//------------------------------// // To Catch a Bread Thief // Story: Midnight Shadow (Outdated) // by Orzo Pasta //------------------------------// --------- "Hey, Twilight! Come look at this." Twilight walked over to where I was working, and looked at the paper. Then, she smiled at me."It's almost legible this time," she said. I had been practicing writing using my horn for a few days. Twilight was right; this was the first time the lines on the paper made anything resembling words. "I'll keep working on it. How's that spell of yours coming along?" She levitated a book up, reread the spell for what was probably the twelfth time, and put it back down. Then, her horn glowed brightly, and in a moment, she disappeared. I heard a crash, and turned around to see her lying legs-up in a pile of books. Twilight herself looked very disoriented. She tried to get up, then stumbled and fell back down. It wasn't surprising to me that teleportation would be very disorienting the first few times, but I was sure she'd be back to normal in a few minutes. There was a knock on the door. "Don't worry, I'll get it," I called to Twilight, who was trying her best to walk in a straight line. I went and opened the door. Because of the security measures in place around the library, namely the guards, we didn't get too many visitors besides the Princess herself and our families. Twilight's family would come to visit often, and my father would sometimes stop by and say hello. The only other pony who visited was Parcel Bringer, the mailpony for this section of Canterlot, and the pony who was standing at the door when I opened it. "Good afternoon, Parcel," I greeted him. "Good afternoon, Midnight Shadow. Got a letter here for you, from the Princess." Twilight told me that her pet dragon, Spike, would be able to send and receive letters from the Princess when he was older, but he was just a few weeks old at that point, so the Princess had to deliver news to us either in person or through the regular mail. She usually came in person and just told us what she wanted to say, only sending letters when she was too busy to drop by. I took the envelope from Parcel. It was addressed to both Twilight and I. "Thanks, Parcel." "No problem, Midnight Shadow. Just doing my job!" After that, he flew off. It made sense to me that most mailponies were Pegasi. After all, they could get the mail delivered faster by flying through the air. Not that a Unicorn or Earth Pony mailpony was unheard of, just that they were uncommon. I turned around and headed back inside, closing the door behind me. "Hey, Twilight! Got a letter from the Princess here!" Twilight, who had mostly recovered from her spell from earlier, walked over to me. "What's it say?" "I don't know, I haven't read it yet." I tore the envelope open, taking out the note inside. Dear Midnight Shadow and Twilight Sparkle, As much as I dislike having to pull you both away from your work, I'm afraid I need to ask a favor of you. Ponies all over Canterlot have reported missing food, and searches have identified that some sort of creature is to blame. From what we have seen, it isn't any creature we know about. And, with most of the Guard away dealing with a situation in Fillydelphia, we can't try to catch it. Twilight and I exchanged a nervous glance, then continued reading. That's where you two come in. Midnight Shadow, I need you to design a trap for this creature. Twilight, you will use your magic to lure it into the trap. It's small and fast, so you'll need to be smart about it. It usually comes out at night, and seems particularly attracted to grains, such as bread and rice. I'm sorry I could not be there to explain this to you, but I am away in Fillydelphia, so you two will have to deal with it. Catch it, find out what it is, and report back to me when I return. Good luck you two. -Princess Celestia "That's all she said." I flipped the paper over, wondering if there was anything else, any clarification. "We're supposed to catch this thing, when we know so little about it?" "Well, we know it likes grains. That's a start," Twilight replied. "I suppose so. Still, we don't know how big it is, or what it looks like, or where it is, this could take days, or longer!" I sighed. "Well, I guess a good place to start would be trying to figure out how big it is." I thought for a moment, then came up with a plan. ---------- I walked down the street, towards the grocery store. I needed two bags of flour, and some sort of grain. We planned to lure the creature out with a bowl of food. When it did this, it would walk over the flour, which would be spread over the ground. Then, we could see its footprints. The flour was easy to find. I grabbed two bags, and put them in the small wagon I had brought. Now, I just need a grain. I then saw something on a nearby shelf that would be perfect. --------- "Why'd you pick orzo?" Twilight asked me. "I'm... not really sure, it just felt like a good choice." I set the jar of orzo on the table. "I mean, everypony likes pasta, right?" "No, I meant why'd you pick this specific kind of pasta?" "Oh. I guess I was thinking, since the creature is so small, it might like something that was just big enough. At least, it won't be too big for it to eat. Probably." I was partially going on the assumption that the creature was at least bigger than a tennis ball. Twilight looked at me, confused, but then nodded. "We should probably set it up soon. It'll be dark in an hour or two." We set it up on the path leading to the library, figuring that nopony would disturb it due to the guards watching it