With the meeting officially adjourned by Twilight's acceptance of the inevitable, the mercenaries moved to follow the reluctant demoness back out into the main lobby. Dash dropped down from the ceiling but didn't deign to set foot on the ground, hovering several inches above it as she drifted along with the group. The rest walked along normally, with Flutter silently bringing up the rear.

Twilight was surprised to see that even though they hadn't been in the back for very long, Tessercube Corner had become quite full with clientele in the meantime. In order to keep anyone from getting a scaly metal surprise when they sat down, she walked over to the table she had been sitting at earlier and rapped it with her knuckles. The metallic squeak of jaws opening in a wide yawn came from underneath and was soon followed by the clicking of claws on the tile as Spike emerged.

A squeal of delight suddenly cut across the restaurant, interrupting the dragon in the middle of a stretch and setting everyone to searching for the source.

"Oh my gosh!" Flutter said as she nearly bowled the rest of the group over. "Is that a mecha-dragon? Oh, he's so adorable! Hi there, little guy. What's your name?"

Twilight blinked in confusion. Though Flutter seemed to be going through all the motions of being excited up to and perhaps passing the point of hysteria, her voice seemed to belie any such evidence. It wasn't pitched up, quickened, or loud by any means, every word instead being cooed out in a soft, quiet, soothing fashion. Twilight found it disconcerting but surprisingly unsurprising.

"Uh, hey!" Spike said after the intial shock wore off. "I'm Spike! And yup, I'm 100% mecha-dragon, from chrome cranium to tin-plated tail!" He clanged his knuckles against the side of his head as if to prove he was truly made out of metal.

"Oh my, that's wonderful. My name is Flutter. If you, um, don't mind me asking, were you constructed by assembly, or are you an egg-born?"

"Grade A gen-yoo-wine egg-born!" The green crest that ran along his back began to twitch with pride. "Nothin' artificial about this intelligence!"

"Wooooooow. Oh, you should meet Angelbunny!"

As Spike watched, keenly interested, Flutter pulled out a digipad and ran her fingers across it in what was obviously a well-memorized pattern. Almost instantly a softlight projection appeared on the floor between them, resolving itself into a small white rabbit munching on a carrot. At first the bunny seemed content to focus entirely on its meal, but a prod from Flutter caused it to look up at the dragon before it.

Spike blinked, his optical sensors darkening momentarily in surprise when a small pair of wings popped out of the rabbit's back and pushed it gently up into the air. He waved his claws at the little critter and was rewarded with a rude noise and a digital carrot being flung at his head before the tiny ball of fluff zipped off to hide behind its owner's pale pink tresses.

"Oh my, I'm sorry. He usually isn't like that," Flutter assured the startled dragon.

Twilight cut in with a sigh. "Yes, well, as wonderful that it is that we're all hitting it off so well," she said, tapping a foot, "I'm afraid we really need to get going."

"Oh, okay," Flutter said as she shut Angelbunny off and immediately reverted to her former quieter self. Spike clacked his teeth together and slithered around to Twilight's side as the group began to filter their way through the still-growing crowd.

"Assignments," Twilight said without preamble once they were outside. "Pinkie, you said you know everybody in town? You and Rarity start talking." She pulled out an info cube and handed it to the other demoness, since she appeared to be the more reliable of the two. "This is a list of all the people who reported contact attempts by our quarry. See if you can get them to remember anything more than what's on the cube."

"Of course, darling."

"Okie dokie lokie!"

"Dash, you're on aerial recon. Do a quick flyby of the village itself, and be discreet. Report any unusual behavior in the citizenry. Once you've finished, do a more thorough scouting of the nearby farmland and the forest. I don't expect that our target will have an obvious sign pointing to their base of operations, but it never hurts to check and make sure."

"On it!"

"Flutter, you and Spike will be checking the local archives for anything that might be connected with our task. Any reports that may have been filed but not sent to the castle, anything that you even suspect might somehow be the work of our target. And while you're there, inform the authorities of our presence here and let them know that we are all working under an official capacity, but remember that our exact purpose for being here is still confidential."

