//------------------------------//
// 9: Smoke and Mirrors 
// Story: Loony 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

After a few minutes, the mare who might have been Smoke Screen finished her cigarette, daintily removing the spent filter from her fancy holder and going back inside the building.  From their position down the street, Arc and Roxy kept watch.

It was troubling that they couldn’t keep an eye on both sides of the building without splitting up, and neither of them was willing to discuss that.

They stayed in the car together, time passing slowly.  A few hours dragged by, broken suddenly by a call from Harv at three in the morning.

“Our lead didn’t pan out.  Proficient and I are heading your way,” Harv informed them.  “We should be in position before the strike team gets there.”

Sure enough, a nondescript car approached a few minutes later, disappearing from sight and parking on the other side of the building.  Both potential exits were now covered, but there was still the matter of waiting.

As the time ticked on, the wait grew more uncomfortable.  Arc shifted position several times.  His tail just couldn’t find a comfortable position.  Roxy’s wings were going through something similar, unused to long hours of being pressed to a seat.

At a few minutes to four, the show began.  A delivery truck pulled up in front of the building, blocking the garage door out front.  The back door of the truck flew open and a crowd of heavily armed ponies in black piled out, promptly setting up a door breach and forcing their way into the target building.  Pegasi covered the air, establishing a cordon over the roof.

Arc, who had seen compounds cleared before, waited for shooting, or at least shouting at prisoners to comply.  The seconds passed with nary a sound.

A long minute passed before Harv called.  “They’re done.  The building is empty.”

Arc and Roxy started to get out of the car when she stopped and said into the phone, “Did they sweep it for bombs?”

“Of course,” Harv replied.

Thus assured, Arc and Roxy headed down the block to get a closer look.  The inside of the building was largely empty, although it was apparent that vehicles had been there recently.  How recently was a good question.

A few pallets were stacked in one corner.  Arc gave them a look.  A few had circular indentations in the wood, as if barrels had been stacked on top.  Roxy, standing beside him, wrinkled her nose.  “It smells like fuel.”

Arc knelt, shifting a few of the top pallets aside.  One near the bottom was stenciled 34-0-0.

“Fertilizer?” he muttered.  A moment later, his eyes widened.  “They built an ANFO bomb – diesel and ammonium nitrate.”

Proficient was standing nearby and quickly called headquarters.  Harv walked away to talk to the strike team, approaching a mare with a light olive coat who held a customized assault rifle.  They appeared to know each other.  After a few seconds’ conversation, the mare directed her team and they all filed out of the building.

Harv came back.  “They’re going to get to work tracking where the bomb might have gone.  We’ll stay here and check if there’s anything else at the scene of value.  I just talked to Granite a few minutes ago and he should be here soon to examine anything magical.”

Roxy turned her head, hearing a phone begin to ring from the small enclosed office space on one wall.  She and Arc headed that direction.

The phone was still ringing when they got there.  After a moment, Arc picked up the receiver.  “Evil headquarters.  How may I help you?”

“You think that’s funny?” asked a familiar voice.  The signal quality was somewhat scratchy and halting, but he knew exactly who it was.

Arc pressed the speaker button so everypony else could hear.  “Ah, Ms. Sisal Twist.  How nice to speak to you again.”

“You’re being very cordial for somepony who I’m going to kill,” she replied, completely ruining the moment.

Arc paused, but asked, “How are you going to do that?”

“It’s not difficult to track you, even to the underwater station.  You’re as good as dead.”

“Hmm.  Come to think of it, we already slept with the fishes.”

Despite the situation, that got a giggle from Roxy.  Arc couldn’t help laughing with her at his own joke.  Sisal apparently didn’t think it was all that funny and spat, “Just wait.  Things are about to go from bad to worse for you.”

There was a click from the other end.  To Arc, it sounded like the call wasn’t so much ended as terminated.  He put the receiver down.

“Good job at staying cool under pressure,” Proficient complimented, “but now we have confirmation of a security breach.  She somehow knows how to track you.”

Arc’s good mood instantly plummeted.  “Maybe that’s why this place was empty.  She knew I was outside.”

Proficient gestured to both Arc and Roxy.  “I think it would be a good idea if both of you took a less active role from now on.  We’ll have you helping Tammy with research or something.”

Speaking of, Tammy called just then.  “Once we identified the building, I was able to get the phone monitored.  Again, we got a call through an autopatch.  This time, however, we’d had time to set up direction finding equipment in anticipation of another call.”

Tammy’s voice was upbeat as she delivered the good news.  “The radio call was made from a narrow cone originating from the repeater to give us a line of bearing, and once I can correlate that from national assets, we should be able to get a range and area.”

“Plain language?” Harv asked.

