“You wanted to see me, chief?”

“McNab, there you are. Have a seat.” The chief gestured to the seat in front of his desk.

The young officer sat down in front of the elder officer. The chief placed a pair of reading glasses on his face and shuffled some papers around before pulling a small manilla folder out to the top. He flipped through the stapled sheets, skimming over the contents on each page.

“So tell me about this recent report I’ve gotten.” The chief said. McNab nodded slowly, his mind racing about what this could be about.

“Well I was in the middle of a patrol through the neighborhood near the high school about halfway through my shift. I was heading down one of the streets when I saw a young girl walking down the road from the school.” McNab shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the chief. His stony expression betrayed nothing of what was inside. “I kept my distance but watched for a bit. A car pulled out off the street after she’d passed it, and I noticed the windows were down. I got ready to interfere if needed if they started catcalling or if they got out, but instead they threw water balloons at her. It was near freezing outside, and this girl was soaked. I called in the car and pulled over to help.”

The chief leaned back, and McNab paused.

“Please, continue.” The chief gestured. The junior officer nodded.

“I helped her dry off and got her in the car to get the heater on her. I drove her home, partly because she’s still wet and partly because I was worried there was more of them somewhere else.” The chief noted something on the paper, and McNab swallowed nervously. “A-And then we got to her home.”

“It says in the record at this point you called in an out of service call and were offline for about another four and a half hours, where you returned for the rest of your shift.” The chief set down the pages and looked up at McNab. “What happened in that period.”

A pit of ice fell into McNab’s stomach.

“Sir, you aren’t implying I did anything illegal in there, are you?”

“Please continue your recount, son.” The man replied simply. McNab shook his head.

“I went in. It was me and her at the kitchen table. We started talking about her family, and it was revealed to me that her family was… less than ideal. Her mother lives out of the state, her father is a single parent working two jobs, and her older sister is never around. She’s bullied at school, but no one did anything about it. She had no one to turn to and it was just…”

McNab shook his head.

“Sir, I know how this looks but I promise I’ve done nothing wrong. She was alone, she started talking about how she was alone and just all these other worrying things. I…” McNab sighed, defeated. “I genuinely believe she might be suicidal. So I made a decision there to do what I could to help her. I’m only a year or two older than her sister, and I never had siblings. I just felt like I had to do something.”

The chief leaned back in his chair, sighing tiredly. His gaze fell from the officer onto the papers in front of him. Sliding a few aside, he raised a picture from what looked like a recent yearbook photo. He flipped it around to the officer, and McNab nodded. No words were said, but both men knew what each other meant. The chief set the photo down in front of McNab.

“How old are you, son?” The chief asked at last. McNab was taken aback by the abrupt question, but shrugged.

“Twenty, sir.”

“And how long have you been with our department?”

“I started after high school when the age was 18.”

“So two years.” The chief grinned jokingly at the young man. “So you saw her as the sister you never had.”

“Yes, sir.”

The chief took his glasses off and set them in front of him, leaning back in his chair. He smiled at the confused nature of the junior. He slid open the top desk and threw down a rather thick file onto the desk. The thud as it hit the table made the younger man jump.

“What’s this?” He asked.

“An experiment.” The chief said simply. McNab’s confusion took over any worry he had before. “Not in the kind with chemicals or mind control. It’s an experimental police unit that consists of patrol officers with training in mental health.”

“Undercover internal affairs?” McNab asked. The chief laughed heartily. Then he realized the boy was serious, and forced himself to respond.

“No. Think of them more as police therapists.”

“I don’t think I follow, sir.”

“This is a group of officers that are trained to deal with mentally unstable individuals through calming them and helping them, instead of detaining them. And I think you,” The chief pointed to McNab. “Are a perfect new candidate. You’ve already made the connection, she trusts you, and you just need the training.”

McNab picked up the file, glancing over its contents. He’d have to go through a lot of classes, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for it. But Luna’s crying came back to him, and he knew he had someone relying on him to do this.

“When would I start?”

“They’ve technically already started the program, but I think we could get you in with only a little bit of catch up. The question is, though, are you ready for it?”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t like regular police work. This is talking to people that we know are mentally unstable. People we know can snap at any moment, and the only thing that’s stopping that is you. Now, I’m not trying to dissuade you here if you really want to do this. But I want you to understand everything you’re doing.”

