Operation Firework

You don't know how long time ticks by. You don't care. You just lie there, one foreleg embracing Tempest Shadow on the bed, and one of hers embracing you. No post-sex kissing or pillow talk, just enjoying each other's company. It's surreal, how quickly you went from knowing each other as a two-pony team, to just throwing it all aside and letting both of your wise libidos guide you to bliss for one night. Surreal, but welcome.

Her eyes are shut. Serene. For the first time, you can actually see Tempest in a perfect state of rest. No-one to fight, interrogate or chase. No orders to follow. Just peace and quiet. She's no longer panting, Instead, she breathes with a steady rhythm that would suggest being half-asleep. She shifts a little closer to you, trying to take advantage of sharing body heat. You curl up with her in response, a sudden shiver making you keenly aware of how chilly the room has gotten. You remember the very obvious fact that you're both lying on top of a bed naked.

"Wanna curl up inside the covers?" you ask her.

She yawns happily, stretching her athletic form both sexily and adorably. "Sure. It is getting kinda cold."

Suddenly, all the relaxation dissipates from her face. Her eyes snap open, her face a picture of shock and realisation. A moment later, she bolts upright in the bed.

"Tempest?" your stomach just found itself a new knot to worry about. "Are you okay?"

She looks you dead in the eye. "Cold," she says dumbly.

"What?"

She crawls out of bed with a sense of urgency, and roots around the discarded armour and gear on the floor, left untouched since your passionate little teleportation trick. Finally, she finds the notepad you were jotting statements from earlier.

"Tempest, I should let you know that I'm usually a very hard guy to scare, but the way you're acting right now..."

"No! Don't you get it!?" she snaps at you, throwing the notepad onto the bed "All of the sailors around here were complaining about how cold the North Luna Ocean was getting. And sure, it's autumn, but it's not supposed to be winter cold yet, mist and all. Who do we know has a knack for making things cold?"

It takes you a solid five seconds to realise she was talking about the case of the missing fireworks. So much for a quiet night with her. You can take the mare out of the mission, but you can't take the mission out of the mare.

"Don't tell me," you raise a hoof. "The freezing weather outside and the factory raid are connected because they both involve the cold?"

"Supernatural cold," she corrects. "Ice and mist that isn't supposed to be there."

"So you think our potential suspects are somewhere in the North Luna Ocean? That they're making the sea too cold for others to sail on purpose?"

"If you want to be left alone, go somewhere no-one else is comfortable going. Plus, it adds up with our theory that they'd have a crew to help with the factory job, and a boat to stash the fireworks on," Tempest reasons, squeezing back into her tight, black jumpsuit (and ignoring your inquisitive gaze as she does so). "But before we jump to any conclusions, we need to make sure."

She beckons you out of bed as she snaps her gold-painted Storm King armour back on, piece by piece. You don't like where this is going.

*******

You don't like where this went.

It's now officially night. It's dark. It's cold. And Tempest Shadow is marching up and down Vanhoover harbour, eyeing anything and everything that moves. You're just trying not to think of the chill. Your Canterlot Elite armour is more suited to combat than cosiness.

You already wish you were back in bed with her.

Your look up towards the night sky. The tourist were right; the moon and stars do shine brighter in this part of Equestria. Below the moon is a pitch-black, endless void that stretches seemingly forever. You know the North Luna Ocean is there, however. You can hear its choppy waves crash against the dock.

"Over here!" Tempest's voice snaps you back into reality. "I found something!"

You gallop over to her - the movement should warm your blood - and look towards the patch of ocean that's illuminated by Luna's moon. There's a black silhouette of a small thing bobbing amidst the waves.

"Could you, uh, levitate that out for me?" she asks quickly. It's night, but you can tell she's scowling. "I don't wanna risk damaging it."

You oblige, plucking the floating thing - feels light, maybe plastic or cardboard - out of the water.

It was a small, red firework. Wet. Unused. Unburnt. No signs of heat damage at all, but a large tear is prominent near its fuse.

Both of you check the firework's innards. As suspected, the gunpowder had been removed.

While illumination magic is certainly not your forte, you concentrate a wide cone of light from your horn to the black, light-less ocean, revealing a sight that even causes Tempest to blink in surprise.

Fireworks. Thousands of them. All drained of their gunpowder and left to float aimlessly on the water.