“If everything is as precise as it should be, we can pin down where the call came from to within maybe a half a kilometer.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it was big step forward.  Arc, however, added, “But that doesn’t help us find the bomb.”

“It’s true,” Proficient acknowledged, “and Sisal may have moved since making the call, but it gets us closer.  We’re still gaining; we just need to close the gap before anypony dies.”

“Then we should be helping,” Roxy pressed.  Arc nodded in agreement.

“You will be,” Harv soothed.  “But you can’t be in a sensitive position or it could give us away.  We’ll have to figure out how Sisal can track ponies, but that takes second priority to results.”

Operational security was something drilled into military members and also their spouses.  Small, seemingly insignificant pieces of information could be slowly gathered and combined to form a larger picture.  It was frustrating to know that some small error had been made but not having any idea what it might be.

Granite, when he arrived, offered a theory.  “Once you have a piece of somepony, a magic user could figure out how to follow them.  Hair is used often enough, but hoof shavings, body fluids, or really anything could be a source.”

“Where would Sisal have gotten something from me?” Arc asked.

“You didn’t notice anypony pulling your tail or cleaning your shower drains, did you?” Granite asked.

“Maybe somepony combed Buttercup’s place really well?” Harv suggested.  “Arc carrying that missile launcher around could have brushed something off for somepony to find.”

It was not a certain explanation, but so far the best theory that anypony had proposed.  Arc asked, “How do we stop it?”

Granite shrugged.  “Take out Smoke Screen or wait for the spell to wear off.  Once a sample gets separated from you, its usefulness declines until it’s worthless.  Until then, I can come up with a blocking charm.”

He spent a few minutes working on the spell in a corner, muttering quietly and combining a few ingredients.  In the end, he presented Arc and Roxy each with a small pebble.

“Are you sure this will stop Smoke Screen?” Arc asked, eyeing the stone in his hoof.

Granite gave him an offended look and turned away without replying.

“So what now?” Roxy asked.  There was only so much to do in the empty building.

“I have some blast calculations on ANFO,” Arc offered.  “I could stop by the MWB office and get them.”

“That would be helpful,” Proficient acknowledged.  “Do you feel safe traveling alone?”

Arc touched Roxy’s foreleg.  “I won’t be alone.”

The two of them left, heading for the borrowed car.  Roxy paused on the sidewalk, reaching down to pick up a cigarette butt.

“Is that Smoke Screen’s?” Arc asked.

“This was where we saw her standing.  If she smoked it, I might be able to lift DNA.”  Roxy frowned.  “Although she was using a cigarette holder so her lips didn’t touch it.”  She shrugged.  “I’ll test it anyway.  Can’t hurt.”

The two of them resumed their walk to the car, Roxy finding a tissue in the glove compartment to wrap the cigarette filter.  Getting in, Arc paused just before he turned the ignition key.  “If Sisal knew I was out here…why did she vacate the building and run instead of coming out for a confrontation like she says she wants?”

“You’re worried about why she didn’t kill you?” Roxy asked flatly.

“Us,” Arc clarified.  “I’m thinking about both of us.”  He put his hoof on the seat and Roxy took it, both of them enjoying a comforting touch.

The sun was rising over the eastern horizon as Arc started the car.  The two of them drove north, heading for MWB.  It was still early when they arrived, but Arc knew that ponies would be around, particularly the military employees.

Roxy waited in the car while he went in.  After a night of sitting in a car, Arc knew he probably looked unwell, fitting with his sick day story from the day before.  At the early hour, however, he didn’t encounter anypony he knew on the trip from the front door access to his office.

In his cubicle, Arc sat down at the desk, signing into the classified computer.  He knew where to find the blast calculations and was quickly looking at diagrams and charts of potential explosive effects.

There came the distinctive sound of military dress shoes on the tile floor outside.  Arc hesitated, and then turned his attention to the unclassified computer that sat dark and powered down.

The polished steel shoes, and the mare wearing them, stopped in the entryway of the cubicle.  Seabreeze looked at Arc in surprise.  “Mr. Arc, I heard you were out sick.”

Arc nodded.  “I hope I get better this weekend.”  He gestured to the computer he was pretending to use.  Seabreeze couldn't see the screen.  “I just came to check my email.  There are a few things I’m working on that I need to keep up to date.”

“Like those ropes?” Seabreeze asked.

“I’m sorry?” Arc said.

“Sisal twist, the kind of sailing rope.  I saw that the other day when I was trying to figure out who your notebook belonged to.”

“Yes,” Arc responded after a long moment.  He shook his head.  “Sorry, I’m still a little bit under the weather.  It’s like working through a fog.”

Seabreeze nodded.  “Let me know if you need any more information about ships.  It’s in my job description.”

