Sheriff Steel was having a really bad case of the Mondays.

It was expected, of course, as just yesterday, Ponyville had seen its first violent crime in years and a missing person case as well. Both had happened in the same afternoon yesterday, literally hours from each other, and understandably, the town was in a tense mood.

Sheriff Steel wasn't tense though. He was more disappointed. It was his job to prevent such crimes for happening but just like that, it had happened. To add to his disappointment was the fact that they had not found Bon Bon yet, nor had they identified the person who had almost killed Anya.

He had talked to both of them that day, before what happened to them. Bon Bon in the morning when he bought some sweets from her, and Anya in the afternoon after he had spotted her getting groceries with her giant spider. He couldn't help but feel responsible for what happened to them.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Right now, he sat in his office, sitting and twiddling his hooves as he waited for an investigator coming in from Canterlot, all because he and his deputies were too incompetent to figure out any clues about either of the two cases they had.

He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling fan spinning slowly. Today was a Monday, alright, and it sucked.

Somebody knocked on the door, making him sit up straight. The door opened and a earth pony stallion came in. He was dark grey with light grey hair, and he wore a black suit and sunglasses. His age showed on his face, which was currently holding a neutral expression.

"Sheriff Steel," he greeted as he stopped in front of the sheriff's desk.

"Mister Sharp Eye," the sheriff replied.

"Let's get down to business," Sharp Eye said, adjusting his tie a bit. "So, a burglary and a missing person case, eh? Have you got any leads or evidence?"

"No, we don' got anythin' yet," the sheriff admitted with some shame.

"Hmm," Sharp Eye said, smirking for just a second. The sheriff chose not to comment on that. "Why don't we go to miss Anya's place first to investigate?"

Sharp Eye followed the sheriff down the wooded path to the crime scene he had to investigate.

As an agent of S.M.I.L.E, Sharp Eye knew exactly what had happened in the house yesterday — he had been there, watching the live transmission from the spy cameras to a computer screen, seeing Bon Bon fight Anya and then get to making her exit from the house, until all the spy cameras stopped transmitting simultaneously.

He knew that Anya had been hospitalised by Bon Bon and he had to cover that up to keep the agency and it's actions secret, which should be quite simple. Finding the missing agent was what he was worried about.

It couldn't have been Anya who had made her disappear since she was just one punch from death when the police had found her. Other than that, he did not know, and he needed clues.

They finally came to a halt in front of the house where the almost-murder had taken place. Sharp Eye admired the ugliness of the house and how it looked so comically obvious that a practitioner of dark magic lived there. In his time as a field operative, he had rarely seen anything like it — outside of when he had to deal with certain cults.

However, the more he looked, the more he became aware of the feeling of being watched. He didn't ignore it because he knew from experience that it would cause him trouble if he did so. He knew that there were things in the forest around but he knew that they wouldn't approach with there being two ponies together.

Maybe something from the forest took Bon Bon, probably a timberwolf or maybe a manticore. It made sense since she would have been alone and even though she was a rather strong agent, all a predator needed to get her was a lucky hit. That didn't explain the cameras going off though, and there were no signs of struggle anywhere on the path, meaning that something else must have happened to Bon Bon.

Sheriff Steel, meanwhile, walked upto the door and opened it, wanting to get away from the forest. He pulled out a key from his vest's pocket and unlocked the door. "Alrighty, the scene's down in the basement. And Ah'll give you a warnin', there's stuff down there that ain't pretty. Miss Anya does meat magic."

Sharp Eye nodded, already knowing very well just what Sheriff Steel was talking about. Already, there were some small blood stains on the hallway floor. They both went down the basement stairs and came across the crime scene. It was much like yesterday. There was dried blood on one of the steps, dried blood on the floor where Anya had landed and a trail of it where she had dragged herself to the table. The crushed spider was still there, the table was still overturned, and all the stuff that had fallen to the floor was still as it was. The crucible was still there, making organic sounds.

"What a mess," Sharp Eye said after observing the scene. He then added, "Looks like a burglary gone really bad."

It was an easy explanation that should have covered any questions anyone would have. The sheriff wouldn't bat an eye. Yet another successful cover-up by S.M.I.L.E.

"Looks like that to me too, but..." the sheriff said, making Sharp Eye frown a bit. "Ah don't think it's that."

"Why is that?"

"Well, as you can see," — he pointed to the crucible — ", Miss Anya's a uh..."

"Biomancer."

"Yes, that, she's a biomancer, an' you can see that it ain't look very pretty. So, last Friday, that lazy brat Rainbow went into Sugarcube Corner and said some nasty things 'bout her bein' an evil witch an' Ah think that–”

"Someone decided to 'be a hero' and do all this?"

"Mhm."

"Well, sheriff, if that were the case, the vigilante would have come out by now and said that they've done it, especially after beating a dark magic user since vigilantes usually think that it'll give them the moral high ground. Has anyone done that yet?"

"No... but they could've just run from town..." A thought came into the sheriff's head and it was banished just as quickly for how dumb it was. "No, it couldn't be that, Bon Bon wouldn't do that. Ah think yer right 'bout this bein' a burglary gone bad, but we can't confirm that since we don' know what's been stolen, until Miss Anya wakes up. Though, there's two boxes o'er there that have some gemstones in 'em but haven't been touched as far as Ah could tell. Might be wrong though since we only peeked."

Private Eye smirked a bit. Bon Bon, despite her rashness, was still good at making sure there was't anything pointing back to her. Then his smirk faded. Bon Bon was still missing and the agency wanted an explanation.

"I'll check this place over for any other clues. Can you go and see if you find something upstairs."

