//------------------------------//
// Bubble Bubble Toil And Trouble, Part 1 
// Story: Mare Do Well: Rebirth 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

Loopy liked one thing about Seasaddle. It had been designed more like a changeling hive than any other city in Equestria - the tall buildings and elevated roads and train tracks gave the city far more depth and dimensionality than anywhere else she’d been. Manehattan could match the skyscrapers but the only thing between the towers was empty air and the occasional passing pegasus. Seasaddle was caught in a web of concrete and steel trusses.
Even now, near midnight, Seasaddle was alive. It was one of the rare nights when the clouds overhead broke up and the rain stopped. Ponies that spent most nights indoors took the opportunity to get out and finally enjoy themselves. Nightclubs warred for attention, the streets filling with pounding music.
The criminals seemed to have taken the night as a holiday. From her perch on top of a concrete monstrosity of an office building, Mare Do Well hadn’t seen anything more serious than a few pockets being picked, and things were so quiet she was sorely tempted to drop down and scare the life out of a few punk foals over what amounted to enough bits for bus fare.
“You want to start heading back?” Lyra asked. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen tonight.”
“You might be right,” Mare Do Well admitted.
“Don’t sound so down. If you don’t have anything to do, it’s good for the city, right? So it’s happy news!”
“It makes me feel more like I’m missing something important,” Mare Do Well said.
Lyra snorted. “If you say so. I mean, technically we’re not even police. These patrols aren’t entirely sanctioned by Canterlot, so it’s a grey area on if you’ve got authority or if you’re just a civilian.”
“If you’re really worried about how it would play in court, you probably shouldn’t be talking to me,” Mare Do Well pointed out. She stepped away from the edge of the building. At some point, it stopped being looking for trouble and started feeling more like she was just spying on ponies. “Do you want me to pick up anything on the way back?”
“They’ve got this new orange-mocha frappamochiatto at Novo’s--” Lyra started before Bon-Bon cut her off.
“A call just went out over the police band,” Bon-Bon said. “There’s a break-in at the PrinTecca building. They’re calling for all units, police and fire.”
Mare Do Well ran to the other edge of the building she was standing on, looking over the edge and down the canyon-like city streets, trying to pick out the PrinTecca building. “Think they can use a concerned civilian helping them out? I’m only a few blocks away.”
“They’re calling for all emergency responders, and that means you,” Bon-Bon said. “You’re actually on the clock for this one.”
“Give me the details on the way. I can beat the police there.”





“Automatic alarms went off ten minutes ago, and the on-site security didn’t reply to any calls for status, so it was treated as a real alarm and the security company notified the police,” Bon-Bon explained. “They’re dispatching everything because they don’t know what to expect.”
The PrinTecca building was one of the newest in the city. It was a fusion of form and function designed to impress investors and give the company plenty of room to expand as they found their place in Seasaddle. The facade deliberately invoked Canterlot like the timeless capital would lend some of its stability to the financial district.
Mare Do Well dropped down to the main entrance, a slice of parkland four stories above the ground housing a u-shaped bit of road and surrounded by high walls, letting ponies drive in and feel like they were on an estate. A fountain provided just enough white noise to muffle the sounds of the city. It was almost a perfect illusion.
Mare Do Well walked forward cautiously, looking at the building and keeping her eyes open. The frame had a huge archway picked out in gold, but the doors inside it were glass. Whoever had decided to lay siege to the building hadn’t needed a battering ram to get inside. Loopy picked her way carefully over the shattered remnants.
“They didn’t even try to be careful,” Mare Do Well whispered. “If they wanted to hide what they were doing they wouldn’t have smashed right through the front doors.”
“Amateurs?” Bon-Bon guessed.
“Maybe,” Mare Do Well said. She walked into the lobby, looking around.
There was still some of that Canterlot glit and glitter, traces of gold along wall panels and marble floors that would pass for the real thing at a casual glance, but it was a lot more like what she’d expect from a professional workplace. She trotted up to the front desk and peeked around at the other side.
“No sign of security,” she said. “I’m guessing somepony is supposed to be here. There’s still a cup of coffee.”
“Is it an orange-mocha frap?” Lyra asked.
“It would explain why it’s still here,” Mare Do Well said. “That still sounds disgusting. I think it’s just black coffee.”
“Ew. Who drinks coffee without sugar?” Lyra made a disgusted sound.
“You wouldn’t be putting weight on if you drank diet,” Bon-Bon quipped. “That’s why I drink Berry Clear. Everything they make is sugar-free.”
“I think I hear something up ahead,” Mare Do Well whispered. “Keep the line quiet for a minute.”
She crept forward, focusing on keeping her own hoofsteps silent as she moved from cover to cover, the visitor couches and decorative pillars giving her plenty to hide behind as she made her way through the empty lobby and to the first set of security doors.
Like the front doors, they were only security in the sense that they politely asked ponies to stay out, and they’d been shattered the same way. Mare Do Well walked through, pressing herself against the wall at the next turn and pausing when she spotted something odd. Something had torn through the wall panels just above head-height. She reached up to touch the edge, and it was sticky.
