//------------------------------// // Fortune... // Story: To the Gods // by Comma Typer //------------------------------// “How would you like your pizza, ma’am?” A tremendous amount of patience is required by Fili-Second to let others order before her. Her super-speed powers demand that she go first in line and blather the entire order out. However, she gives plant-loving Rager and fried-loving Radiance their time in the spotlight just like ordinary non-superhero ponies with ordinary non-superhero friends. First in line, Radiance says to the cashier, “I would like to have one all-cheese pizza, one hay strips pizza, one pineapple and daisies pizza, and the Maredison Square Garden special please—all your biggest size. And top it all off with six orange sodas (large) and one hot cup of coffee (also large) for the pegasus here.” The cashier smacks the cash register with a flurry of taps, eyes baggy from the graveyard shift. “That’d be a hundred and twenty bits, inclusive of the twenty-bits fee for the private room.” Radiance scratches her head through her hat. “No loyalty card?” “Ma’am, this is your first time here.” She ruffles her saddle bags for bits. “Fine. We were hoping our more moneyed friends would catch up right now, but this will do. Did you know one of our friends has gems? He’ll pay for the rest of the bill.” “We accept gems here.” The cashier counts the bits and hoofs the customers a key. “Here. Your room’s number three. Just give us a description of your friends and we’ll direct them to your room.” Everyone is at table thirty minutes later, five minutes before four. Matter-Horn, Mare-velous, and Spike come in at the same time, smelling of fresh perfume to mask Mare-velous’s hideous sewer stench. Zapp is last to arrive, coming in with bulging pockets of notes. A few minutes later, a waiter delivers plates of huge appetizing pizzas along with big cups of softdrinks and a lone glass of hot coffee. “Ah, you are all here! Now, about that—” “I’ll pick up the tab. “Spike raises his backpack to the air. The waiter takes a step back. “If it isn’t Spike the Dragon himself! I take it that you’ll pay us handsomely for a meal with your friends and the princess herself?” “They’re new friends, so a bunch of new ponies to treat!” And old friends too, now that I think about it. “Name me the price.” She names the price, and he flicks three rubies at her. “Keep the change.” “Well, well! I hope you enjoy your meal!” The impressed waiter beams at the dragon and his companions as she leaves their table. Breakfast begins with the Power Ponies chowing down their pizzas. Drips of mozzarella cheese string apart and moans of deliciousness come about, cut short by good gulps of fizzy drinks. Zapp leans back on her chair, slamming her cup of soda onto the table. “That hits the spot! We should do this reality-hopping thing again. Baby dragons can give us free meals for every trip!” “I wouldn’t reality-hop again if it’s like this,” Radiance says, floating a messy slice of hay-strips pizza. “The enchanters in this reality are disturbing enough.” “Alright, alright.” Matter-Horn clears the air and waves her forelegs to grab everyone’s attention, leaving her pizza half-finished. “I don’t want to ruin the good food on the table, but you know why we’re here.” The others nod in acknowledgment. “Let’s see: Who wants to share their findings first?” Zapp slides her notes onto the table. “I’ll go first.” As Matter-Horn levitates the notes for perusal, the pegasus launches into her story: “Manehattan’s Office of Weather hasn’t scheduled a storm for two-thirty. Everypony there was busy trying to figure out who started the storm and why. I asked them if they’d identified any suspects, see if we could land any descriptions of the troublemakers. All they got were pegasi, obviously, but they were pegasi with ‘concealing clothes.’ I asked if they were cloaks, what district they were headed to when they were spotted, and their answers line up. The rogues had pegasi mess with the weather beforehoof to cushion the office assault.” Matter-Horn puts down those notes. “Manehattan is very bright with these city lights. They would’ve been very conspicuous flying around with cloaks.” “But it’ll be hard to identify you either way, especially if no one’s looking for suspicious cloaked pegasi so early in the morning.” Matter-Horn mentally concedes the point. “Right, right. This… yes, it does make sense.” She turns to Radiance and Rager. “Any items of interest you two’ve found?” Rager takes a relaxing sip of tea. “They took magic plants alright, and only the rare ones like Sarsafernilla, Ivory Leek, even Heart’s Desire. I also noticed that they got their plants from everywhere: they’d buy death flowers from one store, Ivy Leeks from another, and cursed cinnamon from yet another. It throws heat off of their tail. Quite smart, I confess.” Matter-Horn takes in Rager’s notes and skims them. “Can you tell me if the shop owners’ descriptions of the ponies they saw were consistent?” “Sort of. Sometimes, they wore official researcher clothes. Other times, it’s just casual shirts or plain naked. They also came in different numbers and at different times: one was in droves during lunchtime, another was a solitary trip right before closing time.” “Any names that repeat?” “Yup. They’re in one of the lists with you now, and they all have matches in Clockwisely’s Enchanted Division.” “Good.” To Radiance, “Something like Rager on your end?” “Certainly.” The unicorn licks the crumbs and toppings from her lips. Another batch of notes comes Matter-Horn’s way. “The timing of their gem purchases is hectic but sensible just like what they did for the plants. They made sure to never appear more than once in the same store and to not buy too many items at any one time or place. It’s decentralized grocery shopping. It also helps that most of them were new customers, so the shop owners never knew what to expect from them.“ “The locations were also all over the place,” Rager adds. “They rarely touched any retails within the same block. They made their case very air-tight.” Matter-Horn puts down the latest papers on the floor, running out of space on the table. “Any noteworthy gemstones?” Radiance brings forward a sketch of a stone. “Yes. We now know what gems they were wearing.” Any trace of idle eating stops dead. Matter-Horn gently floats a pizza slice back to her plate. “I’m listening.” One slow breath leaves the tinkerer. “I had a feeling it was one of them… one of those bloodenstones—“ “True bloodenstones or just enchanted bloodstones? If it’s the latter, they’re either mostly for show or—” “They’re true.” She gives no mind to her peers’ astonished looks. “I’m not talking about the bloodstones you’ll find in any old quarry. We’re talking about crystals with blood inside, the kind you’d read about in the grim original versions of your happy-schnappy bedtime stories.” She scarfs some soda, burps loudly. “Simply put, it’s a blood contract. All the contract’s parties participate in the bloodening. They recite incantations to sum up the contract, and they spill their blood over the bloodenstone which they then enchant to solidify the blood surrounding it like a super-thick eggshell. More potent versions allow for a stronger party to alter the contract without the others’ knowledge—“ “Are we dealing with the stronger version?” asks Mare-velous. “Yes.” She does not take tasty solace in her pizza. Talk of blood destroys their appetites. “It gets worse. It connects to a source of magic so they could use it remotely. Like alternating currents but with much larger distances. Or perhaps a radio: get the magic frequency right, punch in enough juice, and you can make use of even more juice on the other end.“ Matter-Horn looks up from her own note-taking. “You’re saying they’re magically enhanced because they’re attached to a powerful source of magic?” “Correct, although I suspect some of them may simply be that gifted. Yet, borrowed power explains how they kept up with us apart from sheer numbers. Take down that power source, and we depower the enchanters to their true power levels.” The constant pen-scribbling ends. “Anything else to note about their gemstones?” “Their connection to the… unsavory arts.” She treads close to vomiting but swallows it back. “The same applies to the plants: hexes, necromancy, animation and reanimation—one or two of them even had some relation to portals and other worlds.” A freezing sensation crawls up Matter-Horn’s back. “So their shopping list confirms their search for what’s illegal and forbidden. But how did they know what exactly to get? How did they know what they were doing? You can’t just buy every single item in the black market unless you’re foolish.” “Unless they got a look at the libraries!” Fili-Second declares, throwing notes and papers and photos en masse at the masked mare. She catches them all without getting hit, capturing everything in her magic field. “So they got access to the forbidden sections too?” “As many libraries as possible,” Fili-Second starts. “It’s hard to coax the librarians about the specific titles, but there're things like 101 Ways to Cheat Death, The Annals of Pillu the Never-Has-Been-Until-Now, and The Summonicom. None of them sound like coffee shop novels, that’s for sure.” Matter-Horn scans the list of books taken and the map of libraries visited. “It’s even worse than I thought. They aren’t a gang of punks chasing a power grab while sounding like a cult. They planned this seriously. They’ve been planning this for months.” “And then there’re the interviews with what’s left of the Enchantment Division: the good guys and good gals. Didn’t know much; must’ve been clamped ironclad unless they were new and excited about things. They’re the ones who didn’t buy into the hullabaloo about grand plans and bad voodoo. The sane ones thought it’s all just hot wind over