• Published 1st Jul 2021
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Stare Master - Extended Cut - AdmiralSakai



A mystery drama based on the Season 1 episode 'Stare Master'.

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Whatever Happened to Twilight Sparkle?

()

Fluttershy jolted awake to the sound of somepony knocking at her front door. Her bedroom was still pitch dark, and after a few seconds she was able to read the clock on her bedside table: a quarter to three.

The sound of impacts came again.

Cautiously and carefully, she glided down the stairs and peeked through the gap in the doorframe. A blue unicorn stallion in Royal Guard armor was standing on the other side, shifting awkwardly from one hoof to the other- Corporal Subtle Spark.

She fiddled with the latch and pulled open the door.

“Miss… uhh… Miss Fluttershy? I’m sorry to wake you,” he stammered, “but Spike asked me to come and get you. They hit the freight yard again, and we have a few things we’d, umm, like your input on.”

She nodded, stepped out onto the path, and shut the cottage door behind her. Spark followed, a respectful half-body-length behind her, as she made her way down the path and through the streets of the town proper. They met nopony else on their way. It was quiet- still closer to the middle of the night, really- one of those preternaturally still early-autumn mornings that frequently came to Ponyville; cool now, but practically humming with incipient heat.

Eventually the Station came into view, the rail yard lit nearly as bright as daytime by the big crystal floodlights at each corner. Figures in and out of armor were already busying around inside- a few of them turned to look at her as she approached. One of them was Rarity.

“I thought you had a big order due,” Fluttershy asked through the chain-link fence, “I hope nopony woke you up and made you come out here…”

“Oh, no, darling, I was… already awake,” the tailor stifled a yawn with one hoof, “I’ve been awake for a while, in fact. But the gold silk I’m making needs to soak for a few more hours, so I figured I may as well lend a hoof.”

Private Spark hauled open the gate in his telekinesis, nodded at Fluttershy once again, and then set back off down the road.

She stepped through the fence and over the rails to the center of the group, where Private Aqua Regia was standing in between Amethyst Star, Doctor Proper Verse, and Captain Marigold.

“… I heard a loud crash over near the northwest corner,” the junior Guardsmare was explaining, “and saw one of the fence segments tip over. I headed right for it, and heard what sounded… well, it sounded like a timberwolf howl. Smelled like a timberwolf, too. When I got over there, though, I couldn’t see anything. I went maybe… ten meters out beyond the perimeter before I decided it was too risky to go on alone, and when I came back to my patrol area the wagon was just… gone.”

Amethyst and Doctor Verse stepped away from the two Guards and headed off northwest. Uncertain what else to do, Fluttershy followed close behind. True to Aqua’s word, one of the sections of chain-link fencing had been ripped from its base by some sizable force. Near one end, shattered glass glinted in the lights. Fluttershy stepped closer to what proved to be a broken alchemical phial, breathing in the faint scent of rotting vegetation that still surrounded it.

Verse stepped up beside her, muzzle wrinkling under her thin metal-framed glasses, seemingly unsure of what to say. “That’s yeah, that does actually smell like… like a timberwolf…” she turned back to Fluttershy and Amethyst. “How… do you think a pony would go about making something this, this, realistic?”

“Oh. Well, you can buy mock timberwolf scent at hunting and adventuring shops,” Fluttershy explained, “particularly in Trailhead on the other side of the Everfree Forest. They sell enchanted calls, too, but… I don’t think the ponies who set this up were kind enough to drop theirs.”

“You need to get out of your office more,” Aqua Regia admonished a rather peeved-looking Doctor Verse. Then, she led them back to a covered plank wagon some distance away from the others that dotted the freight yard. While the others were arranged in neat rows and wrapped in neat beige tarps, this one was both tilted and very conspicuously empty. “Hey, this is the wagon that was missing, but…”

“Spike?” Derpy Hooves called out. “Can you come over here? What was in this wagon?”

