Quietly growling in frustration, you refocus the target of your tracking spell to the pair of uniformed changelings standing near you. At the same time, you telekinetically dust down your suit just in case someling is watching- the glow of your horn gives off the fact that you're casting a spell. It would look pretty suspicious to be casting a spell with no visible effect.

By the time you finish casting the spell, they're already moving towards the elevators. You move around the crowd as quickly as possible without attracting any attention. You mentally note that a lot less changelings are gawping at you than earlier, now that you're in a changeling-style suit and less obviously a pony.

The suit is still extremely uncomfortable, though. You can't wait to get back to your room and tear it off. A shower would be nice too.

You're forced to pick up the pace as you spot the changelings you're following enter an elevator. One of them leans to speak with the attendant for a moment, after which the attendant says something to the other changelings in the elevator. They pile out in a dismayed fashion just as you reach the elevator.

The attendant slams the door of the elevator shut, leaving you to watch as it slides downwards out of sight. You look around in a slight panic for other elevators, but there's none on your floor.

Instead, you're forced to use a nearby stairwell. As you step inside the air turns deathly still and the din of the atrium fades almost completely. The stairwell is utterly deserted and not particularly inviting. Low-quality lightbulbs cast a dim light on the concrete stairs and industrial railings. It's a far cry from the display of wealth throughout the rest of the Tower, but you take the lack of changelings to be a blessing.

You trot down the stairs as fast as you can, nearly tripping at the last step. Damn outfit.

The tracking spell's markers inform you that the elevator has somehow passed the lobby and is continuing downwards. You frown to yourself. There's only a pair of double doors leading to the lobby, and a heavy door set below the staircase marked 'maintenance'. There must be an underground section to the Tower accessible only by the elevators.

Something doesn't feel right about the maintenance door though. There should only be enough space under the stairs for a small cupboard, at best holding a few cleaning supplies. So why such a secure door? Perhaps the stairwell continues behind it?

You try the door. It's locked with a bolt. You grimace, taking a moment to make sure you can't hear anyone coming down the stairwell, then try to break the lock with a firm, calculated kick to the rough area where the bolt is. The noise is deafening in this small space, but sure enough the bolt breaks free of the door and it swings open. Behind it is, like you suspected, a continuation of the stairwell.

The ceiling is significantly lower and the lights are somehow even dimmer, giving you the impression of crawling into a small cave. Nevertheless, you continue onwards, fearful of losing the two 'lings. Your tracking spell is already on the verge of the failing.

Your heart pounds increasingly faster the further you go. Until now you haven't done any particularly wrong or even suspicious, except for the incident when entering the Tower. Now, though? At any moment you could be caught with your hoof firmly stuck in the cookie jar.

The cookie jar is deep, too. You haven't passed by any doors or signs; the stairwell simply continues down uninterrupted. The gentle clip-clop of your hooves and the occasional chipped staircase are the only things breaking the monotony. Every second that passes by you grow more and more unnerved. If anyone tries to enter the stairwell, they'll immediately notice the broken lock. Then it's only a matter of time till a security force is alerted.

Suddenly, the blue guiding light of the tracking spell flickers into life in front of you. You sigh in relief. This means your targets are finally on a surface the tracking spell can guide you to and the path isn't even that long. You pick up the pace with renewed vigor, eager to get out of the stairwell. You pass a couple of heavy, black doors on the way, but the tracking spell doesn't lead to either of them. You try to gauge how deep you are by now. You've been trotting at a decent speed for a few minutes, so it has be... nearly a hundred meters? If there's such a massive underground complex, why haven't you heard about it? And why is it locked behind a door?

Eventually the blue line finally points through one of the doors. It's a double set of dark, imposing steel monoliths. You poke around to find the locking mechanism, then give it a good solid kick like with the door upstairs.

The doors slam open easily. They weren't locked.

You carefully step through the doors into a large, brightly lit lobby. It's surprisingly little different from the other elevator lobbies, having the same size and shape. There's only two elevator shafts, though, and the ceiling is much lower. Comfortable sofas and potted plants are nestled between giant support pillars around the edges of the room. A hallway is situated between two of these pillars, opposite the elevators.

A changeling janitor is mopping the other side of the room. He gives you a mere glance before returning to work, despite your very loud entrance.

This seems remarkably like a regular office lobby. No scientists, no intelligence agents, no dungeons that would necessitate an underground area... yet, the blue line points to the hallway. You close the doors behind you and tiptoe to it. The hallway stretches on quite a long distance and is lined with marked doors on both sides. You read some of the signs as you pass by.

