Watching the Watchers

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Chapter 1

For generations, when most ponies thought of Ponyville, the thought that immediately came to mind was "What the buck is Ponyville?"

The few ponies that knew of the town would instead think of a quaint village nestled peacefully between Canterlot and Everfree, built around farmland and the rail line to Las Pegasus (and other settlements that no self respecting pony could bother to remember, unless they were in the business of agriculture).

Over the past years, however, Ponyville gained some recognition as the location of Twilight Sparkle, a young unicorn with not inconsiderable political clout. More practically minded elements of the Guard also learned of the town as the location of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, an elite pony force to be called upon when the traditional line of battle was inadequate to defend the realm. A very few even connected young Miss Sparkle to the Elements, although lacking an Element of Books to attribute her, they were uncertain which Element she bore.

Several months ago, Ponyville gained national recognition as the homestead of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Her ascension polarized the nobility and brought months of politicking in the dirty dirty trenches that wove through every ball, gala, dinner party, and unveiling ceremony. Those that counted themselves among Twilight Sparkle's teachers and friendly acquaintances were interrogated without mercy over tea and snack cakes for weeks on end, such that the average girth of Canterlotian academia expanded three inches.

It was only now, however, after the fall of Tirek, that the Princess of Friendship actually entered the political world on her own hooves. Armed with a palace of her own and the most dedicated council of advisers a pony could ask for, the fourth royal power in Equestria was finally open for business.

Now if only she had a clue what she was doing.

Twilight's field sifted through the rubble that had once been a library. Golden Oaks had stood in Ponyville since the town's founding, but it was just an underused bit of culture in a rustic town. Few patrons actually used the library as a library. Nopony had really batted an eye when royal edict ceded the structure to Twilight in perpetuity, so Twilight could be excused for considering it, first and foremost, her home.

Specifically, the first home that wasn't a dormitory, Canterlot Castle, or her parent's house. The first home that was her home.

Tirek had gotten off far too lightly.

Twilight shook her head violently and took a deep breath. It was over, it was done, now was the time to look to the future...and find what remained of the past. No! Bad melancholy! Bad!

Being a mare of organization and refinement, Twilight was ripping the ruins of her beloved library to pieces and sorting them into piles. Ruined walls and books went into the funeral pyre. Books that could be magically restored had their own pile. A bare spot of dirt held the nonexistant pile of books that had survived the carnage unscathed. Personal items were similarly sorted into ruined, repairable, and intact. She had great hopes for the expensive equipment she stored in her cellar.

Spike exploded from the rubble with a bundle of pink fabric in his arms. "Found it!" he called. He waded towards Twilight. "All that gem hunting with Rarity must have paid off. Um, I think it's a lost cause, though."

Twilight tossed another slab of dead tree into the bonfire and turned to Spike's find. It was her royal regalia, the jewelry and gown she had worn for her coronation. "I think you're right," she said sadly. Her magic held out the tattered remains of the dress, scorched and shredded past even Rarity's skills. "The jewelry made it through okay, at least," she said. An awful thought struck her. "Was...was that all that was left of my clothes?"

Spike grinned. "Nnnope." He reached behind himself and pulled out a long bundle of blue cloth adorned with stars.

Twilight gasped. "My dress!" she squealed, wrapping Spike up in a hug. "Oh I can't believe it survived! Did it survive? Oh Spike, tell me it survived." Not waiting for an answer she let her royal shreds fall to the ground and delicately picked up the first dress Rarity ever made her. She fluffed it out and smiled. Oh, it was damaged without question, but she'd seen Rarity work wonders on worse. The clasp was broken, there were scorched threads around the saddle, but they would have needed to be reworked anyway. Twilight ruffled her wings gently and placed the treasured gown on the 'salvageable' pile.

"I remember that dress," a familiar voice came from behind her.

"Princess!" Twilight yelped, spinning around and nearly tripping over her hooves. Celestia stood not a ponylength away, looking over the piles of salvage. She blinked once, slowly and offered a sigh that resonated with the hollow place in Twilight's chest.

"It's 'Celestia,'" Princess Celestia reminded her former student. "How are you holding up, Twilight?"

"I'm fine," Twilight said immediately.

Celestia was decidedly unimpressed. "Twilight," she chided, "I can count on one hoof the number of ponies that have said 'I am fine' without lying."

Twilight sighed and her ears drooped. She waved a hoof to the piles. "I...there's so much that just isn't here at all," she said at last. "Vaporized. Unmade. Incinerated. I'm still not sure what he did. I'd run tests but..." she waved her hoof at the ruin more insistently.

Celestia nodded her understanding. Twilight was brilliant, but not even Celestia herself could hold all the magical knowledge ponies had created in her head. Reference material was absolutely essential, especially when dealing with something as exotic as Tirek. Instead of dwelling on the loss, she nodded her head towards the distant castle. "And your new home?" she asked.

Twilight looked out over the Ponyville skyline. The massive crystal structure stood above all, dominating the horizon and making Ponyville look like an afterthought. "It's...big," Twilight said finally.

Celestia nodded. "A bit too big, maybe?" she asked softly.

Twilight lowered her head. "I...I want to be a good princess," she said. "I can be. I will be."

Celestia smiled. "And you are," she assured. "But I'm not so sure that's what I asked."

Twilight cringed and seemed to shrink into her hooves. "Um...I...miss the library?"

Celestia nodded. "I'd be terrified if you didn't." She deliberately looked up at Twilight's new castle and fixed her gaze on it with such intensity that Twilight was all but compelled to look with her.

Twilight took in the magnificent crystal structure. "It's...it's...that isn't my home!" she wailed.

Celestia relaxed and slipped a wing around her young friend. Twilight had kept this bottled up far too long.

Twilight buried her face in her mentor's flank and cried into her coat. "My books, my lab, my pictures, my memories! All gone, gone because somepony wanted me dead. I watched him try to kill me and I couldn't make him stop! And now I've got this huge thing that wants to be my home but it isn't and everypony is telling me I'm so lucky and...and...and I just want to go home!"

Celestia hung her head and allowed a single tear. It had taken decades for Canterlot to become home after Nightmare Moon. It had taken a millennium for the pain to go away. "You will rebuild," she promised. "Your friends will be there to help you. Twilight, would you allow me to be your teacher one last time?" She felt a nod and smiled sadly. Celestia stepped back and dropped to her knees. She captured Twilight's eyes with her own and was unsurprised to find them red, tear-streaked, and lost. "There's a saying my little ponies have had that has kept me going through times tragic and times joyous. It is a simple wisdom I am happy to pass to you. 'The best is yet to come,' Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight blinked slowly. She'd heard that saying before. What pony hadn't? "Princess?" she asked.

"Celestia," Celestia corrected again. "Twilight, you've suffered a deeply personal loss, and I envy the innocence of anypony that doesn't know that. That doesn't have to tarnish your memories of the library or your time there. And you need to trust that you'll make new memories. That you will be happy again."

Twilight nodded hesitantly and then broke eye contact. She looked at the floor and her ears flattened. "Does," she whispered hesitantly. She swallowed and tried again. "Does the hurting ever stop?"

Celestia felt the echo in her heart again. "Not really," she admitted. A happy lie would not be a kindness. "I still miss the castle Luna and I shared. But until today, I had not thought of it for a long time. It is more a memory of a pain, now." She smiled. "Of course, I lost that castle the same day I lost my sister, and I got the more important of the two back, thanks to you and your friends."

Twilight smiled weakly. "It was our pleasure," she said sincerely. She perked up a bit more and looked back towards the library's ruin. "And I did save my pet owl, Owly...what?"

Celestia absolutely refused to grin as Twilight all but chased her own tail looking around her grand, crystal-walled castle bedroom. It was sparsely furnished, little more than a comfortable bed and a couple books on the floor, but the view out the balcony was unmistakable. "I teleported us when you were crying into my ribs," Celestia explained. "I didn't think you'd want to lose control like that where anypony could see."

Twilight stopped looking around the room and sat down on her haunches with an audible thump. "I'm sor-" she tried to say, but Celestia's hoof interrupted her. Idly Twilight noted that gold slippers taste slightly like dirt.

"None of that," Celestia said. "You needed the release, and I know you well enough that you would not seek it out yourself." She gestured to the room around them. "In fact, I apologize, Princess Twilight, for invading your chambers in this way."

"What?" Twilight asked. Her eyes widened. "No! I mean, you didn't. I mean, that's okay?"

Celestia smiled sadly. They'd work on that, but one battle at a time. "Regardless, if you would like me to give you a moment?"

Twilight rubbed her eyes with a foreleg. The fur came away wet. "No, that's okay," she lied. "I know you didn't come here just to let me cry."

Celestia felt something in her chest twist sharply. She didn't have time to comfort a dear friend at her lowest. She didn't let the pain show. "You are sadly correct," she said, the words ash in her mouth. "But I am here for you. I do not know if you will consider this a reward or a burden, I think it will be both."

"What is it, Princess?" Twilight asked.

Celestia sighed. This was a moment for formality. "By consensus of the Diarchs of the Principality of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle is hereby requested and required to assume her duties in the rulership of Our realm." Her horn flashed once and an already framed declaration appeared by her side, the calligraphy more exquisite than anything Twilight had ever seen outside the most severe of royal decrees...which she realized this was.

"Princess?" Twilight asked again, shrinking back into her hooves.

Celestia smiled and rolled her eyes. "It is a bit pretentious, isn't it?" she laughed. "Luna insisted. Relax, Twilight."

Twilight ruffled her feathers nervously and stood up straight...er. "I'm relaxed," she lied. "What, um, what duties are we talking about?" Her horn glowed and sought out paper, ink, and quill.

"You have two duties," Celestia said simply. "In time, and with experience, more will be added. For now, you will merely have land to manage and a court to run."

Twilight's quill got to work. "Land and a court. Doesn't sound too hard. Just study up on land use, economic trends, roadways. What land?" She thought of the grounds around her castle. They were outside the village limits, owned by the crown, and quite extensive in certain directions. She might be able to found a whole village in the right chunk, but she'd probably just end up extending Ponyville.

"From your castle, a two mile radius in all directions," Celestia explained.

Twilight wrote down the words before processing them. "Wait, all directions?" she asked.

"No, not exactly," Celestia said. She retrieved a small map of the area with a clearly defined border. "We made sure to include all of Sweet Apple Acres and didn't cross into the Everfree."

"I own Ponyville?" Twilight squeaked.

Celestia shook her head. "You rule Ponyville and you own that which was formerly the crown's."

Twilight fell to her haunches heavily. Again. She stared at Celestia. "But...but...what about Mayor Mare?"

"She was informed two days ago and offered an advisory position with a pay raise," Celestia said. "I'm to understand she chose retirement instead -- she has been at the job for a long time, after all."

"That's true," Twilight said weakly. "But my friends?"

Celestia actually giggled at that. "You mean the five mares with thrones in the room below us?" she asked. "If I didn't think it would just make their lives more difficult, I would have already awarded them titles in the nobility."

Twilight stopped a moment and pictured her friends with such titles. Rarity was the only one she could picture pulling it off. "And she would lose most of her high class customers, wouldn't she?" she muttered.

"Rarity?" Celestia asked. Twilight nodded. "Yes, most likely. Unless she managed to make them an exclusive market."

"Which she would never do," Twilight said. The embodiment of Generosity just wasn't capable of limiting her services to the upper class.

"Exactly," Celestia agreed. "And as to your other friends, Twilight, I will not tell you that things will not change. Things always change. Just remember they are your friends. You are not a stranger coming in to take over their lives and change their town at a whim."

Twilight nodded, her eyes wide. "But still, it's a lot of responsibility," she said.

"Is that not what you wanted?" Celestia asked kindly.

Twilight looked away and wrapped her tail around her forehooves. "I guess," she said sulkily, "but I was hoping for decrees and bills and legislature and due process and stuff. Not nigh-unlimited power over my neighbors."

Celestia chuckled at that. "Yes, the grand trappings of government do help conceal the thousands of ponies that can be utterly crushed by an errant swipe of a quill," she said lightly. Celestia waited for Twilight to digest that thought. Her quill fell to the floor and tremors ran up her neck. A few strands of her forelock audibly curled into an unkempt mess. Once she looked ready to vomit, Celestia spoke again, quiet and serious. "When you know the name of every pony you rule, it is easy to see the terrible choices. You will make mistakes. You will fix them. You will hurt ponies. You will heal them. You will learn. And when your rule expands beyond those ponies you can name, you will be ready."

Twilight still felt green under her purple, but she managed a nod anyway. "I understand, Princess. Celestia." She picked up her quill again and took a deep breath. "But I think you also mentioned a court."

Celestia smiled and outlined the duties Twilight would face beyond Ponyville.

"You'd think holding court would be as awesome as it sounds!"

"What's not awesome about this, Dashie? I just created seven new kinds of parties!"

"Pinkie! You were supposed to be looking at the drought outside Filly Delphia!"

"I was, Twilight! All they need is a few more pegasi to groove in their rain dance."

"Uh, Pinkie? Cloudsdale banned the rain dance three years ago."

"...oh. Then I've created two parties and five felonies."

"Rainbow, could you trade with Pinkie?"

"No way! I deal with weather enough. Besides, this stuff is cool."

"I thought you said it wasn't."

"I said it wasn't awesome, Twi."

Twilight facehoofed. "Dare I ask what you're working on?"

Rainbow grinned around the quill in her mouth and held up a sheaf of forms. "Wonderbolts' annual budget request," she said proudly. The forms were instantly grabbed in a lavender field and ripped from her hooves. "Hey!"

"Sorry, Rainbow," Twilight said unapologetically, "but the Princesses would not be happy if we bankrupted Equestria trying to make the Wonderbolts...twenty percent cooler?" She looked from the forms to the suddenly sheepish Rainbow. "Really?"

"Give me a break, Twilight," Rainbow whined. "When you talked us into helping you run court, I thought you were talking about hearing ponies with problems we could help with, what did you call 'em, Rares?"

Rarity didn't look up from her own stack of papers. "Petitioners, darling."

"Right, those. More of that, less of...this."

"You just waved your hoof at everything," Twilight objected.

"I know," Rainbow said flatly.

Twilight rolled her eyes and took in their throne room. The grand crystal table in the center of the room hosted a perilously tall stack of forms, reports, files, and assorted documents that was their in-box, and a laughably empty, cheerful pink outbox. The six thrones had been matched with six folding tables, each with a pony who looked ready to drop dead if one more scrap of paper needing a signature, seal, or moment of attention passed under her muzzle.

Applejack got up from her throne with an inch thick stack of papers in her mouth, which she dropped heavily in the out box. "I gotta agree with RD," she said in a dead voice. "I ain't felt like this since that time Big Mac hurt himself."

"This is somewhat less glamorous than I had expected," Rarity agreed. "We have witnessed Princess Celestia hold court, after all."

Twilight ducked her head slightly. "Um, I remember Cadence telling me about this when I was a filly," she started. "I didn't quite understand it at the time."

Five pairs of eyes landed on her. Fluttershy's were the scariest. "Thou shalt tell Us what thou are talking about or We will feast upon thine soul," they said.

Twilight shook her head rapidly. Talking eyeballs were a bad sign. "Well, she was the youngest princess for the longest time, right? So Celestia, the Bluebloods, the Chermanes, the Maneavellians, all of the royal families could, well, pass the bit to her. Then she got her hooves on the Crystal Empire and they couldn't do that anymore."

"And now you're the youngest princess," Applejack said. Her eyes slowly swiveled over to the mountain of papers that they had laughingly called an "in box."

"This is royal scut work?" Rainbow asked, enraged.

"What?" Twilight asked. "No, of course not! These are all important documents to the functioning of Equestria. They're important!"

Rainbow glanced at the Wonderbolt budget Twilight still held. "Some of it, yeah," she said grudgingly. "The requests, anyway. But those reports?"

Twilight frowned. "It takes a lot of bits to put together a report. They wouldn't do that if it wasn't important. Fluttershy, you've been reading more reports than any of us, tell them."

Fluttershy blinked once, slowly. "When somepony wastes your time, don't waste more trying to rhyme. Buck 'em," she said flatly.

Alarm bells went off in Twilight's head. She ignored them. Reports were like books that hadn't been published. They had all kinds of neat facts in them. "It can't possibly be that bad," she protested. She directed her magic at the stack and retrieved a report at random. "Just because they're dry is no reason to dismiss their value. Here, A Five Year Study on the Job Opportunities For and Hiring Practices Against Earth Pony Mares in Cloudsdale."

Silence.

"New plan," Twilight said brightly. "We get on the next train to Canterlot, find the pony responsible for this, and have Fluttershy Stare him back to sanity."

"I second the motion," Fluttershy said quickly. "All in favor?"

"Aye!" six voices said at once.

"The motion passes," Twilight said. "Court is adjourned to Canterlot."

Twilight stood at the steps to her castle, a scroll floating in her field. It was, of course, a checklist. "Torches?" she asked, ignoring the lock of mane that was getting in her eyes. She'd brush on the train.

Rarity peeked in her saddlebag. "Four, soaked in oil and wrapped in wax paper."

"Check. Pitchforks?"

Applejack leaned forward, raising her rump and the implements balanced on her hips. "Eeyup."

"Check. Flutterrage?"

"Eep!"

Rainbow smirked and pulled the corner of a stack of paperwork from her overstuffed saddlebag. "Got it covered."

"Provisional check." Twilight frowned at that. It felt incomplete. But on the other hoof, it was probably better this way. "And last item...Spike, what does 'sanity check' mean?"

"It means if anypony's mane has gone all weird we abort and write a friendship report before somepony gets hurt," Spike said seriously. He held up a mirror for Twilight.

Twilight considered her reflection calmly. "Only one eye is twitching," she said dismissively. "You worry too much, Spike."

"We're doomed," Spike moaned.

"What was that?" Twilight asked.

Spike was saved the need to answer by a bright red light and a soft alarm tone sounding from inside the castle.

Author's Note

This chapter wrote itself. I knew I wanted Twilight to just get started in the whole government thing, and I knew I wanted everypony else along for the ride. I wanted her to have Ponyville as her private government playground, a place she could make mistakes and learn from. And I wanted her to have a court that made her part of Equestria's national government. I had this glorious image of petitioners and ponies with problems and then I realized that was never going to work. Even if Celestia and Luna do that, who would want to petition the inexperienced princess? Ponies that want to take advantage of her naivete. Figure that Celestia knows that, she's not going to throw Twilight in the deep end where she could do some damage. That means the business of her court is going to be the kind of stuff that is straightforward, the kind of stuff you'd have to be an idiot to screw up. The kind of stuff that is soul-crushingly boring. Thank you, bureaucracy.

Any resemblance to actual governing bodies is tragic. I mean accidental. And tragic.

Chapter 2

"What the buck was that?" Rainbow asked.

Twilight turned around and faced her castle. From the outside nothing appeared wrong, but inside a melodic, urgent chime echoed through the corridors. Twilight gaped stupidly a moment, then ran inside at a full gallop. Her friends followed.

Twilight's castle was a massive structure and had many dozens of rooms of various sizes inside. The lower portion, the one that resembled a tree trunk, was where the throne room, library, and several meeting rooms were located. Up in the branches, where the castle flared outwards in all directions, was a mansion of a living space, complete with another library (seriously, Twilight got creepy when she drooled over all the empty shelves), permanent quarters for all of her friends (which made a lot more sense now that they'd seen the amount of paperwork their court might need to handle), live-in staff housing, and a full laboratory suite. It was the laboratory that Twilight bolted towards.

Once inside, Twilight made her way to a device that looked like the mutant offspring of a tuning fork, a chandelier, and a bonsai tree. Precious metals, stones, and crystals formed delicate spires and branches in sharp points, dull blocks, squat knobs, even corkscrews. It was also the source of the insistent chiming and had some rather urgent red flashing lights. Both stopped when Twilight's horn lit and she attended to the device.

The other Element bearers piled in through the doorway. "What's going on, sugarcube?" Applejack asked.

"It's a monitoring spell. Somepony's trying to spy on my castle," Twilight growled.

Rainbow's forelegs hung slack below her. "Seriously?" she asked.

"It's the Second Postulate of Magical Theory," Twilight said. "Magic always leaves a mark. Scrying magic isn't the easiest to pick up, but Princess ordered this installed hours after naming me Princess of Friendship. I didn't really see the point. The Castle of Friendship refracts scrying magic. Whoever cast the spell is only getting gibberish."

"Then what's with all the unhappy?" Pinkie asked.

Rainbow slammed her forehooves together angrily. "Somepony's poking their muzzle where it doesn't belong. Not cool."

"I'm with RD," Applejack agreed. "That kinda thing just ain't right. Any way to find out who's doin' it, Twi?"

"First Corollary to the Second Postulate, every mark is unique." Twilight levitated a scroll to the array and slid it under the machine. "I've enchanted the paper so...um, short version. The array is going to imprint the 'mark' onto the paper as a waveform. Everypony uses magic a bit differently, and that can be shown as a twisting line, all organic curves and twists. Celestia's is quite beautiful."

"Oh?" Rarity asked. "Do you think you could show my my own mark after this is all over with, darling?"

"Why?" Twilight asked.

"It might make a decent inspiration."

Twilight shrugged. "Sure, no problem. I'll need to test the magic of everypony else to get a match, anyway. Well, let's take a look at the pattern."

