“The seventeenth airborne squadron can protect the residential suburban district on the north side of Mareicopa. That will be the first place they cross when they enter, and I want them to stay back in case our lines give too early,” said General Top Brass.
Sergeant Popper nodded, the pen in his horn’s grip scribbling down wildly on a notepad.
“Also, we need to form a natural barrier around the airstrip to the north. That will give us control towers and high places to snipe from. I mean, it would be best if we could hold them in the desert where we can make sand barriers, but we may not be able to.”
“Of course, I’ll telegraph a little more optimism to our desert troops about our chance of success,” said Popper, smiling.
“Obviously, morale is key,” said the General. He paused for a moment, looking off into space. Then, his eyes returned to the sergeant. “I suppose that covers everything, Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”
“An hour early?” the sergeant asked.
The general shrugged. “I’m a fast thinker; what can I say? Nothing to do now except wait for their floating force fields to get here and for our army to meet them. Let’s just fight to ensure we keep what little buffer zone we have left in the desert outside the city.”
The sergeant nodded. They saluted each other, and the Sergeant walked out the door, teleporting away.
Top Brass sighed as he thought of his military prospects. Though he didn’t believe that all of Mareicopa would fall to the invaders, he definitely feared that at least some of the enemy forces would infiltrate the city. All it would take would be just a few hundred of them, and they could seriously disrupt or even derail the non-unicorn internment entirely, particularly if they adopted insurgency tactics like the partisans in Mareicopa. And that was a best case scenario.
Perhaps there’s a silver lining, the general thought. If Mareicopa fell, the fronts elsewhere might open up. Capturing Manesas or Neighbraska could become possible, and he bet that Equestria had formed this division with some of the troops from the northern Flatlands. But with Pound the pegasus destroying every field in sight, he’d have to be careful. Thankfully, harvest season was coming up. Salting crops that were already fully grown and ready for harvest wouldn’t kill them, just make them taste salty.
He figured that if Mareicopa fell, it wouldn’t necessarily be game over for the Second Kingdom. They could time their attack on Equestrian farming districts to coincide with the harvest, and capture grain silos with already-harvested grain. Let Equestria do the work. But they couldn’t invade too early or Pound Cake would salt the wheat while it was still growing. October or November would be optimal.
Top Brass fiddled with a pencil, twirling it around in his magic, as he recalled that Trixie Lulamoon was still in Mareicopa. Since she was in the Magical Research Department, she might not have been told about the impending invasion just yet.
I suppose I’d better go warn the poor mare, he thought.
Top Brass chuckled as he walked out the door and into the sweltering city heat. Trixie Lulamoon would’ve made a terrible strategist, he figured. As a general, the first thing he had been taught in military college was to leverage his strengths but understand his own weaknesses, and look for the enemy’s weakness, as well. But he’d never seen Trixie acknowledge any weakness at all. She was so arrogant and self-righteous, she made King Blueblood look like a modest stallion, he thought. Hopefully for her sake, she would listen when he said that she needed to evacuate the city with her valuable test subjects, just in case the city fell.
General Top Brass flashed his military ID at the gatekeeper as she nodded and opened the security door, allowing Top Brass into the research facility. He had come here on a few occasions before, to provide specs for the buffalo lightning cannons when they were under development, for instance.
It was a shame that the buffalo had hardly contributed to the war effort since losing Appleloosa. They blamed the entire rainboom incident on the unicorns and their lack of air support in Appleloosa to stop pegasi attacks, and refused to fight any more. Instead, they were content to sit on their reservations with their shiny new lightning cannons and do who-knew-what all day.
After several minutes walking down the long hallways and stairs, he reached the door to Trixie Lulamoon’s office. He knocked.
“Come in,” she said, and he entered. She frowned upon seeing it was him. “Listen, General, I’m working as hard as I can on that intangibility spell, and I’ll have it at the very earliest that—”
Top Brass shook his head. “I’m not here about that. I’m here to say there’s a massive Equestrian force approaching Mareicopa, and they may enter the city sometime in the next few days. You might not be safe at this research facility, so you may need to relocate to Canterlot.”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Our Canterlot research facility is already full of other projects and has hardly enough space. Mareicopa was the overflow area, and convenient for the buffalo so they wouldn’t have to cross enemy territory to get here. Besides, a few of our research subjects in this facility have such specific accommodations, that I couldn’t move them to Canterlot with just a few days’ notice.”
The general shrugged. “I just wanted to let you know. Do what you need to. Anyway, I have a battle to fight.”
He turned around to open the door, just as Snails walked into Trixie’s office.
“Hello, Snails,” said General Top Brass.
“Oh, hey Top Brass,” said Snails, blushing slightly.
Top Brass chuckled. The genetic engineer Snails had worked on a project for Top Brass before, separate from his research into magic. It was a project called Deathwasp 2.0, to genetically engineer deadly stinging insects. The resulting insects’ stings were indeed fatal and very painful. They lived for about an hour and could sting up to three times before dying.
There were some drawbacks that prevented battlefield use, though. The wasps were indiscriminate, and would just as easily sting whoever unleashed them. They could fly up to a kilometer, and in a trench warfare scenario, that often meant that unleashing the wasps inside of an enemy trench might take out that trench, but would also lead to the wasps coming back and stinging Second Kingdom soldiers. If only Top Brass could have gotten more protective suits for his soldiers, but they were prohibitive to manufacture en masse.
