//------------------------------//
// Side Story: Under A Thrilling Moon 
// Story: My Life as a Bipedal Quadruped 
// by Snakeskin Ducttape 
//------------------------------//


—



Under A Thrilling Moon. Prologue:



—


The letter read:



Dear Studded Armor.

I really can’t pull off the formality and prettiness often associated with letter correspondence, so I’m just going to say this:

Whaddup, yo? How’s the Crystal Empire? Are your barrack buddies treating you right? I can rough ‘em up for you if you want.

Yeah, turns out that we’re all heading to see the Equestria Games pretty soon. Me, Twilight, Rainbow, Pinkie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, the Crusaders, and a large portion of Ponyville. Back on Earth, we had something similar. We also had something called the “Paralympics”. It’s pretty much the same thing, but for disabled people. That name always cracked me up. It was short for “parallel olympics” (The Olympic Games is what we called the equivalent affair), and it was supposed to be inoffensive for disabled people. I’ll let you figure out the humor from there.

Speaking of paralympics, I recently ended up in Applied Magic concerning the prostheses that Twilight, your uncle, and I developed. The princesses also notified me that the Canterlot Times may do a piece on it soon.

Not sure how to segue into what I want to say next, but it’s exciting, I’m kinda nervous, and I don’t know how much of a celebrity I want to be from this. I remember some great inventors from back on Earth, and while I’ve always admired many of them, having the opportunity to be in their position has made me very uncertain whether I want to or not.

In any case, most of the time I think about that, I just make myself think about the reactions from the three ponies I’ve helped so far, and seems so quaint, almost trivial, who becomes famous from this and who doesn’t. Unicorns and pegasi are legends on Earth, I think I told you that sometime, and unicorns are often associated with miraculous healing. I’m not sure ancient storytellers had advanced prostheses in mind when they dreamt that up though.

Thank you again for all your help. I miss you, but only in ways that don’t make you feel bad or guilty. I hope I can see you when we visit the Empire. Actually, don’t worry about that. I know three of the four princesses, I’m lodging with one of them, I’m about to meet the fourth one, and her spouse, who is your current commander, and I’m a high-ranking official. I’m pretty sure I can arrange some time for us to catch up. Just tell me if and when it’s okay with you.




Here, near the bottom, was a big, bright mark of a lipstick kiss on the paper, before the words continued




You have my permission to let your bunkmates see glances of this mark, and weakly deny, with a coy smile, that you have a very pretty mare waiting for you, who can’t wait for you to get some leave.

Your friend,

Gabe.

PS: Roseluck asked me if you planned on visiting Ponyville again. I want deets.





—


Quills, inkwells, and papers with notes were scattered around one of the sections of the library, and sketches and formulas decorated the blackboard to near-overspilling.

A period of intense silence had settled over the library floor. The kind of silence you get in a room full of people thinking hard, which often turns the situation into an unspoken thinking race. The tension came from wanting to be the first one to share an observation, conflicting with the abhorrent idea of saying something dumb.

“I know what that part is,” I finally said, looking up from the diagrams of the magic infused in Spike’s enchanted comic.

“What?” Twilight asked, looking up from the notes she was cross-referencing. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure what to call it,” I said. “But it’s for reusing the limited space inside the illusion. You walk through that as a transition stage, and that gives the other parts of the illusion time to reform to the shape they’re supposed to be having momentarily.”

Twilight “Ooh”d in comprehension. “That’s really clever. How did you figure it out?”

I shrugged. “Just thought about some tricks that video games sometimes use. This seems similar to that.”

This piqued Twilight’s interest. “Can you show me that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe, depending on what I have on the thing. The computer, I mean.”

Spike walked in through the door, carrying a tray of tea and cookies. “Hey, gals. How’s it going?”

“Steadily forward,” I said, and floated a cup of tea, vanilla-flavored, from the tray and took a sip. “Thanks, Spike.”

I gently shook my head. Twilight and I had spent quite a bit of time in ‘horn-mode’ by now, and after this long it took a while to get used to perceiving light waves instead of magic.

“Thanks,” Twilight said, as she took her own sip. “The enchantment is not as powerful as one might think, but it’s very elegantly made. I think somepony has practiced this for a long time.”

“Yeah, but there is a bit of it over here that I think it would be best for you to tackle,” I said, and gestured towards a part of the diagram . “I might need some raw, magical strength with this.”

We finished up the drinks and cookies, and Twilight took a look at the part I was talking about. Spike had stuck around to try and figure out what we were doing once before, but since he couldn’t see anything, he’d given up. Now he gave it another shot.

“You just want me to pour as much magic as possible in here?” Twilight asked, after I had described what I wanted her to do.

“Well, you don’t have to go all out all at once, I live here you know,” I said.

Twilight shot me a small smile at that underhanded compliment. “Alright, I’ll start slowly.”

And she did. I started jotting down notes on how the rest of the enchantment construction reacted to the sudden influx of raw magical power.

Until I almost missed one small cluster of magical thread doing the enchanting equivalent of glowing red hot and vibrating worryingly. “Oh,” I said, “actually, maybe we should—”

That was as far as I got before a shockwave emanated from the comic book and blasted us onto our backs. For an illusion enchantment to react that strongly with the physical world meant that the magic had been powerful indeed.

We picked ourselves up from the floor. The idea that someone’s eyes are spinning from something comes largely from momentarily loss of coordination between the individual eyes. So my eye wasn’t spinning, but it was still pretty disorienting.

“Is everypony okay?” Twilight asked.

“Whoa,” Spike said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He would be. I was slowly learning just how tough dragons are, physically and magically. Magic made everyone hardy, but the way it affected a dragon’s toughness was on an entirely different level.

“I think I am too,” I said, then sat up, and shook my head.

“Uuh, Gabe,” Spike said.

I finished shaking my head and looked at him. “Yeah?”

He flinched, and carefully pointed at me. “Uuuh… eye.”

I looked at him blankly. “You?”

“Your eye, Gabe.” Twilight helpfully added.

I blinked with my right eyelid, noticed the feeling of something being absent, then sighed. “Every time,” I said, and started scanning the floor for where it might have ended up.

Spike’s comic was, interestingly enough, physically undamaged.

“Actually, perhaps it’s time to take a break,” Twilight said. “Let me just make sure that nothing’s happened besides that explosion.”

We lit up our horns, then stared in disbelief at what we saw. The magic from the enchantment seemed to have been stretched out, and permeated the entire library, every book and every surface, as well as quite a radius beyond into the village green.

“Do you think this is bad?” both Twilight and I asked at the same time, powered down, and looked at each other sheepishly.

We lit up again, and took another look. The enchantment on the comic had been torn to shreds, and the pieces of it had scattered all over the library.

“Well, it looks like it’s dissipating at the edges,” I said.

“Looks that way,” Twilight agreed, before humming.

“Well… sorry about your comic, Spike,” I said.

“Ah, well,” he said, dismissively. “At least now I can read it the way I was planning to when I bought it.”

“Let’s just keep an eye out for any strange phenomena,” Twilight said. “It was an illusion enchantment, and it might have left some residual effect around the library.”

“Yeah, and speaking of eyes,” Spike said. “Could you please go get one, Gabe?”


—


“Where are you going?” Twilight asked, after I had come down the stairs with a clean eye (the one I had until recently lying in a bowl with water to make sure no dust stuck on it) and the letter for Armor, which was also dripping lightly of magic.

“Just gonna post this,” I said, indicating the letter I had in my magical grip. “I need to stretch my legs, too.”

“Alright,” Twilight said, as I shut the door behind me.

I was getting a lot better at magic, even though the rate of improvement wasn’t as sharp as when I had first started practicing. It was still a bit of a drain to carry something arcanokinetically, or “in my magic” as most people referred to it, and while I was getting used to carrying a lot of things in my mouth, it prevented me from something I sometimes can’t stop myself doing when no one else is listening. Singing quietly to myself.

So I took a cue from Pinkie Pie and stuffed the letter into my mane, and sang the first thing that came to my mind. It ended up being about Twilight.

“♫ Oh, she’s a book, nanana, horse, na-nana. She’s mighty-mighty, just writing down all them lores. Oh she’s a♪—” I was interrupted by the last pony I expected to interrupt me.

“Hello, Gabe,” Fluttershy said from my blind side. “I didn’t know you liked singing too.”

“Oh. Hey, Fluttershy,” I said. “Yeah, I guess. I’m fine with playing instruments in front of people, but I prefer singing alone.”

“I can relate to that,” she said, walking up next to me. “What are you doing? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I’m just posting a letter,” I said, as we came up to the post office. “But Twilight and I are doing some experiments back home.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, with a hint of uncertainty. “Who’s the letter for?”

“Armor,” I said, as we walked into the office and up towards the counter. “Just telling him how I’ve had it, that I kinda miss him, gonna see him again. That sort of thing.”

“That’s also nice,” she said, with a smile that made me just a little bit suspicious before I brushed it off.

I saw Diamond Tiara standing beside a stallion with a very “coiffed” mane next to the counter, with the stallion seemingly double-checking a letter. His cutie mark of bags filled with money made me assume he was Diamond’s father.

Which was confirmed when Diamond Tiara saw me, her eyes narrowing into a glare, pawing at the stallion’s foreleg with her hoof, and pointing at me. “Daddy, that’s her,” she whispered to him.

The stallion looked up from his letter and over at us, his eyes lighting up, then he walked over to us. “Aah, you must be, aah, Gaaabri...elle, I assume?”

“I am,” I said, giving him a little nod. His very “proper” appearance and demeanor made me summon up a carefully measured amount of flippancy which I casually radiated, to counter any minor social disadvantage I might get from me having an envelope sticking out of my mane.

I sighed internally. 'Okay, talk. You raised Diamond Tiara, and I wanna know if you're a jerk, or if you're just a clown.'

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, and offered his hoof, which I shook, making him cast a confused glance down at it as he withdrew it, before continuing. “Name’s Filthy Rich, but just ‘Rich’ is fine. Miss Fluttershy,” he finished with a nod and a small smile towards the pegasus beside me.

“Likewise,” I said, and turned towards Diamond. “Hello, Diamond Tiara.”

“... Hello,” she grumbled at me, before giving the letter in my mane a suspicious look.

“Diamond Tiara’s spoken quite a bit about you,” Filthy Rich continued, always with the same pleasant smile.

That information, coupled with the very non-hostile delivery, was a bit disarming.

“Oh. I… Youuu have me at a disadvantage then,” I said.

He chuckled lightly, and continued. “Well, I am a bit of an entrepreneur, involved in quite a few ventures,” he said. “One of which I haven’t been able to get any hoofhold in however, is a new invention called a ‘bundle ratchet’. I’m trying to change that of course,” Filthy Rich said.

He was talking about the cable ties, which Fancy Pants had started selling, and which he had sent me an estimated profit report of, along with my estimated royalties.

“And here, I just happen to run into the inventor,” Filthy Rich continued. “This could be an interesting development, as I’ve done very little progress in that field.”

'Okay, he's polite enough at least.'

I almost didn’t stop myself from saying, “Fancy Pants being too clever for you, Rich kid?”

“Ah, well, you see, I have plans for my share of any profit from my agreement with Fancy Pants’,” I said.

That was the truth. I’m a straight shooter, although my arcanodispersive shocker needed some work when it comes to accuracy. I had very little use for money at the moment besides a select few endeavors. The one I cared about being funding more advanced research and development into my enchantments. Why settle for near-perfect prostheses for people, when you can try and make them actually perfect? Especially wings. Sunlit Fields was really happy with her new wing, but I felt that area needed work especially. The hard part about that was, unlike legs, I didn’t have any test subjects available. The time might also be approaching to start working on magical eyes. I sometimes mentally kicked myself for not having looked deeper into how cochlear implants worked back on Earth, as that could’ve helped a lot on several levels.

“Well, I would never dream of cutting the inventor off from the profit. In fact, perhaps I could make a more interesting offer?” Filthy Rich said.

I skipped explaining that I didn’t actually invent it. “Well, I don’t feel comfortable going behind anyone’s back,” I said.

“And I can’t interest you in perhaps suggesting to Sir Pants to perhaps put the patent up for rent?” Filthy said, and gestured towards the letter in my mane.

‘Not all of my messages are business related, you know.’

“Well,” I said, and tried not to squirm uncomfortably. “I don’t feel confident in taking decisions like that on the fly.”

“No way to convince you then?” Filthy said, and chuckled again. “Well, I’ll just keep trying the old-fashioned way. You’re welcome to come see me should you ever change your mind,” he said, slid a bunch of letters across the counter, then nodded towards the mare behind it. “Miss Hooves.”

'Eh, perhaps I'm mistaken. He seems alright.’

“Best of luck,” I said, and nodded towards him with a smile.

"And to you," he said, reflecting my expression.

Diamond Tiara’s expression had slightly softened throughout the conversation, but now she just scowled at me. “You’re just being selfish,” she said to me, while her father was busy, eyeing the letter in my mane hungrily.

I looked at her dispassionately. “A wise man once said, ‘Don’t fling poo in a brick house’,” I said, paused, and thought for a while. “Or something like that,” I said, with a shrug.

Whether that was how it went or not, it had the intended effect. Diamond Tiara just gave me a confused look before following her father out of the post office.

“Ladies,” Filthy Rich said, and nodded towards us.

“Mr Rich,” I said, while Fluttershy gave him a hesitant nod.

Diamond Tiara stuck her tongue out at me. I shrugged at her.

I walked up to the counter, then reared up to put my forehooves on the polished wood.

“Hey, Derpy, right?” I said to the mare behind the counter.

“That’s me,” she said happily. “Or Ditzy, whichever you prefer.”

“Which one do you prefer?” I asked.

“The one that works best for everypony else.”

“... Alright. Anyway, letter,” I said, and fished the object in question out of my mane and put it on the counter.

“Do you want it sent by wing or train?” Derpy asked.

I tried to give Derpy a scrutinizing look without making it look too obvious, and decided on train. I didn’t want to have to go to Rarity and ask to use her finest lipstick one more time. I’m not sure she appreciated the humor in which I used it for.

“Train,” I said.

“You got it,” Derpy cheered, took the letter, jerkily tossed it behind her towards the rack, where it spun around in the air a few times, bounced against a ceiling fan, then eventually landed in the correct place behind her, which made me suspect that I might’ve misjudged her skill in the postal service.

“Very nice,” I said, after a moment of silence, and gave her a bit and an acknowledging look before walking out of the office.

“What about you then?” I asked Fluttershy. “You out and about for any particular reason, or are you just enjoying the weather?”

“Oh, I’m just doing some shopping,” she said. “I’m going to see Applejack for some apples, and Angel Bunny made me a list of things he’d like.”

“I haven’t met Angel Bunny yet,” I noted. “I’ve actually never seen where you live either.”

“Oh, no I suppose not. You know where it is though?”

“I think so,” I said. “Cross the bridge over by Rarity’s place, and then walk straight ahead instead of along the river?”

“That’s right,” she said, smiled at me, then considered me curiously for a moment. “Uhm, do you like animals?”

‘I was never much of a horse person the last time I was a little girl. Funny thing, that.’

“Sure do,” I said. “All the ones I’ve met at least. Although I’ve had some bad experiences with my old prosthesis, small dogs, and leashes.”

“Oh…” she said, a bit dejectedly, but recovered when I shot her a don’t-worry-about-it smile. “Well, if you’re interested in a pet, I have lots of animals living with me.”

I was about to kindly dismiss the idea outright, before stopping and considering the offer. “Well, I lived alone and was at work most of the day so a dog was out of the question, and I don’t like the ideas of having cats or birds cooped up in an apartment. I would’ve liked having someone to keep me company, but I had to consider its needs as well.”

Fluttershy nodded. “That’s true, but if you reconsider it, remember that I’m more than happy to take care of any pet you have if you need to, and when I’m away, Angel and Harry takes care of things at home.”

“I’m curious about meeting a bear,” I admitted.

“Oh Harry’s a real sweetie,” Fluttershy said fondly, then we fell into silence.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” I tentatively said after a while.

“Uh. yes?” she said, noticing my hesitation.

“... Why doesn’t Discord like me?”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened a bit as she scrambled for something to say. I could tell that I kinda put her in an uncomfortable position, so I just gave her a patient look.

“Well, uh, you see, uhm… He doesn’t really dislike you,” she said. “You’re just… different, from what he’s used to.”

That just raised more questions. “Different how?” I asked.

“Uhm, well, uh… you’ve had a lot of ponies… react to you in many different ways, I assume? You’ve been… different from what they’re used to,” Fluttershy said.

‘Yeah, you were one of the overly gentle ones. Though that might not have been exclusive to me.’

“Sure, sure,” I said, casually, hoping to put her more at ease. “And humans too.”

“Oh, yes, and humans. Well, to Discord, you seem different, but in another way,” Fluttershy said. We came to a stop, sat down, then faced each other. “You’re different —” Fluttershy gently touched my chest, right by my heart “— in here.”

I looked down at my barrel, and put my metallic hoof on my chest, only getting a touching sensation from one side. “You mean my… soul?” I asked.

“Well, yes,” Fluttershy said. “Or, at least that’s how he explains it.”

I kept looking down on myself. ‘Well, magic and other worlds are real. Of course souls are real as well. Which is a very comforting thought. I know of a few people who deserve nice sequels to their lives.’

“Not in a bad way,” Fluttershy continued. “Or… damaged. Just different.”

“Oh,” I said, and looked up at her. “That’s… interesting.”

“Uhm, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“Well, going by what he’s said, and this is just how I think it works but…” We started walking again. “There are good ponies and bad ponies. Mostly good ponies. Discord… was never a bad draconequi, he was—is, just disharmonious. You could say that he chose to be good. It’s almost like he can decide whether he’s good or bad, and it seems like you might be able to as well. It’s just that he can’t tell what you’ve chosen.”

I had to think a bit before I could respond to that. “If I ever chose to be good or bad, I don’t remember it,” I said.

“Well, perhaps that’s not quite how it works, but he says that he looked at you, and saw that, inside, you were different from ponies. Perhaps even more different than he is,” Fluttershy said.

That made some sort of sense to me. “Hm. There are fantasy stories back home with people other than humans, and while they seem better than humans in many ways, humans are often the masters of their own destiny,” I observed.

