The next day, Applejack was back on the street. Ticketing cars parked at expired meters. And every time she placed a citation on a windshield, she received a heaping helping of yelling from everyone she ticketed.
"I was thirty seconds over!"
"Ugh! Yeah, you're a real hero, lady!"
"My mommy says she wishes you were dead,"
"Uncool! My tax dollars pay your salary!"
Applejack got to her cart and turned the key, but the engine wouldn't start. Then she banged her head against the steering wheel.
"I am a real cop," she mumbled weakly. "I am a real cop. I am a real cop."
"Hey, hey, hey!" called a frantic woman running toward her. She pounded on the cart window. "You, officer!"
"Ma'am, if you have a complaint-" Applejack responded mechanically.
"Are you kidding me?" the woman shouted. "My shop! It was just robbed! Look! He's getting away!"
Applejack turned and spotted a man in a colorful mishmash outfit—a brown suit coat, leather gloves (the left one white, the right one brown), slacks (the left leg tan, the right leg green), and leather shoes (the left one brown, and the right one white)—running down the street, carrying a duffel bag of stolen goods.
"Well, are you a cop or not?" the florist asked.
"Oh, yes! Yes! Don't worry, ma'am! I've got this!"
Applejack jumped out of her cart and chased after the thief, ripping off her meter maid vest.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Stop in the name of the law!"
"Catch me if you can, cowgirl!" shouted the thief.
The thief led her into the crowded Central Plaza, dodging citizens and vehicles along the way.
McHale screeched up in his patrol car.
"Coming through!" the thief shouted.
"This is Sergeant McHale," he said into his radio. "O'Hara and I have got a 10-31 in progress."
"I got dibs!" Applejack shouted as she slid across the hood of McHale's car. "Officer Smith. I am in pursuit! Yee-haw!"
She chased after the thief in the mismatched suit, heading for the giant borough of Dragontown. He lobbed the bag over the gate, swooped through the entrance, and caught the bag as it landed on the other side.
"Freeze!" Applejack yelled forcefully as she continued to follow him.
McHale and O'Hara, who had joined in the chase, stopped at the gate.
"Hey, meter maid!" McHale shouted. "Wait for the real cops!"
Ignoring him, Applejack continued down the street.
Dragontown was packed with giant citizens. Applejack felt like an ant compared to them.
"This must be how the Breezies feel," she thought.
Down the street, a bus swerved to avoid hitting the thief. Applejack watched as he scaled up the side of a building and leapt onto the roof of a moving train!
"Bon voyage-e, flat foot!" he called behind him.
But Applejack wasn't about to give up. She ran even faster, until she caught up with him and pushed him off the train. Dragons and other hybrids stopped and stared as Applejack and the thief barreled through their midst.
"Stop right there!"
"Have a donut, copper!" the thief yelled as he yanked a huge donut sign from the front of a shop.
He flung it at Applejack, but it missed and bounced toward some lady Dragon hybrids coming out of a department store.
"Oh, my gosh. Did you see those leopard print panties?" said a fashionable she-dragon to her blue-haired friend.
They saw the donut bouncing toward them and screamed in terror.
A second before it hit them, Applejack moved in front of the donut and stopped it. She turned to the one she-dragon that hadn't fled. The one with the blue hair. She was wearing khaki chino pants, a white T-shirt and a blue oxford shirt open over it.
"I love your hair," Applejack said.
"Uh... thanks? I think," the she-dragon replied, not sure how to react.
Out of the corner of her eye, Applejack noticed that the thief was about to get away. As he went to retrieve his bag, she threw the giant donut over his head and around his body, trapping him inside.
Later, in the MPD lobby, Pinkie Pie was talking to a worried mother.
"I'm sorry, but you and your daughter are going to have to be patient and wait in line just like everyone else, Mrs. Shy. Okay?"
Suddenly, a thief-carrying donut bounced through the front door of the building and rolled through the lobby until it hit the dispatcher's desk, Pinkie Pie's desk, where it landed like a spinning top.