"Sure thing, Twilight," said Spike. Flutter merely clapped her hands together and did a happy little dance at the prospect of working with the mecha-dragon.

"AJ, you're with me. You all have my frequency. Contact me immediately if you find anything. Dismissed."

Before heading out on their respective assignments, Pinkie and Dash both snapped off salutes. Twilight was certain that at least one of them was meant sarcastically, but she resisted the urge to roll her eyes or say anything. Instead, she merely turned on her heel and started walking. AJ silently fell into step next to her.

The area surrounding Tessercube Corner appeared to be made up mainly of businesses. The buildings weren't large, but the signs promised that they housed any number of goods a person might want. And if it couldn't be found within the stores themselves, it could almost certainly be found in the open-air bazaar that seemed to permeate the marketplace. Without trying to appear as if she was doing so, Twilight scanned the various booths with her eyes, taking in what to her was an unusual setup.

The atmosphere of the bazaar was much different from those that could be found littering the streets of Cantela. There, in the capital city, the booths were desperate things filled with desperate people trying to ply their usually not-so-legal wares on criminals, the destitute, and discerning upper class buyers in need of particular items that would keep them in the upper class. The markets were usually cramped, filthy, and filled with the voices of merchants hawking their wares.

In contrast, the Perinville market seemed to be a clean, quiet, and completely legal affair. The booths and carts were set up with a good deal of space between them so as not to impede traffic, both on the street and to the bigger businesses. The merchants were soft sells, letting people come along and check their wares without any attempts to fast talk, and it didn't seem to hurt their trade at all. The smell of fresh produce filled the air rather than the stench of too many humanoids taking too few baths.

Twilight found that despite the bazaar exemplifying the orderliness that she herself craved on a regular basis, the scene caused a weird trill to crawl up her back. It was almost as if she'd stepped onto a completely different world, alien from anything she was used to.

"So, where we headed?"

"This way," Twilight said, pointing vaguely forward.

"Uh-huh. Reckon we are at that." AJ tilted her cowgirl hat back and stuffed her hands into her pockets as she took a moment to mull something over. "Welp," she finally said, breaking the silence once more, "whatcha think a'Perinville?"

The demon frowned a bit. "It's sound architecturally, but I can't say the same for the security." She waved her hand at a handful of happy, relaxed people that were standing at the stalls. "Don't these people realize there's a war going on?"

AJ simply shrugged and replied, "There's always a war goin' on, sugarplum." She then snorted in mild irritation. "Alright, enough a'tha chit-chat. I figure one a'us has got ta actually point out that you don't trust me, and that sure as heck means you didn't ask me to come along with ya just for the conversation. So what's on yer mind already?"

Twilight strongly considered not answering. She continued striding along, eyes forward and face set, hoping that she looked like she was actually going somewhere instead of just wandering around aimlessly. But AJ seemed the stubborn type, unlikely to give up after being rebuffed, so Twilight ground her teeth together and then dove in.

"Have you ever worked with any of the others before?" she asked without looking over.

"Sure, at least a couple of times each," the earther responded easily, having figured the question was going to come up sooner or later. "Not all at the same time like now, but I ain't figured 'em for nothin' but good, honest folk. Pinkie and Rarity both used ta live here like me, and the angels make the merc circuit pretty regularly out here. They might seem a might strange, but I figure you ain't gonna find a finer team a'mercs in the queendom."

"Won't I?" Twilight didn't look convinced. "So far what it seems I've found is a hyperactive lunatic, a preening prettygirl, a caustic psychopath, a wilting flower, and you."

"Aw, now don't hold back, dumplin'. So you really don't trust me."

"No. I don't. Being a current resident of this town means you may have already been influenced by our target, and may in fact be planning to sabotage our efforts."

"Then why in tarnation did ya tell me ta come along with you?" AJ asked, giving a wry smile.

Violet eyes momentarily regarded her from under a furrowed brow. "To make sure you can't sabotage us without my knowing about it. And . . . I think you may be the most if not only useful member of this team," Twilight admitted. "Assuming, of course, you aren't working against us. I've met other earthers before. I get the feeling you're even stronger than most."

