The Castle of Friendship had, in time, become Twilight’s home. She had grown used to it, and had decided that it was time to make an important decision: what books would be where. Of course, this was no simple task. Twilight had been receiving books and bookcases on and off for months, and now that she had almost all of them she had to decide what books went where. While the library would store the majority of the books, there was room in every room for some books. Two or three bookcases, minimum.
She was in the middle of organizing the entryway when the front door of the castle was slammed open, and a pegasus mare strode in. Twilight jumped a bit at the noise, and couldn’t help but look at this interloper. Light blue with a dark blue mane and tail, accented with several white stripes, the most notable thing about this mare was her cutie mark: a sheet a paper with a hole ripped in it. She was wearing some saddlebags, with some notebooks inside. Twilight, a little confused, waved to the pegasus. “Hey, there, can I… help you?”
“Nah, I’m just here to check in,” the pegasus said, looking around. “Wow. This place is really weird. I want to get some socks on and just zoop up and down the halls.”
“Check in?” Twilight asked. “Check in? Why? Who are you?”
“Miss Mayberry; I work for princess Luna and I was going to be in the area, so Luna said you should know,” The pegasus said. “Man, if I had floors like this I would wear socks all the time. It’d be a threat to myself and everypony around me, but it’d be worth it.”
Twilight shook her head. “What do you do for Princess Luna?”
“Didn’t she tell you?” Mayberry asked, a little confused. “Um, I’m actually not allowed to tell people what I do without permission. I would think that would be eclipsed by you being a princess, but I’m not sure.”
Twilight shook her head. “Well… don’t worry about it, I guess. Well, if you’re on a mission from Princess Luna, I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“Well,” Mayberry said casually, “I see you have a lot of books here, do you have any on alchemy? I mean old-style alchemy, back when it was one part chemistry and one part superstition.”
“Of course I do!” Twilight said, “Let me go get it. Feel free to sit down wherever you want, I’ll be right back.” Twilight got the book for the odd pegasus and then went back to organizing, but couldn’t help watching out of the corner of her eye.
What was happening was fairly obvious: Mayberry was reading the old notebooks, which presumably had alchemical information in them, and using the alchemy guide to translate them into a more modern, readable format. Or trying to, anyway, given the growing grimace it wasn’t going well.
Twilight walked over. “Do you need help with that?” She asked.
Mayberry shook her head slightly. “Not unless you can read ancient nutcase alchemy notes.”
“Can I try?” Twilight asked.
Mayberry, with a slight shrug, carefully turned the old notebook to face Twilight. “The symbols aren’t consistent. For example, what the book says is ‘electrocute’ is being used as a reagent, and the notations are very different.”
Twilight looked over the ancient notebook carefully. “That’s because they are using different notations. The book uses fifth iteration Canterlot normal alchemical notation. This notebook is using third, or maybe fourth. There isn’t a lot of difference between them. Let’s see… salt, water, phosphorous, some kind of plant extract, powder?”
“What kind of powder?” Mayberry asked, curious.
Twilight shrugged. “Doesn’t say. It normally does, but it doesn’t this time. Not sure what that means.” She flipped through the notebook a bit more. “There’s a few other things like that. ‘soil’, ‘liquid 5’, not very descriptive. Hmm. I bet these are quick references, chemicals that the alchemist used on a regular basis.”
“Maybe he defined them somewhere?” Mayberry asked, opening another notebook, “Or the process to make them? Here, what’s this?”
Twilight looked at the page open of the notebook. “This one is called ‘Soil’… contains… and then these chemicals in these amounts. Nothing about how to make.”
Mayberry frowned. “Why call it soil, anyway? Is he making his own fertilizer?”
Twilight turned the page in the notebook, examining the next one. “Maybe he was trying to make artificial soil, true, but this mixture… I don’t think it would be very good fertilizer. He likely just wanted soil with a very particular set of chemicals.”