“Yes, perhaps something like that,” Fluttershy said, and nodded. We stopped as Golden Oaks came into view.

“You’re a good pony though. Redheart told us all about what you did in Canterlot,” she continued, and I felt something positive swell inside myself at that. Fluttershy put her foreleg around me and pulled me in for a cheek nuzzle.

“Well, I just thought I’d help people since I can,” I said.

“... That’s right,” Fluttershy said, softly.

“Well,” I said after a moment, and gently pulled away. “We had a magical accident earlier. An explosion or two, gotta double check and make sure there are no side effects.”

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said and held up a hoof to her muzzle. “Well, good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said. “See you later.”

It was a good thing that Twilight and I seemed to be the only ones in Ponyville who could sense magic in the way I did while enchanting, because both of us, and Spike, were covered in glowing magical energy.

I’m not sure it would’ve been embarrassing to anyone else to be seen like that, but it was to me. Why? Well, have you seen that Mr Bean episode where he paints his apartment? Yeah, a bit like that.

About an hour and a half was spent making sure that the magic soaking the library was harmless, and as far as we could tell, it was. So we decided to just leave it for the day, and see how much would have dispersed the next morning before trying to clear it by horn.

“Well, this was an interesting day,” Twilight noted after dinner.

“Yup,” I said, and nodded.

“At least we learned a few things before that happened. What were you hoping to learn from it?” Twilight asked, beginning to clear the supper dishes from the table.

“Just adding it to my general knowledge,” I said. “Also I was thinking about how to make a user interface for my power armors,” I mumbled quickly.

Twilight and Spike gave me a look. “What?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, and waved their concerns away. “Well, thanks for dinner, Spike.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, as I excused myself from the table.


—



Under A Thrilling Moon. Part One:



—


The orange glow of the settings sun snaked its way between the blinds, casting shadows on my face like the bars of a prison cell.

’Ain’t that ironic?’ I thought. ’Spend my days chasing bad guys and putting them behind bars, when everyone in society are prisoners. The people I meet on the street might not be behind physical bars, but they’re trapped all the same.’

I gently switched the wafer roll towards the other side of my mouth as I checked my insurance: it was called an ‘arcanokinetic dispersive unit’. It was essentially another horn hidden in my prosthesis that could only stun people. A one-trick pony, but it did its job, and it had saved my flank before.

The wafer roll’s existence ended with a crunching sound, then I threw my hind-legs down from my desk and spun my chair around to the proper drawer.

The bottle of cider and the tin of rolls came into my gaze like a pair of old friends. I opened the lid… and let out a sigh. There were three left.

My metallic hoof hovered hesitatingly over the crunchy goodness. I was strapped for bits, and not in a position to splurge. I needed cash, and I needed a distraction. In other words, I needed a job.

There was a hesitant rapping on my door.

I breathed out a sigh of relief before putting on my stone face ’Just in time.’

“It’s open,” I said.

The door opened more hesitangly than it had been rapped, and in she stepped.

Her coat had a natural grace to it, the fuzz was even in length and in color. Her hooves hinted of physical work without being covered in dirt-filled scratches. On her back, she held a pair of respectable wings neatly folded, and her mane and tail held a beauty that made appearance-obsessed mares crush their own vanities— all of the mirrors.

I didn’t have my hat on to hide my expression, but her hesitant demeanor gave me just enough time to set the features of my face right.

“Uhm, hello,” she said, her voice as uncertain as her movements. What was not uncertain about her movements were how eye-catching they were, and I cursed my luck for only having one eye for them to catch as I saw her walk. Her hips swayed as gently as a morning breeze, with the glory of the sunrise.

I didn’t stand up to greet her. That was part of the job. Standing up was for people in polite society. Being polite in my line of work gave people an edge over you, or more likely, and often worse, made people think they have an edge over you.

“Afternoon, miss...?” I asked, my response vacant of passion or feeling, without making it seem like I tried to make it so.

“Uhm, Fluttershy,” she said. “You’re... Gabrielle Desrochers, right?”

“I am,” I answered shortly. “What can I do for you?”

“I uh… was under the impression that you might be able to help me.”

I gestured towards the chair on the other side of the desk. It didn’t spin. Only my chair spun. That was another important part of establishing who’s the mare in this business. Not that it looked like many of the tricks were needed with this one.

She sat down, and properly put her forelegs straight in front of her, her wings held ever so slightly too stiff at her sides. She was out of her element in here, and she fell back on proper manners to keep her cool. Tells someone like me quite a bit. Another thing I noticed, much clearer, was the slight sound of bits jingling in her saddlebag. ’Someone might be serious. About time.’

“Well, Miss Fluttershy, that depends. What do you need help with?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair and bringing my hooves together.

“It’s uh, I have this, uh, or rather, I don’t have, a letter, anymore,” she stammered, her eyes unwilling to meet mine.

“And you’d like to change that?” I asked, opening my hooves in an inviting manner and raising an eyebrow at her.

“Uhm, well, yes,” she said.

She wasn’t the type of lady who found themselves in trouble. They were rare, but they were still out there. The signs of laughter were still visible around her mouth and in the corners of her eyes. Money said that she wasn’t from around here originally.

I stirred the air gently with a hoof. “Go on.”

“I’ve lost it, and I don’t know where it is anymore. Somepony took it and I...”She kept her eyes down at the front of my desk when she started talking. “I’d like… I’d…” she looked up in my eyes “... I want it back. Retrieval of a missing object, you would call it.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, giving her a small smirk. “Or as the law enforcement community might like to call it, ‘counter-theft’, or just theft.”

Her gaze kept steady. “If that’s what’s needed.”

“Well, Miss Fluttershy,” I said, reclining in my chair. “I charge by the hour, so it’s in both of our best interests for you to tell me all there is to tell.”

Her fleeting flirt with assertiveness dried up, and she once again looked down at the front of my desk. “Well, It’s just a letter, but I don’t know what kind of envelope it’s in.”

“And who took it? Why did they take it? Where are they sending it? What does the letter say?”

“It’s uhm, it’s a personal letter that could… hurt my reputation,” she said.

“How?” I asked.

“I… I might not be able to keep my family if it gets out,” she said, whatever courage she was trying to display crumbled as her ears fell flat on her head.

Her eyes were still downcast, so she didn’t notice the scrutinizing look I was giving her. She wasn’t wholly sure of what she was doing, coming to me. It was time to help her out a bit, lest I scare her away.

“Well, Miss Fluttershy,” I said. “You’ve come to the right person. Hire me, and I’ll do everything I can to help you, but let’s go back to the other questions before I get started, shall we?”

She looked up at my eyes again, hope sparkling somewhere deep in them. “Alright,” she said after a while. “I don’t know who’s taken it, and I don’t know where it’s being sent.”

I nodded. “Who was it for originally?”

“Somepony named… Fancy Pants,” she said, looking down again.

“I see,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. 

‘That’s right. Cool professionalism. You’ve seen it all before.’

“And what’s in this letter?” I asked.

She kept her eyes down. “I’d… rather not say.”

“You realize that it might’ve been opened by another party when and if I get to it, I hope?”

She just nodded silently.

“I want to get some information about who this party is. Do you have any enemies? Anyone who could’ve have it out for you?” 

'Would this Mister Pants already be taken? Or did you just make someone’s stallion or mare look a bit too longingly at you perhaps?'

She shook her head, her eyes, wide with alarm, met mine. “N—no… not that I know of.”

I swiveled a few dozen degrees away from her, looking out between the slits in the blinds while thinking. ‘This is blackmail, and to blackmail someone, you need leverage. Whoever they are, they knew where to find it. Where did they learn that?’

I swiveled back to look at her. “How about people who aren’t your enemies? Friends and colleagues? Anyone associating with unsavory people? Work with any blabbermouths? Anyone you know who have problems people can exploit?” 

‘Any jealous beaus or belles?’

She shook her head again. “N-no. Nopony like that.”

“And what do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I-I take care of animals,” she said.

‘A fine line of work, Celestia knows there are few of those left, but it isn’t something that makes enough to afford someone like me. Old money perhaps?’

“I see. Anything else? If you were to try and get to yourself in some way, how would you do it? How would you try and surreptitiously find out about yourself, Miss Fluttershy?”

She stammered a bit, but the slow pace of the conversation was helping to coax some things out of her. “I, well, I, uh, a lot of ponies ask me for help when their pets are ill,” she said. “And I come into town to shop, and sometimes I go to a place called Sugarcube Corner, and I’m a pegasus, so I help out with civic weather duties.”

I nodded, trying to take in both her words and their delivery, all to get a feel for this mare. I had no idea of where her letter went, and she herself was the best clue I had to go on. It was a pretty bizarre case, and I didn’t have a lot of information to go on, but for me that's Tuesday, and it’s not like I have a lot else to do. I didn’t want to go out looking for work. You get in trouble in this job. You could even say that my job is trouble, but I don’t look for trouble.

“Well then, Miss Fluttershy, I think I can make time for this case, and I’d say two days retainer should be adequate for now.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said, and moved her hooves towards her saddlebags.

They came to rest on my desk, and four pillars of bits were produced from them. I did my best not to look at them hungrily.

“Is this enough?” she asked.

‘It’s a gift from the heavens.’ 

“It is,” I said with a nod. “Consider me, and what skills I possess, now hired to look for your lost letter.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

I simply gave her another nod.

We exchanged information, her address and my expected office hours while on a case. After that, she left, casting one more grateful glance at me before walking away.

The door gently shut, and when her hooffalls had faded, I let out a sigh of relief at relieving myself of some facial expressions.

I grinned, widely, walked over to my coat hanger, put my duster over my vest, and angled my hat so that it covered my prosthetic eye.

I spun my metallic hoof around three hundred and sixty degrees, producing a satisfactory click, then walked back to my desk and opened my drawer.

I swept most of the piles of bits down into an empty wafer roll tin and put some of it in my coat pocket, before grabbing the not quite depleted one and opening it. One roll went in my mouth, the other went behind my ear. Then I walked out of my door, with the intention of heading straight to Lyra and Bon Bon’s sweet shop. A woman needs her priorities straight.


—


Spike the janitor was sweeping the stairs when I walked out of my office, the same old, worn beret resting on top of his head, the upper parts of his ridge poking out of a hole at the top of it. He looked like he’d rather be somewhere else, doing something else, and judging from his expression, inside his head he was.

He looked up at me when I got closer. “Heya, Gabe,” he greeted, with a small smile. “Did I see a client walking out of your place earlier?”

“Hey, Spike,” I said. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

Spike chuckled, and kept on sweeping. “You know, anypony else saying that would just confirm it, but I can never tell with you.”

“And that’s the way I like it,” I said. “Is she around today?”

“Yup,” he said, with a small smile. “No getting away this time.”

I let out a sigh. I hadn’t brought any trouble with me in ages, and while it had been close a few times, I hadn’t neglected my rent either. “Oh well. Thanks, Spike.”

“Have a good one,” he waved over his back as I went on my way.

One of the best trick to being inconspicuous is to not do anything conspicuous. Normal, everyday people can sense something funny in the air from someone discreetly snooping around a bar without them even realizing it, but it puts them on-edge.

To get around that, simply don’t be discreet. You look around you because you’re vaguely, unconsciously, and innocently curious about what’s around you. Perfectly normal. Looking around you when signaling that you’re anything but curious about what’s around you is suspicious. Shadow a person down the street while making it too obvious that you’re not, and your mark will more often spot you because people around you cast fleetingly curious glances at you and the person you’re pointedly not following.

That’s the key to being discreet. You rarely sneak in somewhere by staying low and trying to stay out of sight. In fact, you don’t sneak in, you just walk where you’re supposed to walk.

It’s not foolproof of course.

I walked in a calm pace across the floor towards the exit, intending to proceed with perfectly normal business of going shopping when—

“Miss Desrochers,” her voice sounded from the side. It flowed like a gentle breeze through the room and slapped me across the face.

I let out another sigh, this one very quiet, then I changed my direction towards the kitchen. “Miss Sparkle,” I said.

My landlady, Twilight Sparkle, sat by the table, reading a book, as always.

She was dressed in the same old bathrobe she always wore, the fluffiness of which had vanished long ago; same with her slippers, and I tried remembering if I had ever seen her without her mane full of curlers.

She didn’t look up.

We didn’t always see eye to eye, and not just because she had twice as many functional ones as I did. She didn’t approve of me, or the trouble she was convinced I was attracting. I would’ve been more than happy enough to relieve her of those worries, if it didn’t mean that I would have to find another place to set up shop, which was easier said than done.

“I hear you have a client,” she said, still not looking up.

“You hear correct, Miss Sparkle,” I said, my voice both neutral and cool.

“So you can expect to be paying your rent this month?”

“I should hope so, Miss Sparkle.”

“How nice,” she said. “Although, with your… profession, there is of course always a risk that further compensation would be necessary.”

“Should that ever be necessary, Miss Sparkle, I’ll be sure to reimburse you, same as anyone would,” I said, just a hint of impatience in my voice.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

“Goodbye, Miss Sparkle,” I said, and tipped my hat in her direction.

“And keep it down if you get back late.”


—


I charge eight hours a day and it’s a robbery. By me. Against myself. I give away too much of my time. Oh sure, I try not to spend more than eight hours being serious in my investigations, but you never really have any time off in this line of work. You’re always considering your cases, always trying to plan ahead, or to use that age-old but still relevant metaphor, always trying to find all the pieces of the puzzle.

It didn’t mean that you couldn’t do anything useful while you’re at it. First up on my list was shopping.

I walked through the streets of Ponyville, the sun hanging low in the sky. In a few hours, it would be time for a shift change in the criminal world. The ones dressed in suits going home and making way for the ones dressed in filth.

Since I didn’t know the content of the letter I was looking for, I decided to try and find it by determining the perpetrator. One of the best way to find something is to find out who’s taken it, and in this case that would be to find out about where it was taken from.

The bell jingled as I pushed it open, and the only other occupant in the room, a mint-green mare, looked up at me with a knowing smirk. “Evenin’, Gabe,” she said, fiddling with her lyre case.

“Hey, Lyra,” I said. “Is your sweetie around?”

“She sure is,” Lyra said, and turned her head towards where the desk turned around the corner. “Hey, Candy Flanks, our favorite customer is here!”

“Well, evening, Miss Desrochers,” Bon Bon said, as she walked into the room, “Ain’t this a pleasant surprise?”

“You’re telling me,” I asked, as I walked up to the bar, sat down, then produced a respectable pillar of bits.

“You got a client then?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at the pillar’s height.

“No comment,” I said.

“Uhuh,” she said, with a knowing smirk. “The usual?” she asked, as Lyra walked up and took a seat one stool away from me, gently throwing her case up on the counter.

I nodded, with a small smile.

“What’s for the side this time then?” Bon Bon asked, and the two mares subtly eyed the windows for eavesdroppers.

I turned to Lyra. “Something has been taken,” I said to them. “A letter. It needs to be returned to its owner.”

“Mark?” Lyra asked.

“Her name’s Fluttershy,” I said.

“The pegasus who lives on the outskirts of town?” Lyra asked.

I nodded. “That’s her.”

“Perps?” Bon Bon asked.

I shook my head with a small tsk. “Unknown.”

“Contents?”

“Unknown.”

Bon Bon and Lyra glanced at each other with one raised eyebrow each. “Stakes?” Lyra asked.

“Reputation, she says,” I said.

The two mares looked at the pillar of bits, then each other for a few seconds, then back at me. “Alright,” Bon Bon said. “What else?”

“I’m guessing blackmail,” I said. “Someone needs something done, and whatever this something is, it requires at least one part brains and no brawn.”

Bon Bon contemplated this for a moment, before sliding the pillar of bits towards her. “Unknown time frame?” she asked, and produced a tin of wafer rolls.

“Correct,” I said, and spirited the tin into a pocket of my duster, before taking the one I had behind my ear and putting it in the corner of my mouth.

Lyra looked down at her lyre case, and fiddled the last lock closed. “We’ll see what we can do. Check back tomorrow.”


—


Before the sunlight decided to spend its time elsewhere, I was once again walking down the streets of Ponyville. Some noses had been instructed on where to aim their sniffing, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t use my own.

The thing about sniffing though, is that unlike looking, and especially unlike feeling, it’s not always clearly telegraphed when someone turns that particular sense in your direction.

Which is why what happened a few blocks down from Lyra and Bon Bon’s almost coaxed a facial expression out of me.

From down the road, a stagecoach pulled up beside me. The type with tinted windows, cushy interior, and a worryingly large team of worryingly large stallions pulling and driving it.

The door opened, and from the dark interior another stallion stepped out, lumbering up to me with an expression that was probably supposed to be neutral, much like when a gorilla’s expression is neutral, and glared at me from beneath his hat.

“Gabrielle Desrochers?” he huffed in my direction, blowing at my mane.

I had already glanced around while he was walking up to me. There were at least five pairs of eyes, not counting the collection by the stage coach, who wouldn’t be able to deny seeing all of this.

“Indeed,” I said, turning the half-finished wafer roll around in my mouth “Can I help you with something?”

He gestured towards the coach, without taking his eyes of me. “The young madam would like to see you,” he rumbled.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t really have time for a meeting,” I said, and started walking away.

I didn’t get far before his foreleg blocked my path.

“She insists,” he said.

I took in the situation. I could easily have forced my way around him, but that would certainly turns his mates on me, and while I was pretty confident I’d be able to handle them, I don’t make enemies when I don’t need to. Bolting would be better, but I decided to try my luck with words.

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” I asked, and started moving towards the coach.

I stepped in into the dark interiors of the coach, the destrier of a pony shutting the door behind me as soon as I stepped in and leaving me alone with whoever else was in here.

“Miss Desrochers,” a silken voice said on my blind side.

I turned around and saw only red. The glittery kind.

She was dressed in a form-hugging red dress, with open slits going an impressive way up her flanks and leaving her cutiemark entirely bare. In her elegantly two-toned purple and white mane rested a silver tiara, and she looked me with eyes that told me that she not only had an unbeatable hand, she also owned the card factory.

“You’re a hard filly to find,” she said.

“It does say on my door that I might be previously occupied,” I said.

She reached over and started pouring something into one of two glasses. “I’ve never been one much for schedules,” she said.

I said nothing as she inquisitively offered me the glass, only shaking my head slightly.