For a second she thought it was blood, but the consistency was more like maple syrup.
“Strange,” Mare Do Well muttered.
She heard a crash ahead and snapped to attention, bolting through the corridor. The next set of doors were much less polite about asking ponies to keep out. They were steel, and that had been cut and bent like a can opener had been taken to it.
Mare Do Well slipped through the broken door and into the lab beyond. It was already half-destroyed, tables overturned and equipment sparking. For a moment, Loopy thought there were bodies littering the floor, but they weren’t ponies. They were steel and brass, metal limbs and vaguely-equine heads built with curved screens instead of faces.
“What’s this? More security?” Asked a tinny voice from the shadows.
“I’m only going to ask nicely this one time,” Mare Do Well rasped. “Show yourself and surrender and nopony needs to get hurt.”
“I wouldn’t be sure about that,” the voice said. “I think you might get hurt quite badly.”
A pony stepped into the light. Every hoofstep rang out against the floor with pure, musical tones. Mare Do Well’s eyes went wide.
She’d seen crystal ponies before, but never a glass pony. She looked like a sculpture, her glass skin gleaming in the overhead light, a twist of silica giving the impression of a mane in tail in what should have been lifeless mineral but was somehow moving. The strangest thing was the hollow space inside her. Something within the glass pony was sloshing, bubbling with the movement like it was carbonated.
“What are you?” Mare Do Well asked.
“I’m a professional,” the pony said, the glass flowing almost like flesh. “And I already know about you. Ponies have been talking about Mare Do Well. They say you think you’re some kind of hero.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“More like something to put on your gravestone,” the glass pony said. She charged with a burst of explosive movement.
Mare Do Well almost missed it. The pony was impossible to read, her emotions as slippery as she was, and Mare Do Well was too used to attacks being telegraphed long in advance by ponies who fought with furious anger. Against this ice-cold mare, it was just fizzling out.
Mare Do Well jumped over her, landing on her back and kicking hard off of it, trying to send her to the ground with the impact.
The glass pony cracked with the blow, stumbling forward and sliding into a row of boxy equipment and half-assembled steel panels. More cracks grew around her joints. A trickle of something thick started to leak from the broken glass.
“Doesn’t look like you can keep this up,” Mare Do Well said. “You’re starting to leak.”
The glass pony smiled. “You’re not very smart, are you?”
Her foreleg exploded, the liquid inside rushing out at Mare Do Well like it was being fired from a hose. She jolted to the side and only barely avoided the splash, but something cut right through her costume and against her carapace, sharp enough to leave a mark despite barely touching her.
The glass pony laughed sweetly and the liquid flowed back towards her, moving like the tentacle of some underwater beast. Glass shards studded the flowing goo like thorns.
“The more I break, the more I break you,” she said. The liquid flowed back inside her, the glass reassembling like a puzzle and reforming her leg, the cracks healing. “And unlike you, I get better.”
“Don’t like this,” Mare Do Well muttered.
“What are you seeing?” Bon-Bon asked. “Did you find the intruder?”
The glass pony’s entire lower half shattered spontaneously and she rocketed towards Mare Do Well like she’d been launched from a rocket. Mare Do Well ducked out of the way and the trail of glass and fizzing goo raked across her back, tearing her cape to shreds.
“I found her and I have no idea what to do with her,” Mare Do Well said.
“Are you talking to somepony else?” the glass pony teased, pulling herself together and turning around to look. “I’m jealous. I should be enough to occupy your attention!”
“Don’t worry, you’re all I’m thinking about,” Mare Do Well said. She slammed a back hoof into the mare’s snout. It cracked, her features breaking up.
“You annoying little--” the mare hissed, her voice distorted. “--Faces are difficult! It takes forever to get it right!”
She shoved Mare Do Well away, her face a broken void, the edges flaking away into the swirling mass that had been below.
“Well isn’t that lovely,” Mare Do Well whispered, backing off.
“You’ll be lucky if you look this good when I’m done with you!” the glass pony’s voice was even more distorted, like it was coming from underwater. The surface of her liquid insides rippled and a tendril lanced out of the ruin of her face, stabbing at Mare Do Well and missing widely, not even catching her hat.
“If your aim is that bad, I don’t have much to worry about,” Mare Do Well said.
“You act like I was trying to hit you,” the glass pony said, the tendril pulling back, curling around her hollowed head like a scorpion’s sting, ready to strike.
“What?” Mare Do Well glanced behind her.
A bright red pressurized tank only a few paces behind her was bulging, the valve broken by the strike that had gone wide.
Mare Do Well ran for it, throwing herself behind an overturned table. The tank failed just as she was diving for cover. Fire and shrapnel filling the room. The steel table wasn’t nearly enough to stop everything, needle-sharp blades punching through it like it wasn’t there.
“Are you still alive?” the glass monster asked. “I hope you’re not done. I thought you had more moxie than that!”
The fire alarm went off as flames crawled along the wall, noxious smoke starting to fill the room. The glass pony froze and looked up just as the sprinkler system went off, a torrent of water flushing into the room.