a new IP. A smart thing too, in hindsight: they arrest you, they’ll think you’re just so excited over your pet project that you bought blacklisted materials.” Matter-Horn blinks at that. “That’d be a doozy. Apart from that, anything about their current locations? Where they might’ve gone?” Her stomach grumbles and Fili-Second pleases it with another pizza slice. “Occasional meetings. They stopped early on, moving on to venues outside of HQ. Secret dark-magic plans don’t go so well when your boss might overhear it.” The Earth pony takes a big swig of soda and wipes her mouth clean with tissue. “Say, Maskie, you went to the houses yourself. You saw anything there that’d make them come together for a Maretropolis minute before scramming by next week?” “Actually, I do—‘ and nudges the pony beside her “—though I’ll let Mare-velous spill the beans.” All eyes on the former spelunker now, and Mistress Mare-velous takes the floor. “I struck out with the subways, so down the sewers I went. After a while… wouldn’t you know? A couple loose bricks revealed secret passages: shortcuts to museums, malls, stations—” “How’d you know they weren’t just made by some other criminal group years ago? Might even be an inside joke for engineers?” The rest stare at Zapp for her questions. “What? Sewers also collect rainfall. Sewers fall under my domain some of the time.” “Most of them are old and carved up by the engineers, most probably. That’s not the point. The point is some shortcuts cut straight through the basements of otherwise insignificant homes, and it looks like those are new.” “And all of them have been occupied by our suspects,” Matter-Horn concludes, “permanently or otherwise.” The room cools down in stunned quiet. “Underground networks,” Radiance mutters in a lull. “They’ve been a literal underground operation. No wonder no one caught onto them until they went AWOL.” “But why did they go AWOL?” Rager points out. “Underground networks with little chance for detection? That’s a good environment for anything shady. With enough security, you can go undetected for years.” “But no one is perfect,” Matter-Horn answers. “Imagine working under the world’s busiest city with hundreds of thousands of souls right above you. Staying there is dangerous in the long run especially if executing their plan will take months at least. That’s without bringing to mind the equine element. Someone will slip, either on accident or otherwise. Word gets out, and they execute Plan B, whatever that is.” Fili-Second stops chewing on her pizza. The morsel dissolves in her mouth. Her wide unblinking eyes catch Matter-Horn’s attention. “Something you’d like to add?” The Earth pony gulps and swallows. Her eyes stare a thousand yards forward. “Someone’s watched us.” Gasps arise, even from Spike. “Wait, us?!” “Should’ve crossed my mind much earlier, but better late than never.” She shrugs. “Anyway, I chased the watcher until he got nowhere to run. Asked him why he’s watching me. Told me he’s seen me and ‘the others.’ No denying that’s the rest of us. Same gemstone from the fight too. Same cloak, but he got his hood removed before he teleported out.” “Description?” asks Mare-velous. “We might’ve seen this guy in one of the basements.” “Basement, eh?” She rubs her chin thoughtfully. “Blond mane, light blue coat, gold eyes—“ Matter-Horn sits up straight like a statue. “He’s dead.” “What?!” “Did you kill him?!” Zapp whispers, flapping above her seat. “No! Please, everypony calm down!” She waits half a minute for every pony and one dragon to chill out. “I didn’t kill him. Given what Radiance said, however, the signs point to the gemstone doing him in.” She then recaps the journey to Lumen Air’s secret underground passage and basement, her confrontation with the stallion, and the death of the rogues’ traitor. “And that’s what I mean with no one being perfect,” Matter-Horn continues past her summary. “I admit, the timeline still doesn’t add up perfectly: if they’ve had their cover blown, why aggravate things by going for the president? Maybe they tried to fast-track the plan and decide it’s better to attack and take over the company now than later. Whatever it is, Lumen’s caused a blunder by not disposing one of their experiments properly. That experiment, fortunately, ended up in Spike’s claws. Hence everyone’s closing up shop in Manehattan.” “While staying faithful to the cause,” adds Radiance. “That unicorn in the end did say we’d see something when their grand plan is complete.” “Either they have an underground section we haven’t found yet or they’ve got a meet-up place somewhere else. Fili-Second, did any of your interviews suggest something like this?” “The pony who now lives in the house by Manehattan Park. You went there, right?” “One of those with somepony new already moved in. Almost caused a ruckus with that one.” “Oh, so that was you?” The Earth pony smirks while sipping on more soda through a straw. “Single Pen