Author's Note

I see you have caught on to my dastardly plans, Scyphi!

I shall continue to build out this pseudo-author universe within the chapters of What If with Gadget at its center.

Gadget didn't know who her mother was, because her mother was a secret agent off on a prolonged mission abroad? (PE#7)

"It's nice having hands again."

Gadget--the original Gadget, turned her head. "Hm? Oh, yeah, having fingies are reaaaal nice for some stuff. I'm still used to being a tiny magic horse though."

Zoey glanced at Gadget, then back to her (admittedly terrible) stitching work on her plushie.

"I mean it. Remember? When I was stuck in a different world myself, I was also stuck as a pony! I didn't even know I was supposed to be human until I learned about my mom and dad."

"How did you learn about them, anyway?" Zoey set the needle and thread aside. "You said that the rocket exploded before you even made it back to Equestria."

Gadget shrugged, flickering for a moment into her human form. It was a little jarring the first few times to see who was effectively an identical clone of herself, but at this point, Zoey had gotten used to the phenomenon. "Spent a ton of time wandering around in here, I guess. At one point I saw a version of me rocket through this place and steer directly into one of those little lights around here. Decided to follow her in to see what it was like, and..."

She blew a raspberry. "My dad sucks. He's crazy and I'm glad he's locked up. I guess not so much for me as it is for you and all the other Gadgets out there. Y'know? How's it going living my life, by the way? I try to watch every now and then but I kinda get distracted."

Zoey was the one to shrug this time. "It's going, I guess. Feels weird being on all fours and stuff, but Twilight takes care of me and teaches me magic. It's kinda like how it was with me and Lisa before everything happened. She's like, a cross between acting like Lisa and my mom."

"Have you tried looking for your supposed mom in Equestria yet?"

Zoey lifted a brow. "N-no, not yet. Is she like your dad?"

"Don't know, I never found her either. The other version of me that did make it through alive got wrapped up in this whole thing with Queen Celestia wanting a helicopter or whatever. I stopped keeping up with her after a while 'cause nothing really happened after that. The other other version of me that also made it through sorta just left things at 'oh, my dad is an evil wizard guy, okay' and went on with her new life. I think if you ever decided to find out then you might be the first."

Zoey lowered her gaze back to the not-quite-repaired Gadget plushie in her lap.

"Where we headed, Twi?" Gadget bounced around Twilight. "Spike told me that we're going on the train today!"

"Fillydelphia," Twilight hummed. "We're supposed to be meeting up with someone to get some information passed along. Celestia's orders."

Gadget looked around. "How come Spike isn't coming? He's your assistant. I was gonna spend today in the library..."

"It's a low-stakes thing. I figured that since Spike's already been with me before on stuff like this and you're my student, you'd may as well come along and see how things work. Just remember, on this trip, your name is Aspen, not Gadget. I'll take care of everything else."

Gadget leaned back in her seat. "This could've been an email."

"E...mail?" Twilight tilted her head.

"Er, nothing, don't worry about it," Gadget climbed onboard.

"Is something bugging you, Gadget?"

Gadget stared out the window. "Y'know how I said that I found out my dad was some bad guy who tried to banish me?"

Twilight scooted closer, her wings faintly rustling under the binder she was now wearing. "Yeah. You said that he failed to banish you to another world, didn't you? It's how you got that strange knife."

Gadget nodded. "You can think of it as like, a piece of the mirror portal in a way. I got sent somewhere far, far away after that, and then after a long time I finally found my way here to Ponyville."

"Tough filly, that's for sure," Twilight pat her on the head. "So what's got you down in the dumps? It can't just be that you wanted to be in the library all day, you're the sort of filly who likes to do things with her own two hooves."

Gadget rocked her head with the train's vibrations. Would Twilight believe her if she said that the real Gadget did get banished, and died in a world that wasn't her own? That the Gadget she was talking to was herself a human girl searching for a way back home?

"I never knew my mom," she fibbed.

"And here's the pack of cards you wanted me to pick up on the way," Twilight passed along a nondescript pack of playing cards. "The joker looks a little funny in my opinion."

Gadget looked between Twilight and the... human woman, who took the cards and slipped them into a pocket in her coat. A flicker of recognition passed through her mind as she locked eyes with her.

"Who is the little one?" the woman gestured toward her. "You adopt new daughter in past year?"

"I--"

"Yeah," Twilight cut in. "She's a little slow learning unicorn magic since she missed out on magic kindergarten, but she tries her best."

The woman glanced at Gadget again, then back to Twilight. She idly picked at the remaining food on her plate. "You raise her well. She is good filly. I can feel it."

This woman talks like her mother.

Twilight laughed. "Yeah, she is. A bit of a rascal sometimes with the shenanigans she gets into, but she's young. She can afford to make mistakes from time to time."

Was this all just an act, like what Twilight was doing?

"I will admit," the woman speared another piece of chicken on her fork. "It is a long time since I have lived in Equestria. What is it like there now?"

"Can't say myself, I don't know that place very well either. I hear that the nesting birds on the mountains may be leaving soon."

"Ah, such a shame. You say birds like plural? There is another one?"

It had to be an act. It was just a coincidence that the accents matched. That this woman had the same dark hair.

"One with darker feathers, yes," Twilight nodded. "Aspen here once snuck into their roost, in fact!"

The mention of her false name broke Gadget's train of thought. "Mmm?" she finally took her gaze off the woman and instead directed it at Twilight. "Something about me?"

"Just saying you have a habit of popping up in places I didn't expect," Twilight pointed at her plate. "Finish up your spaghetti, we'll be heading out soon."

"Who was that lady, by the way?"

"One of our foreign agents," Twilight untied the band holding down her wings. Spike plodded by and scooped it up to take to the laundry. "She used to live in Canterlot for a while before she was dispatched on an extended mission. I had to pass her some information in a way that wouldn't be intercepted, so that's why we took a trip all the way out to a border town just to eat at a restaurant."

Gadget remained silent.

"Did... you happen to recognize her?"

A nod.

Twilight blinked. "Well, before she left, she did have a child with another..." she glanced at Gadget, making a quiet "oh".

It wasn't even necessarily about the fact that the real Gadget's mom was probably a spy for Equestria. It was that flicker of recognition itself--a little reminder of who she remained unable to reach.

Though that made things quite awkward regarding the circumstances around Gadget's dad considering how her own father was just some office worker guy who very much didn't try to banish her.

Still.

She thought back to the flowers her mother--her real mother--left behind at the pit where it all began.

She remembered how she tried to brush her hand up against her mother's.

The flowers were beautiful.