from their posts. I briefly wondered why one of them couldn't handle this, then reassured myself that Celestia wouldn't have asked us to do this if she didn't have a reason to. When it was finished, the sun was already setting. The flour was spread in a near perfect circle around the bowl of pasta, looking quite strange. Confident that our plan would work, we walked back up the library steps, and prepared for bed. I woke up, feeling sluggish as I always did in the mornings, and got out of bed. Twilight was somehow already up and ready to go. She was always more of a morning pony than I was. When we went outside to check the flour, we saw that the creature had been there. The pasta was completely gone. So was the flour. --------- "I mean, flour is made from wheat, which is a grain, so it kind of makes sense, I guess?" "Yeah, although we maybe should've seen this coming," I replied. "At least the bowl's still there." "Yeah, but we're still clueless as to what this thing is!" Twilight was starting to get frustrated. "How are we supposed to do this? It's hopeless!" "We just need some other way of telling how big it is. Then, we can make the trap, and this will all be over." "But how are we-" Twilight was cut short by a scream coming from a building a few blocks down the street. After a moment, we ran down to see what happened. ------- "All of our bread, gone! What could have done this?" It turned out the source of the screaming was a baker, who had their bread stolen by the creature. Twilight tried to get her to calm down, while I took a look around the bakery. Nothing seemed unusual, despite the lack of baked goods in the display. I looked all around the counter, but nothing seemed out of place. After a few moments, I turned away, only to have something shiny catch the corner of my eye. A singular nail had been moved from its place. I looked closely. It looked as if somepony had tried to put it back after taking it out. Or some creature. I used my horn to pull it out, revealing a small gap in the display case. The board wouldn't move, which led me to one conclusion. This thing was tiny. It had managed to slip through the hole that the nail was in, ate all of the bread and cake inside, and left the same way, putting the nail back in its spot. This answered our question, but it raised several more. "Hey, Twilight? You might want to look at this." --------- "This creature must be one of the smallest animals to ever live! How was it even able to get the nail out?" Twilight had a point. Something that small shouldn't be nearly strong enough to pull a nail out from a board. Not to mention still being that small after eating thousands of calories worth of baked goods. "It doesn't make any sense. What could possible eat so much, be so tiny, and yet be so strong? How could we even contain something like that?" I sat down in one of the reading chairs in the library. "Well, at least we know how big the trap needs to be. The problem is, it has to be strong enough to keep it in there, at least until we can find a better solution." I thought for a moment. "We'll need a strong metal, very strong, and it has to have a good lock on it as well." "Can't you just use the metal you use for everything else?" She almost surprised me by saying that. "That's the problem. Different metals are good for different things. For example, if you're making a tool that is going to be used around flammable stuff, you use bronze, because it doesn't spark. If you need a fairly cheap and strong metal, and sparking isn't an issue, you use iron. But the problem with that is, iron probably wouldn't hold it. Steel might, but it's much more expensive and harder to work than iron. I don't think we can convince anyone to get that for us without Celestia here. We would either need something just as strong, but much cheaper, or we would have to be able to get it ourselves. I don’t know of any metal that is either of those things." Twilight seemed lost in thought. "I mean, we could try to make steel, but that would be dangerous, and hard, and could get us into a lot of trouble. Or, we could make an iron cage, but reinforce it. Or, maybe we could-" "Shadow?" I paused. I had let myself get carried away for a bit, but she had snapped me out of it. "Yeah?" "This might sound crazy, but can I see the original blueprint for your horn?" -------- "What if we took the flux, and mixed it with some iron?" Twilight had something of a point. According to the formula, flux was at least part carbon, which makes steel when mixed with iron. "But Twilight, we don't know anything about this stuff. If we mixed it with iron, who knows what might happen?" "I don't think we have much of a choice here, Shadow. I think we'll just have to do it, and hope it's what we're looking for." Reluctantly, I agreed. Despite the fact that it could do literally anything, from blowing up half of Canterlot to releasing multiple times the radiation of the only recorded successful atomic fission experiment, it was the only way we could proceed without Celestia's help. Plus, it was a risky gamble like this that ultimately got me my job as Royal Engineer anyway. Our request for iron was approved by the Royal Council, who generally dealt with matters when the Princess was either away or preoccupied. Compared to other metals, iron is very common in Equestria, so it tended to be fairly cheap. Steel was much more expensive, mainly because its main ingredient besides iron was coal, which was much more uncommon, and was mostly used for trains. The council agreed to give us seven bars' worth of iron to work with, which