a female earth pony more, so I was shunned by all but my sister. I was named Shadow Mane by her because my parents kept me in the shadows and my mane is black in color. Anyway, enough about me. What seems to be the problem Ms. Harmony?" The detective smiled to her once more and motioned with his hooves for her to begin speaking.

Scarlet took a deep breath and was visibly trying to calm herself down enough to start talking to him again. After a few minutes of her taking deep breaths and releasing them slowly, she looked to him with a nervous but serious look on her face. "I-I was raped a little over a year ago. I kept it a secret out of fear of being an outcast from society, until now of course..." She looked back up to him with a few small tears in her eyes, looking into his own while trying to read his expression. Shadow had a look of horror and sympathy on his face and seemed frozen at the thought of a mare as beautiful as Scarlet being treated that way. He shook his head and pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from his desk before looking to Scarlet and opening his mouth to say,

"Ma'am, that sounds horrible. I'm sure that a lot of ponies would have understood that it wasn't your fault, and that you didn't want it, let alone let it happen. If that's what you came to tell me, I'm gonna need the entire story. Would you be 'okay' with telling me your story so that I may write a report to be put in the files?" Shadow didn't press her for an answer, and instead waited patiently for her to stop crying. He couldn't hold her closely to comfort her like he wished he could, it wouldn't be professional without them being together in a relationship. Instead, he was required to sit there and watch her cry silently until she finally wiped her puffy red eyes, signaling that she'd stopped crying.

Scarlet looked up at him and sniffled quietly, wiping her muzzle with her left hoof. She nodded and sniffled once more, trying to clear her nose before she began speaking to Shadow to tell him her entire story, from the time she had woken up that morning, to the time she had decided to come tell her story. Scarlet moved around in her seat for a few moments, trying to get comfortable enough to be able to sit in the chair for as long as it took to finish her story. She finally found the perfect spot, and turned her head to face him. After a few more deep breaths and sniffles, she nodded to Shadow confidently.

"You might as well get comfortable too, this is going to be a loooooong story..." Scarlet said with a slight smile, hiding the knowledge of how much pain telling this was going to bring. Shadow got up from his seat and pulled it back a bit, almost to where it was touching the wall of his office. He sat down in the chair and slowly put his hind hooves on his desk, sitting how his friend Lyra had told him the humans did. He motioned for Scarlet to begin telling him her story. As he reached over to grab some paper to write his report on, Scarlet took a deep breath and looked to Shadow with a grim look on her face. She clearly didn't want to remember that night, but had to in order for Shadow to write the police report to help her.

Another deep breath. "It was a cool spring night and my store had just closed. I ran an adult toy shop at the time..." She trailed off for a moment as remembered every detail of that night. She looked to him and sighed quietly. "Would it be okay if you got a unicorn in here to show you my memories? I find it a little hard to talk about this now..." Scarlet looked down sadly, having tons of confidence only moments ago.

Shadow nodded and tapped a button on his desk to signal one of the stations unicorns to report to his office. They waited about 3 minutes before a snow colored unicorn mare with a dark red mane and tail appeared in the doorway. The mare stepped up to Shadow and asked what she was needed for, Shadow told her that she was to perform a memory casting spell on Scarlet. The unicorn nodded and wordlessly cast the spell, making Scarlet's memory play out on the empty wall in front of them. It seemed to act as a flashback, because Scarlet was zoned out as her memory was played.

+++ +++ BEGIN FLASHBACK +++ +++