For all these reasons, there hadn’t yet been a practical battlefield use for the wasps. But what if… His heart skipped a beat.
“Snails, I have a question about the deathwasps,” Top Brass asked.
Snails turned his head towards the floor. “I thought you said you didn’t like them,” he pouted.
Top Brass shook his head. “Never mind that. How many of those wasps do you still have left? How many can you spare?”
Snails said, “About two thousand, but I have to keep 1,000 of those for breeding stock.”
Top Brass nodded. “That’s okay, 1,000 will work just fine. Drop whatever you’re doing and put those wasps into glass jars. Spread them out over a hundred jars: ten wasps per jar. But I need them within the hour. It’s urgent. I’ll even help you jar them myself if you have a suit for me.”
Trixie’s ears perked up, and a frown spread across her face. “Excuse me, General Top Brass, but the Magical Research Department is a civilian governmental institution, and you have no authority here! Snails was working on another task for me, and I will not have him bossed around by—”
Ignoring Trixie, Snails exclaimed, “You mean you like my wasps now, General Brass?” A big, goofy grin spread across the young stallion’s face, and Top Brass nodded.
“Yipee!” Snails exclaimed.
Trixie opened her mouth to protest, but Top Brass and Snails had already disappeared in a flash of light, presumably to go off to the creature containment level 2 on the other side of the building. She lacked the magical ability to follow them, of course.
The procession of force-fields continued across the desert, carrying ponies atop like the mythical rugs of Saddle Arabia, as Spitfire surveyed the city in the distance. They were so close now, she could see the individual windows on the buildings. She and her soldiers were less than ten kilometers away by this point, she figured. And there still were no SKAF ground forces in sight. Some of the unicorn planes had arrived, but her pegasi had dispatched them before they could start strafing or dropping bombs on the Mareicopa Liberation Division.
Guess Top Brass put too much faith in those landmines, she thought. Then, she chuckled. Top Brass was normally smarter than that. From its inception, the entire war had been a game of one-upponyship between the two rival generals, each trying to outsmart the other. But she would have loved to see the look on his face after finding that she was using his own magic carpet trick against him.
Suddenly, down below, flashes of light erupted in front of the division.
Looks like they’re here, Spitfire thought. She sighed. Hopefully her soldiers could take out the enemy rather quickly and continue the blitz into Mareicopa. The flashes continued and then stopped, and Spitfire had to blink a few times when she counted only perhaps a dozen unicorns in total, standing about ten meters away from the front of the Equestrian division. The sun glinted and shimmered off of their front lines.
Are those… mirrors? Glass? What are they doing? she thought.
Her soldiers at the very front of the division raised their guns and aimed at the unicorns, firing off dozens of shots, with the sound of broken glass interspersed with gunfire. The unicorns disappeared as quickly as they had come. Only two of them fell to the ground, while the others escaped with their lives.
Spitfire laughed. If a dozen unicorns was the best they could do, then taking Mareicopa would be a cinch. The floating platforms continued forward, passing over the space where the unicorns had been. But soon, screams started breaking out from the ponies in her division.
“Get it off! Get it off! AAAH!”
“My skin is on fire!”
“Wasps! Deathwasps!”
The ponies on the platforms rustled and shifted every which way as the platforms passed above the spot of of the broken glass jars. The platforms themselves shifted as several of the pegasi abandoned their spots at the sides or front of the platforms, convulsing and flying around madly through the air to avoid the wasps. Ponies madly swatted at the air and at their coats.
“Pegasi, hold your positions!” Spitfire shouted into the megaphone.
But then, one of the platforms vanished as a a force-field casting unicorn cried out in agony from a sting. Dozens of unicorns and earth ponies on the platform fell the three meters to the ground, though a few of the unicorns were quick enough to catch themselves with their own levitation magic before they fell to the minefield.
Others were not so lucky. Seven explosions went off one after the other as the unicorns and earth ponies scrambled around in a mad panic through the minefield, trying to avoid the wasps and mines all at once.
“Division halt!” Spitfire called out through her megaphone.
But it was too late. One by one, the magic carpets started to disappear, or simply tilt over due to the pegasi abandoning the sides. Hundreds and hundreds of mines exploded one after the other as ponies fell to the ground, and Spitfire had to put her hooves in her ears to block out the tremendous booms and bangs.
“Carpets, fly up higher to avoid the wasps!” she shouted in vain through the megaphone, the cacaphony drowning her out. “Retreat! Retreat!”
The last column of soldiers in the rear, about twenty or so platforms, saw what was going on, and the pegasi at the head stopped going forward. The desert below the bulk of the platforms had become a charred, blackened nightmare, with repeated explosions, pegasi flying every which direction, and unicorns trying in vain to save themselves and their earth pony comrades from falling. Meanwhile, a formation of unicorn fighter planes teleported in above them. Spitfire didn’t even know that they could teleport their planes. The fighters strafed the confused and disoriented Equestrians, dropping yet more bombs on them.
“Retreat! Fall back!” Spitfire shouted into the megaphone. Ponies turned around and flew, floated, or sprinted back as mines exploded and wasps buzzed after them in furious chase.
Despite all of the carnage and chaos, there were feats of bravery and strength. Pegasi flew around, grabbing as many of their comrades in their hooves as they could carry. One unicorn molded his force field sheet into a sphere, enclosing all hundred ponies in a giant ball to protect them from the wasps and mines. About twenty of the other unicorn force-fielders got the same idea, though a few of the force-field bubbles were burst by exploding mines, causing their occupants to fall and suffer the same fate as their comrades.
