Chapter Text
“No, no, Hitch, that’s all wrong!”
Hitch, being seven, threw the pieces to the side.
“How would you do it, then, you, you– unicorn!” It wasn’t the best insult he could throw at her, but it was the best he could think of at that time. Sunny looked like he’d just said a bad word, though.
She started tearing up and sniffling wildly and eventually, she simply screamed. Hoofbeats pounded up the stairs to them, revealing Argyle, who immediately galloped over to his daughter. He saved a withering glare for Hitch, though!
“What happened?” he said soothingly, to which Sunny simply sobbed harder.
“I called her a unicorn. As an insult. I’m sorry, sir.” Hitch was saved by the doorbell, it seemed, as it rang out through the house. Argyle gave him one last glare as he plodded out of the room and into his mother’s waiting hooves.
Goodness. Hitch had a long way to go if he wanted to be the best sheriff Maretime Bay had ever seen.
—----------------—
“Sunny Starscout! Stop in the name of the law!”
Sunny simply giggles and skates faster. She has a job to do, after all, and damn her if her old friend, no matter his good intentions, is going to get in the way. Someone has to convince all these ponies that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and it certainly isn’t Hitch.
Some shadow of doubt passes over her face for but a split second, but she shakes it off. It must be nothing to worry about. She has a duty to Equestria.
“Sunny!” Hitch throws himself at Sunny, forcing her to stop to avoid running over her friend. No matter how annoying he may be now that he’s sheriff, he’s still Sunny’s friend. If she didn’t practice what she preached, well. That would be a problem.
“Hitch,” Sunny says coolly. “How are you today?” It takes him a moment to respond.
“I am not… that hardly matters! You are going to sabotage the Canterlogic show today, like you do every year, and it is my duty to stop you!” Sunny rolls her eyes and Hich just about explodes. “Sunny Starscout, you are under arrest!”
“Hmm… nope!” Sunny has, over the course of the last few minutes, been loosening the straps on her harness, and she uses the lack of added weight to zip through the streets and collect her plans.
No doubt the back door will be guarded from two years ago. There must be some other way she can get in, but she can’t think of it right now.
Maybe it’s time to end this whole debacle, says a little voice at the back of her head. Lay low for a few years, make everyone think you’ve stopped, then hit them with the biggest presentation ever. Sunny has to admit, it’s the perfect idea. The things she’d put together for this year were very last minute and looked the part.
It’s decided, Sunny thinks. She’ll lay low. She can do that.
Right?
“Hitch Trailblazer! What do you think of Canterlogic’s newest products?”
“Sheriff Hitch! What can you tell us about the incident outside town last week?”
“Mr. Trailblazer!” and a thousand other monikers, a million other names. A billion questions.
Hitch had always hated the flash of cameras. He’d always been afraid that they’d see through him, see to his secrets, see behind the careful facade he placed like a mask over his features. In hindsight, maybe he should have chosen a job that didn’t put him in the way of lenses as much.
The sheriff’s office door creaks slightly when he shoves it open. Behind it lies an empty, soulless place that Hitch can’t be himself inside, but it’s a welcome respite for now. Here, he can relax for a moment, even if the reporters immediately begin to pound on the glass with horrible, prying hooves.
“I will not be answering questions right now,” he says carefully when they finally get him to poke his head outside. “You may direct them to the suggestion box.” He points to the trash can located outside.
“Hitch!”
“Sheriff!”
“Hitch!”
Hitch isn’t listening anymore. He’s taking refuge behind his desk and powering up his computer, he’s beginning to type slowly, he’s spilling himself into this random document.
No matter how much he despises this place, he has to admit, it’s a lot more secure than his laptop at home. It’s the only place he can confidently express himself, even if it isn’t outwardly. It’s getting things down on (admittedly virtual) paper that he’d be afraid to say out loud normally.
It’s wonderful. Here, he can write down his thoughts, whether they be man, that stallion that just moved in next door, am I right? or maybe Sunny’s right. Incriminating stuff, and a lot of it, but he’d be damned if someone could stay out of the built-in prison long enough to hack the secure computer he’s using.