Twilight pulled the scroll from the device and lifted it up. "Hey," Rainbow said, "I thought you said it was supposed to be all curvy."

"It...was..." Twilight said haltingly. The diagram she held in her field was all straight lines and corners, every few centimeters making a quick jag up and then down before returning to midline. The pattern repeated itself perfectly, over and over, with no variation at all. "I've never seen anything like this," she admitted.

"Could it have come from something other than a pony?" Rarity asked.

Twilight shook her head. "It's really weird, but it still looks like unicorn magic. Maybe something close. Fluttershy?"

"Yes?" Fluttershy asked softly.

"Do you know any animals around here that can use spells like a unicorn?" Twilight asked.

Fluttershy shook her head slowly. "Nooo, I don't think so. There are plenty of critters in the forest I don't know that well, though. Maybe one of them can cast a spell?"

Rainbow snorted at the timid pegasus. "If there's an animal in the Everfree that you haven't met, chatted with, and had over for tea, I don't think it's going to develop an interest in us now."

"Could it be Discord?" Applejack asked.

Pinkie giggled. "Discord's hoofwork doesn't look like that, silly. That's all beep beep beep," she said, bouncing in time with her beeps. "Discord's more like beepy bangy wahey bouncy bouncy splat!" Pinkie dropped down from the ceiling and shrugged carelessly. "It's probably aliens. They're probing us. But not with probes because we'd notice that. Who wouldn't notice somepony shoving something up your-"

"ANYWAY!" Twilight said loudly, not a moment too soon. "Checking everypony in town is a waste of time."

"Not to mention it would be a bad edict to start your reign with," Rarity pointed out.

"That too," Twilight agreed. "I'll just need to be ready to trace it if it happens again." She sighed. "Sorry, girls, this is going to take me a while. But if you want to go to Canterlot without me...and you're already out the door."

Dear Princess Celestia,

As I mentioned in my last letter, I am sorry for my friends' behavior at the Equestrian Civil Service headquarters. I am sure, had they known the Senior Undersecretary of Northwest Equestrian Weather Management was allergic to whipped creme that Pinkie Pie would not have set his mane on fire. Applejack told me she sent his family a fruit basket, with a promise of another as soon as the stitches come out and he can eat solid food again.

However, I have made a rather startling discovery. There is a group of creatures spying on Ponyville. I have been using some of the crystal devices coming from the Empire to spy right back on them, however I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew. From what I have gathered, they are not hostile. They have taken extraordinary measures to remain unnoticed, and I do not believe they pose an immediate threat to anything save our privacy.

What should I do?
Your eternal friend,
Twilight Sparkle

Princess Twilight Sparkle,

Undersecretary Blustering Wind's prognosis is good, his family tells me. They send their appreciation for the fruit basket and also mention that Wind's hooves should return to their proper color inside of two weeks, much sooner than the paramedics originally believed.

I am most disturbed by your discovery. However, it takes place in your domain, Princess. Destiny has conspired to place this challenge in your hooves, and I choose to put my faith in you. So long as this incident lies in Ponyville, you mst take command of the situation. Not I.

You are not alone. You have your friends, and I will always be here to offer you what assistance I can. What will you do, Princess Twilight?
-Celestia

Princess Celestia,

I need a lingual expert and three scribes to make sense of all the recordings I've made over the past day alone. All material and conversation related to this issue must take place within wards no weaker than that called for by Crescent classified material, but due to the potential magnitude of this discovery I strongly recommend all ponies be cleared for operating under Dusk protocols.

Unless they're Pinkie Pie. But I only have time for three impossible challenges at once.
Your eternal friend,
Princess Twilight

They're on their way.
-Celestia

Two days later, Twilight held a grim meeting in her throne room. Rarity and Rainbow Dash were the only others in attendance -- Applejack had bowed out for some applebucking, Pinkie had sensed a birthday party in demand of her personal attention, and Fluttershy was, well, probably hiding in her cottage.

"Rarity," Twilight welcomed with relief. "I'm glad you could make it."

"Pish," Rarity demurred with a wave of a hoof. "I'm days ahead on all my designs, darling. This is far more important than my beauty sleep, I'm sure."

"I'm not," Rainbow grumbled from her throne. The other ponies ignored her with the ease of long practice.

Twilight trotted to her own throne and set her jaw. "I'm still getting those readings," she said. "Whoever was trying to scry my castle is still at it."

"What?" Rainbow yelped. She sat up straighter and scowled. "It's been days!"

"I know," Twilight growled. "And it's not just a spell. I'm getting the readings all the time, now. Somepony is very determined to scry in here."

"All the time?" Rarity asked skeptically. "As in, day and night?"

Twilight nodded. "Day and night, the same spell, the same magician. I've triple checked the readings."

"That's impossible," Rarity declared. "Not even you could keep such a schedule, Twilight. Nopony can."

"But we're not looking for a pony," Rainbow said. Of the six of them, she'd had the most time with non-pony friends. Well, unless you counted Fluttershy's animals, which Rainbow did not. "We don't know what kind of thing is spying on us, do we Twilight?"

"Not at all," Twilight agreed. "So it's important that we find out who, and what, is doing this. And to do that, we need to know where it is. Which is why I need both of you." Twilight's horn lit up and she pulled a couple large crystal arrays from behind her throne. Like the crystal-tree-device-thing in her lab, these were fusions of many different elements and had strange, vaguely unnerving shapes built into their design. "I need three points to 'listen' to this magic at once and I can track it down. One here, then these two. The more spread out, the easier the math is."

Rainbow frowned. "Twilight, these things look like Pinkie's sister got into some bad cider." She prodded one branch with a hoof and was rewarded with an unmusical toonk noise that her hoof should not have been able to produce. "I think they might tip off the bad guys."

"I must agree," Rarity sniffed. "In fact, I don't see how you could put these up at all without somepony asking questions, and if you were to answer them outside this castle..."

"Then the scrying spell could overhear me and tip off the bad guys," Twilight finished for her. "I know. That's why these need to be placed carefully, they need to be moved quickly, and they need to look," she stumbled a bit, "well, overlookable?"

Rarity smiled coyly. "I think I might be able to help with that, darling. What do you need?" She reached into a saddle bag with her field and produced a small notebook.

Twilight sighed in relief. "I hoped so. They need to be placed in open air, but a thin layer of cloth or something won't throw the readings too bad. Rooftops work, but the cloud layer is way too high."

Rarity sketched as Twilight talked and then snapped her notes shut. "I can work with that, dear. A slip cover with enough ribbing to disguise the shape, and I can put one on my boutique's balcony."

Rainbow looked the devices over. "I can move 'em without being seen, sure," she said uncertainly. Speed was one thing, exterior decorating was another. "But I can't think of anywhere in Ponyville we can just plop one down without a pegasus seeing it eventually. Maybe the Everfree?"

Twilight tapped a hoof to her muzzle. "Hmm. The Everfree is usually a pretty bad choice for scrying magic. There's too much uncontrolled magic and too many beasts all creating their own fields." Most of them, she had realized, were drawn by the power of the Tree of Harmony. "This signal's so far from normal, though. Let's give it a try."

Rarity needed less than an hour to dress up the array for her botique and Rainbow had both devices placed in five minutes. When Twilight linked them to the master array in her castle, however, she found something very odd. "I'm getting dozens of signals," she said. "Somepony has arrays already in place!"

Pinkie Pie fell out of a closet in a burst of confetti. "I hid them all over Ponyville in case of spy emergency!"

Twilight didn't so much as move a muscle. "Rainbow? If I keep staring at this non-Euclopean horror of a scrying array, will Pinkie Pie start to make sense?"

"Wouldn't bet on it, Twi," Rainbow chuckled.

"That's too bad, because all these extra signals are perfectly positioned to pinpoint the perpetrator of this perplexing puzzle and I'd like Pinkie to tell me how she bucking does it!"

"Do what?" Pinkie asked innocently.

Twilight felt her eye twitch three times. "Rarity, double session at the spa tomorrow. Take it out of the slush fund." There were benefits to being royalty. Not having to account for expenses off a research grant was one of them. Anypony that tried to research Pinkie quickly needed to add stress relief to the bills, and then came the audits.

"Of course, darling."

"So," Rainbow said, rolling her eyes as if sarcasm would keep the spa-based girliness from contaminating her, "where is this thing, anyway?"

Twilight tweaked a control and turned around. "All I have is a bunch of numbers," she admitted. "The castle's map should be able to turn them into a location. To the throne room, girls."

The four ponies piled into the throne room and made for their particular thrones. Fluttershy and Applejack weren't there to trigger the castle's innate magic, but it was more than willing to accommodate the request pushed to it from Twilight's array. The magical map of Equestria formed over the crystal table. It shimmered once and expanded, closing in on Ponyville while the majority of the world simply vanished over the edge of the table.

"Thanks to Pinkie's Pinkieness," Twilight said, "we should get a pretty precise location." The map shifted again, now showing only Sweet Apple Acres. The assembled ponies frowned at eachother. Why would the Apples be spying on anypony? The map shifted again and showed only one orchard, one infested by vampire fruit bats.

"The bats are spying on us?" Rainbow asked incredulously. "Seriously? Bats? Even after we didn't drive them out of town?"

"No," Twilight said slowly. "Something's missing. This area's still too big for how many detectors we used." She hopped up on the table, her muzzle brushing through the illusionary terrain. After a few minutes she made an excited noise. "Found it! The scrying spell originated here, a good ten feet below the ground."

Silence.

"Below the ground?" Rarity asked. "Oh Twilight, tell me those horrid dogs aren't back."

"That's a possibility," Twilight said grimly. "I'm more worried about changelings. They struck me as subterranean."

"They can't be ponies," Rainbow sneered. "Who'd want to hide out underground?"

"Somepony that doesn't want to be seen, silly," Pinkie said. "Maybe they're just really shy. Ooo oo, or maybe they have really big claws and don't want to scare anypony by showing their hideous monstrous faces!"

"And something that doesn't want anypony just walking by," Rarity noted. "Applejack and Big Mac don't go to that part of their orchard anymore, and no pony else does either."

"Should I scry them back?" Twilight wondered. "They might be able to detect it, but the only other thing I can think of is to just walk up and announce ourselves."

"Why not just do that?" Pinkie asked. "We can throw them a welcome to Ponyville party!"

Rainbow snorted. "I'm with Pinkie, only instead of a party, I say we throw them out."

Rarity glanced at the two empty thrones. "I think we are sorely missing our friends right now. Applejack and Fluttershy may have some ideas. I think we should be careful in doing anything we cannot undo. This situation has far too many unknowns for my tastes."

Twilight nodded. "Agreed. We'll see what the others think. I want to know more, but I agree with Rainbow. We can't let whoever it is spy on everypony. We have to protect our friends." She held up a hoof and glared at Rainbow. "But we will try to talk before using any kind of force."

Rainbow rolled her eyes, but nodded. "I'm with ya," she grumbled. "Let's just get to AJ and Flutters quick and take care of this, okay? I'm tired of all this talking!"

As it turned out, Applejack was less than useful. "Corsarnit! I knew letting those bats into mah field was a bad idea! Fluttershy may know her critters, but she don't know the first thing about graftin' apple trees an' growin' an orchard. Now them varmints are helpin' spies too?" She shook her head. "Bad business. Jus' bad business all around. So, when we gonna buck em outta town?"

Fluttershy was a bit more useful. "Oh, that must be why the bats have been so agitated," she gasped. "Their poor ears are so sensitive they can't hardly sleep with all the noise coming from underground."

Twilight blinked and grinned. "They've heard things?" she asked eagerly.

Fluttershy nodded. "Yes, many things, almost all the time. Always too high or too quiet for me to hear, though."

"Fluttershy, that's perfect!" Twilight gushed. "All we need to do is drop some sympathetic crystals in the orchard. They're practically undetectable. Can you talk the bats into carrying them?"

"Um, maybe?" Fluttershy asked. "How big will they be?"

Twilight waved a hoof. "A large grape, no bigger."

"Oh, that shouldn't be a problem."

It took Twilight a day to enchant the necessary crystals. They were similar to her arrays, but much simpler. Physical vibration was much easier to pick up than magical fields. The bats scattered them over their part of the orchard the next day and Twilight vanished into her lab. She emerged at the end of the week.

And then she took a shower at the rather insistent disapproval of Rarity.

Cleaned and smiling, Twilight gathered her friends in her throne room. "This has not been an easy task," she said. "The crystals relay raw sound to my lab, but the spells needed to alter the sound for distance, medium, and background noise were surprisingly complex. If it wasn't for the rather disturbing uses such magic could be put to, I'd write a paper on-"

"Twilight," Rainbow interrupted, "none of us know what you're talking about."

Twilight huffed. "I made a spell that makes it sound like you were in the room with the source of the sounds and got rid of all the bat noises and stuff, then had the receiving crystals etch some records."

"Oh," Rainbow said. "Why didn't you just say so?"

Twilight facehoofed. "Really?" she asked rhetorically. She levitated a small vinyl disk onto a record player and picked up the needle in her magic. "I have a collection of chirps, clicks, beeps, and hums that were made repeatedly, but I can't make sense of them. I also have many hours of conversation, mostly about Ponyville. They're watching the entire town."

Twilight took in her friends' grim faces and nodded. "But it's strange. First off, they don't speak Equestrian."

"So they're not from around town," Rainbow asked. "What do they speak?"

"I have no idea," Twilight admitted. "I haven't found a match in any language I've ever heard of."

"A lot of languages don't sound like what you read in a book," Rainbow said with certainty. "Gilda taught me some Griffish back when we first met. From the way it's written you'd expect all squawks and chirps, right? Well it really sounds more like singing than anything."

"Really?" Fluttershy asked. "Could you say something for us?"

Rainbow frowned and gave a credible impression of a songbird contralto. She ended with a hacking cough. "Ugh, been a while since I tried that." She bent over and made a light retching noise. Rarity scowled at the display.

"Oh, that was beautiful," Fluttershy said. "And thank you."

Rainbow looked up. "You speak Griffish?"

"Not really," Fluttershy said, shrinking back behind her mane, "but, um, thank you anyway."

"What did she say?" Applejack asked wonderingly.

Fluttershy blushed and ducked her head further. "Um, she, said, um."

Rainbow sighed. "I just said she was really great at helping me with Tank, okay? Drop it." She glanced at Fluttershy and sighed again. Fluttershy couldn't even take a compliment in a language she shouldn't understand! How did that make sense?

"Anyway," Twilight said, calling attention back to herself, "I cast a translation spell on the records. The results were...weird. They talk about us a lot. Not us six, ponies. They're trying to understand us."

Pinkie fell out of her throne laughing. "Good luck!" she gasped before laughing some more.

"What about us?" Applejack asked.

"Well, I mean everypony, not just us six," Twilight clarified. "But...here. This bit really sums up what I've learned." She finally put needle to record and a male voice came from the speaker.

Research log, stardate...we have been observing Ponyville for days now and are still no closer to getting sensor readings from inside the castle. Ensign Lorian repeated his suggestion that we remove a sample for material analysis. I still think it's too risky. Even if we had a way to infiltrate the indigenous population, we have no way of knowing what means would be required to remove such a sample. As it is the abode of one of this world's leading political figures, we must exercise caution.
Unfortunately, that brings up another point of failure. The Equestrian government is as opaque to us as ever. We have learned that Twilight Sparkle was, in fact, transformed into an alicorn immediately prior to her coronation. The nature of this metamorphosis is unknown. All references tie back to the translation issue.
The universal translator has failed to translate key technical terminology to explain the abilities of these ponies. To date we have tried ten million different algorithms and have only managed to arrive at a partial, and useless, definition of "magic." We have been forced to conclude that somehow, this pre-warp civilization has stumbled upon a branch of science, or perhaps a model for describing scientific phenomenon, that is unknown to any culture known to the Federation.
In accordance with this hypothesis I have ordered computer resources shifted from translation to sensor analysis and stepped up scans. The stronger intensity still failed to penetrate the castle, but we have a much better resolution of the metagravitational field surrounding pegasi in flight. Doctor Lewis believes he is close to constructing a working model of the mechanics involved. If so, we may finally have a point of reference to understand the means by which these fields are created. End log entry.

The record player quieted to a soft hiss of white noise and Twilight turned it off, leaving only empty silence. She coughed once. "Well?"

"I don't know where to begin, dear," Rarity said.

"What the hay was that bit about pegasi?" Rainbow demanded.

"At least they don't want to take the castle apart," Fluttershy whispered.

"What does 'pre-warp' mean?" Applejack asked. "Doesn't sound kindly."

"I wonder if Federals like parties," Pinkie wondered.

Twilight nodded. "I have a few answers, I think. Rainbow, I'll start with yours. From the other 'logs' I've listened to, these Federals are studying magic, but they don't know what magic is."

Rarity gasped and launched herself backwards into her throne. "How can anything not know what magic is?"

Rainbow frowned. "So why start with pegasi? Sure, flying is awesome, but wouldn't unicorns be easier to study?"

Twilight frowned. "I think they understand nonmagical flight, like birds and insects use. This Doctor Lewis logged some kind of 'simulation' that tried to predict how pegasus magic would mimic that mechanism." She shook her head in frustration. "But that doesn't make sense either. I can't figure it out just by eavesdropping. I need to see it!"

"But it's clear they're tryin' to figure out magic, sugarcube?" Applejack asked.

"Several of them are. I've recorded half a dozen voices, stallions and mares both. One of the mares is very strange, though. I think she may be a golem." Twilight's mane was falling apart as she ran another hoof through it. "But I don't understand how they could create an animated construct without understanding magic."

"Sounds like they know some tricks we don't," Applejack said. "That pre-warp business?"

"No idea what that refers to," Twilight admitted. She grabbed her tail compulsively. "They only mentioned it a couple times, each time calling us 'pre-warp.' They didn't think to define it for me."

"So," Rarity said, "break this down for us, Twilight. What do we know?"

Twilight blinked once and created a list in her mind. "We're being observed by unknown creatures. They use something like magic. They do not know magical terminology. Their language has no equivalents to magical terminology. They speak a language we don't know. They come from a Federation -- has anypony heard of anything called a Federation? Right, they come from off our maps."

"Don't forget yourself, silly," Pinkie said.

"Right. We know they don't understand royalty. For some reason."

Rarity rubbed her muzzle with a hoof. "Hmmm," she mused. "It sounds like what we know is that these Federals don't know a lot of basic facts about us."

"Really basic," Applejack agreed. "Even stuff Rainbow Dash knows."

"Hay!"

"And we know they don't want to be seen," Fluttershy said softly.

Twilight nodded and stroked her tail. "So. Do we tell them we know they're here?"

Chapter 3

"What the hay kinda question is that, sugarcube?" Applejack asked. "'Course we tell 'em we know what they're up to, an' then we run the varmints outta town!"

"But we don't know, Applejack," Rarity said primly. "I say we try to learn more. It would not do to lay a card out of turn, and we have several tricks left in this hoof."

"Awww, but I wanted to throw them a party," Pinkie whined. "They don't sound like meany mean pants, so why bother sneaking around?"

Rainbow glanced around the table. "What do you think, Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy eeped quietly. "Oh, whatever you girls decide is fine with me."

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Flutters. You flinched when AJ and Pinkie spoke up."

"No," Fluttershy protested. "Well, yes, I did, but, ohhhh." She pouted. "I just don't want anypony getting hurt if they feel threatened."

Rainbow sighed. "Yeah well, that sounded way too much like a bunch of eggheads doing egghead things. What's the worst that could happen?"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? 'Epic freak out aria,'" she quoted.

Rainbow shivered slightly. "Good point," she conceded.

Twilight nodded. "If they are researching pegasi, and me specifically, at least we have a way of influencing them. We can learn from how they react."

"So we're not runnin' the varmints outta town?" Applejack grumbled.

"Not yet," Twilight said. "For now, we'll see what we can learn about them."

"And how are we going to do anything to them?" Rainbow asked.

Twilight sighed the heavy sigh of the doomed. "Up for some flying lessons, coach?" she asked gamely.

Twilight collapsed into the cloud, her legs splayed out in, as best she could tell, a particularly random assortment of directions. She sucked in a breath straight through the fluff and tried not to choke on the vapor. She didn't have the energy needed to get her muzzle into clear air.

The cloud rippled slightly as somepony landed next to her. Soon enough she felt a too-cold nose nuzzle her mane. "Up, Egghead," Rainbow insisted.

"Mufeafrain," Twilight mumbled intelligently.

Rainbow grinned slyly. "That's the way you want to play it, huh?" she asked. She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a fresh paperback. "Lookie wha' I go'," she mumbled around the book.

Twilight lifted her head weakly and looked at the book. Her eyes shrank to pinpricks as she recognized the cover. "Is that?"

"Daring Do and the Secret of Muffin Bay," Rainbow said, holding the book on one hoof. "Your advance copy, Princess."

"How did you?" Twilight began.

A couple garnets and a promise not to implicate Spike. "That's not really important," Rainbow said. "The important thing is who I'm going to read it with."

Twilight stopped breathing.

Rainbow looked over her shoulder. "Mail should be coming by soon. I bet Derpy'd love to join me. See ya, Twi!" With that she opened her wings and lazily flew off.

Twilight's eye twitched as she reviewed the late fees accrued on any book with "muffin" in the name. That bubble-flanked mare had covered a third of old Golden Oak's budget all by herself!