A gifted telekinetic unicorn saved ten ponies by levitating them all above the ground for thirty minutes, squashing the wasps in his magic. Mine-sweeper unicorns used their magic to detect and clear mines in record time.
One earth pony with strong legs sacrificed himself by bucking the sand, and the vibrations caused ten mines to go off before anypony could fall on them and die. Another four earth ponies stepped off of one of the platforms and got under it after the pegasi flew off, holding all 96 remaining soldiers up, never flinching despite the wasps buzzing around.
Spitfire flew back off towards Equestrian territory, bringing as many survivors with her as possible, mostly pegasi but a few unicorns and earth ponies from the thirty remaining platforms.
The next day, Spitfire received the preliminary casualty report. Nearly ten thousand soldiers had lost their lives or were missing and presumed dead. Five thousand had been taken as prisoners of war by Top Brass’ soldiers, who had arrived at the battlefield after the wasps had all died off from the heat or from stinging too many times. Of the twenty-five thousand soldiers who made it back to Equestrian territory, five thousand were critically injured. It was the bloodiest battle in Equestrian history.
The twenty thousand remaining able-bodied troops in the Mareicopa Liberation Division regrouped the next day and tried an invasion afresh, this time taking the slow, painstaking way of minesweeping the desert and going on hoof. But by that point, the element of surprise was long gone, and the unicorn forces in Mareicopa had made it out to the desert. They stopped the Equestrian division in their tracks, forty kilometers from Mareicopa, where the unicorns fought the desert warfare that they excelled at, holding the new battle lines.
Princess Twilight, overcome with grief at the loss of life, felt compelled to give a speech to the nation. She had prepared a long, multi-page address explaining everything about the so-called “Mareicopa Massacre” as the media had termed it. The speech was supposed to last for two hours, but Princess Luna advised her not to go on for so long. After several rewrites with Luna’s help, Twilight Sparkle finally suggested that Luna give the speech herself.
Luna chuckled at the idea. “Young Twilight Sparkle, you know that I am not the visage of this diarchy. I am content to toil in the shadows, as dark as my mane, unseen but playing a vital role.”
Twilight Sparkle shook her head nervously. “I can’t give every speech. I wouldn’t even know what to say about this… this tragedy.” She sniffled, her eyes misty. “But you, Luna? You’re like bedrock. You took over raising both the sun and moon once Princess Celestia passed just so I don’t have to. You’re my go-between in parliament and help me negotiate with the lawmakers. You advise me in private when nopony else will listen and I’m having doubts. Why not address the nation? You console ponies when they’re having nightmares, and I can think of nopony better to guide us through the waking nightmare of this massacre than you, Luna.”
Luna smiled and nodded in agreement. “I suppose that, to put it in today’s words, I could ‘take a stab at it.’”
Twilight laughed aloud. “Don’t do that in your speech. Sound as archaic as you normally do. You know, I think it makes you sound wiser. You are centuries older than almost everyone in Equestria, after all.”
In a rare occasion, Princess Luna addressed her subjects directly. She stood on the grey granite capitol steps, her blue mane blowing gently in the breeze, as her words rang out through the streets and across the radio airwaves of Equestria. She spoke loudly and firmly, her stone face not betraying any emotion.
“Citizens of Equestria. Our nation was conceived two thousand years ago in firm unity and equality of the three races. These core beliefs are now challenged, as a sect of ponies fights a war against us in favor of its own flawed, broken ideology. This sect is borne of the same rotten selfishness and hatred which once consumed me when I donned the mask of Nightmare Moon. They threaten Equestria and its citizens with total perdition: from the deserts of Mareicopa, to the skyscrapers of Manehattan, to the hamlet of Ponyville.
“Yesterday, our soldiers sought to protect the innocents from genocide in the occupied Equestrian city of Mareicopa. They were massacred in a cowardly act of biological warfare. Despite our losses, our soldiers have shown through their courage that, on this continent, the three races of ponies shall never be divided. For every instance of wretched despair suffered on the battlefield by the maimed and dying, there were yet more instances of heroism and bravery. Unicorns, pegasi, crystal and earth ponies courageously cooperated to keep our losses down, using their magic, flight, and strength to save lives despite the chaos.
“Our nation’s greatest strength is the very union of the three races’ unique abilities. No force may defeat a nation founded upon amity and mutual respect of three equal races, or such a nation’s army. As we mourn our losses and our army’s noble sacrifices, we must remember that our struggle continues so that their deaths will not have been in vain. With our acts, we ensure that our posterity shall enjoy a peaceful, prosperous, and united Equestria once more.”
There was a somber applause as Luna left the podium, her head held high. She knew that when Equestria had seen her and heard her speech, they saw confidence and were filled with reassurance.
“Applejack, could you be a dear and pass me a napkin?”
Applejack glanced up from her plate of orange souffle at her Aunt Orange, and reached for the napkins with her hoof and passed one to her.
“Thank you, dear,” said Aunt Orange.
“So, how go the orange groves in Horseshoe Bay?” asked Uncle Orange.
“They’re doin’ swell,” said Applejack. “Big Mac and Granny Smith couldn’t make it up here for dinner since they’re busy preparin’ for the harvest in a couple months. I sure appreciate the management job, though. Y’all are sure that I didn’t get it just because I’m family, right?”