The dragon slunk over after a few seconds, his posture unusually hunched. He unhooked a clipboard full of inventory tables from the chest strap of his messenger bag, and leafed through several pages. Then he paused, and flipped back to page one. “Sorry, sorry, just a minute… I’m… maybe I’m a little tired,” he muttered, and then more clearly: “Okay. It looks like this cart was going up to the camp on Castle Rock, and it contained… rations, clean tarpaulins, digging equipment, and a crate of Class III spotlight crystals.”

Doctor Verse looked over at Marigold. "So... what does that mean, exactly?"

"It means the ponies at Castle Rock are down to one meal a day, until we can scrounge up another shipment," the Guardsmare answered.

Aqua’s eyes narrowed, and she took a step closer to Spike. “Don’t dragons eat crystals? How do we know this wasn’t an inside job?”

The dragon took a few steps backward, holding the clipboard out in front of him with both hands. “Hey, hey, hey. Those gems really aren’t edible. Have you ever stepped on one? They pop, and give you a little lightning-shock for your trouble. I don’t want that happening in my mouth, would you? And in any case,” he briefly flipped the clipboard around and waved it paper-side-up underneath Aqua’s muzzle, “if I wanted to take gems from Project stores, I could just alter the inventories so it looked like there were always half as many.”

“Okay, fine,” faced with disapproving glares from Marigold, Rarity, and Derpy Hooves, Aqua backed off and waved one forehoof side-to-side. “Forget I said anything, Sun above…”

“Those gems aren’t even anywhere near jeweler quality,” the unicorn tailor added, “I suppose one could fence them to, I don’t know, a disreputable theater company or somepony else in desperate need of very bright lights, but there are easier places to get them than the Station. I’d guess the scoundrels that did this were more interested in slowing our work down than making any money for themselves… either our work in general, or our looking for dear Twilight.”

She looked at Spike, seemingly expecting some kind of response, but the dragon ignored her. Instead, he sat down on the lip of a container car and continued to stare at the same page of inventory he’d consulted previously.

“You know,” Captain Marigold finally said, “if somepony’s really looking to slow us down, making a move for Doctor Sparkle would be a pretty good way to do it. We’ve been looking in and around the Everfree, but she might not even be on the same continent by now if other ponies are involved.”

“Isn’t it after twenty-four hours that a missing pony becomes a Governorate-wide issue?” Derpy Hooves added.

“… and if Twilight’s really been compromised, then all of our security measures are as good as useless- she came up with most of them, and signed off on everything I or Daycaller or Verse ever submitted,” the Captain finished.

“Twilight wouldn’t tell anypony about that kind of thing, though!” Spike interjected.

Marigold’s expression drifted from simply professional to downright somber. “She might not have a choice.”

Nopony said anything for a little while after that. Proper Verse, Aqua Regia, and Marigold all began to walk back towards the gate. Fluttershy joined them, at first, but then decided to back off and stay closer to Spike.

“If… if somepony really is after Twilight,” the dragon said to Amethyst in a slow, measured tone, “then that’s all the more reason to keep looking, isn’t it?”

“We’ve already done pretty much everything we can,” the Councilpony replied, “we could notify the Governorate office in Canterlot, but I’m not sure what they could do for us that Marigold and her Guards can’t. We’ve already searched just about the whole town.”

“Then search it again,” Spike suggested, flatly and matter-of-factly. “Maybe this time we’ll notice something that we missed previously.”

“I am… working three different admuh… ad-min-ist-ra-tive positions here,” Derpy Hooves answered. “I’m sorry.”

“Would it help if we didn’t have to guard so much of the town?” the dragon asked, leafing through his papers.

Amethyst Star cocked her head to one side, looking for all the world like the idea had never once occurred to her before. “I… suppose?”

“So why not randomize the patrol routes?”

Captain Marigold strode back over from the cluster of Guardsponies, Doctor Verse following along behind. “Wait, wait, what was that?”

“Since… the thieves seem to know exactly where our guys are and… and time their hits for when we’re on the other side of the yard,” the dragon explained, slowly and haltingly, forked tongue protruding slightly from one side of his snout in thought, “why not create random routes… just before? They can’t look for patterns because there won’t be any patterns… and… they can’t steal a look at our schedules ahead of time because they won’t exist ahead of time…”

Amethyst Star shook her head. “That sounds… risky. What if the randomization leaves an area uncovered for too long? I think we should stick to the original patrol schedule.”