"Conference room one... conference room two... empty office... where's a pony supposed to find the juicy intelligence?" you mutter to yourself. You're feeling much more relaxed now that you're in a familiar environment. The same atmosphere as the rest of the Tower is starting to set in- the feeling that you're trespassing, but there's no one to stop you from doing so.

The janitor from earlier barely even looked at you, so you guess there's no special security required to get here. Other than knowing it exists, ofcourse. You wonder if that friendly elevator attendant from earlier today, Adelheid, knows about the underground section.

You suddenly flinch as you hear some muffled talking, slowly approaching you from ahead. You duck into 'conference room three' and hide behind the door. The conference room is little more than a chalkboard and a set of chairs stacked in a corner. You don't have time to close the door before you hear another door up ahead open.

"Woah- did you hear that?" A male changeling is speaking.

"By Chrysalis, for the last time, yes, we heard your stupid joke."

"You're not funny, dude."

"No, seriously, I heard that door open. It's literally open right now."

You hold your breath. The changelings are almost right outside the door. The idea of eating a classy dinner on a cool balcony with the only nice changeling in the nation suddenly sounds particularly inviting. Why did you have to canter off to do spy stuff?

"You want to close it? Or shall I do it for you? Perhaps get your mother over here to teach you how to do it?"

"Heh. His mother."

"It's not about the door being open! We're guards, we guard things. And we've clearly failed to, uh-"

"Stop a random door from opening? Oh, we are so getting fired. Definitely."

"Oh, shut up. My joke was actually pretty good, you know. I used..."

You breathe a sigh of relief as the voices fade away. You could have just as easily bluffed your way through the guards, but the less people who see you, the better. You wait for a moment, then slink out into the hallway. The changelings are nowhere to be seen, allowing you to make your way through a a glass door marked 'Special Energy Research Commission'.

It features a bright yellow hazard warning with a jagged rock cut out of the middle; the universal symbol for the presence of magic crystals. You frown at it. What are crystals doing in an office? They're normally used in power plants, advanced machines, runes...

...and weapons. Powerful, unstable rifles and cannons that throw shrapnel and explosives around at unimaginable speeds. Not exactly something that would be in the hands of a civilian agency.

Nevertheless, you slide open the door and step into a large computing room. Bright lights shine over rows of desks stacked with papers and mechanical calculating machines. All of the desks are empty, papers stacked neatly in preparation for the next workday. The tracking spell indicates your targets are in an adjacent room connected via a door. You can faintly hear them moving about. The buzzing of some sort of equipment occasionally filters through the door too.

You're about to approach them when you realize you've already hit the jackpot. Here you are alone in a room full of documents and numbers, right in the middle of the Great Queen's Tower.

You stop in your tracks and look around for cabinets marked 'extremely important information'.

There aren't any. You sigh and start skimming through random papers from the nearest desk, trying to extract any information as quickly as possible. It's all numbers and senseless symbols though. You move on to the next desk, but the situation is similar. There's barely a complete word in any of the documents.

Suddenly, you hear the exterior door open almost directly behind you and gasp. A female changeling with a striking blue mane stands in the doorway, muzzle contorted in shock. She's wearing a grey suit that indicates she's a guard or soldier of some sort, but is visibly unarmed.

You move first. You turn over a table with your telekinesis and shove it against the door. The guard deftly leaps over the table and tugs a blade from one of her boots, holding it between her fangs. You expect her to leap at you and roll over to the left to dodge, leaving you on your side, but instead she canters around the nearby table and holds the knife directly to your neck.

"Don't fucking move. Don't make a sound," she snarls around the knife.

Don't make a sound? As if you have anyone to save you right now.

Your horn lights up and a shadow falls over the both of you.

"What the hell did I just say-?" The changeling presses the knife against your neck, but you just smirk in false bravado.

"Look up, 'ling."

The guard glances upwards for just a moment, knife still held right to your neck. She almost drops the knife in shock. You're levitating an entire table, calculating machine, documents, and all right above her.

Months of high-intensity S.M.I.L.E training has paid off, allowing you to just barely hold up the heavy desk. Your horn aches intensely from the effort, and you're sweating like crazy, but this was the only object you knew the position of well enough to pick up.

"If you kill me, you, uh, die. If you let me go, we both live. Sounds good?"

The guard doesn't move. "Listen, asshole. I'm on your side. I really am. I'm- we're not with them."

