Mechanical Aptitude

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Original Character, Spike, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 11866

Life isn't always easy when you're the only repairpony for enchanted devices and conveniences in all of Ponyville. It can get rougher when you're exactly the wrong race for the job...

Ratchette runs a one-pony fix-it shop for enchanted conveniences and devices, the only such facility in Ponyville. Some of her services are limited ones, and there are things she has to refer elsewhere -- but on the whole, she puts the majority of the repair traffic in order and in the two years since she first moved to the settled zone, Ponyville's become used to her. But strangers in town can still have a little trouble with her qualifications. Because her mark says she's perfectly suited for her occupation --

-- while her body claims exactly the opposite.

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. While this story is technically a sequel, the earlier one just has the main character's first appearance, and this piece can be read as a stand-alone.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Cover art by EquesTRON.

Published 2014-09-20 02:10:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-09-20 02:10:04 UTC

Wrench Wench

The unicorn standing in front of the little shop set within that slightly-rural, overly-strange town, arriving at just past Sun-raising on a warm spring day, the place he really hadn't wanted to visit for any longer than it took for the train to disgorge passengers who had no idea what they were in for, then take on those whom he would be extremely careful to ignore... he didn't pay much attention to the details of what lay ahead. He seldom did. This particular unicorn knew just about everything he needed to in life, educated others on what they were missing (which was typically at least ninety percent of it), and used his intellect to fill in the rest. This typically meant making his best guess as to what was going on and then declaring the results to be fact, generally in direct opposition to the events which were actually taking place. Because those events would then be wrong, the ponies working through them in error, and he would be only too happy to educate them on the correct way just as soon as they admitted to their mistake.

For some odd reason, that last part hardly ever occurred. He blamed society.

In this case, he had already decided that he'd learned everything he would ever need to know just from the front of the shop. The slight odor which came from the door -- chemicals, lubricants, scorched mane hair and singed coat -- was, in his opinion, exactly what it should be. The absolute jumble of parts, tools, and pieces visible through the very few sections of unblocked window might have looked intolerable to a lesser mind (and there were so many of those), but he knew how such ponies tended to operate and in his experience, the more disorderly the shop, the more proficient the pony operating it.

And of course, there was the sign.

Ratchette's Fix-It Shop

Specializing In Mechanical Tweaks & Adjustments, Improvisation, & Explosion Cleanup

Limited Minor To Moderate Convenience & Device Repairs Available On Request

There was also a founding date. He dearly wanted to ignore that, because it was something less than two years in the past and everypony knew that experience counted more than anything in that sort of profession because anypony who'd survived a decade of such work was probably going to get through several more. But it had his attention, and continued to keep it as he forced himself to approach the front door. He didn't have any other choice: the conductor had told him there was but one such shop in town, which meant the owner had better be up to the task or there would be Words.

The Words would be loud. They would be plentiful. They would be spoken to anypony who was in a position to do damage, and the fact that such ponies frequently tended to ignore him was a detail he always managed to overlook. But the Words also had to be rehearsed, and so he internally composed them as a just-in-case while he forced himself to head inside, listening to the speech echoing in his head instead of paying any real attention to the argument taking place in the mostly-hidden back room. What other ponies said was seldom important. Unless, say, they were repeating his own words or speaking to his interests...

The argument had no significance, even for the ponies conducting it, and so he pushed his way through narrow aisles (which truly weren't that restrictive, but he refused to see himself as significantly overweight and insisted that the rest of the continent simply had no idea what proper space requirements were supposed to be), trying not to get any of the strange oils on his garments, not so much listening for the perfect place to break in as the one which would get them to understand how much more important his needs were than theirs could ever be.

"It's not working!" Brash tones from a rough-edged mare voice, ones which had a high level of frustration laced into them along with an inability to understand why the other party couldn't see the situation as The Most Important Thing Ever. Which was foolish, of course, because his situation occupied that position and would forever, no matter what it was.

"It's not supposed to," came the insignificant reply -- or it would have been, if the voice hadn't gotten his attention. Slightly high-pitched, a little melodious. Young. A rather pretty voice overall, and if the mare behind it matched the sound...

"Yes, it is! That's how you rigged it! So it would work! And it was working, and now it's not! So how is that supposed to be my fault?"

Just a little wearily (but still in an extremely attractive way), "Because of the design."

Insistently, "You designed it! So guess what, lady? It's your fault!"

"I designed it," the prettier voice said, "to resist centrifugal force. Pulls of more than one gravity. Acceleration."

"So?"

Patiently, "Which part of those includes 'going into Fluttershy's chicken coops headfirst'?"

"...I don't know! All of them?"

"Rainbow..."

"And you were making it for me! So it should work perfectly when loose feathers get into the gears!"

The lightest touch of mischief left traces on the next words. "And egg yolk?"

"...huh?"

The unicorn normally would have ignored this, but he always enjoyed a good joke at somepony else's expense and as this one was right in the center of his rounders cage (not that he ever would have lowered himself to playing the foreign thing), he snickered. Neither mare caught the sound.

"Well," the prettier voice explained, "if I made it for you, it clearly has to resist loose feathers. And now you've got egg yolk gumming up the gears." A tiny giggle. "So is that something else you'd normally produce on your own...?"

Huffy. "I do not lay eggs. Everypony knows pegasi don't lay eggs. You --"

Teasing, "Except for the giant goose one you produced at the end of whatever that stunt was supposed to be?"

"...look, would you just fix --"

Which sounded as if it would place a job ahead of his own in priority, and that simply couldn't be allowed. "Excuse me?" he lied. "Customer out here!"

Momentary silence.

"Fine..." the brasher voice grumped. "I'll just be over here." Sounds of movement. Proudly-lofted wings brushing against things they really shouldn't be touching. Shifting metal.

"Rainbow, don't --"

-- and one very loud crash.

"Rainbow! I needed that!"

"And I need my camera! By this afternoon!"

A long, slow, even more melodious sigh, and he strained his neck in that direction, now more eager than ever to get a look at the speaker. If the face and body even remotely matched the voice...

"Can we talk about it after I see who's out there?" asked the pretty voice.

"...whatever," huffed the brash one.

A mare trotted partway through the door into the main shop, just enough to let him see her front half --

-- and that she was the wrong pony.

Pretty -- but it was a 'pretty' which took some effort to see. A steel-grey coat -- if you could look past the stains, discolorations, and little singe marks which would be produced by spending more than an hour in this kind of shop, which was just a small part of why he was so desperate to get out. Copper eyes, mane, and tail: the last two had rather lank falls, especially given how short-cut they were. The snout was... interesting. There was an inner curve to it, a little swoop on each side which was generally known as a Roamer muzzle, along with fur indentations which suggested something had been recently pressing against it. A little shorter than average. And young: perhaps two or three years past graduation.

Pretty -- if you were into feather-dusting. And he never would be.

"Hmph," he haughtily said. "Could you just poke your head back there and get me the proprietor?"