“Feel free to have a seat,” she said.

I sat down, not too slowly, not too quickly, not too reserved, and not too easily. Then I waited as she took some slow gulps from the glass.

She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to address me as she lazily finished her drink. “Since you obviously know my name, may I ask yours?”

She finally removed the drink from her lips. “You may,” she said.

I gave her a deadpan look, and she giggled at me. It was a fake giggle. She hadn’t said anything witty and she knew it. That giggle though. It was so practiced I almost believed otherwise.

“Diamond Tiara,” she finally said. “And I have an offer for you,” she said.

It took an embarrassing two seconds to answer. “And since you seem insistent on making it, I’ll take the time to listen.”

“How courteous,” she said. “It’s an offer for a job.”

“I should warn you that I might be occupied already,” I said.

“Oh, I believe you want to hear this,” Diamond Tiara purred at me.

“I said I would listen.”

“It’s a simple job,” she said. “There’s an object that isn’t in my possession. This displeases me. I want that changed.”

“And who do you want to change that for you?” I asked. A perfectly innocent question. Not coaxing out information, not implying that I’m accepting the job.

“You,” she said. “I want you find a certain letter for me.”

My eyebrows almost knitted in surprise at the request, but I managed to disguise it by raising just one of them. “Can’t you just write another one?” I asked. Again, perfectly innocent, or at least innocent-sounding.

“I didn’t write it,” she said, impatiently. 

’Noted’ 

“I just want it in my possession.”

“I should warn you that if this is an urgent matter,” I started. 

‘That’s right, not just innocent, reasonable as well. Tell me everything.’ 

“I might not be able to—”

“I can assure you that you will be better paid than your current assignment,” she interrupted me. “It’s a simple job. All you need to do is to find the stolen letter—” 

‘Stolen? That’s interesting.’ 

“—and give it to me.” 

‘“Give”, and not “return?”. Also noted.’

I patiently held up my hoof. “Miss Tiara, like I said, I might not be able to accept this—”

“Oh shush,” she said, her eyes suddenly very relaxed, and leaving me feeling very nervous. She gently walked over towards me, her eyes hungrily looking into mine.

The keratin of her perfectly manicured hooves glossed with the slight reflection from outside the coach, and they hardly made a sound as they stepped across the velvet carpet.

She came up beside me, and I tried to gently lean away from her as she leaned forwards towards me. “You haven’t even listened to the whole offer yet,” she said, her eyes half-lidded.

“I assume it’s an urgent affair,” I said.

“Very urgent,” She breathed out.

“I am sorry, Miss Tiara,” I said. “But my dance card is full right now.”

Her soft advancement slowly stopped. “Pity,” she said. “If you do happen to find something that you’re sure I’d be interested in, don’t hesitate to contact me.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” I said, straightened my hat, and left the stage coach just a little bit too eagerly.

“Hope to see you again, Miss Desrochers,” Diamond Tiara said, as her destrier walked in with her and closed the door.

I watched the coach take off and travel down the street. This was already shaping up to be an interesting case. Perhaps I should’ve taken her offer. It could’ve helped a lot to assume the job of someone rich and powerful, but it also meant that one of my clients would have to be disappointed in the end. One was, as just noted, rich and powerful, the other one was Fluttershy. One option would give me trouble living, the other would give me trouble living with myself.

Nothing proved that the letters they were talking about were the same one of course, but I don’t believe in chance. How many people want to find similar letters at the same time?

It did toss a big pile of puzzle pieces in my lap. Diamond Tiara was looking for a letter that Fluttershy claimed was hers.

And I hadn’t even got the chance to visit the post office yet.


—


When you want to find something, one approach is to go to where things like it is kept, but when you want to hide something, you put it where it won’t be found. Very basic cleverness tells you that you can put things you want hidden among others of its kind. Hiding in plain sight, as it were.

A letter was in the possession of someone in town. I didn’t know which letter, but I knew who the victim was.

My two noses were out sniffing at the moment, but they weren’t sniffing here. This was one place I was going to have to sniff myself.

I had to be careful though. Diamond Tiara had an unknown number of goons that were looking for the same thing I was. Our meeting had the unfortunate result of making it highly suspicious for me to look for the letter in their eyes, but also had the much better result of warning me what kind of malefactors to keep my eye open for.

I had taken the “hiding in plain sight” approach myself, and simply stood and observed the post office. As was always the case with stakeouts, it was a long and boring job, and I eventually took the time to savor the first opening of the tin of wafer rolls.

I was almost about to decide it was safe to investigate closer, when I caught sight of her in the corner of my eye. An amateur.

She had a grey coat and a grey mane tied up in a braid, which swished back and forth as she looked around her. I slid back behind my little corner, watching her eyes dart across the street behind her glasses, as she very clearly slowed down to walk past the post office in a calm gait, before slipping into the opening.

It could be nothing of course. It wasn’t unheard of for people to not want anyone seeing them go into the post office, but that meant that they have something to hide, and that is a scent that I react to.

I swallowed the last part of the first roll, and made my way across the street to the office.

That part I talked about earlier, about hiding in plain sight and not bothering to be discreet. I figured that might not be the best approach here. The grey-maned filly wasn’t just an amateur the way a veteran describes a novice, she was oblivious. Completely without knowledge. She didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’. Everything about her demeanor screamed that she was doing something she was neither familiar nor comfortable with.

These people can actually be tricky. They’re easy to spot of course: even disinterested bystanders notice something off about them, but they also use their meager skills of observation in almost aggressive vigilance.

Unlike grey-mane, I did walk next to the post office without signalling that I didn’t intend to enter, and calmly loitered outside, slowly whittling down the roll in my mouth, and my ears innocently angled themselves towards the nearest sounds: a conversation.

“Oh. I’m sorry, but it’s against regulations,” a voice I recognised as Derpy’s said in answer to something.

“But I really need to get it back!” another voice said. The grey filly, I assumed

“Is there a sender address on it?”

“No—I mean, yes! I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“I can’t remember, alright!”

“Oh. Then uuuh,” Derpy said, thinking for a bit. “Maybe you can send another letter telling the pony you sent it to to send it back?”

“I can’t! It’s uhm,” the grey filly said. “It’s a surprise! And he can’t have it yet.”

“Oh, okay,” Derpy said, sounding a bit relieved. “Well, I can’t give it back to you if you don’t have proof that you submitted it, but we’re not shipping out until noon the day after tomorrow. You have plenty of time to find the receipt then,” she said happily.

“I… I… yeah. Yeah, I can do that,” the grey filly said dejectedly. “Thanks for your help.”

“Happy to,” Derpy chirped.

The filly trotted towards the door, casting less vigilant glances all around her as she exited. She saw me, but didn’t notice me.

I had placed her high up on the person-of-interest pile even before I heard the conversation. It was an almost too obvious lead to follow, but I couldn’t pass it up.

I was facing the other way when I knew she looked around her as subtly as if she was doing it through a periscope. Once… twice... and when she was more than enough of a safe distance away for me to follow her, I did.

It was too easy. I kept my eye open for others keeping their eyes open. She was the perfect bait, but I just couldn’t spot anyone whose eyes lingered in my direction a second too long, or who who were just enjoying the afternoon by a street corner.

It made me nervous. Sometimes you catch a break, and things happen the way you want them to, but the luck never lasts, and as nice as it is for a stakeout or a shadowing to go smooth, I’d rather save it for when the magic starts flying.

Still, to break this off wouldn’t help in any way, so I kept at it. We were heading towards the more affluent parts of town. People here weren’t any better than anywhere else. They just dressed better. It was the kind of place where someone like Diamond Tiara made their lairs, and as unexpectedly as the tide coming in, I found myself walking straight towards hers.

It was a mansion, plain and simple. A house the size of a small castle, with outbuildings the size of small houses. A brick wall separated the grounds from the rest of the streets, with a large iron gate providing a view of the house’s entrance.

The gate was open, with grey-mane standing in front of them, looking up at one of the windows with a hesitant look before drawing in a sigh and walking in.

Her vigilance had tapered off the further she moved from the post office, gradually being replaced by resignation. It wasn’t even fun now. I could probably walk past her and claim that I had a meeting with Diamond Tiara, and she’d probably look relieved at the thought of something distracting the filly in the red dress.

Oh yes, it was pretty obvious what was going on. Diamond Tiara had started by sending someone to try and retrieve the letter with words, and the agent was now coming back to report a failure.

I moved a few paces away from the wall of the mansion I was looking behind, then simply shifted my weight to my rear prosthesis. I double-checked to make sure that I hadn’t strangled its access to my magic reserves, closed my lid tightly around my prosthetic eye, and jumped.

I caught the top of the wide wall with the rear of my left, organic hoof, just in case someone might be listening, and led myself to landing low on the wall. I immediately did a quick scan of the grounds to make sure that no one had seen me, then dropped down behind some shrubbery, making sure I landed on my prostheses.

The grey filly had moved out of sight, presumably into the mansion, and while it might seem like a bad idea to waltz around on rooftops if you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, the late afternoon was making way to evening. The sunlight was growing more and more orange, and the details of the skyline was becoming more and more obscured.

I took another look around me, and aimed my prosthetic foreleg towards a cupola on the roof with a weather vane. It was jutting out from the rest of the structure, and no light spilled out from the window. It was the best candidate.

The grappling hook shot out from the opening in my hoof with an authoritative sound, and I reeled myself up the side of the house with a whirr, continuously keeping my eye open for anyone who might spot me.

Luck stayed with me for once. I released the grip my climbing assistance tool had on the weather vane, reeled it back in, and carefully made my way across the steeply arranged roof tiles, feeling more than a little smug about the upgraded gripping tool on the edge of the wire.

On the other side of the wing was the window that grey-mane had been looking up at. Here, the risk of being heard was far greater, and I gently crept along the top of the roof. Reaching the end of another large cupola, I slid down one of the sides, fastened my grappling hook under the ridge of the roof, and very carefully climbed up again.

I laid down on my back, made sure my hat was firmly on my head, then wrapped my trench coat around my hind legs, and my hind legs around the wire coming out of my prosthetic hoof, before slowly lowering myself down across the tiles on the opposite side I had attached the hoof, and over the edge.

Faint light was spilling out of the window I was above. I angled my ears, probing for the faintest sound of conversation.

“So you didn’t get it?” Diamond Tiara’s voice sounded, and I immediately stopped, before continuing to lower myself to just above the window, slowly.

“No. I’m sorry.” The voice of grey-mane sounded apologetic, and submissive.

“I see. I’m disappointed in you, Silver Spoon,” Diamond Tiara said, and I made note of that name. “I don’t like taking drastic action.”

“But we only have to get some proof that the letters is ours,” Silver Spoon said.

“It’s not ours though,” Diamond Tiara said. “And if that fails, it could implicate me. I don’t want to draw attention to my looking for it before I try and retrieve it.”

“The mare in the post office knows I’m looking for it though,” Silver Spoon muttered, in a low voice.

“And that wouldn’t be a problem if you had gotten it to begin with,” Diamond Tiara said, dismissively.

There was a moment of silence, and I fought the urge to shake my head to dry and distribute the blood to the rest of me. ‘Come on! I can’t hang here all night. Get on with it!’

“Why don’t we try and get the files directly?” Silver Spoon finally asked, and I angled my head.

‘Files? What files?’

“You think I haven’t made arrangements for that?” Diamond Tiara said. “I won’t sent brainless grunts to get them; this needs brains… but I’ve gotten somepony to work that angle for us; that mewling yellow-coat. Besides, the muscle will be busy tonight.”

‘Yellow-coat?’

“What for?” Silver Spoon asked, curious.

She wasn’t as curious as I was. I held my breath to not miss out on any details in the conversation.

“I’m tired of waiting. That infuriating little tinkerer has kept me from my rightful prize too long.They’ll be going to get the letter tonight, and you’re going with them,” Diamond Tiara said, and my blood went cold from what happened next.

“What!? Wh—” was all that Silver Spoon managed to say before they saw a shape flutter past the window.

My hat had fallen off, and was sailing down towards the ground, releasing my shock of orange and blue mane. I cast a glance towards it, before I immediately started reeling myself back up.

‘Not too fast, not too slow. Can’t let them see you, can’t let them hear you.’

I righted myself up, the relief of being righted hardly registering as I heard the latches on the windows being lurked.

‘Don’t rush it. Don’t rush it,’ I thought, as I reeled myself up towards the peak of the roof as I heard the window being opened, then swung the wire coming out from my hoof, dislodging the hook from the edge, and reeling it back in as fast as I could, risking any listeners to hear the whirring sound rather than have the claw clacking against the tile.

I hadn’t risked a glance down towards the window. if Diamond or Silver had looked up, there was a chance they’d seen me, and if they had looked down, they might’ve seen my hat. It was getting dark out, the last lights of the day making everything in the shade extra obscured against the orange glare, but it was hard to tell how much easier a time they might’ve had spotting the hat with full sets of functional eyes.

“There! Do you see that!?” Silver Spoon voice sounded.

I could almost feel the scowl on Diamond Tiara’s face. “Get down there,” she growled.

‘Hat it is then’ I thought, and immediately righted myself as silently as I could.

I heard two sets of hoof falls cantering across the carpeted floor in the room underneath me, and immediately rushed up to the edge of the roof to assess the situation.

My hat was lying on the ground a little ways away to the side of the main entrance. No flunkies or other personnel was in sight though, so it was between me and the two fillies.

I was too high up for me to try and reach my hat with my grappling hook, and I hadn’t tried landing on my prostheses from this high up, so that wasn’t a very good option.

I could try and lower myself from where I was, but since I didn’t have a good idea of the internal layout of the mansion, I didn’t know how and when I’d give myself away to people heading towards the entrance.

To the east of where I was, there was a wing with its roof one floor lower, and the garden there favored taller trees and more dense shrubberies.

I darted across the roof, and skidded down the angled tiles on my hind legs across the tiles, then towards the lower edge, before kicking off from the edge with my prosthesis, buckling the gutter sending myself towards a copse of trees.

I must’ve made quite a racket, but this was a daring escape. As soon as I had my hat on my hooves, the only thing that was left to do was to beat hooves. Hopefully, Diamond Tiara hadn’t heard me or taken the time to alert anyone else in the mansion of an intruder, or any response would be a lot quicker.

I aimed my metallic hoof towards a larch tree in midair and shot my grappling hook just above one of its branches.

It struck true, and as soon as it looked like it had a grip, I started reeling myself in, transferring my weight towards the horizontal dimension rather than the vertical.

The branch had a worrying amount of give as I swung towards the top of the wall, and gripped the edge of the wall with my fleshy foreleg, and hoisted myself up on the top.

My prosthesis was strung up against the branch of the larch, and once again my blood ran cold as I pulled without managing to loosen it.

“Come on. Come on!” I grumbled, but the tree just shook mockingly.

Desperate, I looked towards the house, around the edge of which my very incriminating hat lay. I hesitated for one short moment before I swung down towards the ground, then slapped my left hoof on my metallic leg, making a quick series of motions against the opening underneath the covering in order to detach the leg.

My leg came off, and swung lazily as it hung from the branch. I gave it an uncertain look before bracing myself, and turned towards the corner of the house, on the other side of which my very incriminating hat waited.

The right sleeve of my trench coat flapped underneath me as I limped off towards the house as fast as I could, while at the same time navigating between the shrubs, and doing so quietly. Needless to say, I was getting stressed out.

The flowerbed along the edge of the house was a gravelly affair, with polished macadam containing a few select much-cared-for flowers. I limped along it on the grass, until I reached the edge of the house.

I heard the sounds of a large door being opened, with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon coming out into the evening, on top of the large set of ornate stairs by the entrance.

I limped as fast as I could towards a shrubbery next to the flower bed, hopefully close enough for me to able to magic the hat over to me.

The clip-clop of the two fillies’ hooves announced that they were moments away from being in clear sight of my hat, and I crouched down in mid-limp, jumping as far as I could with my rear prosthesis, and just managing to grip my hat as I landed and rolled across the ground, coming to a halt behind a shrubbery.

I floated it over to me as I crouched low, trying to spot Diamond and Silver through a low section of the shrubs. I lowered my hat across my mane, making me somewhat harder to spot.

“It was over there,” Silver Spoon said, and pointed towards where my hat had lain seconds earlier.

If they probed around only a few steps away from where Silver Spoon pointed, they’d see me plain as day.

Thinking in the pace normally reserved for desperation, I reached out and grabbed a pebble from the flower bed, before rearing up on my hind legs, tossing the pebble lightly into the air in front of me, and punting it hard with my metallic hind leg.

The motion made me fall down on my back, but I heard the pebble rustling through a shrub some ways behind Diamond and Silver, and striking the wall behind it.

I carefully raised my head and risked a glance towards the fillies. Their heads were turned towards the spot where the pebble had struck, and they were wordlessly and slowly walking towards it.

I let out a sigh of relief, then slowly rose up. I made my way back towards where the shrubs were more densely placed, casting a glance behind me to make sure that Diamond and Silver were out of sight, before looking around the corner.

I let out another sigh of relief at not spotting anyone else out and about, and that my leg was still hanging undisturbed from the larch.

The way back was much easier, not being fueled by desperation, and figuring that I should have at least half a minute before Diamond or Silver came looking this way. I sat down in front of the prosthesis, activated it, then rubbed myself up against it. It attached itself to me instantly, pinning the shoulder part of my trenchcoat and a part of my vest against myself, then I reeled myself up towards the branch I was once again stuck to.

The claw had spun around the branch, and was tangled in twigs and hanging moss. I forced it off, leaving large tears on the tree but not really caring, before playing it safe and jumping down towards the ground, then jumping up to the top of the wall.

I landed on the dirt outside of the manor grounds, and jogged off towards the nearest alley. I started letting out a long series of breaths in relief as I looked up towards the sky, the last lights from the sun fading and making way for the stars and the moon. I was home free.

At least for now.

Diamond Tiara still planned on getting that letter. Tonight.

Breathing heavily, I reached into my trench coat for the tin of wafer rolls with my prosthesis, my hoof shaking just like the rest of me. There was a dull clattering sound as the metals clacked against each other, and I shakily brought a roll of to my mouth for a moment of respite.