"You're trying to kill me." You point out. You don't find her story very convincing. The whole situation is a bit strange- why was the guard alone, and preventing you from shouting?- but this is evidently just a ploy to get you to move the desk away. "Get back, and then let's talk." You blink out the black dots from your vision. It's getting hard to think.

The guard backs up to the door, and slides the knife back into one of her boots. You drop the table with a crash and climb to your hooves, swaying and breathing heavily.

"Who's in there?" someone yelps from behind the door where the two scientists are. "Alex?"

"Holy shit. Are you stupid? I told you to keep it down." The changeling throws open a seemingly random desk drawer and hands you a bright red folder. "Take this. It's important. Really fucking important. Send it to whoever you're working for, if it helps. And don't forget- it was the Eisenwagen that helped you out."

You're still winded and even more confused by this sudden change in the 'ling's tone. You guess she's some sort of disobedient soldier or resistance member.

You have no choice but to take the folder and flee, though, as the interior door bursts open and two changelings step out. You canter down the hallway, pushing your exhausted lungs as hard as you can.

"There! A male changeling, grey markings!" shouts the guard.

So she is on your side after all. Weird.

The janitor is nowhere to be seen in the lobby. You rush up the stairs of the maintenance stairwell two steps at a time. You're barely keeping ahead of your pursuers, though, judging by the close thundering of their changeling legs.

You travel up that stairwell for what seems like forever. The claustrophobia you felt on the way down is replaced by sheer adrenaline from the chase. You eventually burst through a pair of doors into the relatively much nicer and taller aboveground stairwell. Pausing to think for a moment, you kick open the swinging doors into the atrium but keep climbing up the stairs, leaving the doors still swinging behind you. You pause at the top of the stairs to the second floor to catch your breath and watch.

Just as you hoped, one of the changelings shouts, "There! The lobby!" A ridiculously large crowd of changeling pursuers- you count at least six- rushes through the doors.

The changeling guard who helped you earlier stumbles out the 'maintenance' doors, breathing heavily.

You call out to her. "Hey, uh, changeling? Who exactly are you?"

She glances at you as if she expected you to be standing right there. "You should be getting the fuck out of here, pony, not standing there all pretty. If you're interested, though, leave a note for the Eisenwagen at the post office. We'll find it. Oh, yeah, I'm Ella. I don't care what your name is."

And with that, she's gone into the atrium. You stand on the staircase trying to process the events of the day. You met way too many changelings, didn't get the chance to eat any food, and almost got caught red-hooved on the first real day of your 'job'. And you haven't even dealt with the horrors of changeling bureaucracy yet!

Still, you glance down at the red folder in your muzzle. Levitating it in front of you, you flip it open.

There's two pages inside. One is torn and ragged, the ink splotched and unreadable. The other is the exact opposite. It's a crisp white paper, simply declaring:

Nationale Energiekommission

-Main Test (incl. live demonstrations to Reichsarmee) duration 3/10-16/10
-Secondary Test (incl. live demonstration to ethics council) duration 5/10-9/10
-Royal Demonstration duration 15/10-15/10

All those with authorization to attend may utilize government vehicles to arrive at the test site. The location of the test site will only be shared with higher level government officials and officers the Queen's Guard. Related parties expected to attend must accompany them. Such a high level of secrecy is absolutely necessary and is commanded by Her Majesty herself.

Chrysalis wills it! Our work will be done.

That's it. One page, filled with dates and a vague, rambling paragraph. You have no idea what this 'energy commission' does, or what these tests are. Still, you have a lot of intelligence to send home tonight. Any scrap of information on the Tower and the city is vital to the war effort

For now though, you just want a long shower, comfortable clothes, and maybe a bit of sleep.

There is no choice.

Statistics:

27 votes were cast across 5 choices. Of these, 6 votes were cast against the winning choice, meaning 78% of total votes were aligned with the winning choice.

The choices made have generally taken the story in a positive direction.

Author's Note

intense screaming WE'RE LATE AAGGAAAIIIIN!

I do apologize for the late chapter uploads. I do my best to get chapters out in a timely manner, but sometimes life just gets in the way. Thank you all very much for your patience and support on the last chapter despite it also being late (due to my break).

Also, act 1 is done! This means all the characters and 'core' choices have been complete. We have ourselves a mystery, a resistance group, a nice changeling who wants dinner, and a set of other characters you'll certainly be seeing again. And ofcourse, choices, choices, and choices.

Thank you for reading and as always do share your feedback and criticism in a comment.