McNab nodded slowly, determination overtaking his doubt.

“I’ll do it.”

The chief smiled.

“Good. Let’s talk scheduling, then.”

“Mr. McNab?”

“Hey Luna.”

The young girl was confused by the man in front of her. She was happy to see him, of course, but still surprised that he was there. He was leaning casually on the hood of his cruiser in the parking lot of the school.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well I wanted to check in with you after yesterday. Just to make sure everything was alright.” His calm grin paired with his relaxed nature was a welcome change to the hostility of her classmates. She smiled back.

“I’m fine. Aren’t you supposed to be… I dunno. Doing police stuff?”

“I am. I’m assigned to this neighborhood for patrols. And given the recent occurrences, I’m assigned to watch the students after school.”

“Really?” Luna smiled. “Awesome.”

McNab grinned.

“If you’d like to wait, I’d be able to drive you home. Beats walking in this cold.”

“Sure.”

The young girl hopped up onto the cruiser next to him, sitting on the reinforced hood. The two did a little bit of people watching to pass the time, chatting every so often about each person.

“So with the way she dresses and looks around at what people think of her, I’d bet she’s insecure about the way she looks.” McNab said, trying to subtly gesture to a girl walking out of the school.

“No, look. Her problem is the opposite. She’s looking for someone. She’s dressing that way to get noticed by someone, even though she hates it.” Luna countered.

“How can you tell?”

“She’s uncomfortable and keeps adjusting her clothes. If you wore the same clothes everyday, you wouldn’t be adjusting them all the time because you’d be used to them, right?” Luna watch McNab, and he nodded. “Exactly. So she’s not wearing the clothes she normally does, and she’s looking around.”

“She could be self conscious and that’s why she’s dressing that way.”

“Possibly. But she’s not looking back at people she’s seen already.”

“Hmm, yeah. She’s scanning the crowd looking for something, not at something.” McNab smiled. “Good eye.”

“Thanks.” Luna smiled.

“What about him?” McNab pointed to a student sitting alone by the side of the stairs.

“He’s a loner. Probably someone with an overactive imagination. His excessive daydreaming has led him to think of dozens of possible outcomes which have scared him off from a lot of social interactions. He’s not alone, but he feels like it all the time.” Luna said. “He thinks of dozens of stories everyday that all star a character that holds the traits he wishes he had, but gives them enough flaws to make them possible for him to believe.”

McNab stared at the girl on his hood as her thoughts trailed on. Luna stopped talking and stared at the boy. It took quite awhile for her to notice McNab wasn’t responding. She looked back and shrunk at his stare.

“Sorry, I don’t know if this is cheating, but I knew him.” She explained. McNab relaxed, but only somewhat. “I used to talk with him a lot in middle school, but he got really uncomfortable around me towards the end of eighth grade. He was always like that then.”

“Any reason why you think that happened?”

Luna shrugged.

“I don’t know. It just happened one day. I suppose it was less uncomfortable, but more awkward.”

“Do you think he might need a therapist or something?”

Luna shook her head.

“I don’t think so.”

McNab nodded slowly, thoughts racing. Luna kept on profiling the people in the crowd, but didn’t say anything further. Eventually the crowd died down and the two were almost completely alone.

“Well I think we can leave now. Everyone here looks like they might be around for a while.” McNab stood up. “I think we can get going.”

“Finally!” Luna jumped in the car before the man had even gotten a chance to turn around.

He smiled and shook his head as he walked around to the other side. He started the car and pulled out onto the road.

“So what does all this stuff do?” Luna asked. McNab looked over at what she was pointing to.

“Well that part is the radio, that part is a the database system.” He explained.

“Database for what?”

“Outstanding information. If I pull someone over and check their license, I can see if they have any warrants for their arrest. One time I pulled someone over and found out their license had been suspended due to drunk driving, so I arrested him.”

“That’s cool.” Luna smiled. “How many people have you arrested?”

“Well a good officer doesn’t rate his performance based off of how many people he’s arrested. Just how many people he’s helped by doing his job.” He said proudly. He smiled as he watched Luna try to hide her disappointment. “But it might have rhymed with Qwerty Kevin.”

“Thirty-seven people?” Luna asked. “Were any of them interesting?”