“Wait… you said that just says ‘includes’? What if it’s something he got from somewhere else instead of making it?”
Twilight blinked. “But where would he find a mixture like this-”
“Soil. It’s some literal, specific dirt.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “SPIKE!”
“Twilight,” the young dragon’s voice came from the other room, tired sounding. “I’m making toast. Can it wait a minute?”
“Sure, but bring me ‘Dirt of Equestria, 4th Edition’ when you can.” Twilight opened the third of the four notebooks. “What else can we find? Plant extract? Liquids 1 through 5… oil? Powder? If we can figure out all the reagents, we can figure out what he was trying to make.”
“Look for a guide to that extract, I think,” Mayberry said, “Things that come from plants tend to be distinctive, right?”
“Right!” Twilight said, “But… I’m curious, and I know you said that you’re not allowed to tell people what you do, but... can you tell me where you got these notes?”
Mayberry closed the notebook in front of her carefully, and showed Twilight the cover. “These are the notebooks of Quicksilver Boil, who was a genius alchemist, spellmaker, naturalist, and anatomist some 300 years ago. You’ve heard on him?”
Twilight thought for a moment. “I feel like I have, but I don’t remember any details.”
“Well, a lot of his notes are missing,” Mayberry explained, “People think that he had a hidden lab somewhere that was never found. I think I can find it. I got these notes from the Canterlot Historical Archive.”
Twilight nodded. “If no one else ever figured out where the soil or plants came from, you might be able to. It stands to reason he’d have something near his source. But, are you allowed to tell me this?”
“Yeah!” Mayberry said, “I’m always happy to get help. I’m just not allowed to say what my full JOB is, because it’s a secret.”
“Here we are!” Spike said as he walked over. “Dirt of Equestira, Fourth Edition. You want any toast, Twilight?”
“Not right now,” Twilight said as she took the book, and began to flip through it. She waited for Spike to get out of earshot before speaking again. “I’m quite happy to help. And the chance to uncover lost alchemy notes is something I’ll gladly take! Let’s see here… according to Boil’s notes, this soil sample contains unusually high amounts of phosphorous and potassium, trace amounts of a stable isotope of radium implies a large amount of magic, and this sulphur content with the acidity the sample would have implies a forest with a large amount of animal life.”
“A stable isotope of what now?” Mayberry asked, suddenly left behind by the significantly more intellectual alicorn.
“Large forests, heavily enchanted, with sizable animal life,” Twilight explained simply.
Mayberry let out a “huh” as she pondered that. “Most enchanted forests tend to ward off large predators, especially since they’re usually rotating lumber forests. That leaves only a handful of places in the world as a whole, I’m not even sure if there is one in Equestria.”
“It’s likely the Everfree,” Twilight said with a sigh, before she began to flip through Dirt of Equestria. “And the measurements from the edge of the Everfree are closest to the numbers that Boil recorded. Maybe the soil has changed over the years.”
“Or maybe he took soil samples by whatever his plant was?” Mayberry pointed out. “Man, if only there were an expert on this kind of thing. Unfortunately, no pony is crazy enough to spend a lot of time in the Everfree.”
Zecora looked the notes up and down, considering carefully. “Very hazardous to consume, the plant is called the giggling bloom. A hallucinogen, with a single drop, a pony curls up and giggles until their heart stops.”
Mayberry and Twilight, standing in Zecora’s hut, nodded in response. “First of all,” Mayberry said, “I wish I had known you existed before, I could have saved a lot of time on a lot of things. Second of all, that’s terrifying.”
Zecora nodded. “To the north it can be found, growing low along the ground. Tiny flowers, pink and blue. Many don’t think they could kill you.”
“And golden dart frogs have poison potent enough to kill in under a second,” Mayberry said with a sigh, “At least they have the decency to be brightly colored and easy to see. Okay, if I find these flowers, then it stands to reason that the lab would be nearby. Thanks Zecora! Thanks Twilight! I really appreciate your help.”
