//------------------------------//
// In Which Landshark is a Bad Influence 
// Story: Norrath, Earth, Equestria. A Construct's Journey 
// by Nimnul 
//------------------------------//

	Weeks had passed uneventfully. Witnessing the Running of the Leaves and subsequent start of winter didn't make pony-controlled weather seem any less strange to Landshark. At least Fluttershy had eventually granted Landshark her approval to adopt a dog, after the construct learned about regular check-ups, various canine ailments and little details like the fact that some animals hid discomfort for as long as they could. Landshark had adopted what the pegasus had claimed to be a Malamute, which had meant very little to the construct.

In any case, even Landshark had thought the beast was ugly. He'd been a stray with only one eye and, according to Fluttershy, had only just recovered from a terrible case of scabies. The construct had dubbed him the Admiral and fashioned an eyepatch for him. His fur had slowly recovered, and the dog had been a hit with Landshark's other friends, once she had laid out some ground rules. The Admiral had, after all, lived as a lawless stray for an unknown amount of time. He still wasn't too happy around ponies he didn't know.

One early morning at the smithy, Landshark was, of course, already present. She was double checking her accounting, more out of determination than necessity at the moment. She had learned better than to be sloppy about it. The Admiral was asleep under a blanket. He wasn't an early bird, not when it was cold outside.

Greywack entered the the building. He seemed resistant to inclement weather, Landshark had never seen him so much as put on a hat to keep his ears warm. Of course, she herself was a poor judge of temperature. The minotaur nodded a greeting. "Morning, boss."

Landshark looked up. "Huh. Morning, Grey. First time I'm seeing you here before No-Toes. Wonder what's keeping him." The changeling still hadn't come up with a name for himself. Landshark began to suspect that once he finally achieved Equestrian citizenship, it'd say 'No-Toes' on his tax forms. She hadn't wholly anticipated that he'd latch onto her spur of the moment nickname the way he had.

"Funny," Greywack grunted. He'd made great strides improving his Equish, although he was probably too old to lose the accent. "I'm late."

Landshark checked her watch. The minotaur was, in fact, about five minutes late. Barely worth mentioning and, being honest, not totally unusual. But she hadn't known No-Toes to be late during the previous weeks.

Before Landshark could worry further, the tardy changeling ambled in, followed by his wife. Landshark briefly tried to recall the female's name. Jewel Dredger? At least she had actively chosen the name for herself, the construct supposed.

The changelings immediately detected some suspicion, but did not react to it.

"Morning, No-Toes. Ready to have the greatest and best day in the world?" They hadn't changed the code phrases since they had started working. That wasn't good security, Landshark admitted. It had become more of a friendly ritual.

"Nah," No-Toes shook his head with a grin. "This is just a tribute." He didn't understand the joke or reference, but assumed it came from wherever Landshark had lived previously.

"Too right." She started filing away the paperwork she had been doing into the desk drawers. "And what do we want for today?"

The construct was curious about the situation. They had agreed that No-Toes should let her know ahead of time whenever he planned to bring along family. Or really, any other changeling. She'd probably carry paranoia about operational security to her grave, no matter how long that'd take.

"Uh, I was hoping to show Jewel my workplace, you know. What do you have planned for today, boss?" As he finished talking, the changeling noted some regret directed at him and his partner and hesitated. Of course he knew that the construct always carried around some detectable degree of anger, but he wasn't sure what to make of this.

"We want what we have, pal. When do we want it? Now." The construct shook her head. "Multi-factor authentication, I think they called it."

The changeling didn't have a lot of time to realize his intel hadn't been complete. His horn lit up briefly. Only briefly, because he barely had time to plan an attack before Landshark drew her gun with frightening speed. Maybe Landshark wasn't that great with a rifle and outdoors, but at ranges this short, she couldn't miss, and with a machine's precision, she cocked the hammer, pulled the trigger, and adjusted for recoil three times. The first hit was important. The target was stationary, the same sequence of movements and point of aim would bring the same results, allowing for variations caused by environment and ballistics, both irrelevant at this range. The precision with which Landshark was able to aim and fire three identical shots was of immense use on a firing range, but it was a function of the control she had over her own construct body, not in any way really related to her aiming skills, which, fortunately, were completely adequate in this enclosed space.

As unconsciousness claimed the changeling, his disguise dropped, his body losing some of the details Landshark had begun to associate with workers, as well as some of the blemishes No-Toes had earned at work.

Landshark eyed the stunned second changeling. "You're not a worker. Drop the disguise and surrender." The changeling wasn't nearly shocked enough to really be a mother of two who had just realized that hostile changelings had infiltrated the town and replaced her husband. She was merely startled.

The fake Jewel attempted to disarm Landshark with a blast of magic, but only succeeded in not getting gunned down by fouling up the construct's aim and dodging the other way, evading two bullets.

