Zipline slowly regained consciousness. The first sensation that crossed his mind was cold: he was freezing. He started shivering even before he opened his eyes to greet semi-darkness, shafts of sunlight peeking in through gaps in rotting wood walls and a thatched roof. He was inside some kind of old shed. Groaning, he raised himself up to a sitting position and looked up. How did I get here? he asked himself. The last thing I remember...

He shook his head. It couldn't be; Slenderpony wasn't real, he was just a legend.

In any case, it was time to get out of here. Getting to his hooves, he looked around and saw a door at the other end of the shed. He quickly walked forward and opened it, causing a long squeak of hinges that were in need of an oiling. Stepping out, he saw that it was early morning, snow from last night shining in the sun. All around him were bare trees: he guessed it was an orchard, seeing as it was too thinly spread to be a forest.

Shivering as he tried to determine what to do next, he heard voices calling his name. Familiar voices.

"Zipline!"

"Zipline! Can you hear us?"

"Over here!" he shouted, waving his hoof at the two figures he spotted flying overhead. Hearing him, Twilight and Flash flew down to land in front of him, looking immensely relieved.

"There you are! Everypony's been looking all over for you!" Twilight said. "What are you doing inside Applejack's old shed?"

"I'm at Sweet Apple Acres?" Zipline said in disbelief: he was clear on the other side of town! "How'd I...what happened?"

"We should be asking you that, mate," a voice said. Zipline looked up to see a stallion running towards them. He had a chocolate brown coat, gray eyes, scruffy black mane and tail, and was wearing a green pocketed vest and a charcoal gray trilby. On his flanks was the image of a magnifying glass.

"Phillip Finder, detective," he introduced himself. "What happened last night?"

"I don't know," Zipline said. "I woke up last night because something was tapping against the door, and I went outside and saw..."

The three of them looked at him expectantly. Zipline hesitated, glancing back inside the shed. They might think I'm crazy...what do I tell them?

"I saw...something...and when I woke up, I was in there."

"You saw 'something?'" Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean something?"

"I...don't know," Zipline said, finding it suddenly difficult to make eye contact with her.

Phillip stepped around Zipline and walked inside the shed. "Zipline, we found this on your door," Flash said, reaching into his saddlebag and taking out a paper. It was the drawing that Zipline had seen on the door last night. "Is there something you're not telling us?" Flash asked.

Zipline felt his throat go dry, staring at the paper with a confusing mixture of relief, shock and horror. He knew what he had seen; the image of the faceless head staring down at him through the winter fog still sent shivers down his spine. And the paper proved that he hadn't imagined that, at least. That meant that the monster might have been real, too. But would they believe him?

At that moment, Phillip's voice came from inside the shed. "We have a problem."

The three ponies headed back inside and saw Phillip bending over something in the corner of the shed. Something that made all three ponies gasp in shock upon seeing it.

The body of a pegasus lay on it's side, his dark yellow fur bleached white and purple on the side lying on the ground from the stagnant blood being pulled down by gravity. His blue eyes were clouded over, his face frozen in an expression of terror, mouth hanging open in a silent scream. He had a black mane and tail and a cutie mark of an arrow-shaped cloud.

"I...who..." Zipline sputtered in shock, horrified; had he spent the night in an abandoned shed with a dead body? How had he died? Was that thing involved?

"Do any of you recognize him?" Phillip said, already examining the body. All three ponies shook their heads.

"It was Slenderpony," Zipline blurted, barely knowing what he was saying, his shock and fear taking over. "Slenderpony killed him, and he brought me here."

Flash, Twilight and Phillip all looked at one another. "Zipline, I think you should come with us," Twilight said gently, turning to lead him away.

"Flash, go to the hospital and get Dr. Horse here ASAP," Phillip said quietly. "Then I want you to interview Zipline and get what you can out of him."

"Yes, sir," Flash said, following Twilight and Zipline as they exited the shed. Phillip bent back over the body.

So what happened to you, mate? he silently asked the cadaver. He tested the corpse's limbs, noting that rigor mortis and lividity had fully set in. No sign of any external trauma. He examined the horseshoes and found traces of dirt. That doesn't look like it came from around here. Taking out a pocketknife and flicking open a small blade, he carefully scraped a sample into a plastic evidence bag.

That's when he noticed there was something in the body's mouth. Taking out a pair of tweezers, he gently extracted a balled-up piece of paper from the frozen jaw and opened it up. The crinkled paper held a circle with a large X through it—the same symbol he'd seen on the door of Zipline's home—and the words "HE WILL FIND YOU" in block letters.

A cawing of a raven from outside made Phillip look up in surprise, his heart rate suddenly accelerating and his skin tingling like it wanted to crawl right off him. He glanced at the door, half-expecting somepony to be standing there, watching him.

