The vent was a tight fit because somepony had decided that you didn’t really need room to stand inside your HVAC system. It was sort of rude, the way they didn’t consider the needs of ponies who might need to crawl through them to infiltrate high-security areas. Even for Loopy it was a tight fit, and there was the constant risk of hitting a dead-end or tight corner and getting stuck in the maze of metal.
It was still a lot more comfortable than wearing the malfunctioning armored suit. That had been left back on base where Lyra could repair it and Loopy didn’t have to worry about activating some kind of secret self destruct when she was trying to rescue a cat from a tree.
Not that Seasaddle had trees. Even if they hadn’t been removed to make more room for neon lights and street signs, they’d drown in the constant rain.
“Remember, if you get caught, just show your badge,” Bon-Bon said over the radio. “You’re working for the government. We’d rather avoid turning this into a fight.”
“Next you’ll want to get a warrant and go in the front door,” Loopy whispered. “Maybe we could send them a strongly-worded letter about how they should provide evidence of any crimes they’ve committed.”
“Don’t get sarcastic.”
Loopy snorted and stopped. She could feel a guard. They had a distinct emotional flavor to them, a combination of boredom and alertness that came with endless training about the dangers lurking around every corner when it met the harsh reality that the major dangers of patrolling an office building involved paper cuts and the occasional stale donut.
She found a vent and watched a pony in a tactical vest slowly walk past below her, the emotions going with him.
“Any cameras here?” she whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Lyra said. “It should be safe to drop down.”
Loopy nodded to herself and waited. The guard was already out of sight but she stayed in the vent until she couldn’t sense him at all, then carefully pulled the vent cover free and dropped down.
She held on to the grating, putting it to the side where it would be out of sight, then examined her immediate surroundings. Her suit didn’t have night vision or a shape-shifting cape or hoofblades, and it felt better because of it. She didn’t need to fight against a machine all night.
The lab was a wide space, with worktables along two walls and heavier machining equipment on a third, islands in the center holding half-disassembled things Loopy couldn’t identify at a glance. It looked almost like a morgue, with the parts carefully removed and set aside with labels, like the dead machines were being cut apart to determine the cause of death.
“See anything familiar?” Bon-Bon asked.
“Not yet,” Loopy said. She spotted a clipboard covered in notes and picked it up, flipping through it and trying to get a sense of what was going on. “It looks like they’ve been under a lot of pressure. This is mostly just threats about them losing their jobs if they don’t get results. I’m glad I don’t work here.”
“Maybe Miss Piton wasn’t lying about their tech not working,” Lyra said. “That’s disappointing.”
Loopy looked from the notes to the disassembled machines on the tables. “It seems like they’re trying to reverse-engineer their own demo units.” She stepped over to one and turned it over. If she looked at it just the right way, she could see how it would slip over a hoof. “I think this was in the photo you showed me.”
“Why would they need to reverse engineer anything?” Lyra asked. “They built them in the first place!”
“Somepony built them,” Loopy said. “But not this research team. There are references to an accident about a year ago. Lots of that corporate-speak about how they’ll recover and put together an even stronger team after the… unfortunate resignation of their head researcher, Doctor Ivory.”
“Want to put bets on the accident never being public knowledge?” Lyra asked.
“Miss Piton probably decided it would be bad for their stock price,” Loopy said. “But she’d say something about how important it was to look to the future and move past the tragedy, I’m sure.”
“Doctor Ivory must have taken all her notes with her,” Lyra said. “I’ve seen that kind of thing before back in school -- don’t annoy the only pony doing work in your group project or they’ll just take their ball and go home.”
Loopy put down the clipboard, grabbing papers from a desk.
“There has to be something useful here,” Loopy muttered. “Spellchecker wasn’t using broken-down junk like this.”
“She must be working with Doctor Ivory,” Bon-Bon said. “I’ll see if I can track her down. If she gave her those weapons, it’s a crime.”
“Hey, this is from today,” Loopy said. “It’s about that robbery last night.”
“The robbery? So they do have some kind of connection to Spellchecker!”
“She knew exactly what she was looking for. She opened one container, and took one box out of it,” Loopy said. “Apparently that box was being shipped here. I should have known. The ponies on the dock had the company logo on their uniforms.”
“What was in it?” Bon-Bon asked.
“I don’t know. This is just about changes to the delivery time because of the police involvement. Apparently, they paid a premium to get it out of the evidence locker with no questions asked.”
“That’s called a bribe,” Bon-Bon grumbled.