My breathing calmed down as I did it through the roll, and I sat down on my haunches to detach my foreleg again. This time, I undressed my limbless shoulder and attached the leg without pinning my clothes between them, before slipping back into my trench coat.

I took off my hat, punching out the little indents it had gotten during the excitement, when a cold drop of water hit my muzzle. I looked up into the sky, where rain clouds were converging on Ponyville, and only a small sliver of night-sky was visible between them.

The rumble of lightning sounded in the distance. I steeled myself, before letting out a long sigh, and started half-running towards the post office.


—


I paused and gasped for breath, leaning against a wall. I was already running on fumes, and having two magic-draining prostheses didn’t help matter. I was exhausted, mentally, physically, and magically.

The post office was near. Just around the corner. I paused to try and catch my breath, but it took far too long for me to stop breathing in heaving motions.

‘This isn’t good. It means I’m getting some magic back, but if I’m not careful, I’m gonna pass out in the middle of a breaking-and-entering.’

The rain was on my side though. My clothes might’ve been water-resistant, but the moisture in the air still helped cool my overworked body, and people don’t often consider how much a good rainfall can obscure one's senses: vision and especially sound. I might only have one eye, but this helps even out the playing field.

I stood in the street corner, this time watching the back of the post office. I should be in a hurry, but fools rush in. Diamond Tiara was sending her thugs here, and I wouldn’t be looking for a fight even if I felt tippity-top.

Making sure that no one was coming up behind me, I waited, chewing on another wafer roll in an attempt to regain some energy. Sure, it activated my digestion, which is a drain in itself, but it would have to be worth it. The soothing familiarity of the roll in my mouth tipped the scale into favoring snacks at this moment.

So I waited. Hopefully, Diamond Tiara hadn’t figured out that I was involved in this, but the little incident earlier most likely made them suspicious in general. A preemptive strike would normally be the best move in this situation, but the lack of knowledge and high alertness on both sides, coupled with my own exhaustion, made me switch over the initiative.

If this was a game of chess, I was only one piece against Diamond Tiara’s side. Letting her make the first move might seem like madness, but I hopefully still had one advantage: she couldn’t see my side of the board. She might not even know she was playing against someone.

Feeling reasonably alert, I scouted the post office. I knew how it looked of course, but a reminder never hurt.

There was the customer-entrance, and the large doors to the packing-section, then there was the part that caught my interest. Bunk beds were visible through the window of a second story room, and a chimney jutted out of the roof above. The part below it on the first floor didn’t have a fireplace as far as I could remember, and there were also soothing paintings of landscapes vaguely visible in the room.

‘An employee lounge? Or maybe accommodations for postal riders?’

There were no lights in there though, and no wisp of smoke coming from the chimney.

‘Empty then… hopefully.’

My attention was immediately drawn to a noise from the street a little way to the side, and I slipped back behind the corner of the house I was waiting by. Over the pitter-patter of rain I could hear loud and careless hoof falls echo between the houses, and stallions that didn’t know how to whisper to each other made some failed attempts at just that.

“So lemme get this straight,” a gruff voice sounded. ”We’re looking for a needle in a stack of needles, and we don’t know what the needle we’re looking for looks like?”

“Pretty much,” another stallion said. “Also, it’s dark, and nopony can know that we’ve been doing the looking.”

“Quiet,” said Silver Spoon. “Let’s just go in there and get this over with.”

They walked into my line of sight, and I quickly retreated back a little ways after I had caught enough of a glance of them. There was Silver Spoon, and two stallions behind her. I couldn’t tell if they had been present when I had met Diamond Tiara, but there was one earth pony and one unicorn.

Silver Spoon was looking around her nervously just like before. The stallions were also probing all around themselves as well, but they didn’t telegraph nearly as much nervousness as Silver Spoon.

They walked straight towards the entrance to the packing section. There were some sounds of locks and handles jiggling, and then of the door opening.

I leaned my back against the wall, aiming my muzzle towards the rain and letting out a sigh. ‘What to do? What to do...? We’re all looking for something in there. None of us knows where it is, and I can’t let them spot me. Well, when you don’t know what to do, gather information. In other words, look closer.’

I walked over to the post office, and calmly but carefully climbed up the drain-pipe next to the window. As usual these days, my muscles didn’t burn from exertion, since the limbs I put most energy into didn’t really have muscles, but fatigue was still catching up with me. The painted metal was slick with the rain, but that didn’t pose a problem for me.

I magicked the handle open, and I firmly opened the window to avoid any creaking sounds, and climbed inside.

I quickly shut the window behind me. It was only one story up from the ground, and so it was a good escape route. It would’ve been a great one if I could leave it open, but the rain was coming down heavily, and the sound of an open window would attract attention.

Keeping my knees bent to walk extra softly, I slowly made my way across the cozy room towards the door, my ears swiveling independently to try and pick up any sound or voices. The flash of light and the rumble of thunder made me pause, but after that I crept on.

There was a rustling sound coming from the hall and through the doorway. I thanked whatever force arranges these things for the soft carpet I was on as I crept towards the doorway.

“Why are you checking over there?” one of the stallions asked. “The outgoing piles are over here.”

“The unsorted ones are over here,” the other stallion asked.

“And over here. I can barely see anything,” the first one said. “I need you and your horn over here.”

“Just light a lamp,” the second one answered.

“No!” Silver Spoon hissed loudly. “Do you want the whole town to know we’re here? Keep the light down and find that letter, fast.”

After a short pause, the first stallion muttered, “Those two are kinda mutually exclusive.”

I rolled the wafer roll around in my mouth, then carefully walked out into the hallway.

The stairs were directly to my left, leading down to the large room on the bottom floor. They were supported by thick oak bars going all the way to the ceiling, enabling me to stay low and spy on the three ponies downstairs ransacking the place.

The sound of rain helped mask the sounds of my sneaking as I took position to spy on the trio. I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to tackle this more than a little complicated situation, while feeling like just laying my head down and falling asleep.

‘I could sneak down there and try and rifle through the piles and shelves they haven’t reached yet, but the chance of me finding what I’m looking for without getting caught is too low. I could wait until they have something and try and snatch the letter when and if they find it, but I’m outnumbered and about to collapse anyway. What to do, what to do?’

“I can’t tell where we’re supposed to look,” one of the stallions said. “There’re are like fifty piles called ‘outgoing’ around here.”

“That Ditzy mare,” Silver Spoon muttered. “Just keep watch by the door and make sure nopony notices we’re here. We should have hours to find it.”

‘That is an excellent idea. Look at the door, not at the rest of the room.’

“But it will take longer if only two are looking,” he complained.

“Between safe and fast, I’m going with safe,” Silver Spoon said. “Besides, you said you can barely see anything.”

“And what about you? You’re an earth pony too.”

“Just do as I say, okay?” Silver Spoon snapped.

“Alright, alright. Sheesh.”

The stallion walked over to the door and peeked his head around the corner by the window in the door, peering out into the darkness, and perhaps it was my short rest here at the top of the stairs, or I found this development encouraging, or perhaps that and more, but I felt a second wind building up inside me. A little one at least.

When Silver Spoon and the unicorn stallion were once again focused on the stacks of letters, I waited for another discharge of lightning. Don’t want them to see my outline in the flash. I slowly snuck down the stairs, keeping a low profile like a lion on the prowl.

I took position behind a large, potted viper’s bowstring, feeling reasonably sure that the filly and her thugs would have no reason to look there, before taking out another wafer roll to still my nerves with.

I had sacrificed a superior vantage point for being closer to the action. The stakes were high and my hand wasn’t great, but I had played for too long to fold now.

I focused on the piles that were furthest from Silver and the stallion. I didn’t know if the letters were filed in the order they had been accepted, but if they did, it meant that they had looked through one end by now and hadn’t found anything.

Flashes from another pulse of lightning shone through the window, and I magicked two small piles down from the edge of the table, away from the sight of the two other ponies searching, and floated them over to myself.

I might not have have the same field of vision as most others, but my night-vision was pretty good. It was still pretty dark, but there wasn’t much to look through per letter.

I kept my search as quiet as I could, and above the sound of rain, I didn’t make a sound.

... Until I found something.



To: Private Studded Armor, skyward barracks, Crystal Palace, Crystal Empire.
Sender: Gabrielle Desrochers, Golden Oaks Library, Ponyville.



I froze.

‘... What is this?’

I read the name of the recipient and sender again.

‘This is from… me? Who is…? Studded! My friend, and… assistant. Assisting with what?’

The stagnant pool of long term memories stirred, and trapped gasses of recollection were released from the depths.

I looked down on my metallic hoof, the so alien part of me.

‘He helped me. I was… I… I came from somewhere else. We went to Ponyville and stayed at… Twilight’s! Yeah, Twilight is my friend. My grumpy landlady is—no! No she’s Princess Celestia’s student, and a princess herself.’

I looked between my prostheses and the letter again.

‘Then… who am I? I made these. I’m Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers, private eye for hire, tough champion of the little guy, armed with… no. Fillies aren’t private detectives, and what kind of pony name is that? I’m… a human. From Earth.’

I looked down at the letter. This wasn’t the one that Fluttershy had told me to find, but it was the one everyone were looking for. I was sure of it.

‘... Something very strange is going on here.’

I don’t know how long I was lying in that little corner, but it wasn’t long enough for Silver Spoon and the goons to finish their search.

It was however long enough for the wafer roll on my mouth to start falling apart from the drool in my mouth, and half of it broke apart and fell down on the pile of paper in front of me with crackling crunch.

The room froze as four sets of ears immediately perked up.

“What was that!?” the earth pony stallion said.

“I don’t know,” Silver Spoon said. “You go check.”

I immediately put the letter in my mouth and quickly backed away under the stairs.

“Somepony’s in here!” the stallion said from where I had been going through the letters.

“Spread out! Find them!” Silver Spoon barked. “And get some lights going in here.”

I decided to take my chance this early. One of them was going to be busy lighting lanterns, and after that there’d be less darkness to hide in.

I snuck towards the stairs, and climbed up them as fast as I could without making any sound.

Just as a weak, orange light started warming the room, another flash of lightning came from outside, and the shadow of my sneaking form was plastered over the wall.

Once again, the room froze, me at being spotted, and the others at spotting me.

“There! Up the stairs!” Silver Spoon shouted, and I immediately turned around towards the earth pony stallion, the one closest to me.

I whipped my hoof around a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and when I heard a satisfactory click, I aimed my prosthesis at him through the bars supporting the stairs.

I let out a wild shot at him, and he ducked as a box of empty envelopes exploded over his head, then jumped over the desk to take cover.

“Stop them!” Silver Spoon shouted, and a blast of unicorn magic shot towards me.

It struck beside me, rattling the stairs slightly.

This wasn’t a fight I could win. I turned back towards the upper floor, and started running as fast as I could.

“After them!” Silver Spoon shouted, and I heard three sets of hooves following me.

I turned around and raised my prosthesis, intending on letting loose another discouraging pulse of stun magic, when another bolt of magic hit the one I shot right as it left my hoof.

A small explosion of magic resulted from the collision, and I was slung backward from the shockwave. I let out a gasp, and the letter fell from my mouth.

...

Something in front of me was spinning, and I extended a hoof to try and steady whatever it was.

When I reached out, I got a sense of just how far away that thing that I was trying to steady, and I realized that I was looking at the roof.

I shook my head, and tried standing up without tripping over my trench coat.

The room I came from was to my side, and I stumbled towards it when I glanced towards the stairs.

The earth pony stallion was coming up them with an armchair on his back. He dumped it on the floor before turning around and bucking it towards me.

I jumped out of the way into the room, trying to run towards the window. The armchair crashed against the wall in the corridor outside with a “thump”.

I reared up by the window and threw it open, and the sounds of the approaching hooves made me turn around and send another magic blast towards my pursuers.

The earth pony stallion ducked away from the shot, then the unicorn came into view and let loose another blast of magic.

I threw up my prosthesis to shield myself, and the blast hit it square in the lower leg.

I was pushed back and fell straight out the window, landing in a pile in the wet flower bed outside, then let out a sigh.

“I got ‘em!” the unicorn stallion shouted.

“That was Gabrielle Desrochers,” Silver Spoon said. “It’ll take more than that.”

I let out a groan, then rose up to sprint down the street towards the houses on the other side.

“She’s still up!” the earth pony shouted behind me.

“Told you,” Silver Spoon said.

I looked back and saw the earth pony stallion and Silver Spoon standing in the window, the latter holding the letter in her mouth.

The unicorn appeared behind them and pushed the earth pony away, then powered up his horn.

“Don’t bother,” Silver Spoon said, and the unicorn powered down. “We have what we came for. Let’s just get back.”

I slipped behind a corner of a house and kept running, thanking Celestia that Silver Spoon wasn’t interested in pursuing me. They might’ve captured me if they got me completely helpless, but pursuing me wasn’t worth the effort.

… I hoped.

Good thing too, because I was about to collapse, and after two minutes of running, I did.

I rolled over on my back, and stared up into the rain coming down on me, when a face appeared over it.

It was mint green, with a white mane.

“It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?” Lyra said.

I groaned as I felt myself being lifted into the air and deposited on her back, then let myself lose consciousness, not being able to remember the last time I was so happy to do so.


—


Gaiden part one


Under A Thrilling Moon. Part Two:



—


“I swam through the darkness, like the lone ship looking for a port. Suddenly, the voice was there, and I realized I was dreaming.”

“Gabrielle?”

“... The voice asked.”

“Gabrielle. What is happening?”

“... The voice continued in confusion. There was silence for a moment, as if the voice was contemplating what it should do.

“For my part, I just reclined against the shadows of the dream, thankful for the respite, wherever and whenever I was going to wake up.”

“Are you under a spell then?”

“... The voice finally asked, thinking hard.”

“Oh for—”

“It said, clearly frustrated.

“It grunted at my narration, before I felt some form of magic building up.”

“An intricate affair. Very impressive, but.”

“... The voice said.”

“But, I, can, help.”

“It continued, probably glaring at me in annoyance.”

“Ugh. Just wake up for now.”


—


I opened my eye, and took a look around me. I was in a small bed in a rather plain room, with dark wooden panels, weakly illuminated by a few large candles on the small table beside the bed.

Beside the bed was a window with the curtain drawn, which spoke against me being captured. No malefactor would place their captive beside a window. Especially a night like this were the rain could help mask the sound of whatever one would be up to.

This comfort vanished when I tried reaching for the windows, and found out that I didn’t have a right foreleg to reach for it with.

I looked down at myself. All my clothes were gone, as were my prostheses. Even my eye was missing.

I slumped back against the pillow, and tried gathering up the energy to do… something. I wasn’t sure what that something was, but this wasn’t the type of situation I was comfortable with just waiting around in.

After the third deep breath, I scooted over to the edge of the bed, and tried gently sliding down to the floor.

Letting out an “Oomph!” I landed on the floor in a heap, then started dragging myself against the floor.

Fatigue clung to me like the rain had earlier, but I reached the door, dragged myself up against it, then turned the handle.

I ended up in a pile in the floor again, this time outside the room. It was in a corridor, carpeted and homey. I heard a set of hooves coming up the stairs around the corner on the far side, and held my breath.

I let out a sigh of relief when Nurse Redheart came into view, her usual cap missing and her mane flowing free. She let out a surprised cry when she saw me, and walked up to me with determined steps.

“And where do you think you’re going?” she sternly asked as she walked up to me.

I let out another sigh of relief when she crouched down beside me, then scooped me unto her back. “Back to bed I hope,” I said.

Redheart let out a snort. “You’re absolutely right about that. Lying in bed is the only thing you’re in a state to do.”

She walked up to the bed, then tipped me into it. “Now, you are going to stay right here while I get something for you to eat,” she said.

Struggling to keep my eye open, I nevertheless gave her a look. “Thanks,” I said.

She gave me a look of deep affection, before shaking her head, seeming to struggle against an invasive thought. With a look of concentration, she smiled at me, and said, “You’re welcome,” before her stern and grumpy expression returned, and she walked out of the room.

Before long, just as I was dozing off, Redheart returned with a bowl of soup in her mouth. She set the bowl down on the nightstand, and asked, “Can you eat, or do I need to feed you?”

I chuckled as I rose to a sitting position. “I think I can handle it,” I said.

I took the spoon from the bowl in my foreleg, and started eating. It was a nice soup, but my hunger made it one of the tastiest things I‘d ever eaten. I had to eat with my left foreleg of course.

“Hey, Redheart,” I asked between mouthfuls. “Where are my legs, and clothes?”

“They were filthy, so I cleaned them off, along with your clothes. They’re drying off in the other room,” she said. “You had a magical exhaustion, and your legs were slowing down your recovery, so it’s a good thing that you showed me how to remove them back when you...” she trailed off.

I looked up at her, and our eyes locked on. Redheart’s stern expression softened to a mix between worry and fondness.

“... Gabe? I don’t know why I’m acting this way,” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t snap at you. You’re my friend, and Lyra found you out in the rain, and asked me to take care of you ‘just as usual’. I should be taking you to the hospital. I… I don’t—”

I reached out and grabbed her around the neck, pulling her into a hug.

“I know,” I said, and she leaned into the hug. “Something strange is going on. I’m out spying on people and getting into fights for some reason. I’m not a private eye, but I’m acting like one. Don’t worry about it. I know you don’t mean it.”

Redheart let out a sigh. “Okay. Can I go back to… however I was acting before? It’s getting kinda hard not keeping it up.”

I leaned back from her. “Yeah. Same here,” I said.

She gave me a smile before her expression hardened again. “Well, eat up,” she said. “Then you’re going back to bed. Lyra said she’d be back later. I’ll wake you up when she is.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She walked out and shut the door behind her. I quickly finished the soup, doing my best to scrape up everything in the bowl, which wasn’t an easy task with one foreleg and not enough juice left to hold it magically.

Normally, I wouldn’t be able to rest properly in a situation like this. Vulnerable, and with Diamond Tiara and her thugs knowing I was against them.

But this wasn’t normal tiredness.

So I slept. Deeply.


—


By the time Redheart came back, I had recovered enough to be feeling that normal tired you feel from having slept for too long and not feeling like you’re able to wake up properly. The sun was setting again, and I hoped that Twilight hadn’t started waking up from whatever was happening enough to worry about me.

“She’s waiting for you downstairs,” Redheart said, as she tossed my legs, my vest, trench coat, and hat next to me on the bed.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and started activating and attaching my legs, before moving on to my coat and hat.