“What sort of randomization algorithm should we use?” Proper Verse added.

“Listen.” Spike shifted nervously from one foot to the other, his tail flicking back and forth behind him, “The way we’re trying to combat these… these ponies just isn’t working. I’ll rewrite all the patrol routes myself every day if that’s what it takes, but…”

Marigold’s eyes narrowed. “Twilight and I put a lot of thought into that system, I’m not comfortable throwing it out completely without somepony higher up signing off on it.”

Spike waved the clipboard in front of her, then scribbled something on the bottom right corner. “There. You were the one who said nothing Twilight worked on is secure anymore, remember?”

“We can’t use naturalistic random sources, we don’t know… we don’t know what kind of divinational capabilities these, these troublemakers might have access to…” Verse continued.

Marigold took the clipboard in one hoof, turned it around, and then pushed it back towards Spike. “I’m sorry, I can’t accept orders like this. This is way out of line for how we’re supposed to operate.”

“… and what if the, the thieves learn about what we’re doing, and decide to stop showing up?” Verse interjected.

“Then we won?” Spike looked from one skeptical face to the other, eyes narrowed to slits. “Okay. Fine,” he snapped, “if you want to be difficult, then I guess that’s what we’re going to do.” He stalked off out of the glow of the spotlights, clipboard in hand.

Proper Verse looked to Marigold, ears swiveling backwards. “Um. Well. What’s… what’s gotten into him?”


()

They kept scouring the area for hours afterwards, on the ground and from the air. Fluttershy assisted in flying search patterns, not because she expected anypony to find anything – and, indeed, nopony did – but simply because she didn’t want to be rude.

Thus, it was close to five o’clock in the morning when she finally staggered back up the path to her cottage, sweaty, dirty, and profoundly exhausted.

In her half-asleep state, she almost didn’t notice when she nearly trod on one of her own chickens.

It also took a good few seconds to occur to her that her chickens had absolutely no business wandering freely around her property, at this unreasonable hour or at any other.

Blinking to try to clear her head, she staggered around to the rear of her cottage and stopped in her tracks. The fence surrounding her chicken coop was collapsed on one side and the door wrenched open, leaving straw, wood scrap, and feathery white forms scattered over a good portion of the yard. Many were moving. Some were not.

Fresh adrenaline pushed the tiredness away, at least for the moment. Once more able to focus, Fluttershy turned back to her cottage proper, methodically checking the windows and doors and peeking through into the main room. Everything remained locked, and nothing seemed out of place. She swallowed hard and stepped back over the ruined fence, then ducked down into the chicken coop itself.

The interior was even worse off than the outside. Shelves had been pulled down, leaving the floor a sticky mess of broken eggs, straw, feathers, and what looked to Fluttershy’s limited night vision very much like blood. Most of the latter seemed to be concentrated in one corner away from the door. Looking closer, the pegasus realized that the epicenter consisted of a mass of stained rooster feathers, unidentifiable shreds of bone and meat, and a torn-off head that still possessed a mostly-intact comb.

Fluttershy had dealt with raids by foxes and other woodland predators before- that just came with the territory when one raised poultry. But, as much as her rooster had been torn apart, nothing seemed to be eaten. If she didn’t know better, she’d call what she was looking at an act of pure spite. He never hurt another creature, he was just a chicken for Gaia’s sake! Could a pony have done this? Why? And why was I too busy to come and stop them?

She slammed her left forehoof into the coop’s plywood siding hard enough to leave a visible crack. The few chickens remaining nearby squawked and scattered in alarm.

Fluttershy closed her eyes and forced herself to focus. She stepped outside once again and circled her property, this time remembering to make a proper headcount of every chicken she could see. Both of her other roosters were missing, as were five different hens. If they’d run off into the Everfree -which was the most likely place, all things considered- she might as well give up on ever finding them again.