AJ gave her a funny look and then burst into laughter, causing a few people nearby to turn and stare. The frown on Twilight's face deepened as she waited for the outburst to taper off.

"Sugarcube, you either got yourself a mighty fine sense of understatement," AJ said as she wiped a few tears of mirth from her eyes, "or you ain't read word one of our files. I got the feelin' it's the latter, and that just might explain why you ain't too keen on workin' with us. But don't you worry none. You give these girls a chance and they'll show ya what they can do."

Twilight went back to watching the ballet of commerce as they continued walking along. "We'll see," she said, unconvinced.

---

The day moved by like molasses.

Twilight considered looking over the mercenary files on her digipad, both just to have something to do and in the hopes that it would make AJ finally shut up about it, but in the end she resisted what little temptation there was to do so. There was little reason, in her thinking, to bother wasting the time learning about people that she would soon part company with anyway. Despite their offer to work the information gathering part of the mission for free, she was still fully prepared to cut them loose as soon as the first viable bit of intel popped up.

In the meantime, she had resigned herself to being shown around the village by AJ, who was more than happy to play tour guide.

Perinville had been founded by earther refugees during the First Griffon Conflict nearly six hundred years prior to the present day, according to AJ's spiel. The earthers had sought refuge at Cantela but were rebuffed at the city walls. Hard travel by foot followed until they finally reached a relatively small patch of land that hadn't been ravaged by the constant fighting, the reason for this being that it was land that nobody really wanted.

The soil in the area at the time had been contaminated by a natural magical disaster that had altered the surrounding ecosystem. Plants grew, animals dwelled, but neither flora nor fauna were anything that a non-mutated humanoid would find palatable or even, in most cases, edible. Unfortunately for the earthers, it was surrounded by even more inhospitable areas on the three sides apart from the one they'd approached from. Tall, craggy mountains blocked off any access to the south or southeast, swampland covered the north, and the rest was home to a dark and virtually impenetrable forest.

If not for their terrible desperation, the earthers would likely have turned back around and left for greener pastures, but none of them knew if such greener pastures existed or even if they did, whether or not the army of refugees would manage to make it to them before running out of supplies. And so, without any other viable option left to them, they had settled down along the habitable strip surrounding the strange plains of mutated grass and trees.

By hand and instrument, they had carved their way into the polluted land, using what limited technology they had at their disposal to terraform it, cleanse it, and turn it into arable farmland. The process took decades and many lives were lost to starvation, poor work conditions, and predators before there was enough space for the budding community to finally be self-sustaining.

Over the years, the newly named Perinville had grown larger, pushing all the way up to the edges of the forest and mountains, both of which had stubbornly refused to budge. The great swamp, on the other hand, had given way as it was drained and the land sculpted into something more useful.

Then had come what AJ called the War of Failed Independence. Twilight didn't bother to correct her. What she knew from her own history books as the Fifth Rebellion Conflict had embroiled Perinville and several other villages, towns, and cities at the time in a massive conflict with Cantela itself. The government had seen Perinville and other such small, relatively new settlements as colonies that belonged to them. The "colonies" themselves disagreed.

Queen Celestia preferred not to speak of that time, but from what little she had told Twilight, it had obviously pained her deeply to have to bring the errant communities forcibly into the fold.

Though they had lost their independence, Perinville had gained government support after the conflict. With this had come an influx of immigrants, eager for the business and job opportunities presented by a town that was busy rebuilding itself. Though the population continued to remain primarily earther, many demons and angels had come to call the little village home.

AJ's family, she was inordinately pleased to inform Twilight, hadn't been part of the later settlers. "It was my ancestors what started drainin' the swamp," she said with enough pride that it seemed almost like she was taking credit for having done it herself. "After that first patch was made fit for livin' on, they set up camp and ain't ever moved. Aw, sure, we got some family up in the cities and a few a'tha smaller towns, but there's always been Smiths here in Perinville, and there always will be."

"Fascinating," Twilight said, trying her best to sound as if it truly were. She took a quick sip of her cider and set it back on the table before asking, "So, what do the Smiths do with their little patch of land here?"

