Applejack found Twilight in the room they had determined Spike and the changeling had been staying in, stooped down low as she magically worked with the lock of a safe. “Pickin’ locks now, are we?” she asked as she stood in the open doorway.
“They wouldn’t go through all the trouble of getting a safe for no reason, Applejack,” Twilight reasoned as she worked with the lock.
“Yeah, an’ that reason’s probably ta have sumthin’ ta put their money in,” Applejack reasoned back, not seeing why it was significant.
Twilight, however, shook her head. “This safe has had additional security applied to it,” she explained. “The changeling must have added a number of magical defenses onto it after the fact. I don’t doubt they’ve been keeping money in there, but there also has to be something else more significant than that. One doesn’t just put that much security on something and not hide something extra special inside.”
“Ya do if yer just paranoid of someone tryin’ ta steal yer money,” Applejack retorted. She tilted her head knowingly at Twilight. “Or yer on the run from a pony who’d try ta break into it just ’cuz she could.”
Twilight ignored Applejack’s snark and continued working on the safe lock. It seemed to be slow and meticulous work. Applejack watched her in silence for a few moments. Finally, she sighed.
“Twilight, she might have a point,” she remarked aloud finally.
Twilight didn’t look up from the lock she was concentrating so much on. “Who? Miss Fly Leaf?”
“Yeah…Ah, uh, gotta wonder if yer maybe takin’ all this a liddle too far…”
Twilight frowned. “Now don’t you start.”
“Ah’m sorry Twi,” Applejack apologized. “But…sumthin’ ’bout all of this just don’t add up.”
“We can focus on figuring out the finer details once we’ve safely recovered Spike and have that changeling in custody where he belongs. Then we can finally get to the bottom of this.”
“An’ see, before now, Ah was willin’ ta go along with yer approach t’ all of this thinkin’ the same thing…but sumthin’ hasn’t felt right ’bout this since the beginnin’ an’ Ah’m startin ta wonder if maybe we’ve got this all wrong…Twi, wut if Fly Leaf’s tellin’ the truth?”
“I’m sure she thinks she’s telling the truth…I’m actually starting to think the poor mare’s been misled by the changeling in the same manner that Spike was…in which case you know everything she could say on the matter might potentially be suspect.”
“An’ see, ya just automatically jump ta that conclusion, but do we really have any proof that’s wut’s happenin’?”
Twilight was quiet for a moment, her gaze narrowing as she continued to work with the locked safe. “She’s not right, Applejack. She can’t be.”
“But wut if she is?” Applejack persisted. “Or wut if she’s at least close to it? Shouldn’t we at least consider it might be possible?” Applejack threw out her hooves and motioned to the surroundings of Spike and Thorax’s room. “Ah mean look ’round ya at this room…this is where Spike an’ the changeling have been stayin’ in fer the past four moons, right? Does this room look like a place a mean criminal changeling plottin’ conspiracies an’ holdin’ a kidnappee hostage against his will has been stayin’ ta ya? ’Cuz it don’t ta me. It looks ta me like just two roommates sharin’ a room t’gether, tryin’ ta make a livin’.”
“Trying to keep up appearances, no doubt,” Twilight mumbled.
“Except we’ve got no evidence that they’ve done anythin’ nefarious the whole time they’ve been here!” Applejack argued. “Nothin’ in four moons straight, Twilight. If anythin’ they seem ta have been fittin’ right in!”
“And that’s what scares me, Applejack,” Twilight remarked. “Equestria is becoming complacent to the idea that a changeling could be living in our midst.”
Applejack was quiet for a long moment. “If this is really how a changeling would live among us, Twilight…then would that really be a bad thing?” She sat down, removing her Stetson respectfully, fondling it with her hooves as she gathered her thoughts. “It ain’t that I think yer entirely wrong Twilight or that we shouldn’t proceed with caution…it just seems clear ta me that…there’s more goin’ on here than we first realized…an’ Ah can’t help but feel yer tryin’ yer darnedest ta ignore it.” Applejack bit her lip for a moment. “Look at it this way…ya dabble in science right, Twilight? Doesn’t a good scientist consider all of the angles…even th’ ones they don’t want ta be right?”
A long moment of silence fell during which Twilight didn’t respond, focusing instead on the safe still. Judging from the look in her eyes though, Applejack thought she had at least sparked something within the alicorn, though she wasn’t sure if it was a good thing, or the reaction she hoped for. Whatever the case, Twilight seemed unsure how to respond to that. Eventually though, Twilight was spared from having to do so when the lock to the safe suddenly clicked, and the door sealing it popped open a crack. Eagerly, Twilight swung it open fully and peered inside. Applejack, returning her hat to its usual place on her head, strolled closer so to take a peek as well.