"Guess we were right," you mutter, "they really do want to blow something up."

"The tide must have brought these firework cases back here, after the thieves poured out what they needed and threw the rest overboard," the violet unicorn muses. "Which means we were right about them using a boat too."

Try as you might, you can't get your glowing beam to reach far enough to see anything else. Just white stars above and black waters below. And some kind of flickering, yellowish star on the horizon.

Oh wait, that's the lantern of a boat. Sailing by itself. At night. In the cold. Presumably loaded with stolen gunpowder.

"There you are," Tempest's eyes narrow, locked on her distant target. Her eyebrows dip in concentration. This is the Tempest Shadow you heard about during the Storm King crisis; she's seen the target, and now she's on the hunt. With a smirk that thirsts for action, she clamps a hoof on your shoulder. "Let's go. I'm ready."

A pregnant pause. Two seconds of just the waves crashing against the harbour, and Tempest's hoof awkwardly attached to you.

"What?" you finally ask.

She looks at you awkwardly. "Well, you can teleport, right? That's your whole shtick. The boat's all the way out to sea. Teleport us! I want to crack some skulls."

You look towards the boat in the distance, then back to Tempest. "I can't."

"Why not!? You did it with our armour, no problem!"

"It's easy to teleport nearby inanimate objects," you explain. "And I'm used to teleporting solo, and at short range. But two ponies at once? To a boat that far away? It's like asking a sprinter in the Equestria Games to run a marathon! Carrying another pony!"

Tempest Shadow's face doesn't move as she considers your excuse. She takes a deep sigh, trying to find the best best way to put it. Eventually, she settles on the following: "Look, you're my partner, so I'm gonna play it straight with you."

Suddenly, her hooves reach out and grab you by the scuff of your armour. For a brief moment, you think she's going to get excessively rough with you, but instead, she simply holds you still so her face is caught in the light of your still-illuminating horn. You're treated to seeing her pretty, pleading face and glistening green-blue eyes in perfect detail.

"If we don't get to that boat, they'll escape, and something terrible might happen." There's a faint quiver in her voice. Her face bears no hint of worry. But you can hear it. "They could hurt innocents. They could hurt the Princesses we made an oath to serve. They could hurt all of Equestria. We could find a row-boat and get there the old fashioned way, but it'd take too long, and we'd be too late. I'm almost certain that boat is chock-full of dangerous explosive powder, but there's no way I can get to it alone. Not with this horn. Please. You have to get us there."

As you watch Tempest - ex-commander of the ruthless Storm King army and strongest, smartest mare you've ever met - stand here begging and beseeching, you realise that she's not just worried about losing her shot at redemption. She's terrified of causing even more damage through inaction.

If you refuse and something bad truly does happen, you don't think she'll ever forgive herself. She'll be lost to the personal demons of her remorse forever. And you refuse to let that happen.

You gaze towards the distant light of the suspected boat. "I could try, but it'll take a lot out of me. I'm not sure if I'd be able to make it back again."

"We'll find a way," Tempest promises. "I have no idea how, but we'll take care of it."

That's all the reassurance you need. If she has your back, you can do it.

The light in the distance is still flickering. It's hard to tell if it's even moving at all. Tempest's hoof clamps back onto your shoulder. She braces herself.

Teleportation is either very easy or very hard, depending on the many factors that go into it. How far away your destination is, whether or not you can accurately visualize said destination, and who or what you are teleporting in the first place, are three pretty important ones.

Teleporting short distances are obviously easy, and long distances hard. That's a given. If you've never seen - nor been to - the place you hope to teleport to, this makes things a whole lot more tedious. Instead of telling your magic "I would like to go to this exact place I'm visualizing in my head, please!", you now have to tell it "I would like to go roughly this far in front of me, at this kinda-sorta angle, and please do not make me accidentally reappear halfway through a wall, please". In short, you're mentally flinging yourself with all the grace of a disobedient colt flinging a brussels-sprout from his plate.

Add a second pony, with both clad in suits of metal armour, and we're just adding to the load. And the mere suggestion of blindly teleporting yourself to an unknown vessel, with a group of potential criminals as a crew, in the middle of a dark ocean without wearing armour? That's just silly. You have some brains. Even if this brain is about to do something colossally stupid.

You grit your teeth, close your eyes... and teleport.