Bitch Tailraiser looked up from her desk as the door to her office was slung open.

"How can I help you, Citizen?"

The pony who had just been about to blurt out what bothered him took the opportunity to catch his breath as the Sheriff leapt over her desk, gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder and offered him a glass of water.

Good old Bitch, he thought to himself as he gratefully gulped down the glass. Everyone in town knew her as a total bimbo, but darn if she wasn't the best sheriff they'd ever had.

"Now, tell me what's bothering you?"

He suddenly found himself sitting in front of the desk previously occupied by the sheriff, a sandwich in front of him.

"Hay, that was my sandwich!" a reedy voice called over from the other from the other end of the office, but was ignored. Nopony listened to Deputy Bloom, not when the Sheriff was around.

"Uhm," he mumbled, taking the proffered sandwich and giving it a polite nibble. It was a BLT, his favorite. He thanked the kind sheriff, then remembered why he had rushed over.

"I saw a...," the stallion paused for dramatic effect, "... a.... unicorn."

The last word was a whisper, but it echoed in the silence that only the U word could achieve. Well the P word was just as bad.

"Where?" Bitch asked, suddenly all serious, well even seriouser than usual, and for her that was saying a lot.

"In the alley," he replied, looking relieved to be believed so readily. This was why you came to Sheriff Bitch.

"Which one?" she followed up.

"Does it matter?"

They both finally noticed the third occupant of the room, a young mare with a fire engine red coat, messy blonde mane and a silver star pinned to her harness.

"Like there's only two allys in the whole town," she explained when it was clear she really had their attention, "and they're both connected."

"She's right," Bitch barked, sounding impressed to have been told a new fact about the streets she spent every day patrolling. "Earning that deputy badge, Bloom."

She shot Bloom one of her most winning smiles, but her deputy just rolled her eyes. So she turned the smile back on the stallion, he seemed to react appropriately, he even blushed. Bitch had buckets of charisma, and she knew how to use it. First though, she had an investigation to persue.

There was suddenly a notepad and pen in Bitch's hooves as she started to take his accounts of the suspected unicorn sighting.

Bloom meanwhile moved to steal her sandwich back, and huffed when she noticed all the broccoli was already gone. Citizens, they were more trouble than they were worth in her opinion.

"How long ago did you see this unicorn?", Bitch asked, pen poised.

"Well, it was about five minutes ago," the citizens explained as Bitch took notes. "Me and my marefriend Balloon were sneaking into the alley to.... it doesn't matter what we were doing," he blushed even more, "and there we saw it, bright as day, a unicorn."

"Very disturbing," Bitch noted down both the potential public indecency violation and the alleged sighting of their worst enemy. "What did it look like?"

"Well, it looked like a pony," he explained.

"It looked like a pony?"

Now even Bitch sounded sceptical.

"Well, yeah," he admitted sheepishly.

The stallion had been surprised too, he had expected unicorns to look a lot more scary. Shouldn't they have razor tongues, spiked teeth, horns like tazers and all that?

"Yeah, it looked almost exactly like a pony," he explained, and then pointed to his forehead, "Except for the horn, of course."

"The unicorn had a horn," Bitch noted down on the clipboard. "Anything else? Colour, clothes, weapons of any sort?"

"Well no weapons that I could see, but then again unicorns probably don't need weapons. And it had an orange coat, and a purple mane..."

"Oh come on!"

The shout was enough to disturb even Bitch from her furious note taking, she looked over at Bloom again, raising an eyebrow.

"It's not a unicorn," Sprout sighed, "It's just Sonny Starscout pulling one of his dumb stunts again. He probably thought that if ponies got ambushed by unicorns more often we'd see they really just want to be friends or something dumb like that. Because that's all he does, dumb unicorn stuff, and he likes unicorns more than earth ponies, the dumbhead.

Bitch looked over, a note of concern over the vitriol in her Deputy's voice, normally Bloom was far too lazy to achieve that level of spite.

"He's that dumb is he?" Bitch smirked, she suspected why Bloom was so grumpy, "Then why did you go on a date with him last week?"

"I..." Bloom looked increasingly flustered. She meaned forward, a hoof cupped to her mouth and hissed, "Okay, be cool, what if my dad hears about that?"

Bitch let out a chuckle and kept on teasing her deputy, "So he's called you back then?"

