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Destinies

by Sharp Quill

Chapter 17: 17. An Unforgiving Land

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The ponies all gathered around Meg and Steve outside the barn in the cooling air of the late afternoon, as the subject of their plans for tomorrow was discussed.

“We’ll be spending the day in Canterlot, playing tourist, visiting museums and parks and such,” Steve said. “Any suggestions?”

“You simply must visit the Couture History Museum.”

“There’s a Wonderbolts exhibit—no, wait, that’s in Cloudsdale.”

Such predictable, clichéd answers, thought Meg. Twilight’s recommendations had been no less so, but at least hers were of greater general interest. Mostly. But then the former unicorn did possess the advantage of having lived most of her life there. When they had mentioned considering the public tour of the castle, naturally Twilight quickly pointed out how she could give them a real tour someday.

“Thanks for those—” Meg politely began, not wishing to hurt anypony’s feelings, but got interrupted by Applejack.

“Twilight?” the farm mare said, who was the first to spot the returning alicorn. “What happened?”

The others turned to follow Applejack’s line of sight. Twilight was despondently walking towards them, her mane a frazzled mess, defeated.

So that’s a real thing? Meg had never seen her so miserable, her head down, avoiding eye contact with everypony else. Twilight came to a stop in front of them. She lifted her head to address them, and simply said, “The doll is gone.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Steve, hoping he heard wrong.

“It’s gone. It’s at least a hundred miles away.”

“Gone? Were we robbed or something?” asked Meg. But that didn’t add up. Mere thieves wouldn’t have transported their belongings so far so quickly.

“I don’t think so,” she glumly replied. “Only that doll was obviously missing.”

“FBI,” Meg weakly said, as she sat on her haunches. Her worst fears were coming true.

Now what? Did they dare go back?

I guess it’s safe enough… as invisible ponies.

And there was the point Twilight had made, that to be arrested for giving a doll the ability to break the laws of physics, they’d have to first believe it was possible to do that.

They just took the doll? They didn’t do anything else?

They hadn’t even tried to call her or Steve. It still didn’t add up.

Twilight lowered her head, her ears sagging. “I’m so sorry, I really am. No matter how hard I try not to, I keep underestimating what your technology can do. I should have taken your concerns more seriously.”

Rainbow Dash lifted into the air, full of determination. “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s go find it and get it back!”

Twilight didn’t immediately respond. Meg said, “That was your contingency plan, if this happened, wasn’t it?”

The alicorn lifted her head to look at Meg. “I’m questioning the assumptions that led to that plan.”

A breath later, she continued. “What do you think the agents will do with the doll?”

Maybe it was because Twilight was so devastated, or maybe because it seemed so unreal, but Meg found herself surprisingly calm.

“Well… they did say something about taking the cause of The Effect—as they call it—somewhere far away from any city, so that it no longer interferes with broadcasts. And you did say it’s been moved a great distance.”

Twilight clarified the question. “What will they do to the doll?”

Meg gave her a blank look. “I don’t know. I would think they’d be very cautious. For all they know, destroying the doll may cause an unimaginable explosion.” She blinked. “Would it?” she asked, suddenly worried.

“No,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “The hole is not dependent on the physical body of the doll. I don’t know what binds the two, but the worst that can happen is that the hole floats freely—which is still bad enough. It could go deep underground, if it’s subject to gravity.”

Rainbow Dash was getting quite irritated, crossing her forelimbs. “We need less talk, more action.”

“I agree,” said Steve. “There’s not much we can plan until we know where it is and how it’s guarded.” He tilted his head slightly. “By the way, how did you find it the first time? You didn’t search the entire planet, did you?”

“No, that wasn’t necessary,” Twilight began to explain. “Those pills can put us within fifty miles of it. We then just follow the magical field gradient. The first time we used them, we found ourselves over an ocean, a few miles from shore. It only took a few hours to zero in on your location.”

Dash was hovering in Twilight’s face. “So let’s get going already!” she shouted, causing her to wince and flatten her ears.

Twilight looked at her for a few seconds, recovering her resolve. “I don’t have any more pills with me; we need to go back to the castle first.” The alicorn spread her wings, preparing to take off.

“Not without us,” Steve said. It wasn’t a request.

Twilight paused, considering her options. “I’ve already caused you two enough trouble. I’m not subjecting you to more danger.”