The copper eyes briefly closed.

"I am the proprietor," the melodious voice softly declared, and there was more than a hint of shy exhaustion in it. "What can I help you with today?"

A slightly-rural, overly-strange town -- one which apparently had no problems with abusing its guests.

"This," he tightly insisted, "isn't funny, young lady. I am here for an emergency repair, a very important one, perhaps the most crucial this shop's owner has ever seen. So whoever else is back there, send them out."

Her eyes closed again. "The only other pony back there," she said, her tones beginning to tilt into an annoying level of shyness, "is a customer. You can look for yourself if you like. The owner is not out getting breakfast, or picking up parts, or tools, or sleeping in late, or anything else. The shop's owner is standing right in front of you, sir. Now -- please... can I see what you need repaired?"

His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. He would have scraped at the floor, but he didn't have the room. Boondocks humor. An idiotic joke being played on her superior, and she was too stupid to realize anypony of intellect could see right through it.

They were leaving the realm of Words. He was going to make a Statement.

"You," he declared to the mare who might just be too much of a featherbrain to have realized it, "are a pegasus."

She heard the facehoofing echo out of the back room, accompanied by a smaller crash as Rainbow's empathic shift managed to knock something else over. She was still thankful for it, simply because it was nice to know somepony else was even fractionally as sick of it.

For Ponyville... she'd heard it a lot, especially at the start. Virtually anypony meeting her for the first time would almost inevitably find the need to post a public reminder of her race. It still came up if a local visited her shop for the first time, one who had never made the connection between establishment and operator -- or if somepony new came into town. As such, she'd come up with a large number of responses, and had vocalized a grand total of none.

The one she dearly wanted to try one day was jumping straight up in mock fear, hovering in false panic at the apex, all while screaming 'NO!' in a single lung-collapsing burst. And then there would be a rush for the door, with a well-rehearsed speech clearing the path. Magical accident, that was the best excuse. Something had happened, everypony run or it was going to happen to them too, she was a pegasus and there was no worse thing possible... Of course, doing so would knock any number of hanging tools from their ceiling hooks, she would do so much damage to delicate instruments on the way out as to set herself back moons just from the costs of replacements and the long wait for same... but if done just once, she felt the reaction could be worth it.

Slightly below that was glancing back towards her wings with total disinterest. 'I am? Oh. Huh. Well. Who knew?'

And then there was the one Rainbow had suggested, something she really couldn't pull out in front of a still-possible customer. 'And you're the pony who goes around stating the obvious. What's your point?'

Instead, she went with the usual response, and hoped against hope (plus a lot of dismal previous experience) that it would somehow work out.

"Yes," she said. "My name is Ratchette, sir. I own and operate this shop. Just me -- no other pony." She carefully stepped forward, bringing her mark into view. "As you can see, I'm qualified. May I see the item in question?"

He stared at her mark.

"What is that?"

...well, it had been worth a try. During her entire lifetime following manifest, she'd met all of seven ponies who'd understood it immediately. Three had claimed illusion (which, when creating long-term false marks, started at impossible), one had refused to believe her no matter what she did, a fifth had eventually accepted her, the sixth had originally delivered her to Sun in the first place, and the seventh ran the town library.

"It shows a flow pattern of energy through a device," Ratchette patiently explained. "Is what you need repairs on today with you?" A quick look at his saddlebags, which were rubbing against discarded parts and picking up stains which she normally would have already been apologizing for. If it was with him, it was relatively small -- although any number of things would have seemed to lose mass when compared to those bulging flanks. "If so, may I please see it?"

The stallion took a deep breath. Two more tools fell down. He ignored the crashes.

"This isn't funny," he repeated.

"It's not a joke," Ratchette said (and just managed not to sigh).

"You are pushing your luck. I know ponies. I am on my way to see some very important ponies."

"So if I could see your item, I might be able to get you out of here all the faster --"

"-- so where's the real repair shop?"

Just for a second, she was impressed that he thought somepony would have gone so far as to set up an entire fake repair shop just for his personal discomfort. And then she went back to being worried about the implications. "This is it." At least Rainbow was being quiet. And she already knew that couldn't last, she had to get this settled before the cyan dam inevitably let a sluice overflow of angry words flood the room...

He was staring at her again.

"Tell me where the other repair shop is in town."

"This is it," Ratchette repeated. "I have the only one. Before I moved here, everypony took a day trip to Canterlot because the owner of the last local one --"

His mauve eyes blazed interruption. "Thaumaturgy shop, then. Sometimes their owners know how to --"

"Ponyville doesn't have one." Truth, and a frustrating one for several residents.

He sniffed, and the anger had become equally mixed with disdain, resulting in a concoction which was even more toxic than before. "Earth pony majority towns... A convenience store, then. Even the boondocks of the settled zones must have one of those."

"I can give you directions to Mrs. Wonderment's, but she'll just send you back here or to the train station. She doesn't do repairs," Ratchette helplessly said. "Could I just... please...?"

The stare had become something darker.

"I'm going to show it to you," the unicorn said. "Just to see nothing happen. And then when I find the actual owner of this shop... I suppose that with all your little stains and singes, a mare who would need five baths just to reach dirty, you might be an assistant of some sort. Such a very progressive policy, hiring the disabled... right up until the moment you use that tentative status to make a joke and nearly cost your employer their entire business. Or maybe you're just a marefriend, and when the illusion of love is weighed against the reality of bankruptcy..."

A bile-hued field surrounded the lid of his right saddlebag, flipped it open. The color descended, edged an off-silver rectangle into view. The forward edge of that field receded a bit as it floated towards Ratchette: instinctively exposing a portion for her to grip --

-- but then it snapped closed again.

"Well?" It was a demand.

She was barely paying attention to it. "Oh," she said, and there was no effort made to keep the disappointment from her voice. "It's just a Minder." She didn't like Minders very much.

Fury flushed his jowls. "Just a Minder? Well, that tells me all I need to know about you! Minders are status symbols! Minders are only owned by the most important --"

But Ratchette wasn't listening, not to words. Her hearing had turned inwards, towards the little murmurs which sometimes arose from her deepest magic, the hints and suggestions which stemmed from the mark itself...

"...oh," she said. "Oh, dear..." Sounding at least a decade younger than she was. "Sir... I think you have a problem..."

"I know I have a problem!" It was a full-fledged shout. "I knew I had one the first time I triggered the playback!"

He thinks there's an issue with the playback? Minders... they were mostly used by ponies who had somehow come to the conclusion that not only was keeping their memory within their heads pointless, but taking notes was just too much work. When Minders were functioning (which was seldom), they recorded their user's voice, indexing any comments made via a system of single-word categorizations made at the opening of the statement. They typically couldn't hold all that many words: the best sound recording spells had been created to work in conjunction with the chemical image recording of film and when separated... well, the supposedly-best current models of Minders might be able to record a thousand syllables before they started mixing them up with each other. New editions were typically announced once per year, improved the capacity by at least two brief mid-speech pauses, cost twice as much as the previous model, and only shipped three moons before the next supposed innovation was declared.