For the third time, she found herself back in front of the coop. This time she peered more closely at the door. It was usually kept closed with a simple hook-and-eye latch; now, the hook hung freely on its pin without a single indication of damage. A weasel or some sort of predatory bird might’ve been physically capable of that kind of dexterity, but would be unlikely to do something this complicated on its own.

Unless something -or somepony- more intelligent commanded it to…

She sat down next to the closest chicken, looked it in the eye, and focused on recalling the mapping that related the words and concepts of a pony’s mind to its own. Chickens could only conceptualize so much, but what they could understand was communicated simply. Where a pony would need to string together multiple abstract concepts to express something fairly concrete, they needed only a few signals. To Fluttershy now, for instance, the question “|How long have you been scared?|” could be expressed in only a single word.

The hen cocked her head, and through the magical bond the part of Fluttershy’s mind that was now a chicken’s extracted the concept “|Still Dark|”.

“|What are you scared of?|”, the pegasus asked in turn, or possibly just “|What is frightening?|”. The distinction wasn’t one most animals would understand, and as a result Fluttershy had to operate as though it did not exist.

“|Green hen loud| |scary| |scary| |rooster dead| |scary| |scary| |scary|…” the hen’s thoughtline wobbled and drifted out of Fluttershy’s ability to conceptualize.

“|Calm| |Safe| |Safe| |Calm| |Safe|”, she replied, and the bird’s frantic gabbling quieted. The part of her mind that was not a chicken wondered if perhaps the hen had encountered a pony druid with a green coat. It wasn’t unusual for social animals to perceive druids as members of their own species once communion was established. Finally, she asked “|Scary thing| |Where is that?|”.

“|Scary| |dark trees| |scary| |scary| |scaryscaryscary|…”

She wondered if that meant the Everfree, stopped focusing on the hen, and let the communion link fade away. She circled the coop twice more, once nearby and once at a radius of about twenty feet. There were no tracks leading into the forest, but then again there were no tracks of any kind leading anywhere else either- other than her own hoofprints and the chickens’ directionless paths, of course.

Fluttershy started back around to the front door of her cottage, intent on catching up on her remaining few hours of sleep. Then she looked back at the dark mass of the Everfree, shuddered, and headed for the road back to town.


Her first stop was at the Station, to inform Marigold and the Guards. The Captain listened to her story all the way through without much more than a “Mm-hmm,” and then politely informed her that an incident like this was well beyond the military’s purview and she would be better off contacting the Ponyville Watch. That led her to Rising Star, the town’s sole night-shift constable. He followed her back to her cottage, took a statement, and nosed around the chicken coop for about an hour. Afterwards, he sheepishly admitted that he was unable to spot anything Fluttershy herself hadn’t already told him about. As understaffed and overworked as the Watch was at the moment, the odds of finding any leads for what was, in the grand scheme of things, a minor property crime were sadly remote. The only concrete action he could suggest was for Fluttershy to purchase insurance on her cottage and its surroundings, something the pegasus had never before even stopped to consider.

By that point, it was well and truly past sunrise. Fluttershy decided to abandon any pretense of getting additional rest, and staggered her way down the road to town for breakfast at Sugarcube Corner.


()

It was a busy morning, at least as far as Ponyville ever became truly busy at all. The pegasus found herself peering at the faces of the shopkeepers setting out their wares, workers heading to early shifts, and the few children already up and about playing incomprehensible games. She wondered how many of them knew what was going on at the remodeled train station south of Sweet Apple Acres, between the disappearances and the thefts and all the rest. She wondered just how many of her friends and neighbors would think it worth caring about if they did know.

As she made her way across the town square to the bakery’s entrance, she spotted a familiar white-and-purple unicorn heading for the same point. Rarity looked surprisingly composed despite the early hour, but then again Fluttershy supposed the tailor would find a way to look composed even as a rotting corpse. Her makeup was, as usual, utterly flawless, but it didn’t quite manage to eliminate the bagginess of the skin just under her eyes, and there was a faint pinkish hue added to her eyeshadow. It made the bloodshot state of her eyes themselves seem almost natural, certainly moreso than trying to conceal it completely would have done, but the redness was still there.