"You stupid fool! You could have just played along for the day and we would have been gone! Now you're both going to get dismantled!" She hurled a quick spell at Greywack, who had likely been the most shocked  by the sudden outbreak of violence. The minotaur collapsed, out of action for the time being.

Landshark holstered her revolver. She had had only five rounds loaded and didn't expect to be given the opportunity to reload. She drew her black knife and vaulted over the desk, only to be violently smashed against it by another burst of magic. By her bad luck or the enemy's good intelligence, she'd taken the bolt of magic right to the knee.

Apparently some changelings found it difficult to resist gloating. Fake Jewel levitated Landshark's form, which the construct found a little surprising. You didn't often see ponies levitate beings of her, or their own, mass casually, so maybe this one had won some manner of genetic lottery, or was straining in a way the construct couldn't detect. "This is all on you, Landshark." 

Landshark didn't have reflexes like organic beings had them. She had no automatic responses to stimuli. This sometimes made her look slow to react, but she was only comparatively slow to react to surprises. Planned movements were a different matter altogether. The enemy changeling did not have time to realize what was happening before Landshark had drawn her derringer and shot her in the leg on the second try. Being levitated wasn't a particularly stable firing position and the first bullet had missed.

Landshark didn't waste time. The changeling had collapsed in pain and lost the concentration to maintain her spell. The construct lunged at Fake Jewel and her jaws clamped shut to on the changeling's wings, tearing great ragged holes into both in turn. "Last chance, lady. Surrender or I tear out your throat. Light up that horn and I'll scoop out an eye." She wiggled her fingers in front of the changeling's large eyes for emphasis.

Landshark took stock of the situation. The Admiral seemed to have taken cover behind her desk after she had crossed it, and was peeking around the side in an unusually undignified manner. Greywack was groaning and sitting up. The construct was impressed, but then, the minotaur had always seemed extremely tough. She was sure of her victory now. "Grey, get a chain and let's tie her up."

"You're not going to get anything out of me," the wounded changeling groaned. "I'll die before I betray the Queen."

"Oh, don't worry. Maybe you won't have to die." Landshark affected a conversational tone. "And I don't, as a rule, torture folk for information. You wanna guess why?"

"Because you're just as uselessly soft as the ponies?" The changeling wasn't doing a very good job sounding superior as she was getting tied up securely.

Landshark chuckled as she finished the job of binding the changeling, then reloaded her guns. "Well, maybe we misunderstood one another. First, everyone knows that information gained under torture is unreliable." She shook her head. "Second, what I mean is, I won't be asking you things because I don't want you to think you have any kind of input on when I'll stop." After a moment, she added, "I'm sorry, but your queen making you cross paths with me is really going to cost you, personally. Sure, you'd die for her. Let's see you live for her when we're done here, hmm?" The construct wasn't real happy. The hit she took hadn't outright broken her knee, but she didn't think it would hold up to running without a chance to recover from damage first.

She re-sheathed her knife as well before sitting down at her desk. Grabbing quill and parchment, she hurriedly wrote out a note. "Admiral, I need you to get this letter to Princess Twilight. Ask the owl or Spike if she's not at the castle. No delays." The message would tell the Princess that her employee had been replaced and would urge her to check on his residence, on the remote chance it held more hostile changelings and perhaps even No-Toes and his family as captives. The grizzled dog grabbed the scroll in his mouth and Greywack opened the door for him to race off. The Admiral  certainly didn't look like a dog in mint condition, but the canine was still young and quick.

"Grey, you've gotta run to the candy store. Tell Bon Bon I need Enigma and the whole team immediately. If she asks you to deliver another message, please do. Otherwise, stay in a public place until this blows over." Having delegated the delivery of two messages, she went to check on the first changeling she had gunned down. He seemed to be alive, although she couldn't judge how long that would last. She chained him as well. Perhaps later there would be time to call for medical treatment.

Grey nodded, casting a worried look at the bound changelings. "Right. Enigma, whole squad. Be careful, boss."





After the minotaur had run off, Landshark had dragged the female changeling into the back of the smithy and secured her on top of a workbench. Then, she had begun to try and frighten the intruder.

"You know," Landshark mused. "I don't lower myself to this for just anyone. After all, it'll be bad for my reputation." She probed at a gap between chitin plates with the tip of her knife. "No-Toes, the guy you took, he told me a changeling would go mad with pain if you tried to lever the chitin off."

"What do you even want?" Fake Jewel had to admit that the construct was pretty unsettling, now that she was at its mercy.

"What I want? Well, I suppose if we're being honest, I'd take a do-over of the last couple days, except this time you pick on some changelings that don't work for me. I guess that sounds uncaring." She poked and prodded at the changeling without inflicting any real damage, or even pain. "I wish your Queen's and your decisions hadn't come to this. I regret that, for you."