“Any time,” Zecora said, “Any friend of a princess is a friend of mine.”
As Mayberry and Twilight left, Mayberry immediately turned to go deeper into the forest. Twilight, a little surprised, called out, “Mayberry! Where are you going?”
“North,” Mayberry replied, “I think? About noon, sun’s that way… yeah, north. To find the flowers and maybe a secret lab if I’m lucky.”
“First of all,” Twilight said, “It’s two in the evening. Second of all, you’re going deeper into the Everfree forest by yourself? Are you crazy?”
“Yes, yes I am,” Mayberry said, “But not so crazy that I don’t know that timberwolves are out of season, no large creatures have moved into the dragon cave, and overall the entire forest has been quiet recently.”
Twilight blinked in surprise at that. “It’s still dangerous,” Twilight said, “But I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I want to know, too. I’ll go with you; we should be safe together.”
“Oh. Well, thanks Twilight!” Mayberry said with a smile. “I appreciate it. Who knows, maybe we’ll luck out! And with you here, I likely won’t get lost and brainwashed again.”
Twilight blinked. “Wha-”
“Come on! I want to get back to town before sunset.”
“You know,” Mayberry said as she trotted through the Everfree forest, “this place isn’t as bad as it sounds. I mean, most of the trees are covered in poison ivy or worse, the number of thorns is distressingly high, and it’s like the sun has been lost in a cloud cover of off-shades of green, but it’s not like the trees are trying to eat us. Yet.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Twilight said, “The Everfree is dangerous and unpredictable, it’s just not actively malevolent. As far as we know. Barring that one time, but that was Discord.”
“Ha, hard to think that not long ago a lot of ponies thought that it actually ate ponies that wandered into it. And then you come along, and you practically start holidaying in here,” Mayberry joked.
Twilight was about to retort, when suddenly a plant ahead of the duo suddenly stood upright. A thick green stalk, with an array of petals to either side. With a hiss, a toothy maw opened, dripping with a liquid that sizzled when it landed on other plants. Twilight took a step back, startled. Mayberry came to a halt, and raised an eyebrow. With a bit of a frown, she said, “You’re not a carnivorous tree at all. I baited you, and this is the best you can give me?”
The plant hissed again, and launched a stream of something at the pair. Twilight flinched, her horn reflexively flaring to create a shield. The spray hit the shield, running down it harmlessly but causing the plants it touched to wither and die.
Mayberry sighed, peering at the plant from behind Twilight’s shield. . “Well, I guess maybe spitting acid is an okay trade off… oh, I get it! Twilight, look!” She turned to Twilight. “It’s a cobra lilly, get it? It has the hood and everything.”
Another spray of acid hit the shield, some of it glancing off and onto a nearby tree. The bark was eaten through almost instantly, as was a good amount of the wood. “That’s very nice, Mayberry,” Twilight said, moving the shield into a roll around the plant, grabbing the ‘cobra lilly’ in it and letting out a nervous laugh, “But the time has come to move on. I think we can just…” With a tug, the plant was pulled up into the air, and then tossed casually aside. “There! Not a worry anymore. Let’s find these flowers, see if there’s a lab nearby, and head back!”
Mayberry laughed as she watched the lily sail into the underbrush. “What, suddenly afraid of the forest? I could have easily taken that little fern. Come on, you’ve faced meaner things than a flower that spits acid. It’s no secret that you can your friends seem to fight off giant monsters with ease.”
Twilight shook her head. “Mayberry, we’re headed into the most terrifying forest in Equestria, looking for a flower that makes ponies laugh to death. Maybe this part of the Everfree forest is just more dangerous?”
“Ah, even so it’s not that bad,” Mayberry said as she led on, “I mean, the really scary plants are the ones that sneak up on you, lull you into a false sense of security, put you to sleep with their pollen, strangle you as you sleep, and then bury your body under their roots to use you as fertilizer!”
“Yeah,” Twilight said, weakly, “That would sure… be scary.”
