The bottom of the page—the printout, Twilight had called it— was sharp to the touch. A row of tiny teeth at the edge of the slot had cut it clean and straight. There was nothing at all like that in the Dragon Lands.
“Wow, look at that! No magic!” Spike marveled. It was times like this that made him glad he lived among the ponyfolk. They had a way of tidying everything they touched. Everything was clean and bright, and just so. He couldn’t imagine where he’d be without them. Without Twilight. Sucking his thumb, still stuck inside his egg, probably.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said to the parchment, holding it in a dusty sunbeam. The block letters had bled a little into the over-bright white.
Avg. Velocity (horns/second) = 6 Uncertainty = 42
Nothing else was on the page. “That’s the secret, huh? Guess I better … uh … guess I better take this data upstairs and file it,” Spike muttered. “Where should it go? Medical section? Yeah, that’s probably where it should go. Would be a shame if it were to get smudged, or lost after all that hard work. Twilight said …”
What had she said?
It was evidence, he remembered. She could talk about it to other ponies, other creatures—ones without magic, even—or put it into a book so others could read about it and check to see if they could get the same numbers. But that meant any pony could read about it. Bad ones, too.
“Gosh, I hope no pony uses this for anything evil.” He looked to his left and right.
Something moved behind one of the chairs.
He turned to run. He had to get to the medical archives before whoever that was could steal the velocity and use it for their own nefarious purposes. Once it was filed, he would lose them in the maze of shelves and get Twilight’s help. Then they’d be in a world of trouble.
In his haste, his foot slipped into the Data Retrieval Slot. Like the grip of a vengeful ghost waking to its purpose, it pulled him off-balance. As his belly hit the floor, he coughed out a cloud of flame, and not the kind that sent letters to Princess Celestia. Hot air from the blast gusted into a tower of color-coded notes lying on a nearby table. It toppled over and splashed against the wall.
The printout disintegrated into a hail of soot.
“No!” Spike cried. He rolled onto his back, ready to turn his fire loose on the would-be thief who had ambushed him.
Paper floated down around him; swirling sheets of tiny black words and figures. Nobody was there.
He slammed his head against his palm. The last, last step. He’d gotten to the very end, only to be defeated by his own tired dragon brain. Twilight was going to be really, really mad.
He sank to his knees over the serrated metal groove and shouted down to her.
“Um … Twilight? Can we start over?”
She might have sung a few notes of her song. It was hard to hear over the hum of the machinery below.
“Twi?”