Loopy shrugged. “Whatever it is, it was worth a lot of trouble. Miss Piton might have just flown in from Prance, but it wasn’t for a meeting. She flew in for that box. They mention just how displeased she was that it wasn’t here on her arrival waiting for her.”
“No wonder she was so pleasant,” Lyra said. “I bet she expected us to ask about her shipment. When we started asking about technomagic and some odd devices, it must have been a relief.”
“Let’s find it,” Bon-Bon said. “Maybe we’ll get a few answers.”
“That could be a problem,” Loopy said. “It’s not in the building. With the delay, they had the courier take it right to the final destination.”
Loopy could hear the frustration in Bon-Bon’s voice. “And where was that? It had better not be on its way to Prance.”
“I can answer that,” Lyra said. There was the sound of dramatic unfurling of paper.
Loopy paused, waiting. No explanation came.
“You have to read it to me,” Loopy said. “I can’t see what you’re holding.”
“Oh! Right. Supernova Solutions is holding a big investor banquet tonight on the corporate yacht. Rumors are they’re going to unveil a whole new product line.”
“And that’s in the papers? The news is public?” Loopy asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because if I wanted a second chance at stealing whatever Spellchecker wanted, I couldn’t imagine a better opportunity. I need to get on that boat.”
“I’ll see if I can hire something on short notice,” Bon-Bon said. “There has to be a speedboat or jet-ski or something…”
“That would alert Spellchecker if she’s there,” Loopy said. She tossed the papers she was holding onto the floor. She buzzed up to the vents, trying to suppress the noise from her wings as best she could. “Not a good idea to fly, either. She could see me coming from above.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“One,” Loopy said, slipping back into the vent.
The thing about being a changeling was, Loopy could imitate whatever she turned into almost perfectly. Some changelings had the skill to turn into inanimate objects or shift into massive monsters, but she’d never really been that good. Even just trying burned through her stored love so quickly it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds before she’d have to turn back to normal.
What she could do, really well, was pretend to be almost any kind of pony. It only took a trickle of energy to stand on a cloud. Earth pony strength was draining, but maintaining it for a few heartbeats was simple. Unicorn magic was the most difficult, but most unicorns couldn’t do much more than simple telekinesis anyway.
Tonight she had to try something new. She’d never been a hippogriff before.
The bay waters splashed around her as her new fins pushed at the water. It should have been icy-cold this time of year, but Loopy couldn’t feel the chill at all. She dove down deeper, under the waves, and everything smoothed out. It wasn’t exactly like flying, but it felt almost as freeing. It was quiet and peaceful. If breathing water didn’t feel so strange it would have been perfect.
Loopy dove deeper, then turned to the surface and swam hard, leaping out of the water for a few seconds. The yacht was huge, less like the little pleasure boat she’d imagined and more like a mansion on the waves, lit up like a casino against the dark sky. As she got closer she could hear the music and the rumble of the engine through the water as it slowly circled around the bay.
Despite the deep rumble of the powerful motors, Loopy had no problem catching up. Nothing that size was built for speed. She surfaced in its shadow, too close to the hull for anypony to spot her unless they were looking straight down off the port side.
Loopy spotted a ladder built into the side of the yacht and grabbed on, shifting back into her natural shape and adjusting the waterproof bag on her back, making sure it didn’t slide off with the change of shape. She peeked over the side, and found herself sharing the deck with diving suits and air tanks but no ponies, all the sounds of the party a level above her.
“Perfect,” Loopy whispered. She climbed the rest of the way up and opened her bag, pulling on her suit and tapping the radio earpiece a few times. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah!” Lyra said. “Hey, Bonnie! She’s back on air!”
There was a rustle of somepony grabbing for their own equipment. “Are you onboard?” Bon-Bon asked.
“I’m Mare Do Well,” Loopy said, like it was an answer.
“I’ll just take that as a yes. Any sign of Spellchecker?”
“I’m hearing ponies laughing and talking, and no screaming, so she must not have shown up yet,” she said. “I’m going to get to the upper decks and see what’s going on. Maybe we’ll be lucky and it’ll be a quiet night.”
“Have you ever been that lucky?”
“No, but the odds say it has to happen at some point,” Loopy muttered. She quietly padded upstairs. Thankfully, somepony had the bright idea to leave the lights off in some of the corridors to keep the guests politely herded in one spot, so shadows weren’t hard to find. Loopy looked around the edge of a brightly-lit door and into the floating ballroom beyond.