Mayberry nodded. “Ooh! Or the ones that mess with your libido! Those are both insidious AND embarrassing.”
Twilight stopped short. “Mess with your what now, in the-”
“Keep up, Twilight!”
Each flower was small, barely half an inch in diameter. But they were common, sprouting from vines that all but covered the ground and trees. Twilight and Mayberry looked at the flowers, Mayberry in awe and Twilight in horror.
“If you start to fall over, Twilight,” Mayberry said, “Be sure to close your mouth. Tripping, swallowing a flower, and then dying of laughter would be a dumb way to die.”
“Uh… yeah,” Twilight said, “Maybe we should just fly instead.” She took off, hovering. The trees were far apart enough to let the ponies flap comfortably, and staying away from the flowers seemed like a good idea.
“Oh, yeah,” Mayberry said awkwardly, “That would be an idea, even a good idea, but I can’t.”
“You can’t… fly?” Twilight frowned as she said it. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Twilight then landed, a little embarrassed.
“Nah, it’s okay,” Mayberry said, “And technically I CAN fly, I just have no air control. Anything more complex than a short glide and I lose control. I’ve gone to therapy on and off about it, it’s just not something I’ve ever been able to do. All the same, it likely IS a good idea to not step on the flowers. It’d stink to rub my eye later and then wind up giggling to death.”
“Well,” Twilight said, taking to the air again, “I think I can keep us both in flight.” A purple disk appeared under Mayberry’s hooves, and lifted her into the air. “I just need to be creative.”
Mayberry laughed. “Great! Okay, look around. If you were an ancient alchemist, where would you put a secret laboratory?’
Twilight flew forward, bringing Mayberry with her. “Not in the Everfree. In fact, Celestia was very supporting of alchemy. Why make a secret lab at all?”
“Well, Celestia has always been kinda shaky on some things, I understand,” Mayberry said, “She’s outright banned most Necromancy, and the spells that aren’t banned you need a license to cast. Maybe he wanted to study an aspect of necromancy she didn’t approve of. Or maybe this is where he did his unethical experiments on unwilling pony test subjects.”
“You’ve read too many comics,” Twilight said, “Do you know if Quicksilver Boil was a unicorn?”
“He was,” Mayberry said with a nod, “Most alchemists were.”
“So it’s reasonable to think that his lab was magically sealed.” A light shone from Twilight’s horn, and after a moment refined into a pale purple spotlight. She panned it around, and it filtered over the ground and through the trees. “There! I can feel some unicorn magic over there.” Twilight flew the pair in that direction, and after a bit they came across a square stone slab in the middle of a small hill.
“Look at that!” Mayberry said, hopping off of the flying disk and into the grass. “I bet that’s a secret door. I wonder how he opened it? Some kind of code phrase, maybe?” Twilight seized the door in her telekinesis, and slid it aside. Mayberry frowned at her. “Oh come on, we aren’t even going to try to guess the lock?”
“The magic is over three hundred years old,” Twilight pointed out, “The residue is still here, but the magic would be too old to work properly. Besides, he likely used a magic aura lock; you can’t guess a code for that.”
With a sigh, Mayberry entered the doorway. She pulled a small electric lamp out of her saddlebag, turned it on, and held it with one wing. Twilight, for her part, put a bit of light at the tip of her horn. There was some stairs down, and then a metal door. Mayberry pushed the door open, and strode confidently into the room inside.
The sight inside horrified Twilight. In the center of the room was a metal contraption that held in the air the mummified corpse of an earth pony. The coat had long since fallen out, and the cutie mark was faded to little more than a discolored spot on the grey skin, but the pony’s face was contorted into a scream of terror, and the chest was open and hollowed out. On a table to one side, there were organs in jars, some better preserved than others. On the shelves in the room were more such organs, accompanied by various liquids, decayed plants, and powders. Some of them were marked with the alchemical symbols from the notes; liquid 2 was almost certainly blood before it was left for 300 years, and the one marked ‘liquid 5’ still had something alive inside it, swimming around in it.