He pressed his case as Twilight turned towards her castle. “You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s how you got into this mess in the first place. It’s our world. We can properly interpret what you’ll find there.”

Twilight stood motionless, her ears, tail, and wings slowly drooping.

“He has a point, Twi,” Applejack said.

Twilight sighed, then lethargically turned back around to face the others. “Meg, come with us. Steve, I’m sorry, but this time wings are required. We’ll be returning to your realm high above the ground.”

“Yeah, we didn’t know that the first time,” Rainbow Dash said. “We found out when we started plunging to our deaths,” the pegasus said, ending with a snicker aimed at Twilight.

Steve did not argue the point.

They didn’t waste any more time. The three winged ponies took off and flew back to the castle. That gave Meg a few minutes to speculate to herself on where they might have taken the doll.

Assuming they weren’t taking it someplace absurdly far away, like the south pole or an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific, the best bet would be in the middle of the Mojave desert. Lots of military bases there, including the apocryphal Area 51.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

They arrived at the castle, and quickly went to the private library. Twilight went upstairs to retrieve a set of pills. Upon coming back down, her mane restored to its normal state, she said, “Start hovering,” and levitated pills to the other two. “Take it into your mouth, but don’t swallow yet.”

They all did so. Meg did not find it pleasant keeping the plaid-tasting pill in her mouth. Is this funny to you, Discord?

“Keep your mind clear of any destination, then swallow.”

They all swallowed.

Below them was a dry, barren landscape. Broad dusty valleys flowed between low rocky mountains, layers of geologic strata visible within them. Maud Pie would love it here. The valleys sprouted sparse vegetation, desiccated and brown, possibly dead, though probably just hibernating until the next, unlikely rain. There was no sign of civilization, not so much as a dirt road. They were probably a mile above the ground, but even up here it was hot under the burning sun. Not a good place for furry creatures. Not a cloud to be seen either.

“Looks like you were right about the middle of nowhere,” Twilight said as she scanned the horizon, looking for anything relevant.

Meg’s best guess as to their location was looking good. She brought her phone into view and selected the map app. The app had no details to show, no roads, no rivers, no towns, nothing. Only one bar, too—and only that, she was sure, because of their altitude, thus providing a direct line of sight to a distant cell tower.

At least the GPS registered a change in her location; but she needed to zoom out, way out. Uh oh…

“So, where are we?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I, uh, got a small problem,” Meg said, bearing a sheepish look. “I need to do a pinch gesture to zoom out, but I can’t do that with hooves.” She held up the other hoof. “I need two fingers.”

Twilight considered that for a moment, tapping her chin with her own hoof. “Try using your lips.”

That’s… clever. If it works. Only one way to find out. She pursed her lips, widely separated them, and made contact with the screen. After closing her lips, she pulled the phone back to see what happened. “That actually worked,” she said, pleasantly surprised.

She had to repeat the gesture numerous times, but eventually the map was sufficiently zoomed out to make out their location. “We’re inside Death Valley National Park, barely, though far to the east of the main road used by tourists. Maybe a hundred miles away from Las Vegas.”

Rainbow Dash was slightly confused by that. “Don’t you mean Las Pegasus?”

Meg rolled her eyes in irritation. I don’t need this right now…

“It’s called Las Vegas here, and it’s on the ground, not in the sky. Anyway, we’re about four to five hundred miles from my home—by car, anyway. As the bird flies it’d be significantly shorter, but there’s a huge mountain range in the way.”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Twilight said, dismissing it. “But, seriously, you have a park named Death Valley? Who’d want to go there?”

Meg sighed. “Long story. Suffice it to say, it’s quite survivable with modern technology. But if you have any magic that can help us deal with extreme heat, it would be most useful. What we’re experiencing right now, up here, in the late afternoon is nothing.”

Twilight took out her magic probe. “I’m sure there’s a spell or two I can find that will do the job,” she said without concern. She positioned the probe at the boundary of her bubble and took a reading. Frowning, she said, “Well, it’s farther away than when we were over that ocean.”

“At least thirty miles away, then,” Meg declared. “I don’t think they’d set up base in a national park, so we should fly east.” She looked at the setting sun and pointed in the opposite direction. “That way. We should at least find the highway running parallel to the park on the Nevada side. I have an idea for speeding up the search, if it’s possible for you to move our car here.”