A live band was on stage, playing a fusion of classical and pop music on instruments made out of glowing plastic and metal that were obviously very advanced and expensive and sounded almost as good as the real thing. The vocalist was doing her best, but she seemed to have been picked more for her looks than her talent. Buffet tables had countless tiny portions of exotic foods. Most importantly, there was enough alcohol at the open bar to keep the fifty or so ponies happy while they socialized.
“I need to start getting myself invited to these events properly,” Loopy muttered.
“If we had more notice I might have been able to pull some strings,” Bon-Bon said. “Maybe next time you can go to the party instead of just crashing it.”
“I’ll keep my hopes up. Looks like we got here just in time.”
Miss Piton stepped out on stage as the musicians finished their latest number, dancing in the restrained but obviously practiced way that a very self-conscious pony might attempt in order to look cool and hip without actually risking looking silly. She moonwalked up to the vocalist and took the microphone, giving her a quick, polite hug. Just the kind of quaint thing they might use in Prance, probably.
“And that was Jasmine Jewel, everypony!” Miss Piton said. “She’s just the best, a real Seasaddle legend, and I’m super happy to have her here today!”
She applauded while Jasmine took a bow and left the stage, the band quickly packing up and evacuating as well. The crowd joined in on the applause politely.
“Now I’m sure you’re all wondering why I had this little soiree planned,” Miss Piton said with a smile. “Believe it or not, treating you all to the best food and entertainment in Seasaddle wasn’t the main plan for tonight, just a happy coincidence. As you might have heard, we’ve got something very exciting for you tonight.”
Piton stepped aside and two workers wheeled out the metal box Loopy had seen on the docks. The scuffs and scrapes it had gotten hadn’t even been cleaned up yet.
“We’ve had an amazing breakthrough, thanks to a collaboration with some lovely and intelligent mares from Prance's Centre for Equine Research and Networking,” Miss Piton said. “Now I’ll admit, I’m not a scientist, I just get really excited about this stuff, but they tell us this is going to revolutionize our research.”
She opened the box and carefully revealed an ingot of a variegated material, like ceramic that gleamed with the multicolored shades of an oil slick.
“This is a magical superconductor,” Miss Piton said. “I’ve been asked not to pick it up with telekinesis, so I’m just going to leave it where it is, but it’s a beauty! You remember last year how I said technomagic would come to market in maybe five years? Make that two. We might even have some preview units ready for review by the holidays if my guys at the lab are right.”
The crowd applauded, and Piton smiled. The smile faded along with the applause as only one slow clap remained, and a pony in gleaming white pushed her way through the crowd. Two burly ponies in suits stepped in front of her, and a lion’s mane of orange light appeared around Spellchecker’s neck before forming into solid lines and throwing them to the side, right off the deck of the ship and into the water below.
“What’s this all about?” Miss Piton asked. The lines swept forward, binding her in place as Spellchecker walked up onto the stage.
“Guess,” the villain hissed.
Spellchecker took off her mask, revealing her face. Scars crisscrossed her forehead and snout, like she’d run face-first into plate glass. That was only a detail, though, compared to the tiny, broken stump that was all that remained of what had been a unicorn horn.
“Doctor Ivory?” Miss Piton whispered, shocked.
“That’s right,” Spellchecker hissed. “You didn’t think I’d come back? You had me fired because your lab accident left me crippled and it was too inconvenient to have a head researcher who couldn’t even use magic anymore! You struck my name from the papers, took me off the patents!”
“It was in your contract,” Piton tried to explain. The lines of glowing orange around her tightened, and she gasped. “Look, we can make a deal! I don’t like what happened either, but we can do business! How about we get you back pay for that whole year - double back pay, even!”
“It’s not just about the money,” Spellchecker growled. “You stole my work and gave it to other ponies!”
“And they can’t figure it out! You’re a genius. I’m saying it right now, it’s impossible to replace you. We made a mistake. How would you like your old job back, with a big raise? It’s pretty obvious you’ve made plenty of advancements on your own, Doctor Ivory--”
“I have,” Spellchecker interrupted. She put her mask back on. “And now the press is going to know all about you, and about what you made us use to get your demo units working! And unlike them, I’m going to make sure you pay for it all!”
“That’s enough,” Mare Do Well said. Loopy stepped out of the shadows. She hated working in front of a crowd, but there weren’t a lot of options. She’d privately been hoping Spellchecker would just nab the box and run so she wouldn’t have to fight her where other ponies could get involved. “Put the mare down.”
“She’s more guilty than I am,” Spellchecker said. “You have no idea what kind of mare she is!”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I’m still asking you to put her down.” Mare Do Well held out a hoof. “You don’t need to hurt anypony for the truth to come out.”