Twilight snapped protesting wings open and crawled off the cloud. "Get back here, Dash!" she bellowed.

Rainbow grinned and glanced behind her. Twilight was flying like a drunk duck with a lame wing, that would never do. "Gotta do better than that, Sparky!"

Twilight grit her teeth and poured as much magic as she could into her wings. The part of her brain not focused on saving her book from its muffiny doom clapped its hooves in glee. She was giving the Federals exactly what they wanted -- a demonstration of flying magic made all the clearer by the grossly exaggerated overcompensation of a grossly overpowered novice. Their reaction to this display would be most...why was Rainbow stopping?

Rainbow landed on a cloud and frowned at Twilight. "What were you doing?" she asked, suddenly serious.

Twilight landed next to her, managing to fall to her haunches rather than flat on her barrel. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Your wings," Rainbow said. "You were pumping them way too hard for the speed you were getting. So, what were you doing?"

Twilight blinked in surprise. "Um, I was focusing my pegasus magic into a field on the interior of my wings to decrease their inertia on the upstroke and increase it on the downstroke, allowing my muscles to impart more force into the air. Why?"

"No wonder you fly like a goose," Rainbow groaned. "That's not enough, Twilight. You also need to make the air thicker under your wings."

"What?" Twilight yelped. That wasn't in the script! Yeah, Rainbow was supposed to critique her technique and give her an excuse to lecture on how pegasus magic worked, but Twilight wasn't supposed to be wrong. "I thought you said unicorn magic was cheating!"

"Well yeah," Rainbow said. She tilted her head in confusion. "But why don't you just do it the normal way?"

Twilight mouthed the words 'the normal way' while trying to make sense of the world.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Egghead. I mean the pegasus way. Force the air under your wings to behave more densely while cutting the resistance above. Once you're good with that we'll move on to projecting your field before and after you to make it easier to speed up. Of course," she said with a smile, "even if you get good enough to hold up a field against a mach cone, you'll never hold it long enough to rainboom."

Twilight reclaimed her slack jaw. "But only unicorns can project their fields!"

Rainbow snorted. "Who told you that?"

"Starswirl's Treatise on the Three Tribes," Twilight recounted instantly. "Chapter seven, principles of spellcasting, and chapter nine, pegasi."

Rainbow brought her hoof over her muzzle and groaned. "Uuugh. Well, take it from a pony who actually has wings, Old Beardo the Magnificent was dead wrong on that one. We have to project our magic to work the weather. What, you thought a wind was just a bunch of pegasi flapping really hard?"

Twilight blushed as she thought about that. "Well I've seen that it doesn't work that way...I guess I really never thought about it."

Rainbow sat down on her haunches and flared her wings out. "You need to use your magic to do three things. You feed your muscles, and you're good at doing that so we'll skip that. But you also need to put a field around yourself and push back against the stuff pulling you around."

"Huh?" Twilight asked. "What do you mean, stuff?"

"Like gravity or winds or stuff," Rainbow said. "Once you've got a field around you, you can move yourself around in it. That's how a good flier can turn so sharply. Pegasus foals are so light they can pretty much fly just by deciding to ignore gravity." She snorted. "Once they start weighing more than a hummingbird it stops being that easy."

"How do you know all this?" Twilight asked.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "I'm one of the best fliers in Equestria, Egghead. Awesomeness counts for a lot, but if you want to be reliable you gotta know what you're doing. You think I could pull off a rainboom at your brother's wedding if I didn't know this stuff?"

Twilight blinked rapidly and felt two lemons and a cherry spin though her eyes. "What does this have to do with a sonic rainboom?"

"Everything!" Rainbow said, throwing her hooves into the air. "Go fast enough and that field can't keep up. Around when you reach sonic speeds the air pressure forms a wall in front of you." While she was talking she gestured with her hooves, putting her left up and pointing at it with her right. "They're called mach cones, 'cause the faster you go the more it bends around you. Even the fastest ponies have trouble with mach cones. No matter how good you are, go fast enough and you can't keep up with the cone. And as it pulls back around you, your field is going to have to pull back or just plain collapse when the cone touches it. Most ponies just can't hold it and end up plowing right into that mach cone like a brick wall." She now slammed her right hoof into the side of her left with a loud clack. Twilight winced at the implication.

But then Twilight's eyes danced as she worked through everything else Rainbow was saying. "The rainboom isn't a matter of accelerating fast enough, but dealing with the mach cone?" she asked wonderingly. "It's a magical explosion, not an optical one, so it has to be a disruption in a highly charged field...you let the field collapse?"

Rainbow shook her head and grinned. "Nah, that's just another way to plow into the mach cone. I make a second field around the mach cone. Then I push me and my first field through the second and the mach cone like an arrow through a bullseye. The cone and field collapse together and create a kind of void behind me which sucks in the air and keeps another mach cone from forming as long as I can keep that wake going."

Twilight pawed at the cloud, scribbling something that looked too complicated for Rainbow to care about. "You use the second field to contain the pressure cone rather than disperse it. When it collapses the magic explodes and takes the dense air with it. If it's strong enough and big enough," Twilight blinked and snorted. "If. Because it is a freakishly powerful event it leaves a void behind that feeds off your remaining field. That's the contrail. But you're not trying to magically balance the pressure, so it takes it from the air around you. A new mach cone can't build up without the air being sucked away!" Twilight pumped a hoof in the air. "It all works!"

Twilight blinked rapidly several times. She lowered her hoof and stared at Rainbow, her head slowly tilting to one side.

Rainbow just stared at Twilight with a half-grin. "To hear you talk about it, I'm not sure if I'm even more awesome than I thought or not."

"Rainbow, how did you know all that?" Twilight asked again.

"I thought we went over that," Rainbow said dryly.

"I mean that sounded almost...egghead," Twilight said. "I wasn't expecting you of all ponies to put out a lecture like that."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rainbow challenged.

"Rainbow," Twilight said dryly, "I've seen you study, remember?"

"Well, yeah," Rainbow muttered. "But that was, like, history and math and egghead junk like that. This is flying." She pulled a backflip and nodded once. "Totally different."

Twilight narrowed her eyes. "How many standard sized clouds does it take to assemble a type four rainstorm with two rainbows?"

"Thirty seven," Rainbow said automatically. "But since you're calling in for rainbows anyway it's easier on the town budget to order a type seven prefab out of Cloudsdale and trim it down." She shrugged. "Type fours are really only useful for watering fields, anyway. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," Twilight said quickly. She flexed her wings and winced. "Aaa, my wings are really sore. I'm going to head back home and have a nice long soak. But first..." Her horn flared and her Daring Do book vanished out of Rainbow's grip to reappear by Twilight's side. "Never steal a Princess's book," she said with mock indignation.

"Rarity would be proud," Rainbow deadpanned, rolling her eyes. "I still get it when you're done, right?"

"Of course," Twilight said.

"Whoo hoo!" Rainbow cheered and jumped into the air. "Okay, have fun in your bath!" She flew off, humming loudly (and slightly off key) a song Twilight knew should have had the words "I'm awesome" in there somewhere.

Most songs Rainbow came up with did.

Smiling at Rainbow's antics, Twilight flapped her wings experimentally and decided against teleporting. Pushing herself a bit further would only help, after all. Besides, she wanted to try out magicking the air "the normal way." She made her way home at a leisurely pace, but even so flying was already so much easier than it had been.

She grinned ruefully. "Rainbow's a great flier," she said to herself, "but she needs to work on her teaching." She swooped in through the large doors of her castle and landed solidly on with a loud staccato clipclop. An earth pony ran up to her quickly.

"Princess!" the stallion greeted. He wore a huge smile and little else over his grey coat and close-groomed, green mane. His cutie mark was the triangle of a pony's ear with concentric circles inside it, his left mark covered by a single bag, a satchel made to hold scrolls more readily than an ordinary saddlebag. "Amazing results!"

"Really?" Twilight perked up. "What is it, Sharp Ear?"

The royal analyst pulled a scroll out of his satchel and hoofed it over. Twilight took it in her magic. "The Federals dropped everything to watch your lesson. We recorded the entire conversation. But that's not all. See?"

Twilight skimmed the report.

First stallion's voice, tentative ID Ensign Lorian: Doctor, the Princess has left the castle. In flight.
Second stallion's voice, tentative ID Doctor Lewis: Just keep the scanners on her. Once we crack pegasi, it will be good to have a comparison to how alicorns fly.
First stallion: Very well, doctor. Has the latest model produced results?
Second stallion: Some. That little pegasus, Scooter or somesuch,
First stallion: Scootaloo.
Second stallion: Thank you, Lorian. Scootaloo. Studying her last attempt to fly gave me some useful information.
First stallion, confirmed Ensign Lorian: Doctor, Princess Sparkle has just met with the lady Rainbow Dash.
Second stallion, confirmed Doctor Lewis*: Hmm. (pause) Lewis to Matthews. Charley, I need extra power from the subspace array. Sparkle and Dash are flying together.[/preline]

Twilight glanced down at the footnotes. Asterisked entries were recorded from two positions at once. With all the processing the sound went through to record and translate the words, they had as much hope figuring out which voice was 'real' as they did figuring out the tone of voice used. Assuming their inflections were even a little like pony tones.

New voice, Charley Matthews*: Hmm, that'll slow down the scans on the castle, but I can give you an extra ten percent.
Ensign Lorian: Lady Dash has informed Princess Sparkle that these flying lessons are going to be extremely intense.
Doctor Lewis*: That won't be enough. I've just been told that these are flying lessons. Lessons, do you hear me? I can't afford to miss any of this!
Charley Matthews*: Agreed. (pause) You have full access to the array, Doctor. Good luck.[/preline]

Twilight's eyes widened and she grinned hugely. She reread the last few lines and promptly forgot the rest of the report. "Squee. What happened on our array?"

Sharp Ear pulled out another scroll. "The scrying stopped."

Twilight took the scroll eagerly and studied the diagram. "Not entirely, there's still some vibration in the lines. I'll increase the sensitivity to confirm for the next experiment."

"Uh, right," Sharp Ear said. "Princess, do you mind me asking? Where did that device come from?"

"Hm?" Twilight asked. "Oh. Crystal Empire. Cadence is getting their economy up and running again by exporting crystal devices. They're cheaper to build and enchant than natural gem work."

Sharp Ear pursed a lip as he thought that over. Twilight went back to the transcript. Most of it was dry and boring. Whatever excitement the Federals may have felt at observing Twilight's performance didn't survive spell and quill to make it onto the paper. One snippet did jump out at her.

Ensign Lorian: (Unknown word), what energy patterns are present around subject Rainbow Dash?
Third mare (presumed golem): No structured energy pattern detected.
Ensign Lorian: Compute all forces acting on subject over a five second interval. Mark.
Golem: Working.
Ensign Lorian: Onscreen. (Unknown word, assumed to be a type of golem), account for discrepancy.
Golem: The discrepancy cannot be accounted for.
Ensign Lorian: Create an energy field in the model. Oblate spheroid, centered on the subject's center of mass. Closest approach to the subject, three centimeters.
Golem: Model adjusted.
Ensign Lorian: Now, project onto the energy field all necessary properties to account for the discrepancies in the model.
Golem: Unable to comply. No solution found.

Twilight tapped the section with her hoof. "They heard everything Rainbow said, but can't find her magic field?" she wondered aloud. "What does that mean?"

Sharp Ear shook his head. "I have no idea, Princess."

"Nor do I," Twilight said glumly. She hung her head and winced as the motion reminded her of aching muscles. "I'm going to take a bath. Good work, Sharp Ear. I couldn't have done it without you."

Twilight went to her bath some minutes later, after diverting through the library. As she settled down in the water, she groaned in contented agony and closed her eyes, even as her magic cracked open her first book, well above the water. Cloudsdale Monthly vol. 325 iss. 6. There was an article, Economics of Rain and the Massive Cloud Paradigm by Prisma Sprint. Her next selection rested on a dry table on the far side of her frankly extravagant bathroom: the latest issue of Hoofwork and Gardens and an old, suspiciously pristine copy of Forgotten Magic: The Synergy of the Tribes.

Chapter 4

Daring Do wiped her brow for the umpteenth time. Was that sweat or humidity? Stupid jungle temples. Ugh, didn't matter. There were more important things to focus on. Ancient earth pony ruins were big on traps and low on subtlety. She gave it two, maybe three chambers before reaching the boiling lake of lava.

Rainbow Dash glanced at Sweet Apple Acres. Still nothing. She turned back to her book, a worn and dogeared thing that had clearly suffered its way through the trenches of fandom and the hooves of an athlete.

Daring paused to examine a mural in the corridor wall. The pigment has long since worn away, but pre-Equestrian earth ponies always carved the image before painting over it. Before her was an unmistakable carving of Celestia, wearing the heavy armor of an earth pony general. The alicorn's wings were folded and she tilted her head up, minimizing the horn atop her brow. Daring smirked slightly. Celestia and Luna in warrior garb were common elements of ruins of all three tribes, of course, but in an earth pony temple? She reached out with a hoof and pushed gently on Celestia's steel-shod foreleg.
Click. Daring smirked more widely. "Always trust the ancient earth ponies to be reliable and predictable," she said. Then the floor gave way under her.

Rainbow glanced down from her cloud again. Nothing. She turned back to her book.

Daring flapped her wings idly. "This is what they protect the Golden Schnitzel with?" she snorted.

"Rainbow!"

"YAAAH!" Rainbow screamed, jumping up, her back arching as she tried to twist around to see who snuck up on her.

Twilight smirked and lighted gently on the cloud. "Am I getting better at sneak attacks?" she asked.

Rainbow stared at her friend for a moment while her brain struggled to process....stuff. "Um, yeah," she finally said. "I mean, a bit. I wasn't scared though!"

"Right," Twilight said. She was still smirking.

Rainbow scowled as she landed back on the cloud. She settled back down over her novel and motioned for Twilight to take a patch of cloud for herself. "So what's up?"

"I need to ask you about pegasus magic," Twilight said, sitting down.

Rainbow frowned. "You mean for..." she cut herself off and glanced down again.

Twilight followed Rainbow's gaze right to the bat orchard of Sweet Apple Acres. She looked away quickly and sighed. "Have you been here long?" she asked.

Rainbow tapped her hoof against the cloud. "Um, maybe three chapters?" she offered.

Which at the rate Rainbow read could mean hours. Rainbow was playing sentry for the Federals below. Subtle. Twilight tried not to react but couldn't stop herself from scrunching up her eyes and lifting her hoof halfway to her face. "Ergh...no, this is just my own personal thing" she said with forced cheerfulness. "You know that talk we had yesterday about weather magic?"

"Yeah," Rainbow said easily.

"Well I did some research," Twilight started.

Rainbow dropped her muzzle back into Daring Do.

Twilight rolled her eyes and closed the book with a brief glow of her horn. "Rainbow," she teased.

"Egghead," Rainbow sing-songed back.

Twilight bit back her counter-retort. "Do you want to know what I found out?"

"No?" Rainbow asked hopefully.

"Too bad. I read everything I could find on pegasus magic and field projection."

"Since yesterday?" Rainbow asked, impressed despite herself.

Twilight nodded once, sharply. "And it didn't make any sense at all." She gestured at Rainbow's book. "I can't even figure out that!"

Rainbow blinked. "Reading? I thought you'd mastered that already."

Twilight fumed. "Rainbow, your book is lying on top of a cloud!"

"And?" Rainbow asked. She grinned slowly. "Wait, Princess Egghead struck out? All that brainy research power and you didn't find any of this stuff?"

Twilight narrowed her eyes. "The pegasus nomenclature is completely different from unicorn magecraft. I can't figure out what the articles meant. Except for a few in Cloudsdale Monthly."

Rainbow froze, her grin staying on her face but no longer looking quite so sure. "You, uh, you get the CM here? I mean, journals are boring. Of course you'd read them. Egghead."

"Yes," Twilight purred. Payback was unbecoming of a princess, but this was between friends after all. "The library has a complete collection."

Rainbow licked her lips and tried to find words in a suddenly very dry mouth. "Um, how complete? Not that I care or anything."

"Complete enough," Twilight said. Victory is sweet. "Prisma Sprint?"

Rainbow hung her head. "Ponyfeathers."

"But why the pen name?" Twilight asked over the whistle of a kettle.

Rainbow turned down the heat and picked the kettle up gently in her teeth. "If sumphomy fown ouf I ve a laufinsock."

Twilight waited for Rainbow to pour the tea before responding. She took a moment to look around. It wasn't often she saw the inside of Rainbow's kitchen, after all. The cloud floor was nicely firm underhoof, far more than the natural clouds that she was used to. No, Rainbow's cloud house was made from cured and toughened cloud made from long, long exposure to pegasus magic. It was one of many things Twilight was realizing she didn't know about magic. "If somepony what now?" she finally asked.

Rainbow set the kettle back down on the stove and sighed dully. "Found out," she continued, "then I'd be a laughing stock. It's not exactly awesome to nerd out like that."

Twilight bit back her first response and sipped at her tea. She grimaced slightly and saw that Rainbow was bringing out cream and honey. Rainbow quickly dumped what Twilight thought was an unreasonable amount of both in her own cup, spilling the not-quite-brown-anymore liquid. Suddenly the mottled pattern on the tabletop made perfect sense. Twilight took both and worked to fix the misbegotten fluid Rainbow had served her. "Then why publish in the first place?" she asked.

"I dunno," Rainbow muttered. "I had a whole lot of paperwork to take care of after Winter Wrap Up. I figured if I just changed a few words I could submit it to a journal, maybe help somepony out that way."

"But how did you learn all this?" Twilight pressed. "After you got kicked out of flight school-"

"I didn't get kicked out!" Rainbow snapped. She snorted and shook head angrily. "I quit. I knew everything they were going to teach me anyway."

"And then?" Twilight pressed.

"And then...I kinda found out joining the Wonderbolts wasn't going to happen overnight. I had to actually do something to get their attention first. So I started looking for jobs where I could fly a lot." Rainbow grinned. "Weather manager of a little town on the border of Everfree? I figured I could set some records for longest runs without a wild weather disaster and catch their eye that way."

"How'd that turn out?" Twilight asked.

Rainbow sighed and downed her tea in one gulp. Twilight doubted she could actually taste it, or would have cared to. "Turns out the records were a few years longer than I thought. So I'd have to get creative. Do as much as I can. Do it as cheap as I could, or as fast, or both, or something. Anything to get Cloudsdale to notice that somepony special was in charge."

"You are somepony special," Twilight started.

Rainbow cut her off with a raspberry and a waved hoof. "You don't need to convince me. I've already made the reserves, remember? It worked." Rainbow shrugged her wings. "But back when I was starting, yeah it was all bluster. I started taking special classes, the kind where it's all done by mail."

"Correspondence classes?" Twilight asked.

"Yeah, those," Rainbow nodded slowly. Twilight realized Rainbow was staring through the wall above her head. "They sent a lot of books. Not like Daring Do. Thick things with tiny letters. Lots of pictures, they helped. I'd remember what they looked like and try and do what they told me to when I found things that looked like stuff."

Twilight bit the inside of her muzzle to keep from laughing at Rainbow's utterly worthless description of what she had tried to learn. She was lost in the past, but Twilight was insanely curious about how a weathermare who could barely get through a sentence ended up making scholarly articles on weather management. "Did you learn much?"

"Only that the books were worthless," Rainbow snorted. "Just like flight school, but ten, no, twenty times worse. Stuff that didn't make sense, stuff that didn't work as good as following my gut. Proper methods of cloud management my cutie mark, I bet they were written by eggheads that hadn't even seen a cloud. So I dumped 'em."

"The books?"

"Nah, the classes. Burned the book. Celestia that felt...good?" Rainbow blinked and remembered who she was talking to. "Uh, I mean, um, I returned the books to the publishers with a strongly worded letter of dissatisfaction?"

Twilight grinned. "Why Rainbow, when did Applejack teach you how to lie?" she teased.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine. Big bonfire, some evil cackling, Pinkie lent me a giant stone head to overlook the whole thing. Happy?"

Twilight blinked. "Giant stone head?"

"Pinkie Pie, remember?"

"Excellent point. So you did the weather your way."

"Yeah," Rainbow sighed happily. "Worked great when it was just me on a shift, but nopony else wanted to do it my way. They couldn't see the right places to buck or pinch or push or pull. It was like the sky was full of Derpy."

"Rainbow," Twilight chided.

"There's a reason Derpy isn't on the weather team, Twilight," Rainbow said with a roll of her eyes. "Great flier, sure, but that mare is a menace with clouds. Anyway, I finally lost it when we missed a full week of rain and had to hit Ponyville with a monster storm."

"Was that when Applejack and Rarity had a slumber party with me?" Twilight asked.

"Maybe?" Rainbow shrugged. "I was chatting with Fluttershy and she asked what had happened and I just unloaded on her. And she let me. And by the time I was done, you know what she asked me? She asked me why I didn't just tell my team what I screamed at her. So, long story short, I whipped the Ponyville team into shape, and someone wrote to Cloudsdale that we were being awesome. One thing led to another and ended up making that article."

"Rainbow, that's incredible," Twilight said honestly. She leaned forward. "You have to tell me more."

Rainbow frowned and flicked her eyes in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. "Is this about," she started.