They proceeded to fly away from the sun. Moving quickly through the air helped make the heat more tolerable.

“You want Steve to take readings on the ground while we take readings up here,” Twilight hypothesized, finding considerable merit in the idea. “It should be possible to move your car here by passing it through Equestria first.”

“That’s the idea.”

“It’s a shame you don’t have more of those phones. We could cover even more territory.” Twilight sighed. “Not that we know how to use them.”

“You don’t want to know about the billing plans,” Meg deadpanned.

Twilight raised an eyebrow at that, but decided not to inquire further.

Mile after mile of arid desert past beneath them as the sun rapidly approached the horizon, the shadows growing ever longer. This high up, the path water took when it did rain was obvious, forming the valleys in which the sparse, half-dead looking shrubs barely grew.

They paused for another reading, as the sun touched the horizon. “We’re not going to find it before nightfall,” Twilight said, as the probe moved into position.

Meg didn’t have much in the way of encouragement, but she offered what little she had. “Another night won’t make a difference. If they were going to destroy the doll, they’d have done it already.”

Twilight had little herself to offer. “I don’t think it’s moving—at least, not very fast—so we have that in our favor too. And it is getting stronger, so you were right about the direction.”

“Hey, guys?” Rainbow Dash was looking at the horizon as the other two were talking. “What are those bright, moving things over there?” There were only a few visible, widely separated, traveling in opposite directions.

Twilight took a look herself once the probe was put away. The objects were slowly dimming. “I… I don’t know. At least they’re not coming this way. Meg?”

Meg was already looking at them. It was perfectly obvious what they were. “Those are cars reflecting light from sun behind us, like a mirror.” They were dimming rapidly now, as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

“That’s the road I was looking for,” she said, after checking the map—which required her to awkwardly zoom in. “US Route 95. That’s where we’ll put the car.” She began descending towards the road. Twilight and Rainbow Dash followed, once her intentions were clear.

It took nearly ten minutes to reach it—distances can be deceiving in the clean, dry air—but eventually they set down on the dirt, a few feet from the pavement.

“I see what you mean by the heat,” complained Rainbow Dash, as she decided to spare her hooves by hovering. The sun had set, but the ground still retained the heat it’d absorbed. Meg decided to join her; it wasn’t hot enough to be painful, but it sure wasn’t comfortable either. The air was cooler a few feet off the ground, too, and flapping wings helped keep the air moving. Twilight remained on the ground; must be her alicorn constitution, Meg reasoned.

“We won’t be here much longer,” Twilight stated. She took another reading. “Still getting stronger.” She put away the probe and looked at the two hovering pegasi. “Let’s head back.”

“No, not yet,” Meg objected. She was looking south, and didn’t like what she saw. “Not enough visibility here.”

“What are you talking about?” Rainbow Dash asked, following Meg’s gaze. “I can see that hill just fine.”

“And the road goes behind it,” Meg pointed out. She only got a look of incomprehension from both of them. Just then, a car came around the curve and rocketed past them.

“Whoa…” Rainbow Dash stared at the retreating taillights. “They can go that fast?!”

“Quite a bit faster, actually, but he’s breaking the speed limit as it is.” Meg flew down the road, looking for a suitable spot.

Twilight followed, while looking back nervously at the curve in the road. “How long does it take to get up to that speed?”

“Now you see the problem.”

They flew on in silence, during which two other cars went past them. Meg wasn’t going just for distance, but in the fading light was also looking for some ground next to the road, beyond the normal shoulder, that didn’t look like a flat tire waiting to happen. Eventually, she came upon a suitable spot.

“Okay, right here.”

Twilight took one last measurement with the probe. “Looks a bit stronger, so Steve will want to take your car north, while we continue flying east.”

They all invoked the return spell. Steve was there, using the laptop as Spike watched on in fascination, waiting for their return.

“I have some good news,” Steve said, as he noticed their presence. “The simulations have converged on a solution.”

“Perfect timing,” Twilight muttered, as she and Meg went over to see the solution for themselves. “Spike, copy that down.”

“Already done.” The baby dragon distractedly pointed to a scroll next to the computer.

Steve turned to the mares. “So?”

