A reporter had once referred to Canterlot as “the safest city in all of Equestria”. Despite the pile of missing ponies files on Twilight's desk that might have objected, Twilight didn't think this was entirely inaccurate.

While the city had a thriving community of felons and more than a few things that went bump in the night, the force prided itself on modernism. The criminals might have ruled in their own little world, but it was the cops who had the gadgets and gizmos, the magic and the means.

But there were always weeds, weaknesses to be pruned. Dirty cops who accepted bribes, traitors whose morality could be flipped at a moment's notice, thieves hiding in plain sight. Twilight had been almost obsessive about getting rid of the weak links, trying to singlehandedly create the strongest and most trusted police force in Equestria. She wanted to fulfill the only dream Shining Armor had left behind.

Then she was forced out of Canterlot and dropped flank-first into Ponyville. A place that didn't need to be cleaned because it was hardly ever dirty. A place where a “mugging” was something that happened in crime films and the only thing being “murdered” was Twilight's patience. Ponyville didn't need a Twilight Sparkle or a Shining Armor. It needed hard workers like Applejack and friendly faces like Pinkie Pie.

But Twilight had brought Canterlot—all that filth, that corruption, that resentment—to Ponyville. She'd forced Ponyville to need her when she didn't need it. She'd created an unhealthy relationship. Twilight felt as if she was the abusive partner who'd brought all of her baggage from work into a once-peaceful home. However, she could fix it. She could fix all of this.

Twilight slid the bug across the map and frowned. She'd finally found a use for that map of Ponyville—rarely updated, but it wasn't like it needed to be—she'd stashed in her desk. She'd spread it out on the living room floor and placed the bug in the center of it. Tracking spells were rather tricky and not always reliable. The problem was zeroing in on a specific location with only a map for guidance.

Spike was still gone, but he'd sent Twilight two messages in the past hour. The first had been to ask if she wanted anything from Sunbean. The second was him telling her—at length for a change—exactly where he was. Twilight wanted to appreciate his efforts at keeping her mind untroubled during such a difficult time, but that would have required complete forgiveness. Spike was still trying to pretend everything was fine. But that deception had left a scar. Every time the concept of letting go popped into her head, she remembered how he'd lied to her, how he'd worried her, how he wasn't the same Spike she'd known in Canterlot because of those things.

Twilight hadn't replied to either of Spike's messages and he hadn't sent a third. He knew better than to pester her. But then again, maybe he didn't and he was just waiting for the right moment to hit her with a guilt trip. Twilight didn't know anymore. So much of her life had been twisted out of shape recently. Those familiar circles and squares she'd once called her reality could no longer fit into those molds.

She pressed her hoof down on the bug and moved it again. To the right? No, left and then up. Right again. Left, up, down, a bit to the right. Twilight bit her lip, her heart pounding as the seconds dragged on. Tracking spells were efficient in their own way, but they were also arduous. Twilight knew she didn't have much time. Eventually the masked pony would realize she was catching up to them.

The worst part of police work was waiting around and doing nothing. Twilight had been on a stakeout before. Four hours in front of a museum to catch the pony who'd been stealing paintings. Four long miserable hours just watching a silent building, nodding at the security guard as he did his rounds, eating donuts and drinking coffee. The caffeine helped, but only as long as it lasted. Then it was infrequent bathroom breaks—too much coffee—and trying to keep her mind active so she didn't doze off. This was before Spike and her were partnered up, so she'd had to endure some cop whose name she'd forgotten trying to strike up a conversation about turnips of all things. Four hours of pure mental torture only made bearable by the arrest Twilight and her fellow officer were able to make later that night.

There! Twilight moved the bug to its final position. She smiled triumphantly. This was it. There was no way in Tartarus she was wrong. Twilight could feel the invisible strings of the spell tugging at her hoof as it chased the signal.

Twilight stared at the map for a few seconds. She had no idea what she was about to find. That should have scared her, but there was a strange energy coursing through her entire body. She felt as if she was about to finally get some answers, finally meet her tormentor face-to-face. The masked pony would no longer be a phantom. They would be something real, something physical. Something solid and breakable. Something Twilight could fight.

She went into her bedroom and grabbed a camera, a dagger she kept in the drawer of her night stand, and her phone. She didn't normally carry weapons—unicorns hardly ever needed them—but she didn't want to be caught off-guard. The problem was that this masked pony was clever. Even if Twilight took them by surprise, there was no telling what kind of tricks they had at their disposal. Twilight had been under the impression that the masked pony didn't intend to kill her—at least not yet—but plans could change if she backed them into a corner.