She favored Fluttershy with a quiet nod, and pushed the door open. Spike sat at the counter inside, a cup of mineral broth in front of him that looked to have already cooled well below boiling. He was reading a section the Times of Canterlot- rather slowly, but that was better than simply staring at whatever was in front of him like she had seen him doing at the freight yard earlier. A few seats down, Applejack and Pinkie Pie were talking quietly to each other.

“Oh!” the baker turned around to look at them, “More customers, that’s usually good…” She chuckled, but there was a flatness underneath.

“Hey… umm… howdy, y’all…” said Applejack, before turning back to her coffee and donut.

Spike silently refolded his Times and started on another page.

“So… what can I get you?” Pinkie asked.

“Coffee and a Danish to go, darling” Rarity answered as she set a five-bit coin on the counter, “I still need to finish these last few dresses by three, and I’m afraid I really can’t afford to dawdle.”

“I’ll get right on it,” the baker said, and quickly busied herself against the back wall.

Finding herself temporarily forgotten for the moment -a state she was in fact more than comfortable with- Fluttershy slipped onto the seat at the end of the counter.

She watched Rarity sidle over to where Spike was sitting, still resolutely ignoring his mineral broth. “I don’t mean to pry, Spike, but are you sure you’re all right? You look a bit peaked,” the unicorn asked.

“I’m all right, I’m just… tired, is all.” Spike slowly let the newspaper drop back onto the table. “And, well, maybe a little nervous. What if this… antiquities ring, or whatever we’re calling them, goes after the Golden Oaks next?”

“That does sound awful, darling, but… I think that’s not the only problem?”

He shook his head. “You’re right. It’s… really tough not knowing what’s going on with Twilight, but… I have a whole project to worry about, whether or not she’s around to take the lead on dealing with it, and…”

“Well, perhaps the whole ‘project’ just needs to learn to better appreciate your creative contributions,” Rarity suggested.

Pinkie Pie leaned across the counter between them- which was odd, because Fluttershy was fairly certain the baker had just been busy on the other side of the kitchen. “That means ‘they need to stop giving you shit’, but, you know, classily.”

Rarity blinked for a few seconds. “… yes, Miss Pie. That. Exactly.”

Spike just nodded, and his mouth twitched upward ever-so-slightly at the corners.

“You know, if you ever do just want to… well, talk to somepony, I’m happy to listen…”

“Yeah… thanks.” The dragon took a sip of his mineral broth as if noticing it for the very first time, and then his snout wrinkled in disgust. “Cold. That’s… that’s been sitting there the entire time I’ve been moping, hasn’t it?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Pinkie Pie said as she slid a disposable cup and waxed-paper bundle down the counter to where Rarity was standing.

The unicorn wrapped both in a blue telekinetic aura, uttered a quiet “Thank you,” and made her way outside. A few seconds later, Spike folded his paper back into his messenger bag and followed.

“And what about you, sugarcube?” Applejack asked Fluttershy. “You look like the rooster woke up early ‘n wanted everypony t’know it!”

The pegasus just swallowed and looked away, suddenly feeling vaguely ill. It was probably just her appalling lack of sleep. Probably.

“Aww, heck, you okay? You know you can talk to me, Fluttershy. What’s eatin’ ya?”

Fluttershy closed her eyes and shifted into a somewhat more comfortable position on her seat. “Somepony- or, at least, I think it was a pony- broke into my chicken coop this morning and killed a few of the chickens,” she explained, “I know they’re just birds, but…”

“Horseapples! Now why'd anypony go an' do such an awful cruel thing like that? Just 'cause they thought they could get away with it?” the farmer interrupted, “Say, Big Mac’s awful torn up ‘bout that Sergeant Leafspring pony goin’ missin’ too. Guess bad times ‘re catchin’.”

Fluttershy nodded, and then sat up a little straighter. “For now, though, Applejack, do you think I could… maybe buy a couple of your roosters?”

“Aww, there ain’t no need for bits, Fluttershy. Ah’ll send Apple Bloom over in a couple days.”

“… Thanks.”