It was clearly true. Landshark was angry at the Queen, who wasn't here, and she did experience faint regret for the changeling's sake. "You don't really have the guts to do anything to me. Well, maybe you don't care about me, but your reputation would be shot."

"Maybe not," Landshark evenly agreed. She focused on her feelings regarding Queen Chrysalis. Staying angry was easy. "I should probably just do away with you. Your queen won't care either way, I guess."

The changeling couldn't quite suppress a whimper. As far as changelings went, she was a professional, a fairly experienced infiltrator and manipulator. But she never had occasion to wonder if machines could hate. Hatred, the changeling had thought, wasn't a basic psychological structure in sapient minds. It generally came about later, through experience. But the construct in front of her seemed to hate with every fiber of its being, right down to her core. It was a flat, flavorless hate, the product of a machine mind, or a machine heart, and cold as ice. It would have been boring, if not for its intensity.

The changeling, although disturbed, was also immensely glad to not be the object of such antipathy. She had no doubt that anyone the construct hated with such intensity would simply be killed in the most expedient manner possible, as soon as practical. This wasn't the ranting, raving hatred of a villain. There was no creativity in it. She couldn't imagine indulging in such bland hatred would be in any way satisfying. Still, it was pretty obvious that the machine didn't hate her personally, strange as it seemed.

"Executing a prisoner isn't going to be any better for your reputation and you know it."

Landshark started chuckling. "You're right, of course. But no one's going to judge me for protecting my home and my other worker. And I assure you, I am nothing if not an excellent liar."

She burried her face in her hand and sounded distraught. "I had no choice! You know I don't think any life is worth less than others, but what could I do? It was two professional changeling soldiers against two civilians without any magic, and, and I'm not even physically strong! I had to use my gun, for Greywack's sake at least! And I still nearly lost!" The construct seemed to be deeply upset. The changeling could of course tell she was still angry, most of all.

Landshark tilted her head, suddenly sounding quite pleased with herself. "Who's going to doubt that? As a changeling I'm sure you can appreciate the quality of my work. No one is going to to believe I went too far on you ... and without an accuser, there won't be an accusation like that anyway, right?"

Fortunately for the changeling, Bon Bon, Lyra, Berry and Ditzy eventually arrived in a hurry, closely followed by the dog. Landshark briefly outlined the situation, excluding her conversation with the changeling, and explained her plan. The two earth ponies and the pegasus left once again, along with the Admiral, while Lyra settled into the front office.

Landshark felt proud that her friends trusted her enough to go along with her idea. At the same time, if she had been able to come up with a plan that didn't involve them, she would have. While waiting to hear from the princess, she packed a pair of saddlebags for Lyra. "Here's your party favors." After a moment's thought, she slipped a hammer in one bag, her derringer in the other. "Tell Berry to keep the hammer, her teeth marks are all over the handle anyway. Remember, the gun's a last resort."

"Right on, Shark." Lyra didn't seem too happy, but went to sit down behind the desk as Landshark went to tend to her captive.

They didn't have to wait long. Twilight Sparkle burst into the front office and, upon seeing Lyra, quite out of place behind the desk, first zapped the musical unicorn with a disguise-cancelling spell.  "Oh good, it is you. Where's Landshark? We couldn't find anyone at the address she gave, but we think there was a fight."

Lyra sighed. That wasn't the answer anyone had wanted to hear, but it was the anticipated one. She raised her voice. "Shark, they've been taken!"

The two ponies heard a hammer blow ring on metal and a piercing wail of pain, which quickly faded. They both hurried to the door leading into the work area. Twilight gasped. A dead, or very nearly dead, changeling on the floor, Landshark, holding a hammer, standing at an anvil on which she had apparently just shattered the horn of a second captive changeling. 

"Landshark, what have you been doing? You can't just mistreat prisoners! That's torture!" Twilight was struggling with shock and disappointment, although she was also glad Cadance and she had advised Shining Armor against sending spies after the construct's friends. She magically disarmed Landshark, who made no more threatening moves.

Landshark made eye contact with Lyra and nodded minutely. Then she addressed the princess. "I won't apologize for the one on the ground. They're combatants, crossed the border into Equestria and tried to infiltrate my home. They knew the risks." As Landshark spoke, Lyra left the building.

"I suppose now you can lecture me, or you can use your teleportation to get these changelings help. Or just the one, not sure if the one I shot is dead."





Lyra was dealing with the rather pressing suspicion that she might be afraid of heights. Or at least deeply uncomfortable with them. She said as much to Ditzy.

"I don't know. Heights aren't so bad," the mailmare patiently explained. "I worry more about falling."

Lyra was fairly sure that had been a joke, which did make her feel better. It was familiar ground. "Well if we're taking that view, then the sudden stop at the end is the real problem."