heard noises near his couch.” “Yeah, that’s me and Spike, waiting for the both of you to get out. You took too long so we resorted to the sewers. Any idea where he’s—“ “Numnahvut, that’s what he said.” Fili-Second finishes her slices of pizza, ignoring the confounded looks of her friends. “Was from there, he said. Said original owner just wanted out. In fact, Pen’s been in Manehattan for just a day.” “Original owner being Whorlick,” Matter-Horn says, recollecting the missing enchanters’ addresses. “Spike, do you know where and what Numnahvut is?” “Um, we’d be going past Mount Everhoof, for one.” “And where would that be?” The irony of this very smart mare not knowing such a basic fact in this world provides little amusement for the dragon. “That would be way up north. As in hours to get there by train ride.” “Looks like that may be on our itinerary. You know the way there?” Spike shrugs and shakes his head. “Never been there, but I can always ask at the train station’s info center.” “Okay, any faster way to get there like airship rides? You have the gems to cover us and then some.” “Airships aren’t that big here.” Others gasp and raise their ears at this. “Most of the airship services in this world are tour rides.” “I see.” The Masked Matter-Horn passes the time by mulling over their options. “At least we have a probable hideout to go to. We just need confirmation on whether we should go there or not. For all we know, they could still be hiding here. What Single Pen said might be mere misinformation from Whorlick to throw the police off his trail, and—“ Mare-velous’s ears flick up and wobble. Stops all eating and talking. Her mouth moves without speaking. Eavesdropper. By the door. Every eye on the door. No window to see the silhouette through. If this is Lumen betraying us and somehow getting out of that ice prison... Matter-Horn coughs and wears a very fake smile. “Well, that is all we have for now! I just forgot we still have some breakfast to take care of, so let’s get back to our meal, shall we?” An ambiance of pretended chatter about everyday things, backgrounded by munches and slurps. Amid the feel-good atmosphere, Matter-Horn tip-hooves to the door. It opens before her magic reaches the handle. Black suit with a pair of shades over her eyes. The mystery guest portends an anonymous air. Her coat and mane, however, give her identity away to a surprised Spike. “B-Bon Bon?! Wh-what are you doing here dressed up like a special agent?” The dapper mare closes the door behind her. “Thank you for your time.” Her chipper Valley Mare voice, nowhere to be found. Only a professional deadpan. Zapp fluffs up her wings. “Hey, isn’t this a private room? I demand a full refund!” The guest signals the pegasus to stand down. “You don’t have to. We’ll repay you in full. It’s all we could do for the information you’ve given us.” “Information?” Matter-Horn flares her horn up, browsing through dozens of offensive and defensive spells. “You’ve eavesdropped on us, haven’t you?” She just nods. “You can trust us. We’re on your side.” “And who’s we?” and Fili-Second stands up from her chair. “You part of The Enlightened Horses clique or something?” “Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria.” A pause for everyone to take the name in. “S.M.I.L.E. for short.” Spike slaps himself on the head, secretly wishing this is just a stupid prank with her crazy old friend Lyra behind it all. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Bonnie.” Bon Bon takes off her shades, revealing her familiar blue eyes. “Spike, I’ve tried my best to make sure I’d talk to the Power Ponies without you… precisely to avoid this extremely awkward moment. You didn’t even go out for a bathroom break!” Her shoulders sag and she whistles to herself. “But time’s of the essence and someone might be watching the watchers.” The no-longer-secret agent brings out a beeping antennaed device and points it at the far wall. A second later, the wall folds itself up into a narrow corridor. She does not wait for everyone’s surprise to wear off. “Before you ask, the passage moves around too. Anypony tries to break the wall without our control, they’ll just hit bricks.” Puts the device back into her suit. “Now leave your food here. We’ll re-heat them for you when we’re done.” The cramped little tunnel has no end in sight. Spike marches forward, stuck with little breathing room. Every pony marches in single file, Bon Bon leading the downward change. They reach the end of the tunnel: a control room. Deep underground, ponies hustle to and fro with papers and orders. Monitors expel pages of data and security camera feeds are the purview of several dark-suit ponies, witnessing the pizzeria’s operations—including its private rooms. An overcoated pony with a darker pair of shades trots up to the Ponyville mare. “Alright, Agent, don’t laud yourself for getting this one in the bag. This relied too much on luck for any one pony to get