Aunt Orange chuckled. “I appreciate your honesty, but I can assure you that nepotism had nothing to do with it. You have been farming fruit trees all of your life, and you are eminently qualified for your job at Orange Incorporated.”
“If there is one thing that your Aunt and I love as much as our nieces and nephews, it is money, and I can assure you that if your orchards were not producing the results that they are, you would be terminated,” said Uncle Orange.
“Don’t listen to your uncle; we love you more than our money,” said Aunt Orange, lightly elbowing her husband. “So how do you enjoy the area? It is quite different from here in the north, is it not?”
“Well, it’s hot, but I got used to heat when I was in Appleloosa,” Applejack chuckled. “I sure feel at home down south, happier than a pig in mud. The ponies there are all really polite, and all the fried food is great. Oh, and nopony asks me about my accent down there!”
Aunt and Uncle Orange laughed.
“There is one peculiarity about accents that I have noticed on business trips,” said Uncle Orange. “On the east coast, accents differ from city to city. Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Hollow Shades, Baltimare, and Horseshoe Bay each has a unique accent. But further west, the accents sound the same from city to city. Las Pegasus, Tall Tale, Canterlot, Ponyville, and Mareicopa all share one single, monolithic ‘western’ accent. I can’t distinguish one city from the next.”
“That isn’t quite true, dear,” said Aunt Orange. “The Applewood valley is right on the west coast, and has its own flavor of speech, which I find quite repulsive. ‘Like, totally, dude,’ and whatnot.”
“Yes, but is that an accent, or merely the local variety of terminology and slang?” asked Uncle Orange. “For instance, a Trottingham accent is non-rhotic, and wouldn’t pronounce the R sound in words that Equestrians would keep it, such as ‘worm’ or ‘dancer.’ That is a difference in accent. But saying ‘loo’ instead of ‘bathroom’ or ‘water closet’ is a difference in terminology.”
Applejack cut in, “As much as I’d like to hear y’all talk about accents, I gotta use the… um, whatever it’s called in Manehattan. May I be excused?”
“Right down the hallway where it has always been,” said Uncle Orange. Then, he turned to his wife and they continued their debate while Applejack walked down the hallway.
So as not to be made a liar, Applejack indeed walked into the bathroom and did her business, but then when she exited, she didn’t go back to the table just yet. Instead, she eavesdropped around the corner, out of sight of her aunt and uncle. Just as she predicted, they were still having a heated discussion about the finer points of accents.
Perfect. They’re distracted, she thought. Just like she planned. Like her friend Rarity, Applejack’s Aunt and Uncle took great care to refine their accents and way of speaking to sound as sophisticated and classy as possible, but disagreed on the ‘correct’ way to say things. Applejack knew that bringing up the topic could spark a debate, and it had worked perfectly, and provided the cover that she needed.
The last time that Applejack had spoken to cousin Peachy Pitt, she had been strangely evasive when it came to discussing her line of work, changing the topic so that she wouldn’t have to. Applejack hadn’t gotten any good information, so she figured that she would do some investigation into the Oranges to at least clear her aunt and uncle’s good names. Or so she hoped.
Applejack walked further down the hallway until she reached the Oranges’ home office. She creaked open the door and flicked on the lightswitch, as the room illuminated. From inside the office, she could still just barely hear her aunt and uncle’s conversation. As long as they were talking and too distracted to notice that she had been gone for too long, she could snoop around. She walked forward towards the desk.
On the desk were a stacks of papers, mostly business related. There were Orange Incorporated balance sheets, profit and loss statements, invoices, letters, and memos, all neatly organized. Since moving from field labor to management, Applejack had become intimately familiar with corporate Equestria and business documents. She already figured that most of them wouldn’t give her any clues, except perhaps the letters. She scanned her eyes over them, but they revealed nothing except typical corporate back-and-forth.
There were price negotiations with grocery stores and fertilizer providers. Apparently the Oranges were engaged in a fierce negotiation with Filthy Rich over the price of premium shelf space in the produce sections of Rich’s Barnyard Bargains megamart locations.
There was a rather stern letter from a competitor’s lawyer arguing that genetically modified frost-resistant oranges did not fall under Equestrian patent law, and that Orange You Glad Enterprises was free to use Orange Incorporated’s orange seeds in its own orchards without paying royalties.
Then there was another letter addressed to a lobbyist, to get parliament to amend the law regarding patents to be unambiguously in Orange Incorporated’s favor. Another letter contained a quite generous promise of a campaign contribution to a senator from Horseshoe Bay.
No business like agribusiness, thought Applejack.
Basically, there was nothing incriminating in the stack of papers that she could find, other than the typical government-business cronyism any big corporation engaged in, particularly in the Princess Twilight administration. Lobbying was hardly honest, and in Applejack’s eyes campaign contributions were morally equivalent to outright bribery, but none of it was illegal.
Applejack breathed a sigh of relief. At least her Aunt and Uncle weren’t breaking the law, or collaborating with the Second Kingdom. She turned around, and started walking out of the office until she noticed a giant map of the Equestrian continent above the door.
Certain areas of the map were highlighted. There were the orange groves of Horseshoe Bay and Tallahorsey down south, and the wheatfields of Neighbraska and Manesas in the midwest. It was a map of everywhere that Aunt and Uncle Orange had agribusiness holdings. Pretty typical. But then, at the very top of the map, north of Canterlot, a giant area inside of the northern flatlands was shaded.