It was possible that his had a genuine playback issue, probably caused by hitting capacity and causing the spools to scramble, something which was only warned about in the smallest of print, and that on the price tag, where nopony wanted to look for too long. But it hadn't felt like that.

It hadn't felt very much like a Minder at all.

"May I touch it?" She already knew it was going to be a bad question.

"If you damage it in any way..."

"I won't." The words had been too shy. She was having trouble looking directly at the stallion. Sometimes paying attention to nothing but the device helped -- and most of the time, it didn't. "Please... I just have to..."

"It'll be the first one you've touched, I suppose," he haughtily decided.

It would be the twelfth. "Please?" She upturned her right forehoof.

His expression told her he would be waiting for her to drop it. And immediately after that happened, demanding that she pay for it. But he wouldn't place it at a bad angle on purpose. He wanted it fixed -- and didn't believe it would ever happen here.

Which made what happened next into a deliberate attempt to humiliate her.

His field lowered the device onto her hoof. Winked out. "Well? I would have expected somepony with such an interesting supposed mark to have a diagnosis on contact..."

spools not at capacity new and not new signatures are dual and wrong workings substandard, rushed, shoddy with factors added secondary routing installed and

She'd never been able to explain it to anypony else, hadn't even really tried. The instinct. The sensation of communication with the inanimate, translations arising from the deepest part of her. The feel. None of it was ever discussed. Because most of those in the settled zone, upon seeing Ratchette (at least when she was fully clean), immediately decided she was pretty. And then, after learning even a little about her, they would decide she was just pretty weird.

That was bad enough.

"I'm a noble, you know," the unicorn declared.

"...that's nice," Ratchette distractedly replied. She was listening to a much more important voice.

His ears went back. "Cinarest Cimarron! Of House Quarant!"

The title registered. Sort of. "West coast, right..." Ratchette knew the Houses, and generally wished she didn't. "Tell your mother I hope her sacroiliac pain has gotten better..."

"What did you say about my mother?"

"...oh, dear... sir -- Mr. Cimarron -- where did you purchase this?"

More staring. She wished he would stop.

"Four train stations back," he eventually said. "In Craderhearst. My train had an overnight rest stop. The Minder ownership had set up a business stall just outside the station. Very practical, actually. Much more convenient for the business traveler of importance than having to visit one of their stores and standing in line with all the -- well, the service was certainly an improvement. As were the salesponies. Such a pair of upstanding gentlecolts, proper unicorns in every way..."

Which was when Rainbow Dash emerged from the back room.

"Two unicorn stallions?" the weather coordinator asked.

He glanced at her, mostly in hopes of getting the real proprietor. Saw the wings, sniffed again. "Yes. Siblings, I thought, although they never said as much."

A little too harshly, "Can you describe them?"

"I fail to see --"

"-- just so we know what a pair of proper unicorns look like," Rainbow finished.

More disdain. "Slightly tall. Rather narrow in body and hips. One had a mustache. They both favored full-body clothing, which they said is now mandatory for Minder employees. Tended to speak in chorus." He paused. "Good singers --"

Ratchette and Rainbow groaned in unison.

He ignored it. "-- coat and mane colors were --"

"It doesn't matter," Ratchette sighed. "As long as there's dyes, it doesn't matter. Sir, you said there's a playback problem. Could you describe it?"

A simple statement filled with the most basic of anger. "It doesn't sound like me."

Ratchette blinked.

"If you would trigger a playback for me --"

"-- I will not," he spat. "These are private notes. I have a speech to make in front of some very important ponies indeed. Fellow nobles, members of the Day Court, not that you would be likely to know any of the names." Completely ignoring what had happened a minute ago. "As such, they are secret, and I have categorized them as such. I will not have somepony else hearing them."

Private... secret... oh, no... But they had to reach it normally: perhaps once she'd cleared the first problem, he would be willing to listen on the second. (She hoped. She wasn't very good at judging such things.) "Then... may I just record one short statement myself? Just to test the playback." Quickly, "I'll erase it immediately after."

The frown reached every chin, which took some major travel and required the traversing of an impressive crevasse along the way. "I... suppose. If you clear it immediately. I'll have to instruct you on the procedure first, of course --"

But Ratchette had already lowered her head.

"Rec: Cat: Temp: Test. Play."

The rectangle shimmered with the residue of bright green, one which no true Minder had ever displayed.

"Test," it said in Ratchette's voice.

Immediately, "Del: Cat: Temp: Last Entry."

"Erased!" it declared in a pair of familiar jovial voices, and the glow faded out.

Ratchette frowned at it. "Playback's fine..." If only that had been the true problem. "Sir, we need to talk --"

"For your voice!" he immediately decided. "A voice with no field behind it! It must be picking up interference from my sheer power!"

"Then... would you record a sample speech for me? None of your notes... just what I did there? And then maybe I can --"

The bile snatched the rectangle back, zoomed it back to the owner while nearly knocking down three more tools along the way. He spat the syllables onto the metal, shoved them at the two listening pegasi, then waited exactly as long as it was going to take for him to lose his temper, which coincidentally equaled the time it would take before one of them spoke.

Rainbow served as the trigger. "That's your voice!" she stated. "Nopony else's! Whatever's wrong --"

-- and he'd had enough.

"I," Cinarest Cimarron declared, "am wasting my time. I stalled hoping the true proprietor would appear. I was trying to give you two a chance to admit your poor excuse for a jest, and perhaps I would have even forgiven it. But now... I cannot appear in Canterlot, in front of the nobles of the Day Court, with a faulty Minder. Nor can I readily go to one of the repair shops in Canterlot, because somepony might see me there and assume I had need of such services, and I must look perfect for this meeting, everything perfect. Here, nopony knows, nopony would ever care about this landlocked backwater, and I can conduct my business in peace -- except that there is no business to conduct."

He glared at both of them in turn before settling on Ratchette.

"I have indulged your fantasy," he finally said. "Now, I'm going to run along and find somepony in this idiotic Discord-warped excuse for a proper settled zone who can actually help me. You can just stay here and indulge in another fantasy, the one of continued employment... the one I will break before I get back on that train. Now why don't you go find a cloud to sulk on and weep into, because you're going to need the practice --"

Ratchette wasn't a particularly strong flier. Her techniques were somewhere below inadequate, for the very few she could get to partially work at all. But you couldn't operate a device repair shop without truly outstanding reflexes (or at least, you couldn't operate it for long) -- and so her head darted to the right just in time for her teeth to clamp down on Rainbow's passing tail.

The pegasus was barely stopped, and dragged Ratchette across half a body length before even that was achieved. More tools fell. Several parts clattered. Two broke, but they had been unfixable extras which Ratchette had been puttering around on, so no real harm done.