Meg pulled off her phone and presented it; Steve retrieved it with his magic. Due to the antenna’s enchantment, it still thought it was in the Nevada desert. “We ran out of daylight, but it’s somewhere northeast of there. We’re thinking, first thing tomorrow morning, you can drive north while we fly east.”

“Nevada, eh?” He sent the phone back to Meg as he turned to Twilight. “I take it you can move the car there by bringing it here first?”

“We can go fetch it right now.” Twilight started to fly upstairs to fetch more plaid pills.

“No, don’t, not yet,” he said.

She drifted back to the floor, mystified. “Why not?”

He stood up and walked over to her. “We have to assume they’re looking for us. They know we weren’t home. They know we didn’t take our car, but they might still be keeping an eye on it. If it disappears now, by tomorrow they’ll be searching multiple states for it. We need to wait till tomorrow. It will then be physically impossible for it to be in Nevada, so they won’t be looking for it there—not before we locate the doll, anyway.”

Twilight looked over to Meg, who had nothing to add. “We get it tomorrow,” she conceded.


Dawn was breaking. Under the dim skies, two mares popped into existence behind a car. Meg proceeded to fly around, looking to see if anyone was up and about, as Twilight prepared herself to pull a massive object with her back to Equestria.

It didn’t take Meg long to report back. “It’s clear. Can’t rule out video surveillance, but if they’re watching they’ll be working overtime to come up with a reason why the car didn’t just vanish into thin air.” The thought of them desperately searching for some hardware malfunction, or editing of the video, or something, was amusing to her.

Then a scary thought occurred to her: are we visible to cameras? What if invisibility was achieved by manipulating the perceiver? That seemed unlikely, since most would be outside of a magical field. But if photons were passing right through them, how could they see each other?

“I need to check something,” she hastily told Twilight. Meg moved a few dozen feet away, then brought up her phone and put it into camera mode. She saw the car—and only the car—on the screen. Yet she had no trouble seeing with her eyes the lavender pony looking back at her with curiosity.

It was her perceptions that were being magically manipulated. It made sense, really: being invisible, the retinas of her eyes could not absorb photons; she ought to be blind. The same would apply to sound and hearing. No, they were still solid objects. But that implied echolocation could “see” them. She shrugged that off; fortunately, there were no bats on the FBI payroll.

Wait. How does the camera see anything? Meg shook her head. This wasn’t the time, and Twilight was starting to get impatient.

Meg went back to her. “I’ll explain later.” The last thing they needed was for Twilight to go off on a tangent right now. “Let’s get out of here.”

Twilight concentrated, as Meg kept an eye out. After a few seconds, she heard hooves click three times and she turned around. Twilight and the car were gone. She invoked the return spell herself.

Back on the main balcony of the castle, the car shined in the morning Equestrian sun, with Twilight and Steve standing next to it. Rainbow Dash was hovering next them, watching.

Steve was trying to unlock the door, the problem being his keys were in his pants, and his pants were wherever they went when he turned into a pony. He was attempting to unlock the door by pushing a button inside the car using telekinesis. Having to pass through solid objects to get to it made it difficult. Twilight was treating it as one of her lessons.

A mechanical sound marked his success. He opened the door and Twilight levitated one of her magic probes into the car. Steve got a crash course on how to use it last night. It wasn’t designed for human fingers, but it could be managed. Once it was on the passenger’s seat, he closed the door.

Rainbow Dash took that as her cue. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said with anticipation, as she flew back into the castle. The others followed her to the library.

Twilight went upstairs to fetch more plaid pills, and upon returning sent two of them over to Rainbow Dash and Meg. They swallowed the pills.

The sun was peaking through a gap in the hills to the east, as they stood a dozen feet off the highway. It was now pleasingly chilly—to pegasi, anyway—but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Not a sound was to be heard in the still air.

Meg noticed they weren’t casting shadows. It then occurred to her that not enough time had passed for the sun to have risen above the horizon. Right, she remembered, we’ve gone a few hundred miles east.

Rainbow Dash had already started to climb high in the sky, and Meg belatedly followed. Once they achieved a vantage point that let them see the road for miles in either direction, they hovered.

Meg now felt silly for picking a spot yesterday based on visibility. She had perfect visibility right here. All she had to do was to give Steve the all clear via their phones. I’d been thinking as an experienced human driver, not as a pegasus.