That only served to put Bloom in an even fouler mood.

"I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled, glowering down at her desk as if it had personally offended her.

"Uhm..."

They both looked over at the stallion in the room, having briefly forgotten that they had a job to do.

"Could we get back to the unicorn?" the stallion asked. "It might still be attacking Balloons."

"Of course!" Bitch put her hat on, "We can't leave a citizen in distress for longer than necessary. Lead the way!"

The stallion looked relieved and turned to lead them to the only alley in their small town.

Bitch was hot on his tail, as her name suggested, while Bloom dragged her hooves. She really didn't feel like meeting Sonny right now. The dumb stallion was probably banging whatshisface's marefriend right now and telling her all about horns and wings, and their surprisingly many uses.

***

"So this is where you saw the unicorn?" Bitch asked once they had crossed the street.

"Yes," Whatshisface replied, pointing into the mouth of the alley, "It's in there, or was when I ran for my life."

"And you left Balloons in there?" Bitch's tone was supportive, but there was a clear note of disapproval.

"Well," Whatshisface rubbed his neck nervously, "I expected her to run as well, but when I got out of the alley she was nowhere to be seen."

Bitch made a disapproving sound, but picked up her flashlight and shone it into the gloomy recesses of the alley. It appeared empty apart from a few dumpsters

"She doesn't seem to be there now," she commented, and then raised her voice to shout, "Anypony in there!?"

No reply. She sighed and turned to her Deputy with a declaration, and an order.

"I'm going in there, cover me."

Bloom sighed and saluted. With uncharacteristic bravery she pulled out her baton and followed her sheriff into the murky alley. Perhaps she was bolstered by the conviction that they would face nothing worse than a rebel bad boy with an unhealthy fascination for unicorns.

It seemed not even that was forthcoming. They emerged on the other side of the alley, facing the other part of the mane street without having seen anything suspicious.

So it was rather odd that Whatshisface, who had taken the much safer street route to meet them, looked like he had seen, well like he'd seen a unicorn.

"Wh-wha-what is that!" He extended a shaking hoof and pointed at the two policemares.

The policemares in question exchanged a confused look. Bloom was the first to speak.

"Two mares who will kick your plot if you keep pointing at them and wasting their time." she suggested.

Bitch was more perceptive however, and less confrontational, she noticed that Whatshisface wasn't really pointing at them, he was pointing at their hooves.

She looked down at Bloom's hooves and gasped.

"It's blood!"

"What? Where?" Bloom was instantly on edge, brandishing her baton, or rather doing her best to hide behind the thin bar of metal.

"On your hooves," Bitch pointed, and then looked at her own hooves, the bottoms of which were also soaked in red. "And on mine."

"Wha-whai-fuck!" Bloom shrieked, "It was a real unicorn after all?!"

"We don't know that yet," Bitch pointed out, attempting to restore the calm. But we're going to find out."

Resolutely she turned back to the mouth of the alley, which now had a much more sinister gloom to it.

"Deputy Bloom, are you with me?"

Bitch turned, noticing the silence, and the clear lack of any deputy. She did catch a glimpse of a blond tail as it disappeared into the door to the police station though.

"Coward!" The sheriff muttered. "You're with me right?" She asked Whatshisface.

The stallion didn't appear to be responsive however. Unlike Bloom who was brave enough to run away, he had simply frozen up in fear. Even waving her hoof in front of his glazed eyes yielded no response.

"I'll be back with hot cocoa and a blanket," Bitch promised him, and went into the alley herself.

Now knowing what to look for it wasn't hard to follow the trail of bloody hoofteps to a pool full of the stuff. She shuddered, nopony could have bled that much and still be alive.

She dipped a hoof in the stuff and licked it. The taste made her gag.

"Yup, definitely blood!" she coughed.

It didn't take her long to find the body. Bloom had been unceremoniously dragged over to one of the dumpsters and then stuffed inside like she was some sort of trash. Bitch couldn't believe that anyone could treat a fellow pony like that.

Then, the horn shaped wounds on Balloon's body told her that maybe they weren't dealing with a pony at all.

Maretime Bay was being stalked by a unicorn.

Author's Note

So the prompt was:Genderswap
I had a lot of fun writing this one and I'm thinking of expanding it into a full story about the beast that stalks the streets of Maretime Bay.

I would really appreciate some good genderswap names for the g5 ponies though.