Twilight cut her off. "My research project?" Rainbow's cloud house wasn't protected from scrying. The Federals could be watching, and Twilight wasn't ready to give away their secrets. "Kinda, but mostly this is just me. I'm the Princess of Friendship, I'm an Alicorn, and I've studied magic for as long as I can remember, but I only just realized that the only magic I've really studied is unicorn magic. Did you know that pegasi were the first potion brewers? I never thought about it, but a lot of my supplies come from Cloudsdale."

Rainbow frowned. "Twilight, I am awesome with all things flying, but I don't know anything about potions or that nerd stuff."

Twilight stomped a hoof on the cloud below her. "You know about this," she pointed out.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Well yeah, but what kind of pegasus doesn't know how to work a cloud?" she asked.

"Me," Twilight said simply. She saw Rainbow's eyebrows shoot up. "Rainbow, I never went to flight school or took a class on weather. I've never worked a cloud with my own hooves. All I have is what you've taught me, and that's all been about flying."

"Yeah, but I screwed that up," Rainbow shot back. "I had you flying like a duck out there."

"That's not your fault," Twilight insisted. "And yesterday, you were the one that figured out what I was doing wrong. Your articles were the ones that made sense. I need somepony that can talk about advanced weather magic that I can actually understand." Twilight was laying it on a little thick, of course. She knew that, with focus, she could learn the jargon pegasi researchers used to describe their magic. But Rainbow's only exposure to high level magic talk had been Twilight herself. 'Prisma Sprint' had used unicorn terms and plain language in her articles. It was a unique vocabulary, one Twilight would have recognized instantly if the idea of Rainbow being a published researcher wasn't completely absurd.

Rainbow stared at the empty cup in her hooves for a long moment. "Okay," she said finally. "I've never left a pony hanging. I'm not going to start now. What do you need, Twilight?"

Rainbow stood firm atop a cloud. That was nothing unusual in and of itself, but the stern expression was new to the pegasus's face. "What is a cloud?" she asked her student.

Twilight brightened. She knew this one! "A cloud is a collection of water vapor that has condensed into a-"

"Wrong," Rainbow cut her off. "A cloud is power and magic and rain and lightning. It is wind and heat and snow and hail. It is beauty and destruction and life. A cloud is raw potential."

Twilight hesitated. "That's...poetic," she said at last.

Rainbow blushed lightly. "Yeah, well, sometimes around here the egghead answers don't work good. Cloudsdale sends out nice, easy, normal clouds, but Ponyville has to deal with Everfree clouds. Ya gotta think of them as something different. Of course, that's why we get so many more rainbows."

Twilight blinked. "What do Everfree clouds have to do with rainbows?"

Rainbow Dash facehoofed. "Ugh, this isn't going well. When you simplify a cloud, all the excess magic or whatever comes out as rainbow extract. Cloudsdale makes the stuff by the barrel, but we get a couple gallons every month by pacifying an Everfree cloud. It's hard work, but if the 'team doesn't have much else to do it cuts down on the weather budget. Even with the extra ponyhours."

Twilight scowled and shook her head. "I never even thought about what rainbows were made from. Even at the weather factory, it was all just 'ooo pretty' and 'Pinkie is random.' So they're just a pretty byproduct?"

"Pretty much," Rainbow nodded. "They've got a few egghead uses, so we can sell it if we want, but around here there's nothing like a super bright rainbow to perk everypony up after something blows in from the forest." Rainbow craned her head down to stare at her forehooves and calmly twisted one into the cloud. "This cloud is an Everfree cloud, Twilight. I've got it under control, but it's still a wild cloud. And you're touching it right now. What do you feel?"

Twilight's eyes widened. "Fear, nervous, anticipation, pan-"

"Not like that," Rainbow groaned. "Do I look like Rarity? What do you feel about the cloud?"

"Oh." Twilight's ears drooped and she tried to grin. "Um, it's soft?"

"Close your eyes," Rainbow instructed, rolling her own.

"What?"

"Close your eyes. Breathe slowly. Yknow, relax and stop thinking about everything else. Just focus on the cloud, okay?"

Twilight's ears perked up as she complied. "At least you're not telling me to open my mind or listen to the magic within me or something."

"No, I want you to listen to the magic in the cloud. Or don't give me that look, you're the one that started talking weird. Close your eyes! Now feel the cloud at your hooves however you want and tell me what you feel."

"Um," Twilight stuck out her tongue and furrowed her brow. "Well, it's soft. Springy. Tense? Yeah, tense. Like it's pushing or being squeezed or pulled or...something. Anticipation maybe? Like it might blow up all at once and it'll be big and dramatic and we're standing on a floating bomb that will destroy all of Ponyville and!"

"Twilight!" Rainbow shouted. "Breathe! Relax! You're projecting into the cloud!"

"Huh?" Twilight asked. Her eyes shot open and she stared at her hooves, which were surrounded by tiny droplets from across the spectrum. "Rainbow?"

"Yeeaaah," Rainbow Dash drawled, "you pushed a bit of that egghead freakout of yours into the cloud and forced some rainbow out of it. You weren't doing too bad before that."

Twilight's ears drooped again. "I ruined this cloud, didn't I? It'll turn into a raging storm now."

"Pretty much," Rainbow agreed. "Don't worry about it, Twilight. I've got the cloud under control, and I'll buck it into a million pieces when we're done."

"But I still wasted the cloud," Twilight mumbled.

"Wasted?" Rainbow asked. Then she sat down laughing. "Oh, that's a riot, Twi! This cloud was supposed to have been bucked hours ago!"

"What?" Twilight yelped, wings shooting out.

"Yeah, Twi. You think anypony can just handle a cloud first try? We all start with training clouds nopony'll miss." Rainbow wiped a tear from her eye and coughed out a final laugh. "Only thing different is you get an awesome wild cloud, not one of those lame foal-safe things Cloudsdale sends to the flight camps."

"Oh," Twilight said. She grinned a little at herself. "I guess I was being a little foalish wasn't I?"

"Just a bit," Rainbow teased. She stretched out on the cloud and lounged comfortably, still grinning. "Ready to give it another shot, or should we take a nap first?"

It took Twilight three more tries before she could get a feel for the cloud without projecting her own intent into it. Four tries after that and she was able to sense Rainbow's field holding the cloud in place. She managed to create a field of her own in only one try.

"But I couldn't sense your magic at all after that," Twilight grumbled around a mouthful of hayburger.

"You'll get there," Rainbow promised. "It's really hard to read what a pegasus is doing by hoof alone. Heck, there are even some Wonderbolts that can't pull it off."

Twilight wasn't sure what cloud reading had to do with stunt flying, but decided not to question it. "But I could read you at first," she complained.

"Yeah, but that was when I was being really loud and obvious about it," Rainbow said matter-of-factly. "I was making it real easy, that's all." She frowned at Twilight, who was pouting mid-chew. "Don't feel bad, Twilight. You're doing awesome. This stuff takes years to learn, and you've only been at it for hours."

"I guess," Twilight muttered. She unwrapped her second burger n her magic and paused. "I was wondering. What would happen if a weathermare made the same mistake I did? Ruined a cloud by projecting into it, I mean."

Rainbow snorted. "Her pay would be slashed to cover the costs of fixing it, including all the overtime. Live weather is no place for school."

"But couldn't you just cut away the bits she touched?" Twilight asked. "Some of those clouds are huge."

"Doesn't matter," Rainbow said. "We're not dealing with bricks and sticks, Twilight. No matter how big it is, it's still just one cloud. You weren't thinking about it in pieces and you didn't change just a piece of it. Maybe if we'd split it in half, the other chunk wouldn't have been messed up, but I've seen stranger. Especially with Everfree clouds. It's not worth the risk of somepony getting hurt."

"Identity," Twilight breathed quietly. The last crumbs of her hayburger fell from her lips, which were hanging weakly in shock. She shot to her hooves, ignoring the rest of her lunch. "You're describing identity!"

"Uh, sorry?" Rainbow tried. "Um, Twilight, maybe you should tune down the crazy?"

Twilight's head snapped around and saw ponies staring at her. "Oh. Right." She calmly trotted out of the building, Rainbow floating behind her in her magic. "Rainbow, to the palace! We have research to do!"

Rainbow squirmed in the purple field, stretching her neck out to try and reach her tray. "Can I at least finish my fries first?"

"Oh, darling, I can't tell you how much I've been waiting for this! Ever since your coronation you've needed a whole new wardrobe!" Rarity practically pranced around her boutique, summoning up swatches of material and measuring tapes to swarm Twilight. "Now I have a good idea what matches your coat but I haven't had a chance to test your feathers and you'll note your pinions are slightly closer to heliotrope than lavender." Twilight blinked and stared at her feathers in confusion while Rarity rambled on. "Oh they'll absolutely clash with what I have ready. This will never do." She banished the swatches and retrieved a second set, along with spools of thread. "Perhaps something patterned. Subtle but repeating, maybe iterating?"

"That's actually what I wanted to ask you for," Twilight managed to get out. "I need a supply of fabric for an experiment I'm running."

Rarity stopped dead mid-prance, the whirlwind of fabric frozen in midair. "Could you repeat that, please?"

"I said I just needed some fabric?" Twilight repeated, cringing slightly.

"I see. That's what I thought you said," Rarity said primly. She gently put away all the supplies she had pulled out, everything floating back neatly into the bins and drawers from whence they came. "I can certainly see why you came to me. After all, I do have a full supply of textiles and nothing to do with them."

Twilight smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I know it's not really your thing, but that fabric you made for the Manehatten show was really incredible and I need that kind of precision. I came to you because you're the best."

Rarity smiled back, mollified. "Yes, well, thank you darling. What is it you need exactly?"

"Did you ever study sympathetic spellwork?" Twilight asked.

"Yes, actually," Rarity said. "A dash of magic in the dress really helps give it that special flair. But the fabric can't channel the magic alone, even if I anchor it to gems, so I employ sympathetics to the owner. Why?"

"I'm trying to get a backdrop for a spell that won't corrupt the result," Twilight explained. "Plain white canvas should do the job, but an extra pattern layered into the weave to redirect the magic back where I want it would really help."

"White?" Rarity mused. "Hmm. I have some bolts of canvas for saddlebags, of course, but plain white...I will need to check. It's not a color one usually looks for in an accessory that is likely to pick up dirt so frequently. What is the pattern?"

"Oh, you remember that last experiment, the one that tripped the castle's alarm?" Twilight said lightly. "That provided the pattern."

Rarity drew in a slow breath. "I see. Well, I can certainly understand why you seem so eager to move to the next phase of your experiment. If I don't have enough canvas on hoof I will put in an order express." She paused dramatically and tapped her hoof to her muzzle. "I suppose I could stop by the castle tomorrow to pick up the pattern, make sure I remember it properly. Lunchtime?"

"Sounds great," Twilight said enthusiastically, trotting for the door. "I'll have Spike fix something special."

"Yes," Rarity murmured into the empty boutique. "I'm sure you will."

"Y'want me ta what, Twilight?" Apple Bloom asked doubtfully. "Why me?"

Twilight carefully lowered a small, cloth-wrapped branch to the filly. "Applejack said you'd learned some whittling," she said.

"Well yeah, bu' I cain't do nothing fancy!" Apple Bloom protested.

"It doesn't need to be fancy," Twilight assured. "But I do need you to do it. It's a magic thing."

"I dunno," Apple Bloom said slowly.

Twilight glanced at Bloom's flank. "There might be a cutie mark in it."

Apple Bloom froze and for a moment Twilight wondered if somepony had broken into Starswirl's collection of time spells. "Could ya say that again?" she asked with quiet, casual indifference.

Twilight winced. "There might be a," she started again.

"CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS BRUSH MAKERS YAY!" Apple Bloom shouted. She snatched the branch from its fabric wrap and galloped away.

Twilight glanced at the scrap of cloth she was still holding and raised a hoof to her mouth. "Remember, do it yourself Apple Bloom!" she called. "Let the other girls get their own branches!"

"So they scraped away most of it, but Applejack wants the whole orchard to get three rainstorms this month. Big ones," Rainbow grumbled, looking over a stack of papers. She was in her office, an undecorated room nestled deep in town hall's most boring office spaces, with a rather stunned looking Twilight. "Partly to wash off the rest of the tree sap, but mostly as an apology to Maxine, Gloria, and Hoofchester. Something about losing half their branches. What gave the Crusaders such a crazy idea...Twilight are you okay?"

"You have an office?" Twilight managed.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Hey, I have to keep the weather schedule somewhere. If I let this egghead stuff near my house it would fall out of the sky out of sheer lameness."

Twilight stared at Rainbow. "An office. That is yours. In Town Hall. How have I never known about this?"

"I only come here in disguise," Rainbow said flatly. "And most ponies just track me down when they need something done to the schedule. You're the first to actually try being official and junk."

Twilight shook her head. "Wow. Okay. I can deal with this. This is not the strangest things about my friends that I've ever learned."

Rainbow pressed a hoof to her face and groaned. "Twi, you wanted something about the rainstorms?"

Twilight shook her head. "Uh, right. I need some rainbow extract from the clouds that will be over Sweet Apple Acres."

Rainbow frowned. "Those clouds specifically?" she asked. "Extract's extract. We don't usually separate it by the cloud."

"This is one of those egghead uses you mentioned," Twilight told her. "I'm going to be using sympathetic links to target a matrix. One of those links is identity. You know, how changing a bit of cloud changes the whole cloud? I need to be able to use that. So I need extract from the right clouds, and no others."

Rainbow turned to a file cabinet and opened it up, revealing a mess of papers at all angles except straight. She hauled out a few overstuffed folders and hoofed through a stack of loose sheets, which Twilight could tell were four different colors and three different sizes and should probably not have been a single stack. "Okay, we'll need to talk to Clear Skies to make sure that batch stays separate. She's on cloud wrangling that week."

"Can you take over for her?" Twilight asked. "It would help the experiment."

Rainbow looked at Twilight with one of the most severe expressions Twilight had ever seen. "Twilight, you're asking me to cut into her work hours, and a lot of overtime for a job this big. That's a lot of bits I'll be asking her to give up on. This experiment worth all that?"

Twilight nodded slowly. "It's part of that big experiment I've been running. The one the Princesses are watching. Yeah, it's serious."

Rainbow sighed. "Should have guessed." The clouds over the secret alien spy base. Of course it was related to that "experiment." "I'll talk to Clear Skies, see if I can swap shifts with her. Maybe throw her a night shift over the school. How much do you need, anyway?"

"Not much, just a few ounces, but it needs to be pure," Twilight said. She bit her lip. "I know it doesn't sound like much."

"Don't worry," Rainbow promised, slamming the file cabinet mostly closed. "You'll get quality stuff, or I'll eat my own tail."

"Thanks," Twilight breathed with a bright smile. She turned to go. "Hey," she called back over her withers, "I was going to get the girls together for a lunch next week to show you the end result. Can you come?"

Rainbow's grin was a bit forced. "Wild yaks couldn't keep me away."

Author's Note

I think I've rewritten this about ten times.

Chapter 5

Rainbow resisted the urge to tap her hoof, fidgeting in her chair. She was having lunch with the girls, just like Twilight promised. The regal dining room looked awesome, sure, but she just didn't have the patience to admire Rarity's selection of flowers and tapestries forever.

Especially with actual important stuff they had to talk about. Yeesh, how much time could ponies spend eating, anyway?

"I must say, darling, you do know how to treat your guests," Rarity said as she dabbed her lips with a pristine napkin.

"Y'cin say that again," Applejack agreed with a belch. "That was one heck of a spread, Twi."

Twilight blushed and put her most recent napkin ontop of her others. "Thanks, but it's really Spike and Pinkie that deserve the praise."

Pinkie beamed over the table. "Like Granny Pie said, you can't go wrong if you make sure to stay just below half a lethal dose of sugar."

Fluttershy frowned slightly at her plate. "Um, it didn't taste that sweet, but I might be wrong."

Spike raised a claw. "I may have made some modifications to the recipe."

"My complexion thanks you, Spike," Rarity said.

Rainbow gave up and rapped a hoof on the cloth covered table. "Anyway, now that we're done with the food, Twilight, what are we really doing here?"

Twilight grinned. "I have found a way to map out the Federals' home under Sweet Apple Acres," she declared. "And best of all, you all helped." She scooted her chair back and levitated a large box out from under the table.

"We did?" Pinkie asked. "Hooray! Oblivious helpfulness party time!"

"Maybe later," Twilight said quickly. "I'd like to tell you my plan. It started with Rainbow."

"Which is why we know it's an awesome plan," Rainbow declared, crossing her hooves over her chest and nodding sagely.

"Right," Twilight drawled, holding back a smile. "Rainbow procured some rainbow extract from the rainstorm over Sweet Apple Acres two days ago."

Applejack shook her head. "Twern't no rainbows over th' Acres two days ago, Twi."

"True, but the point is that this," Twilight levitated a clear inkwell filled with rainbow-hued liquid, "is from the same cloud as the rainwater that's been soaking into the ground for two days. According to the principle of identity, they are two parts of a single whole. We can use magic on this rainbow to learn about that rain."

"Well, that's sumptin'," Applejack murmured. "Ah guess. Howzat gonna help?"

Twilight smiled. "By the principle of contagion, the rainwater is now part of the ground."

Rarity frowned. "Darling, you cannot seriously intend to use two links of completely different type. Even if you managed the transfer, the spell itself would simply overwhelm the second link."

Twilight beamed, now well into full lecture mode. "Normally you'd be right," she agreed. "Using any kind of sympathetic resonance is tricky. When a unicorn casts a spell, the parameters of the magic are all definitive. What object to lift, how hard to lift it, its orientation once it is lifted, so on."

"Flying's like that too," Rainbow added. "You gotta provide lift evenly or you'll just tumble tail over pinfeathers." Fluttershy nodded her quiet agreement.

"Ah guess Ah can say the same about applebuckin'. You gotta hit the tree jus' right or them apples ain't gonna land where ya need 'em."

"But with sympathetic magic, you have constraints," Twilight added. "It would be like, like, like pouring a glass of water into a chute instead of directly into the barrel the chute pours into. Once the water's in the chute, you have to hope it goes where you want. And what I'm proposing is like putting the water into a chute that pours into another chute. And the second chute needs the water to flow uphill. And is also made of paper. With holes in it."

"That's a problem?" Pinkie asked.

Twilight was not the only pony to stare blankly at her pink friend and probable demiavatar of all things wacky. She was the first pony to find her voice, though. "For most ponies, Pinkie, yes."

"Huh," Pinkie said flatly. "Weird."

Twilight shook her head and got back on topic. "Moving on. We're going to force the magic to do what we want by using other sympathies in parallel. Connections to the land, to the belonging of the orchard, to the Federals, and to revealing deception."

"I'm lost," Rainbow said, holding up a hoof. "What the hay does all of that mean?"

Twilight produced two more objects. One was a brush, the other was an easel with white canvas. "I asked Granny Smith which tree was the oldest in the orchard, and collected a fallen branch from it. I then asked Applebloom to carve it into this." She held up the brush.

"That explains their latest crusade," Applejack groaned. "Brush makers. They went out an started cuttin' down li'l branches to carve."

"So much tree sap," Rarity murmured in horrified reminiscence.

"Sorry," Twilight winced. "I then made the bristles from Big Mac's tail."

Applejack gaped. "How'd ya git a holda that?" she demanded.

"I admit nothing!" Pinkie shouted. She slammed one hoof on the table and pointed the other at Applejack. "You can't prove anything! You don't have any evidence! I was framed!"

Twilight shook her head. "Moving swiftly along. Rarity provided this canvas, which has the Federals' energy pattern woven into the material."

Applejack tore her eyes from Pinkie, who was now whistling loudly and wearing a trenchcoat and fedora. "So, uh, how's all that gonna tell you about them spies?"

"They won't tell me anything," Twilight answered. "But they should tell you."

"Me?" Applejack asked, throwing a hoof to her chest.

"Yes, you," Twilight said seriously. "This ink with this brush on that canvas by your hoof should be enough to support my spell."

"Oh," Rarity murmured, studying Applejack the same way she might a new design on a catwalk. "Very clever, darling."

"Thanks," Twilight said.

"Still not getting it," Rainbow protested.

"The canvas resonates with the Federals," Twilight explained. "The magic on it will want to hold like to like, so it will hold an image of the Federals' home. The ink resonates with the soil. The magic on it is made to purify and expel what does not belong, so it will push an image of the Federals' home into the canvas. The brush resonates with the Apple family. The magic on it will draw what Applejack wants to see. And Applejack herself is the Element of Honesty." She turned to Applejack. "The spell I want to put on you will guide you to only paint what is true."

Applejack frowned. "What're the risks o' that spell?" she asked.

Twilight waggled a hoof. "Short term, I can't be sure. Long term, nothing. You probably won't be able to stop painting until the picture is done. If something goes wrong, though, I have an easy counterspell ready and tested."

Applejack nodded. "Okay then. I trust ya, Twi'. When do we get this done?"

"The sooner the better," Twilight admitted. "I made sure that each of these foci are pure, but it wouldn't take much to spoil them. The sooner we do this, the less chance they have to get ruined." She grimaced. "And the last 'log' has Ensign Lorien getting curious about my activities. They're apparently keeping a pretty close eye on me. I don't think I can replace any of these without raising their suspicions."