“The only way she’ll be punished is if I do it myself. You know it! If this wasn’t needed, you wouldn’t wear a mask either!” Spellchecker tapped her hoof against the ground, and lines started forming around her forehoof. Loopy rushed at her and grabbed her fetlock before the chainsaw blade could fully form, holding it away from Miss Piton and trying to wrest it toward the deck.
“Don’t!” Loopy yelled. The blade sliced into the stage and severed something important, a support beam snapping and tilting the stage to one side. Spellchecker’s telekinetic threads around Miss Piton flickered out, and the mare gasped as she fell back, trying to catch her breath.
Spellchecker clicked her back hooves and fought Mare Do Well for control of her chainsaw blade for a few seconds before the teleportation ring completed and she vanished from sight, reappearing next to the buffet table. She looked around, orienting herself, then dismissed the blade and activated her collar again, a spell forming.
Mare Do Well grabbed a serving tray from a waiter with her own magic, tossing it in front of Spellchecker before the mare’s spell could finish forming. A blast of energy slammed into it, sending it flying.
“Stop it!” Spellchecker snapped.
“You aren’t going to win,” Mare Do Well said. “I figured out your weakness.”
“I don’t have a weakness!” Spellchecker said. She clicked her back hooves together, turning slightly. The teleportation circle closed, and she vanished -- and immediately took a hoof to the face.
“You’re predictable,” Mare Do Well said.
“No, I’m not!” Spellchecker growled, rubbing her snout and clicking her heels again. Mare Do Well jumped even before she vanished. Spellchecker blinked in surprise, and when she reappeared out of the teleport flash, Mare Do Well slammed into her from above, wrestling her to the ground.
“You’re not really casting the spells, so they’re the same every time! It’s like a recording!” Mare Do Well grabbed her forehoof and got Spellchecker in a hooflock.
“Just let me have this one thing!” Spellchecker yelled. “I deserve this!”
“I’m sorry,” Mare Do Well said.
Spellchecker’s collar started to glow as a spell began forming. Mare Do Well braced herself and twisted, kicking Spellchecker’s jaw hard enough to make her head snap back and slam into the deck, knocking her out and probably giving her a concussion.
Mare Do Well stood up, sore in more places than she wanted to admit.
“That was amazing!” Miss Piton said, stepping forward. “You’re a real hero. Let’s all get a round of applause!”
She offered a hoof to shake and an insincere smile.
Loopy hesitated.
“It’s good press,” Miss Piton offered, whispering.
“Did you have to punch her?” Bon-Bon asked. “Right in front of cameras?”
She tossed the newspaper onto Loopy’s lap. The front page had a good shot of Mare Do Well slugging Miss Piton.
“Sorry. I just couldn’t stand it anymore.” Loopy shrugged and sat back. “It was a visceral reaction. Like seasickness.”
“The only good thing is, most ponies think she deserved it,” Bon-Bon said. “Doctor Ivory wasn’t the only pony she mistreated.”
“Any word on what the police found once they couldn’t ignore it anymore?” Loopy asked.
“Supernova Solutions is being investigated for what Spellchecker revealed during her testimony,” Bon-Bon said. “It turns out the exotic, expensive material that was so much trouble for them to replicate were unicorn horns. They used it as a shortcut to make the demo units work but there was no way they could market that.”
“No kidding,” Lyra groaned, rubbing her horn in sympathy. “The second one reviewer or hobbyist took it apart they’d be in serious legal trouble.”
“So what’s it all mean?” Loopy asked.
“A few morgue workers are going to prison, and the company will probably get some kind of large fine,” Bon-Bon said.
“So Spellchecker was right. Miss Piton really isn’t going to see justice for anything she did,” Loopy sighed.
“There’s more than one kind of justice,” Bon-Bon said. “Supernova Solutions had their stock drop to almost nothing. She probably lost her entire fortune, and the company will get sold off to somepony else. Maybe somepony with morals.”
Loopy shook her head. “And what about Spellchecker?”
“Robbery, assault, battery… She’ll be in prison for a while.”
“She’s really a genius,” Lyra said. “I hope she can turn herself around. She could do amazing things.”
“What about her gear?” Loopy asked.
“It’s safe,” Bon-Bon promised. “I was able to use some laws about medical waste to make sure SMILE got custody instead of the local police. I don’t trust them not to sell them to the highest bidder.”
“Medical waste?”
“She used parts of her own broken horn to make the technomagic work,” Bon-Bon said.
Lyra winced.
Loopy looked at the armored suit. “There’s nothing like that in there, right?”
“I hope not,” Bon-Bon muttered.