would be plenty. We then made our way to the Canterlot ironworks. This was where most of the guards' weapons and armor were made, as well as a lot of other metal products. This one specifically was owned by the Royal Court. Most private ironworking companies had their own ironworks in other cities. "State your name and business," the guard at the entrance said. "I am Midnight Shadow, and this is Twilight Sparkle. The princess assigned us the task of catching a bread-stealing creature on the loose"- I handed him the letter from the Princess - "and in order to do so, we need access to the ironworks." The guard looked over the letter, then back at us. "Okay, you're clear." He then stepped aside, allowing us to enter. "I'll never be fully used to all of this formal stuff that comes with being a Royal anything," I said once we were inside. "Really? You seemed pretty good at it," Twilight responded. "I'm just used to addressing strangers with respect. That's a little different from the 'wait a second I have to make sure you really are who you say you are' stuff that I have to do every time I go somewhere new." We reached a furnace that would be suitable for our needs. I took out an iron bar from the wagon we had brought with us. I put the bar into the furnace, then took a match from a box that was sitting in front of it and lit the flame. Unsurprisingly, metal takes a while to melt. After about twenty minutes, it had fully melted. Then, I took the jar of flux and a measuring cup from the wagon, and carefully poured the precise amount of flux I had estimated would make an alloy as close to steel as possible. "How'd you know how much to use?" Twilight asked. "Well, I tried to keep the proportions similar to steel, except with the coal replaced with flux. I thought that'd be the best way to make something similar." With the flux all measured out, only about an eighth of the jar, it was ready to be mixed. I took a deep breath, held it, and poured the flux into the molten iron. The iron and flux mixed together, making a strangely purplish-red mixture. It seemed almost as if the temperature of the furnace went up. Twilight and I were both sweating by that point. I then lifted the container using the special tool lying on the wall nearby, and poured it into a sheet mold. It took another fifteen minutes to cool. The result was a solid sheet of purplish-gray metal, shimmering in the low light of the ironworks. Twilight's horn began to glow as she tried to levitate it. It didn't budge. It didn't even glow, like most objects did when being levitated. It just sat there, immobile. "Let me try, Twilight." I switched my horn on, and tried to levitate it. It still wouldn't move. Then, I hesitantly reached out my metal hoof to pick it up. I thought it was maybe just too heavy to lift. But when I lifted it, I was surprised to find it was light as a feather. I touched the surface with my other front hoof. It tingled a little, but nothing else happened. I shifted it from hoof to hoof, concluding that it definitely wasn't too heavy to be lifted. Which led to another, more interesting possibility. But, we had created it with the sole purpose of making a strong metal, so we needed to test its strength. I grabbed a metalworking hammer off of the wall, and struck the metal plate with it. When I lifted it back up, the head of the hammer was squashed down all the way to the handle. "Well, I guess that answers the question of strength," I said. Still, I felt as if that wasn't the most important quality of this metal. There was definitely something special about it. I decided in my head that it would need further study, when I didn't have another task to complete. --------- It took us a few hours, but we eventually made enough of the new metal alloy to make the cage. I had started calling it "flux-steel," but Twilight wanted to name it something a little less obvious. "How about... Purple-steel? Purple-iron? Lavender-iron?" She seemed to like the fact that the color matched her coat, although she didn't want to admit it. "Twilight, we have more important things to do than come up with a better name for it. Flux-steel will do for now." I placed the six flux-steel sheets into the wagon, and we set out for home. The trap was fairly simple; it was a flux-steel box, with one side that could lift up and down. It was rather small, about the size of a small fishbowl, but it was big enough to hold a creature small enough to squeeze through nail-sized gaps. It had a mechanism for being raised and lowered, attached to a string that could be pulled from a distance, and extremely tiny air holes, to keep the creature from suffocating. I figured that it wouldn't be that small, so it wouldn't be able to squeeze through. Our plan was equally simple, if not more so. We would set the box down outside, put some bait inside it, then hide in the bushes and wait. When we saw it enter the box, we would pull the string, trapping it inside. The sun was already setting by the time we had set everything up. We were ready to catch the creature, once and for all. --------- The light of the moon allowed us to just barely see the trap from our hiding spot. A few minutes passed without any movement. Twilight fell asleep twice, and both times I had to wake her up. After about a half hour, I saw it. I couldn't tell what it looked like; but I knew it was there because of its eyes. They glowed a soft amber color, just barely illuminating the ground in front of it. It was about as big as I expected; that is, about as tall as a bit was wide. It slowly made its way to the trap, seemingly