I looked up, and saw Redheart standing in front of me with a small smile, and my prosthetic eye in her hoof.

“I cleaned it off. There were crusts building on it,” she said.

I smiled back at her. “Thanks,” I said, then took the eye, plopping it back in.

I hopped off the bed, and we started walking towards the ground floor.

“I hope you can fix this, Gabe,” Redheart said.

“Yeah. Well, I seem to be playing a character, and my character has a gut feeling that doing my job is the key to all this,” I said.

“Oh, good,” she said, before shaking her head. “Oh, here we go again.” She looked at me with weary annoyance. “She’s in the kitchen.”

She pointed towards an opening in the lounge (the rest of the house was a lot more furnished by the way), then we walked in to see Lyra reclining against a stool by a table.

“Hey, Gabe. Back on your hooves again?” she asked, with a sly grin

I shakingly took a seat by the table. “Kinda,” I said, and pulled my coat closer around me. “Thanks for your help.”

“Well, I’d tell you to remember that the next time you pay for a lookout, but I can’t really complain with your last payment.”

“I’ve heard of the word ‘foresight’, but I never thought I’d have any,” I said, and fished a wafer roll out of my inner pocket.

Redheart went to making the dishes, not really hiding that she was listening.

“So, what do you have for me?” I asked Lyra.

“Alright. Diamond Tiara’s little helper, Silver Spoon, has been asking around about the post office. She’s apparently looking for something. The letter you mentioned, I assume, but I think you know that already, going by where I found you yesterday,” Lyra said, and gave me a sly grin.

I let out a small groan. “Yes, I know that,” I said, and just waved for her to continue.

“Well, we also checked out Fluttershy, to see what her deal is. You said that she said that her reputation was at stake, but I gotta tell ya, we were struggling to find out what kind of reputation she’d lose,” Lyra said, and shrugged.

I frowned at that. That’s another angle you should always check, but the first day had moved a bit too fast. “She said her family might be at risk.”

“Dunno how that’d work,” Lyra said, and shrugged again. “If she has a family, they don’t live anywhere nearby.”

My face mellowed from exasperation. Clients hardly ever gave you the full truth, but the ones outright trying to manipulate you were always hard.

‘And she seemed like such a nice mare, too. Wait, she is a nice mare. I know she is. Ah, whatever, I’ll deal with that later.’

“Apparently, she lives alone with a bunch of animals just outside of town. When she went into town a few days ago to buy fodder from the Rich’s little emporium, she apparently met with Diamond Tiara. No idea if it was voluntarily or not.”

“So she might’ve be coerced into it?” Redheart asked.

“Maybe,” Lyra said. “Haven’t heard that she’s familiar with Diamond Tiara from before, but we haven’t heard that she isn’t either.”

I nodded. “What else?”

“Well, here’s where it gets interesting,” Lyra said, as always relishing in a rapt audience. “That letter you mentioned? It’s not her’s. Can’t be. She hasn’t sent anything in weeks.”

I sighed. “I guess I’m not surprised. Who’s is it?”

“We don’t know,” Lyra said. “But it’s not Diamond Tiara’s either, she wants it for a trade, apparently.”

“Trade it for what?” Redheart asked.

“And with whom?” I asked.

“Don’t know, but apparently there’s money involved,” Lyra said. “And that’s pretty much all we have on this topic.”

“Alright,” I said. “Now, about Tiara’s thugs.”

“They were watching Golden Oaks a few hours into the afternoon,” Lyra said, and looked out through the window, to the rain coming down, either still or again, I wasn’t sure. “But they gave up. Can’t blame ‘em.”

I took some amount of pleasure in that, hoping that the thugs that had been standing out in the rain all day were the same ones who had blasted me out the window in the post office. “Good to know.”

“And that’s pretty much it,” Lyra said.

I nodded. “So how much did the little rescue cost me?” I asked.

Lyra put her hoof to her chin and looked up into the roof. “Just customer loyalty,” she said and grinned at me.

I gave her a wry smile back. “Well, I think it’s about time I made it back to Golden Oaks,” I said, and made to get out of my seat.

Redheart’s hoof was immediately pressing down on my prosthesis-outfitted shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said, sternly.

I grinned at her over my shoulder. “I didn’t know you liked having me here that much,” I said.

Redheart snorted at me, rustling my mane. “The rain is gonna let up around sunset. Until then, you’re staying here, resting.”

Lyra shrugged at me, and gave me an amused smile. “I wouldn’t be able to argue with that,” she said, then rose up. “I think my work here is done. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Lyra,” I said.

“I trust you’ll see yourself out?” Redheart said to Lyra.

Lyra just put a hoof up placatingly, and started moving towards the door.

“And you,” Redheart said to me. “Bed, couch, hanging upside down from the rafters, I don’t care, you’re gonna be resting. Get moving or I’ll carry you.”

I made like Lyra and obeyed.


—


I opened the door to Golden Oaks. Lyra had been right, I saw no malice loitering around outside the place. Diamond Tiara’s thugs weren’t very good at the whole cloak-and-dagger thing. They’d caught me once, but I wasn’t gonna let them do it twice.

The main hall was empty as I entered, the air was still and the lamps were out.

Bracing myself for a verbal whipping from my alicorn landlady, I quietly crept across the wooden floor, feeling the hairs on my coat stand up. If it was from Twilight’s eyes boring into me from some corner, or some unsavory malefactor, I didn’t know.

I reached the stairs, then quietly walked up to my office. I walked in, shutting the door behind me, and took a look around the empty room.

‘Huh. False alarm?’

I locked the door behind me, then slowly walked over and pulled the curtains over the window.

I checked in the corners, the closet, and under the bed, but there was no one in here but me.

Suddenly, there was an uneven rapping on my door, like someone hesitated to make their presences known.

I whipped my head to face it, foreleg shooting up and my hoof rotating to ready the stun gun.

All was quiet for a moment, and I glanced at the window, but saw nothing but the silhouette of the town in the darkness.

The rapps had been fitful, and not at all like that of someone with dark intent.

Another set of rapps came from the door, a little more steady this time.

“Ms Desrochers?” a mare called from the other side.

I let out my breath, and rotated my hoof again before setting it down on the floor, before walking over to the door, fanning myself with my hat as I did.

I put my hat on, and opened the door, perhaps a bit more cautiously than I would have liked for my image.

Outside stood Derpy, a worried expression on her face and one of her eyes focusing on me. I quickly took in the rest of the hallway to see if there was anyone else with her, perhaps waiting in the shadows for me to open the door.

I gave her expression another quick scan and had to search my brain for a proper response. “That’s right. Can I help you?”

There was no accusation in her voice. Worry, but not directed at me specifically. So I didn’t need to worry that my meager finances would go to cover the damage of the post office. Besides, the proper way to do that, and Derpy was all about proper procedure, would be to go to the town hall and have them send me an invoice.

“Uhm, I want something found,” Derpy said. “So I thought I’d hire you.”

I almost excused myself with the intent of shutting the door there and then. Perhaps contradictory, spending all day in bed doesn’t make you feel energized in the slightest. But then I realized who was standing in front of me and what had happened yesterday.

“I have other cases,” I said, keeping it vague. “But come in anyway and let’s hear it.”

I made way for Derpy and shut the door behind her. We silently sat down, and she cocked her head while she looked at me with concern. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem tired.”

“Like I said, I have other cases,” I said, and tried summoning a bit of energy to pour into my posture and held out my hoof invitingly. This could be a clue after all. “Please, go on.”

Derpy shook her head and stopped staring at my metallic hoof, before looking at my face. “Ehm, yesterday, after the post office closed, and I had cleaned off the counter, and made sure the stacks were in order, and fireplace in the lounge wasn’t lit, and all the uniforms were clean” – I smiled and waved my hoof encouragingly, but to no effect – “and the inkwells were in the box, and turned off the lights, and shut all the doors, and locked them, somepony must’ve come in and made a mess, because this morning, there was shredded paper all over the floor! and one box of envelopes was ruined, and some furniture was turned over, and the window to the second floor was open, and it was such a mess.”

The genuineness of her words and the expression on her face made me struggle to not grimace a little in pain.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It sounds like you had a rough day.”

“Oh it was no problem. I cleaned that up no problem,” Derpy said, smiling calmly.

“Glad to hear that,” I said, relieved. “So do you need help to figure out what happened?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. “I think I figured out where the shredded paper came from. It came from the box of ruined envelopes.”

“That… is a sound deduction,” I agreed, making Derpy beam. “So do you need my help with anything?” I asked.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Well, I went through the box of outgoing letters, and one of them was missing. I looked under the potted plant, I looked in the attic, I looked in my lunchbox, I looked between the couch cushions, but I couldn’t find it. I think the same pony who broke into the office yesterday took it.”

“Another sound deduction,” I agreed. “You want it found?”

“Uhu,” Derpy said, nodding her head, and started talking in a very deliberate manner. “In accordance with the official postal service guidelines, when the realm is not officially declared to be in a state of emergency, engaged in national conflict, under martial law, or other similar disruption, disturbances to operations should be reported to senior members within the institution, government representatives of the region, and if possible, applicable agents of law enforcement.”

I blinked at Derpy for a few moments. “Are you conscripting me to look for the lost letter?”

Derpy happily shook her head. “Nope! The Ponyville Postal Services doesn’t have the authority or budget for that.”

“So no payment for me either.”

“Not from me, but you’ll be compensated by the municipality in accordance to section one hundred and eighty–”

“Alright, I think I get it,” I said, holding up my hooves. “Don’t worry, Derpy. I’ll find your letter. What can you tell me about it?”

Derpy put her hoof to her mouth and thought for a moment. “Uhm… it was in the far side of the hall, on the counter by the potted plant. There were fifty four letters there yesterday when I went home, and today there were fifty three.”

I knew more about the letter than she did, but I still wanted to keep up appearances. “Anything else you can tell me?” I said, raising my eyebrow.

“Nope!” Derpy said, cheerfully.

“Alright, you’ll probably want to go home then,” I said, and rose from my chair.

“Yep!” Derpy said, and walked out the door that I held open for her. “See you when you’ve found the letter, Ms Desrochers.”

“Goodnight, Derpy,” I said, and closed the door.

I lingered there for a moment, thinking about that letter, specifically the contents of that letter, and that made me remember that I was a human. A human who had been transformed into a pony and… something.

I tapped my head with my hoof, trying to remember, before registering the strange sensation from doing so, and looked down at the metallic surface of my prosthetic foreleg.

‘... This is a prosthesis. It’s… rare. Special. I didn’t always have it and… why is it so hard to remember?’

The unnerving feeling from before came back, like some presence was there, watching me.

I barred the door with the chair for my clients, and moved the cabinets to provide me some cover from anyone planning on jumping through the window. I was a bit tired, but my magic was back to normal. I was gonna be able to get off quite a few shots towards anyone planning something.

Moving the cabinets, I noticed the plaque on one. “Formulas - Archive”, it said. I slowly opened it, and took the contents out.

It was a folder, nearly overflowing with papers in various stages of badgerment. I brought it over to the desk, careful not to spill anything, lit a lamp, then started reading.

‘My old works. The early versions of my prostheses. A bit less refined than my current models, but really tough all the same.’

It was like a migraine, but without the unpleasantness. My mind was filling up, too many things were trying to fit in there, and overwhelm me. Or at least discourage me from doing what I was doing.

‘No dice. No one tells me what to think. Not even my own brain.’

In the fog of my mind, I noticed one string of thought feeling very familiar. I grabbed it, and followed it through the haze.

The fog suddenly lifted. Just like it had back at Redheart’s. It was still there, tucked away in a corner of my brain, but as long as I held on to these thoughts, I could easily keep it there.

It might sneak up on me if I lower my guard, like when I sleep.

‘Time to take care of it right now then.’

I emptied another cabinet into my desk, marked “Formulas - Current”, and “Miscellaneous Research”. I flipped through the papers in the folders, noting how proficient I had become at handling papers using only my hooves, then making a note of that thought, as it further grounded my state of mind the way I wanted it to.

‘Mass accelerator, magical data storage protocols, encryption, flight, auditory recordings, fast-acting ingested magic boosters, rechargeable propellants, water jets…’ On and on I flipped through the projects and subjects, thinking back and remembering.

In my days since becoming a pony, thinking about my time as a human back on Earth sometimes felt like remembering a former life. Now, that also encompassed my life as a pony up until very recently. I hadn’t forgotten anything, I was just in a state where it felt disconnected if I didn’t think about it.

Then I found it. “Thaumatic Interface”, the project was called… By me.

A way to create a set of visible inputs. Routines and subroutines, easily adjusted by a moderately skilled magician to respond to a wide range of physical and magical interaction, sending out magic in several different ways equally adjustable, and visually represented by low-powered magic light.

‘It was gonna be like a computer from a science fiction movie. Like a holographic keyboard instead of an actual keyboard. From there you could make things like large command-consoles, and more.’

I smiled, thinking back and remembering that I really didn’t have any plans on what to do with it. I just thought it was gonna be awesome, and make some experiments with it before moving on to making my magical music player, using that as a test device.

Turning back to the notes, I started reading about my preliminary research.

‘Let’s see. “Few analogues available in my proximity, if anywhere. Twilight, as expected, is very proficient in making illusory illustrations, which will be useful knowledge, but she has trouble wrapping her head around the goal of the project. She needs to see more science fiction movies. Perhaps more movie nights are in order.

‘“I’ve found a potential lead in the project. Spike has a comic with a fairly powerful and very impressively created set of enchantments in it. Key features include both physical interactions, as well as visual, auditory, and physical feedback (perhaps even olfactory) all illusory. This could be perfect for gaining some knowledge about the subject, and a good jump-off point.”’.

It came back to me in a flash. That day where Twilight and I were researching Spike’s comic. ‘We were making good progress, and having fun too. Then it exploded, in some way. The next day was when this started… oh thank her teacher this has only been going on since then.’

I shook my head in relief, and went back to thinking.

I almost smacked myself when I remembered. I projected myself into my horn, and sensed the magic around me. What I saw made me fall over in my chair.

The whole library was absolutely soaked in magic. Glowing phenomena pulsed across the structure and everything in it, and soft tendrils were reaching out from the large glow, into the village green beyond. I saw Spike resting in a couch, and one tendril connected him to the library.

I almost didn’t notice another tendril trying to “reach” for me, but it was mostly repelled, as if by a magnetic field.

‘Well… that’s interesting.’

I magically reached out and pushed the tendril away from me. When I did, what little creeping feeling there was to skulk around with a trench coat in the night and spy on people vanished.

“Okay, uuh… next step is Twilight.”

I let the tendril try and come at me again, but its hold over me was very limited now that I knew how to concentrate to limits its influence over me.

With that, however, came a sudden fear of my landlady. Not Twilight as such, just the way I knew she was now.

I braced myself, walked over and unbarricaded the door, then made my way downstairs. Twilight was sitting in the kitchen, reading a book and drinking tea, looking dour as always, in her old bathrobe and hair curlers.

‘No! Not always. Only since this started, because she’s supposed to.’

Twilight looked up at me with a cross expression when I walked in. “Miss Desrochers,” she said, coolly. “To what do I owe this visit?”

I closed my eyes, projected myself into my horn, and took a look at Twilight. There was something different about her. Not one, but several tendrils of magic, loads of them in fact, were swirling around her, gently hovering around her.

‘... Oh. Now I see where this thing has been getting it’s magic from. She must be exhausted, which probably haven’t helped her mood. Good thing she’s an alicorn.’

I magically reached out and grabbed a few tendrils and yanked them off her. She sat up and eyed me warily. “Desrochers? What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’m gonna try and dispel something,” I said, then I lost the grip on the tendrils, and they reaffirmed their grip on her. I tried grabbing a few more. “It might take a while to explain, and I wanna do it when you’re more receptive.”

“Desrochers?” she asked in alarm, as I yanked a few tendrils. “Ga–Gabrielle!? What are you doing?”

‘Yeah, that might not have been the best thing to say.’

“Don’t worry, I think I know what I’m doing,” I said, my voice straining a bit. I yanked a few more tendrils, but they kept reforming. I don’t know what she was feeling, but I guessed it was some strange feeling running through her whenever I interrupted the flow of magic going out of her.

“S–stop! Whatever you’re doing, stop it!” she shouted.

‘Man, I am really smooth today.’

I grabbed a few more tendrils, but no dice. ‘Ugh! This isn’t helping. Which one is it!?’

“Stop!” she shouted again.

“Twilight!” I shouted. “You’re an alicorn, right!?”

“W–what!?” she shouted. “What does that have to do with anything!?”

“Just say it. Tell me you’re an alicorn,” I said, as commandingly as I could.

“Alright, alright, I’m an alicorn! Now please stop it.”

“All alicorns are royalty,” I said, steadily. “What are you doing as a landlady?”

I didn’t play any attention to her face, but I guessed there was confusion and a bit of anger there. “I, I, I can be whatever I want!” she said.

“How did you become an alicorn?” I asked.

“I, I don’t have to answer that!” she protested.

“You became an alicorn through the power of friendship,” I said, as calmly as I could, before turning stern. “Tell me about your friends,” I commanded.

“Wha–why? What do they have to do with anything?” she asked.

“Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Rarity,” I listed them off. “You and they were the carriers of the elements of harmony. How did you become friends?”

“We, we… we…” she stammered, and I saw something flicker amongst the tendrils around her.

“Tell me what you did,” I said. “You know Princess Luna, tell me how you can know her.”

“We… we saved her,” she said, quietly, almost in awe of her own words.

I saw one of the tendrils being pushed away from her. I immediately grabbed it and yanked it off her.

I heard Twilight let out a gasp, followed by a weak groan and a thump.

Keeping my attention concentrated on the tendril trying to slither back onto Twilight, and keeping my attention on the one trying to do the same for me, was too much to do while using my eyes, or “looking” at anything else magically. So I had to carefully walk over to Twilight, essentially voluntarily blinded, and started feeling around where I last heard her.

I met a soft amount of resistance after probing for a while with my fleshy hoof, and slowly reached down to nuzzle Twilight.

When I established the way she was lying, I slipped underneath her, and carried her off towards the cushion she had been lying on as gently as I could.