There was virtually no traffic this early in the morning. There would be no problem in bringing their car across. Meg called her husband.

The use of cell phones did raise concerns. It was not a secret which cell tower they communicated with. After returning to Equestria the previous day, they had gone home—as invisible ponies—to retrieve some stuff. A useful side effect was that it had also reset the tower her phone talked to. If anyone was paying attention, they would have seen her phone instantly hop hundreds of miles, then hop right back again almost an hour later. As with the disappearing car, they would be preoccupied with finding and fixing the fault in their monitoring tools, and would question it when they saw it happen again today.

“We’re ready,” he tersely answered. Who knew who was listening in?

The two hovering ponies did another sweep. A car had decided to pick that time to come from the north. “Soon,” Meg replied.

Meg kept an eye on that car while Rainbow Dash checked the other direction. The seconds ticked by, until the car finally passed their chosen spot, its noise doppler shifting to a lower pitch.

“Clear,” Dash said.

“Go,” Meg said, then ended the call. The call was likely to be dropped anyway; the cellular infrastructure wasn’t designed to hand off a call from one tower to another hundreds of miles away. Wait. If we’re invisible, how can the phone talk to a cell tower? Obviously, invisibility didn’t apply to radio frequencies. Did they show up on radar?

The two pegasi descended to their starting point, as the car popped into existence, pulled onto the road and noisily accelerated away. Twilight went airborne and met them halfway.

“The doll doesn’t appear to have moved since yesterday,” she said. “Let’s continue east.”

For several minutes they flew at a northerly angle to the rising sun, over more of the desolate land, occasionally seeing a dry river bed formed by flash floods. Twilight signaled for them to halt so she could take a reading.

“It’s weaker, but not by much. It must be quite some distance to the north.”

Meg checked her phone. “The road bears west, so we should go straight north.” She switched to the compass app and oriented herself. “This way.”


For the past hour Steve had been traveling north on US Route 95, pulling over every mile or two to take a reading and text it to Meg. Fortunately, the non-existent traffic made it easy to slow down in preparation for pulling over onto the dirt shoulder, as he was doing yet again.

After parking the car, but leaving the engine running, he reached for the magic probe. The probe was designed to be operated by unicorn telekinesis, but it was still possible to turn the tiny knobs with fingers. He had already needed to decrease the sensitivity several times as he got closer to the doll.

But before he could grab it, he noticed a car pulling up behind him with a makeshift flashing light on its roof, not the highway patrol but an unmarked sedan.

Oh, crap.

The driver and passenger got out of the nondescript vehicle and Steve recognized the passenger as FBI Special Agent Holmes. For a change, he wasn’t in a suit and tie but, like the unknown driver, in a sport shirt and jeans.

This cannot be a coincidence.

He cursed his stupidity; Twilight wasn’t the only one operating on erroneous assumptions. A least she had a good excuse.

No purpose would be served by fleeing, so he opened his window and patiently waited. He would just have to hope for the best.

Holmes casually walked up to window. “Fancy meeting you out here in the middle of nowhere, Mr. Coleman.”

Not that he thought it would do him much good, Steve decided to play innocent for as long as possible. Besides, exactly what was he guilty of? Speeding, which he hadn’t been doing anyway, was outside his jurisdiction. “What’s this about?” he tried to say as nonchalantly as possible.

“Care to explain why you are here?”

This cat and mouse game was not likely to end well, but he really didn’t have much choice. “Exploring the desert. Is that a federal crime?”

“An interesting question,” Holmes replied with a deceptively relaxed attitude. “Where’s your wife?”

That was tricky to answer. Give an obvious lie and the agent will have his federal offense on a silver platter. Tell him she’s a winged pony flying around not too far away, and he’ll… it wouldn’t be good, whatever he did. “She was unable to accompany me this morning.” A completely true statement.

The agent was silent for a moment, obviously knowing an evasive answer when he heard one. “I’d like you to help me understand something,” he finally said, still maintaining a relaxed façade.

“Okay…”

“How did your car get from the Bay Area to a point about fifteen miles south of here—” he paused briefly for effect “—instantaneously, without traveling through the intervening distance?”

There was only one way he could know that. Even if there was live video surveillance, that wouldn’t tell them when or where the car arrived here, nor did he say anything about his phone. “You put a GPS tracking device on my car?”

He got silence in response.

