//------------------------------// // Fresh Developments // Story: The White Phoenix // by Quick Fix //------------------------------// March 2nd Another day was drawing to a close in Manehatten. Sweetie Belle had been doing her best to just get through the last few days as quietly as possible, keeping her head down and working at Manehatten Carousel. Thankfully things had been getting busier in the store, meaning she didn't have time to dwell on her discussion with Spoiled Rich. The morning after learning the truth about the Equestria Today and spending a sleepless night convincing herself it wasn't futile, she had gone straight to Gleaming Truth and made her case for trying to do something about it. The investigator had been understandably cagey about going up against a pony as influential as Spoiled was but had promised to take it up with her superiors and see what she could do. For now they just had to stay out of trouble until a decision was made, something Sweetie was quite good at doing on her own. "Hey, Sweetie Belle, are you doing ok? You've been pretty quiet." Market Match asked as he finished checking the store over as part of closing up for the day. "Hmm? Oh, yeah, just a lot on my mind right now." Sweetie replied as she put dresses away, trying not to make eye contact. A lot was a bit of an understatement. "I understand, that interview was...Well they were just savage. Anypony who knows you knows you'd never say something like that." "Yeah..." Sweetie closed up the storage cabinet and glanced away, doing her best not to comment on it. She knew Match was on her side but didn't feel quite as confident about the same being true of ponies out on the street, or elsewhere in Equestria. "If it helps, while you were handling the stockroom we had a number of ponies come through who said they had stopped reading the Equestria Today after that interview. I can't speak for the wider Equestria, but I don't think your popularity took any major knocks here. "Oh, well that's a plus." Sweetie perked up slightly as she heard that, relaxing a little and adjusting her silk scarf. She'd been wearing it during the day as a mixture of both product promotion and a small measure of comfort after the last few days. It had helped more than that, Coco always looked a little happier when she saw it being worn. With the necessities to close up the boutique finished, the two of them waited for Coco to come down from her workplace before making their way outside and locking the store up. They had made plans to go out to a bar tonight, try and ease the various tensions that all three had had to deal with recently. The sight outside put paid to those thoughts though. A police wagon pulled up just outside the boutique just as they were starting to leave, a smaller cart that only needed a single pony to pull and seated two. The door opened on it and Babs Seed stepped out, dressed in her full patrol uniform, looking round for a second before spotting the group and trotting over. "Sweetie Belle, good to see you. You too Mr Match, Miss Pommel." She said happily as she reached them, familiar with Coco and Match through discussions with her friend. "You too Babs," Sweetie replied, noticing the look in the earth pony's eyes. "This is a business call though. isn't it?" "''Fraid so. Gleaming Truth wants to see you right away, something about your personal case." "Dangit..." Sweetie muttered to herself, hoping the others didn't hear her little curse before she recovered her composure and looked over at the other two. "I'm sorry, but I really have to go deal with this." "Oh it's alright, what you're needed for sounds very important." Coco replied, unable to hide the tinge of disappointment in her voice. "We'll be able to do it again another day, and we'll have a great time then." Match added, putting a reassuring hoof on Coco's shoulder. Sweetie nodded and turned toward the cart, following Babs as she got in. It was lucky that she was good at withholding her emotions when she needed to because for once she really wished that she could make this wait. Despite her best efforts, she had been neglecting her friendships recently more than she'd like thanks to dealing with both The White Phoenix and Spoiled Rich. Hopefully though, one way or another, this would be a major step toward ending her involvement with the latter. Once she was in and seated the cart driver set off back toward the MPD precinct, both passengers wondering just where this meeting was going to go. For all the times she'd been here, Sweetie Belle felt a little strange as she walked through the corridors of Manehatten's police command center with Babs. Maybe it was the fact she only had her scarf and not the rest of her detective outfit, or that she didn't have any explicit idea of just what she was doing here. She'd feel better when things were clearer but for now she simply kept walking, exchanging greetings with ponies they passed. That was another strange thing to think about, she'd been here so often that she was starting to become familiar with the other ponies that worked here, not to mention that she could probably find her way around half the facility on her own if not for the fact she'd probably get in trouble for doing so. "So, does Truth normally have meetings round here?" She asked, looking over at Babs and trotting a little faster to keep up, since this was one of the areas she hadn't really been to. "Not really, the armoury doesn't rank all that high on the list of meeting rooms." Babs replied, sounding just as clueless herself as to the reason behind the decision to go there. Sweetie actually stopped for a moment before continuing on as she processed that. She'd never expected to be allowed anywhere near the police armoury considering she was just a civilian, yet she had been explicitly summoned there now. Maybe they had something only she could use? The sudden thought surprised her, buying into such ideas so easily was more Scootaloo's thing. Then again, despite her best attempts to claim otherwise she did seem to have some degree of skill, she'd never met another unicorn who knew how to teleport after all. Managing to put those thoughts aside for now, she remained silently following Babs until they reached the armoury entrance and entered. It was pretty much exactly how she had imagined it. A dozen spacious, secure lockers lined three walls of the room, most of them locked up tight right now. The one open one she could see was loaded with what appeared to be riot