"Let go!" Rainbow shouted. "Let me at this jerk! Just give me a chance to teach him a thing or two about the sort of ponies he can find in this settled zone --!"

The noble's eyes went wide with fear. "Assault!" He screamed. "Attempted harm! Police! Police! Police...!"

Ratchette didn't let go of the prismatic tail until the door slammed, plus one full minute just for safety. It would have been more, but her jaws were starting to ache. Rainbow just never stopped pushing -- which meant that when the grip was finally released, the next sound heard was that of desperate wing braking.

The weather coordinator didn't quite make it. Most of the door survived.

"...ow."

"Sorry."

"I can still go after him."

Ratchette sighed. "Please don't. He's not -- going to do anything, Rainbow."

"Yes, he will! I know that type! He'll talk and he'll write and he'll lie, he'll say you broke his precious Minder in the first place, he'll sue you and then --"

"-- somepony would have to listen," Ratchette wearily said. "He's the type who does all of it, Rainbow... but somepony has to pay attention, somepony who can get things done out of pettiness and stupidity and -- fear. And even if he does find ponies like that... I'm me. Let it go... please...?"

They looked at each other for a while, magenta eyes on copper. It lost something for the former being mostly upside-down and half-buried in metal.

"Fine."

"Thanks."

"I so totally could have taken him."

Ratchette managed a smile. "I know."

"So... what was wrong with his Minder, anyway? Because we both heard his voice, and other than being stupid and annoying and saying stuff nopony would ever want to hear, it was fine. Does it actually have a problem at all, or is he just that dumb?"

"It's kind of both." She was sighing a lot today. "But I have to tell him. He could be in big trouble, Rainbow, really big trouble. Somepony has to let him know..."

"Why?" That in a tone which definitively stated that the unicorn had not only earned any approaching trouble, but had several extra prismatic installments well past due.

Ratchette told her.

Rainbow stared. Managed to work her way out of the debris, flipped over, shook out her wings and mane as much as the limited space would allow.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Then let it happen. Now, about my camera..."

Ratchette had tried to spend some time working on Rainbow's camera. It hadn't -- well, it hadn't worked. Sure, the camera was eventually going to be just fine, at least until Rainbow got it in the air again, but...

Rainbow's original idea had been simple: she wanted to film her own stunts, and to do so from something as close to her own viewpoint as possible. Ultimately, it would give her a highlight reel to display of her most successful efforts -- one which induced high-speed nausea in anypony unlucky enough to view it -- or an accident report to dissect frame-by-frame in the name of not getting that exact view a second time. It had meant a head-mounted camera, and that was already available -- but Rainbow's magic worked through a pegasus field, not a unicorn one. She couldn't turn the hoof crank, not while the thing was pressing down her mane, not in flight. And so she had come to Ratchette...

It had taken some time to rig the solution. Ratchette encountered a multitude of problems in her mark-assigned profession, and there were many days when the minority of them stemmed from the hazards of dealing with faulty devices. Chief on her personal list were tools.

Convenience and device repairs... were not only the realm of unicorns, but had been their exclusive domain right up until the day Ratchette's mark had manifested in a blaze of white light at the exact moment she'd put her mother's dishwasher back together in working order for the first time. (Her family had gone through a very large and extremely indulgent number of dishwashers. For starters.) And unicorns conducted those repairs with their fields. A field Ratchette was never going to have. They could look at a piece of misaligned wire and pull it into place with a thought. Ratchette...

It had become comedic in a depressing hurry. She needed tools which would substitute for the precision manipulations of a field, because hooves and wings were never going to come close. She designed them, submitted the plans to prospective manufacturers. Then it turned out that she was going to need a second round of tools just to have any attempt at building the first set. She'd designed those, only to run into declared material limits along with a demand to know why anypony would go through all this when the obvious, simple, and easy solution was to go to a proper, normal, and full-service repair shop...

She'd never been quite able to decide if producing her desired results just wasn't worth the effort for a single customer, or if she was being stonewalled. There was a good chance it was a bit of both. But her mark wasn't changing any time ever, and in the end, after coming to Ponyville... she'd met Stile.

They were not a couple: Ratchette's infrequent attempts to date tended to backfire spectacularly -- she had gone through the Caramel Experience and had the shattered vases to prove it -- and Stile was paired with Allie Way, although it was a partnership which had breakups as regular and nearly impossible to reconcile as a seven-ten split. But the shortest earth pony adult she'd ever seen had his own special talent: one for construction, the creation of those little touches which let the two-thirds of Equestrians who had no telekinetic capacities comfortably function in their world at all. He had looked at her designs and, two weeks later, trotted back towing a sled full of prototypes. They worked closely with each other, she needing new challenges met every other day, he relishing the unique opportunities to exercise his talent which only she could give him. Not a couple, not entirely friends -- just two ponies who truly enjoyed the push they each provided to the other.

Virtually anypony looking at this one of their mutual creations would have been startled. A few might have run away screaming. Three simply fainted and did so every time, believing that to be the practical reaction to seeing somepony who appeared to have a giant steel spider eating her face.

Ratchette pushed her tongue into one of the tiny switches which littered the metal in front of her jaw. It released a portion of energy from the nearest wound spring, and that kinetic force went down a series of micro-levers until it pinched a miniature clamp shut at the far end. Another tongue flick made that clamp twist right. She kept pushing.

With Rainbow, the idea had been simple: rig a wind turbine on top of the camera, then let it collect the force required to turn the crank. But creating the little air-powered engine had been another level of difficulty. Designing the force-storing springs which would keep the entire setup from exploding when Rainbow inevitably went overspeed -- two additional weeks, which included the backups to the backups, along with the energy-channeling emergency vent for when Rainbow overloaded even those. And then there was balancing everything, trying to keep the elements as aerodynamic as possible -- and, when Rainbow finally, beyond inevitably, almost perpetually crashed, putting it all back together...

Ratchette's rough estimate, based on what little gossip she'd heard concerning Weather Bureau pay vouchers, was that she was personally collecting ten percent of Rainbow's income. During a slow week.

But... Rainbow accepted her. Unlike just about everypony in what had once been home, Rainbow only cared about Ratchette's mark in one way, and that was 'So what can this pony do for me?' Most of Ponyville had gotten used to Ratchette by now. She was pretty weird... but that could be said for so many things about the settled zone which hosted the Bearers. On a good day, Ratchette almost faded into the background weirdness, and any disruption she might create in the lie of normalcy was lost in the sounds of Cerberus charging after his ball.

Today... not a good day. And it could so easily become worse for Cinarest Cimarron, unless she could make him listen...

Release the clamp. Another steel spider leg brought up a tiny corkscrew: she'd found it handy for getting channeling wire back into proper twists, especially when dealing with the perpetual danger of platinum. Fortunately, this was just drawn-out aluminum.

Rotate six degrees...

He could be in real trouble.