The monster made an annoyed noise and fled, smashing a tiny, barred window and surging through it like water flowing down a drain.
Mare Do Well stood up, wincing. A sliver of twisted metal from the broken tank was sticking out of her shoulder. She yanked it free and limped for the door.
“And here I was hoping to stay dry tonight,” she grumbled.





“You can’t be serious,” Loopy said.
“I’m always serious,” the officer said. She held up a set of cuffs. “You can either wear these or not but you’re coming with me either way!”
“It’s not happening, Loopy told her. “I’ve had a bad night and if you think I’m going to let you make it worse, you’re delusional. What’s your name?”
“My name is Officer None of your Beeswax is what my name is,” the mare said, spitting on the expensive faux-marble lobby floor. “I don’t like vigilantes, I don’t like ponies going over my head, and you’re a vigilante waving a badge around and saying you don’t have to listen to me.”
“I already explained, I came here when the all-units call went out,” Loopy said. “I didn’t do any of the damage!”
“Sure, like you said, a monster did it,” the officer snorted derisively. “That’s much more likely than the pony in the mask who won’t even tell me her real name. Don’t worry, once I get you downtown you can tell me all about this stupid monster story.”
“That’s enough, Officer Beeswax,” a tired voice said. A detective in a dark brown overcoat walked out of the back room. “We found the security guards. They’ve corroborated the story about the glass monster pony.”
“Your name is seriously Beeswax?” Loopy asked, amazed.
“Sir, even if she didn’t do it, she had something to do with it! At least let me take her down to the station so we can get a statement out of her on the record!”
“Just let it go,” the detective said. “Go take a walk and cool down.”
Officer Beeswax sputtered in frustration and stormed off.
The detective walked up to Loopy and looked at her. The stallion pulled a paper pack out of his coat and offered it to the changeling. “Salt stick?”
“No thanks,” Loopy said.
“Suit yourself,” the stallion said. He took one out and sucked on the end. “Now look, Beeswax is right about one thing. Vigilantes don’t belong on the streets. While you’re working for the Agency, I can’t touch you and I don’t want to. Just do me a favor, alright?”
“What?”
The detective sighed. “Stay in your own lane. Next time, wait for my ponies to respond, or at least call in and let us know you’re on the job.”
He fished in his jacket and pulled out a card, giving it to Loopy.
“That’s got my direct number. If I don’t answer, you call the front desk and ask for Detective Arabica. If they don’t answer, use the police band. I know you can get on the radio. If you can’t get through to me, at least ponies will know you tried and we’ll call it a wash, right?”
Loopy hesitated, then nodded and put the card away.
“I’d like to think we can at least try to work together,” Arabica said. “Your agency did good work with the Sirius Hotel incident. I’d rather have you as a friend than an enemy.”
“I think I can work with that,” Loopy agreed.
Arabica held out his hoof to shake. Loopy took it and winced. He glanced at her shoulder.
“You want me to get the medics? That’s a nasty cut.”
“I’ve had worse,” Loopy said. “No offense, but I don’t want them poking and prodding me without my mask on.”
Arabica smiled. “Fair enough. Just remember, next time--”
“--I’ll call first,” Loopy agreed.





“Her name is Vitria,” Bon-Bon said. She held up a folder.
“Just give me the highlights,” Loopy said, wincing when Lyra pressed a cotton ball into her shoulder wound. “Ow!”
“Sorry, that’s the iodine,” Lyra apologized. “I don’t want to take any chances. There was this weird brown gunk in some of your cuts and scrapes and the last thing we need is to try and find you a doctor.”
“The weird brown gunk was from-- what did you say? Vitria?”
“Yeah,” Bon-Bon said. She sat down and paged through the file. “It’s not her real name. They call her the Vitrified Pony.”
“Cute, because she’s made of glass.”
“That’s the thing, she isn’t made of glass,” Bon-Bon said. “The glass is more like a diatom’s shell. She’s the liquid inside, and the shell just holds her together and gives her shape. It’s like a bug’s exoskeleton.”
“Trust me, you don’t have to explain how those work,” Loopy snorted. “So how’d that happen?”
“Some kind of experiment. She’s not originally from Equestria, so our information is limited. She’s wanted internationally for being a mercenary, assassin, and thief.”
“I don’t think anypony died, so what was she stealing?” Loopy asked, raising her hoof so Lyra could wrap bandages around her shoulder, grimacing as the unicorn put pressure on the wound to help close it.
“That’s the strange thing,” Bon-Bon said. “As far as we can tell, nothing. They’re still going over everything, but even though there was a fire, it got put out quickly, and the PrinTecca people haven’t discovered anything missing yet.”
“So either they don’t want to admit what was taken, or Vitria wasn’t there to steal anything?” Loopy asked. “Thanks, Lyra.”
Lyra patted Loopy’s good shoulder. “Try not to get cut up too badly next time. I’ve only had like one first-aid class. I can’t do stitches yet.”
“We might be asking the wrong questions,” Bon-Bon said. “She doesn’t do anything for free. Somepony in this city hired her, and we can figure out why after we figure out who.”