Sheriff Steel, despite having combed through the house yesterday, complied anyway because who knows, he might have missed something. Meanwhile, Sharp Eye, now alone, walked to the corner of the basement where Bon Bon had put up the camera. He didn't find the camera, and if he were to guess, it'd be the same story in all the other rooms.

Next, he had to make some stuff disappear to make the burglary explanation more solid. However, there wasn't much he could make disappear since most of it was either worthless, or broken on the ground. There were the three boxes though. He walked over to them and opened the wooden one, hoping to find something that would be worth taking.

In the box was a small trove of gems. He reached out into his magic and channeled it through the ground and reached out to the gems in the box and yup, the gems were all magically active. Not something a burglar would take. And he couldn't make all that many gems disappear without it being obvious that something had changed. He dug through the box, hoping to find something that was expensive but also something that could've been easily missed.

And he found something that was expensive. He pulled out a hundred gram bar of silver from the box. It would have been expensive even if it were magically active. He then checked it for that and found that it wasn't active. It was the perfect thing to take. Anya would notice its absense with it being worth a good thousand or so bits, and the burglary story would hold true.

He pocketed it and closed the box before moving onto more important business.

He pulled out a device from his suit and turned it on. It had two antennas and six lightbulbs. Once on, the first light turned green while the other five flashed red for a second, after which, only one of the red lights remained on. That was interesting. The device he held would detect magic out of the ordinary and with one red light already on, it was obvious that something magical was happening in the basement. Probably the crucible, but he did reconsider thinking that Anya had nothing to do with the disappearance.

He walked around the basement, testing for any weird magic. Three red lights switched on when he went near the the crucible but that was to be expected. Besides that, it stayed at one.

Until he brought the tester over to the corner that had the camera.

All five red lights turned on immediately, telling him that something had happened to the cameras — probably a teleport. This was interesting, but it might have been a coincidence. He left the basement and made his way into the laundry room, and again, the readings spiked when he brought the device close to where the camera had been. Definitely not a coincidence.

He left the laundry room, and walked over to the front door, noting how one red light stayed on the entire while even though he was far from the crucible. Perhaps there was something else.

He waved the thing around, hoping it wasn't broken. In doing so, he pointed it towards the stairs, making the second red light turn on. He stopped waving the detector around and walked over to the stairs, watching as the two red lights became three.

He walked up the stairs, finding the sheriff in the hall, looking out the barred window. He ignored the sheriff and continued moving around with the detector. The reading went upto four when he went down the hallway with the bedrooms, and then five again right outside the second bedroom.

"What're ye doin'?" the sheriff asked, having watched Sharp Eye wave around the detector.

"Just checking for out of the ordinary magic, and it looks like there's a lot if it in here," Sharp Eye responded as he opened the door to the second bedroom.

Inside, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, but the detector was giving a reading of five everywhere in the room. He couldn't see any immediate sources of magic that would give such a high reading, or any reading at all. The room was bare, clearly unused in quite some time as evident by the dust in it, and so, the reading seemed illogical.

"Ya know why there's lot o' strange magic 'ere?"

"No. I'll need some help figuring this out. Say, do you know some unicorn who could come over here and help us out?"

"...Ah'll go and get someone."

When the sheriff returned, he returned not with one of his deputies like Sharp Eye had expected. He instead returned with none other than the element of magic, Twilight Sparkle.

"Hi, I'm here to help," she had said in greeting before getting to work right away.

Right now, both him and the sheriff were waiting as Twilight did in the middle of the room with her eyes closed and her horn glowing. The detector was still giving the same reading as it has been when they fir–

The reading went down to one and Twilight opened her eyes with confusion. "The magic, it's– it's gone."

That wasn't good. Magic didn't just go away like that, not without outside intervention at least. The place was getting weirder by the minute, and it seemed to Sharp Eye that he'd have to get actual backup.

"It's alright though, I was able to figure out that it was residue from a teleport. A really badly done teleport," she said, looking quite proud of herself. Then, her expression fell and she added, "But I don't think that's very useful for catching whoever hurt Anya."

It was quite useful for finding out what happened to Bon Bon though.

"Did you find out anything else?" Sharp Eye asked.

"Unfortunately, no."

While it wasn't great, it was a start. Sharp Eye still had a lot of work to do, it seemed. Though, he'd get lunch before he did that.

Suddenly, Twilight asked, "Do you think I could look over the scene downstairs? I might be able to find something."

"I've already looked it over and I find nothing. There's no point for you to go there," Sharp Eye said. "I suppose we take a break, I'm hungry. And thank you for your help, Miss Sparkle. You can go."

Twilight looked disappointed that she couldn't help but moved. The three ponies went downstairs and left the house and made for Ponyville.

"We still don' know who broke into the house," the sheriff said to no-one in particular.

"It could have been an outsider who needed money quick," Sharp Eye lied.

"But why'd they have to attack her so brutally? They could have just knocked her out and left," Twilight said with slight anger.

They continued walking till they reached the crossroads. They would have kept walking, but a scream from the forest made them stop in their tracks.

Sharp Eye was the first to run. He ran into the forest, towards where the scream came from. Sheriff Steel and Twilight were quick to follow. They kept running until they came across a clearing.

In the clearing, close to the middle, a muzzle was sticking out of the ground.

The three rushed forward to it and started digging at the ground. They had found Bon Bon. They dug her out from the ground where she was buried alive and laid her out on the ground.

She was covered with cuts and scratches and dirt from her head to her hooves, but she was alive and mostly fine physically. Mentally... she'd probably never sleep soundly — or even just sleep — after getting eaten alive and spat out under some clearing.

Sharp Eye had questions to ask her but she had to be taken to the hospital first. The day had gone a lot better than what he had imagined.

Author's Note

24m jL

You said something bad about the princesses? 👁️