“Hey, Twilight,” Mayberry said, “Do you have some oil? I think there’s an oil lamp over here!”
“MAYBERRY,” Twilight screamed in the harshest whisper she could manage, “Are you blind? There’s a dead pony in here! And the organs from several more ponies, who probably also died! This place is a place where someone! Killed! Ponies!”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Mayberry said, “Quicksilver Boil was a serial killer, after all.”
Twilight balked. “He what?”
“Yeah, didn’t I mention that? He was one of the most successful serial killers in the history of Equestira. He’s been connected to the deaths of over 200 ponies, and suspected in the disappearances of over three hundred more.”
Twilight shook her head. “No… no you didn’t.”
“Oh.” Mayberry said, sheepishly. “Must have skipped my mind. It’s a cool story, though. Celestia made a task force dedicated to hunting him down. They uncovered his experiments and secret labs, but never found the pony himself. Hey, look, there’s another door over there. Let’s see what’s further in!”
Twilight was less eager to go further in, but followed the excited pegasus. The next room was more like a traditional alchemical lab, with a storage room attached. Twilight went out of her way to not examine anything too closely.
“The sad thing is,” Mayberry said, “Quicksilver Boil was obviously a genius. His work was way ahead of his time, and could have accelerated medical knowledge by years and years. We could be having cybernetic wings right now! But he had to go about everything in the most sadistically evil way possible, of course, so no-one took his work seriously. I can hardly blame them, but it’s still sad.”
“Uh-huh,” Twilight mumbled as they entered the next room. This one was thankfully short on gore and long on sketches, if gory ones. Some were pinned to a cork board, and others laid out on some tables. Mayberry gravitated toward a single desk in the room, while Twilight worked up the courage to take a closer look at the notes.
They did show a very advanced knowledge of anatomy and physiology; some showed detailed information on cells and the immune system, others showed detailed diagrams of the vessels in a pony’s leg, or how precisely the bones and muscles worked together. As Twilight began to piece the big picture together, however, she found it more horrible than she thought.
“He tortured ponies,” Twilight said aloud, “the ones that he hollowed out were the lucky ones! He captured ponies, and then did things to them, mutilated them, and kept them alive for days! How did he find the time to kill hundreds of ponies?!?”
“Hey, I think I found his personal diary!” Mayberry said cheerfully.
“No, no, no,” Twilight replied sternly, “I’m having enough trouble keeping my lunch down as is. I’m not going to-”
“Beautiful success!” Mayberry read aloud, “At long last, I’ve found the secret. It’s not perfect, motor control seems to have been sacrificed, as have all high mental functions, but it proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt: Mercury is the key to eternal life. I need more test subjects, I need to be sure that this can be recreated, and that it works as well on pegasi and unicorns. I’m keeping my test subject in the basement for now; with luck, he’ll soon be joined by others like him.”
“Immortality?” Twilight asked, “He was trying to get immortality out of mercury? That’s insane! For someone so ahead of his time, he sure is attached to a notion that went dead before Equestria was ever founded!”
“Where do you think his basement is?” Mayberry asked, “Apparently he’s keeping his proof in there, but this seems to be the last room.” She hmmed. “Hey, Twilight you’re a scientist, right?”
“I like to think of myself as one, but don’t you DARE compare me to this monster,” Twilight said.
“If you had a secret basement, or sub-basement, where would you hide it?”
Twilight looked daggers at Mayberry for a moment before pondering the question. “Most ponies wouldn’t want to move furniture to look, so under some furniture. Nothing too heavy, but something where no one working with it will even think of the floor, where there would be a low-profile hatch. Under the desk, maybe.”
Mayberry leant down and checked under the desk. “Yep! Here it is!” In response, Twilight snorted indignantly.
“Let’s get on with this, then,” Twilight said, equal parts disgusted and enraged. “Let’s see if we can find his notes on how to most efficiently slaughter foals, kittens, and pug puppies.”