unaware of our presence. I was breathing very shallowly, and Twilight was practically holding her breath, the two of us sitting in complete silence.It made its way along the path, taking a moment to look around after every two inches. It seemed like it took hours for it to reach the box. It crawled inside. "Twilight, now," I whispered, barely audible. Twilight grabbed the string, and pulled back on it. The trap's door slammed down. It wasn't that loud, but the fact that it was the only thing making any noise made it seem louder. We sat still for a moment, and I was about to go and get the trap when I heard another sound. A strange Earth Pony walked up to the trap. Her hoofsteps were quiet, almost as if she was trying not to be heard. She reached the box, then started to try and open it. "Hey! What are you doing?" I called out to her, as Twilight cast an illumination spell. The pony looked as if she had been out in the woods for weeks; her mane was messy, her coat was filthy, and her hazel eyes were bloodshot. Her coat looked like it was a yellowish-blonde underneath all the dirt, and her mane seemed to be a similar color. Upon seeing us, she hissed, exposing her jagged, yellow teeth. I stood up and began to walk towards her. "Hello? Ma'am? I need you to tell me what you're doing here." She started to back away, almost as if in fear. "Listen, the Princess tasked us with catching this creature, and by interfering you are inhibiting a royal operation, which is against the law. Now please, explain yourself." I was getting closer to her. She hissed again, then turned and ran. "Well that was unexpected," Twilight said. "Who was she?" "I don't know, although it seemed like she wanted to set the creature free." Twilight and I both looked at the purple box, now closed, sitting in the middle of the path. I walked over to it, picked it up, and put it on my back. "Now, let's see just what this thing is, shall we?" ------------ It was definitely small, that was for sure. It looked bug-like, although it wasn't any bug I'd seen before. I reached out a hoof to pick it up, but it scurried away, almost running straight into Twilight's forcefield. "Relax, little guy. I don't want to hurt you." I slowly moved towards it. It pressed its back up against the forcefield, squeezing as far away from me as possible. Once again, I reached out a hoof to it, making sure to use my good front hoof, seeing as the metal one would probably scare it even more. Seeing it had nowhere else to go, it reluctantly crawled onto my hoof. "There you go, little guy. See? I'm not gonna hurt you," I said. It seemed to calm down a little. I looked at Twilight, who was watching from outside the forcefield. She was looking at me with an anxious expression on her face. I looked back to the creature in my hoof. Its eyes met mine. Its gaze was one of curiosity, and I could tell an intelligent being was looking back at me. It tilted its head sideways. I did the same. It blinked twice. I did the same. Then, I took it and set it gently back in the box, closing it afterwards. Twilight lowered the forcefield. "What is it?" "Well, it definitely isn't anything I've seen before." I looked at the floor, thinking for a moment. "The real question is, how is something so tiny able to pull a metal nail out of a board?" "And what was up with that other pony?" Twilight said. That was when I figured it out. "Twilight," I said. "What do you know about symbiotic relationships?" ---------- It made perfect sense. The pony would do all of the strong work, and the creature would squeeze through the gaps that the other could never fit through. They shared the food they got from it, and that was how they survived. It was definitely strange, a pony acting so much like an animal. "In order to truly complete our mission, we need to catch both of them." Twilight nodded. "But how are we going to catch a full-grown pony?" "It's actually quite simple. You saw how she tried to free its creature from the box. I bet, we could use her desire to free the creature against her, and trap her so she won't be able to steal any more bread." "That's all well and good, but this is a pony we're talking about, not an animal. We can't chain it up like that." As usual, Twilight had a point. Even though the pony was a thief, she was still a pony, and we had no place arresting ponies. That was the police department's job. The police department. "Maybe we can't, but I know somepony who has every legal right to do so." ------------ We planned to lure the thief out with the creature, then have the police arrest her. After all, she had been an accomplice to the creature; therefore, she could be arrested for stealing from the citizens of Canterlot. When we walked outside to set everything up, I was surprised to see the pony standing just at the entrance of the path. It was barely past noon, so I was confused as to why she was there. I decided to try and talk to her. "Excuse me, ma'am? What are you doing here?" No response. She just stared at me, her gaze like that of a wild animal looking at its hunter. "Ma'am?" Still no response. I walked closer. "...friend..." she said. I was surprised to hear her talk, seeing as she didn't seem to be able to before. "Yes, I am your friend. I just want to help you." "...you...take friend..." Her voice was raspy and hoarse, as if she hadn't had a drink of water in days. "Oh, yes, well, about that..." "...you...take friend...that make you no friend..." "Listen, I only want to help you. You've done some bad things, but it's okay." "...how would you like...if me took friend from