“I don’t see why it’s my problem if your hardware malfunctions.”

More silence.

It wasn’t as if he could claim the car really did teleport hundreds of miles; and if the device was tampered with, then why was it working now?

Holmes pulled back a few inches, putting his hands on his waist. “I’ll admit this is a peculiar situation we got here. I could let you be on your way, but I think we both know we’ll just end up bumping into each other again. I got what you’re looking for—though how you’re able to track it is another of those mysteries I’d like solved.”

In hindsight it was so obvious. This was all a test, to see what their reaction would be to the doll disappearing. If they had been oblivious about the doll, they would have done what anyone else would have done in that situation: wonder what happened to it, then move on. They wouldn’t be efficaciously tracking it down hundreds of miles away. They had been given plenty of rope, and they had just hung themselves with it.

Agent Holmes stepped away from the car. “Please exit the vehicle.”

This is it. Perhaps it was just as well. In all likelihood, they were taking him straight to the doll. It was only a matter of time before Twilight showed up. Then things would get interesting.

Hopefully not in a bad way.

Steve got out of the car and was promptly handcuffed.

“My associate will drive your car to our base of operations,” Holmes said as he led Steve to his car. He opened the back door. “Please get in, Mr. Coleman. It’ll be a short ride.”

He did so without resistance.


“We’re done going north,” Twilight said as she put away her magic probe.

The sun had climbed higher in the past ninety minutes and was making its presence felt. It wasn’t hot, yet, but it was only a matter of time. “Do you know how hot it will get?” she asked Meg.

Meg brought up the weather app. “The forecast high is 112 degrees in the afternoon. No clouds.” She looked up at them. “Could be worse; summer’s only getting started.”

Twilight took that in stride. “The cooling potions should last about two hours at that temperature.”

“What about Steve?” Rainbow Dash asked. “He’s in that metal box thingy. Won’t that get really hot?”

“He’ll be fine,” Meg assured her. “Air conditioning.”

Twilight’s ears perked up. “Could you elaborate?” How could too much heat be solved by technology?

“Uh… a machine that can pump heat from the inside to the outside?”

“What are the operating principles of this machine?”

“I don’t know, really,” she admitted. “Involves compressors and heat exchangers and stuff like that.” She ended with a sheepish smile.

Well, Twilight thought, they can’t be knowledgable about everything. She added it to the list of technologies she needed to study up on when she had the time.

“What I would like to know, right now,” Meg said, “is how we can feel the sun’s heat when we don’t cast shadows. The light must be passing through us.”

“I don’t really understand, myself,” Twilight said, frowning. “This is Discord’s magic, don’t forget. I believe it’s tied into the fact that we can see each other; that requires the light to interact with us, even if it also ignores our existence. Perhaps the light is duplicated at the point of first interaction. True, practical invisibility is extremely difficult to achieve.”

There was still much Twilight hadn’t puzzled out about how those pills worked. Never before had she seen magic so sophisticated—or disorderly. Normally, a complex spell is well structured, with clearly defined layers, parts, and interactions. These pills were the opposite of that. It would have been amazing that they worked at all, if she hadn’t known who created them.

“Speaking of Steve…” Meg checked her phone, and frowned. “It’s been too long since his last update.”

She proceeded to call him. The phone rang once… twice… thrice… and just before it would have gone to voice mail, the call was answered.

“Mrs. Coleman, I presume?”

With her ear swiveled to the phone, Twilight could make out the voice coming from the other end—and it wasn’t Steve’s. Worse still, Meg’s face had gone pale.

“Agent Holmes?” she said, weakly.

“Mr. Coleman is in my custody right now. If you tell me where you are staying, I can have your car returned to you.”

Meg was now scared. “That… that won’t be necessary.”

“You might be interested to know I have the doll as well.”

Meg looked at Twilight. There wasn’t really anything to say, and it wouldn’t do for this agent to learn of her existence prematurely.

“Ex-excuse me?” Meg belatedly replied.

“I think it would be best to dispense with the pretense, wouldn’t you agree?”

She ended the call. “Maybe I should put it into airplane mode—shut off the transmitter,” she mused. “He’s going to try and trace my location, though I suppose it wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good even if he succeeded.”

“He can do that?” Dash asked, a bit worried.

