This wouldn't do. Not at all.

She lit her horn and crumpled up the piece of paper prior sitting in front of her. A new blank sheet materialized into view before its cousin even hit the bottom of the trash lid, its flammable content growing taller and taller with every barely passable sketch-up and every wasted second of her time. She stamped a hoof against her chair in an attempt to position it closer to her workbench, magicked her carpenter's pencil from next to her, and leaned forward to observe her new canvas. The magenta aura around her writing utensil appeared on the large oil lamp situated by her easel's base, allowing it to twist and turn to shed more flaring orange illuminance on the sheet of paper waiting for its leaded contact.

She cleared her throat and began to draw once more, figures and equations bouncing around her too-occupied brain like foals in a multi-colored bouncy castle. Her pencil jaggedly flew across the paper in a crow-like fashion, ending at what she inwardly determined to be about twenty-six inches. She'd done this time and time before; she knew how long the barrel was by now inside, outside, and in its diameter. She hummed at this revelation, the pencil in her magical grasp hovering idly. It wouldn't hurt to quadruple check. With no need to arise from her seat, she felt for the object in mind and surrounded its figure in her aura, then quietly and cautiously brought it over into the light. The other lamp—an electric one, her backup—found itself flicked on with a kick of a purple hindleg and a positioning of its light bulbed head.

The dull yellow tape measure flung itself from the scratched wooden countertop in a magenta hue, extending from one end of the weapon to the other. With her pencil, she wrote on the bottom left corner of her paper a series of dimensions. Forty-six and a half inches in total; twenty-six for the barrel. She was right. She didn't find time to chuckle, but it inwardly amused her that she had doubted herself. She was always right. You never got to be a protege for nothing, after all. Her counting done, she looked back at the weapon for five whole, uninterrupted seconds. Her purple eyes darted from one edge to the next, and from one corner to another. The tape measure instantly snapped closed, and, in similar fashion, each and every single bit and piece of the rifle suddenly disconnected, unlodged, and floated before her for her to study on and marvel at.

The barrel was first, like it had been so many times before. Twenty-six whole inches of an incredibly weighted steel, with some kind of grooves or twists lining its insides. The exterior was of a particularly bleak color; a very steel-like gray, shiny and glittery beyond all belief, but with enough scars, scratches, and etchings marring it to tell her that it had seen a lot of dangerous action, whatever it may have been. She adjusted her glasses. Once more; maybe she had missed something. There had to be a reason this kept muddling up. Maybe a size error, or maybe she'd misidentified something. She went through it again. The barrel was used to propel whatever it fired, some kind of grainy powder she—and apparently the Princesses—had never seen before. The idea of the powder sprang into her head again, and so she gave it a slow turn to the various jars and bottles she'd used to try recreating it. She didn't exactly want to waste the ammunition that she'd found inside the weapon, as she'd need all the help she could get, but every passing second told her she could spare just one of those brass casings. She proceeded to occupy herself once more by darting her head in plain view of the rear part of the weapon, to the odd L-shaped lever that she assumed to be some kind of locking mechanism, if the small notch on the right side of the frame fitting it just right was any telling indication.

She fiddled with the lever for a few seconds, intending on measuring it out and writing down what she saw.

"Twilight?"

There he was again. She knew why she couldn't answer him; he knew as well. Any millisecond spent not studying this weapon meant another millisecond for those... those... criminals, those murderers to be out there, running around and spreading their horrific plague wherever they went in a terrifying blood wake. He knew she couldn't stop for even one second, so why did he continue to do this? She shook her head almost unnoticeably, and leaned forward more even as the old oak door behind her creaked open with a hellish squeal of trite. She didn't know why she could suddenly hear the small taps of dragon feet along the floor; she'd get so engrossed in her work that she could block out any other kind of disturbance with the ease of a spiritual button. Why not now?

"Twilight?"

The pencil in her magic continued to scribble fervently. If she kept this up for long enough, he would go away. It was just that simple.