She started to call Spike, but she stopped herself. It occurred to her that she'd been rather reckless when it came to communication. Twilight had assumed that the masked pony had a limit, but that bug under her desk had proven otherwise. Who was to say they hadn't tapped her phone somehow? No, Twilight couldn't afford to just give away her plans, even for safety purposes. Twilight needed to start thinking like a pony whose every move was being tracked.

Twilight wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. The note claimed she'd gone food shopping and implored Spike to give her a call if she wasn't back by a certain time. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best Twilight could do.

She wondered if she should try to contact her fellow officers. Incompetent back-up was safer than no back-up at all. She could have turned the whole thing into a raid instead of going solo. Safety in numbers.

Twilight shook her head. What in Tartarus was she thinking? She'd barely been a team player in Canterlot. No, there was no reason to drag more of her colleagues into this. None of them deserved that. This wasn't their fight. They hadn't signed up for this.

She quietly shut the door behind her. There was a good chance she might die, that her body might never be found. But it didn't matter. This was something Twilight needed to do alone.

Canterlot had once been known as the wine capital of Equestria. It had eventually been dethroned by Manehatten, but Twilight—a loyal citizen to the end—was of the opinion that Canterlot still made the best wine in Equestria. She wasn't exactly a wine lover, but her non-professional opinion surely counted for more than those snobs who bashed some of the city's best eating establishments and mocked her favorite donut place.

Canterlot wine had class and character. It was robust and charming. Before Manehatten snatched the coveted title, Canterlot wine was referred to as “the nectar of the princesses”. It was Princess Celestia's glowing endorsement that kept Twilight loyal to her own city's wine.

But looking at it from an outside perspective, she realized that every town and city thought they had the best everything. For example, Ponyville thought it had the best fine dining establishments in Equestria. Twilight wasn't sure where such a delusion came from, but the citizens seemed to believe it wholeheartedly. From what she'd seen of Ponyville, the town actually had only one fine dining establishment and the fanciest thing on the menu was the pasta salad.

Twilight pushed open the door with her hoof. She expected the hinges to creak, but it seemed to have been oiled recently. It opened silently, further masking Twilight's arrival. Perfect. If she was going to make this work, the element of surprise was crucial.

There weren't many abandoned buildings in Ponyville, but this was one of them. According to the rarely-updated map, the place had once been an eatery. It had been converted into a boutique, then into a sort of community center. But due to its location—it was near the edge of town, a place frequented mostly by rebellions teens—it had eventually been abandoned altogether. The walls were covered with graffiti and the floor was littered with candy wrappers.

Twilight pulled out her camera and started snapping pictures of the graffiti. It was mostly artistic renderings of occult symbols and “(name) was here”. Several couples had deemed their romance special enough to add their names to a specific wall. Twilight wondered if SH + RA or SD + R were still together. Were they even still in Ponyville? Or had they eloped, as young lovers always seemed to do in those cheesy romance novels Twilight had once read? Wherever they were, she hoped they'd gotten out of Ponyville while they could.

She lowered her camera and looked around. The place seemed empty, but Twilight wasn't fooled. Why oil the hinges of a door that was never going to be used? Either the masked pony was there or Twilight was about to stumble into a nest of evidence. Either way, she was going to win this round.

Twilight had expected her fear to flare up as soon as she crossed the threshold, but she was remarkably calm as she trotted further into the building. She felt unstoppable, even as worries nagged at her. What if there were multiple masked ponies and she was walking into an ambush? What if this entire building was filled with booby traps? What if she was being recorded by a hidden camera? What if the masked pony had rigged some kind of magical defense system and Twilight was seconds away from triggering it? But even as these reasonable questions peppered her mind, Twilight didn't stop. This was a showdown. A winner-takes-all battle of brain vs. brain.

The door of the back room was slightly ajar. The room beyond it seemed to be almost pitch black, save for what might have been a single lantern placed on the floor. Twilight involuntarily shuddered at the image in her head. There was something eerie about the idea. It reminded Twilight of the cults she'd dealt with in the past. No amount of experience lessened that feeling of dread when one stumbled across a site of occult worship. Sometimes it was just dumb teens playing around, but other times it was something much more sinister. Dark magic wasn't something to be taken lightly. Those who messed around with it never seemed to understand the forces they were invoking for the sake of petty revenge or notoriety.

Holding the dagger in her magic, Twilight thrust the door open. The sound of it banging against the wall nearly made her jump, but she kept herself steady. Steeling herself, Twilight charged into the room. She swung the dagger in an arc as she did so, a weak battle cry spilling from her mouth.