“So, umm, do you want to go ahead and just have the usual?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Ye- actually, no. I’d like a coffee today, not tea.” She dug into her saddlebags and set the requisite bits on the counter.

“Long day ahead?”

“It’s already been a long day…”

“Yeah, let me tell you…” Applejack swallowed the last remaining segment of her donut, “this get-famous-for-savin’-a-Princess business ain’t what Ah thought it was gonna be like.”

“I know, right? We’re not that interesting. You could get maybe two or three little serials out of us, at most! Well, maybe… less than ten. Certainly.” Pinkie Pie slid a mug of coffee with extra cream and a plate of buttered toast over to where Fluttershy was sitting. “You know, we’re also the ponies who helped Princess Luna get over her weird gothy ‘seer’ thing. Some other ponies might be pretty mad at us for doing that… maybe mad enough to mess with us?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Applejack stared at her own reflection in the polished surface of the counter, “but who’d even care that much ‘bout Luna bein’ miserable and makin’ everypony around her miserable?”

“I dunno, it was just an idea,” the baker replied, then paused when the bell on the front door rang. Spoiled Rich stepped inside, and made her way to one of the tables in the back.

Fluttershy, for her part, elected to stay quiet and watch as the other mare sat herself down and began rooting through her designer Abyssinian leather saddlebags. It was amazing what one could find out about ponies, if one learned to just stay quiet and watch.

For instance, she knew that Spoiled was likely here in preparation for the weekly book club she headed for a few other ponies who could generously be called ‘Society’ mares. Rarity had been a regular participant for all of three weeks before declaring the whole enterprise shallow and gauche. Pinkie Pie only barely tolerated their presence because there wasn’t any actual pretext for expelling them- they were loud, they ordered only the most minuscule of portions, and they rarely if ever thought to tip, but were usually finished and gone before the lunchtime rush.

Spoiled finally seemed to find what she was looking for, and pulled out an assembly of thin soft-cover books -pamphlets, really- to spread around her table. The covers were all decorated in the same tasteful, abstract, blue-and-purple pattern, a pattern that Fluttershy vaguely remembered from a conversation with Twilight Sparkle about a certain “Society for Lunar-Equestrian Studies.”

Who indeed?


Your Grace Princess Luna,” Spike wrote, “I’m afraid the situation in and around Everfree has experienced some disturbing developments. Doctor Twilight Sparkle has not been seen or heard from in the last three days, and we are rapidly exhausting our avenues of conventional investigation. Would it be possible for Your Grace to attempt to locate or communicate Twilight by means of her dreams? I am willing to provide any assistance or information necessary to make this possible.

He paused briefly, then added “Additionally, I would prefer if Princess Celestia was not informed of these developments just yet. I would like to wait until we are more certain of where we stand, and I can make a proper and comprehensive report.

Warmest Regards,

Spike Spell-Born of Canterlot


The day finally dawned in earnest, bright and muggy and simmering. Fluttershy told nopony else about what had happened to her chickens, but somehow by noon everypony she talked to knew anyway. There was no single, specific incident that Fluttershy could put her hoof on as she ran her errands, but the sense of tension was omnipresent. Filthy Rich, Roseluck, and Lucky Clover of all ponies even held a sort of perfunctory little demonstration outside of the Station, where they complained about not receiving prompt notification of emergencies. As she skulked along the edge of town, Fluttershy could vaguely hear Filthy shouting something about how “all this started after you came here and started making demands and meddling in the local antiquities trade, and now you don’t even have the spine to take responsibility for the wanton invasion of ponies’ homes…” She didn’t dare step out into the field to correct him.

Amethyst Star came to visit her around two, to relay that she’d written to the Dominion subsection of the Ministry of Justice. They’d replied that a solitary case of vandalism did not merit the involvement of Governorate resources, and the disappearances of a Royal Academy scholar and two Royal Guards did not much change that fact because there was as yet zero evidence of foul play. Bulletins with Twilight and the Guards’ photographs would be distributed to Watch officers throughout the Dominion, but that was all.

Fluttershy called Silver Spanner over to fix up her chicken coop that evening, and paid an extra ten bits for her to install a proper padlock on the door.