"Right," Applejack said. She got up from the chair and looked at the paintbrush. She pointed a hoof at the cloth around it and looked at Twilight. "So, how'm Ah gonna use that brush if it's wrapped up like that?"

Twilight smiled. "You can unwrap it. The branch that brush came from hasn't been touched by anypony but Apples."

Applejack nodded. "Ah hear ya." she said. "Not sure Ah see how that's important, but yer the brains o' this here scheme."

Twilight swiftly set up the canvas and opened the inkwell. "Now, hold still a moment. After I cast the spell,pick up the brush and paint, well, hopefully you'll figure it out."

"Great," Applejack muttered. "No pressure."

Twilight got up from the table and walked up to Applejack. She bowed her head slightly and put her horn on Applejack's brow. Purple light exploded from her horn, expanding into a multihued aura that shifted to pink and blinding white for about five seconds before suddenly vanishing.

Rainbow, Rarity, Pinkie, and Fluttershy looked out carefully from behind their hooves after the light had faded. Applejack looked slightly dazed. Twilight was down on her knees gasping for air. "Whoa," Rainbow muttered. "That was pretty intense, Twilight."

Rarity pointed a hoof at Applejack. "Darling, your mane!"

Applejack shook her head and looked down. Her hair felt heavy. She could see faded pink and red stripes in her ponytail, and a ghostly image of a massive green ribbon tied to the end, which was far too close to the floor for as long as her mane should be. She blinked and the ribbon faded away, slowly, to reveal the simple red band she always wore, her mane at its proper length and weight. "Huh," she muttered.

"Unexpected," Twilight wheezed, finding her way to her hooves. "Applejack, how do you feel?"

Applejack shrugged. "Not like much o' anything. Different fer sure. Should Ah get to painting now?"

Twilight frowned and nodded. "Yeah, you probably should."

Without a word, Applejack unwrapped the paintbrush and took it in her teeth. Turning from the table she ambled up to the easel and dipped the brush into the inkwell.

Rainbow drifted up to Twilight. "Hey Twi, I know you did your egghead best to make sure this was safe, but are you sure she's really okay?"

Twilight grimaced. "Dash, remember what it felt like when we took down Tirek? After we opened the box?"

Rainbow grinned. "Yeah, that was awesome. It was like I knew exactly what to do. I didn't even have to think about it."

Twilight nodded, still staring at Applejack. "My spell isn't nearly that powerful, but I based it on that feeling. Applejack's in a trance where she, well, doesn't really have a choice but to do what Honesty wants her to."

Rainbow frowned. "This is sounding pretty Smarty Pantsish, Twilight."

Twilight blushed. "Um, maybe. A little. But that's why I made sure to have a foalproof counterspell ready. As long as we're keeping an eye on her, nothing should go wrong."

Applejack's brush soaked up the rainbow ink readily and she put it to the canvas. The magical nature of the paint was instantly obvious as it left a pencil-thin line behind it, quite unlike the wide bristles that pressed against the canvas. Applejack quickly sketched many straight lines with sharp corners. After a minute the lines resolved into shapes.

"Oooo I think it's working," Twilight squealed. She reared up and clapped her hooves together. "I can't wait to see how detailed it gets."

"That's not a normal cave," Fluttershy mumbled. "All those sharp corners and lines."

Applejack's sketch showed a single long corridor that connected three large rooms, one on each end and one in the rough middle. To either side of that corridor were smaller rooms. The middle large room had two branching paths shooting off at right angles which had their own, even smaller rooms.

Twilight pointed a hoof at the smallest rooms. "Tiny, equally sized rooms on side halls. Dormitory?"

"Perhaps storage," Rarity offered. "That central room could be a dining room."

"Maybe one of each?" Twilight mused. "I'd expect a good sized room for a kitchen, though."

After Applejack finished the outline she started to work on the interior. The rainbow paint flowed and changed color with each pass of the brush, and when Applejack finished with a bit of her painting what was left looked like a blurry photograph, or at least that's what the realistic colors suggested. Applejack went room by room, seemingly at random, to the ongoing commentary of her friends.

"That has to be a bed. I was right," Twilight pointed to the obvious dorms.

"Mmm, more cafeteria than fine dining," Rarity sniffed as the central room filled with small, plain tables and chairs.

"No kitchen?" Pinkie gasped. "How can they bake without a kitchen?" The other side corridor was more sleeping rooms.

"I think those shiny side rooms on each is a private bathroom," Twilight mused. "They're very lucky."

Rarity shuddered. "I will take your word for it, darling. They have a lot to learn about interior decorating. Anything that is not just cut rock is just plain white."

"What about those dark panels?" Twilight asked.

"Windows?" Rainbow snorted. "What could they see underground?"

"That's why I don't think they're windows." Twilight grinned. She had no idea what else they could be, but maybe they'd find out.

Most of the side rooms to the main corridor turned out to be office space, with desks and comfortable chairs in evidence. "But where's the paper?" Twilight asked. "The ink, the quills? The books? How can they do office work without books?"

Others were full of machinery that made no sense to the ponies. Rainbow pointed at one. "That looks like a cloud crucible. What is it doing underground?"

One of the large rooms turned out to be a large, confusing assortment of long metal desks, lots of chairs, more of those not-windows built into nearly every surface, and a single large not-window built into the wall to the left of the corridor.

"What is that?" Rainbow asked. "Egghead central?"

"Observation room," Twilight said quickly. "See the terracing? The steps? The majority of those seats and most of the floorspace has line of sight to that large window. That must be the focus of their observational efforts."

Rarity looked at Twilight. "Darling, they're underground. I know they're spying on Ponyville, but I do not think they're using a window to do it."

"Maybe it's the source of their scrying spell?" Twilight mused. "I'd use a setup like that. And the other not-window things built into those long metal tables are exactly like the ones built into the desks. That room just has to be where they watch us and take notes and scans and studies."

"So I was right," Rainbow deadpanned. "Egghead central."

"Rrrrgh." The ponies turned to Applejack, who was growling at the painting. She was working on the last large room, and it was a catastrophe. Thick rainbow hued paint clung to the canvas. Applejack stabbed it with the brush and rapidly drew hexagonal patterns, spreading more paint and twisting the riot of colors into a new, equally useless riot of colors.

Applejack stared at her work for a moment. Then she threw the brush down and reared up.

"Something's wrong with the spell!" Twilight shouted, throwing up a shield around the canvas just as Applejack spun around and bucked at it. The out of control pony bucked again and again, as singleminded in her rage as she had been in her painting. "She's going berserk! Everypony keep your distance."

"I thought you said it was safe!" Rainbow shouted.

Twilight didn't answer Rainbow. "Rarity, can you pull the canvas out of Applejack's reach?"

Rarity frowned and watched Applejack's crazed kicks for a moment. "I think so, darling. If you drop the shield when I say."

Twilight nodded. "Okay then. Tell me when."

"Very well. Three. Two. One." Rarity's horn flared. "Now!"

In a single smooth motion the shield dropped and Rarity swept the painting up and into the air. Rainbow flew in to grab it, far above Applejack's reach.

With the painting safe and Applejack impotently flailing at the air, Twilight had time to shape her counterspell and fire it. Applejack's trance broke and the mare toppled over, unmoving.

"Applejack!" Fluttershy screamed. She raced to her fallen friend and put her wingtips on her throat and barrel. After a moment Fluttershy sighed in relief. "She's just sleeping," she reported.

Twilight grimaced. "She burned a lot of her magic channeling my spells. Especially in those last few seconds."

"Darling, what just happened?" Rarity asked.

Twilight looked up at the painting and the insane, meaningless streaks of colors in that last room. "I don't know, Rarity. Something about that last room made a...a conflict. The spells wanted to do different things. Applejack was just caught in the middle."

Rainbow gently put the painting back on the easel and hovered in front of it. "So what do we do with this, anyway?"

Twilight scrunched her muzzle. "I was hoping we'd find a library. The transcripts we've made all sound like they're doing some kind of scientific research. They're studying our magic by watching how we use it. They're collaborating with each other and referencing material from...well wherever they come from. They have to have some kind of, of archive in those machines."

"Why does that matter?" Rainbow asked.

"Well, all we've been doing is making guesses about them. If we could get a look at that archive, then we'd know."

Rarity frowned. "What are you planning?" she asked.

Twilight shrugged. "I don't think we can learn much else without getting in there."

Twilight, Rainbow, and Applejack gathered again that evening. Their focus was on a copy of Applejack's painting, enlarged and spread out over the Cutie Map's table. It also had a lot of writing on it.

"Ah don't remember nothin' after you cast that spell, Twi," Applejack grumbled. "You sure I painted this here thing?"

"Well, this is just a copy, I have the original safely sealed so it doesn't get damaged. But yeah, you did this," Twilight affirmed.

Rainbow slapped a hoof on Applejack's back. "And it was cool. Until you went nuts. That was less cool." She turned her attention to Twilight. "So, how are we breaking in to this place?"

Twilight frowned. "There are no obvious entrances," she said. She traced a hoof around the perimeter. "No stairs, no ladders, no tunnels. That leaves teleportation."

"How'd they get in there?" Applejack wondered.

"I think teleportation," Twilight said again. "We know they're capable of high energy magic." She frowned and pointed a hoof at one room, labeled Room A and, below that, Unknown 17. "The recordings tell us this room's name is untranslatable, but from context of that unknown word in the transcripts I think it's an arrival and departure point. Possibly a designated safe area for teleporters."

"Why would they need a whole room just for that?" Rainbow asked.

Twilight flashed back to her own lessons in teleportation. Two textbooks and a five page essay on the logistical difficulties of practical teleportation. She could already hear Dash snoring. Twilight decided to try and invent a shorter answer. "Teleporting is a lot like flying," Twilight said. "You have to pay attention to a lot of things, at the same time, even when you might not exactly exist in the classical sense. If you always teleport to and from the same locations, however, you make it a lot easier."

"But you zap around all the time," Rainbow objected.

Twilight lifted her nose and turned her head with a huff. "I," she said grandly, "am an egghead."

Rainbow snorted a laugh in surprise, shoving two hooves on her muzzle. Applejack chuckled quietly while Twilight managed to hold the pose for another two heartbeats before collapsing into giggles.

After a moment's break Twilight swiped her muzzle with a hoof. "Back on task. I think Room A is some kind of pre-arranged teleportation chamber. Probably using that platform in it, specifically."

Rainbow frowned at the painting. "I thought that was carpet."

"It might be," Twilight admitted. "We're making a lot of guesses here." She was treating Applejack's painting as a true-to-life image of what was really down there, mostly because in the absence of other evidence she had no way of finding, or fixing, any flaws. "Until I get in there and look around, we'll just have to keep in mind we could be wrong about everything."

"Reckon that ain't the best place to pop in," Applejack said. "It'd be like knockin' on somepony's front door and askin' if ya could sneak around for a few minutes."

"Right," Twilight said crisply. "The offices are out, too. With their communication spells, we can't figure out who is in what office when."

"What's their spell do?" Rainbow asked.

"It makes their voice come from multiple places at once," Twilight explained. "One where the person is, one where whoever he's speaking to is. With the gear we have in place, we can't tell the difference." She pointed a hoof at one of the bathrooms in the western dormitory wing. "I'm going to try and arrive there. Lowest possible chance of running into anyone when I teleport in."

"I am still so not cool with you going in alone, Twilight," Rainbow argued.

"Ah'm none too settled with it neither," Applejack added.

Twilight grimaced. "That makes three of us. But what would anypony be able to do to help?" She held up a hoof just as Rainbow opened her mouth. "If I get spotted, I can teleport out of there faster if I'm alone. More ponies means more chances to be spotted and more time casting a teleport spell to get us out. I'm safer going in alone."

Rainbow crossed her hooves and huffed. "Fine," she snapped. "But if you're not back in fifteen minutes, we're coming after you like a pack of diamond dogs after a diamond."

Twilight grinned. "That almost might be worth it to see."

Rainbow snorted and looked away, but didn't hide her smirk.

The tiny metal room flashed with magenta light, and Twilight didn't even dare to breathe. The room was dark, like she'd hoped. Dark and quiet. She sniffed the air quietly. Clean, with some undertones she couldn't even guess at. Her failsafe spells didn't react -- if the air had been fouled she would have instantly been teleported back to her castle.

So. She was in the Federals' home, she hadn't been spotted yet, and she could breathe their air. So far, so good. She looked around in the darkness...

And as soon as she moved her head the lights blazed into full illumination. Twilight scrambled off the strange bowl-shaped chair she was perched over and tried to hide against a wall. She had been found already!?

But the room was empty, and the strange metal panel she guessed was a door was closed. No one could see her. She took a few deep breaths to still her heart. Something had triggered the lights. A motion sensor of some kind? A few of Canterlot's oldest districts used spells like that on streetlamps, to save lamp oil for when it was needed.

If they had such spells active in their home, her movements could be monitored. She decided to speak as little as possible and updated her mental timer. Rainbow wanted her out in fifteen minutes. Twilight planned to end this expedition in five. She would much rather hear them report an unknown intruder in their daily logs than experience whatever they did with such intruders firsthoof.

Feeling the increased pressure of a ticking clock, Twilight looked around the bathroom and catalogued everything. Shower, lacking a water spigot but still obviously a shower assembly. Seat, probably a toilet. She opened the lid and confirmed plumbing inside. She'd used similar sanitation at Canterlot High. Speaking of which, the scale of everything was closer to human than pony. A quadruped big enough to need a door that large could never fit in that shower.

The strange glass panel on one wall was a mystery. It was very high on the wall, far above Twilight's eye level. It showed letters and glowed with its own light and the images and words on it moved. Some kind of computer, then. The Federals had far more advanced technology than Equestria. Again, Twilight was glad to have come alone. Only Spike had her level of expertise with the human devices, and she didn't have time to explain what they were.

Even if most of those explanations would actually be confessions of ignorance.

Using the computers at Canterlot High had been slow, challenging work, and they had at least used Equestrian language. Tampering with the Federation computer built into the wall was sure to get her nowhere and might even trigger a bigger alarm than she had already tripped, so Twilight ignored it. But, that seemed to be the end of the list of things in the bathroom. She walked to the door and flinched when it opened for her with a loud hiss. Fortunately, the room beyond was empty, and she saw the lights flick on as the door opened, inviting her forwards.

Twilight smiled as her expectations of dormitory conditions were confirmed. The single bed was a luxury in its own right, but other than a table and a few chairs, the room had little furniture or space for more. Twilight noted a few paintings hung on the walls, but decided those were mostly to break up the monotony of the walls. Most showed skyscapes of some kind, starry nights and buildings silhouetted against a rising sun, that sort of thing. An obvious response to being forced to live underground.

Having given herself little time to work with, Twilight turned her attention from the expected to the unexpected.

Several wall-mounted computers were moved from the latter category to the former -- if a single room required this many control surfaces they had to be ubiquitous, and unless she risked a translation spell the gibberish on their screens was meaningless. Twilight guessed all the window-panels on Applejack's painting were more computers.

Another door that doubtless led to the corridor and could easily be triggered by moving closer to it; Twilight dared not risk that. Not this trip.

Shelves of trinkets. Most appeared nonfunctional and decorative, but Twilight didn't bother to examine them. She needed obvious, useful information this trip. Detailed investigation could wait.

A portrait, now that was interesting! Twilight trotted over to the framed picture. Looking out at her was...well she wasn't sure. She immediately thought of humans, but this creature would have been a grossly deformed specimen of the species. It only showed the neck up, but she could already see that the head was either tiny or the neck was massive. His eyes were similarly undersized and dully colored. His mane was not the shortest she had ever seen, but it was thin and lacked the volume of a healthy head of hair.

Twilight shook her head slowly. The Federals were deformed humans. That was a piece to this puzzle, she was sure. She had no idea how, but it was a piece.

Twilight examined the bed and chairs. The basic furnishings were familiar but the materials were beyond her. Rarity might have some answers...but it would be hard to get her a swatch.

That left the table. Twilight wanted to leave in less than a minute, but there was just one stack of objects to go. They were grey and thin, about half the size of a book cover. She picked one up in her magic and discovered, to her amazement, a small, hoof-held computer screen.

Cell phones. Sunset Shimmer had mentioned them. They could access massive amounts of information at a great distance and were supposed to look like this. Twilight stared at the machine in her magic and licked her lips. "If only I could read you," she whispered to the small machine. She winced at the sound of her voice, but no alarms sounded.

She was about to put the "cell" down when the strange Federation language changed on its screen, becoming Equestrian script. Twilight stared, stunned, at a detailed report of observations of Rainbow Dash in flight, provided by...somepony named LARS?

Her time was up. True, nothing was forcing to her to leave except prudence, but that was enough. But now there was a complication. This "cell phone" had reacted to her. Whoever came back for it would know instantly that a pony had tampered with it. She couldn't leave that kind of evidence. But...steal the "cell?" Take it with her? Would it be noticed?

Maybe. But it was the best she had. With a flare of her horn she vanished from the Federation compound. She took the "cell" with her.

Chapter 6

Twilight reappeared in her castle, holding the Federation device. She was alone, in her private library high in the palace. Most of the shelves were sadly empty, and the room was on the whole far smaller than the public library low in the palace's trunk, but it was secure and an excellent place to take notes.

"Spike!" she called loudly.

The rasp of claws on crystal came at a fast pace, and the door opened to the panting young dragon. "Twilight! You're back!"

"Of course I am, Spike," Twilight said happily. "No one spotted me and I managed to get my hooves on this." She lifted the device slightly. "I think it's like the cellphones in Canterlot High." She turned to the door and saw Rainbow Dash standing behind Spike.

"Hey, Egghead," Rainbow interrupted. "Cellone or whatever later. Anything going down we need to worry about?"

Twilight frowned at Rainbow. "Cell-phone," she enunciated. "And what do you mean?"

"Are they planning an attack? Do they know we're listening in on them?" Rainbow asked.

Twilight's expression cleared. "Oh, right, I guess that is important." She took a deep breath. "Nothing saw me, but there might be evidence that somepony was there. If I'm right, any visits we make are going to be noticed." She pointed a hoof at Rainbow. "Rainbow, I need you to check in with the transcript team. If the Federals know that we know that they're here, they might act. We need to know what's happening."

Rainbow stiffened and brought a hoof to her brow in salute. "On it." She flared her wings and was out the door in seconds.

Twilight looked to the device she still held in her magic and smiled to Spike. "I guess I got a little carried away, huh?"

"Nah," Spike said. "If you didn't want to research that thing, you wouldn't be Twilight Sparkle. That's why you've got friends."

Twilight beamed. "Yeah," she said dreamily. She shook herself gently and turned the device so Spike could see its display. "So let's do what we do best, Spike."

Spike walked closer and peered at the strange machine. "Huh," he said. "Hey, it's written in Equestrian."

Twilight nodded. "It changed when I spoke to it. The Federation language is as strange to look at as it is to listen to." She grinned and brought the machine to her face. "But since it is in Equestrian, we can examine it. Spike, take notes."

"Gotcha," Spike said. He ran to a nearby desk and picked up a long, blank scroll, a fresh inkwell, and two quills. "Let's see. 'Examination of Federation Device, Preliminary Findings, as Dictated by Princess Twilight Sparkle.' Ready when you are, Twi."

Twilight cleared her throat. "Ahem. The Federation device was retrieved during the first operation inside their facility. Said operation was simply a preliminary incursion which engaged no individuals and allowed only a visual scan of a single, two room residence." As Twilight spoke, Spike's quill flew across the paper.

"From these two rooms we can conclude that the Federals are a bipedal species possibly related to humans. Photographic evidence inside the residence shows sufficient similarity to support such an assumption, but the Federal physiology is extremely deformed from human standard. Much more research is required before any conclusions can be drawn.

"The device resembles the 'cellphones' used by humans, and is believed to perform a similar function. Cellphones are data retrieval and communication devices that operate purely on electronic principles. This device, as well as suspected computers in the Federation residence, lead this researcher to conclude that the Federation technology is on par with that of the Mirror World, rather than that of Equestria proper. This is a highly unexpected find, as our first indications of the Federation observation was magical in nature. I feel that understanding this technology will answer questions of their magical technology.

"When discovered the device showed information in the Federation language. Afterthought, the Federation script is blocky and rigid, with repeating characters. I suspect it is alphabetic in nature. Will need to cross-reference trends in Equestrian language to confirm, but recent advances in printing technology and the decline of hoofwriting is leading our own alphabet to similar trends. This suggests the Federals have had similar technology for far longer.

"I voiced an idle wish that the device display Equestrian language and it complied. As this would have left strong evidence of my passing, I chose to remove the device rather than leave such evidence behind. On the other hoof, we now have the opportunity to not only examine the device, but read its contents.

"The device's display, or screen, is in the majority a single document." Twilight hesitated and brought her hoof to the screen, similar to how she had seen humans use their cellphones. "The device responds to hoof movements to move the displayed text, allowing the entirety of the document to be viewed without making it too small to read. The contents of the document are research notes on Rainbow Dash, who is the subject of long range observation. Bordering the document are what I believe are interface components and labels that describe the document. Prominent among them is the label L*ARS, which includes an unknown character from the Federation language. I believe this is an acronym and includes an untranslated term."