Applejack gasped. Her Aunt and Uncle had holdings in the northern flatlands of the Second Kingdom. She didn’t know how, since they were earth ponies. Maybe they owned a shell corporation through Peachy Pitt, or maybe Blueblood had relaxed his racial ownership laws, but either way, they were betraying Equestria through shady dealings.
Now, the ‘burglary’ made sense. It had been a failed assassination attempt on Pound Cake’s life, and her backstabbing aunt and uncle and cousin Peachy had indeed orchestrated it to protect their business interests.
Mareicopa Research Center, September 15th, 2025
Trixie sat inside of her office in the Department of Magical Research. A cup of coffee levitated in front of her, jittering in the wavering field of her magic as it floated up to her lips and she took a gulp.
Today was it: the final day before the deadline. She was supposed to get results back about Pumpkin Cake, and learn once and for all exactly how the intangibility spell worked, and how other ponies could cast it.
That is, if Doctor Stekton would get to her office already. The clock on the wall read 5:03. She had to have enough time to board a train back to Canterlot to tell Blueblood the news, and the last train that day left at seven. But until then, all she had to do was nervously wait. She tried to keep herself occupied by doing work on some of her other research project—after all, Pumpkin Cake was just one of the department’s many promising magical subjects—but couldn’t keep her thoughts from racing back to the deadline that Blueblood had given her. Her job itself didn’t hang on any one of her other subjects.
Trixie had never intended to be working right up to the last minute before Blueblood’s deadline. She had implored Stekton to speed up his research over the past few weeks as the deadline drew nearer, to give herself a nice time buffer. He had continued to tell her that he needed more time, that science doesn’t function on a deadline. But they made the best of what few days they had. Trixie and Stekton had devoted all of their waking hours to research, pulling 80-hour weeks along with Snips and Snails to try to save Trixie’s career at the Ministry, all to get the final result in today.
The door creaked open and the coffee cup fell out of Trixie’s magic and to the floor. Thankfully for her, there wasn’t any coffee left in it.
“Hello, Doctor Stekton,” said Trixie, jittering slightly in her seat as he walked in, a stack of papers floating in his magic. “I trust that you finally have the results of the subjects’ brain scans in, and know exactly how this spell works, yes?”
Stekton nodded. Trixie smiled. She waited a few moments, then the smile disappeared from her face.
“Well, aren’t you going to tell me, Dr. Stekton?”
“Yes,” said Stekton. “Though there isn’t any easy way to tell you this. I’ll just be blunt: the intangibility spell is genetic magic.”
“Genetic magic? What do you mean, ‘genetic magic?’” Trixie demanded, scowling.
“I mean exactly what I said,” said Stekton. “It’s genetic, just like earth pony farming magic is genetic. Look at marker number seventy-one.”
He levitated up a black and white photograph, with banded pictures of chromosomes. The portion of interest was circled in red.
Stekton explained, “The subject has markers that our geneticists have never seen in any other unicorn. Just to be sure, I had Snails take a DNA sample from every single unicorn who works here, which is some fifty ponies. None of them had it. The subject is in an extreme minority, I’d estimate less than a fraction of one percent, when it comes to this particular genetic sequence. This could explain how she can cast such an incredibly rare spell.”
Trixie shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no, Stekton. No, Stekton. Unicorn magic isn’t ‘genetic.’” She made air quotes with her hooves. “This isn’t like earth pony farming magic; all unicorn spells are learned. It’s nurture, not nature. In theory, any unicorn can cast any possible spell so long as he knows how and trains enough. It’s determined by neurological activity and brain pathways. Hence why we have been studying the subject’s brain, if your memory was working.”
Stekton sighed. “No need to patronize me; I remember our scans quite well. I took them into account. As with any unicorn’s brain when casting any spell, an intangibility spell does indeed have its own unique pattern in the motor cortex, but that still doesn’t tell us how to cast it, or how or why this subject knows it. So that led me to other alternatives, such as genetics, and we found marker 71. The brain activity is merely a shadow cast by the true cause looming above: genetics.”
Trixie gritted her teeth. “No, there must be something we’ve missed! Every single other unicorn spell that we know of is determined by neurological activity! Every one of them!”
“Apparently not, or else every unicorn could learn to cast every spell, but that’s clearly not the case. For instance, not every unicorn can teleport. Perhaps that is genetic, too, but far, far more common than intangibility,” said Stekton.
Trixie scowled at Stekton’s passive-aggressiveness towards her magical disability, opening her mouth to object, but he put his hoof in front of him.
“Listen,” said Stekton. “When you get new evidence that doesn’t support your prior theory, you don’t ignore the evidence just to preserve your old theory; you make a new theory. That’s how science works. For instance, astronomers had long thought that a lone white dwarf star could never turn supernova. But then they observed one that did, so they had to change their theory to accommodate the evidence. First comes evidence, then theory; it’s not the other way around like you seem to want it to be. Stop putting the cart before the horse.
“If intangibility were based solely off of brain patterns and not genetics, then why is the subject the only pony we know of who is able to cast it? Surely other unicorns have tried learning it, thereby developing said brain patterns, and the vast majority of them have failed. Not even King Blueblood, the former dean of Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns,ever witnessed such magic during his tenure there.”