you?" It was at that moment I realized what the pony was saying. The creature was its friend, perhaps its only friend, and it had been tricked into being captured. Even if the creature wasn't a pony, it was definitely intelligent, perhaps even sentient. I realized what we had done. "I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have tried to take your friend, but you've been stealing from other ponies, and that isn't right either. You're just trying to survive, and I get that, but there has to be a better way!" "...no better way...without friend..." When I looked in her eyes, I saw true sadness. A single tear dripped down her cheek. I understood what I had to do. ---------- "You let it go?" Twilight said, practically yelling at me. "Well, what was I supposed to do, Twilight? Keep it locked up, in a dark box, separated from the only friend it ever had? It just wasn't right." "You know what else isn't right? Having them running around stealing from everypony. Shadow, how could you do this? Imagine what Princess Celestia would say!" "Twilight, if you and I were going around stealing, might I add for survival and survival alone, and I was kidnapped, wouldn't you want to get me back?" "I-I suppose so, but..." "And does the fact that we're thieves make the kidnapping right? If we were to keep them imprisoned, we would be no better than they are." "They are animals, Shadow! They are-" "They are intelligent beings, Twilight. Intelligent beings who were forced to steal in order to survive. They didn't choose to live like that, they had to." "You don't know that! For all we know, this whole 'surviving' thing could just be a trick pulled by her to make us let her go!" I looked away, not convinced. "All I know is that I want to do what I feel is right. And keeping them in a cage doesn't." A small rock hit the library window. I went over to see where it had come from, almost forgetting the argument between Twilight and I. The pony was sitting in the branches of a nearby tree, with the creature on her shoulder. She mouthed words, and although I couldn't hear her, I could tell exactly what she was saying. "...you...friend..." -------- "So you weren't able to catch it, even with this fancy trap of yours?" Princess Celestia looked at me, then at Twilight. I nodded. "It was just too strong. It easily lifted the door." The Princess looked over at Twilight. "Is this true?" She nodded, very clearly nervous. "Well, I guess it might have been a bit of a tall order for you two to take on alone. Even so, you tried, and came very close. I'll have my guards track it down later. Twilight, you may go. Shadow, stay here. I have something else to discuss with you." Twilight breathed a sigh of relief and left the room. I could tell by her hoofsteps that she broke out running as soon as the door was closed. "You let it go, didn't you?" Celestia asked. "Huh?" "Listen, Shadow. I know you wouldn't have given up like that. You would've asked for more time if you really thought you could do it yourself. Plus, there is no way a creature as small as the one you described could lift the door to this cage. There's something you're not telling me, Shadow, and I would appreciate it if you were just honest with me." I took a deep breath, then described to her everything we went through. From the first test to figure out how small it was, to the bakery incident, to making the trap, to discovering the wild pony and her relationship with the creature, to me letting it go because it didn't feel right to keep it locked up. When I was finished, she thought for a moment, then nodded. "I see." She made eye contact with me, and by her eyes I could tell she understood. "That was a very mature decision you had to make, Shadow. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what I would've done in your situation. But you made the decision almost without a doubt. You stood up for what you believed is right, even when neither of the two choices were objectively better than the other. That kind of devotion is a trait which will serve you well, if you apply it correctly." "So, what are we going to do about them?" "Well, from my understanding, you never had any irrefutable evidence that this exact creature and this exact pony were the ones behind the thefts, did you? For all we know, they might not have had anything to do with it. And, since our court system operates on an innocent-until-proven-guilty philosophy, there is no way we could legally arrest them." The Princess winked at me. I did the same. ----------- "Goodnight, Shadow." Twilight climbed into bed. "I just need to do one more thing, then I'll go to sleep as well." I opened the door, and walked down to the path. I set the wooden bowl full of pasta down on the ground. In the morning, it would be empty. I turned around, and went back inside the library, ready to get a good night's sleep. ----------- The Princess issued a Royal Decree not long after the incident; that, in an effort to reduce the bread thefts, the citizens of Canterlot would put out at least a small morsel of food every night. Most ponies did so, and the amount of bread thefts dropped dramatically. Nopony could explain why it worked, or where the idea came from. Nopony, that is, except Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia, myself, and the thieves themselves. Eventually, it became a normal part of life in Canterlot, and everything went back to normal. Of course, the story isn't over. In our haste to catch the thief, Twilight and I had created something that had limitless potential, for both good... ...and evil. -----------