Inside the safe was generally a series of smaller containers, mostly shoeboxes, filled with varying levels of bits of all denominations, no doubt the funds Spike and the changeling had collected over the moons under Fly Leaf’s employ. Applejack couldn’t help but be a little smug about it. “Told ya there was only gonna be money inside,” she told Twilight. “So unless yer intendin’ ta steal all that, an’ Ah shouldn’t have ta tell ya wut would be wrong ’bout that…”
Twilight wasn’t really listening though, instead having spied a small pile of papers tucked into a space at the bottom of the safe and withdrew them with her magic, holding them aloft to examine and shifting through each one in turn. “Hmm,” she hummed to herself.
“So wut’s all that, then?” Applejack inquired, moving positions again so to steal a peek at the paperwork too.
“Legal documentation, mostly,” Twilight replied, not pulling her eyes off the documents as she flipped through them. There weren’t a great many of them so it wasn’t long before she was reaching the bottom of the thin pile. “Mostly warranties for items they’ve purchased…including one for this safe, in fact…though I’m certain they voided it when the changeling modified the locking mechanism like he did…still, it gives me a paper trail I can perhaps follow later, so to get a better idea what all they might have been…”
She trailed off suddenly, stopping as she arrived at the final paper and continued to sit there and stare at it. Applejack frowned, sensing Twilight’s alarm, and turned her attention to the paper as well, but she didn’t immediately see what was significant about it. She nodded her head at it when Twilight didn’t resume speaking after a moment. “…an’ that one?”
“It’s a deed,” Twilight replied slowly. Her eyes were darting back and forth as she quickly read through the lettering printed on it.
“A deed?”
“You know…the personal copy of the document proving ownership of property that you keep for your own records?”
Applejack frowned, starting to understand why this gave Twilight pause. It seemed like an odd thing for two runaways to have. “A deed fer wut?”
Slowly, Twilight’s eyes began to widen as she reached the end of the document. “An airship,” she murmured aloud. She then twisted around to face Applejack, growing increasingly alarmed. “They’ve got an airship, registered to them in their name and everything! An airship they can privately use to take off from anywhere they choose!” Twilight dropped the paperwork and turned for the door. “This must be what they’re using to escape! We have to figure out where they’re taking off from and stop them before it’s too late, if it isn’t already!”
She raced out the door and started to hurry downstairs again. Applejack chased after her. “How the hay d’ya plan ta find that out?”
“We’ll have to get that information out of Miss Fly Leaf, it’s our only chance,” Twilight explained as they proceeded down a floor and exited the stairs again on the second floor. “If we can get her to tell us anything about where this airship may be parked at…”
She trailed off as they both arrived on the second floor, slowing to a stop at the sight that lay before them. The table they had left Fly Leaf sitting at just minutes earlier was still where they had left it. But Fly Leaf was now gone. And the one guard they had left to watch over her now lay on the ground, stirring as he faded back into consciousness and beginning to sport both a black eye and a notable bump on the head.
Twilight was beside the fallen guard in an instant, propping him up urgently. “What happened?” she demanded. “Where’s Fly Leaf?”
“I don’t know!” The guard replied with a wince, still somewhat dazed and his thinking clouded. “She was sitting there all nice and quiet…she was actually being rather friendly. We got to talking…but then she was suddenly on me before I could react! She moved like lightning, doing some kind of combat stance I didn’t know. I’m not sure I would’ve stood a chance even if I had seen it coming!”
“But where’d she go after that?” Twilight pressed as she moved the guard so he could prop himself up against the table, Applejack hovering around worriedly, wanting to help but unsure how.
“I don’t know, I didn’t see,” the guard admitted with a groan. “She must have knocked me out for a second there…”
“But why?” Applejack asked, not understanding why Fly Leaf would do this.
“She must be trying to escape,” Twilight mumbled darkly, turning around and surveying the room briefly before heading for the stairs. “Trying to get to wherever Spike and the changeling are and warn them or help them escape before we find them.”
“That assumes she even knows where ta find ‘em any more than we do,” Applejack argued as she followed Twilight down the stairs towards the shop’s first floor. “An’ how would she even escape a shop under guard?”
“Through the back door,” Twilight concluded instantly as they arrived on the first floor and Twilight immediately turned for the batwing doors that led into the back of the building.
“Why not the front door?” Applejack asked, throwing a hoof out at the door across the room as they raced across it.