Mayberry opened the trapdoor, revealing stairs headed down. As she began down them, they creaked loudly and shifted. Twilight followed close behind, and the pair barely had any time to react before the staircase fell apart and their lights went out.
The pair groaned in pain for a moment. “What’s this stuff on the floor?” Mayberry asked.
“Mercury,” Twilight replied with a sigh. “Trust me, I know. This isn’t the first time I’ve wound up hoof-deep in the stuff.”
“I, uh, I think some of it wound up in my mouth,” Mayberry admitted.
“Don’t worry,” Twilight said, lighting up her horn and surrounding herself and Mayberry with a purple glow. “Mercury is magically conductive enough that it’s easy to ward against and purge from the system, and since I’m getting it so soon it’s not going to have time to do any damage-”
The light from the spell was enough to illuminate the basement. The floor was completely covered by a thin layer of mercury, but the notable part was that the two of them weren’t alone: the light illuminated a number of emaciated pony-shapes, each one slowly turning toward the pair. Mares, Stallions, and even foals, each and every one of their faces contorted into a silent scream. The two living ponies, however, added to the silent screams with actual ones.
The nearest undead stallion moved forward, and tried to sluggishly stomp Mayberry with its hooves. Mayberry responded by smashing it in the face with what was left of her lamp, shattering the rest of it. The stallion didn’t seem to notice, and more mercury began to ooze from the cuts on its face, and dribbled from its empty eye sockets.
As more of the things moved forward, twilight fired up her horn, surrounding the pair with an opaque bubble of magic that protected them for a moment, and then forced the group back. She re-formed the bubble into a wall of force, keeping the two ponies separated from the rest of the room.
“What are they?” Twilight asked, trying not to panic.
“I don’t know! Quicksilver zombies?” Mayberry guessed, “But they don’t seem very fast. Plenty heavy, though.” She examined the smashed remains of her lantern. It looked like she had beaten it on a stone wall!
Twilight put up a force barrier to keep the zombies back, but they immediately started beating on it. “How is this possible? Mercury doesn’t have the needed reactivity to act as a vital fluid!”
“Not right now, Twilight!” Mayberry shouted as she lept up, grabbing one of the boards left in the partially-collapsed stairs, “You warded me against mercury, right? So I don’t have to worry about getting it on me or in me?”
“Right,” Twilight replied, “but what are you going to do?”
“The reasonable thing to do,” Mayberry replied, breaking the board free and jumping off the wall, over Twilight’s barrier, “Slay the undead, and kill the necromancer!”
The board completely smashed when it hit the first zombie, but that didn’t slow Mayberry much. She directed sharp hoof strikes at the zombies, landing on their backs to beat them as much as she could before the others got too close. While she couldn’t fly, Twilight noticed, Mayberry was still very vertically-minded.
That said, even expert hoofedge strikes could only do so much against this enemy. Attacks that should have broken bones did no such thing, and although Mayberry was very agile, the most she could do was make small cuts in their skin, and although they would presumably “bleed” to death eventually, Twilight wasn’t sure if Mayberry could hold out that long. Something more had to be done.
A missed kick wound up with Mayberry sprawled on the floor, and in the moment it took to get the mercury out of her eyes one almost got her. A powerful stomp was only barely avoided, and it was about to be followed by a second one when the mercury covering the floor suddenly glowed bright magenta and all the zombies stopped in their tracks. After a moment, they began to glow slightly themselves and shaking, their skin starting to turn black. One by one, the zombies crumbled to ash, the mercury that filled them flowing to the floor. Mayberry got up, shaking some of the liquid metal off of her, and looked at a shocked-looking Twilight sparkle. “That was really cool!” Mayberry said, “What’d you do?”
“I used the mercury as a conduit to cause their flesh to rapidly deteriorate and oxidize,” Twilight said, a tremor in her voice.