The reporters would have a field day. They already do with his frequent outings with his mare friends (emphasis on the space), trying to find out if she’s the ‘marefriend of the week’, and he thinks he’d probably be driven out of town if they found what’s spelled out before him.
But that won’t happen.
Right?
“Hitch! Sheriff!”
Hitch’s attention snaps outside to where the reporters no longer stand, beating the ground beneath their hooves, and his perfect view of a pony he’s never seen before. Screams are echoing through the square.
Long cerulean hair, the color of the sea that borders the horizon behind her, flows down her shoulders and almost to the ground beneath her, framing her horn and ears quite nicely.
Horn?
Thinking at the speed of light, Hitch decides that the best way to capture this unruly creature is to sneak up on her, but somepony presses the alarm button conveniently located outside the sheriff’s office. Immediately, the streets become deadly, now littered with unicorn traps, but before Hitch can effectively take the poor mare into custody, somepony (cough cough Sunny) spirits her away. She’s gone as quickly as she appeared, but Hitch doesn’t really care about that. He just wants to get her out of here for her own safety.
Despite her… unicornism, Hitch feels a responsibility to her, feels like he owes it to her to make it out of Maretime Bay alive.
Maybe it’s the way she seems so much kinder than the typical unicorn one could find on the various advertisements for movies outside the theater, maybe it’s the way she’s the first unicorn he’s ever seen in person, maybe it’s the lesbian cuff that had been wrapped around her front right hoof. Whichever one it is, he has to get her out of here before Phyllis Cloverleaf has a chance to test her shiny new unicorn traps.
Hitch knows where Sunny will take her: her residence, an old lighthouse on the edge of town. He decides immediately that he can’t take any weapons. It’ll just scare her away, and God knows what Sunny will do if he comes with weaponry.
That and all of his tech is designed and produced by Canterlogic, and he’s never been the most trusting stallion in the world to big companies. Phyllis has definitely gone overboard in the years since she took over the company.
The trek to the Starscout lighthouse is mercifully short but littered with danger in the form of unicorn traps and random civilians. He’s lost count of how many times he had to reassure someone that he’d get her out, that he was going to apprehend the intruder. The sooner she was out of here, the better.
He found his mind wandering as he turned onto the gravel road that led to the lighthouse. Maybe that unicorn is his ticket out of here for a while, a chance to get away from the cameras and the constant expectations. Who knows, maybe he’ll finally find that special place. That special someone. It’s worth a shot.
“Sunny?” he calls after a few minutes of simply knocking on the door. He can see them inside, moving around. “Sunny, open up. I just want to talk.” Yeah, like she’ll believe that.
She did, apparently, as is evidenced by the way she opens the door tentatively and pokes her snout out.
“No.” She almost manages to close the door, but Hitch shoves his hoof in.
“Sunny, it’s important. All I want is to get her out of here.” He hopes she knows what he means. “Not just for our own safety, but for hers. She’ll likely be killed by Phyllis if she stays much longer, and if she’s a spy of some kind, that could mean war. I know I go along with Phyllis and her crazy schemes most of the time, but… it’s my duty as a sheriff and it’s your duty as… someone who obviously cares about her community.”
Sunny takes the liberty of sticking the rest of her neck outside the door. Hitch is reminded, briefly, of a turtle.
“Why? Why do you, Hitch Trailblazer, sheriff to the town of Maretime Bay, want this enough to risk your career?”
Oh, right. He forgot about that part.
“Maybe I want to be the one to escort her back to wherever she came from,” he says carefully. “After all, we’re pretty much stuck here. I’m pretty much stuck here. This could be my one chance to, you know, see the world. Get to know people. Find where I belong.”
“Find yourself a nice mare?” says Sunny suspiciously. Internally, Hitch breathes a sigh of relief. She doesn’t know. She can’t know. “Or stallion,” she adds. “I don’t judge. That’s cool, if that’s… I mean.”
Hitch sighs. “May I come in?”
Sunny narrows her eyes suspiciously, but Hitch is prepared. Slowly, he begins to spin in a circle to show her he has no weapons, no devices. Just himself and his badge. Carefully, Sunny cracks the door open and allows just enough space for Hitch to squeeze inside, then slams the door shut behind him.
