Part-Time Griffin

Investigator

I breathe in nervously as I stare at the shocked teenager who is still standing beside the sawmill. My heart is rapidly thumping against my feathered chest.

Only a few moments ago, he was looking at me as I was crouched by the mill. No normal human eyes could have seen me there. Also, he claimed that I was the one committing the vandalism.

I strongly believe that I have just confronted the alicorn, in his human form.

If he thinks that I am the one doing the destruction in town then that proves that he isn't the one doing it either.

Someone else is out there, possibly at this very moment, who is wrecking our town carelessly.

I want to meet this alicorn boy, but not until I see him shift first. It will confirm that he's the alicorn. I'll then know for sure that it is Mr. Alicorn. Plus, I don't even know what he looks like. A shadow is covering his facial features.

The fact that there's a crazy person loose in my town makes me turn and speedily run back toward Melark. And, as always, my front bird feet trip me up, and soon I make the decision to shift back to a human and run the remainder of the way. The sawmill is on the far outskirts of town. So it's a long run back into town.

Since no one sees me out here, I can freely use my 'griffin strength' without worry. People at school see me run. They think I'm fast, but little do they know that I am much faster.

As I'm running, multiple branches try smacking me in the face, and I constantly duck under them at high speed. Every so often I have to jump over a fallen tree or some random rock protruding from the ground. Luckily, I am more agile on my legs when I'm not a griffin.

Five minutes of running, and I find myself standing in the middle of the dark shadowy streets of my hometown of Melark. The traffic lights above me turn green even though there is not a single car out this late. Not a single noise is heard beside the faint buzzing of street lamps.

It must be around 1:30 by now.

I morph back into a griffin, because I feel safer that way and there is not a single person who will witness my shapeshifting. I'm safe to change back and forth from either form.

A slight breeze ruffles my brown and rusty colored feathers. The furry tip of my lion tail is flicking back and forth restlessly. Tension lingers in the air like thick fog.

I came back to town to find a maniac who destroys property every night. What was his next move supposed to be?

On Monday night, there had been a house fire. On Tuesday night, there was a car wrecked. During the next two nights there was a mass robbery at the local gun dealer and reports of multiple power outages caused by power poles that had been cut down by a chainsaw.

None of those events have anything in common, but they are not a common thing to take place in this uneventful town. No normal town has huge events that occur four consecutive nights in a row.

I don't claim that I'm a superhero, but all superheroes have at least one friend that helps them. I myself need a dependable ally that might can help me in this investigation. My parents can not know what I'm doing, Felicity is too young to take part in this, and no one else knows that I am a mythical creature of legend.

Somehow an answer instantly drops from the sky.

Seriously. No joke. It literally does.