With no leads to go on, the crime fighters were left with nothing to do but lick their wounds. And in Pinkie's case, an emergency visit to Starlight to get the Spider Cam repaired without Twilight knowing it. Fortunately, Starlight had her own lab within the castle that could be accessed without Twilight's knowledge.
Starlight noticeably frowned as she examined the damaged machine with her magic. "Gotta say, Pinkie. This is a new record. Twilight gave you that camera just a day ago, and you've already wrecked it."
"But you can totally fix it, right?" Pinkie pleaded. "I promise I'll be more careful with it. And I'd hate for Twilight to find out after she worked so hard on this new creation."
Starlight held the machine aloft. "Well, I think I can do it, but it'll take some time. It's not going to be a perfect fix."
"That's fine. I don't have anything else to do," Pinkie admitted with an unhappy sigh. "Now that Martin Lee's taken The Shocker away, Cheese and I lost the only lead we had so far," She angrily kicked the ground. "It's just not fair! Martin Lee won't tell me anything, and with Shocker in his care I can't do a thing. I hate feeling so helpless!"
Starlight placed the camera on a table to start working on it. For the unicorn it was quite difficult to work when one hoof was artificial. But she'd been used to it for some time now, so it wasn't so much a burden as it was an annoyance. "If anypony knows what that feels like it's definitely me. After The Rhino's attack, I knew I should've felt lucky to be alive but I just felt like I was a burden to Twilight. She took me in out of the kindness of her heart, and just as I started showing promise with my studies it all got cut painfully short," Her lips appeared to quiver a little as she added. "But you know what? Since the attack, I've come to realize that everything happens for a reason."
Pinkie was most intrigued, especially as she recalled Twilight's statement earlier about Starlight's personal research that remained a mystery. "Would it have anything to do with you insisting on your own lab now?" She wondered. "I know you're not exactly Twilight's student anymore, but you still live here."
Starlight paused briefly in her work to turn to Pinkie. "Yes, that's a very big part of it. And I feel like I'm on the verge of a breakthrough, one that will revolutionize the world as we know it!" With eyes all aglow the unicorn proceeded to explain. "You know about lizards, right? If they lose their tails for any reason, they just grow a new one and it's like it never happened. After studying them for a bit while working on a permanent solution to my prosthetic hoof, I started thinking 'What if there was a way to duplicate the results in ponies?'"
"Sounds... interesting, I suppose," Pinkie replied with a shrug. "I've had to improvise solutions on the fly before, and just maintaining my web shooters is a constant undertaking. I'm not sure I see how that's so ground breaking, though."
"Just think about it, Pinkie," Starlight boldly insisted as she raised her other hoof (the normal one). "I'm not talking about growing back tails! No no no! We need to think big, and we need to think bold! Imagine the possibilities if ponies could grow back missing limbs like a lizard grows a new tail. Not just hooves, but also wings from pegasi, and horns from unicorns, they could all be grown back good as new. Same goes for eyes. Those brave stallions and mares in the royal guard that throw themselves into danger and pay the price for it, they'd be freed from relying on patches and prosthetics! They could walk, fly, and use magic like nothing ever happened! We would live in a world where such physical traumas were banished forever, never to return! Wouldn't that be lovely?"
Pinkie pondered the proposition as she put a hoof precariously to her chin. She was silent for a moment as Starlight's words slowly sank in. "It all sounds like a good idea, Starlight..." She began.
"-See?! Told you it was a good idea!" Starlight proudly declared.
However, Pinkie was quick to add in. "-But that's exactly what the scientists behind that experiment which gave me my spider powers thought. And something tells me that a pony receiving all the powers of a spider wasn't one of the things they were hoping their research would produce. It's why I developed so much of the spider tech myself originally, I didn't want anypony else to start experimenting with my abilities. I feared somepony might attempt to duplicate the results."
"I see your point, Pinkie. Which is why it's still strictly a hypothesis for the time being," Starlight replied to her friend. "I haven't yet begun to set up a reliable way to test it. And I know that if I proposed the idea to Twilight, she'd say no too for similar reasons. Though in her case it'd be more of the 'It's too dangerous' argument. But I really believe it could be a benefit to all of Equestria, maybe even beyond!"
"Funny, that's exactly what Filthy Rich believed when he created The Scorpion," Pinkie commented. "They always say the path to Tartarus is paved with good intentions," Then she decided to change the topic. "Well, I guess I'll leave you to work on the repairs for my Spider Cam. Send me a note when it's all done, and I'll come to pick it up. Fiddling with that should keep you occupied for the near future."
"Wait! Before you go, there is something I'd like to give you," Starlight offered. "If you'll let me see your web shooters for a moment."
"What are you gonna do with them?" Pinkie asked, even as she reluctantly obliged and showed her web shooters to Starlight.
The unicorn lit up her horn, aiming a spell at the wrist mounted devices. A light tingling sensation worked its way through Pinkie's body as her web shooters were surrounded in the soft glow of Starlight's horn. It stopped a moment later.
"There," Starlight smiled. "It's not much, but I was able to modify your web shooters to include a rapid fire option. Just quickly press the button and you can shoot as many cartridges as you can carry. Of course, you'll have to be careful using it since it'll eat up webbing very fast. So try not to get carried away with it, okay?"
"Okay," Pinkie nodded to Starlight. "You know, the funny thing is, I'd been meaning to give my web shooters just such an upgrade for a long time now. But I could never make it work, every time I tried it would ruin my web shooters and I'd have to repair them. Took a very long time. This new feature might be useful if I ever get backed into a corner, and I'll bet I could mix it with different types of webbing too."
"Guess you'll have to figure that out on your own time," Starlight suggested. "And if you need some leads, why not check Town Hall? Mayor Mare may know something about Martin Lee that we don't."
"Great idea!" Pinkie declared as she slipped into her Spider Mare costume. "Thanks for the advice, Starlight."