“It’s guarded,” Twilight replied pointedly, not even looking at the door that was indeed clearly guarded from the outside by a trio of city guards. She instead kept pressing forward, slipping through the kitchen.
“So’s the back door!” Applejack argued, still hot on her hooves.
“Yes, but not with as many gu—” Twilight trailed off and they both came to a halt as they arrived in the hallway leading to the building’s back door. “—ards.”
A simple glance down the hall was all they needed to clearly see the two guards that had been posted there at the back door were now down on the floor, having been attacked similarly to how the guard upstairs had been, as well as hurriedly tied up with some decorative twine taken off one of the storage shelves lining the walls. The two mares trotted up to the two fallen guards, but while they saw that these guards were no more hurt than the one upstairs, they were both unconscious still, and weren’t going to be quickly revived.
“Still think she doesn’t know anything?” Twilight growled to Applejack as she opted to slip past the two downed guards and to the back door. She quickly found it sealed shut. “Drat, she put some kind of high-security lock on the door on her way out!” Twilight growled as she jiggled with the lock briefly but knew it wouldn’t be quickly opened again, even with magic. “She’s trying to slow us down, keep us from following her trail too quickly, to buy them time!”
“Try the front door then!” Applejack suggested, having satisfied herself that the guards were going to be okay and standing at the ready to act as Twilight needed.
Twilight nodded in silent agreement, and they quickly backtracked to the front door again. Twilight was first to reach it and quickly jiggled the latch, only to find it wouldn’t open any more than the back door. A quick glance confirmed it was for the same reason. “She’s locked this one, too!” Twilight grumbled, turning her attention to the lock identical to the one on the back door.
“How?” Applejack asked, seeing the guards that were stationed outside the door notice them through the window and turn to try and figure out what was happening and help accordingly. “How th’ hay could she have gotten ta the lock ta lock it without that lot out there seein’ her?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter now!” Twilight said, pointing her horn at the lock and beginning a series of spells to try and magically pick it open. “I’m trying to see if I can open the lock now, but it might take a few minutes. This is a seriously high-end anti-theft lock, magically based, and not easy to pick! Why does she even have a lock like this? It seems like such an unusual thing to have for such a smalltime shop in a city renowned for low crime rates…”
“Oh fer th’ sake of corn starch, move, would ya?” Applejack interrupted, gently but bodily bumping Twilight aside so to get at the door herself.
Twilight let herself be pushed aside, perplexed, but only until she saw Applejack twist around and rear up her hind legs. “No wait—Applejack!”
Too late, Applejack bucked the locked door with all her might. That was all that was needed, because with an almighty crack, the door’s latch snapped and the door itself sprang open with sufficient force that the window mounted in it fractured into a spider web of cracks. Locked as it was, it also set off the shop’s anti-theft alarm, and nearly in the same moment a loud bell concealed somewhere in the shop began to clang loudly, almost deafening them.
“Whoops!” Applejack declared, turning around at the source of the noise, blankly realizing her error.
“Your highness, what’s going on?” one of the three guards positioned outside ran forward to ask, having deduced accurately that a problem had arisen.
“Fly Leaf’s escaped, attacked her guard, and knocked out two more that were guarding the back door!” Twilight explained loudly, dragging Applejack out of the shop since the door was now open anyway. She had to shout in order to be heard over the ringing alarm. “I’m positive she’s running to warn and help Spike and the changeling, who I’ve learned possess an airship of their own and are almost certainly trying to use it now to escape! We have to find out where they’re launching this airship from and stop them before they get away!”
“What are your orders then, ma’am?” the second guard asked, catching on while the third attempted to send away several ponies from off the street that had curiously started to gather upon hearing the very loud alarm.
“Spread out!” Twilight ordered. “Find every airship you can, landed or airborne, and ensure all of them do not leave this city! I also want guards going out to search outside the city in case they’ve got this airship hidden out in the outskirts! But one of the airships in Vanhoover has to be theirs, and I want it found!” She pointed a hoof at the second guard. “You, go and spread the word! Get as much help as you need! Also have guards come and meet me at the airship yard!” She turned to the first guard. “You, come with Applejack and I down to the airship yard to double check they grounded all flights like I asked and to have them ready an airship to search the area with, in case they’re already airborne!” She then turned to the third guard. “And you, stay here and wait for when the police turn up to investigate this alarm that Applejack’s set off! Have them turn it off while they’re here if you can’t do it yourself!”
“Ah’m sorry!” Applejack apologized, following in Twilight’s wake as Twilight and the first guard turned to set off for the airship yard as fast as they could. “Ya wanted the door opened though, an’ darn it, Ah opened it!”