The door to the CCTV monitoring office opened, electronically, on its own, as the two of them approached. Dry-ice fog billowed out from the darkness like so much cigarette smoke.

From deeper in the room, by the bank of monitors that were the only source of light therein, a deep, sultry voice that sounded like a poor imitation of Adagio Dazzle’s trademark purr beckoned them from behind a tall swivel-chair. “I’ve been expecting you. Come in.”

“Why, thank you,” Adagio coolly replied.

“Oh– wow–”, the other dame coughed, letting slip the girlish squeak that was her genuine register. “You, uh, do a better fifties-femme-fatale than me.”

“It’s just my speaking voice, doll.”

There was an audible delay before the surveillant replied, “Well, I mean, still. You’d be great in a remake of… Sorry, I’m rambling.

“I’m Juniper Montage, but you can call me Officer,” she giggled. The chair swivelled around to reveal a rather unremarkable, plain-looking girl who must have been deeply aware of how bland she looked, judging by how attention-grabbingly she dressed. The security button-up was probably non-negotiable, but her glasses screamed ‘type-cast me as a secretary’ and the film reel scrunchies partitioning her deep teal hair into pigtails screamed ‘unimaginative movie nerd’. “Hi there, Sunset and– Oh my gosh, Sunset, have you been crying?”

“Oh thank Celestia you’re not. But– Yeah, I… I have. –But don’t worry about it! ”

“Um, okay…”

“So you’re a mall cop, now?”, Shimmer asked, in a blatant, artless attempt to distract from the obvious signs of her misery.

“Oh! That’s me! They needed someone who could watch TV for eight hours, and that’s basically what I do all day, anyways!” The smile she flashed was a certain kind of petty-devious, where she thought she was getting away with something, but that something wasn’t actually any sort of misdemeanor to begin with.

“How’s Rainbow? I saw you two go to the Shoe Boxer breakroom, but our cameras aren’t set up back there for privacy reasons.” – A fact about which she seemed a bit miffed.

Grimacing, Shimmer left it at, “She’s… Kinda having a rough one, too.”

“Phooey. And your new special friend…?”

“I am not her ‘special friend’,” denied Adagio ever so strenuously, “whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Oh, that’s just what Dashie told me.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“You sure? Her gaydar doesn’t lie.”

“Completely.”

Montage squinted at the siren, apparently investigating for herself, only to find something else in her visage. “Whoah, I gotta say, it’s not just the voice! You look just like you walked out of one of the classic Daring Do movies – like, from the Cabbage Leaf era – and into a Heated Debate.”

Adagio scowled, just a little, at the comparison. Heated Debate was Sonata’s store of choice for when she needed to dress in black, but Adagio and Aria had better taste than that.

But, hm. Cabbage Leaf had her run of the Daring Do role back in the sixties. Those were the good years of the franchise, before the senior Yearling passed the torch of writing the novels they were based on to her utter hack of a daughter.

Montage snapped her fingers, apparently not even noticing Adagio’s disdain. “Yeah, yeah, you look just like Gilded Idol! Gosh, the sixties were such a different time – back then, a virtually-unknown actress like Adagio Dazzle could just show up on set one day, demand to be cast as the villainess, get the role just like that,” – the siren’s anger-attuned ears detected a bit of buried envy, there – “set the model for casting for the next half-century, and just… disappear.”

To Adagio Dazzle’s left, Shimmer was staring at her, her jaw hanging slightly.

“Rumor has it,” Montage rambled on, “that she was absolutely terrible to work with. Just a huge flirt who kept getting the cast and crew to fight for her attention.” She shrugged. “I don’t know; could have just been a scapegoat-y excuse for terrible set conditions making everyone a little crazy.”

Shimmer’s stare had transformed into a glare.

Adagio played it cool, thoughtfully resting her fingers on her chin. “How did the line go?” Memories of co-stars flubbing their lines and forcing her to retread her perfect performance over and over again flooded back to her. There was a reason she didn’t stay in the business. Nevertheless, “Ah, yes– ‘No, Daring Do, I expect you to die.’”

Now it was the clueless movie buff’s turn to pick her jaw up out of her lap. “Wow! That’s a… spot-on impression!” A subtle twitch of the eyelid told Adagio she was starting to get the sense that something weird was happening. “Is there an impersonation contest or a convention or something going on…?”

Both Adagio and Shimmer shook their heads.

“Allow me to introduce myself.” One hand to her chest, she gave a grandiose bow. “Adagio Dazzle; occasionally an actress, always a star. You’re a fan of mine, I gather?”

“…N– No,” Montage stammered. “I mean, I mean– No, you can’t be her. You’d have to be in your nineties.”

“You could say the years have been kind to me.” Adagio clicked her tongue. “Until recently, at least.”

Montage turned to Shimmer, hoping she’d back her up, but all Shimmer had to give her was more head-shaking.

“…No way.” She stared dumbly at Adagio’s beautiful face – tried to blink the image away – but now that she’d seen the truth, it couldn’t be denied. She turned again to Shimmer. “Is this another magic thing? Are you going to tell me she found a crystal or something that made her immortal and gave her magical powers? And she did terrible things with them, but now she’s a good person?”

Adagio started with a chuckle, but the mirth was gone with that last part. “Your description was shockingly accurate until you got to the end. I am most certainly not ‘a good person’, nor do I particularly plan to be. Nevertheless: am I to assume by your familiarity with the subject of magic that Shimmer’s gang of thugs stole and destroyed your personal property, too?”