gear, all reinforced armour pieces and batons that she couldn't imagine seeing use in even the less harmonious parts of Equestria. Two ponies were sitting on a bench that ran the length of the free wall next to the door, Gleaming Truth was one of them but she didn't recognise the pony next to her. An amethyst coloured pegasus stallion that sported a windswept ruby mane and tail with a trio of scarlet streaks, dark blue eyes and a cutie mark of a distant cloud in vivid detail. As she focused on them she realised he also had a small cut barely visible on the back of his neck. "Sweetie Belle, glad you made it," Truth said as she saw the unicorn come in and got up, offering a hoofbump to her and Babs that they both readily returned. "I've got good news, we've got a green light to proceed with investigating you-know-who." "Really?" Babs asked in surprise, getting an affirmative nod from Truth. "Didn't think it'd be that easy." "Me neither, but the higher ups are taking this seriously enough to start putting a search warrant together. Social engineering with intent to inflict emotional abuse and proxy to worse...Yeah, she has to be stopped." "It's still not as easy as all that," Sweetie pointed out. "All you've got to go on is my testimony and that's not going to do much good against somepony who could probably get off scot-free by discreetly coughing at the judge." "Exactly, and solid evidence would normally be a lot harder to come by. Which is why we have somepony who knows just how we can get it." Truth motioned for the pegasus to come up and join them. "I'd like you to meet one of our friends from the Canterlot guard." "Pleasure to meet you both. Name's Sky Eye, but you can call me Oka." The stallion said with a grin, again sounding more pleasant that he appeared. He actually looked to be around the same age as Sweetie Belle, give or take a few months since she had no idea. "Oka?" Babs asked, both her and Sweetie curious about that. It sounded exotic, like from the languages of the lands south of Equestria. "Focus on the task at hoof for now, please." Truth interjected before they could get sidetracked. ".Anywho, Sky Eye was working with the Canterlot Institute of Development recently, helping test some magic based doohickey that...You know what, it'd probably be easier to let you do the talking for this." "It's a prototype device from the Institute's studies into portable magic. There's a lot of technical stuff they understand better than me, the point is that it gave us this." Sky said as he went to the open locker and reached into the back of it, fetching out a package hidden back there and bringing it over. Setting it down on the bench, he opened it up and let the others see. Inside was what looked like a black brick made of carbonado, a small round section on one of the larger sides was thinner than the rest, a gentle white glow visible through it. Attached to the sides were a pair of straps that seemed designed to wrap round a pony's body and the top end had a rubber wire that curled round for several meters before ending at an approximately tooth sized microphone. Sweetie, Babs and Truth all stared down at it, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. There was something eerie about it, a strange sense that it shouldn't be. Whether that was simply due to the idea of how far the Institute was pushing Equestria toward a new future or something worse was unknown, which didn't really help. "So...What is it?" Babs finally asked, looking up at Sky. "They called it a wire tap, probably after the pony who made it," He explained. "The simple version is, that glow is coming from a recording spell that's been separated from its source of magic, it just exists there right now, sitting dormant. When it's attached to a pony, it activates again, being powered by the natural magic inside the pony, and starts working. It works with earth ponies and pegasi, I had that thing on for an hour and it keep going the whole time, but it works best with unicorns due to their natural affinity for magic. Apparently the finished version will be seeing some kind of use within the Equestria Defence Force but for now, when one of Gleaming Truth's bosses called them, they let me take it out of the lab and bring it here for its first field test on this case. How's that sound?" He looked at them with a grin before dropping it as he realised they were all staring at him. "That was the simple version?" Truth asked, raising an eyebrow that was half sceptic, half confused as she tried to make sense of that. "When you've listened to Institute Chief Moondancer giving an explanation that lasts for ten minutes and uses even more complex terminology, you'd think so, yes." "I think I get it," Sweetie mused, feeling the brick with a hoof and being pleasantly surprised at how warm it was. "This'll record anything around it, including voices. So all we have to do is get Spo...Our suspect, to say anything that reveals her motives close to it and we've got our evidence, even her word can't go up against her word." "Precisely," Sky confirmed, watching her for a moment. "Why didn't you say the name though? I've still not been told who you're investigating." "Because it feels like she could probably hear us right now. Trust me, you'll know soon enough." "Right..." The moment hung a little awkwardly between them before he continued "So, we have our method, now we just need a plan." "Well, I took the liberty of making sure we had a room spare for that," Truth interjected, getting up and flexing a leg slightly. "I'll take you two there to get started. Babs, did we leave the testimony papers in your office?" "I think so, I'll go check and then grab something from the cafeteria for while we're working," Babs replied, moving to the door before stopping and looking back at Sky. "Hope you like coffee, we get through a lot here." Sky chuckled and nodded, while Sweetie gave a quiet sigh of disappointment before starting to follow Truth. In all honesty though, she couldn't really see it as a problem with all these positives coming to her now. She now had a genuine means to take the fight back to Spoiled Rich and a pony that could show her how to make the most out of it. Combined with both Babs' and Truth's experience and Manehatten know-how, she was certain that they could come up with a plan to end this vendetta against her and her friends. If that meant having to be around a few cups of that drink for a few hours to do so, she could handle it. Probably.