“I’m alone, Sunny. No weapons. Nothing.” Hitch steps in something rather squishy and decides he doesn’t want to think about what it might be.
It’s a can of beans. Not that it matters, or that Hitch looked. (He did. He totally looked.) The unicorn has some bean juice coating the tip of her horn, so it’s safe to assume she used it to open the can. Hitch tries and fails to not shudder in mild disgust.
“Hello! Ooh, shiny,” says the unicorn. Hitch very much minds how close she is to him, but he tries to ignore it. “My name’s Izzy Moonbow. What’s yours?” Hitch answers absently, mind instead choosing to focus on her name. Did all unicorns have weird names? “Huh. That’s a cool name.”
“Thanks,” he says.
The unicorn– Izzy– doesn’t respond. Instead, she trots lightly around the room, picking up random objects (with her hooves , mind you; like an earth pony would. Izzy is a unicorn and therefore should be using her horn.) and marveling at them. Hitch blocks her out and turns to Sunny.
“Why isn’t she using her magic?”
Sunny shrugs. “She claims she doesn’t have any.”
“None of us do,” Izzy says nonchalantly. “We all lost it a few decades ago. I wasn’t even born! That’s why I came here. I thought that maybe the earth ponies could help.” She sets down the toaster she was carefully examining. “I got this–” She produces a folded-up scrap of paper from the depths of God knows where and unfolds it. It’s a child’s drawing that has no significance to Hitch, but Sunny gasps and Hitch swears she tears up a little– “a long time ago.”
You have friends in Maretime Bay! the card reads in the scrawl of a young foal. Hitch can’t decide if he wants to slap Sunny for sending that out randomly, hug her for giving him an out of this stupid town, or both. No one said he could have both.
The fact that Sunny brought this unicorn here, caused her probable doom, even if it was indirect, lights something within Hitch’s brain. That has to be illegal in some capacity. Even if it isn’t, Phyllis would find some way to make it illegal. She always does.
“Izzy,” he says. The unicorn’s attention snaps to him. “We need to get you out of here. It’s not safe for you.”
“As much as I’d like you to stay forever, I have to agree.”
“Ooh!” says Izzy. “Maybe you could come with me to Bridlewood! That’s where I’m from, um, by the way. If I can’t stay here, maybe you could come with me!”
Hitch has to admit, it’s a wonderful plan. Maybe there’s some stallion in this Bridlewood place for him. He ponders that for a moment. On the off chance that Izzy is lying or that she’s just weird, wouldn’t it be nice to have a stallion that can do magic? Hitch thinks so.
“Alright,” says Sunny. “I’ll get packing–”
“Wait.” Both mares freeze. “We need to find a way to get out of here that will disguise the fact that we’d rather you alive.”
“Ooh. That's going to be tough, from what I’ve seen. You earth ponies are stubborn!” Hitch tries to take it as a compliment.
“Maybe… you’re taking her out of town to execute?”
“Ooh! You could be taking me to my overlords to send a message!”
“Um… Izzy’s idea is more plausible for the amount of time we’d need to be gone to get to Bridlewood.” Hitch hates to admit it, but Izzy’s idea was actually pretty good, both logistically and practically. No one would bat an eye at sending her away, though they might hesitate at sending their beloved sheriff with her. Sunny would be easy enough to sneak out; maybe she could meet them at some rendezvous point along the way.
“It’s settled, then. Hitch, you go… do sheriff-y things and scheme about how to convince everypony to not just lock her up on sight, I’ll pack essentials, and Izzy… try to be, I don’t know, kinda… scary.” Izzy looks slightly miffed, but she agrees. Hitch is going to have his hooves full trying to keep her safe, he just knows it.
“Sunny?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll pack my own stuff. Don’t worry about me.” Hitch, in truth, doesn’t want her snooping through his stuff. He’s very territorial, with good reason, but that’s neither here nor there.
Hitch sighs deeply as he takes his first steps outside the lighthouse, hyper-aware of two pairs of eyes on his retreating flank.
It’s going to be a long time before anything’s normal again.
—----------------—
“Hitch!”
“Sheriff! What can you tell us about the unicorn found roaming the streets?”