"Book him on shoplifting!" Applejack exclaimed.
"Smith!" Chief Iron Will shouted, pointing to his office.
Iron Will's office was plain, with a veneered desk, six old file cabinets in an imperfect line against the wall under an analog clock, and sloppy gloss paint all over the place.
Basic but neat.
The only thing that remotely stood out was a framed photograph on the corner of the desk. It showed Iron Will as a stronger, younger man, standing, smiling and shaking hands with another young man. An old picture, maybe ten or more years old. The other man was attractive in a pale, blond-haired, strong-featured way.
Vladimir Blueblood.
The day he appointed Iron Will the Chief of Police.
Iron Will sat down behind his desk. And like a kid in the principal's office, Applejack sat in the visitor chair across from him as he reviewed the report in front of him.
"Abandoning your post, inciting a panic, reckless endangerment of the public, and complete and total disregard for their safety... However, to be fair, you did manage to stop a known criminal from stealing two dozen moldy onions," he said, holding up the bag that Applejack had confiscated from the crook she had stopped—John Q. "Discord" de Prancie.
"I hate to disagree with ya, sir, but those aren't onions. Those are a Scrophulariaceae varietal called Antirrhinum majus. They're a Class-C botanical, sir. I grew up in a family where plant husbandry was kind of-"
"Shut your face or I will erase!" Iron Will shouted.
"Sir, I got the bad guy. That's my job,"
"No," Iron Will stated. "Your job description, as a meter maid, is to put tickets on illegally parked vehicles."
The phone on Iron Will's desk beeped and Pinkie Pie's voice came over the intercom.
"Chief, Mrs. Shy and her daughter are here to see you again,"
"Not now," Iron Will answered.
"Okay, I didn't know if you wanted to take it this time because they seem really upset-"
"Not! Now!"
"Sir," Applejack began again. "I don't want to be a meter maid. I want to be a real cop."
"Do you think anyone at City Hall, the Mayor, the District Attorney, or even my boss, the Commissioner, do you think any of them asked what I wanted when they assigned you to me?" he retorted. "Life is not some cartoon musical where you sing a song or two and your insipid dreams magically come true! Now, I am going to say this only once, and as nice as I possibly can... Please. Drop. It!"
Just then, the door to his office opened and two women barged in with Pinkie Pie trailing behind.
The first one was of medium height, slim, and timid. She wore eyeglasses with large frames so that her eyes could be clearly seen. Her eyes looked kind, but worried. Her hands were small, and her red hair was high and curled. She wore a white collared shirt under a blue sweater vest, with white pants and heeled shoes, a necklace of yellow pearls with matching earrings, and a diamond wedding ring.
The other woman was extremely petite in comparison. She was about three inches shorter, perhaps fifteen pounds lighter, and twenty-four or twenty-five years old. She had longer, straight, almost pink hair that framed her face and her skin was very pale. She had a high forehead and enormous eyes. Her eyes were moderate cyan and looked like twin pools of terror and tragedy, and under them was a small nose and a small mouth. She was wearing a white tank top with a green pleated skirt. She had no rings on her fingers or polish on her nails. No makeup and no jewelry, except for a butterfly barrette in her hair. There was nothing in her face. Just fear, shyness, and loneliness.
As a pair, both were well groomed, well endowed, fragrant, and feminine as Tartarus.
"Chief Iron Will," the younger woman begged, "just five minutes of your time. Please!"
Her voice matched her physique: small and delicate.
"I'm sorry, sir," Pinkie panted. "I tried to stop them. They're surprisingly quick... I really need to go sit down."
Pinkie closed the door behind her as she left.
"Ladies, I've already told you, we're doing everything we can," Iron Will said as he got up from his chair.
"My husband has been missing for ten days!" the older woman said. She reached into her purse, pulled out a photograph and held it up for him to see. "His name is Stratus Shy."
"Yes, I know,"
"He's a retired factory worker. This is one of our two beautiful children," she said, motioning to the younger woman. "He wouldn't just disappear."