Twilight swiped her hoof over the screen a few more times and frowned. "Addendum. The device responds to hoof movements, but only poorly. As it was made for human-like Federals, I assume it is designed to react to fingers; smaller and more nimble digits than a pony's hoof. I will need to find some way around that in order to make full use of this device, but for now, Spike?" Twilight waited a few moments.

Spike finished writing and looked up. "Yeah, Twilight?" he asked.

Twilight passed him the device. "See how your claws handle this. Be careful not to scratch it."

Spike nodded and took the device gently. A lifetime of living among ponies left him well-trained in not damaging anything (or anypony) with claws that could carve a diamond into bite sized chunks. He flicked a claw over the device's surface and it responded perfectly.

Twilight smiled and took Spike's quill in her magic. She dictated to herself, "As hypothesized, the device reacts more readily to Spike's claws than my own hooves. I will attempt to design a stylus at a later date, but for the rest of this investigation, Spike will manipulate the device on my behalf." She paused her writing. "That okay with you, Spike?"

Spike shrugged. "Sure. Not like this thing is going to explode or anything."

Twilight chose not to speculate on an unknown machine's ability to explode. Long experience with the Crusaders, Pinkie, and Discord had taught her not to eliminate that particular possibility out of hoof. She resumed her dictation. "The Federals' research into Rainbow Dash is a curiosity but ultimately uninteresting. Sonic intercepts have already provided much of the material in question. Instead, this investigation will focus on the device's functions. Taking cues from human devices, it is likely that the header of the document will have some command or editing function when accessed. Spike, please tap your claw on the acronym."

Spike did so and the document blanked away. The header remained for a few seconds, then new text appeared in the center of the screen. Spike read it, while Twilight transcribed it into her notes. "Error: Library...bunch of gibberish...Access and Retrieval System not available. Connection to Main...same gibberish again...not available."

Twilight mused over this development before she resumed dictation. "My suspicions of the acronym are confirmed. Library something Access and Retrieval System. Likely the unknown word is a descriptor of the library in question, possibly relating to this technology. From my own experiences I believe 'computer' or 'cellular' might be the most appropriate terms, but these words do not appear in any documents the Federals have access to. Nor, for that matter, the ponies I have employed translating intercepts. I may need to assemble a lexicon of technological terms."

"Twilight," Spike prompted.

"Getting off track. Thanks, Spike." Twilight grinned sheepishly. "Let's take the name literally. This L-something-A-R-S is a system that accesses and retrieves from a kind of library. Library implies collecting, borrowing, and ultimately returning in a central location. This 'Main Whatever' may be the physical location where the library is located. The device we have acquired uses this system to access the library and retrieve a document. Except the device doesn't actually move, so it is using a communication medium of some kind. A medium that doesn't function, probably blocked by the castle. Could we enspell an exception to allow this device to function?"

Twilight pondered the question quietly for several minutes. She half-raised a hoof and waved it limply, gesturing along with the competing ideas floating in her mind. "It's a bad idea even if it is possible," she concluded. "Retrieving a document means the communication must be two-way. The Federals could learn we have one of their devices."

"They could?" Spike asked. "How?"

Twilight paused to consider. "Spike, what would happen if I needed Celestia to send us a copy of her schedule for tomorrow?" It happened often enough; even as a student Twilight needed Celestia's schedule to find some way to squeeze in her more casual visits.

Spike shrugged. "We'd write a letter to the Princess and send it off." He mimed blowing on a scroll. "Easy."

"And then?" Twilight prompted.

"Well, she'd get the letter, pass it off to Smooth Sailin who would write the copy, then send it back to us. Then we'd try and figure out which meetings would try to break the schedule worst and give the Princess an excuse to cut them short."

Twilight smiled wryly at that. "Okay, now how do we get the schedule from Celestia?"

"She sends it to us," Spike repeated. Twilight stared, rolling her hoof in a aaaaand? gesture. Spike frowned. "Which means something. Um...she knows she's sending the schedule. To us." He looked at the device in his claws. "So if this thing asks the other thing for a thing, the other thing will know this thing wanted a thing."

"And might know where this thing is, so it knows where to send the thing to," Twilight said, picking up on the thought.

"Okay," Spike nodded. "That would be bad."

"Curious, though. If I am right, this single device can access any number of works. Why would anypony need a stack of them like I saw?" Twilight studied the device a few seconds, then her notes. She turned her attention back to the device. "Multiple users? No, the stack was in the residence of a single individual." Back to her notes, back to the device. "Maybe they were different devices? They all looked the same to me." Back to her notes, back to the device. Then she straightened, eyes going wide. "Ugh," she groaned, slouching and slapping a hoof over her eyes. "So they can have multiple works available at once. Silly Twilight, the answer was right under your muzzle."

"Twilight, are you sure you should be writing all this down?" Spike asked.

Twilight glanced at the last line of her own dictation and scribbled it out hastily, adding a note that the above section was redacted as Princess's Eyes Only. That should fool everypony. "Er, the presence of multiple devices to a single user suggests these are widely available in Federation society. As the device no longer displays useful information and is too risky to reconnect to the Federation library, I am deliberately choosing to move on to experiments with a significant risk of damaging the device. The final experiment will be its complete deconstruction and analysis of its components."

"Spike, start pushing random parts of the display until something changes."

Rainbow Dash was widely known for her bravery, diligence, calm under fire, and patience. These were vital aspects of her awesomeness that made her "Okay I can't even convince myself," Rainbow muttered. She smacked her face with a hoof. "Anything yet?"

Sharp Ear sighed. "No, Miss Dash. Nor are we likely to have anything the next minute. Or the next." The grey-coated earth pony resisted the urge to facehoof himself and instead pointed at the rather extensive equipment around them. "Do you know what all is going into these efforts?" he asked.

"Er, not really," Rainbow admitted. "Twilight explained it all once, but that was before you were all brought in."

Sharp Ear nodded. Explaining what he did to a laypony was hardly the most pleasant way to spend time, but it was better than continually answering "is it done yet?" at least twice a minute. "I am a lingual expert. My talent is to interpret words and their meanings. The Princesses call for my services when diplomatic missives seem to say more than is strictly on the page." Which, honestly, was all the time. Princess Celestia cared too much about the ponies of Equestria to risk anything to chance, so any message from afar went through at least two analysts in addition to the Princess's own keen insight.

Rainbow nodded less because she followed that and more because she wanted him to get to a point. "So why aren't you listening like those three?" she gestured with a wing.

Sharp Ear followed the gesture and took in the three ponies working on magical arrays. Two pegasi and a unicorn, each with a mystic object in her ear and each writing with practiced, unhurried speed on a scroll. "They are scribes," Sharp Ear explained. "Their job is to write down everything they hear, as accurately as possible. I doubt I could help."

"You can't write?" Rainbow asked dubiously.

"It's not a matter of simple writing," Sharp Ear explained. "Could you write down everything we're saying?"

"Of course," Rainbow said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

"With perfect accuracy?" Sharp pressed.

Rainbow nodded, still confident. "I can be careful when I need to be."

"As quickly as you can say the words?"

Rainbow paused. "Huh?"

Sharp smiled. "It's not enough to write, you must write both perfectly and quickly, while still listening to the conversation so you can keep up. It is not the most glamorous skill in Equestria, but a good scribe is a true professional."

Rainbow looked at the trio again, for the first time really seeing how fast they wrote, how tidy their writing was. "Well, I guess I can get needing to be fast enough," she admitted. "So why's that one doohickey different from the others?"

Sharp glanced at the array in use by a pegasus. "That array is Crystal Empire magecrafting. The others are unicorn gem work; we brought them with us from Canterlot."

Rainbow frowned. "What do they do?"

"They receive magical transmissions from crystal sensors scattered over the Federation base, or 'duck blind' as the Federals call it," Sharp explained. "The sensors pick up vibration -- sound. The arrays filter out sounds coming from other places and give us a reading on where the remaining sounds are coming from within the blind. The gem arrays then record that information on its own scroll."

"But not the crystal one?" Rainbow asked.

"No. It doesn't have that ability." Sharp Ear sniffed softly. "Princess Twilight chose a new, cheap model over an old and reliable one. In any case, all arrays translate whatever speech they pick up and present that to the scribes. The scribes can filter out voices by adjusting the array, allowing them to split up the work."

Rainbow nodded. "I guess that makes sense. So, anything yet?"

Sharp Ear just pressed a hoof to his muzzle and groaned.

"Examination of the device's screen while components were removed has presented some insight into its operation. Appropriate pieces have been carefully labeled by both given name and presumed function. The most important examinations will be of these 'equal-line chips' and this transmitter-receiver unit. The former stores information in a way the device can access and the second is the mechanism to connect to other devices."

Twilight finished her report and reviewed her scroll. "Do you think I should mention the patterns?" she fretted.

Spike shrugged. "It's not like you came to any conclusions." After opening the case of the device Twilight had started comparing the arrangement of its physical pieces to everything from insect hives to impressionist paintings. She only stopped when Spike grabbed her by the withers and directed her attention to what the components actually were -- unknowns to be examined.

Twilight's ears drooped. "I guess you're right," she said dejectedly. She perked back up quickly. "I suppose the only thing left is a detailed examination of the parts!"

Spike winced at the oncoming research binge. "Shouldn't you check in with Rainbow first?" he asked.

Twilight paused and thought that over. "You're right," she said. "Duty before pleasure. I'll be back soon, Spike!" She trotted out of her library and headed for the observation team.

Spike wiped a claw across his brow and took off at a run as soon as Twilight was out of earshot. He didn't have long to get lost in some chore far away from Twilight's newest vacation into mind numbing boredom.

Twilight walked into Sharp Ear's office to find Rainbow hovering over his shoulder while the earth pony scribbled notes with the quill in his mouth, his ears flattened tightly against his skull and his expression professionally neutral. Twilight winced and hurried to announce herself with a polite cough.

Sharp Ear looked up and nearly sagged in relief. "Princess!"

Rainbow landed gently next to Twilight. "Your egghead brigade hasn't managed to do anything," she whined.

Twilight rolled her eyes and silently looked to Sharp Ear.

Sharp scowled at Rainbow for a second before schooling his expression. "Your Highness, there has been no mention of your activities by the Federals. However, after Miss Dash told me you had taken a piece of their technology, I was able to find this." He hoofed over a stack of papers. Twilight paged through the details and analysis and went straight for the raw transcript.

Ensign Lorian: There is a pad missing.
Doctor Lewis: Are you sure?
Ensign Lorian: Of course. I was cross-referencing Rainbow Dash's observed flight with the metagravitonic field we've noted to better understand the inconsistencies. The pad with the observations is gone.
Doctor Lewis: Strange. Anything irreplaceable?
Ensign Lorian: No, it was just a copy of the library file. This pad has all my personal notes.
Doctor Lewis: Chalk it up to a minor mystery then and just get a new pad.
Ensign Lorian: Standard procedure is to conduct a level three security sweep of the installation to account for all Federation technology in the event that anything goes missing.
Doctor Lewis: For a single pad that vanished from your room? Lorian you probably took it with you and forgot. It's lying on some table somewhere with a whole new file loaded. It may even be that pad in your hand.
Ensign Lorian: I do not forget things of that kind.
Doctor Lewis: Which is more logical? That you were absentminded, or that somepony snerk came in and swiped it?
Ensign Lorian: While I do not share your sense of humor, your logic is sound. Very well. May I share with you my conclusions?
Doctor Lewis: Absolutely.

Twilight looked up from the transcript and smiled. "Well, that's a relief."

Rainbow frowned at the neat writing. "But it doesn't say anything about you," she complained.

"Exactly," Twilight said with satisfaction. "They saw I took that device, the pad apparently, and explained away its disappearance. That was the biggest evidence that I was there, and they're ignoring it."

Rainbow thought that over for a moment. "Okay, I guess that makes sense," she agreed. "So what did they have to say about me? Probably how awesome I am, right?"

Twilight smirked fondly. "I can honestly say that their report on you was fully unable to grasp your awesomeness, Rainbow."

Rainbow pumped a hoof in the air. "Yes! So, learn anything cool? Are we looking at an alien invasion of blob monsters?"

Twilight stared at Rainbow for a couple heartbeats. "Ummmmm... no. No, Rainbow Dash, not at all."

"Shoot."

Twilight stared a few more seconds. "Anyway," she drawled slowly, "from the pictures I saw, we're looking at deformed humans." She saw confused blinking from Sharp Ear and Rainbow and realized they had no idea what she was talking about. "Primates, bipeds, upright posture, no fur to speak of, magically on par with minotaurs."

Rainbow shrugged. "So are we being invaded by the planet of the apes then?"

Twilight shook her head. "I don't think so. They still sound like scientists to me, not invaders."

"But you can't know for sure," Rainbow pressed. "So why aren't we kicking flank and shooting rainbows?"

Twilight sighed. "Because I still want to learn from them," she said. "Just this one device I brought back, it connects to a library, Rainbow. A library! Think of what we can learn. What they can teach us."

Rainbow paused. "Cool alien tech?"

Twilight grinned. "Cool alien tech."

"Lasers?"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Maybe later."

Rainbow rubbed a hoof under her chin. "Hmm. Yes, that could be awesome. How can I help?"

"Research," Twilight answered.

"Pass," Rainbow shot back.

Twilight clapped her hooves together and rubbed them vigorously. "Then stay out of my way."

Doctor Whooves was well known as that crazy brown stallion in Ponyville. At least, to the hoofful of ponies that cared to know him. Which wasn't too many. Honestly the doctor preferred it that way. Isolation made it easier to pursue his research in peace.

Of course, it also meant he didn't know timetravel was a mere spell away and most of his theories were proven wrong ages before he was born. So he wasn't entirely sure of his life choices to date.

These same life choices did not comfort him when Derpy hoof-delivered him a royal summons along with the day's mail. A summons from the Princess of Friendship. Oh Doc Whooves was aware that the princess lived in Ponyville and had for quite some time, but he couldn't say he knew Twilight Sparkle. If it hadn't been for her attempt to disaster-proof Equestria because something something message from the future some years back, Whooves might have never given the princess a second thought.

The giant crystal palace of Friendship/Harmony/Magic/Books/whatever had been an interesting novelty when it was first...grown, but Doctor Whooves hadn't been back since. So it was with rather a great deal of hesitation that he put hoof to crystal and knocked, standing in the open doorway of the palace atrium. "Hello?" he called. "Somepony summoned me?"

He heard the rapid scratch of claw on crystal before Spike rounded a corner into his line of sight. "Doctor!" he called. "Glad you could make it. Twilight's up in one of the laboratories waiting for you."

Whooves swallowed. "Eh, yes, right. Waiting for me. Well then lead on, good dragon. Er, I don't suppose she happened to mention to you why she needed me?"

Spike turned and set off for the stairs at just under a jog. "Oh she did, but I can't tell you," he said. He shrugged. "Something about a huge matter of Equestrian security and maybe the fate of all ponykind. But that happens every couple of weeks anyway, so I'm not sure why...Doc?" he turned around and frowned at the stallion frozen in place a halfdozen steps down. "You okay?"

"Great whickering stallions," Whooves whispered. "Fate of all ponykind? The princess needs me to help with something that will matter to all ponykind?"

"Yeah," Spike said. "Which is why we're kinda in a hurry?" He waved Whooves forward. "Come on, we can't keep Twilight waiting."

Whooves's hooves moved robotically as he made his way up the stairs. "But, why me?" he asked slowly. "Surely there are better experts at...at...at whatever."

"Actually there aren't," Twilight cut in. Whooves hadn't even realized they had reached her lab. She smiled. "Doctor, I'm glad you could come."

Whooves dropped into a bow as fast as he could. "Yes, Your Highness," he said quickly. "I'm sorry for questioning your orders, Your Highness."

"Rise," Twilight said with a tired smile. She managed to keep her eyes from rolling. It was getting easier. "And never apologize for an honest question. Especially when it deserves an intelligent answer."

Whooves stood slowly and frowned. "It does?"

Twilight frowned. "What I am going to tell you can never leave these walls. You can't speak of it, even to me, outside of the palace. If you can't do that, you can walk away right now, no hard feelings."

"Walk away from what?" Whooves asked. "Princess, I don't understand."

"Right now, I just need you to understand that you will be working under a Royal Order of absolute silence," Twilight said. "And this is your chance to get out."

Whooves scuffed a hoof on the floor in thought. "Do you need my assistance, Princess?"

"Yes," Twilight said.

"Then you will have it," Whooves declared. "My lips are sealed, Your Highness."

"Twilight will do fine, Doctor," Twilight said. She broke out into a smile and gestured Whooves into the lab with one wing. "We will be working together, after all."

The lab was an unusual design, by Whooves's standards. The walls were lined with shelves of tools, beakers, and bins, while the floor was practically devoid of furniture, save a single small table with many tiny objects covering it. Several of those objects were obscured by a sheet. Twilight let Whooves take in the lab for a moment while she closed the door. "Two weeks ago, the Crown became aware of extraequestrial life near Ponyville," she said.

Doctor Whooves blinked a few times. "I'm sorry, could you say that again? I'm afraid I misheard you. Er, Your Highness."

"Twilight. And I said there are aliens on the outskirts of Ponyville," Twilight repeated. "Creatures from another world. Beings that have traveled the stars to get here. Straight out of a comic book aliens from beyond Celestia's light."

Whooves swallowed loudly. "Great whickering stallions," he muttered. "Why do you need me, of all ponies? You think I could be some kind of expert on aliens?"

"Not at all, Doctor," Twilight assured. She waved her hoof at the lab's center table. "Are you familiar with the theories of Alan Trotting?"

"Er, some of them," Whooves answered. He trotted up to the table of small devices and peered at them. "Trotting proposed a purely physical decision-making machine, a kind of logic engine. A few universities have been trying to make one into reality, but it's a fringe field." He looked up from the devices and tilted his head at Twilight. "I'm surprised you know about them, Princess."

"I honestly didn't until a few days ago," Twilight admitted. "I've realized I haven't explored beyond unicorn magic as far as I had thought, and Trotting's work is, well," she winced.

"Completely outclassed by an enchanted gem carrying a third level abstract matrix," Whooves filled in. "Which are hard to come by unless you know an expert at gem magic, but are a lot smaller than anything Trotting proposed."

"Right, that," Twilight said. "But are you familiar with the big stumble in Trotting's work?"

"Of course," Whooves said. "For the logic engine to actually do anything it needs information to work with, and nopony has found a way to store complex data in a mechanically accessible format." He snorted. "Unless you want to eat up a few furlongs of tape with punch holes. But what does any of this have to do with aliens?"

Twilight nodded and pointed a hoof at the table. "That is something the aliens call an 'identical line chip.' It is roughly equivalent to 1.9 million miles of punchtape."

Whooves stared at the tiny chip. "But that's...why that's brilliant!" He smiled and looked up at Twilight. "Do you know what that means? These devices could solve the greatest hurdle facing nonmagical data manipulation." He trotted in place for a moment and laughed. "Fantastic! How do they work?"

"I have no idea," Twilight said simply.

Doctor Whooves stopped moving. He stopped breathing. He did manage to blink, however. "I think I need you to repeat that."

"I estimated their storage capacity based on the amount of data found in the alien device it came from. However, I have no idea how to actually retrieve the information stored on this chip." Twilight tapped the tiny device. "That's why I need somepony with a solid grounding in nonmagical sciences and Trotting's theories to help me figure this out."

Whooves picked up one of the chips and examined it closely. "Oh, this is a beautiful piece of work. Absolutely brilliant. Mad, of course, completely mad. I mean, build an interface to pull information from a completely unknown medium and store it in a useful fashion? Impossible. Beyond impossible." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of spectacles that he perched on his muzzle. He beamed at Twilight with a smile Pinkie would be proud of. "Oh, this is going to be brilliant."

Twilight beamed. "Welcome to the future of scientific research, Doctor Whooves." She extended a hoof.

Whooves took it. "Glad to be here, Princess Twilight."

Author's Note

Assuming a punchtape of 8 bits per row and 0.1 inch length per row, a terabyte would come out to just under 1.9 million miles. I figured that was a viable estimate for an isolinear chip in a PADD.

And yes, I'm giving Equestria century-old computer technology and assigning it to the fringe of enthusiasts and theoretical research because it's just not competitive with magic. Computers are hard.

Chapter 7

Celestia, if given opportunity, could wax poetic for hours on the march of civilization and bemoan the endless trail of paper left in its wake. In good times and bad, simple or complicated alike, season after season, there would be reports to read, forms to sign, and memos to draft.

Rainbow Dash let her quill fall from her hoof and groaned. "Ugh. Sooo boooring," she whined. True to form, Rainbow had finished with the weather in 83% of the time a less cool pony could have. Of course, no pony would ever hear about this burst of awesomeness, as it was the boring ink on paper kind of weather work. Rainbow filled out the entire month's schedule in one go. That way it was done and ready for anypony to look at and she wouldn't have to worry about it for another month. It was, in her estimation, a perfect system.

The other weatherponies had a different opinion, which largely revolved around the fact that the schedule was never posted more than five hours before the month started.

Rainbow looked over the schedule one more time. She herself was scheduled for the first of the month, just like always. Then the month's rotation picked up on the second, starting with pairs decided by throwing darts at an employee roster and then rotating so everypony had a chance with everypony else, except storm days which called for extra hooves. Not too many this month, except Sweet Apple Acres was still due one big storm that hadn't been in last month's budget. Rainbow scowled and added in a new storm for the weekend, and extra cloud wrangling the day before. There, perfect.