What's wrong with me? he asked himself. Why am I so jumpy?

Shaking it off, he examined the body for more clues, but found nothing else of interest. Standing outside the shed to wait for Dr. Horse, he considered the questions: who was the dead pony? How'd he die? How'd he and Zipline end up in a shed in Sweet Apple Acres?

And why did this feel...familiar?

"...and when I woke up, I was in the shed," Zipline said, staring into his cup of tea like he might find some answers in the dark brown liquid. Rain Breeze sat by his side on a cushioned couch in a sitting room in the Friendship Castle.

Flash, Twilight and Spike sat opposite them, Twilight taking extensive notes with a quill and scroll.

"Dear, are you sure you're all right?" Rain Breeze said softly, tenderly touching his shoulder.

"No," Zipline said. "No, I'm not all right. That...thing...came after me. It chose me."

"Don't worry, Zipline," Twilight said. "It's probably just some creep in a costume trying to play a sick joke."

"Do you have any enemies that you know of?" Flash asked. "Maybe somepony in the Guard or one of your patients?"

Zipline and Rain Breeze both shook their heads. "I had my rivals, sure, but no enemies," Zipline said.

"It couldn't be one of my patients," Rain Breeze said.

Twilight frowned as she looked over her notes from the interview. "Is there anything else?"

"Oh, yes," Zipline said. "When I was woken up by the tapping, I noticed that the bedroom door was open, but I'm sure that it was closed when I went to sleep."

"Maybe Rain Breeze opened it?"

"No, I was never up last night and all the doors and windows were locked!" Rain Breeze said in alarm. "Ohmygosh, that thing was in our house! I'll have to change the locks, find a better security system, coordinate a neighborhood watch...Scootaloo! What if it had went into Scootaloo's room?!"

"Rain Breeze, calm down," Twilight said reassuringly. "There's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this, I'm sure."

She didn't seem to understand just how hollow those words sounded to her companions. How could she understand? It hadn't been she who woke up with her husband vanished from her side; it hadn't been she who had spent the night in a shed with a corpse. It hadn't been she who had seen it.

"Don't worry," Flash said, reaching out to Zipline and touching his shoulder. "You have my word as a Guard we will get to the bottom of this."

"Thank you, sir," Zipline said.

"If either of you think of anything else, don't hesitate to contact us," Flash said.

"Will do," Zipline said as he and a still-fretting Rain Breeze stepped out of the castle and back out into Ponyville. "It's okay, dear," Zipline said, pulling his wife close with a wing. "We're all okay, and I'm not scared of some creep."

"Well, I am," Rain Breeze said softly.

As the couple walked down the snowy street, they couldn't help but notice something odd. On a day such as this, in a town like Ponyville, one would normally find several ponies walking the street: friends and families going for visits, shoppers heading for stores, foals and fillies out playing in the snow.

But now, the streets were silent and devoid of ponies. Every house had it's curtains drawn and lights dimmed. Flickers of movement in the corners of their eyes told them that they were being furtively watched by ponies who regarded them with fear, quickly ducking back behind cover when they turned to look. Rain Breeze was reminded of what the town used to be like when Zecora came to visit...only this time, she was seeing it from Zecora's eyes.

Fear began to change into anger. It wasn't fair! They'd done nothing wrong! They didn't deserve this!

Why did this happen to them?

Twilight pulled out a chalkboard and chalk. "All right, let's put down everything we know. What do we know?"

"Not much," Flash said.

"We know that there's a monster creeping around!" Spike said, finally allowing himself to release the building panic that he'd been fostering since the interview.

Twilight sighed. "Spike, there is no such thing as a Slenderpony."

"How can you be sure of that?" Spike asked.

"Because there just can't be," Twilight said, levitating some chalk. "Now, we need to answer who, what, where, when, why and how. The first four are easy enough," she said as she made notes on the chalkboard underneath the titular questions. "But the why stumps me. Why kidnap somepony and just leave them in a shed?"

"It could be a hoax," Flash said. "Maybe they're trying to get some attention."

Twilight gasped in shock as she turned to him. "I have to consider every possibility, Twilight," Flash said.

"They're the victims in this!" Twilight responded.

"Well, excuse me for doing my job, your Highness!" Flash replied rather sharply. Twilight turned back to the board, scowling. A silence colder and denser than the snow outside formed between them.

"So...I'll go...organize your notes for you," Spike said, quickly backing out of the room. Before doing anything else, he made a quick check of the castle doors and windows to make sure they were all secured and resolved to dig through his comic collection to see if he could find anything on Slenderpony.

He knew better than anyone that Twilight could be wrong, and he was almost certain she was wrong this time. He was out there. Waiting. Watching.

Author's Notes:

A dead body and a faceless monster. What could be the reason?