She started to turn, but Arc said, “Speaking of your job, I thought you had been taken away from here to work on the explosion at the base.”

“Yeah, nights.”  Seabreeze sighed.  “I’m actually just here to check my own email.  The rest of the time I’m at the base on guard duty.  I don’t mind carrying a gun, but I feel a little bit underutilized.”

Arc could relate.  “I suppose we all feel that way sometimes.”

“I suppose so.  Have a good day, Mr. Arc.”  Seabreeze walked away.

Arc went back to his computer.  He made some guesses on the size of the bomb based on what he had observed and what could be expected to fit in a small truck.  That, combined with the effects of a certain amount of ANFO gave him an idea of what the bomb could do.  It was not pretty.

Worse, they still had no idea where the vehicle carrying the explosives might have gone.  Figuring out how powerful the blast could be might help narrow that down.

Arc printed out his findings and, after a moment to regret the security violation, carefully folded the papers and put them in his shirt pocket.  This was a little more important that protocol.  After securing his cubicle, he walked out of the building and back to the car where Roxy waited.

“I found something that might help,” Arc said, getting into the car. 

Roxy nodded.  “Good to hear.  If we stop by the lab, I can get started on processing Smoke Screen’s cigarette.  It should only take a few minutes to get started and I can follow up when I go back to work.”

Arc started the car and they traveled to Roxy’s workplace.  She’d hoped to get there earlier than most, but the morning was already growing later and Roxy had to manufacture many of the same excuses Arc had used every time she met somepony she knew inside the building.  In particular, she encountered Carbon in the lab.

He looked up from his work as she came in.  “I didn’t know they would let you in here while sick.”

“You and I both know that this place cares more about cases cleared than how we do it.”  The two of them had talked in the past about how some of the management did business.

Carbon shrugged.  Roxy went by him into the next room.  Checking to make sure she wasn’t being observed, she got the tests started and put the cigarette away where it wouldn’t be noticed upon cursory inspection.

Coming back out, Roxy gestured over her shoulder to the room.  “I just wanted to make sure everything was in place.”

Carbon nodded and said goodbye.  Roxy left, going back to the car to find Arc struggling to stay awake.  Despite Granite’s supposed cloaking device, he did not feel particularly comfortable dozing off in such a public place.

The two of them headed back to Shade headquarters.  There seemed to be more activity than usual today.  Some ponies were actually visible in the hallways.  The threat of a bomb had apparently put all employees on high alert. 

They took Arc’s blast calculations to Tammy.  She showed them a computer program that could help.

“Something I got from the Air Force,” she said.  “It calculates the effects of bombs on buildings.  I’ll have to recalibrate it so it doesn’t think we’re using third-world structures.”

With the inputs, the program generated a map of areas where the most damage could occur.  While it was unlikely that Sisal had used similar calculations in planning her attack, the results provided some idea where a bomb would cause the most destruction.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything to narrow down the splotches of red scattered across the map of San Palomino.

“Do you have anything else you can give me?” Tammy asked.  “We can’t check everywhere.  The bomb’s supposed to go off sometime today, right?”

“Maybe Buttercup can tell us,” suggested Roxy after a moment.

“Is driving over there to talk to her a good use of our time?” asked Arc.  “She could give us nothing, or lie to us and make it worse.  A lot of lives could be riding on this.”

Roxy spread her hooves.  “Well, what are we doing around here?  There isn’t anything else we could be doing!”

“And instead of finding something, you want to talk to a criminal?” Arc said, matching her tone.

“She’s more than that,” argued Roxy.  “I’m trying to help her help herself.”

“Help herself to your face again?” Arc shot back.

Roxy’s voice rose even further.  “I can handle myself!”

Tammy grabbed the two of them by the scruffs of their necks and pulled them apart.  “Look, I don’t really care about your fight, just get out of my office.”  She gave them a shove towards the door.

Arc and Roxy both left, pausing in the hallway to face each other again. Neither was able to look the other in the eye.

“Look, Roxy, I... I just hate feeling this way.”  Arc lowered himself wearily to his haunches and was finally able to seek her gaze. “It's just that we're supposed to be protecting ponies form this sort of thing happening and... we're failing.”

Roxy saw the anguish in Arc’s expression and his dejected attitude. She approached and sat down next to him. Leaning over she nuzzled her husband. “Sorry,” she murmured.

Arc let out a long breath. “Yeah, me too.”

“I didn't mean to be so dogged.”

Arc barked out a laugh.  “Actually, you’re right.  We have to follow any lead no matter how slim.”  He kissed her on the nose and the two of them got up. “Right now, Buttercup is the only one we have.” He took out his car keys.

Roxy nodded. “Let’s go.”