Now she just needed to file a copy, post a copy, and hoof one over to the mayor. Maybe she could get Twilight to cast a duplicating spell on it?

"Oh yeah," Rainbow muttered. "Mayor Mare quit. I need to take this to Twilight anyway!" She grinned. That was a perfect excuse to get Twilight to save her poor hooves from more writing!

One of the peculiarities groundbound ponies learned about their feathered peers was that, to a pegasus, "door" and "window" were the same thing. An open window was an invitation to visitors, pure and simple. And a balcony was just another way for friends to enter.

The Royal Guard took a rather dim view of that attitude. Even pegasi guards. They had this crazy idea that a secure building needed to be...secure. And that the easiest way to secure Twilight's castle was for everypony to go through the big front doors. And while it was true that the Council of Harmony was well-recognized and allowed to pass through without more than a glance, high speed blurs of rainbow colors were far harder to identify.

Convincing Rainbow of that simple logic had been easy. Convincing her that entering the castle at Rainboom speeds was an inadequate substitute for personal identification had taken longer. But it had sunk in, eventually, and Rainbow landed a short walk from the open, inviting door and nodded respectfully to the two slightly less inviting guards flanking it. With quiet dignity she entered the building on hoof, as opposed to her own personal idiom.

As soon as Rainbow entered the foyer the castle burst into sound. Her ears swiveled to take it in. Twilight was yelling, and probably had for some time. "Wow, I didn't know the Egghead could get that mad," Rainbow said to herself. She grinned and followed the yelling up a staircase. Twilight had been even more boring than usual ever since she got back from that spy mission. Rainbow cared deeply for all her friends, but Twilight was facing a severe deficit in her radical rating. Seriously, what kind of pony becomes boring after a spy mission in a secret alien base? They should have lasers and rocket ships and hunky green marstallions. Instead, Twilight was just doing egghead stuff with Doc Whooves.

Rainbow had stopped paying attention to what, exactly, the egghead stuff was when it was clear that no, lasers were not involved. Or rockets. Or marstallions.

Rainbow figured she was on the right floor when she could make out some words. "Impossible," "magic," "laws," "melt," and "fire." Rainbow's eyes widened and she grinned. Melting magic fire could be awesome. "Who knew you could get coolness from cracking an egghead?" she chuckled.

"...no matter how much you reinforce it. It's going to go BWWwwwoooOOF! and turn into a pile of plastic goo," Twilight snapped.

"It won't melt if we keep the power down. There simply is no way to build a probe fine enough to observe the storage medium. Unidirectional photonic bombardment is the only option." That was Doc Whooves's voice. Rainbow had never heard the strange stallion upset, although he sounded more frustrated than angry.

"You're talking about a laser!" Twilight shrieked.

Rainbow's eyes opened wide. Fillies and gentlecolts, we have awesome, she thought. She hoofed the door open quietly and looked inside the lab.

The Castle had provided Twilight with an abundance of rooms, far more than two residents and five frequent guests could ever find a use for. Rarity had long extolled the virtues of a princess having an abundance of meeting rooms, each appointed differently, for the many affairs of state that such a position would engender. Rainbow didn't see the point, and it seemed neither did Twilight, as half of the rooms had been taken over by laboratory equipment of some kind or another. As best Rainbow could tell, Twilight gave each project its own room for as long as the experiments went on. Looking into this laboratory, Rainbow didn't bother trying to understand what she was looking at. All the chalkboards filled with eggheadese made her eyes hurt if she looked at them too long. Twilight and Whooves were standing on opposite sides of a long, narrow table, each with a chalkboard behind them, with a plastic alien gizmo thing between them. Rainbow could taste the chalk dust in the air. Twilight levitated a fresh piece to her board and furiously underlined a particularly dense bunch of scribbles. "Look! A class three gem focusing a light spell into a coherent beam has a minimum power output defined by Muler's Law. That output is enough to obliterate the artifact."

Whooves picked up his own piece of chalk in his mouth, which Rainbow noted had a hefty chalk-white coating. "But if we use a class two crystal," he mumbled around the chalk.

"Then the crystal will shatter under magical strain," Twilight interrupted. "It's impossible to channel that much magical power through anything less than a class five crystal, and that has an even higher minimum light output than the gem!"

Whooves spat out the chalk. "What? No! No no no, great whickering stallions, no. We focus the laser from the gem through the crystal in a magic-null function," he explained. "Neighton's work on optics clearly shows how you can split light through a medium. A properly grown class two crystal can refocus the laser into a weaker beam and then it's allonsy all the way to Prance."

Twilight blinked and lowered her own chalk. "You use the crystal without an attached spell?" she asked. She tilted her head. "But with the interfering crystal, how do you measure the result? The sympathy light has with the anchoring gem is too weak to survive the refocusing."

It was Whooves's turn to frown. "I should have considered that," he admitted. "Could the crystal anchor a new sympathy?"

Twilight looked over Whooves's work. "I don't think so," she said slowly. "A class two crystal is pretty inefficient. If we put that much magic into it, we could change how the light scatters."

"And we have no way of measuring that effect," Whooves finished, hanging his head. "Brilliant."

"We should copy down the design, though," Twilight said. "I haven't seen anypony develop a viable laser before, even in theory. We could get published!"

Whooves smiled and raised his head. "Well, at least it wasn't for nothing then. Back to the drawing board!" He pulled in a clean chalkboard as Twilight pushed the ones they had used aside.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "So much for awesome," she said. Giving up on lasers so easily? Boring!

Twilight turned towards the door. "Hello? Rainbow! What are you doing up here?"

Rainbow hoofed the door fully open. "Uh, hey Twi. I was just in the neighborhood, y'know, and I heard shouting. So I thought I'd just, um,"

"Come up and watch the fireworks?" Twilight asked flatly. She gave Rainbow a Look Maud would have been proud of. Maybe. It was hard to tell with Maud.

Rainbow's ears sagged. "Er, yeah. That. Sorry. But hey, you said there wouldn't be any lasers involved, and I find you talking about lasers!"

Twilight facehoofed. "Tiny lasers, Rainbow. Less than an inch long and so weak it couldn't even warm your muzzle."

Rainbow's jaw dropped. "Seriously? Lame. What could such a wimpy laser do anyway? Shoot down gnats?"

Twilight groaned and pointed a wing at the Federation device. Her hooves were still occupied with her snout. "That thing has really tiny stuff written on it. A narrow laser would be small enough to read it."

Rainbow tilted her head. "Can't you just make the writing bigger?"

"That was my thought," Whooves interjected, raising his hoof. "But it turns out that somepony named Haycartes proved that magical enlargement had a minimum resolution above the necessary threshold."

Twilight hid a smirk at Rainbow's blank expression. "Remember when Daring Do had to figure out a ruin where the carved letters had been blurred by erosion? It would sort of be like that, but worse."

Rainbow winced. Half of that volume had been Daring recovering from a trap that the lost carving would have warned her about. "Why would anypony write so small?" she asked instead.

"The smaller you write, the more you can fit on the page."

Rainbow snorted. "Yeah, but it's no use to anypony if it's too small to read."

"They have machines that do that for them," Twilight explained with a sigh. "Honestly figuring out how to read it ourselves is the problem we're trying to solve. Anyway, did you need something?"

Rainbow blinked. "Oh yeah. I just finished the weather schedule for next month and was hoping you could magic up a couple copies."

Twilight blinked. "You came here because you forgot to use carbon paper?"

Rainbow tilted her head to one side. "What's carbon paper?"

Twilight hung her head. "It's a special paper used with typewriters to make a copy of what you're writing as you write it."

Rainbow gaped. "That exists? Why hasn't anypony told me about that! I've been hoofwriting this thing in triplicate for years!"

"Because nopony knows you do paperwork," Twilight told her flatly. She looked up and frowned. "Why do you need three copies?"

Rainbow pointed a hoof back to town hall. "One for the files, one to post," she swung her hoof to Twilight, "one for you."

"Me?"

"Well, the mayor," Rainbow explained. She put her hoof down and pulled the schedule out of her saddlebag. "She always insisted on getting a personal copy."

Twilight frowned more heavily. Offhoof, she couldn't think of a need to have a personal copy of the schedule when there was one on file in the weather office and another posted where anyony who wanted could see it, but Mayor Mare had had a lot more experience running a town than she had. "Okay, well I guess we'll keep with that system for now," she said, half to herself. Her horn glowed and the paper in Rainbow's mouth tripled. Twilight took one copy and set it aside."There. Thanks, Rainbow."

Rainbow stuffed the other copies back in her bag quickly. "No problem, Twi! You just saved me a couple hours of boredom." She gave Twilight a quick hug and flew out the door. "I gotta get this posted. See ya later!"

"Bye Dash!" Twilight yelled after the already vanished pegasus. She turned to see Whooves staring at the Federation chip with an intense expression. "What is it, Doc?"

"I believe Rainbow has hit upon a brilliant idea," Whooves said slowly. "Also, it may be that we are just thick. It's so obvious. We've been looking at how the information is stored."

"Yes?" Twilight asked.

"We should have been looking at how it is read. Look here." Whooves took the chip in one hoof. "See here, this is where this chip attaches to the rest of the device. These contacts must be where it gets requests for information and sends that information."

"Yes?" Twilight asked again. "But we don't know how the retrieval works."

"We don't need to," Whooves countered. "As your friend said, information is useless if it cannot be read. The chip can read its own information. We only need to figure out how to ask it."

"And how to listen to the answer," Twilight realized. She smiled slowly. "Then all we need is somepony to make our own copy, one we can read." Her face fell. "But there's no way we can store all that information. It would fill up the castle with scrolls."

"Unfortunately true," Whooves agreed. "We either need some magical means of storing the information, or we need a retrieval system that can search the device's own storage in real time. Either way, I believe the task calls for a full mana-consciousness. We'll need some master-quality gem work to pull that off."

Twilight offered Whooves a small smirk. The earth pony hesitated. "Ah. You can take care of that yourself, I suppose?"

Twilight's smirk grew. "Well, not me."

Rarity blinked blankly. "I'm sorry, darling, I must have been distracted for a moment there. I thought you said you wanted me to build you a magic brain." She lowered her teacup so she could laugh politely into one dainty hoof.

Twilight nodded, beaming. "That's pretty much exactly what I need," she agreed. She took a sip from her own tea, peacefully oblivious to the statue-like demeanor her friend had adopted.

Rarity slowly lowered her hoof and tried to hide her wince behind a weak smile. It wasn't working. "Twilight. Dear. Princess. After your need for reams of canvas last month, I had wondered if it had escaped your notice, but I am a dressmaker." She threw out a hoof to encompass the ponyquins, suits, dresses, and accessories surrounding them. "Not a supplier of magical minutiae."

Twilight blinked. "But you make enchanted dresses for sale in Canterlot," she objected.

Rarity frowned. "Well, yes, I do have some experience with this kind of work," she admitted, "but cleanliness and sturdiness enchantments are relatively simple. A glamour or two to accentuate the color scheme takes more work, but still."

Now it was Twilight's turn to frown. "But what about arcanothaumic assistants?"

"Gesundhoof?" Rarity offered.

"Everypony at Celestia's Gifted Unicorns had one," Twilight exclaimed. She flung her hooves wide. "It's the only way to keep up with the intense course load. The professors would have one with a larger gem as the focus, worked into a broach or a necklace or such."

"And these were, what exactly?" Rarity asked.

"Arcanothaumic assistants," Twilight repeated.

Rarity merely sipped her tea and arched an eyebrow.

Twilight's ears fell. "You've never heard of arcanothaumic assistants?"

"I'm afraid not, dear," Rarity admitted.

"Oh," Twilight muttered. "Um, they're enchanted tools that store notes, lectures, pretty much anything spoken that somepony didn't want to bother writing down. The bigger ones could even replicate simple spell patterns. They, um, they aren't everywhere?"

Rarity smiled and placed a hoof on Twilight's withers. "Twilight, you are a dear friend, but you must learn that there is a difference between collegiate Canterlot and political Canterlot. I dare say your life as a Princess will get quite a bit easier once you do."

Twilight doodled circles with a hoof. "Oh," she said again. "Um, well, I guess I should get a book on making them."

"Two, darling," Rarity said.

Twilight cocked her head to the side. "Two?"

Rarity smiled coyly. "My dear Twilight, I am trying to open a boutique in Canterlot. There is an open lot on Sundawn Avenue for far less than I would pay elsewhere in Upper Canterlot."

"But Sundawn is on the edge of CGU," Twilight objected.

"And on the edge of the palace," Rarity pointed out.

"Well yeah, it's the border between school grounds and palace grounds...oh," Twilight's ears perked up. "So you're thinking you can sell to both sides of the street? Is that doable?"

Rarity gave Twilight a flat look. "Darling, when next you return to your alma mater, I suggest you stroll Sundawn and look carefully at the establishments. I assure you Barns and Nobles is not a typical bookstore."

Twilight tapped a hoof to her muzzle. "I did think it off that Marevelli's The Princess wasn't a biography. Or that The Art of Friendship wasn't about magic."

Rarity rolled her eyes. "In any case, with Ponyville now subject to your tender care, I have no doubt that investing in scholarly clientele is just good business sense."

Twilight frowned. "It is?"

Rarity laughed lightly. "Darling, you have free reign over how much land? Five years from now, when Princess Twilight Sparkle's Research Center for Magic, Friendship, and Books brings in the brightest and boldest minds in Equestria, the successful businesspony will be she who is ready to cater to them. I intend to be that pony."

Twilight blinked twice. "Princess Who's What Center for What Now?" she squeaked.

Rarity glanced at Twilight's cup. "Drink your tea, darling."

Staring straight ahead, Twilight levitated her cup, downed her tea in a single swig, and gently placed the cup back to rest on the table. Then the cup exploded into powder. Twilight didn't so much as twitch.

Rarity glanced at the tea saucer filled with porcelain powder. "I'll just get you a fresh cup, shall I?"

Two days later, Twilight found herself in her private study with Rarity and Whooves. Twilight had a stack of journals on magical research, while Rarity and Whooves studied brand new copies of Arcano Assistants for Apprentices.

There were many advantages to learning a new, complex, esoteric form of magic. Twilight would know, she had those advantages on an itemized checklist. "Distraction from anxiety" was already on there (Shining Armor moving out had not been easy on his LSBFF) but now she had "Distraction from anxiety caused by world shaping power and no I'm not kidding" as an addendum. Studying this year's second issue of Modern Magical Masterpieces for an article in arcanothaumic anchoring was much safer than considering her ability to reshape the academic landscape of Equestria in her own image. "There's a New Horshire professor that thinks electrum would outperform pure gold for a decision making enchantment," she commented.

Rarity looked up from her own reading. The usually pristine mare had bags under her eyes and a limpness to her coiffure. "Beg pardon? I thought we were studying gemwork."

"Well, yes, but we can choose to set the gem into something that helps the enchantment. Pure metals channel magic well." Twilight glanced up from her journal. "Isn't that why you use gold or platinum settings?"

Rarity frowned. "Typically I choose a gem's setting on aesthetic principles over arcane ones," she said sourly. "I've never noticed a problem."

"You wouldn't," Twilight agreed. "If you haven't been using pure metal, it won't react with an enchantment on the gems."

"Pardon the foolish earth pony," Whooves drawled, "but wouldn't an impure metal react negatively?"

Twilight held up a hoof and waggled it uncertainly. "Complexity, anchoring, sympathetic resonance, bottom line is unless the enchantment is finicky an impure setting has a neutral impact. Only pure metals are magically reactive enough to effect a spell."

Whooves scratched his hoof over his mane. "Then why over-complicate things? All we need, for a proof of concept, is something that can read from the device on demand."

"But we'll need to interface the translation spell," Twilight protested. "It took me most of a day to work out the Federals' language. The gem will need to-"

Whooves cut her off. "That would be an elegant solution," he agreed. "But we don't need elegant." Rarity gasped. Whooves ignored her. "We need functional. From what I've read, the basic enchantment on these gems is something a student can pull off, much less a master craftspony like Miss Rarity."

Rarity blinked and sat up a bit straighter. "Yes, well, I must say the task is within my considerable abilities," she offered, "but I don't quite see what your point is."

"We don't need just one gem," Whooves said. "We have a single task to perform, but we can break that task into smaller tasks. Each one gets a dedicated gem, passing information down the line from one to the next."

Twilight tapped a hoof to her muzzle. "Break the task down. It's not a bad idea, but we would need some way to," she waved her hoof vaguely, "to store the information. To pass it from one enchantment to the next."

"Darling, that is just the work of another enchantment," Rarity said excitedly. "If we set all the gems in the same piece, we can treat them as a single enchantment."

Twilight blinked and smiled. "You know what, Rarity? That might just be an idea."

Three days later, the three ponies were gathered around a plate of pale yellow metal in what Rainbow had declared The Laserless Lab of Lame.

Which was why Rainbow had not been invited. Twilight instead turned to her number one assistant. "Spike? Final pre-experiment preliminary checklist, please."

Spike rolled his eyes and unrolled a scroll. He cleared his throat. "One. Check integrity of each gem's enchantment. Subpoints A through F."

Twilight and Rarity probed the plate gently with their magic. Six gemstones were arranged in a circle around its edge; a diamond, ruby, star sapphire, emerald, and two amethyst. The unicorns checked each gem in turn, announcing that the enchantments were stable.

Spike checked off the subpoints. "Two. Integrity of the crystal."

A large shard of Imperial crystal made up the center of the disk. "The enchantment is very faint," Twilight reported.

"I can't sense it at all," Rarity complained.

"It's there," Twilight assured her. "Exactly as planned."

"Check," Spike said. "Three. Interface."

Whooves held up a thin wire that ended in a gold alligator clip with a topaz chip embedded in it. "We got a definitive reaction in yesterday's dry test and the mechanical components are in good order."

"Check," Spike marked off the item. "Four and final, recording."

Twilight levitated a stack of papers next to the disk and placed a quill on top of them. The quill had a short, pure silver rod embedded deep in the quill's calamus. The nearest amethyst glowed a faint lavender and the quill twitched. "Ready," Twilight announced.

"That's it," Spike said. "Preparation checklist next, Twilight?"

"I think so," Twilight said. "Rarity? Doctor?"

"By all means, darling," Rarity said.

"No time like the present," Whooves agreed. "What's first?"

Spike unfurled his scroll a bit further. "Review each gem enchantment by function."

Whooves nodded and set down his clip. "Very well. The topaz translates the electronic signals the alien machine uses into magical pulses."

"The amethyst repeats these pulses to the crystal," Twilight added. "The crystal records the pulses inside itself."

"The ruby uses your translation spell to turn the pulses into, well, meaning," Rarity continued. "And the crystal updates itself?"

"Then the diamond tries to fit the information into a meaningful order," Whooves said doubtfully. "I'm still not sure how that works."

"It has to do with the Smelly Hoof Principle of Context," Twilight explained. "Then the star sapphire uses the translation spell again to turn the structured information into Equestrian language."

"The emerald checks the result and reverts the translation to await more information if it is incomplete," Whooves said.

"And finally the amethyst takes the enchanted pen to write the result," Rarity squealed. "I must say, this is more exciting than I expected magical research to be."

"Oh, this is nothing," Spike said casually. "We're always making weird gizmos around here. Why just the other day I built a-"

"What's next on the list, Spike?" Twilight asked eagerly.

Spike shot his big sister/mother/it's complicated a dirty look and glanced at the scroll. "Attach the interface to the amethyst. Do not use magic."

Whooves picked up one end of the wire in his teeth and pushed it inside a notch carved for it in the amethyst's setting. "Allonsy."

"Clip the interface to the device," Spike read off. "This will begin the experiment."

Twilight picked up the clip in her magic and breathed slowly. "This is it, ponies," she said. "I am attaching the clip to the probable connector on the alien device." Twilight carefully positioned the clip inside the casing of the connector of the alien chip. She released the clamp slowly and let the bare metal teeth touch the metal of the chip.

Almost instantly the disk glowed with a white aura. It was dim, indistinct, growing out of the central crystal. It grew slowly, creeping out from the center to cover the whole of the enchanted plate in a hazy, ovoid mist of power, white as fresh snow.

Whooves and Rarity stepped back, but Twilight tip-hooved up and peered carefully at the aura. "Is that all?" she muttered.

Color flickered over the aura, gone almost too fast to be seen. Then came another pulse, and another. Blue, orange, teal, umber, red, orange again, chartreuse, periwinkle. They came from different directions and fled over the white, seeming to gain in speed. The aura grew in intensity, still white but resembling a kaleidoscope with the frequency of flashes within the haze.

"Astonishing," Rarity whispered. "If I could capture this in a fabric..."

"Brilliant," Whooves marveled. "note how complex the resulting pattern is? Theoretically the functioning of the device maps directly to the meaning of the message in its original encoding, but I confess I can't see any intellect being able to process this quickly."

"Prismatic excitement was always a possibility," Twilight muttered. "I am worried that it hasn't grabbed the quill yet."

"Maybe it hasn't found anything meaningful, dear," Rarity offered gently. "For all we know, that little piece of plastic could be blank."

"Impossible," Twilight said with certainty. "Spike and I both saw it. It had a full report on pegasus flight. We should get that, if nothing else."