“Well, I wrestled a gunman to the ground once.”

“What? What happened?” Luna turned to watch him as best she could with the seatbelt, fully enthralled with just the notion that he was telling the story. He smiled. Kids always loved the action parts of police work.

“I got called to deal with a domestic dispute between two gentlemen. I get to the scene only to find that one of them has a gun pulled on the other, and is forcing him down on his knees. I ran out of the car and sprinted straight towards him. Then bam.” McNab hit the steering wheel. “Tackled the bastard straight to the ground. Pinned his arm to the ground and pried the gun away from his hands. I threw it into the grass before I flipped him over and cuffed him.”

“That’s insane. What if you had gotten shot?”

“The thought didn’t even cross my mind.” McNab lied.

In reality, he had been thinking of nothing but what if he had gotten shot. But in the end, the safest scenario was one where the gunman didn’t have the gun anymore. So he had made a rather gutsy decision. It wasn’t until after the fact that he realized just how stupid that move had been in reality, but that didn’t make for a good story, now did it?

“What were they doing?”

McNab waved a hand casually.

“Some sort of dispute. One guy accuses the other of messing around with his wife and confronted the other guy. I found out later that the call was for just the argument, but then they pulled a gun not too long before I showed up.” McNab turned and smiled. “Scariest part was, the gun was actually loaded. It wasn’t just for show.”

“Does that happen?”

“Yeah, more than often there’s no bullets in the gun. It’s just for show.”

“That seems like a waste of time.” Luna scoffed.

“Well most people aren’t killers. Even with soldiers. Most of them have a lot of trouble with it. So that’s why I think more often than not, violent people can still be reasoned with. No one is ever truly lost.”

“That’s a very optimistic way of looking at the world.” She nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ve always been like that.” McNab smiled. “People tend to surprise you when they get the chance.”

Luna smiled.

“That’s really sweet.”

“I’d like to think so. This is your house, right?”

Luna peered out the window.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Luna turned to McNab. “Have you ever played Nintendo 64?”

The man stared blankly at Luna.

“Uh…”

“So that’s a no?” Luna smiled. “Do you want to?”

“...Sure.” McNab laughed. “I don’t think I’ll be very good, though.”

“You don’t have to be good.”

“Alright, let’s do it.”

“Yes!” McNab screamed. “Not last!”

“Barely.” Luna laughed. “Third place in a four person race, against the computer characters.”

“Gotta start somewhere!” McNab shouted, his enthusiasm not wavering in the slightest.

Luna let the man have his victory, and tried to start another game. McNab stood up and did his victory lap around the room, coming to a stop behind the couch. He smiled at the TV, the bronze colored third place shining proudly.

“On that note, I call that a night.”

“So early?”

“Moon, it’s like 8:30.”

“Really?” Luna peered over at the clock. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late.”

“Time flies, as my dad says.” McNab peered in the kitchen where Luna’s lunch bag sat empty and open.

“I think I’m just gonna go to bed now.” Luna stood, powering off the N64 and the TV. “Goodnight, Jake.”

“Night, moon.” McNab called.

Luna waved tiredly as she climbed the stairs, leaving McNab alone in the living room as he started to pull his boots back on. He heard the upstairs door shut softly, and McNab stared over at the kitchen.

“Luna! Time to go!” Celestia called.

“Alright, gimme a minute. I’ve gotta make lunch.”

“Just hurry up!”

Luna walked into the kitchen, and grabbed her lunch bag. She was shocked as the weight of the bag was significantly more than she expected. She unzipped the bag and peered inside. A myriad of foods were inside, more than she’d ever had time to make in the morning. A folded piece of notebook paper was on the top. Unfolding it, she was surprised to find a short note from McNab.

Hey Little Moon, made you lunch so that you’d have more time in the morning. Have a great day. I’ll be there to pick up after school.

• Jake McNab

She smiled, and threw everything back into the bag. She clipped the bag onto her backpack with a carabiner clip, and headed outside just as Celestia started honking.

“I’m coming!”

Author's Note

This chapter was a bit of filler to make the next one make more sense. Expect that one shortly.

Oh yeah and the editor thing and all that. PM me if interested.

Special thanks to the one friend of mine who will pre-read this for me, even though he doesn't know this site exists and finds it weird that I write pony fan fiction.