Trixie laughed. “I refuse to believe that Miss Cake is some special little snowflake that has magic unique to only her. That sounds like something out of a badly-written novel.”
Stekton shook his head. “It’s not ‘unique to her;’ it’s just unique to ponies that have the rare mutation. I doubt she’s the only one, just the only one we know of. Now, if you want other ponies who are able to cast the intangibility spell, your best bet is not to train currently living unicorns as Blueblood wants. Unless they just so happened to have the rare genetic marker, they could never cast it, no matter how hard they trained. No, your best bet is to harvest the subject’s ovaries and implant her eggs into surrogate mothers. Those offspring would very likely have the same genetic mutation that we see in the subject. As an added bonus, some of them might inherit enough of her earth pony DNA in order to farm and grow crops when the war is over.”
“Breeding new unicorn foals would take YEARS!” Trixie yelled, reaching over with her hooves and shaking Stekton by the shoulders. “We need a breakthrough by tonight! Do you have any idea what Blueblood will do if I tell him that I’ve wasted months studying genetic magic that will take years to realize its potential?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t change the science,” said Stekton flatly.
Trixie shook her head, turning away from Stekton. “You’re wrong. All magic is neurological, and I’m going to prove it. Get the scanner out; we’re going to test the subject again.”
Stekton frowned. “No.”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?
“I said ‘no.’ I’m not going to chase shadows with you anymore, Trixie. You have ignored me at every turn, on more than just this. Every time that I present results to you, you ignore them if you don’t already agree with them, rather than keep an open mind as a researcher should. Why King Blueblood put you in charge of magical research, I’ll never know. You’re an arrogant know-it-all, and you ignore everything that doesn’t fit your preconceived notions. You’re not an objective scientist; you’re a blind, religious zealot in love with your own ego. You might as well move to the Zebra Empire and start worshipping Zaporizhia!”
Trixie gasped, getting out of her chair. “You take that back, Stekton!” she practically screamed.
Stekton stomped his hoof. “No! In fact, when Blueblood fires you, I plan on posting for your position. Perhaps I can restore a modicum of professionalism to the popsicle stand that you’ve made of this agency.”
Stekton opened the door to the office and walked out, slamming it shut behind him.
Trixie scoffed. Who needs him, anyway. I have work to do. If I work fast enough, then maybe I can get some results from the subject.
Snips and Snails walked in the door of Trixie’s office, after she had called for them.
“Yes, Great and Powerful Research Minister Trixie Lulamoon?” they asked in unison.
“Go get the brain scanner again, and hook Miss Cake up to it. We’re going to observe her brain activity while she casts the intangibility spell again.”
“Aww, not again!” Snails whined. “Can’t we do something different for once? This experiment is getting boring.”
“Yeah, we’ve done this exact test on this exact subject dozens of times,” said Snips. “What makes you think you’re gonna find anything different than—”
“Fine, then I’ll just do it myself!” Trixie screamed. She walked out the door and slammed it shut behind her. She hustled down the hallway, almost tripping over her own hooves, as she rushed to the equipment room to get the brain scanner.
Trixie had to get results, and tonight. There was no other option. She would lose her job, and she would be a complete mockery. Worse yet, she was privy to state secrets. Were she fired, Blueblood could very well have her killed if he wasn’t 100% satisfied that she wouldn’t tell a soul about what she had seen at the research agency. Given his obsession with security and spies as of late, he might just have her killed.
No, she thought. She would not be killed, because she would get the results. She was confident that she was correct, and that Stekton was pursuing some misguided, pet theory.
Trixie reached the equipment room. All sorts of microscopes, test tubes, beakers, bunsen burners, and electronics were inside. She found the brain scan helmet, lifting it up with her magic. It was heavier than she thought, and her head jolted as she hustled back out the door, this time at a slower pace.
She walked down the hallway to the research area, passing by other containment rooms with other subjects inside. Unlike Pumpkin Cake’s custom made room with its extra security, most of those unicorns were held in their observation rooms with a firm padlock and a steel door. A few of them were willing volunteers for study and had little or no security whatsoever.
Finally, as Trixie’s horn started to ache from carrying the brain scanner, she reached the door before the long, winding hallway leading to Pumpkin Cake’s detainment room. A lone security guard named Vigilant Eye sat by a switch, which he would throw to trigger the knockout gas in the hallway should Pumpkin Cake try to escape. There were two security doors in the hallway, which had a bend in it, preventing her from simply teleporting straight to the end of the hallway, and the guard could see each door from where he sat.
The guard read a magazine with a naked, seductive mare on the front cover, and glanced up as Trixie raced towards him, her hoofbeats clanking on the metallic floor.
“Evenin’, Trixie,” Vigilant Eye said, pressing the button to open the security doors, and then glanced back down at his reading.
Were Trixie not in such a hurry, she would have scolded Vigilant Eye, both for referring to her merely by her first name and not by her proper, full title of “Great and Powerful Research Minister Trixie Lulamoon,” and for reading a magazine on the job. Vigilant Eye had always argued that he could hear magic being used, and the hallway was long enough for him to react in time, and pointed to his solid track record in preventing the subject from escaping when she had tried it before. Why shouldn’t he be allowed a magazine, he had always argued. But since Trixie was in a hurry, she merely muttered back at him and raced down the hallway.
