A Tense Interrogation

SLAM!

Whoa. What happened? I can’t see.

I hear him moving.

Step. Step. STEP. Step. Step.

I stand frozen, shivering in the cool atmosphere. I scan my surroundings, squinting and blinking, trying to get a sense of this room I’ve been led into, but I might as well be blind in the pitch-black environment. From the distances of the hoofstep echoes around me, I can tell this is a small room, but that’s all I can infer.

“Miss, take a seat, please,” the gruff voice says.

I extend my hooves, wandering and swirling them around for anything physical. Nothing… until…

“AHH!”

My knee hit something, causing me and… whatever it is to fall over.

CLINK!

I massage my forehead, trying to alleviate the pain from the impact of the ground and this… metal?... thing I’m now leaning over. I give it a few prods. This shape. It can only mean one thing. It must be… a chair. I stand it back up and take a seat like I’m told.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” I ask.

Then, I instinctively shield my eyes from the sudden blinding white light from above, accompanied by a bang, illuminating the room. Well, to say it’s illuminating the room would be an overstatement. What’s visible now are only the metal table in front of me and on the other side, a silhouette of the stallion who brought me here.

“Good. Now, let’s begin,” he says.

“W-what’s going on? What’s this about? And do we need to be in such a serious place to discuss this?”

“Of course we do! This is no laughing matter! This case has been going on for weeks with seemingly no end. We need information.”

My forehooves start to tingle. “W-what kind of information do you need?”

“Why? Information regarding the incident from weeks ago, of course.”

“I-i-incident? W-what kind of incident?”

“Not just any kind of incident. THE incident. You were in Ponyville on its first day of winter, weren’t you?”

“Y-y-yes? And?”

“So, you must have noticed something going on at Cloudsdale from where you were, am I wrong?”

Ohhh, now I get it. I take a deep breath. “Yes, I did.”

“So, what do you know?”

“I-I don’t know anything! I never witnessed anything up close. I only saw it unfold from the ground!”

“So, you were on the ground the whole time? You didn’t fly around at all?”

“Well… after the incident, I flew up to the cloud house, but nowhere near the weather factory.”

“Describe the cloud house, please.”

I scrunch my eyebrow. “Uh… it’s kinda hard to explain. It’s tall, cloudy, has some pillars, some rainbow falls coming from it, a big rainbow shining from the roof , a cloud-rainbow symbol hanging above the entrance, and… that’s all I can say.”

“Oh, you mean THAT cloud house. Okay, so apparently, you couldn’t have been close enough to the scene to witness anything. How about I show you a few things that were found at the scene and ask if you recognize them, okay?”

I gulp. My heart ups in intensity. “O-okay.”

The colt lays a row of evidence bags on the table. “Recognize these?”

Gasp. No! It can’t be! This can’t be true! “Uh… yeah… I do recognize them.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Well… they do remind me of somepony I know, but I’m not sure. I might need to look into these a bit further.”

“I see. Well, how about this? I’ll let you hold onto these items to investigate. And then, you return with whatever information you have. How does that sound?”

“Uh… ye-yeah! Sure! I can do that!”

“Great! Here’s a copy of my notepad, and all the evidence bags. Don’t lose them.”

“O-okay,” my shaky voice says. “Bye!”