But he was mean. He was vicious. He was just like so many other ponies back home, the ones who said I was...

Rainbow thinks he deserves it.

She glanced at the back wall. There were tools there, and parts, and stains from when something hadn't quite worked out. There was also a diploma. It wasn't a particularly reputable one and she only showed it to somepony who insisted on seeing her credentials. The paper came from a correspondence school: Learn To Repair All Sorts Of Devices At Home! It had been the only school which was willing to take her at all, mostly because there was no space to check off 'race' on the mail-in application. Until Ratchette, there had been no need.

She'd passed the tests on the sample pieces they'd sent her... with a little quasi-cheating assist. Not that the school cared. As long as they had her bits...

Somepony has his bits.

No -- two ponies have his bits. And they're probably riding the next train, closing in. Waiting. I should go to the police. Alert somepony who could help. I have to do something. He was mean and rude and -- just like nearly everypony from home, but... he doesn't deserve that.

Does he?

Twist, release, seal the housing...

He was mean. He wants me shut down. And he won't get that, even if he follows through and didn't just want me to spend a week in fear as repayment for what he thought was wasting his time. I know he can't do it. But...

A stranger in Ponyville. He might have heard some of the stories about her new settled zone, but he wouldn't really know the place. And working under that fear of Canterlot gossip, he would not get on the train until he'd rejected every single possible local solution.

So where would he go?

She already knew the very limited answers.

Ratchette carefully worked the trigger mask off her snout. Ponyville wasn't the largest settled zone. But the hunt was still going to require some time...

Twilight looked embarrassed.

"He was here," the librarian eventually said. "But... he didn't say he'd been to you first at all, Ratchette. If I'd known..." The slightly-built unicorn slowly shook her head. "He was polite with me, initially. More or less. While he still thought I could do something for him. And when he found out I couldn't, and I tried to send him to you..." She trailed off as her tail dipped and the blush began to suffuse her cheeks.

"He got angry," Spike finished for her. "He started saying things about her mark. That was when I came downstairs. He left as soon as he saw me."

Ratchette gave Spike her prettiest smile, or at least the one she thought served in that position: she'd never been the best judge. The little dragon developed a blush of his own. "Thank you, Spike."

Twilight added a grateful nod to that. "He tried appealing to me as a fellow noble," she sighed. "And you of all ponies know how I feel about that..."

Ratchette did. She and Twilight had talked about it once, mostly as a side diversion while the mutual migraines subsided.

It was a problem of marks. Ratchette's was for devices and it was, in the sense of potential talent execution alone, partial. She could design, disassemble and the reverse, diagnose problems through the feel she would never be able to explain or even mention, and there were times she could manage repairs. If the issue was physical -- channeling wire out of alignment, elements slipped into contact with the housing -- then Ratchette's efforts would suffice. And there were times when it turned out that the spells being channeled could be altered by subtle physical twistings: in such cases, she could effectively repair the workings themselves...

...but she couldn't enchant. Ratchette would never be able to cast a spell, do a working, perform any trick. If the problem stemmed from the magic itself... she was blocked, always would be, and had to refer the item's owner to an establishment in Canterlot. She understood the principles behind devices better than anypony else in Ponyville: her ability to do anything with that knowledge was permanently limited, and the pony in front of her had ultimately provided the field signature for her correspondence school to read.

Twilight's mark was for magic. To many ponies, that came across as a catch-all: not just any spell, but anything to do with spells -- including when they were made to channel through the inanimate, casting themselves on command. In practice, that mark worked out to be an enhanced ability to learn, study, invent, and duplicate unicorn workings. Personal tricks -- but not enchantments.

Twilight had the comprehension of devices which was normally found in a dedicated amateur who had spent a good part of her childhood putting the things in her house back together in something much less than working order. She could do minor tweaks on her own equipment, and did. She could also push 'minor' into a series of multihued, rather spectacular explosions, and did that too. Ratchette felt Twilight would improve in that area with dedicated study, but there was just so much for the librarian to investigate at any given moment that device mechanics were almost always assigned to the caboose of the investigation train.

Ratchette was just about the only pony in town whom Twilight could freely talk to about devices, and the two mares had spent hours on slow business and library days comparing discoveries. But they tended to lose each other. Ratchette understood devices on a level which Twilight might never reach: Twilight had more comprehension of the spells which went into them than Ratchette could even remotely approach. So on those slow days, they would talk -- each with a bottle of headache remedy at the ready.

They tried to ignore the side bets on which mare would open her container first, although Ratchette had noticed a slow-but-steady upwards trend in Spike's victories.

"So what's so wrong with it that you have to catch up?" Twilight asked. "It didn't look like anything was wrong from the outside, certainly not as if it would explode any time ever, and when he started talking about the sound -- excuse me, but that book goes on the left shelf, please place it in its proper spot immediately! -- being off and I heard the playback..." She reared back enough to brace her forelegs on the checkout desk, then spread them. "I mean... how can somepony not know about bone conduction? Nopony hears their own voice through their ears, not completely: it comes up through the skull! I know the first time I heard mine, I couldn't believe I really sounded like --" The blush was deepening. "-- anyway, the sound was fine. So what else could have been wrong?"

Ratchette sighed, wondered if she even had time to explain -- but Twilight of all ponies had to know, not just to be on the lookout, but on the offhoof chance she knew a way to fix the problem instantly. "For starters? It's not even a real Minder."

Double-blink, brother and sister. "It's not?" Spike asked. "But it looked real. I've seen enough ponies getting on the train chatting into them, with a few walking into the doors or other ponies because they're not paying attention to anything else. And it sure played back like a Minder."

Twilight nodded. "Ratchette..." Awkwardly, "I know -- you'd know better than anypony else, and... I accept that, I really do, I've seen you work and I -- but -- how did you figure that out?"

I can't. I can't tell her about the feel. She'd never...

"Did you see the field hue?"

Spike nodded. "Bright green."

"Did he tell you that he purchased it from a train station sales depot? From two brothers? One with a mustache and both with really narrow hips? Who sang?"

This time, it was a double-groan.

"Oh, horse apples," Twilight muttered. "I didn't even know they'd gotten out after they were caught running away with everypony's lottery ticket money. Somepony must have been stupid enough to give them bail, and of course they skipped out... I don't get them, Ratchette. I really don't. They're talented. For what they do, they're two of the best inventors I've ever seen. If they just put a little time and effort into completing their products... why can't they try to get rich with work instead of cons?"

Ratchette sighed. "I don't know." She never wanted to speak to the brothers long enough to find out, as there was a chance she would only wind up buying something. "But now they're duplicating Minders. It works, Twilight -- as well as anything they make does. The enchantments... from what I could --" scrambling, which was something Twilight hardly ever picked up on "-- see in the rigging, they're a lot shorter-term than a regular Minder. It'll stop working completely in a few weeks no matter what anypony does, unless everything gets recast from scratch. But -- they also made additions. I could see that there were extra storage spools, and they were cross-connected to each other. Making backups."