The hallway was many meters long, but Trixie ran so fast, that if she had thrown down one of her trademark smoke puffs, she might have possibly convinced a bystander at either end of the hallway that she had in fact teleported the distance rather than sprinted it. She stopped as she reached the door to the containment room. Normally, this part required two ponies: one to stand behind the observation window and ensure that the subject didn’t try any funny business, and one to actually enter the containment room with the subject. But since Snips, Snails, and Stekton were being insubordinate, she would have to do it all herself. Thankfully for Trixie, she had security override privileges.
When I come back to work tomorrow, I’ll harshly discipline those three. I may even have them terminated, she thought.
If she came back tomorrow. But she truly believed with every fiber of her being that she was on the right track as entered the room with the subject.
Ships. Sailing ships. There was an entire fleet of them, all made of wood, with silk sails of all colors of the rainbow. Pumpkin Cake stood at the bow at the front of one, her fiery mane blowing in the breeze as salty mist droplets hit her cheeks and filled her eyes. Dolphins chirped and frolicked about in the crashing waves, as seagulls cawed and soared above. There was a sandy shore and land in sight, off in the distance. And then—she was awoken from her dream by a loud and insistent Trixie.
“Miss Cake, you are to put on the brain scan helmet at once.”
Pumpkin Cake opened her eyes, and then winced immediately at the flourescent light shining into them as Trixie stood over her, practically shoving the helmet down onto her head and latching it into place.
“What the…” Pumpkin Cake muttered.
“Are you deaf, Miss Cake?” asked Trixie. “Do I seriously have to explain this procedure to you again after dozens and dozens of times of doing it? Or are you just going to continue to make it as difficult as you have all along? You know, you are the most obstinate, stubborn wench that I have ever had the displeasure of knowing. Now put on the helmet.”
You’re one to talk, thought Pumpkin, securing the helmet as Trixie had shown her before.
“Why you don’t just willingly serve the unicorn master race of which you are a part, I will never know,” Trixie said. “Now cast the spell.”
Pumpkin glanced around the room, still groggy as she tried to remember her dream and what it was about. It had a rather victorious and upbeat air to it, but… it was very quickly fading.
“No, wait, hold on,” Pumpkin muttered as it slipped further from her recall.
“What? You dare defy me, you worthless trash!” Trixie shouted, socking Pumpkin Cake in the face with her hoof. Pumpkin fell to the ground in pain as Trixie spat, “You are so pathetic, you’d defy your race for what? Your love of the dirt ponies? Well I have news for you: the pegasus you call brother didn’t even bother to come rescue you. He’s alive and he knows we have you hostage and will kill you if he doesn’t stop fighting the Second Kingdom, but he didn’t stop fighting and he’d rather we kill you; he cares that little for your safety.”
Pumpkin frowned, getting back up as she gritted her teeth against Trixie and her vitriol.
“Hopefully that proves you shouldn’t mingle with dirt ponies, and proves why you must cooperate with us. Now cast the spell, damn you!” Trixie ordered.
Pumpkin’s breath quickened and her heart raced as she clenched her hooves and bared her teeth. Trixie stood before her, a mere two meters away. The seconds passed as Pumpkin simply stood, not doing anything. Trixie’s mouth opened once more to speak, and a pang of rage shot through Pumpkin’s chest.
So Pumpkin did indeed cast the spell: directly on Trixie. The minister’s entire body glowed blue as she glanced around in shock at the sudden lack of all sensation. But Trixie could not scream out for help, as her intangible voice box could not make a sound, and neither could she use any magic.
Pumpkin Cake walked over towards the center of the room, floating the helpless Trixie along, as she approached the thick glass water tank that Trixie had so often used to tempt and torture Pumpkin with extreme thirst. It was empty, at least for now.
The tank was too small for a pony to fit into normally when it was filled with water; Trixie herself had made sure of it. But when it was empty, it could just barely fit a single pony, albeit with a bit of contortion. So Pumpkin shifted around Trixie’s limbs and shoved her through the tank wall. Trixie screamed as she resolidified, crammed inside of a small box.
It’s not soundproof, Pumpkin Cake realized. There was a removable top of the tank for pouring water into, that would be screwed shut when it was being used to torture her. So Pumpkin fired a magical ray of energy at the cracks of the tank, welding the seams of the lid shut. She could now no longer hear Trixie.
Pumpkin’s heart pounded in her chest as she realized that if she was going to try an escape, she had better do it now or never. She had been waiting and planning for this day for weeks, but it was hard to plan the specifics when she couldn’t even see all the way down the hallway. But when Pumpkin saw Trixie walk into the the room with her, with nopony behind the observation window to alert the guards, she saw her chance to strike and knew she had to take it.
Trixie’s white lab coat was left in a pile on the floor from when Pumpkin had first cast the spell on her. Pumpkin smiled as she got an idea. She recalled the first time she had used a mane-change spell, and had turned blue, and Trixie thought that Pumpkin had been imitating her. It hadn’t been intentional then, but this time it would be.
Pumpkin put on the lab coat and cast a color change spell on herself, taking care to resemble Trixie’s coloring as closely as possible. Her mane and coat were a slight shade off, and of course her height, weight, and facial structure didn’t change to mimic Trixie’s. The disguise wasn’t perfect by any means—only a changeling could imitate another pony down to the finest details—but it was close enough to look passable from a distance, and that was what mattered.
