Twilight was not happy, Pinkie was in the same boat as Twilight, and Sunset didn’t seem concerned either way. They had been called down to see a test start of the machine and test run of the helmets. The helmet demo had gone mostly okay, aside from the two ponies doing the testing commenting on now having memories of an event they wished they had never been part of, on both sides, without any further explanation. From the look of things, they had already managed get all the problems with the helmets fixed but the interdimensional pinging device was another story.

The device that was to act as their beacon home was not functioning as it should, the most they got out of the test run was a flicker across one of the screens and a low beeping for a split second after waiting for a little over a half hour. Twilight just facepalmed and went over to shut the machine down then take a look at its internal working. After flipping the device, open Twilight said, “Sunset, I think we’ll all be very disappointed if it turns out this mistake was intentional, because you know Spike is going to force the truth out of you one way or another. The main power coupling is loose, the auxiliaries are all unconnected, and it looks like the magic energy converter is missing, which probably means the backups for that system are missing as well. To top it off, it looks like the transceiver systems aren’t linked into the system as well. Even if everything else was fully functional, without that array nothing can be achieved.”

Sunset gave a very audible gulp, she then said in an apologetic voice, “I kind of rushed the project a little, I didn’t think it was all that pressing, so I just had the foundations and casing built before moving on to other projects, then I kind of rushed the rest when I got a reminder that one of the reasons you were coming here was to check the progress of this beacon.”

“Sunset, I’m very disappointed in you,” said Spike, “I thought I impressed the importance of the project on you. Since we still require your skills with magical technologies, I’ll have to get a bit more creative with your punishment. Thankfully, I got a reminder to anticipate this sort of outcome and prepared your punishment beforehand.” Spike snapped his claws and Chrysalis, in a stripper’s rendition of an office secretary’s outfit, sashayed in with three items in the hold of her magic.

When Sunset spotted them, she paled a bit, started making distraught noises. “Oh, it’s not that bad, deary,” said Chrysalis in a disturbingly sweetly sounding pseudo-compassionate voice, “it will only be until you actually manage to finish the project.”

Twilight spied the objects as they passed her, and got a bit of a chill at their sight; a chastity belt, some sort of bracers, and a mask of some kind.

“No, not the inhibitor gear,” said Sunset with genuine fear in her voice, “I can’t believe that would come to haunt me now.”

“Care to explain?” Twilight inquired.

“It’s a special set of gear I had commissioned that is designed to be used as easily on almost any creature,” said Spike, “as a precautionary measure we’re having several sets tuned to also work on changelings. It was a joint project between my top technical minds and the dragons responsible for maintaining and calibrating the collars and rings. Basically, it’s intended to mainly be used on problematic individuals, by restricting certain behaviors, words, various other choices. Sunset might be the best tech mind I have currently, but her rather open sexual nature and tendency to adjust priorities as she sees fits from time to time is more of hinderance now. And not amusing, for the time being, so we’re going to reinforce the behaviors that are more acceptable for this project. Besides, every once and a while she needs these sort of reminders.”

Twilight and Pinkie cringed at that thought, hopefully with her focus more clearly directed, Sunset would get the device up and running within a few days. The two mares decided it was in their best interest to head back to their places of business and just get back to that, at the very least they could have their day not feel like a total waste.

**********************************************

Three days after the fiasco, when everyone had returned, the device was all good to go. Sunset looked like she had been galloping a marathon with weights tied to her legs and arms, and sounded like it when she explained everything to everyone. Spike still berated her for not having finished the project properly in time for the prior unveiling. Twilight and Pinkie really didn’t want to think about things involving Sunset for the rest of their stay.

Author's Note

Just one more chapter, and an epilogue and this story is all wrapped up. I’ll be putting the poll blog before the epilogue, mostly because I intend to have the epilogue act as a lead up to the following story.