Moments later the enchanted quill sprung into action. Gripped by the pale lavender magic of the device's amethyst it flew over the paper, scribbling out the first translation.

Twilight stared eagerly and read aloud. "'Error, access to central repository/command structure absent.' That sounds like the last screen Spike and I got out of the alien device. 'Check functioning of communication component using the following methodology. If no improvement is evident, contact technology support services.'" Twilight's voice trailed to a mumble and an uncontrollable smile spread over her muzzle. "It even had pictures its drawing," she squealed. She clapped her forehooves together. "Oh the research!"

"Care to share, darling?" Rarity asked.

Twilight beamed. "We just translated the operating instructions for a device that pulls information from the Federals' central archive. It uses the same kind of interface this chip does. In a few days, maybe a week, we could know everything!"

Author's Note

What? I'm not dead?

Hard to say if holding a job is helping or hurting. I've got creativity flowing like it hasn't in years, but now I'm braindead tired when I'm not channeling that energy to my students. Who don't appreciate it. Math is awesome darnit!

An arcanothaumic assistant is the magical version of a calculator. It is an incredibly useful tool that no serious arcane researcher could possibly live without and which has any number of potential applications in everyday life. And just like the first generations of computer technology, it is almost entirely limited to academic circles because no pony else is sufficiently nerdy to have even heard of the fool things. Twilight, having lived her life in academic circles, never noticed.

You may be wondering why Twilight has never been seen with such a tool. I could never figure out a good way to get Rarity to ask, so I'll just tell you. She made a crude one of her own during her studies. She was a bit on the small side at the time and couldn't carry it around easily as a necklace or such. So she put it in Smarty Pants. She, uh, she forgot that casting spells on heavily, amateurishly enchanted gemstones can, possibly, overcharge such spells and cause Ponyville-sized riots. Oopsy.

Chapter 8

Princess Celestia nodded to the guards as she walked into Twilight's palace. She had heard a hoofful of names for the palace, but to her it was nothing more or less than a monument to Twilight's accomplishments. Calling it anything other than "Twilight's Palace" just didn't seem right. She looked around the palace's hall and smiled. Rarity's touch was obvious in the time since Celestia had last been in Ponyville. Austere crystal walls were broken up by tapestries that complemented and muted the riot of color and refracted light that dominated the palace. Alcoves and tables displayed trinkets and bric-a-brac and more than a few books. The large doors to the throne room were flanked by more elaborate tapestry depicting the Elements of Harmony and Celestia's experienced eye picked out empty spaces perfect for guardsponies to stand at attention and even a spot for an unusually short, bipedal master of ceremonies to stand. The stairs up into the rest of the palace were flanked with tapestries in solid lavender that did not quite match Twilight's coat and beyond, Celestia could see that homier touches won out over the regal. Even so, the transition from palace to home was subtle, and Celestia noted it with approval. She had a tower to herself in Conterlot that similarly lacked many of the trappings of her political position, and she knew well how the respite was necessary for a mare to keep her sanity.

Celestia blinked once, the only outward sign of her pushing away the idle thoughts. Two months ago, Twilight had discovered the presence of aliens in Ponyville. She had requisitioned a high security staff and dug up some of the oldest spells from the diplomatic archives. Two weeks ago, she had written that she had made a breakthrough in learning about their visitors. Also that she had invented a laser.

Celestia wasn't sure how the one was related to the other. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know, either.

Last week, Twilight had reported that her breakthrough had panned out and she was actively collecting large amounts of information. Also that she was still uncertain as to what, exactly, it was she had been learning. Finally, Celestia had a break in her schedule to allow her to visit, and possibly learn about the puzzling series of events that led to such cryptic reports about their visitors.

Celestia blinked again, having sufficiently reviewed her purpose and organized her thoughts. She made for the stairs leading up and staunchly ignored the decor as she walked, although she could not help but pause at one alcove which featured a ruined, cracked, velvet-lined case that had once held the Elements of Harmony. The main library wrapped around the staircase through the 'trunk' of the palace, and Celestia passed several floors with stacks of books. Even after all these months, much of the library was still empty, but clearly Twilight and Spike had been hard at work rebuilding Ponyville's collection. Finally Celestia arrived at the top of the stairs and the corridors of the palace's wider, branching section. Here she slowed her pace and peered in door after door in genuine interest.

Celestia was privately envious of Twilight's decision to re-purpose most of her meeting rooms as laboratory space. True, Celestia had an entire school for her research, but she hadn't had time to personally hold experiments for decades. She had not done so regularly since, well, Luna would remember better than her. She passed rooms with runes carved in the walls, rooms with tables filled with beakers and test tubes, and one room with a collection of pacified clouds. This last room brought a new smile to Celestia's muzzle. She had been afraid Twilight would neglect the subtleties of her new magics. She passed another room filled with the various scrying implements and scribes monitoring the alien complex. She moved past quickly, not wanting to disturb the ponies from their labors.

Finally Celestia looked into a room to find Twilight and, to her happy surprise, most of her friends. She walked into the room. "Twilight?" she called.

Twilight's head shot up from the papers she was working on and she smiled. "Pr-er, Celestia!" she said happily. Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity all looked up at Twilight's shout. Twilight shot to her hooves and cantered over to Celestia's side like an eager filly. "I didn't know you were in Ponyville!"

Celestia dipped her head apologetically. "Yes, well, I may have forgotten to write ahead," she admitted. "I had an opening in my schedule and wanted to see for myself how your research has been going. Without all the pomp of a royal visit," she added in a loud whisper.

Rarity certainly did not scowl and mutter about the unfairness of it all. Ladies do not scowl. And if they did, it would not be in the presence of Princess Celestia. And even if some strange warping of the fundamental forces of the universe caused such to happen, it would never be in response to something Celestia herself had said or done. And so whatever the expression was that she almost made, it was not a scowl. Instead, she smiled and bowed to her soverign, seeing the rest of her friends do so out of the corner of her eyes.

Celestia nodded to them. "Rise, my little ponies," she said gently. She turned her attention back to Twilight. "How is your research going?"

Twilight nodded eagerly. "We've made a lot of progress!" she enthused. "The Federation computer is almost a how-to guide to their culture!"

"Computer?" Celestia asked, sounding out the strange word.

Twilight, if anything, only nodded faster. "Uh-huh! It's what they call their archive. It's an entirely mechanical means of storing and retrieving information." She frowned. "Well, sort of mechanical. We're getting information kind of at random, and a lot of it doesn't make sense. Yet!" Twilight smiled uncertainly. "I promise we'll figure it out soon."

Celestia chuckled. "I have no doubt you will, but perhaps you should start at the beginning?"

"Oh, right," Twilight faked a laugh. "The beginning. That would be the place to start." She abruptly stopped herself and took a deep breath, moving her hoof to her chest as she did so. "The beginning," she repeated, more calmly. "I suppose I should show you. It's a few doors down." She trotted over to the door and paused expectantly at the hallway.

Celestia followed Twilight, and the smaller alicorn picked up her explanation. "We - myself, Rarity, and Doctor Whooves - built a magical machine that extracted and translated information from Federation devices. We tested it on all of the data storage of a 'pad' that I, well, took from the Federation 'duck blind.'"

"Duck blind?" Celestia asked.

"We still haven't decoded an explanation for that," Twilight confessed, "but it's the informal name for this kind of observation post -- well hidden and in close proximity to its target." Her ears straightened as she returned to her impromptu lecture. "One of the first things we translated was an error message the device generated before, well, Spike ripped it to pieces. Carefully!" Twilight raised a hoof to silence an objection Celestia didn't actually have. "We were careful in how we took it apart. Barely any of it broke. Anyway, the error included some information about how the 'pad' connects to their 'computer.' One thing was the 'sub-magical frequencies' the Federation uses for communication like this." Twilight hoofed open a door and stood aside to let Celestia enter first, pride radiating off her.

Celestia looked into the room. Originally a library or study, it was lined with bookshelves, but instead of books the shelves had oblong crystals set in stands, most with a sheet of parchment hanging under them. The center of the room, on what had once been a reading table, was dominated by a metal disk studded with jewels. Another oblong crystal was standing upright in the center of the disk, and the whole thing glowed with magic. A wire led from the disk several pony lengths to a cage made of "Is that copper?" Celestia asked.

"Brass, actually," Twilight said. "It's enchanted to allow a specific magical signature to penetrate the palace and access the inside. That signature matches the 'sub-magical frequency' the Federals use to allow their devices to communicate. And their communication device is in there."

Celestia frowned. "Then the Federals know that one of their devices is in the palace."

"Their machines know," Twilight clarified. "I believe they have as many as a hundred such devices. Nopony is actually tracking all of them."

"But couldn't the machine alert them?" Celestia asked.

"It could," Twilight admitted, "but I have learned that machine logic is a strange thing. The computer scrying the palace would report the presence of their technology here immediately, but the computer tracking the devices connecting to it does not care where those devices are. It recognizes that a 'padd' that belongs to its 'network' is trying to get access and allows it." Twilight shook her head. "Strangest of all, I think that only one computer is doing both tasks. But without an explicit instruction to do so, it cannot use the information it already has."

"And if they truly have so many devices, they will not think to give such an instruction," Celestia mused. "A dangerous assumption."

"A necessary one," Twilight countered glumly. "Celestia, I don't like all the secrecy. It isn't, well, friendly."

"No, it is not," Celestia agreed. "Had the Federation approached us openly, I would never condone this kind of research. But they did not. As my sister would put it, 'they hath set upon Us in secrecy a game with rules of their own devising, and We are duty bound to best them.' But then Lulu is somewhat fond of cheating at checkers when she's losing."

Twilight giggled. "That helps," she admitted.

Celestia nodded and turned to the shelves of crystals. "But you were explaining your contraption? Your sister-in-law was surprised by how much crystal you ordered."

"Ah, yes," Twilight yelped. "It was actually Doctor Whooves's suggestion. Each crystal holds information pulled from the Federation computer. The machine transcribes a page or two to parchment, which we use to guess at the content of each crystal. We still aren't sure how to request specific information, and we got some duplicates before we were able to devise a systematic approach." She frowned at the diamond and emerald in the disk, which were easily twice as big as the other gems. "We keep having to rebuild the contextual enchantments, too. The computer has a lot of cross-references in its information, and pruning away excess, links I guess you could call them, has been a challenge."

"But why store the information in enchanted crystals?" Celestia asked. "A natural gem might be able to hold all those links."

"That's the genius of the design," Twilight said. "No matter how close they are, no two natural gemstones are really the same. But crystals can be grown to order." Twilight gripped the crystal in the center of the disk with her magic and lifted it smoothly from its setting. She wrapped it in parchment and set it aside while also levitating a new crystal that fit perfectly in the place of the old one. "A magical machine enchanted around natural gemstones would shatter if you tried to replace a stone like I just did. But because these crystals match each other, at least in the ways the enchantment cares about, we can swap them out. Each crystal on these shelves holds information from this one machine, and we've built a couple 'scribes' that write down information from a crystal so somepony can read it. That's what we were doing when you showed up, Princess." Twilight waved a hoof at the wall of crystals. "I don't know how much knowledge we've accumulated. Some of it is technical, some of it is cultural, some of it is historical, biographical, even agricultural. I've been reading their research logs, and I think that they have been trying to compare magic against technology they understand, so their computer has a lot of information about those technologies. And since we use magic in just about everything we do..." Twilight trailed off, grinning.

Celestia smirked. "They need an equally vast collection of technology to compare against. But is that really the most important thing to study, Twilight?"

Twilight sighed. "No," she admitted. She perked back up. "But I did find out where they came from!" Her horn lit and she cast an illusion spell Celestia knew well, projecting her imagination into the air between them.

The image was also familiar to Celestia. "A star chart?" she asked. Twilight had projected a map of the night sky, as it had looked for the past thousand years. Luna was not certain if she should remake it, as she once did regularly. The ponies of today knew the stars as a comforting constant, rather than the dynamic canvass of a princess desperate for recognition.

Twilight nodded. "We knew the Federation was not on Equestria. What we didn't know was how far they had come from." She frowned at the image and it folded, twisting and expanding. The two-dimensional map became a three dimensional field with stars scattered throughout it, the familiar constellations shattered beyond recognition. "This is something like what the night sky looks like from the outside," Twilight explained. "They call it the Hromi Star Cluster."

Celestia stared at the image, shocked. "From outside?" she asked. "From beyond the sky itself?"

Twilight nodded. "We can't see them from inside, but apparently there are stars beyond the night sky. They are much further apart and easier to navigate, so the Federation expanded much more quickly outside than in." Twilight made the image of the night sky shrink, then made a new dot far, far away from the now tiny cluster of stars. "This is about how far the Federation homeworld, 'Earth,' is, from the night sky. I think. Their measurements don't make sense. Something about light having a speed."

Celestia had not moved from her staring. "From beyond even Luna's sky," she wondered. "How long have they been traveling?"

"The Federation was founded two hundred years ago," Twilight offered. "And at least one of the scientists was on Earth itself a month ago. A vacation, to see his family."

Celestia shook her head, and Twilight let the illusion fade. "Powerful visitors, indeed," she murmured. "Twilight, I am very glad I entrusted you with this responsibility. I would not have thought to look into their technology, and I would not have found out just how powerful they must be."

Twilight frowned. "What would you have started with, Pr-Celestia?"

"Names," Celestia said instantly. "Who these people are, what they are doing here. Their laws and customs."

"Rarity is reading up on their laws," Twilight said. "Applejack is reading something else that looked like laws, but were called something else. And Pinkie is reading their personnel roster."

Celestia smiled. "I also would not have had friends to share my workload with," she said fondly. "Shall we hear what they have learned?"

Rarity looked up from her parchments and bowed again as Celestia reentered the room, following Twilight. Twilight smiled at Rarity and asked, "Rarity, have you learned anything about the Federation's laws we should know?"

Rarity shuffled through her pages and set her glasses on her muzzle. "Indeed I have, darling. They call themselves the United Federation of Planets. Their laws are written to give basic rights to anypony, regardless of species, so long as they are sentient." She frowned. "I am not sure how many species on Equestria fit within their definition of sentience. Ponies absolutely fit, so will griffons, minotaurs, dragons, donkeys...but I am being distracted." She shuffled her pages again. "The Federation itself focuses on matters of trade, diplomacy, exploration and the like. Member states are largely autonomous and send delegates to a legislature somewhere called Earth." Rarity looked to Celestia. "But the most important thing I have found, Princess, is that Federation law prevents them, or any member state, from contacting us directly. The only exception is if we invite them to Equestria first."

Applejack looked up. "Beggin' yer pardon, Princess," she called out, "but ya'd best hear what I found here, afore you think much on what Rares found."

Celestia and Twilight turned to Applejack. "Please, Applejack," Celestia prompted. "Twilight said you were studying more Federation laws?"

"Not as such, Princess," Applejack said. "Turns out the Federals squattin' on mah farm are part of somethin' called 'Star Fleet,' which sounds mighty military to my way o' thinkin', but they don't seem to think o' themselves as such. An' this here," she shook her own stack of pages, "is some o' the regs and rules they gotta live by. And top of the pile is this 'Prime Directive.' General Order Number One, it says. Lots o' fancy talk that boils down to, if we don't have tech like what they got, they ain't supposed to let us know they exist. They can't tell us nuthin' we didn't figure out on our own, an' they're supposed to do whatever it takes to stop us from learning about them, their tech, the universe, any o' it." Applejack scowled. "Way I read it, they wouldn't lift a hoof to save a foal, and might even consider murderin' ta keep their secrets."

Twilight gaped at Applejack. "Applejack, that's horrible!"

"It's right here, Twi!" Applejack said furiously, shaking the parchment at Twilight. "Plain Equestrian, neat as you like. 'Any and all measures must be taken to prevent the spread of cultural contamination of prewarp societies, regardless of ponitarian concerns.' That sounds to me like 'Let 'em suffer if it makes the secrets die with 'em.'"

Twilight snatched the parchment in her magic and read over it with a scowl. "That can't be right. They're researchers, not..." Her expression slackened. "Not...what the bucking Tartarus is wrong with these ponies?" she shrieked.

"Less than I feared, more than I hoped," Celestia said softly.

Twilight turned to see Celestia reading over her withers. "Princess?" she whispered.

Celestia didn't correct her. "This does not read as a justification for slaughter," she explained. "Merely non-intervention, taken to its worst extreme. I can sympathize." She smiled sadly. "I have seen generations of ponies commit the same mistakes of their forefathers. Once, before Nightmare Moon, my sister and I tried to teach ponies not to repeat the same patterns. Our students resented us, called us stifling, and I believe they were correct. Everypony needs room to make choices, so everypony must be allowed to make mistakes."

Twilight reread the Directive. "But according to this,"

"According to this, everything you learned this past month Should Not Be," Celestia finished. "No doubt every member of this duck blind faces severe punishment once they learn of your efforts."

Twilight's eyes widened. "I don't want anypony to suffer because of what we did!" she objected.

Celestia smirked, although it didn't reach her eyes. "I did warn you that you would cause suffering without intending it, Princess Twilight," she said. "It is an inevitable fact of life. The question is, what can we do about it?"

Twilight heaved a breath. "Even if we destroyed everything, we can't unlearn it," she said. "Forget the Federation stuff we've uncovered. I improved a translation spell we thought was obsolete. We've learned about aliens. We've learned there's something beyond the night sky itself. Rarity, Whooves and I created an entirely new way of enchanting crystals. We even invented a laser."

"I still do not understand how," Celestia mumbled.

Rarity twitched. Princesses do not mumble. It was against the order of things.

Twilight threw her hooves wide. "And what we have learned about the Federation already...Princess I don't want to destroy what we have!"

"Nor should you," Celestia said gently. "Twilight, they can hardly ask us to obey laws we shouldn't know exist. Perhaps things would have been better had we never discovered them, or if they had never come to Equestria. But they have, and we did. This is the reality we must deal with, now."

"It's okay to be a little selfish, dear," Rarity added. She smiled when Twilight turned to face her. "Oh really, Twilight, I do have some self-awareness. Generosity requires a degree of selfishness. Remember that debacle with Polomare? Being too generous is disastrous for business, which forced me to impose on my friends. I shudder to think of the repercussions of a government that gives too freely. My point is, darling, that what the Federation or this Star Fleet wants and what Equestria needs may be incompatible."

"And I should pick Equestria?" Twilight asked. "Automatically, without thinking?"

"Never without thinking," Celestia interrupted, "but it should always be your inclination. You are a Princess of Equestria. You have a royal duty to all our little ponies to be mindful of their needs. Would burying all that we have learned be the best thing for them?"

Twilight sat and thought for a full minute. "No," she said at last. "No, we cannot hide the truth from everypony. That would not be honest."

"Darn tootin," Applejack said.

Twilight smiled slightly. "But we also need to be generous when we can, and kind to those we might hurt. Pinkie was reading up on the Federation crew roster, wasn't she? Where did she go?"

Rarity and Applejack blinked and looked around. "Um, no idea, sugarcube," Applejack said.

"Here are the sheets she was reading," Rarity added. She levitated them to herself. "Looks like she dropped them. Ensign Lorian? Why would she OH SWEET CELESTIA!" Rarity's horn flashed and she collapsed into her fainting couch.

Twilight raised an eyebrow and glanced at Celestia. "She usually doesn't do that around you," she noted.

"It is a bit awkward," Celestia noted back.

Twilight pulled the top sheet to herself. "Let's see if I can read this without oh buck me." Celestia coughed an undignified laugh that Rarity was too unconscious to be disturbed by. "This is bad. This is very, very bad."

Celestia looked over the sheet Twilight was holding. "I don't see anything to be alarmed by," she said.

Twilight pointed a hoof at one line. "That."

Celestia frowned. Applejack wandered over to Twilight's other side. "Whachyall lookin' at?" she grumbled. "Could ya be a little more clear?" She peered at the parchment. "Whoa nelly!"

"Would somepony explain the problem?" Celestia complained.

Pinkie didn't smile. Oh no, smiling was small potatoes. She beamed. Beamed in the dark, where nopony could find her. Oh they had told her not to. They had lots of big words and reasons and all kinds of boring lectures that didn't matter at all. And they were mostly Twilight. Sometimes Applejack. Party poopers. Nopony poops Pinkie's parties! Nopony! There, a noise! She pulled the firing cord on her party cannon just as the door opened.

"Surprise!"

As Pinkie observed the confetti and streamer covered alien, standing in his quarters next to a massive cake and a smoking party cannon, she was sure this was going to be her best. Party. Ever. She beamed at the alien, eagerly awaiting the joyous noise of a well-executed party.

The alien stared back stoically. Then he calmly closed the door.

Pinkie's beam dropped a few lumens. She glanced up at the banner she had decorated Ensign Lorian's room with. "Maybe 'happy birthday' means something bad in their language?" she asked the empty room.

Author's Note

The placement of tapestry as a decorative mainstay in the palace hearkens back to actual stone castle construction. Solid walls like that echo like mad and are poor insulation; hanging tapestries help both. They also added color to otherwise bland rooms. In Twilight's crystal catastrophe, simple tapestries break up the feeling of living in a giant kaleidoscope. The palace is already oversaturated; adding frills and heavily patterned decorations would just be an eyesore.

It's interesting, writing Celestia's tour of Twilight's library, how well my plans for this scene answered questions raised by the previous chapter.