AJ grinned and pointed at their glasses. "You're drinkin' it, sugarcube. Sweet Apple Acres provides all sortsa fruit products to the businesses here and a few places elsewhere, but as the name oughta tell ya, it's apples we're best known for. You really oughta try the harder stuff, by the way," she said, then quickly slammed down her own drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Mighty tasty, and got a real kick to it!"

"I'll . . . keep that in mind. It must take a lot of you to keep up with that much business."

"Naw, not really," AJ said with a wave of her hand. "We got a coupla hired hands, but mostly it's just me, granny, my big bro, and my little sis."

Twilight leaned forward, suddenly interested despite herself. "Well, what about your mercenary work? Surely that leaves them shorthanded."

"Aw, bein' a merc is just a side thing to help us pay for stuff like repairs and maintenance on the tools. Orchard farmin' is my real job. It's why I usually just take jobs nearby, like thisun."

With a soft noncommittal sound, Twilight settled back into her chair. In the time she had spent sightseeing, occasionally questioning people, and generally learning the lay of the land with AJ, she had begun to develop a grudging respect for the woman. True to her race, she was a down-to-earth type, apparently very practical and with a great deal of pride in her accomplishments, indicative of a strong work ethic.

But this paradoxically made the earther even harder to trust, because those were the very same traits Twilight would expect a traitor in the group to show her in order to alay suspicion. The whole situation continued to be too tricky to fully unravel, and she was glad to be distracted from it by the insistent buzz of her commlink. Pulling the device out and pressing it into her ear, she opened the line.

"What have you got for me?" she asked, then winced as Pinkie's squealing voice tried to tear its way through her eardrum.

"Oh man, what didn't we find?" Pinkie replied. "Well I'll tell you what we didn't find! Anything that wasn't already in the cube you gave us!"

There was a sudden silence on the line as the merc waited for a response and Twilight tried her best to untangle the mess of a conversation that she had just been handed. After a few seconds she realized that Pinkie had told her that they hadn't found anything, a translation that seemed a bit suspect given that Pinkie had delivered her message in such a cheerful tone. "Um, Pinkie? Could you put Rarity on? Please?"

"Dreadfully sorry about that, darling," Rarity said once she had control of the comm, "but I'm afraid our dear Pinkamena is telling the truth. Everyone we interviewed confirmed their earlier report without any substantial amount of variance."

Twilight sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. "That's alright, I didn't really expect much to come from that end anyway. I'll call the others and see if they've had any better luck, then we'll all meet back at-"

"Well now, my dear, I hate to interrupt that train of thought, but we aren't actually quite finished," said Rarity. "We do have one more name to check before we can arrange a rendezvous. A Brolly somethingorother. We've been having just the most awful time trying to track him down, but we think he may currently be at the weather control station. I know it's a little bit out of our way, but do you think we could reconvene there by any chance?"

"Hmm. Hang on, let me check with the others first." Putting Rarity on hold, she flipped open another channel and dialed for Spike. The dragon answered immediately. "Spike, are you almost finished? I think we're going to be heading up to the weather control station and-"

"Whoa, really?"

Twilight glanced up at AJ, who caught the surprise in the demon's eyes. "What do you mean 'whoa, really'?" Twilight asked.

"I mean it's kinda spooky you should say that right now," Spike returned. "Flutter and I have nearly torn this entire system apart without finding anything, but she just found this story tucked away in a recent newscast about the animals out by the weather control station acting strangely. Like a weird migration pattern away from the area. No one seemed to think much of it, but it got me digging deeper into the station's records, and apparently there have been some mild power fluctuations over the past couple of weeks. Not enough to really notice unless you knew you were looking for something."

" . . . okay, definite change of plans then. We're meeting at the station immediately."

"Roger that, boss lady."

Twilight cut the connection and quickly relayed what Spike and Flutter had discovered. "Do you have Dash's frequency?" she asked. "Good. Call her in. Rarity?" she said, switching back to her original call.

"Yes, darling?"

"We're on our way."