“Um, something like that, but really, it can’t be anywhere near as interesting as, um, your story.” She made a show of adjusting her gaudy glasses and straightening her posture. “But look, uh, if we don’t change the topic I’m gonna totally fangirl out, and that would be really embarrassing. I do wanna hear more, but… Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Shimmer slumped her shoulders. “Oh– Yeah, there is…”

In the interest of keeping things moving along (and, perhaps, to leverage the adoration of her fan), Adagio talked over Sunset. “We need to skim through the security footage for Shoe Boxer from the past couple hours. There’s been an incident, if you catch my drift.” Thankfully, there was nobody else in the office to suggest reporting this through the mundane, official channels.

But still, Montage hesitated, craning her head around to study the mural of monitors behind her. “I haven’t seen anybody going on a rampage today…”

Shimmer shook her head. “That’s not– We haven’t gotten to that point… –yet. We’re trying to deal with it before it turns into a– well– you know…”

“Another ‘Manday Mirror Mayhem at the Mall’,” Montage sighed. “Okay, I’ll help.”

The camera-copper scooted her rolling chair across the room to a laptop set up in the corner. After a quick dive into the files (or whatever it was she needed to do; computers were Aria’s area of expertise, not Adagio’s), she pulled up a quartet of hour-long videos.

“What are you looking for?” She set the playback speed to whatever four arrows meant and hit some button or other that made them all play at once.

“Let’s start the moment that Rainbow Dash puts her elbow on the counter and then runs off to the break room,” explained Shimmer.

“Alright, I’ll be watching for that. Could you guys keep an eye on the live feed and tell me if you see any funny business?” She pointed to the wall of televisions without turning away from the tiny laptop screen. “Please?”

“Of course,” Shimmer promised.

Likewise, from Adagio, “I might as well.”

The next few minutes passed dully and uneventfully. There were no armed robberies or savings-fueled riots to entertain the siren; the best she got to witness was some snot-nosed kid dropping his ice cream twice in that short span, to the irritation of his beleaguered mother.

Their vigil finally came to an end when Montage shouted, “Got it!”

Both investigators rushed over to her side, hovering over her shoulders. Closing all the other recordings, she full-screened the moment in question and played it back in slow-motion.

There Dash was, handing some sporty cyanette her receipt and a shipping-bag of shoes. The moment she was gone, Dash’s customer-service smile dropped to a bored frown in a flash. She leaned on the counter – and bam, there she was, rushing off-camera as though nature were calling.

“That’s it! Great!” Montage earned herself a hug from Shimmer.” Okay, so now we gotta rewind until we see whoever it was that did… whatever it was. –To that counter, while Dash was away.”

“On it!”

Being only several seconds prior, the precise moment in question was on-screen before Montage even enunciated her ‘t’.

Unfortunately, the only thing the camera could tell about their suspect was that she was a gal. The angle was terrible, keeping her face out of view, as well as whatever she used to get the counter wet. She had on a ratty gray hoodie that kept her hair hidden, and the whole ensemble was too bulky to get much of an idea of her build.

And yet.

– And yet! –

There was something very familiar about her sullen slouch, about the way she stomped as she walked away from the trap she planted. Adagio didn’t like it one bit; she had a nagging feeling about her. Nevertheless, she asked, “Have you seen this individual on-camera before, Montage?”

“I think so!” Quickly, she opened another video. There, this hooded culprit was, loitering outside the food court. “She was there for a while. I figured she was waiting on someone.”

“Yeah, she was waiting on me to get off work so she could give me– crying poison, I guess!”

Adagio put a hand on Montage’s shoulder and instructed her, with the utmost gravity and clarity, “Show me where she entered the building.”

That took a few tense minutes of skimming on Montage’s part, during which time Adagio loomed over her like a dragon, tapping her fingers impatiently on her sleeve. Finally, she settled on a single still frame that only served to deepen Adagio’s frown: hands in her hoodie pockets and face turned away, the culprit was caught mid-shouldering-open the glass door.

“…Is that the Astradoes you took me to?”, asked Shimmer, pointing to part of a blurry green sign hanging near the entryway.

“It is,” Adagio stated, through gritted teeth. She walked back over to the wall of live-streams. “Officer Montage, do these cameras show the parking lot, too?”

“They sure do!” She gestured in a circle; the relevant monitors formed a ring around the interior shots.

It took Adagio only a few moments to see just what she needed to see: one familiar car, blanketed under fresh snow.

“She’s still here,” she determined. “Find her.”

Montage shot upright, muscling the investigators out of the way. Her eyes darted and raced like sailfish across the screens. “Found her! She’s–”

“–That’s… the door to this room,” Shimmer observed.

The blurry little figure on the screen, who’d been leaning casually against the wall up to this point, suddenly took off and bolted.

Adagio’s blood ran cold. “…Oh, you dam-rutting whorse-daughter,” she spat, making Shimmer blush like a bonfire and Montage just stare at her, confused. “Follow me, Shimmer, and hoof it,” – she was already halfway out the door – “You’re going to stop me from killing that slimy little eel.”

Author's Note

It's pretty obvious who the culprit is, but this was really only a little bit about the mystery.

Juniper Montage is... apparently really slept on. Prior to me uploading this, she's only got 70 fics on Fimfiction credited to her.
Granted, she doesn't have a whole lot of personality in the show, but that's certainly never stopped me from pulling one out of my ass and assigning it to a girl before.