There was a pony standing on the opposite side of the room, their back to her. They were wearing a long black cloak, the hood pulled over their head and their Cutie Mark obscured. They seemed to be wearing the fox mask Twilight had heard so much about. The masked pony didn't move as Twilight came galloping into the room. They just stood there, staring at the opposite wall as if it was more important than a possible attacker.

Twilight stopped in her tracks. Frowning, she dropped her gaze to something she'd almost missed. It was less than an inch from her leg, about three or four inches off the ground. If she hadn't gathered her wits and actually paused, she would have galloped right into it. It was a single thin wire, almost invisible to the naked eye. Her heart pounding, Twilight followed the wire's path until her eyes fell upon a crude metal contraption. Explosives. Of course. Extremely simple in design, but dangerous nonetheless. Probably assembled by skilled hooves. Twilight was willing to bet that the resulting blast would have wiped this building and everything in it off the map. No survivors. If the masked pony went down, they were taking everything else with them. A split second to make a shield, less than a split second to realize what was happening. Twilight wouldn't bet on those odds.

She carefully stepped over the wire, her eyes still on the masked pony. Why were they just standing there? Was this yet another attempt at scaring or disarming her? A last minute effort to confuse and intimidate her with silence and mystery? If this was their biggest and best plan, Twilight wasn't afraid. She was angry. Twilight could feel the resentment rising inside of her as she approached them. She was finally going to unmask her nightmare.

Smirking, she placed the tip of the blade on the masked pony's back. She wanted them to be afraid. She wanted to see the complete terror in their eyes as they realized that they'd dug their own grave. This was what all of that scheming had led up to, where their path of vengeance had ultimately led them. Twilight had read a lot of detective novels when she was a filly. This was the part of the story where the bad guy accepted their defeat and the hero claimed their fear as an incorporeal trophy.

But then Twilight's smirk turned into a frown. She pressed the dagger in a little harder. Whatever was under the cloak, it didn't feel like fur. It felt far too solid, almost like plastic. Was the masked pony wearing some kind of armor under their clothes?

Her heart sinking, Twilight grabbed the cloak in her shaking hooves. In one swift motion that felt very much like a magic trick, she whipped it off and tossed it to the floor. The action reminded her of that infamous tablecloth trick she'd seen as a filly. The sleight of hoof she'd mistaken for magic. But it wasn't magic, was it? It was just a cheap parlor trick meant to dazzle the naive. Twilight knew what real magic was, what it felt like and what it looked like. But she also realized that she hadn't really been naive back then. She'd been hopeful. Those silly tricks were what Twilight had once wanted magic to be. Flashy, wonderful, awe-inducing. But there was nothing to that kind of magic. It was just smoke and mirrors. No heart, no lungs, no spirit.

A mannequin. A regular store mannequin, faceless and still. It was like the tablecloth trick. Hollow and disappointing. No heart, no lungs, no spirit.

Her face expressionless, Twilight picked up the mannequin with her magic and turned it around. She stared into the fox mask, her gaze looking past the mask and into the blank eyes. It looked like a prop. It was a prop. Twilight hadn't walked into an abandoned building. She'd walked onto a stage. Twilight was her own audience, the only one invited to watch the hilarious tale of a desperate detective stumbling over her own mind as she tried to solve the biggest case of their career. Cue laugh track.

Still expressionless, Twilight slammed the mannequin against a nearby wall. The sound of the impact seemed to reverberate through the entire building. She did it again, harder this time. Then again, even harder. Again. And again. And again. Her face still blank, her gaze fixated on the fox mask. On the seventh or eighth slam—Twilight wasn't keeping count—the mannequin's head detached from its neck and tumbled to the floor. The mask stayed firmly attached even as the head broke free.

Twilight threw the body aside and picked up the mannequin head. She stared at it for a moment, looking directly into its unseeing eyes as if it had a mind she could read.

“Go directly to Tartarus,” she said.

She tossed the head aside, her mind crowding with several obscene requests that mostly involved shoving Celestia's sun into unsuitable orifices.

Twilight turned her attention to the wall the mannequin had been staring at. She almost expected there to be an insulting message scrawled in marker. Something about how she was chasing shadows and she would be better off giving up. This wasn't a game anymore. This was a fucking circus and that masked pony was the ringmaster.