credit for.” “I was going to haul them here anyway,” she claims, telling half the truth. “But yes. You’ve heard everything, Agent Furlong?” “Enough to put the lid on the case.” To the Power Ponies and one stunned Spike, she turns and her overcoat spins with her. “Oh, right. I’m Agent Furlong, the mare holding down this League. We’re on the same team and we’re also on the same case, just from different angles. We’ve had operatives case the houses and we’ve surveyed some of the stores you’ve hit, but until you came in, we were stuck in a blind alley.” “That seems incompetent of you,” Radiance say, sour taste on her tongue, “given how sophisticated you seem and how large your workforce is.” Furlong nags a hoof around. Doesn’t help that a couple ponies in the background have almost spilled a stack of papers. “I didn’t say we were omnipotent. We appear strong to the enemy and that’s enough to ward off more than a few threats, but it’s a perennial problem of resource management. We didn’t think this was a high priority so we put it on the back-burner. That is until Bon Bon here discovered the untimely demise of Space Beat.” “B-but… Bon Bon!” Spike jumps a few steps forward to her. “I just saw you and Lyra in the con!” “I was also on the lookout,” she replies, bearing none of her usual Ponyville cheer. “That’s the real reason for our Manehattan late night trip. They sensed suspicious activity at Space Beat’s room: an unusual uptick of visitors. All we knew was that Clockwisely was housing something, so I and Lyra went undercover here to see what could be done.” Her features loosen at the thought of her best friend. “The convention wasn’t part of the plan. Lyra really wanted to go there and buy some merch. That it was sort of related to the case was a happy coincidence.” “So… you were on a secret agent mission… a-and Lyra’s in on it too?” “Hi there, Spike!” yells Lyra as she hops along with papers in her magic grip. She falters at the sight of the serious faces on Spike, Bon Bon, Furlong, and the superheroes themselves still in disguise. “Oh, uh… yeah. Um, sorry about this whole dragging-you-around-in-the-agency-until-your-face-is-blue thing. Doesn’t happen too often, so yeah, good thing! Hey, Bon Bon, don’t give them the amnesia pen flash thing, ‘kay?” “I won’t, Lyra!” Back to that sweet Valley Mare accent Spike heard often enough back home. “The Power Ponies are good ponies, I’m sure, and we’ll return them home. Let them blab about us; we don’t exist there anyway. And, Spike—” she sighs, still rocking the Ponyville voice “—I’m sorry for… all of this. Still, know that, sometimes, I wished you’d be in the know too. From here on out, I know you’ll see me and Lyra as secret agent ponies and you can’t say anything about it. Okay?” And Spike sighs, fiddling with his claws. “Weren’t we friends?” She gives a wry smile. “We are. Honestly not as close as, say, Twilight and company, but it’s all real.” Her village voice shifts into deadpan: “Still, for the sake of Equestrian security, if this goes public, whatever’s out there will know who we are and prepare for us. Promise to keep it a secret?” Not too bad. It isn’t too bad, so his heart speaks. Bon Bon was an alright pony in the crazy town of Ponyville, not to mention the much crazier Lyra with her lyre obsession and her worldbuilding musings of hoomains. He bumps Bon Bon’s hoof with a fist. “Yup. My lips are sealed. Pinkie Promise. And hey, when this is all over, let’s cool down over sandwiches?” A burning sensation twitches her ears. “Oh, boy, why do I have a feeling Pinkie heard your promise from thousands of miles away?” Meanwhile, in Ponyville, a sleeping Pinkie sits up in bed with burning ears. “Huh! I swear I felt a Pinkie Promise going on!” But she closes her eyes and goes back to sleep, hugging her blanket tight. She mumbles, “Have a good one, Spike, whatever you’re doing.” “It’s nothing,” Furlong reassures. “With that out of the way: Can we get to where we come in and help you Power Ponies?” Matter-Horn gives the green light with a nod. “However, you should know that we’d rather not have outside interference. Considering the nature of our dilemma, this is very personal to us, and it can stir up… things.” Bon Bon steps aside and Lyra moves on with her papers. The concert of typewriters and reports drone on as Furlong continues: “We’re aware of that. However, you seem to be missing a key piece of information that’ll complete the picture. My foals collect comics like hot cakes, and in all their incoherent babbling, not once do I hear of you having eyes and ears across the kingdom.” “That is correct.” Furlong points at her army of monitors and papers across the room. “We have such a network. It doesn’t get into everyone’s homes, but it stretches from coast to coast, from Appleloosa down south all the way to Numnahvut up north.” Furlong relishes in the looks on their faces. “Around the time of the attack on Clockwisely HQ—yes, we