“...so you used their own blood to disintegrate them?” Mayberry said, after taking a moment to parse the information, “That’s really cool!”
“I guess I did,” Twilight mumbled. There was no evidence left of them, except for the last of the ashes floating on top of the mercury.
Mayberry looked back up at the trapdoor, a good twenty feet above the pair’s heads. “Hey, Twilight, can you fly the two of us out of here?” She asked.
Twilight took a deep breath, and then took a moment to do the deep breathing exercise that she found most calming. It did well to clear her head, but did not actually calm her. “No.”
There was a bright magenta light, and the pair re-appeared in the Castle of Friendship. “Spike!” Twilight shouted, using magic to clean the last of the mercury off herself and Mayberry, “Spike! Get in here! I need you to send a letter to Celestia immediately!”
Celestia arrived a few hours later, Luna in tow. Mayberry immediately began to discuss her finds with Luna, while Celestia pulled Twilight aside.
“Are you alright, Twilight?” Celestia asked, “I know that sometimes Mayberry’s adventures can be dangerous.”
“I am,” Twilight said, “Thanks to that Mercury purge spell you taught me when I was seven, but what is going on? But, what’s up with Mayberry? She said she worked under Luna?”
“She does, now,” Celestia said, “I’ve given Luna the role, but I had it for a while myself. Mayberry is a very important, but very low-key, part of Equestria’s safety. I gave that duty to Luna, though, as she’s always been better with that kind of thing, and she wanted something to do.”
Twilight blinked. “What do you mean? What does Mayberry actually do?”
“There are things in Equestria that work outside of equestrian magic,” Celestia said, “And outside of science as we know it. Sometimes, these things are dangerous. Mayberry… takes care of them. Sometimes, it’s a simple matter of talking to someone and asking them to not cause trouble, but sometimes it’s far more dangerous than that. Mayberry has so far been able to overcome everything she’s come up against.”
Twilight looked over at Mayberry, who was at the moment describing her fight against the Zombies, mentioning that Twilight suddenly “Limit broke out of nowhere.” Twilight shook her head a little.
“And Mayberry is your best… operative on this?” She asked, a little incredulously.
“She is our only one,” Celestia said, “but she does it well. Her skills are varied, she’s an able combatant and negotiator, and she has a knack for finding help she needs when she needs it. Albeit, it seems that this time around she’s gone off to find trouble instead of waiting for it to come to her.”
Twilight nodded slightly. “And what about that… lab? And the stuff inside?”
“I’ll have experts go over it with a fine-toothed comb. The research will likely be sealed away in the Canterlot Archives, and only a very few will be allowed to see it,” Celestia explained, “Yourself included, of course.”
“I’ll pass,” Twilight grumbled.
“Hey! Twilight!” Mayberry called as she walked over. “What’s going on? You in fight club, or what?”
Celestia nodded. “Yes, I have told her about your mission and role. I’ll leave Luna and you to introduce her to the base of operations at a later point in time.”
“Excellent,” Luna said, as she walked forward as well, a smile on her face. “Mayberry, you likely won’t be able to get Twilight to come along on a regular basis, but she is exceedingly knowledgeable on many subjects.”
“Aw,” Mayberry said, frowning a little, “But she’s like a swiss army knife and a roll of duct tape; there’s something she can do in any situation.”
“Sorry, but I have a lot of stuff on my own plate,” Twilight said, a little confused. “Oh, if I’m not available, you can ask Spike. For that matter, if one of the other Elements of Harmony can help you, you can likely ask them, too?” She looked up at the princesses, who each gave a short, approving, nod.
“Alright. Maybe I’ll see you around?” Mayberry said, “We’ll see what happens!”
“I supposed we will,” Twilight said with a nod. As Mayberry left to guide Luna to the lab, Twilight looked back at Celestia. “Swiss army knife and duct tape?”
Celestia shrugged slightly. “I’ll be honest here: you never quite get used to Miss Mayberry.”
