“Ba, ba, I’m a little lost sheep with no place to sleep, won’t you please let me come in?”

“Not by the hairs, on our chiny chin chins, you can’t fool us with your old sheepskin!”

Dante Haze, as he was known, stifled a yawn from the far corner of the shadowy recesses beyond the reach of the stage lights. The 'wolf' with its associated sheep pelt was one of his better jobs of late. She had managed a certain degree of menace that was almost too much for the young children the program was meant for. Given the pay from her recent jobs, yet another inevitable stint through a list of D level jobs courtesy of Speculum was more for keeping up appearances and keeping Speculum at ease than any material benefit. Her alter ego, Dandelion Blossom, had almost gained Speculum’s trust. The hammer would fall soon, but until then Tisiphone bided her time.

They also gave her time to think.

The recent entrant into the game, Ms. Who, vexed Tisiphone. The mage had inadvertently confirmed her power by being too cute by half in masking herself. Ms. Who had outwardly shown she had no magic of note, Tisiphone had no doubts as to the mage's true strength. The fact that Ms. Who commanded Razorwire was a further complication.

Tisiphone deeply suspected that her own masking had proved inadequate in the exchange. Rare was a pony willing to ignore the presence of a Queen in service of a larger goal. The only logical conclusion that could be drawn was that the goal was of enormous value. Somehow the data Ms. Who sought would define the future.

On one hoof, that made her giddy. She had a data set and a half, plus whatever the two gems she held might hold. On the other hoof, it made her very, very nervous that at some point some pony would clarify to Ms. Who what exactly had happened to the Magewood Circlet and Songcrest Meridian. If Razorwire was anywhere nearby it would likely get, messy.

Then there was the question of what Ms. Who's end goal was. Tisiphone really wished she knew how disabling the transformer station belonging to the power company had allowed Radiant Industries to acquire Sweetwater. She suspected that the transaction had been made by Ms. Who in order to get Radiant Industries to combine the data it had with Sweetwater’s data to form a larger whole. It made sense. The only way Radiant Pine would allow RI's data on the power Cores out of hyper secure storage was if it was needed for a project. If her hunch was right then she had to applaud Ms. Who, it was an elegant solution. But why?

It had occurred to Tisiphone that the consistent emphasis on parabotany held clues. The CMC had their interest in Nightmare Moon. Radiant Pine wanted total socio-economic dominance. What did Ms. Who or her backers want? Was it something that could be filled by further cores? Perhaps using them to grow something in the style of those given by the Tree of Harmony? The ability to synthesize such gems on a mass scale at will, combining the technology of the precursors with magic? The pony that mastered that trick first could own the world.

But this was speculation. Tisiphone had no way to read the data sets. Her last entreaty to the metaplanes had gone unanswered. Her research had revealed no sites of precursor knowledge where she might learn the secrets of the Cores. It was sublimely frustrating to have the pieces of a weapon that might turn the tables on the ponies but no idea how to use them.

There was The Link Man, but any slip that revealed her as a player in this game rather than a once used pawn was achingly dangerous. She had hoped that favors owed might have permitted this by now, but Speculum Shine was being slow in letting her anywhere near sensitive records. Even the purloined data modules from the grocery store had seemed to do little to spark the Link Man’s interest. She really wanted the protection of her Hive and a greater debt of loyalty from the Link Man before she even hinted at that subject with him.

So what then? Soldier on she guessed. The last job had gone rather well in her opinion. No pony had suspected a thing. Even the paranoid manager Drip Coffee had never seen her attacker, though the lesson the mare had provided Tisiphone about disguising the target of her interest was valuable. Some pony would eventually figure it out and in this, a niggling worry ate at the Changeling. She had long realized that being too perfect would raise questions. Each bio-metric scanner fooled would invite questions. The correct answer wouldn’t be the first one a Knight Errant detective considered but it was an uncomfortably short jump of logic from considering a 'master of disguise infiltrator' to Changeling. In an ideal world, a modicum of electronic tampering would go a long way to diffusing that line of thinking. But such shenanigans were beyond Gwynn. Some other ploy would need to be considered.

She turned her attention back to the cartoonish pigs. She found it slightly strange that she was rooting for the wolf, though it was not as if she could flip the script on this tale. The common mistake was to always assume one was the pig that built from bricks when often sticks or straw was more apt. She considered their team. Was Split Klaw the pig of straw? He built nothing and gave no thought to security other than what anonymity provided. Or was he the strongest? A formless enemy was nigh impossible to fight. Vixie? Largely the same. The happy go lucky fox-filly was so far removed from most of their fights as to be off the radar of foes. Gwynn was definitely the pig of sticks. Well-meaning but often seeming un-motivated.

What of herself? Tisiphone mused that she probably wouldn’t know how wise her actions were until Ms. Who or the Couch Mare Club made their move. She was taking a horrible risk inserting herself into the fight for the Power Cores but history had already once shown the danger of ignoring developments in Magic weaponry. To do so again risked that she might share her mother’s fate.

A bit longer and the shoot was over. Dante settled into his car for the ride home. The audiodisk with the lesson for basic enchanting was almost done. The next queued purchase for basic principles of summoning waited, full of potential. Regardless of all that happened up to now she had fought for the future of the Hive alone. That was about to change.

Soon….

Author's Note

Game Notes: The team is hired by a new player, a mysterious mage calling herself Ms. Who. She is revealed to be the master of Razorwire. This again makes Glass Darkly (PC, POV) very nervous should anyone mention that Glass Darkly has two 'gems' which Glass Darkly alone knows are Power Core relics as the obvious ploy for Ms. Who would be to kill Glass Darkly and take them.

Ms. Who directs the team to infiltrate and shut off grid power to an area of Seattle containing Sweetwater industries, a company specializing in parabotany research, at a very specific time. This is accomplished by tracking down the manager of the substation, and capturing her, her access codes, and replacing her with Glass Darkly. The mission was successful, a welcome success after the pride wounding debacle at the grocery store in the prior mission.

As a result Sweetwater Research is bought by Radiant Industries.

Elsewhere, Tisiphone continues her plot to destroy Speculum Shine, while making arrangements to summon in the first elements of her hive.