"Mrs. Shy, our detectives are very busy,"
"There's got to be somebody, anybody, to find my papa," the younger woman pleaded.
Iron Will tried to calm Mrs. Shy and her daughter down, but nothing worked. They kept going on about their concern over their husband/father's disappearance.
"Fluttershy-" the Chief began.
"I will find him," Applejack volunteered.
"Oh, thank you!" Mrs. Shy sighed as she and her daughter wrapped their arms tightly around Applejack. "Bless you, Officer."
Applejack looked at Chief Iron Will, who growled.
"Take this," Fluttershy said, giving Applejack the photograph. "Find my papa. Bring him home to us."
Applejack nodded and Chief Iron Will cleared his throat.
"Mrs. Shy, if you and your daughter could please step outside for a minute," he said, ushering them out.
"Of course," Mrs. Shy said. "Thank you both so much."
"One minute,"
Iron Will closed the door and turned to Applejack. He looked like he was about to explode.
"You. Are. Fired!"
"What? Why?"
"Insubordination! On top of everything else that I've already mentioned!" he replied. "Now, I am going to open this door and you are going to tell those two women that you are a former officer, a former meter maid, with delusions of grandeur, who will not be taking this case!"
Iron Will opened the door and there was Assistant Mayor Inkwell, hugging Mrs. Shy and Fluttershy.
"I've just heard that Officer Smith has taken these ladies' case," she said.
"Assistant Mayor Inkwell, what're you doing here?" Iron Will asked, quite shocked, as he forced a smile.
"The Mortal Inclusion Initiative is really starting to pay off," Inkwell chuckled as she pulled out her phone and started texting. "Mayor Blueblood is gonna be so jazzed!"
"No, no, don't tell the Mayor just yet," Iron Will protested.
"And sent. And that's done. Well, I'd say the case is in good hands," Inkwell said as she approached Applejack. "We really need to watch out for each other, don't we? Just call me if you ever need anything, okay? You've always got a friend at City Hall, AJ. All right, bye-bye."
"Thank you," Applejack called after her.
Iron Will closed the door again. He sighed and slumped in exasperation.
"I will give you 48 hours," he said softly. "That's two days to find Stratus Shy. But! If you strike out, you resign."
Applejack thought for a moment and then nodded.
"Okay. Deal!"
"Splendid. Pie will give you the complete case file,"
Excited, Applejack rushed to the front desk.
"Pinkie! Chief Iron Will said you got a file for me,"
"Yes! Good for you, by the way,"
Pinkie opened a drawer in the file cabinet behind her desk, reached in, and pulled out a folder.
"There you go. One missing 52-year-old retired factory worker, husband, and father of two," she stated.
Applejack opened the file folder and her mouth fell open. All it consisted of was a single sheet of paper with a basic description of Mr. Shy: his name, height, weight, hair color, eye color, address, and occupation.
"That's it?" she asked in disbelief.
"Yikes!" Pinkie exclaimed. "That is the single, smallest case file I have ever seen! No leads, no witnesses, and you're not in the computer system yet, so no resources! Oh, I hope you didn't stake your career on solving this one... You didn't, did you?"
Applejack didn't respond.
"You did," Pinkie groaned as she took a bite of her cupcake and sprinkles landed on the picture inside the file.
"Last known sighting," Applejack said, looking at the photo after brushing the sprinkles off.
The picture was from a traffic camera and showed Mr. Shy on the street.
As AJ looked at the photo, Pinkie Pie stood beside her, slurping a bottle of soda through a straw.
"Can I borrow that?" Applejack asked as she grabbed the empty bottle. "Thanks."
Using the bottle like a microscope, Applejack looked through it and saw Mr. Shy holding a familiar-looking object.
"A popsicle," Applejack said.
"The murder weapon," Pinkie breathed.
"Get your popsicle,"
"Yeah! I'm sorry... What does, what does that mean?"
"It means... I have a lead,"