noticed that too, and you should thank Agents Bon Bon and Lyra for their interrogations there after you left—we’ve received an anomalous magic signal from Numnahvut. A report came in from our northernmost branch: turns out the signal’s been building for days but no one’s noticed until now because it came in blips no ordinary unicorn or measurement instruments would detect. We try to be hooves-off, let the town settle its own problems, but if that’s not your lead to settle the case, I don’t know what is.” “So wait, where exactly did they teleport to again?” asks Mare-velous. “Numnahvut’s your likeliest option. Other anomalous signals have come from other places, but we have our own unrelated cases in there—“ “For your perusal, ma’am,” says an agent. She shoves papers onto Furlong’s face. “Causation isn’t correlation, but take a look.” No caustic backlash against the rude worker. Her eyes read the lines, the charts. A minute later, “Power Ponies, tell me one thing: did they teleport out of the office one by one or at the same time?” “We were blinded by a flash when they got out,” Matter-Horn recalls, “but that implies simultaneity. If it was one by one, it must’ve been very fast.” “At the same time, then.” She hoofs the report to the curious Matter-Horn. “This is clearer data of a Numnahvut magic signal, the loudest yet. Timestamped at around two-thirty P.M., same time as the battle.” While the superhero reads, Furlong whistles and bulky stallions stamp up to her side, armed to the teeth with armor and weapons. “We’ll be escorting you express to Numnahvut. These bad boys pack enough stopping power to negotiate a peace treaty with dragons in wartime. We’re dealing with potential reality-benders, so if things go off the charts—“ “No.” The tiny interruption snaps the agency’s president out of her spiel. “Excuse me?” “It’s pretty clear you haven’t read us. We can handle this just fine. Not that we dislike you—we don’t—but we don’t want you meddling further in our business.” “It’s our business too,” answers Furlong, almost muzzle-to-muzzle, “and the security of Equestria depends on it. We can’t have another Chrysalis-Tirek-Cozy Glow triumvirate on our hooves.” Matter-Horn plants a hoof firmly on the floor. “This is our business. Your special forces will also tick off any enemy scout, but that’s neither here nor there.” She narrows her eyes until they become white slits. “We want these scoundrels to personally and truly understand what they’ve done to our world and to the ponies we’ve sworn to defend. You can at least understand that sentiment.” Furlong stares out over her office. She beholds the work of her hooves and many others: the agency, a beehive of agents on eternal watch. The queen bee relents with an exasperated wave. “Alright, you win. We’ll be hooves-off except for express trips.” Matter-Horn curves a sharp brow. “No catches. I don’t want bodyguards hiding under the carriages.” “I’ll swear, just as the sun and the moon rise and fall each day.” Furlong puts a hoof on her chest, although frustration lurks in her tone. “No surprises, no shenanigans, no catches. You have my word. But just one more thing, and I’ll let you go.” Her hoof goes down and skeptical expressions go up. “Reality-benders. Have you dealt with them in your adventures?” “Issue #55 where they tackle Surgeon Maretropolis!” blurts out Spike. “He’s a self-proclaimed doctor who tried to take over the city by bending the fabric of reality so everyone will have been slaves to her since forever, but she ended up turning herself into a ghost!” The bug-eyed Power Ponies don’t deny the account. Furlong stares nonplussed at the dragon’s database of comic knowledge. Every other agent’s spared a moment to hear the dragon ramble about a ghost surgeon villain. “And that was just the start of it,” Spike finishes, shrinking away at his nerdy outburst. Furlong rubs her eyes and groans. “Fine. You have enough experience, so I suppose… but I beseech you to watch out. Portals and alternate realities are huge red flags for this operation.” “I know you want us to reconsider,” says Matter-Horn, glancing at the faithful mares around her. “I still say no.” Furlong throws a hoof up. “Fine. Have it your way, but you won’t get us out of this. If we don’t hear anything from you by mid-morning, we’ll be headed there no matter what you say. We are not letting this get out of hoof.” She leaves with a scripted and heartless farewell. Bon Bon is left behind, looking at the blank spot her boss occupied. “I apologize,” she begins, turning to her extradimensional visitors and one curious Spike. A sympathetic frown mars her face. “Her job isn’t stress-free. With what she deals on a daily basis, it’s a miracle she doesn’t have any gray hairs and leftover pizza filling up her fridge.” Her astute eyes pinpoint the crumbs on her guests. “Speaking of pizza, I’ll escort you back to your room. Finish your food: you’ll need all the energy you can get.”