“Sheriff Hitch, is it safe to let the children out to play? I don’t want them to–” The mare can’t finish, mainly because she’s fainted, but partly because Phyllis Cloverleaf’s incredibly false laugh rings out through the voices. Everyone, including the incessant click click click of the camerapony’s camera, ceases all noise.
“If you want to know if your child is safe outside, don’t ask him! Ask Canterlogic’s newest line of child-safe unicorn protection gear!” Hitch has to resist grinding his teeth. Of course Phyllis would find a way to turn this into a massive advertisement.
“It is perfectly safe to allow your foal outside without the use of Canterlogic’s protection. I spo– I interrogated the unicorn. She has stated that this was an isolated incident and that no backup is coming. In fact–” Hitch takes his prime opportunity to make fun of Izzy, if only for a moment, and chuckles lightly– “she’s a bit of an outcast. She came here to seek asylum, of all things!” The crowd around Hitch laughs nervously. Phyllis looks like she’s about to explode, the beehive-like pile of hair quivering with her anger. “Not to worry. I’ll be taking her back to her rightful place among the unicorns and making sure the others know that we will not be as friendly if others try to… replicate the act.”
“But who will protect us if this is a trick?” says Phyllis carefully. Something is up: Hitch can practically smell it. He needs to get out of here with Izzy before something bad happens. “Surely having our amazing sheriff –the best Maretime Bay has ever seen– escort a criminal back to its homeland will leave us vulnerable.”
“Then this is a prime business opportunity for you, Phyllis,” Hitch says coolly. “A real-world test of your products, if you will.” Someone in the crowd swoons and another calls out some variant of we love you, Hitch, please don’t go! “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning. It’s probably for your own safety that you allow us to go in peace. There’s no telling what an angry unicorn will do, and there’s no guarantee that Canterlogic’s products will hold up in action.”
Hitch pushes his way through the crowd before anyone –especially Phyllis Cloverleaf– can say any more. The faster he can get out of here, the better. Something’s going on with Canterlogic, and he needs peace and quiet to figure out what it is.
Packing is easy: it’s going to be straightforward, there-and-back, so he packs light. If he finds himself enamored with somepony, well. He hopes Sunny’s little plan works.
He’s in and out of his house in fifteen minutes, tops, so he takes the extra time to trudge around the city, through the forest, to avoid the masses that would surely descend upon him if he were to walk in their path. He supposes the ponies of Maretime Bay are rather like a tornado in that sense.
The silence, excluding the occasional bird call, gives him time to think critically about what he’s about to do.
Oh, God, what is he about to do?
The short, uncomplicated-by-feeling answer is that he’s going to a foreign land to deliver a member of their society back to them. The long (technically shorter, but in practice a mess) is that he’s making a mistake.
Izzy got here, right? So she should know how to get back. Hitch doesn’t have to go anywhere with her.
But the nag of travel, the need for an open space (and the absence of cameras), the desire to run away from it all, beckons him like the wind beckons the leaves to rustle, like the moon above beckons the waves to crash. The depths of the woods call to him, and he can almost hear a voice amongst the sounds of nature, calling his name.
He’s going. He’s going to go on this journey, no matter what the depths of his mind tell him. This is going to be good for him, he just knows it, and he’s going to meet new people and help his friends. Maybe this will be the push the world needs. God knows Phyllis could use that particular kick to the flank.
It’s risky, though, leaving Phyllis Cloverleaf and her dubiously operated company in charge of defense for a while. Who knows what she’ll do in his absence? He’s only semi-confident he’ll be able to shut down whatever ridiculous things go up while he’s gone, after all. He very well might end up dead due to some shiny new defense system she rolls out.
Hitch shakes his head. He’s going. He’s leaving, and it isn’t going to be permanent, and Phyllis won’t have time to set up her weird plan, whatever it is, and he can look into it when he gets back. She won’t win, he assures himself. He’ll find something to shut her down with.
He’s so caught up in his head that he almost runs headlong into the lighthouse. He manages to pull his head up at the last second and stop with his face only inches away from one of the many walls that separates him from the next chapter in his destiny. Will he be able to handle it?
Of course he will. He is Hitch Trailblazer, after all.