Twilight frowned. "Why would anypony make an internal backup? As long as they're connected, if one was faulty, the other would be too. Unless the second one detects something going wrong and cuts itself off -- but then it wouldn't be able to play back..."

Ratchette told her.

The blush reversed itself. The red departed from lavender, began to fade out the shade even as her sibling's scales angled up...

"Oh. Oh, no... Ratchette, he was going to Mrs. Wonderment next. He might have stopped for a meal first, though: he was complaining about the food on the train and how even the first-class car didn't know how to serve nobles properly... Depending on where he ate, he might just be getting out now. Maybe you can intercept, or just wait for him at the train station, he's got to get on something heading towards Canterlot eventually..."

"I'll try Mrs. Wonderment first," Ratchette decided. "Maybe she got through to him and there's no need to do anything else." She hoped.

"I... I'm going to work on a letter," a slightly-concussed looking Twilight said. "For the police. How anypony could just abuse an enchantment like that -- reworking a perfectly innocent device -- oh, and there's the ponies to consider, I was thinking about that, but the spells involved in rigging a duplicate spool to automatically copy -- Spike, get my notebooks -- no, just a scroll, the notes can wait -- Ratchette, hurry, try to catch him..."

"Don't."

They both looked at Spike.

"I heard what he said about Twilight," the little dragon furiously said. "I can guess what he said about you, Ratchette. About nearly everypony. Why does he deserve saving?"

"Spike," Twilight hastily said, "you can't think like that. He's the victim here --"

"-- what makes you think he's going to be grateful? That he'll ever thank anypony? That he won't just blame Ratchette, or you, or... that he'll believe anything?"

Another mutual glance at the furious green eyes. Then at each other.

"I..." And that was all Twilight had.

Ratchette didn't know Twilight that well, certainly not as closely as she sometimes wished she did. They didn't see each other too often, generally wound up talking shop during such meetings, at least when they weren't giggling about their first encounter and a certain poster which Ratchette had read through the lens of a single definition. But she understood the librarian well enough to spot when an event had gone outside the realm of every scroll ever sent off to the Princess and left the unicorn helplessly floundering behind.

"I'm going," Ratchette said, mostly to get out of a situation which she had no personal solution for either. "Maybe if I fly..."

Twilight's field opened the door for her. Ratchette took off.

She couldn't spot him from above. Black body, dark brown mane, Barneigh's saddlebags, one partially ripped because he snagged it on the synchronicity tester on the way out... It should have stood out from the air. But there was nothing to see. Either he was somewhere else entirely, concealed within a building, occupying a blind spot --

-- or I don't want to see him.

Rainbow. Spike. She didn't know either of them that well. Ratchette had trouble getting close to other ponies, something which had started long before her mark had manifested, when the first curiosity to investigate devices had worked into reality as a trail of shed housings and sorted wires spread out across vapor floors. In the time when her classmates had first started to notice 'pretty', followed by almost instantly transitioning into 'pretty weird'.

She wasn't a Bearer. She had business relationships with three: Rarity often asked to have the lighting in the Boutique tweaked to suit various collections, Rainbow was forever trying to come up with better ways of recording her own declared awesomeness, and Twilight trusted her to keep the basement equipment running. With Twilight, it was even a little more than what she had with her other clients: the talks might end in mutual migraines, but the talks still took place.

But she still wasn't part of that circle. She didn't know them all that well. Oh, for what there was, she knew them as ponies, with all the good and bad that implied. She sometimes considered that Twilight was the closest thing to a friend she had, especially in the dark moons after yet another fumbling attempt at a relationship had ended in broken crockery and if she'd just listened to everypony else about Caramel instead of looking at the gifts and what had felt like warm eyes telling her that when it came to 'pretty weird', he was only seeing the first word...

She didn't know the Bearers, not as friends. But she knew enough to understand that having Rainbow and Spike agree on something was unusual. And she was chasing down Cinarest Cimarron, declared noble, a pony who had mocked her and

made me think of home

anyway --

-- and there was Mrs. Wonderment's. She touched down in the lightly-populated street.

Formally, the store was supposed to be known as The Enchantment Grotto: Mrs. Wonderment had lived by the sea for most of her life and so had set up the interior with a host of illusion spells to make it seem as if ponies were shopping in a well-lit underwater cave, complete with dancing liquid reflections and soft splashing as imaginary fish broke the virtual surface. Most ponies just referred to it by the owner's name, for Mrs. Wonderment made more of a long-term impression than the special effects.

There was her age to consider: most Ponyville residents had only seen two ponies who might have been older, and each of those had a throne. The sharpness also left an impression, a mental blade which had been put to constant use and become all the more cutting for it. Fierce orange eyes stuck in the memory, a frazzled violet mane, the horn with a slight curl at the tip which had been put there by a malfunctioning device, or a bad casting, or a duel gone wrong: the rumor changed on each telling. Most ponies got stuck on the way she treated granting discounts as giving away her own life's blood, with sales turning into sacrifices of the children she didn't seem to actually have. And then there was the return policy. She had one. And by the time most ponies had finished reading the details, the return period was over.

Ratchette dealt with her regularly, as much as it was possible for anypony to do so. She'd had to make contact before ever trying to open her shop: Mrs. Wonderment was also famed for not doing repairs (or taking responsibility for them, or caring very much when something went wrong, along with asking for the most embarrassing of details and then repeating them to every other customer for moons to come), and it was still understood that anypony wishing to set up on her turf had better make sure to arrange the imposition first. And when they'd met, Mrs. Wonderment had...

The front door was open. Not very much: just enough to let the familiar sounds of the sea wash out -- along with something else.

"But you have to work on it!"

The voice was not the slightest bit weak or quavering. It was a sound which would have been appropriate coming from a much younger pony, and not a friendly one. "No, I don't. I didn't sell it. And even if I did... which I wouldn't have, by the way: I can see the little differences from here which your eyes never picked up on, I may not be allowed to sell Minders without giving them extra bits over and above the total price just for the supposed honor of carrying their products, but I know what they're supposed to look like and yours isn't quite it..."

"How dare --"

"-- I don't." Self-satisfied. "I don't dare. Convenience and device sales... it's looked at as a high-risk profession, did you know that? You can look forward to a longer lifespan as a Wonderbolt. I leave the first-generation devices for the thaumaturgy shops. Let the first-adopters travel: it keeps the explosions that much further away. And for the things which have been time-tested -- I don't tinker. Ever. It's how I've lived so long, so it feels like a successful policy to me. If you want it repaired -- or in your case, junked would be safer -- I suggest you visit young Ratchette. Her shop is rather easy to find, and I guarantee you'll know her when you see her --"

A hiss. "-- I have seen her."

"And she refused to work on it?" Bemused, "Hard to believe. She takes more risks than those Wonderbolts just by coming in to work every day. If I didn't know what an actual mark for luck looked like and had never seen another like hers, I would have sworn that was it..."