“Twilight?” I asked. “Twilight, are you okay?”

There was a soft moan, and I found her face lifted up so that it was facing my general direction.

“Twiiiliiight?” I asked softly. “Yeah, I figure you’re tired,” I said, seeing all the tendrils still slowly draining her of magic, “but I need you to wake up.”

She let out another soft groan, and stirred.

“Gabe?” she asked, a hint of fear in her voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here. How do you feel?”

“I feel...” she said, and paused.

“Oh Celestia!” she exclaimed, and put her forelegs around me. “Gabe, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t– I, I don’t know what happened! I—”

“It’s okay,” I said, hugging her back. “It’s okay, I know you weren’t. Neither was I.”

“But what happened, and why are you dressed like that? And why am I—uagh!” she exclaimed, and pulled back in shock.

“What, what!?” I asked.

“My… my mane,” she said. “Why would I ever do this to my own mane?”

“Well, it’s kinda hard to explain with words,” I said. “But uh, let me ask you again, how do you feel?”

“Aside from just realizing I’ve been sitting alone for two days and feeling dour, while acting the way I did to you, I mostly feel a bit tired,” she said.

“Only a bit?” I asked. “Okay, that’s good.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, and hesitated for a while. “Gabe? Are you okay? You haven’t hurt your eye, have you?”

I shook my head. “No, I just need to keep my concentration. If you’re not feeling too bad, I would appreciate it if you started sensing magic. That will explain quite a lot.”

“Okay,” she said, confused, then let out a gasp. “Gabe… what’s going on?”

“Remember that research we were doing on Spike’s comic, and the part of the magic that covered everything afterwards? I think this is it.”

“But what are all these things doing with me?” she asked, and pushed a few of them away from herself, before they came at her again.

“I uh,” I said, hesitating. “I think you’re the fuel for this whole arrangement.”

Twilight groaned, but I stopped her before she could get anything else off.

“Also, see this thing here?” I asked, waving the tendril that was trying to get at her in front of her magical sight. “This is the one that’s causing you to act the way you did, and I’m getting a bit tired of holding this.”

“Oh! Oh, sorry,” she said, and grabbed it herself.

I let out a sigh of relief, then deprojected myself and opened my eye again. “Thanks.”

“So what’s going on?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Shortly after I noticed, I came down here and snapped you out of it.”

“I don’t like this,” Twilight said. “Do you think anypony’s been hurt?”

I shook my head. “I’ve only seen a few of these tendrils go beyond the library, and I think I’ve met everyone who’re involved. They’re all okay.”

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Twilight breathed. “Are they acting strange too?”

“Yes, just like we were,” I said. “Twilight… I think we’re in a story.”

Twilight was about to say something when she froze. She closed her eyes and projected herself into her horn again, then double-checked that she had a firm grip on the tendril affecting her, before moving towards the library.

I followed, and started sensing magic as well. What I saw didn’t really surprise me. A particularly intense form of the magic energy saturating the library had settled down on parts of the shelves, and was slowly spreading towards the other section.

“Uh, Gabe, the tendril that’s connected to you comes from—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I sighed. “Believe me, I know.”

“So how are you acting so much like, well, you?” she asked. “It’s connected to you right now.”

“I think I found a logical fallacy or something,” I said. “I found proof that I wasn’t what… this story magic wants me to be, and it’s much easier to suppress it if I keep it in mind.”

Twilight took another look at the shelves. “It’s spreading,” she said.

“Yup,” I sighed. “Other genres.”

“And there are more of those tendrils growing out from the library,” she said.

“Yup,” I sighed again.

Twilight turned towards me. “Then we should probably try and fix this.”

“Yup.”

We traced the flow of magic across the library. There was a bunch of observations about why it formed and how (Twilight speculated wild magic and I was inclined to agree with her experienced view). Then, after some time of study, we came to a conclusion.

“Something’s missing,” Twilight said. “A crucial document, either removed or misplaced. I don’t know what it contains, or even what it is, but there are traces and shadows of it everywhere. Without it, I don’t know how we’re supposed to dispel this safely.”

I sighed, once more. I knew where this was going. I was starting to suspect that this magic was aware, or otherwise had some form of sentience, and was laughing at me.

“It’s the letter I’ve been hired by Fluttershy to find. She’s being blackmailed by Diamond Tiara, who wants it for some reason,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Twilight asked.

“Because I wrote it,” I said. “It’s the only object that has left this library in two days. Also, the story wants me to get it.”

“Why is Diamond Tiara blackmailing Fluttershy?” Twilight asked. “And how?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s the kind of thing that happens,” I said.

“And why is Diamond Tiara after a letter that you wrote?” Twilight asked.

“That’s what I wanna find out. Look at the mesh of the enchantment again,” I said. “It’s got big holes in it. Those are some pretty significant flaws.

“We need the letter, which is also what the story wants me to find,” I said, dejectedly. “Time to get to work.”

“No,” Twilight said, and put her hoof on my shoulder. “You’ve done enough, and you should rest.”

“You should rest,” I said. “I know you’re an alicorn and have years of experience, but you’re still having your magic sucked out of you.”

“I can handle it,” she said. “I just need to talk with the right ponies before everyone is lost in a story. You just go and rest up.”

She turned around and walked towards the door, but shortly after she had stepped out into the early night, her steps became sluggish, and she fought to walk on as if invisible cords held her back.

That was actually a very accurate likening, since after a few more steps, she was launched backwards and landed on her back beside me, her eyes spinning in different directions.

“Are you okay?” I said

“Uuh, I think so,” she yawned.

“Just sit tight,” I said. “I’ll be back with the letter. Diamond Tiara wants something of mine. I just have to find her.”

It was just as well. Now she didn’t have to go out of the house with those curlers still in her mane.

I adjusted my hat, put a wafer roll in my mouth, and started walking towards door. When I was halfway through it, I turned around and faced the library’s main hall.

“I’m onto you! Those flaws are plot holes!” I shouted.

I got the distinct feeling that something in the library besides Twilight heard that, and didn’t care.

Fishing out another wafer roll, I started walking down the street, not being able to stop myself from grumbling.


—


It was time for some answers. What I saw back in the library had me worried. That mutated enchantment or whatever it was was spreading, and if it used Twilight as its fuel, who even knew how far it could go?

So I made my way down the street towards Fluttershy’s cottage. This was the next step in the mystery. She had lied to me, as perhaps I should’ve expected, but I didn’t know why.

She sent me after the letter that Diamond Tiara wanted. Why? And it was my letter, would anyone of them expect to get their hooves on it?

It didn’t make sense that they would be in cahoots either. If they were, why did Diamond Tiara try and double-book me? To throw me off? Judging by my confusion, it would work. Lyra had said that she didn’t know why Fluttershy wanted the letter, but I felt it wasn’t that either.

Whatever the case, I was going to find out. This was just another step on the path to knowledge. It’s just that the path was longer than it first seemed.

Then again, it always is.

The rain from the other day had mostly evaporated. A few puddles remained, mostly visible here on the rough roads on the outskirts of town, but otherwise it was mostly normal humidity.

Fluttershy’s cottage waited ahead. The normally quaint cottage somehow looming like the outline of a hungry wolf in a dark forest.

I stopped a while and waited. Something rubbed me the wrong way, and I softly went off the road, and slowly made my way through the bushes.

Nothing seemed to react to this. Nothing moved in response to me clearly signalling that I noticed something suspicious.

This, of course, meant one of two things. That either I was jumping at shadows (or avoiding shadows as the case might be), or someone saw me, and I didn’t see them.

This place was wild grown. Much of White Tail Woods was cultivated, providing hurdle posts and wires and things like that for crafty ponies, but this wasn’t that. This place was made for little woodland creatures leading merry chases through the bushes and undergrowth.

I slowly circled around to the back of the cabin. The soil was soft and the grass was thick, masking the thumps of my hooves as I jumped over the stream.

The windows were completely dark, hinting at hidden faces observing me from the darkness in countless ways for the creative mind.

I crept up towards the back door, trying a quick but fruitless attempt to look through the windows before I slowly tried the handle on the door. I smelled trouble, but while I wasn’t fully tippity-top, I felt a lot better than the last time I had been in a scuffle.

It opened with a cringe-inducing creak, and I slowly made my way inside, keeping my posture low and my ears swivelling.

The cottage looked like a mess. A sofa was knocked over, something sticky clung to the underside of my hooves, and the sweet smell of crushed produce blanketed the room.

I considered calling out and asking if my client was here, but thought better of it. Yeah, it was incriminating to skulk around someone else’s place like this, but she had no reason to fear me. At least as far as I had determined.

That’s when something swooped down and knocked me off my hooves.

I landed on my back, with a large, shadowy creature looming over me, all sharp angles and ridges.

It let out an angry hiss, and I brought my foreleg prosthesis up to shield myself just in time for something to clamp down on it, drooling hungrily.

‘Taking care of animals, indeed. Just what kind of animals are we talking here?’

The creature’s forelegs started pawing around my head, pulling at my mane and knocking off my hat.

I brought my fleshy foreleg up and tried holding the upper foreleg of my assailant in place, putting it just out of reach of my muzzle.

Using the very short time it reassessed how to get at me, I brought my prosthetic hind leg up between us, then angled its lower part upwards, before kicking the creature off from me.

It’s jaws still clung to my other prosthesis, which I angled in another throw in a different direction, sending the creature tumbling over the floor.

I was immediately on my hooves, rushing the snarling form, jumping at it, and pinning it down with my prosthesis held hard against its throat.

“Don’t move,” I said in a low voice, with as much authority as I could muster, which was actually quite a bit more than I thought I’d manage, before I got a good look at the creature now that it was relatively still.

It let out a whimper and shied away from me.

“... Fluttershy?” I asked, incredulously.

The one eye not hidden beneath her ruffled mane looked up at me. “Hello,” she said, in a small voice. Her mane had become ruffled, though still retaining the same amount of grace as always, her wings were leathery, bat-like affairs, her eyes were red and gave off a slight glow, and I couldn’t help but notice that, just as the crusaders had said, she had a pair of fangs in her mouth.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded weakly. “Mhm.”

“Are you gonna attack me if I let you up?”

“... No.”

I stepped off her, and gently hooked my leg around her to steady her up as I did.

We stood there, awkwardly looking around while we searched for things to say.

“I, uh, heard about when this first happened to you,” I said, slowly scratching the floor with my hoof. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know how much of a secret it was, but I felt I had to say something.

Fluttershy gracefully took off and seemed to flow up towards the ceiling. She hung herself from the rafters with her tail and wrapped herself in a cocoon of her own wings. “It happens again sometimes, but I’ve never lost control like this,” she said behind her wings, with only her eyes peeking out beneath them.

“I have some ideas as to why though,” I said.

She peeked down a bit more under her wings, looking intrigued. “What is it?”

I looked at her, trying to gauge her behavior.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” I said, fighting the urge to refer to her as ‘miss’. “How much you are you now?”

Her eyes shied away from me again. “I remember visiting you the day before yesterday,” she said, and paused. “I hired you.”

“Strange right?” I said. “Like something made us act that way.”

She looked at me again. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s this spell going on at the library. Using a bunch of stories to influence people,” I said. “You seem to be largely snapped out of it by now.”

She shied away again. “A little bit. I’ve never felt like attacking anypony before.”

I nodded. “Well, this might be a bit of a spurious hypothesis, but I think you might be getting conflicting influences from the spell.”

She let out a confused hiss, then stopped herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, I mean... what do you mean?”

“It’s spreading towards the rest of the library, and towards other people in town. No offense, but I think you were the best candidate for a different kind of character. Maybe the effects have at least partially cancelled each other out,” I said. “For now.”

“Oh, uh… I guess that makes sense,” Fluttershy mumbled.

I shook my head. ‘You’re here to fix this, remember? Get in character so we can get this show on the road.’

“Miss Fluttershy,” I said, and stopped myself, holding up a hoof to signal my confusion. “Sorry, Flutters, but I think I need to play along for now.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Uhm, I think I do too.”

“Alright, great,” I said, and walked over to pick up my hat, then putting it back on. “Miss Fluttershy, what were you not telling me when you hired me?”

Despite her intimidating appearance, Fluttershy’s eyes started darting around in anxiety. “I, uh… I… didn’t…” she stammered.

“You said you’d lose your family if you didn’t get that letter, but your family is nowhere near here,” I said, calmly, and without accusation. She wasn’t a soulless liar, her conscience would take care of the accusation part on it’s own. “You live on your own, no partner, and no children.”

She suddenly spread her wings and let out a snarling hiss at me. I took a frightened step back, my metallic hoof spinning around, preparing the stunner.

Her outburst was short-lived though. Her angry expression gave way to one of worry and sadness. Intense, too. It was practically despair. At least that’s what I saw before she cocooned herself again, this time her eyes being completely covered.

“They took him!” she cried into her wings. “They took Angel Bunny!”

“And who is he?” I asked, slowly lowering my foreleg.

“He’s my bunny,” she cried. “They took him, and they said they wouldn’t give him back unless I helped them.”

“By ‘them’ I suppose you mean Diamond Tiara and her goons,” I said.

Fluttershy nodded, as represented by her mane waving from behind her wings.

I sighed, and turned my hoof around again, locking the stunner. “Why did you hire me?” I asked. “What does that letter have to do with anything?”

Fluttershy seemed to relax, or perhaps just sagging from dejection. “I overheard them talking. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. They don’t want the letter, they want something from you. They’re either going to use the letter to get it, or do it some other way.”

“From me?” I asked. “What?”

“I don’t know. They told me to get all the files in your office, but I didn’t know how,” she said. “After I overheard them, I hired you go get it before they did. I thought that… maybe whatever was in the letter was enough to get Angel Bunny back, or perhaps convince you to help me, I don’t know.”

She let out a small shiver. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

“But that letter is only a correspondence with a friend,” I said. “There’s nothing valuable in there. Are they after my files?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think so, but I don’t know what for.”

I sighed, thinking for a while. Diamond Tiara had stolen my letter, but if she was also after my files, that might not be enough to get her to leave me alone.

This provided additional incentive. Fluttershy had already hired me, she just had to change the objective of my task to Angel Bunny, and the story was back on track.

“Miss Fluttershy, your retainer is still good for one more night,” I said.

Fluttershy’s eyes peeked down from under her wings in surprise.

“In fact,” I said, taking off my hat and hammering out a dent in it. “My schedule is otherwise free, if you want me to try and find Angel Bu—”

That was as far as I got before she pounced me again. This time with a loud screeching sound that made my ears flatten against my skull.

There was no snarling or biting this time though, only the embrace of her hooves and her leathery wings.

“Thank you,” she said, after a while in a low voice.

I tentatively returned the hug with one leg. I could feel a fang prodding me in my neck, but she didn’t seem to know about that. “You don’t happen to know where they might be keeping him, do you?”

Her hug sagged a little bit. “No,” she said.

“Oh well,” I said, and leaned away from her. “Time to get to work.”

I started walking towards the door without another word.

Not only was I going out to rescue Fluttershy’s Angel Bunny, I was also there to pay back Diamond Tiara. She had stolen from me, and it was now getting personal, and while it was nothing that couldn’t be replaced it…

I stopped in my tracks a few steps outside the door from Fluttershy’s cottage. No, it really couldn’t be replaced. It was the only thing that would solve this whole situation.

… I angrily kicked a pebble as I started walking again.

‘That sneaky little comic spell. I’m gonna—’

A loud croak from a frog interrupted my train of thought. “Eeey, filly,” the frog said, in an incredibly slimy voice. “Kiss me yo. I’m a priiiince.”

“Fffuaugh–buzz off,” I grumbled at it, and kept walking.


—


Having an opponent without them knowing they’re your opponent can be complicated. You’re tempted to stay in the shadows, acting covertly, secretly, cautiously, and perhaps most frustratingly, slowly.

After enough time of that, it’s almost a relief to act openly. To have them knowing you’re coming, and just psyching yourself up to simply hit harder than the other son of a diamond dog and just win.

That’s what I was doing right now, and the first step was to find a flaw in Diamond Tiara’s defences. They were good, I didn’t know how to strike at her directly, but I had a few ways to probe for a weakness. Two weaknesses, actually.

They were both walking somewhere from a late night excursion from… who cares? The point is that they were out and about, and I knew where.

They were approaching my little arrangement as I sat observing them from my perch on the roof of Carousel Boutique. Good thing to, because if I had to stand listening to Rarity’s loud complaints that she couldn’t feel ever larger peas through ever thinner mattresses from her open window for much longer, I’d might do something drastic.

“I’m telling you, ‘The Leggy Mermares’ is a great name for a band,” Snips said, as they kept walking closer and closer.

“I don’t like it,” Snails said, and I gripped the rope in my hoof tighter and prepared to jump. “I don’t wanna call myself a mare.”

“You don’t have to be the thing your band is named after,” Snips said. “Otherwise, all bands would just be called ‘The Frontpony And The Other O–UAGH!’.”

Snails joined in on that last part, and in both cases they were responses to suddenly being lifted up by the ankles in a large snare, the other end of which I was holding in my hoof.

I landed softly beside where the two unicorn colts were now hanging, and grabbed the handles for the cellar doors just as I felt the combined weight of the two colts starting to lift me up, then quickly pulled the rope through the handles and made a simple but strong knot.

“Wha–What’s going on!?” Snails asked, as the two of them were jostled up and down from my tugging at the rope.

“Hey, wha– Hey!, lemme down!” Snips said loudly, as they finally registered what was going on.

Snails was about to try and hoist himself up to tug at the rope holding the ankles of his hind legs, when I quickly pulled his forelegs down again, and brought up a prepared set of cable ties. “No-no, we won’t have any of that,” I dismissively, as I quickly tied their hooves together.

“Wha, you? What do you want?” Snips asked.

“Just some answers to some questions I have,” I said, as I quickly slipped on a horn trap over his horn, then grabbed his companion’s head and doing the same to him with the other end.

“What? What questions?” Snails asked.

“About Diamond Tiara,” I asked. “And where she’d keep things she doesn’t want people to know she has,” I said, stood down, and took a few steps back to proudly observe my handiwork. It was an interesting display, and I realized that I should’ve brought a camera. Some modern art museum in Canterlot would probably appreciate this little creation.

“We, we don’t know nothing!” Snips quickly sputtered out, both his and his partner’s eyes wide in alarm.