Mentally mapping the mannequin's precise line of sight, Twilight approached the blank wall and pressed her hoof against it. A small square of wall dropped away, revealing a secret compartment. Small and invisible to the naked eye. There was no way that had been there before. Given how well-concealed it was, it must have been meant for Twilight and Twilight alone. Her heartbeat increased at the thought. There was a certain perverse intimacy to the idea. This entire case felt like a sensual exchange of minds. Everything about it was intertwined with a twisted element of romance, almost like the masked pony was mocking the connection of two lovers. They knew Twilight so well, as if their bodies and minds occupied the same space.

Obsession. The masked pony was obsessed with Twilight. They knew her inside and out, could read her fears and insecurities as if they were alls he was. Was this love to the masked pony or was it hatred?

She reached into the compartment. Twilight realized a second too late—caught up in her thoughts—that it might be a booby trap. She stiffened, her hoof already inside. She expected to feel something sharp or to hear the muffled click preceding an explosion. At best, Twilight expected another note and maybe a photograph of Cadence. More cryptic evidence to add to the growing pile. But as she cautiously felt around, Twilight realized that the compartment only contained a small box. Skeptical, she reached inside with her magic and pulled it out.

The box looked old, but not too old. Judging by the wear, it must have been kept somewhere dark and lonely. A basement? The back of a closet? No stains or anything like that, but the sides were slightly caved in, as if something large had been placed on top of it. The box must have been in storage for quite some time. Maybe a few years. There had been something written on it at some point, but it had been removed. All that was left was a faded “G”.

Twilight considered. This couldn't be more photographs. Even if more existed, she'd already gotten the gist of it. No, that was impossible at this point. This masked pony didn't like to repeat themselves. But a sickening thought entered Twilight's head. What if these were pictures of Shining Armor? Not his corpse or anything gruesome like that, but more of the same images she'd been seeing. It would make sense. This masked pony seemed to be focused on the three of them—Cadence, Shining Armor, Twilight—as a triad, a complete package rather than three separate ponies. They seemed to be primarily focused on Twilight, but the other two completed the triangle.

Her hoof trembling, Twilight opened the box. For once, she wanted to be wrong. She no longer wanted to be the smartest pony in the room. She wanted—if only briefly—to feel as if her intellect had failed her. Twilight didn't think she could face a truth so harsh and confusing.

Her heart skipped a beat. No photographs. Praise the sun. Her morbid thoughts evaporated so abruptly that she nearly laughed out loud. She'd been mentally preparing for something devastating, something that would wreck her emotionally. But how does one prepare for a rush of fury, sadness, and guilt?

The box was filled with papers. Twilight picked one up and realized it was a letter. The hoofwriting was familiar to her, but only vaguely. She'd recently realized just how common it was for ponies—and dragons—to have two or three different types of hoofwriting. Keeping track of them all was a pain in the flank, so Twilight normally only committed a pony's primary hoofwriting—the type they used more often—to memory. The issue was further muddled by the fact that the masked pony was seemingly adept at copying the hoofwriting of others. Even if Twilight recognized it, that revelation didn't necessarily mean anything.

However, there was something about this hoofwriting that struck her as legitimate. Maybe it was the simple fact that the letters themselves looked to be old, maybe a few years older than this case. These were relics of a bygone time, not something recent. But who was to say if the masked pony had been planning this for months or years? On the other hoof, there was something oddly innocent about the letters. They felt genuine, even intimate.

Twilight skimmed the first letter. She was searching for a few relevant keywords, like “murder” or “mask”. Maybe even a mention of Spike or herself. But as her eyes frantically sought these confirmations of her worst fears, she realized that these weren't those kinds of letters.

She paused, frowning in puzzlement. Were these love letters? The language was a bit loose and it was hardly poetic, but the tone suggested something romantic. Another more thorough reading confirmed Twilight's question. These were most certainly love letters. The names and places had been carefully redacted, but the contents were unmistakable. The words themselves were soft and affectionate, sometimes teasing but always filled with need and want. It was almost disarmingly sappy.

She closed the box. What in the name of Tartarus? Everything up to this point had made perfect sense. Even the photographs had eventually fallen into some recognizable logic. But this? This was so detached from everything else the masked pony had done. They'd wanted Twilight to find these letters. They'd arranged it, had gone to great trouble to make sure she found this box and read those letters. They hadn't simply sent the box to her, like they'd done with the photographs. They'd led Twilight there for this one specific purpose. It was as if these letters meant more than anything else Twilight had found so far.

Twilight left the room in a hurry, carefully stepping over the wire as she exited. There was no time to waste. Twilight had a lot of reading to do.