"She's. A. Pegasus!"

There was a long silence, mostly to give the echoes time to fade out, at least for those which had not found homes in pony ears all over the street...

Ratchette tried not to turn around. Didn't want to count. And didn't have to, for she could feel every gaze.

"Yes," Mrs. Wonderment said. "She is. She was a pegasus yesterday, and she happened to be a pegasus today, and I'd say she'll be a pegasus tomorrow, but given what she works with, there's always a chance of an accident turning her into something else. Like a small pile of ash. And it hasn't happened. I don't think it ever will. Because she has the mark to avoid it." A little more softly, and yet it still projected to the entire street, "The talent."

"She can't cast!" the noble screamed. "No horn, no tricks, no workings, no spells, no field at all! She's supposedly fixing things which she can't understand! Which none of them -- you should know it, you're a unicorn, don't you see..."

She was trembling. Her feathers were shaking. Right in front of the door, there was no power which could have made her take a single hoofstep inside, all of his words were in her ears and they had so much distant company...

The nod was audible. "I see."

A long exhale of relief. "So if you would just look at it -- this is the latest model, in fact I got it ahead of the general release by buying at the train station, so I'm not surprised you haven't seen the differences..."

"I see a bigot."

The death of words.

It didn't last. Softly, far too softly, "It is not bigotry to point out when somepony does not have the capacity to do a job. No pegasus would be a bigot if they said I was unfit for lightning triggers, although I'm sure some unicorn somewhere is perfecting that working even as we speak, something the featherbrains might have suppressed. She is a pegasus. She cannot repair devices."

"And yet she does," Mrs. Wonderment calmly replied. "When she first walked into my shop... oh, I thought about laughing. I thought about alerting the hospital, or having the coroner on standby, or perhaps even just trying to talk her out of it, although I did think that would have ultimately been considerably less amusing. But I also looked at her mark. It's not a unique one: I see it a few times in every generation. I recognized it. A talent for devices... an instinct for them. Almost --"

And the next words froze Ratchette's heart.

"-- a feel..."

"You're mocking me," the noble hissed. "As much as she does, every moment just by existing, mocks all of us..."

"I gave her a chance," Mrs. Wonderment continued, completely ignoring him. "At worst... at worst would have been an amusing cautionary tale for everypony else. And at best... there was nopony else in town, not after the last repair shop wound up crash-landing in the Everfree. They never did find poor Mr. Tinker, and if you had any mind to listen and learn, the full story might be an educational one when it comes to the subject of why nopony should purchase a suspect device. But at best... she has the mark, member of House Quarant. A mark nothing in the world can fake for more than a few seconds, and I kept her here much longer than that on the first day, watched from a safe distance as she straightened out something which had taken a few too many jolts during shipping. I sold that piece three days later, at a refurbished full price -- because it worked. Yes, she's a pegasus. I don't know why she was tapped for that mark and I certainly have no idea how she's doing some of what she manages, especially when she should in fact have no ability to cast -- and yet it often feels as if the enchantments themselves come back tweaked into greater efficiency. Maybe the adjustments of wiring and elements allow more than I ever thought, or she's risking a little platinum on the sly..."

There were still other ponies in the street. They were still staring at Ratchette. But now it felt as if the nature of those gazes had shifted.

"This... this town," the noble spat. "Dragons in the library! Pegasi in the repair shops! Cooks with crossed test tubes for marks!" There was a pause after that last one, just long enough for the stomach cramp to clear. "Everypony knows about the Bearers, how many strange things have happened since the Return... a town of freaks, and you -- you're just protecting one of your own...!"

And then Ratchette heard Mrs. Wonderment lean forward.

"You're having trouble with your device," she said. "We have a wonderfully efficient and frequently innovative little repair shop. I suggest you visit it." And the sound which was not a sound: a brilliant white corona igniting around that slightly-twisted horn, blazing at a full primary... "Now get out."

He got, and nearly knocked Ratchette over in the process: she took off just in time.

And he didn't notice, or perhaps simply ignored her. He simply galloped down the street, heading in the general direction of the train station.

Aged head and frazzled mane gradually poked themselves through the doorway.

"Hello, dear."

Ratchette managed to keep from heading for the upper atmosphere. For the next settled zone, for the coast, any coast at all, and would never be entirely sure how. "I... Mrs. Wonderment, I..."

It got her a sly smile. "Would you do me a small favor, if you'd be so kind to an old mare?"

Mrs. Wonderment's small favors had a way of turning into very large chunks of work time. Ratchette didn't nod or indicate acceptance in any way, a lesson hard-learned over the course of nearly two years. She just waited to hear what the favor was.

"That fake Minder... do you feel it's likely to do something which will hurt anypony else on the train?"

Ratchette shook her head.

"Only him?"

A tentative nod.

"Physically?"

The short mane shook again. A few slivers of ignored silver shavings fell to the ground.

"Then, dear -- he is not your responsibility. I'm sure you did your best. I'm equally certain any number of ponies have today. And since we have all failed in our noble cause -- let it happen."

The aged head withdrew, and the blazing white field slammed the door.

Ratchette hovered in front of the store for a full two minutes, shivering in the spring air. And then she flew away.

The train station wasn't that far from the convenience shop, and the unicorn had been galloping at a decent pace, at least when considering his build and lack of conditioning. He'd had a good head start on her, and Ratchette wasn't anywhere near the best flier in Ponyville. But the thing about train stations was that anypony could gallop, fly, or even teleport there at top speed if they had the ability -- but unless your timing was exact, once you got there, you still had to wait for the train.

He had isolated himself in a corner, well away from everypony else. His Minder (or what was supposed to pass for one) was held within his bile-hued field, and he was whispering to it. Out of hearing and almost completely out of sight, except from overhead. And it was one of the worst things he could have done.

"Mr. Cimarron?"

The spin-in-place was almost done on a single hoof, and the mauve eyes blazed. "Duke Cimarron. For you! Why are you here? It's your joke which is putting me back on the train to sanity, to find a real repair shop away from this freakshow, Sun and Moon forbid anypony see me in Canterlot needing help but you've left me no other choice, all of you! I have a next generation early release product, the Princesses only know if anypony will know what to do with it or even admit it was issued, somepony might see me and believe I have something inferior instead of superior, and if they see me and that gossip spreads..."

He turned away from her.

"You'll know if that happens," he said. "Because I will be sure to take it out on you. Have a good final day in your joke of a business -- oh, what was your name? Never mind -- it'll be on the lawsuit papers..."

"Lady."

It had not been a hiss. Ratchette, often too shy for her own good, could not manage hisses, at least not at other ponies. Misbehaving devices... they got hisses, and glares, and curses most suited to total privacy, especially as they tended to tarnish the silver. But this was another pony, and so the word had not emerged as a hiss. And given enough time, she was almost sure she could have found another way to describe it.

"...what did you say?"