“There are so many reasons to believe that,” I said. “But in this case, I think I want you to tell me what you do know anyway.”

“We-we-we, we can’t,” he said.

“Try,” I insisted encouragingly.

“She, she, she’d—”

“Idiot!” Snips said to his friend, whose muzzle was aimed towards his thanks to the horn-trap. “You just told her that we know!”

“That’s right, he did,” I said, before Snails could answer. “And now you’re gonna tell me the rest.”

Snips’ eyes turned to me, anger and defiance mixed with fear. Something which I could use.

“No, we’re not gonna tell you anything,” he said in a low voice.

“I think you will,” I said, dismissively, and slowly walked towards them. I started rubbing my metallic hoof against the cuff of my trench coat. “I have ways.”

Snails’ eyes didn’t have the same amount of defiance that Snips’ had, and now there was a growing sense of uncertainty in the eyes of the latter.

“What are you going to do?” Snails asked, me knowing that he’d fear the answer.

“This,” I said, when my prosthetic hoof was clean enough, then brought it up to my lips to give it a wet, slobbering kiss.

Their eyes went wide as they realized what I had in store for them. After I slowly removed my lips from the now saliva-wet hoof, I equally slowly brought it towards their muscles.

“N–n, nnnooOOO!” Snips shouted, as I just let him avoid my hoof.

“Filly geeeeerms!” Snails shouted, as I did the same towards him.

“Big, nasty, squirming ones,” I agreed, with a smirk. “They multiply too.”

There were quite a few whimpers and screeches and hyperventilating as I teased the colts with my saliva-covered hoof, their eyes following it like cobras, and every time one managed to squirm away from it, the other one was brought closer, prompting a renewal of effort to stay away from it.

“Alright! Alright! We’ll talk!” Snail’s eventually said.

“I know,” I said, as if they had commented that the stars were out, and brought my hoof down. “Go on.”

“Filthy Rich has a warehouse on the east side of town,” Snails breathed out, hurriedly. “It’s just wood pulp and textiles, and there’s nopony there except a few days a month. Diamond Tiara keeps stuff there all the time.”

There was a moment of silence as Snips looked at Snails, a mix between relief and dejection clear on his face, and I looked at the two with a happy smile.

“Thanks, boys,” I said. “I’m sure someone will find you soon enough.”

I turned around, and walked away. There were a few half-hearted protests from behind me, but they quickly died off.


—



Under A Thrilling Moon. Part three:



—


I walked at a brisk pace through the town. The details I kept seeing were starting to add up, like how Rainbow Dash and Applejack, dressed in a gi and a gunslinger outfit respectively, seemed to be facing each other off in the distance.

I had to do it right though. I couldn’t afford to lose another fight and spend another full day recovering, or worse, getting captured.

One thing that I hoped would help could be found among friends. Not friends themselves: I was planning on doing this myself, but I wanted to be stocked up when I did it.

Scrap Armor opened the door shortly after I knocked on it. The faint glow of the forge being visible through the slits in the curtains of his workshop observatory. Thank Luna for workaholics.

“Gabe? What are you doing here?” he asked, then took a closer look at me . “What are you wearing?”

“Trench coat, hat, shirt, vest,” I listed off. “Long story short, me, and a bunch of other people, are stuck in a story. We’re kinda compelled to act in our assigned roles, and it very much seems like that’s the best way to fix it.”

Scrap looked at me for a few moments, his face locked in confusion, before shaking his head. “Alright. Come on in,” he said, and made way for me.

I gratefully stepped into his workshop, and closed the door after me. This wasn’t a time I was comfortable with lingering on thresholds.

“I’m not staying,” I said. “I just need to borrow some things.”

“What for?” Scrap asked. “Wait, run this through me again. You’re in a story, and… getting to the end of the story stops the spell that causes it.”

“Yeah, you haven’t noticed anything?” I asked. “You have those goggles that can detect arcanic resonances.”

“I’ve been smelting all week,” he said, and reached over for his goggles.

He lowered the goggles over his eyes and looked at me, then took a step back in alarm. “Uaaugh!” he exclaimed. “Gabe... you got this… thing, following you.”

“Like a tendril?” I asked, and he nodded. “Yeah. I can kinda keep it at bay if I want to though.”

He looked around, and looked his eyes at something in the distance. Physically he was staring right into a wall, but he could spot the tendrils snaking their ways across the village green.

“So, those things are causing you to act… appropriate for the story, or something?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Any of them gotten to you yet?”

He looked around again. “No,” he said, slowly.

“Well, I know how to stop it, and I need some gear to get the stuff that lets me do it,” I said.

Armor tore his gaze away from the tendrils, and raised his goggles to look at me. “Tell me where we’re going.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not the kind of story I’m in. I just need to stock up. This is the climax. There needs to be a showdown between me and my opponent… I think.”

“Gabe, I can’t let you just go out on your own,” Scrap insisted.

“Tell you what,” I said, smiling slightly at him. “Stock me up, and if you think I’m gone too long, you can come after me.”

He looked at me for another moment, before nodding. “Alright, what do you need?”

“An arcano-metal torch, a pair of safety goggles, an extra small high-powered magnet-boot…” I said, as I took a seat on a small chair, and Scrap started gathering the things from around his workshop. “At least eight sets of full hoofcuffs, a long-range thauma-disruptor… and Hot Pink.”

Scrap paused and looked at me, as I rolled up the right sleeve of my trench coat. “Going all out?” he asked.

“Sure am,” I said, and rested my prosthesis on the table beside me. “It feels important to get this right.”

Armor dumped most of the things on the table, and took my prosthesis in his hooves to start inserting the thauma-disruptor. “How much are you you right now?” he asked.

“I’m almost all me right now,” I said. “It’s a bit like a dream. A dream where I do things I normally wouldn’t. Only I know it’s a dream.”

“...Weird,” he said, as he started attaching the magnet-boot on my rear hooves.

“You’re telling me,” I said, as I started pocketing the rest of the stuff.

When I was finished, I looked to my right, seeing Scrap standing beside me with Hot Pink, the enormous arbalest, in his hooves.

“... Don’t use this against anything or anypony closer than twenty-five trots,” he said.

“I won’t,” I said, and took it in my prosthetic foreleg, the one of the two forelegs strong enough to carry it properly. “Thanks, Scrap,” I said, and started walking towards the door.

“... Good luck,” he said, hesitantly, from behind me, as I walked back out into the night, fishing out a wafer roll from my pocket.

“If I’m not back before sunrise…” I turned around and gave him a smirk, the roll sticking out of the side of my mouth, “call the princesses.”


—


I skulked back and forth around the warehouse. The first few rounds had revealed no one guarding the door, except for one pony keeping watch from the shadows behind a personal entrance. The shipping entrance was solid with no windows, and no doubt locked: no one would get in there without revealing themselves to everyone inside.

The subsequent runs didn’t reveal anyone keeping an eye from the upper windows, and so that was my entrance.

I scurried back towards the dumpster in alley I had started out from. I picked up the wet, flattened cardboard box, threw it back in the dumpster it came from, and retrieved the stuff I had tucked under it.

I secured the belt for my trench coat over my pockets so that nothing would fall out, slung Hot Pink across my back so that I could hang upside down without it falling off me, then walked towards the side of the warehouse not having any entrances… not yet, at least.

When I got to the side of the building, I was about to launch my grappling hook, when I stopped myself, then walked back to the alley and retrieved the piece of cardboard again.

With the large paper construction in my other hoof, I walked back to the warehouse, then launched my grappling hook towards the roof.

It struck true, and I raised myself up towards the windows on the second floor. I hung beneath the piece of the roof jutting out from the side of the building, and spied into the main storage section. It was mainly one large room, with tarp-covered wooden crates ranging from large to enormous stacked at random, turning the ground floor into something of a maze. An L-shaped catwalk hung from the ceiling in one corner, large loading hooks and pulleys reachable from it, and stairs placed in strategic locations, with an office about a normal house level up, looking down over the main floor.

Many of the stacks of boxes were high enough to match the catwalk in height, creating a sort of second level for the acrobatically inclined who didn’t mind a lack of railings. The two stallions I had ran into in the post office stood by a chair, looking bored.

On the chair was a thick bundle of rope, and from that bundle the head of a bunny poked up, looking thoroughly displeased. There were also clear hints of ponies walking around on the other side of the boxes from the shadows they cast. The light was fairly dim, but it was enough for me.

Revelling in my boldness, I held the piece of cardboard against the window, and turned myself around so that I was hanging upside down.

Both my forelegs were occupied. Luckily, I could hold the cardboard in my magic grip while I used my organic hoof to activate the magnetic boot. I had to be careful not to bring the boot too close to something I didn’t want I want it attached to, like my prostheses. This is also why I only used the one.

Attaching the boot to the underside of the roof, I then activated the magnetic feature, firmly making me hang from the underside of the ledge.

I disengaged the grappling hook and freed my artificial foreleg, pulled the cover up to remove the flammable covering, then held the large, wet cardboard piece in my fleshy foreleg. I fished the arcano-metal torch out of my pocket, after I had gotten myself a new wafer roll of course, then lowered the goggles over my face, and went to work on the lock, with the torch held by my uncovered but now non-flammable foreleg.

The torch made a low, hissing sound, as it let loose a very thin stream of superheated magic energy. I aimed it towards the spot between the window and the sash where the deadbolts were located. Luckily, it was all metal, and the dampness of the cardboard made it hold out for long enough to not catch fire.

After a few moments of torching, I felt confident that little was holding the window closed. Being careful not to burn my coat, textile variant or hair, I fished out a pair of hoofcuffs, and welded it to the lower frame of the window, giving me a handle.

Feeling pleased with my effort, and the speed with which I accomplished it, I raised my goggles, and jammed the muzzle of the torch against the wet cardboard to cool it off before pocketing it again.

I grabbed the window, and after a few tugs it opened. I kept the opening small to begin with, and let the piece of cardboard fall towards the ground, as I chewed up the last part of the wafer roll. I grabbed the windowsill with my forelegs, and magically deactivated the magnet-boot I was hanging from the underside of the ledge with.

The subsequent maneuver could’ve been smoother. I managed to keep my startled, “Oof” fairly quiet, as I accidentally reactivated the magnet boot again midair, and it attached to my prosthetic hind leg.

So I ended up hanging from the windowsill with the hoof of my left hind leg firmly attached to the knee of my right hind leg.

This is where having a super-strong foreleg comes in handy. I swung up on the side to deposit myself on the windowsill, and I could grab the still searing hot parts of the windows frame for a better grip with my metallic hoof.

After some more maneuvering, I managed to deactivate my magnetic boot, and I quickly kicked it off towards the street after I was done with it, then I opened the window and jumped in, making sure not to burn myself on the still hot surfaces.

I landed with a low thud on a crate on a stack of crates, covered by a large tarp. I immediately looked around, my ears perked up high and swiveled around for any sound.

Nothing could be heard though, and the two stallions I had seen earlier had moved away. I quickly relocated behind some other crates though, just in case the quiet was a result from them hearing me.

I sat there for a moment, letting my ears poke up behind my cover, until they caught the voice of the earth pony stallion I had ran into at the post office.

“I’m telling you, I heard something,” he said.

‘Well, thank you for that very informative proclamation.’

“We should’ve grabbed her when we had the chance,” his unicorn friend said.

I loosened Hot Pink from the harness that held it to my back, undid the belt holding my trenchcoat closed, and started slowly pumping the heavy lever. I heard the sound of at least two more ponies walking around among the crates below.

“Stay together, you dolts!” I heard Diamond Tiara’s voice call out. “Don’t let her pick you off.”

I pulled the limbs of Hot Pink all the way back and locked the payload into place. ‘Why, thank you, Diamond Tiara. That’s very considerate.’

I carried Hot Pink in my prosthetic foreleg, and ran on three legs across the large crate I was on, and jumped, very visibly, towards another set of crates, my trench coat flaring visibly behind me.

“There she is!” the voice of a stallion I didn’t recognise sounded out.

‘I am indeed. Come and get me.’

“We got her!” The voice of the unicorn from the post office sounded out from the ground level.

I shifted Hot Pink over to my left foreleg, rearing up to be able to steady it against my barrel, then aimed my prosthesis towards the rafters in the roof to fire my grappling hook.

It gripped the rafters easily, and I swung down a bit ahead of the direction the voice had been heading in.

Hanging from the ceiling down between a corridor formed from crates, I trained the heavy net launcher ahead of me, at a T intersection of this little maze.

The two stallions came into view at a full gallop, but skidded to a halt when they saw me. I figure they were ready for a traditional fight, but a unicorn with this much control of the vertical dimension probably wasn’t something they were used to.

“Hello again, boys,” I said, grinning widely at their shocked expression, then pulled the trigger.

The bola-augmented net hurled against them with the speed of a striking eagle, and unfurled like a killer squid as it zoomed through the air, catching them and sending them backwards, straight into the crates behind them.

The crates piled on top of them, which, along with the net, ensured that they wouldn't be getting out of there for quite a while, and that didn’t even consider how they probably weren’t in the mood to try at the moment, judging by the groaning.

The fight wasn’t over though. Four more goons soon ran in from the other side that my old friends from the post office had came from. They hardly slowed down when they saw me, and one of the mares among them was a unicorn.

I quickly raised myself up before they could reach me, and disengaged the grappling hook halfway up, jumping towards a large crate instead, then depositing Hot Pink there, since I doubted I was gonna get the time to reload it.

One of the worrying things is that I was sure that one of the ponies was a pegasus. I tenderly rubbed my barrel from the bruising that was no doubt forming beneath my vest from the monstrous recoil of the net launcher, then made for the edge of the crate I was on.

I aborted my plans to jump to another crate when I saw an earth pony mare and stallion, from the group I had just raised myself out of reach from, spinning bags of wood pulp in their mouths, letting them go towards me when I came near the edge.

The edge of the crate chipped as I kicked off from it with my metallic forehoof, and I sent myself rolling in the other direction, narrowly avoiding the bags as they zoomed past me.

A cloud of dry sawdust exploded in the ceiling, and I quickly lowered my goggles in response, almost not noticing the pegasus as he came flying up from beneath the crates.

He swooped towards me, and I just managed to roll out of the way, before he descended into the maze again.

The cloud of sawdust had now formed a cloud where I was, and I used it to hide myself as I took off and tried again to jump to another stack of crates.

“There she is!” one of the mares shouted, too late.

This time I didn’t land on one big crate, but a heap of smaller ones, which wasn’t covered in tarp. I punched through the wood of one of them with my prosthesis, and pulled out a hooffull of pulp bags tied closed with strings.

I quickly jumped onto the catwalk suspended from the roof by tough-looking steel bars, then ran noisily across it.

The sound of hoofs followed me from below, but as I suspected, the pegasus quickly landed on the catwalk some ways in front of me, crouched low and ready to pounce.

I skidded to a halt by one of the loading hooks, a frightened look on my face– one not entirely fake either.

The pegasus shot off towards me, and I hurled myself over rails and swung in the loading hook just in time, before tossing the bags of sawdust as hard as I could with my prosthesis into the rails right where the pegasus was zooming past, rattling the catwalk and causing an explosion of dust.

He tumbled across the catwalk out of the cloud, coughing and sputtering, as I swung back and landed back on the catwalk.

He groggily made it halfway to a standing position when he looked back at me, with my prosthesis trained at him, before I gave him a standard blast, knocking him out.

My foreleg caught a blast of magic from the unicorn mare from the ground, which luckily did little more than give me a push and knocking my goggles off. I turned and ran through the still lingering cloud I had just made, and jumped down in the maze, away from their aim.

Instead of fleeing, I ran up to the corner of the corridor that they’d be coming from, poking my head out around the corner with my prosthesis at the ready, causing the two earth ponies in the front and Diamond Tiara to duck behind cover. What the unicorn was up to, I didn’t know, so I went straight to work.

As soon as the mare started spinning another bag of pulp to throw at me, I blasted it with an arcanokinetic shock just as she was about to throw it at me. Both the two grown earth ponies and Diamond Tiara brought their hooves up to their mouths and started coughing, which is when I brought my grappling hook to bear again.

I sent it out around and caught the mare around her foreleg, and tugged as hard as I could.

She came flying towards me, and just as she was about to slow down, I stepped around the corner and pulled her with me.

She was disoriented long enough for me to release the grappling claw and unceremoniously blast her before she had started rising up.

I hadn’t seen the unicorn for almost ten seconds, and that worried me. I quickly crouched down to jump up towards the upper levels of crates again.

I scanned the room around me, and the unicorn and I spotted each other at the same time.

She was fiddling with Hot Pink, entirely in the open, and didn’t recover from spotting me long enough to jump out of the way of my magic blast.

She collapsed with a soft thud, and I did a very quick celebration in my mind for my luck, before turning back to the matter at hand.

A heavy set of hooffalls were quickly making their way across the warehouse, in the direction of the exit.

I took off at a full gallop, jumping across the gaps in the crates and over the destruction that had been caused by this little scuffle, and jumped down on the ground floor in the larger open space by the door and the loading dock.

The one remaining goon was there, an earth pony stallion. He whipped around when he heard me land behind him, before I quickly disposed of him with two simple blasts.

I hadn’t spotted Diamond Tiara, and I quickly started looking around when the air was knocked out of me.

I partially managed to spin around as I collapsed from whatever hit me, and saw Diamond Tiara slowly walk towards me, her flanks swaying beneath her swishing red dress.

In one foreleg, she held an arcanokinetic disperser, which looked like a small crossbow without the limbs.

She tutted disapprovingly as she walked up to me. “I was almost worried for a moment there,” she said, and reached into my inner pocket for a wafer roll, holding it in front of my mouth teasingly. “A for effort, B for brawn, and C for smarts. Close, but no wafer,” she said, almost putting the roll in my mouth before lightly tossing it away.

I looked up at her through a half-lidded eye, not having the energy to scowl at her, or even enough to have much of a desire to.

“I always get what I want,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be this easy though.”

She lowered the disperser and aimed it straight at me while a smile grew on her face. “I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun, as soon as I wake up some of these dumb-dumbs. No offense, beautiful, but I don’t really want to carry you around before you get a wash.”

I closed my eyes, sighed, then heard the blast of the disperser go off.