As Pumpkin approached the door to exit the containment room, she turned back to the entanked and squirming Trixie and grinned deviously.
“You’re right, Trixie,” said Pumpkin Cake. “Blue is a lovely color.”
Now was the moment of truth. Pumpkin Cake grasped the door handle with her magic and pulled the door open, wincing as it creaked slightly. She walked slowly out into the hallway. This was the part that had always tripped her up before. The guards would see her from their observation window and release the knock-out gas in this hallway, taking her out before she reached the second security door. But this time, Trixie had gotten lax with the security, and whoever was in charge of releasing the knockout gas must have been fooled by Pumpkin’s disguise.
She slowly but steadily made her way down the hall, careful to walk at a normal pace as her hoofsteps clanked on the metal floor below. Now was the second security door. She opened it, this one creaking even louder and making her almost jump, as she walked into a hallway which wound in a different direction. This was the farthest that she had ever gotten on her past escape attempts, and she had never even seen this part of the hall. Her pulse quickened as she had to keep herself from sprinting towards the last threshold.
This door was slightly different, as it didn’t have a door handle or anything on it. Instead, it had a single window on it. She peered out and saw that this was a normal-looking hallway, without any of the knockout gas vents in the sides and ceiling that the hallways leading up to her cell had. So she figured she’d just walk straight through the door and take her chances. The door turned blue as she walked through it, to see a single security guard standing beside the door.
Pumpkin jolted as the guard looked up from his magazine and towards her.
“Oh hey, Trixie,” he muttered nonchalantly, only briefly averting his eyes from the magazine. “I see you figured out how to cast that spell. Good job.” The guard then returned to his smut, flipping to another page as if nothing had happened.
Pumpkin Cake had to use every ounce of strength that she had to keep from bursting out laughing. She continued on towards the stairs, climbing them as fast as she could after she realized that there wasn’t anypony else in the stairwell to see her. The stairs were long and winding, and she counted at least two hundred of them.
Finally, she reached another door, and she was now on the main floor of the building. Here, it was much better lit, and she squinted her eyes as she walked along. A few scientists in lab coats walked along, but none of them dared meet Pumpkin’s gaze or look her in the face, where her disguise was the weakest. Instead they all gazed at the floor or to the walls while she passed. At first, she thought that they knew that she was a fake, but then she realized that they thought that she was Trixie, and could certainly understand why nopony would want to look a pony like Trixie right in the eyes. They must have thought it was best to just scurry along in the halls and not make eye contact with such a terrible pony.
Pumpkin passed by some of the other laboratory subjects, who were visible through the observation windows. Pumpkin wasn’t sure why they were here, but they probably knew some other magic that Trixie was researching, she guessed. As she winded along through the hallways, she didn’t see too many scientists around. She wondered where they all were, until she reached a window at the end of the hallway, the night sky visible outside.
During the months in her containment room underground, she had lost track of time. She tended to assume that whenever the scientists came to check on her, it was daytime, and when they left her alone to sleep, they had gone home for the evening, and it was nighttime. But apparently Trixie had come to disturb her in the evening for some reason. Pumpkin trotted at a slightly quicker pace towards the window, no scientists in view.
She gazed out towards the city lights of Mareicopa in the distance. There was no security other than a barbed-wire fence surrounding the building. It might as well have been made of paper. She turned intangible and phased through the window, outside of the building, and then through the fence. She realized that she was actually one story above ground, so she gently levitated herself down to the ground below.
As Pumpkin resolidified, she felt the hot night air of Mareicopa on her skin. Crickets chirped, vehicles passed by on the road, and the light from streetlamps shone down. She gazed at the night sky, a few stars visible through the orange glow of downtown Mareicopa off in the distance.
Tears came to her eyes as the fresh air of the outdoors filled her lungs.
Trixie’s tortured screams filled the tank, reaching nopony’s ears but her own. She panicked and thrashed about in her tight confinement as her air supply rapidly diminished. Her vision was now dimming, and her breaths were labored and quick, her lungs on fire from a lack of oxygen.
She kicked and punched and pushed the tank walls with her magic, but they wouldn’t give. She and Stekton had designed the tank out of the sturdiest material, almost impossible to break though without either a diamond-tipped saw or the intangibility spell.
Wait… of course! I’ll just cast that spell on myself and get out of here! Trixie thought. Though she didn’t have any instructions for Blueblood, she had seen the brain scans herself, and Stekton was surely wrong about it being genetic. If anypony could learn that spell in the next few minutes and use it to escape, she thought, the Great and Powerful Trixie could do it!
She focused on the images of Pumpkin Cake’s brain scans and the specific, lighted areas of the motor cortex as she desperately tried to phase through the side of the tank. It didn’t work, and her struggles only more quickly depleted her limited air supply. A few minutes of her vain attempts passed, until the door to the containment room opened up as Stekton walked in. When he saw Trixie inside of the tank, he rushed over, his horn lighting up as he tried to remove the top of the tank.
“As if I haven’t… tried that already... you fool! It’s fused shut!” she shouted in between labored breaths. Stekton read her lips and glanced at the lid, now welded with the tank.
Stekton briefly inspected the weld and then shrugged, unable to do anything to help Trixie. Her panic was now complemented with rage as her vocal chords frazzled with every curse word and insult hurled towards Stekton that she could think of. He shook his head as he walked back out the door and left her alone in the containment room.
Trixie’s eyes closed for the last time as she drew her final breath.