"If you're Duke Cimarron," Ratchette told his lashing tail, "then I'll be Lady Gust of House Cumulus. And again, sir, my best to your mother."

He turned. It took a very long time, more than enough for Ratchette to hear a whistle in the distance.

"You can't be..."

"Why not? Because I'm a pegasus?" With a completely false casualness which would only impact her in the workshop later, "You know, it's amazing how many unicorns forget that there are earth pony nobles, and pegasus nobles -- any family which held territory early in a settlement stage or before the unification can qualify for the nobility. There are more unicorn Houses, compared to any one of the other two races -- but together, we outnumber you, at least when we care to speak up at all..."

He seemed to be blinking far too much. "You're lying. House Cumulus -- that's the oldest House among the pegasi. They almost have..." He swallowed twice. "...status. If I consulted Twerp's Peerage..."

"...page two hundred and forty-five. Bottom row. Right edge. I'm pretty sure you know where the library is."

He kept staring at her.

"No lady of any House -- even a pegasi one -- would be --"

"-- because I'm not," Ratchette said. "Not while I'm here. You're right, you know. This is a freakshow of a town sometimes. That's why I moved here. Because it was a place where somepony who's only pretty until everypony realizes she's just pretty weird might have a chance. I dropped a lot along the air path to get here, and one of the things I didn't regret dropping was my title. Oh, a few ponies here know about it. They mostly think it's funny, or better yet, they don't think about it at all. And I never pull it out -- until somepony tries to throw their weight into my flank. Quarant... west coast. A very nice and long-suffering matriarch, and I have to wonder how much of that pain comes from something other than the sacroiliac. And a minor House."

She looked at him, copper eyes on mauve. and it would be hours later, tucked in her bed, before she would wonder where her blinks had gone.

"I use my weight -- whatever there is of it -- to stay on my hooves when somepony shoves," Ratchette softly said. "And you could see that as a threat, I guess. Wonder what House Quarant could do against House Cumulus if we all pulled our respective strings at the same time."

She let him think about that, or at least provided time where she could look for signs that thought was happening. There didn't seem to be any.

"But that's not what this is about, sir," she said. "Because once again, my best to your mother. This is about your counterfeit Minder."

The words made her automatically glance at it -- just in time to see the little circle of shadow at the side.

Her eyes widened.

"Sir, it's dangerous," she said. "Look at it, please. It'll freeze if it senses somepony is paying attention, try to reverse itself when nopony's looking, but if you look right now..."

He didn't. He simply looked at her.

There was another whistle. The chugging of train wheels, and then the screech of brakes.

"I... I will look you up at the Canterlot Archives," he inhaled, and took in no strength from it. "If you're anypony other than who you say you are -- or you're just laying claim to somepony else's title... you'll see me again, and so much of my House. Don't make a bluff you can't back up, Lady."

Maybe if she attached the title, she could force his ears into working. "Duke Cimarron -- you have to wipe that, right now. Full erasure, everything you've put on it. And even that might not be enough. If you've said anything --"

He turned away from her again, began trotting towards the train.

Ratchette looked away. Just for a second.

There was a little sound, much like a tiny silver spool hitting the ground. It was followed by a scritching noise, something small rolling away. All of it would have been easily lost in the sounds of the train and ponies boarding, but Ratchette had been listening for it.

And then there were new sounds as the boiler heated, the steamstack vented, ponies who had just disembarked streamed out of the station to find no special advance generation of Minders waiting to be sold...

...Ratchette was alone on the platform.

She took a deep, supposedly cleansing breath. Too much of it brought steam into her lungs, and she spent some time coughing afterwards.

"Now," she finally managed, "where are you hiding...?"

It would have gone for a dark corner, she knew (sensed) that. Something small and secure, but not buried deep: the movement spell would fade quickly and unless the caster sensed it within minutes, they would need to retrieve the spool on their own. That meant it wouldn't tuck itself inside something else, not fully enclosed. A small hole...

The search took eight minutes, and she was never sure if she actually saw the partially-blocked mousehole near the benches or just somehow knew there was a device waiting within.

She didn't sneak up on it immediately. She had to find an appropriate stick first. And then, with wood clenched between her teeth, she inserted the thin end, the one which still had a little bit of leaf attached, into the hole and knocked the contents out...

It tried to scramble immediately, flee, get anywhere she couldn't reach. None of those goals could be accomplished with her hoof on top of it.

She shifted her position, just enough to see the little duplicate spool while still keeping it pinned.

Why make internal backup spools?

Because proper Minder recordings were sorted out by category. Like 'Private' and 'Secret'. And if somepony whispered such things into their very real Minder, those words would remain exactly that. But with this fake...

The duplicate spools recorded. And then they would wait for a quiet moment. Get away, hide, and stay in the shadows until the brothers had retrieved them. Play them back, see what was to be learned, especially from somepony who was about to have a meeting with members of the Day Court and would have bragged of that...

...see what could be used.

The spool was struggling under her hoof: still some thaums left in the enchantment. If she lifted, it would hide again.

He's... horrible. He's what so many ponies think of when they think of nobles at all. The reason they think of that, and just one more not to ever use my title in front of anypony, unless it's a joke or somepony just treats it that way no matter what. Unless I trust... even with ponies I can't trust everything with, I've trusted that with some of them, and they didn't think any less of me because...

...I was already pretty weird.

If I let this go... the brothers will be here eventually. They'll retrieve the spool. Maybe there's nothing on here at all. Nothing important. Secret notes which are only crucial to him. Hearth's Warming gift lists for next winter, not that he'll give any.

Or they could find something interesting. Go after him. Con artistry discarded, inventions never worked out, so it's time to try blackmail. Given what he was okay with saying in public, what would he put on a Minder when he thought it was private? How much could they use?

'Would you do me a small favor?'

'Let it happen.'

'Why does he deserve saving?'

Ratchette stood alone on the platform. Nopony to see or hear. Just her, the struggling spool, and the echoes of words.

Her hoof lifted. The spool immediately rolled right --

-- and didn't get a half body length before her teeth nipped it off the ground.

She took off, hovered just a little off the surface.

The police first: if the letter hadn't been finished, then they would need to know the brothers would be on their way into town, and there would be a warrant waiting for them. Then Twilight, to drop off the spool -- unless the police needed it for evidence -- because the librarian would love getting a chance to figure out how that enchantment had been worked and if all else failed, she could always look it over in the confiscation locker. And then back to the shop, because Ratchette wasn't quite good enough to make Rainbow's camera setup fix itself when she wasn't there.

With schedule set, she flew towards her first stop.

Why does he deserve saving?

Maybe he doesn't.

Ratchette... was often seen as being pretty. She was usually seen as being pretty weird.

But I'm not a Bearer, or a Princess, or a police officer, or a Guard. I'm a mechanic. And I'm not the pony who should make that decision.

And she made her way through that slightly-rural, overly-strange town.

The place where she almost fit right in.