I didn’t expect it too feel this way though. It felt like my face was covered by a sawdust, and deep experience told me to breathe easy.

‘Speaking of which, should I be thinking right now…? Also, is that strange sound Diamond Tiara coughing?’

Something yanked at my left shoulder, and I felt something hit me in the face.

I opened my eye to see Angel Bunny angrily looking at me through another cloud of sawdust, aiming my prosthesis towards a Diamond Tiara who was stumbling backwards and coughing.

I gathered up the strength I had left, and let loose another blast of arcanodispersive energy at her. She collapsed unceremoniously, and then so did I.

… Until I vaguely became aware that something was off.

Half-formed beginnings of thoughts formed and dispersed on my head, as if being awake was an old, half-forgotten relic in my list of states of minds, and my brain was looking around for wherever it could have put it.

Eventually, it found it. “A-a-all-ri-i-i-ght,” I groaned. “I-I--I’m a-aw-a-a-ake!”

I opened my eye to see Angel Bunny holding the collar of my vest and shaking me back and forth.

Angel Bunny eventually stopped, then spun in front of me, and with a colossal effort, I brought my hoof up to stop my eye from spinning.

I eventually managed to look straight at my rescuer. “Angel Bunny, I presume?”

He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the room.

“Did we win?” I asked.

He nodded at me with a slight scowl.

“Alright, hold-ooh! Hold on,” I said, and started fishing the hoofcuffs out my pockets. “We better cuff ‘em before they wake up, and I need a minute.”

Angel Bunny nodded towards me, and took the cluster of cuffs, about as big as he was, first cuffing the stallion behind us, then hopping away. He left one for me though.

I managed to stand up, and leaned against a crate, breathing heavily, then looked at Diamond Tiara’s prone form.

I walked over to her, and cuffed her forelegs to a ring of the tarp next to her. She wasn’t going anywhere. That tarp was strong enough hold a tornado, and it was weighed down by several tons of pulp-filled crates.

I lay down and let myself rest for a minute. I wanted some answers, and having the interrogator about to collapse from exhaustion could easily undermine their credibility.

It had been an exhausting few moments during the exciting bit, but it hadn’t been a prolonged scuffle. I had a bit of magical energy left, and while it wasn’t enough to get me through another little adventure, I could feel it being drained in favor of some physical energy.

The second wind came, and it would have to last. I took Diamond Tiara’s head in my hoof, and started shaking it, although a lot more gentle than Angel Bunny would have.

Her eyes eventually opened, and after a moment of trying to focus, she noticed me. To her credit, her expression of shock was a lot more mild than I thought it would be. She quickly tried something, but looked up and noticed her hooves tied above her, and sagged.

“So, it looks like you win,” she said, looking at me with half-lidded eyes.

“Seems that way. I have some questions though,” I said. My face was neutral, which in this situation translated to one step from annoyed and impatient.

“Of course,” she said, and gave me a small smile. “Ask what you will.”

“Where’s the letter?” I asked.

Her smile grew. “I got it right here,” she said, and nodded at her dress. “Do you want it?”

“Correct,” I said shortly, and pulled her dress down.

She let out a short, “Eep,” and looked down at herself, before looking up at me again with a teasing smile.

I ignored her smiles. She was just trying to seem as confident as possible to get under my skin. Granted, she did it really well, but I didn’t let it get to me.

She didn’t lie, the letter was indeed where she said it was. I took it and quickly verified it.

“Good,” I said, and finally looked at her for real. “Why did you want this?”

“Oh as much as I’d like to involve myself in your personal relations, it was just a means to an end,” she said.

“And that end was?” I asked.

“Getting access to your files. More specifically, your patents,” she said, and smirked at me. “Those ratchet ties are really taking off, and I saw all that profit it will eventually make and thought to myself ‘why not just make it mine?’.”

“And how was this supposed to help with that?” I asked, waving the letter.

“Ah well, that was a miscalculation,” she admitted. “I thought it might’ve been a letter for your correspondent. It was working out nicely. I kidnapped that hateful little fluffball to get that batty old animal lover to get your files from you. It looked promising at first, she hired you, and I thought she was being clever, but it soon became obvious that she went behind my back.”

“Daring thing to say, coming from a blackmailer,” I noted.

Diamond Tiara waved my comment away with her hoof still tied above her head. “She must’ve caught scent of my other plans somehow. I let you go after I had tried hiring you. I realized that it might’ve been a plan on her part, occupying you. She didn’t understand why I wanted the letter. Then again, if it wasn’t for the fact that you obviously weren’t going to give it to her after you’d found it, her plan might’ve worked,” she said, evenly.

“So you tried hiring me to find my own letter. How was that supposed to get it into your hooves?” I asked.

“Why, I was going to send my muscle to get it from you when you had located it of course,” Diamond Tiara said simply.

"And why didn't you send them to get them from me or my office directly?" I asked.

“These brainless lumps?” she asked, looking at the cuffed stallion lying a little bit away from us and laughing. “No. Who knows what arrangements you had in place for protecting everything in your office? This needed some smarts.

“Anyway, Silver Spoon managed to get the letter, but it didn’t seem to be of much use at first. Then I realized something, and I held onto it,” she said, shaking her head. “I got the feeling that it might be useful in the end. Like it was important to you, and therefore I could use it. Turns out I was right.”

“Must’ve been when the magic started stretching a little too much. Another plot hole,” I said, mostly to myself.

Diamond Tiara masterfully raised an eyebrow at me. “Excuse me?” she said.

“We’re in a story, sort of. You’re the villain,” I said, shortly.

“‘Villain’? Moi? Qui sont absurde,” she playfully protested, as Angel Bunny came stumbling back, with one spare set of hoof cuffs and Hot Pink balanced in his forelegs .

“C’est absurde. Well, B for Brains, F for Foresight, and A for grace,” I said, and put the letter in my inner pocket, while also fishing out a new wafer roll. As much as I hated to admit it, she was being a good loser. “And now, I really gotta go.”

She playfully pouted at me as I took Hot Pink and slung it over my back. “Aaaw. Are you really gonna just leave me here?” she said. “I would so like for you to stay.”

I looked at her for a moment, before letting my head drop and letting out a fake sigh. “You’re right, I can’t leave you like this,” I said, and walked up to her.

She hid her surprise well as I walked up to her. That was enough to throw her off guard when I quickly adjusted her dress before turning away.

“Hey!” she said, angrily.

“Hey yourself,” I said, as Angel Bunny and I walked out into the night.


—


“Hey,” I said to Angel Bunny as we walked away from the warehouse. “You’ll be alright from here, right?”

He just gave me a deadpan look, and waved his forepaw dismissively.

“Okay, great. Just so you know, she’s kinda vampire-y at the moment,” I said.

His eyes widened in surprise, looking in the general direction of Fluttershy’s cabin, and giving me one last look as he darted off towards her.

“Alright then. I guess that solves that.”

Scrap’s hoofcuffs were spent, as was one of his nets, but the magnet boot, the torch, and Hot Pink were all with me. First stop however, was Golden Oaks.

The excitement seemed to be done with me, although I saw the flower trio furiously packing a cart in the middle of the night. It looked like they were going on a road trip. I ignored them, and soon enough, I stepped into the library.

Twilight was sitting in a couch, her neck slumped over the backrest. She let out a groan towards Spike, who was standing on the armrest and gingerly extracting the curlers from her mane, still in his grey beret with his spikes sticking out of the top.

“Coffeeeeee!” she moaned.

“No more coffee until Gabe comes back,” Spike said. “You shouldn’t have made me read those physiology books. Tricking your body into feeling energized when this magically exhausted isn’t good.”

“I’m an alicooooorn! I can take iiiiit!” Twilight complained.

“No,” Spike insisted. “Only if Gabe needs help.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon,” I said, drawing their attention, very sluggishly in Twilight’s case. “I’ve got it,” I said, holding out the letter.

Spike jumped down from the chair and started walking towards me. “Great! Twilight said that—”

That was as far as he got before Twilight, now mostly curler-free, tried getting out of the chair and collapsed on top of him.

“Greeeeat!” she slurred at me, with a dopey smile. “I’ve fixed the thing, so that… thing is real easy to… fix,” she said, trailing off uncertainly.

Spike, grunting, squeezed his head out from underneath Twilight. “She said earlier that she fixed it so that all we need is the letter and the rest should be really easy for you,” he clarified.

“Alright, lemme see,” I said.

I projected myself into my horn, and took a look at the run amok enchantment again. I took a step back at the number of tendrils that had popped into existence. There must’ve been hundreds of them. The weave of the enchantment now had another layer to it though. A bright, purple radiance flowed through it, but was clogged up at a spot right next to us.

Studying it for a minute, I figured out how to apply that kind of magic on the letter as well. I summoned up some of my meager reserves, and finished the spell. There was a low booming sound, as though the magic atmosphere filled a sudden vacuum, and that was it.

Perhaps I was too tired and the hold on me at that moment was too weak, but I barely noticed anything at first, until a pressure in my mind lifted, and I let out a sigh of relief.

“Oooh, that was worse than the first time I flew. ” Twilight whimpered behind me. I turned around and saw her slowly lifting herself off the ground. “Sorry, Spike,” she said, as Spike climbed out from underneath her.

“I know how it feels, believe me,” I said, and sat down on my haunches.

Twilight walked over to me and put a foreleg around me. “I’m sorry, I should’ve helped,” she said.

“You did,” I said, and leaned into her. “And I think this was how it was supposed to go.”

“Still, I should’ve gone with you,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, and gave a small smile. “But… it was actually kinda fun.”

It kinda hurt to admit that, since it felt like the enchantment that caused all this trouble won.

“Well, so long as everypony is okay, I guess we can rest easy,” Twilight said. “Speaking of which…”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed. “You need rest, not coffee.”

“I’ll take that,” I said.

Spike walked over to me with a black brew, and I swallowed it in two gulps while Spike took off his beret and looked at it curiously before shrugging and putting it back on.

I followed his example, and took off my hat to look at it. I had to admit that it didn’t look bad on me. The mystery was just where it came from.

“I’m—” Twilight started before being interrupted by a yawn, “I’m gonna send a letter to Princess Celestia about this tomorrow. I’ll make sure she hears about what you accomplished.”

“You mean cleaning up my mess?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Our mess,” Twilight said. “Good thing you managed it when you did. When I was examining the enchantment earlier, I think I saw some star-crossed lovers-story starting out. I couldn’t tell who it was though.”

I let out a low whistle. “Well, then I shouldn’t complain. At least this was something I could handle.”

Twilight yawned again. “I really want to go to bed now,” she said.

“You might as well. I’m just gonna see if Angel Bunny and Fluttershy are alright,” I said.

Twilight looked at me, trying, and failing, to look anything other than groggy. “What do you mean?”

“Angel Bunny was kidnapped, but I… I guess I rescued him?” I said, uncertainly. “Anyway, I sent him back to Fluttershy. He seemed okay.”

“Okay, that’s good. And now,” Twilight managed to say, before yawning, then moved towards the stairs.

“You’re gonna be okay, right?” I asked.

Spike was already at her side though. “Yeah, don’t worry, I got her,” he said, and supported her up the stairs.

“Goodnight, Gabe,” Twilight said.

“Goodnight,” I said, and walked towards the door again.

“Man,” Spike complained behind me. “I hardly ever get to do anything cool. I just cleaned, only this time I wore a hat.”

“We’ll… we’ll come up with something fun to do some other time, Spike,” Twilight said.


—


I once again made my way through the empty streets of Ponyville, or at least almost empty. The flower trio was now packing things back into the same house from the same cart as before, this time with confused and uncertain looks on their faces.

I had left Hot Pink in the library, since it was just down the street from where Scrap lived, and I took the opportunity to just enjoy the fresh evening breeze without feeling the need to be on the lookout for non-existent thugs and lowlifes.

My ears perked up when I walked past Lyra and Bon Bon’s house though.

“I still can’t figure out what happened!” Lyra said from inside their house, sounding agitated.

“I know,” Bon Bon answered, as I put another wafer roll in my mouth. “How am I supposed to report this?”

“... What?” Lyra asked after a while.

“Nothing,” Bon Bon said, dismissively.

I reached Fluttershy’s house, and entered a bit daringly after a simple knocking.

Fluttershy was once again hanging from the rafters, wrapped inside leathery wings. This time however, she held a pleased and kinda smug-looking Angel Bunny tight and rubbed her cheek against his.

I softly walked up to them, and when Fluttershy opened her still glowing red eyes, she smiled widely, let out a screech, and pulled me in with her wings, even flipping me around and making my head rest downwards as she wrapped me in a wing cocoon. It was very cozy and strangely comfortable.

“Thank you, Gabe. Thank you so much,” she said.

“Well, it feels strange to be praised for something I think was meant to happen,” I said. “But you know, you’re welcome anyway.”

“Angel Bunny told me about what you did,” Fluttershy said. “About how you fought a whole army of ponies.”

I fought down a small blush. “Well, I wouldn’t call it an army,” I said. “Also, he saved me in the end.”

“He uh, has experience with chewing through rope,” Fluttershy said.

I looked at Angel Bunny, who gave me a look of smug superiority. I wriggled a hoof free from Fluttershy’s embrace and hoofbumped one of his paws.

“You’re still wearing your coat and hat?” Fluttershy asked.

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “I was just checking in to see that everyone was alright before calling it a night. I didn’t bother removing it.”

“It… looks good on you,” Fluttershy said, her face reddening.

“Thanks,” I said, looking down at my vest with a smile. “And I think you pull off the whole queen-of-the-night thing really well too.”

“Oh, uuh, thank you,” Fluttershy said.

“Well, I think I better move on,” I said, extracting myself from the wing-cocoon. “Like I said, I was just checking in to make sure that everyone’s alright. Gotta tell Redheart I’m okay as well, and give Scrap back hiiiiis…” I trailed off

“What?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh, uh. I just remembered that we left seven ponies tied up in a warehouse,” I said, and paused to think about it. “You know, maybe I’ll check in on them last.”


—


In summary, that little episode had a pretty successful conclusion.

The getup still hangs from a rack in my bedroom. Rarity sometimes wants me to wear it, and so does Scootaloo, when she doesn’t want to try it out herself.

Twilight spent a day and a half feeling groggy before being back to her normal self, still working on enchantments with me among other things. We set to implementing strict cleanup policies regarding magical contamination, which we followed vigilantly from then on.

Lyra, Bon Bon, Redheart, and I, had a good laugh at the whole thing. Bon Bon was especially pleased with my newfound appreciation for wafer rolls. Although I don’t carry them around with me all the time anymore. It doesn’t look the same without the hat.

I got a letter requesting me to report to the town hall to receive my payment in accordance with my agreement with Derpy. Mayor Mare and I had a head-scratching time before we anomaly stamped the whole thing, and I used my modest reward to buy a basket of muffins from Sugarcube Corner which I gave to Derpy at work. She had a few and then took the rest home to share with her daughter.

Diamond Tiara was thoroughly embarrassed by the whole thing when I came to let her go. Her henchmen were apparently her father’s housekeeping and gardening staff. She insisted, in strong words, that I never talk to anyone in school about this, and then immediately extended it to everyone. I released her from her cuffs and told her that she had a deal if she let her “henchmen” loose herself, and then returned the cuffs back to Scrap Armor. She won’t talk to me in school, but that’s business as usual so I don’t care.

She admitted that the whole thing was a scheme to get her hooves on my patents for the cable ties, which she was planning to give her dad as a present. I thought that was sweet of her, so I let it slide.

Silver Spoon kinda got away scot free. It doesn’t really bother me. Her scowling at me in recess has mostly made way to looking worried at Diamond Tiara’s twitching eyebrows whenever I’m around though. If there was a lack of karmic judgement going on here, I wasn’t really in a position to complain. Snips and Snails didn’t really deserve what I did to them either, even though they didn’t seem to be all that bothered by it in the end.

Scrap Armor gracefully accepted the equipment I had borrowed from him, and in return he asked me for a full and detailed report of how the showdown in the warehouse had gone. One of his cuffs were ruined, but he didn’t seem to care as the rest was returned. He didn’t bring up the beefed up arcanodispersive shocker he had jammed in my prosthesis, and I got a feeling that it wasn’t because he had forgotten it.

I returned Fluttershy’s money to her. She didn’t really need it, but then I didn’t really either. There was some minor rumors going on around town from the events of those few days, slightly stoked on by the minor property damage in the post office and Filthy Rich’s warehouse, but in the end, it wasn’t anything major compared to what usually popped up in Ponyville.

After that, life continued as normal, relatively speaking. Not counting the new stun gun in my foreleg, there was no worldly reward. All I had to show for it were new experiences and a fun story to share. Then again, that’s not so bad. People often pay for that, but it kinda felt that if I saw this experience through the metaphor of a reward, it kinda felt like a strange currency I’d never seen before, from a country I wasn’t sure I was ever going to visit.

In the end, I just shrugged and laughed at the whole thing. So do most people I tell the story to.


—


Under A Thrilling Moon Epilogue:


—


Spike was dusting shelves and cleaning off books. Particles of vegetable oil sometimes drifted from the kitchen into the library section, and it could slowly accumulate on the spines of the books, mixing with dust and damaging the books. Spike took pride in his job. He was good at it, and he liked that.

Sometimes though, he found himself dreaming away to other places, where he could do other things. Exciting things. Adventurous things. Like the things that Gabe had done.

He had been on adventures before, but they always came out of nowhere, and his friends always ended up the real heroes.

Except for a few times.

A small smile formed on his face. At least he’d always have books and comics to help him dream about it.

He stopped his cleaning when he saw something he didn’t recognise. A book.

He looked at it. It hadn’t been there the last time he had went through this shelf, and that was only two days ago.

Curious, he removed it from the shelf. It was a plain, grey, and not very thick thing, without a title.

Spike took the book, and opened it. Inside however, there were only blank pages.

He sighed. Figuring that it must’ve been a blank journal that somehow found its way onto the shelf.

Spike was about to close the book when something caught his eyes.

In the top-left corner of the page, there had suddenly appeared words. He was certain that this was the case, and that he hadn’t just missed them the first time he had looked at the pages. This was because the words were being written as he was looking at them.

What they said was what particularly caught his interest. They read:


Greetings, Agent Spike. Your mission, should you choose to accept it...



Gaiden part two