As Dinky had predicted a few weeks prior, her mother had no particular problems carrying a fully grown mare, at least not for the short distance to a suitable cloud. Lyra didn't know the spell for cloudwalking, which supposedly was pretty advanced anyway, so she was clinging to Ditzy's back and neck while the pegasus rested on the cloud itself, steering it as best she could with her wingbeats. It was an altogether awkward arrangement.

Ditzy pointed out the quintet of supposed ponies they had noticed leaving Ponyville earlier. The five didn't seem in any great hurry, but the timing and direction of their exit from the town made them suspicious.

"Huh," Lyra wondered. "You'd think they'd be racing outta here. Maybe they're not changelings after all?"

Ditzy shook her head. "This way they're easy to forget. If they galloped through here, any farmer seeing them from afar is, is going to remember them and wonder." She paused, concentrating on bringing their cloud closer. "They'll hurry once they're far enough away."

"Makes sense, I guess." Lyra squinted and lit up her horn. Spells that cancelled changeling disguises also weren't trivial, and while Lyra didn't consider herself a particularly versatile unicorn, she had had a good personal reason to try and learn one. Nailing five targets at long range would be completely beyond her, but as long as she hit just one, the reaction of the others would hopefully be telling.

Ditzy felt her friend tremble with the effort of shaping the spell she meant to hurl down at one of their targets. She held her breath. Now that they were in position, there really wasn't much for her to do unless the ponies below them started trying to hit them with magic.

Lyra gasped as she released the spell. She experienced the tiniest bit of jealousy as she imagined that Twilight would probably just set her horn to wide beam and nail all those targets at once without even getting winded.

Even as her spell struck home and tore the disguise off one of the changelings, Lyra was reaching into her saddlebags with her magic. "Hey," she called out. "Hooves up, horns cold, pals. You're under arrest!"

Their five targets didn't seem in any way surprised that they had a changeling among them. Horns lit up with magic and they continued moving, even as they peered around themselves searchingly, looking for targets to shoot their own brand of magic at. It wasn't clear yet if they were about to make a break for it, or if one of them thought to take an experimental shot at the cloud above them.

"Oh well." Lyra lit the fuses on some of her party favors. Apparently Dinky had helped put them together. "Payback for Canterlot. Eyes closed, ears flat," she whispered before tossing the home-made grenades off the cloud. She had wanted to just ram them through the cloud, but wasn't sure the fuses would stay lit.





Bon Bon and Berry were panting. Ditzy and Lyra had had it easy, more or less inconspicuously pursuing their targets up on their cloud. The earth ponies had described a wide circle at a full gallop, intending to come at their targets from an unexpected angle without actually being seen to race out of town. Now they were at rest, waiting for the signal.

Bon Bon really would have preferred to stay out of trouble, but she hadn't been able to find any faults with the plan except that it would put them all at some risk of injury. Bon Bon didn't owe Equestria anything at all in her mind, certainly not fighting more monsters, but she wasn't going to leave Landshark hanging. Besides, changelings were pushovers. She had faced worse. Faced worse and been the worse for it, but revealed changelings just weren't that scary to the former special agent.

Berry still wasn't as fit as Bon Bon, but she had kept up well enough. She wondered, briefly, if the other earth pony would be alright, but she didn't think to worry about herself. It had been a very long time since Berry Punch had gone after anypony with the intent to do serious bodily harm. Bar fights didn't count, that was just poor impulse control. Besides, she had been a pretty fun drunk, most of the time. 

Growing up in one of the worse Las Pegasus neighborhoods had meant plenty of conflict with other gangs, and occasionally the police. Berry and her peers had been angry, at the world, at their awful prospects, at just about everything, really. But they still had had that last shred of decency to try and avoid involving the very young, or just generally older family members.

Of course that had been more a goal than a fact. Fillies and colts were on the streets at awfully young ages, and especially the unicorns couldn't just take back a wayward spell that hit a bystander or set a house on fire. If Berry hadn't been so angry right now, she might have started feeling bad again. She had been so lucky to move to Ponyville for the sake of her daughter, and instead of being happy her drinking had worsened after settling in.

She shook her head and her nostrils flared. The changelings were going to wish they had never touched those foals and their parents. It never crossed her mind that she probably wasn't half the fighter that the other earth pony was. Absentmindedly, she cracked her fetlocks and turned to Bon Bon. "You gonna be okay, Bon?"

Bon Bon nodded curtly. "No problems here." That was true, but it was still good to know she had someone to watch her back. It kept ponies alive in her line of work, and it helped keep them sane for as long as possible.

They didn't have to wait long before the light and sound of Landshark's 'flashbangs' reached them, which of course meant that the ponies they had been set to intercept truly were changelings. The earth ponies charged, hoping the devices Lyra had been carrying really were as disorienting as they were meant to be.