She, in the meanwhile, returned her attention to the rifle. Slowly bringing its delicate pieces back down to eye level, Twilight hummed to herself and ran a hoof along the long barrel. A shiver flew up and down her spine. She couldn't imagine such a thing being used to... kill other ponies. There were too many parts—too many logistics and too much dedication—for such a thing to not end up as some kind of heavy washing machine or incredibly durable factory engine.

It took a couple minutes of dead verbal silence, but Twilight heard the telltale sound of her door slamming shut once more soon enough. A sigh escaped her lips, but she lit her horn and placed the rifle at the top of her workbench all the same. Her carpenter's pencil returned to its home on the lip at the bottom of her workbench, next to her large assortment of erasers and other writing utensils. Pens, markers, crayons, quills. Whatever she could find went into her sketching, but the sketching itself proved to be more detrimental and difficult than even she had previously thought. She enveloped her glasses in her aura and propped them back up to the bridge of her nose. She looked upward, disturbed by a few loose locks of her mane, and quickly swiped them away with a flick of her hoof. She'd have to put her mane into a bun of some sorts if this continued.

She knew why she kept working. She knew why she didn't stop, or halt. Even with the locking down of Ponyville, she knew she had a job to do, no matter what the Royal Guards outside her house had to say on the matter. The rest of the house was an all-black dark, only changing in increments of orange and yellow atop burning white wax. Spike spent most of his time sleeping anyhow, so there was no need to keep them on a ritualistic basis. All she needed was light in this room, and only this room. She'd been able to modify the bright lamp that Spike had always complained about from downstairs into using its own energy supply based off her own pumping of magic, and it was an easy source of light that she didn't need to necessarily watch out for.

Others had their own concerns, however, and each of them came to her one at a time.

The first was Rarity. Twilight had already started her pursuit of engineering at that point—which had been only a week or two after the robbery occurred—and so she wasn't able to see her friend's unmistakable sounds of suppressed sobbing and nose-blowing, only being able to make it out thanks to her ears having not been accustomed to such a high work effort before. The Unicorn had come to discuss what she could do about their friends on the farm, and her sister as well. Applejack had gone into isolation in her farm house since the day of the crime, and shooed away anypony else that would come and try to comfort her. Twilight couldn't blame her; she couldn't tell what she'd do if she ever found somepony she loved dead. Twilight had said nothing, and so Rarity simply yelled at her and flew out the door.

The next was Spike. He hadn't had much to say, and neither did Twilight, so the dragon simply apologized to her and walked out the door.

The next was Rainbow Dash. The mare had to be pulled out of the treehouse by about five Royal Guards after she began shouting at Twilight to help her, and how she was going to do anything she possibly could to make sure it happened.

Twilight had said nothing.

But she had listened, and now she was planning.

She'd been no stranger to pulling all-nighters; she'd done so countless times back in grade, middle, and high school for projects, or papers, or exams, or the likes, but pulling an all-nighter, which then extended into all-weekers, which in turn shifted to all-monthers? She needed a few more cups of coffee for that kind of work. She turned her head—her pencil and eraser continuing their tireless work as she did so—to the many piles of mugs, glasses, and bottles of now crusted caffeine lying on the floor. Her eye twitched, knowing full well what a mess she was making, but she breathed in heavily, shut her eyes, counted to five, and looked back at what her magic was doing.

The sunlight peeking in from the circular window to her right cast a distinct pie-shaped quartet of god rays onto her piece of paper.

There were lines, and angles, and shapes, and crosses where her calculations proved wrong, but it was getting somewhere.

She looked up to her dissected sniper rifle on the shelf above her workbench, then looked down to see if the two were like in any way, shape, or form.

She heard the door behind her slam open once more, and a smile drew upon her face.

A flurry of heavy stomping drew closer to her position at the end of the room, accompanying the Pegasus' obviously furious approach.

The hooves along the floor halted. Twilight didn't even need to look to her left to see the mare looking over her shoulder with a death glare.

Finally, she spoke, her voice gravelly, rough, and dark.

"Is it ready?"

Twilight turned her head to look at Rainbow Dash.

And she smiled.

Author's Notes:

XBS JT DPNJOH

Sorry that it's a bit of a short chapter. I couldn't find a great way to increase its word length without sincerely boring you guys, but I apologize all the same. Next up, Delirious films a video.