“Not very well, I would think, given the low density of cell towers out here.” She did some tapping on her phone. Eventually her face broke out in a smile. “Fortunately, I can get an exact GPS fix on my husband’s phone.” The orchid pegasus turned around, orienting herself to the southwest. “That way, about three miles.”

So why can’t the agent get an exact GPS fix on her phone? So much about their technology she did not understand.

“Well, what are we waiting for?!” The cyan pegasus was chomping at the bit. Meg flew off in the indicated direction and the others followed.

The minutes it took to get there gave Twilight plenty of time to ponder the situation. The trouble that Steve—and probably Meg—are in with their government was ultimately her fault. She couldn’t fix the hole fast enough, never mind that it was her actions that created it in the first place, even if unintentionally.

And about the doll… It was now clear they could track it too. What were her options? Take it to the middle of an ocean and hope they couldn’t find it there? That they couldn’t follow her as she moved it there? She couldn’t afford to again underestimate their non-magical technology.

She shouldn’t underestimate this agent either. “Meg, does this agent know you can home in on that phone?”

She quickly glanced at her with a grim look on her face. “It wouldn’t surprise me. He may very well be counting on it.”

So they will be expecting us. Except, of course, they would be expecting Meg to arrive in a car, not on wing as a pegasus accompanied by an alicorn fueled by the magic pouring out of that doll.

I am a Princess, she reminded herself. What would Celestia do?

They had the element of surprise, but how to use it? Certainly not to start a war.

She quietly sighed. It seemed so much easier when she was merely being tested.

Are you sure this isn’t your biggest test of all?

She pushed such thoughts out of her mind; they were unproductive. Besides, it wasn’t as if Celestia knew this would all happen.

Meg checked her phone again and made a minor course correction. They remained high above the ground in order to enjoy a large field of view. Whatever it was they were looking for, it would probably stick out in this desolate land.

And it did. From behind a hill, a collection of shiny objects came into view, reflecting the intense morning sun back to them. “I think that’s it,” Meg confirmed.

They descended towards the objects. “Stay five hundred feet above them,” Twilight cautioned. “That should ensure our invisibility, at least until I can check the magical field strength.”

Finally they came to a rest above the objects. There were four large rectangular objects, sort of like train cars except they weren’t attached to each other, and three cars, one of which was Steve’s. As she got the probe out, she asked Meg, “What are we looking at?”

“Looks like three RVs—recreational vehicles—and a tractor trailer.” She got blank looks. “Uh, an RV is basically a hotel room on wheels. They probably rented these on short notice in Vegas. It means they can sleep here overnight. The big, heavy stuff is inside that tractor trailer—probably equipment to study the doll.”

Twilight took a reading. “It’s definitely down there. I think we can get as close as two hundred feet before our bubbles collapse and we become visible.”

“It could be much worse,” Meg said. “I was afraid they’d take it to a military base. There are several to choose from out here.”

Twilight did not want to even think about their military technology, much less have to deal with it. As unfortunate as it was what happened to Steve, she was glad she had accepted Meg’s offer to join the mission. She couldn’t afford ignorance right now. She needed Meg’s understanding of her realm. “I’m open to suggestions,” she humbly stated. “Our top priority is getting Steve out of there.”

Meg looked down at the RVs, conflicted over which option to pursue. It took an uncomfortably long time for her to decide.

“No, the doll is,” she sighed, looking back at the alicorn. “Steve’s in no immediate danger, not really in any danger in the sense of physical harm. They can’t stop us from taking him back to Equestria with us. They don’t even know we can do that. The doll, on the other hand… er, hoof…”

Right. We can’t take the doll to Equestria. “We use our element of surprise to get the doll,” Twilight proposed. Meg nodded. “Then I’ll talk to this Agent Holmes myself.”

“Huh?” Meg and Rainbow Dash said simultaneously.

“You should not be suffering for my mistakes. I need to set things right.”

“How do you know you can?” Rainbow Dash demanded to know. “How will he react when he sees you?!”

They both looked at Meg. “Impossible to predict,” she said. “It could be anything from ‘he thinks you’re best pony’ to ‘he’ll think he’s having a mental breakdown.’”

Why can’t it ever be easy? She took a deep breath. “I have to try,” she said with determination. “But that’s why we’re getting the doll first.”

Next Chapter: 18. Interventions Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 34 Minutes
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