“Ruin Blackwatch’s day,” I repeat. “But aren’t you all friends?”

“Sure, we say we’re friends.” Pinkie Pie shakes the can, and the bug rattles against the tin. “Except friends don’t spy on other friends.”

Spying with a bug, seriously? Pinkie’s sanity has left the house, taken a one way ticket out of the country, and is now residing in Crazyville. “They’re spying on you with that thing?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s just a bug. How can a bug spy on you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it writes everything I say on a tiny piece of paper and mails it to Blackwatch HQ with pictures and a postcard. Maybe it picks up a couple flags and waves them around to send secret messages to the pony reading a newspaper across the street. Or maybe a unicorn can enchant it to listen to a conversation and emit an invisible magic beam that teleports our voices across a city so the bad ponies can know what we’re talking about and follow my every move. Who knows?”

My eyebrow goes up. “Or maybe you need to work on your sarcasm.”

Pinkie Pie pulls out a rock from another drawer and plops it on top of the can. The can shakes a bit, but it’s not falling over any time soon. “It’s a bug with an enchantment. I found it a couple days ago when I was going through the cabinets. Blackwatch planted this bug in my office to spy on me. We might say we’re friends, but this is proof Blackwatch isn’t interested in being buddies.”

I’m not the greatest of pals with Blackwatch, but I find it odd that they would spy on Pinkie Pie. Out of all the ponies in the world, what’s Pinkie Pie hiding that they need to find out? “Maybe they planted it so they could figure out what to get you for your birthday.”

“Come on Gilda, use your noggin,” she says, tapping her forehead. “You’ve seen enough of Blackwatch’s antics to know that won’t happen.”

“Sure I have,” I say. “And I’ve also seen enough of your antics to know you don’t notice sarcasm.”

“Sure I do. What you just said”-

-“Was sarcasm.” I run my claw over my head. “Went right over you.”

“Oh.” She looks down at the tin, and taps her hoof on the desk. “I guess I still have a lot to learn.”

“Don’t worry. Just hang around me, and you’ll pick it up in no time,” I say, giving her a wink. “So Blackwatch is spying on you. I didn’t know you had any dirt to dig up.”

“Neither did I!” she says, throwing her hooves in the air. “Sure, I got secrets, Mrs. Cake’s real age, Spike’s crush on Rarity, Fluttershy’s fetishes, but there’s nothing I know that Blackwatch would be interested in. Yet for some reason, there is a bug in my office listening to all my conversations.”

“I don’t blame them,” I say, shrugging. “You’re a wildcard, Pinkie. They might want to know if what’s going on in your head so they can brace themselves when you throw them a surprise party.”

Pinkie Pie gives me a deadpan look. “You can quit with the sarcasm.”

“That’s not sarcasm. We both know you blow things out of proportion all the time. You’re parties, your cooking, even your personality. Blackwatch might want to keep tabs on you to check when you go overboard.” At least that’s the only reason I can think up.

“Gilda, we’re talking about a shadowy organization that’s turned Manehattan into a police state and is fighting off the hoard of infected ponies. If they’re spying on me, it’s not because they want to know if I took my pills this morning or not.”

Pills? “Did you take them?”

“Ha! Like I need them.” She plops down in the desk chair and runs her hooves through her hair. “This outbreak is draining the life out of me. The last thing Blackwatch needs to worry about is me throwing them a surprise party. Heck, I’m nothing to them. They just put me in charge of QWP so they can look good on papers.”

“But you say they’re spying on you,” I say, pointing to the can. “They must think you’re worth something.”

“I’m worth as much as a good publicity stunt, maybe,” Pinkie grumbles, leaning her chin on a hoof. “I don’t get it. I found the bug before I got the photos. Blackwatch wouldn’t need to spy on me before that. So why would they bug me?”

“You got photos?” I ask. “What would Blackwatch want with photos?”

Pinkie looks up at me. “You wouldn’t happen to remember anything about Genicorn, do you?”

I shake my head. “No.”

Pinkie Pie sighs. “You should. Genicorn is a medical research company. Blackwatch is sort of their child with the Equestrian army, only to be used in the event of an outbreak like this. Before Blacklight, Genicorn was doing research to cure any injury and illness, or so they said. If you remembered them, then I think you would be very angry in a moment.”

Should I be angry? Sure, Blackwatch are bullies, and if Genicorn created Blackwatch, Genicorn is another bully by extension. But I’m not exactly fuming at what they’re doing. “Do the photos involve them?”

Pinkie nods. “They do, big time.” She gets up to the chair and walks over to the back of the room. She climbs up the cabinets to reach an air-vent in the ceiling. There’s a string dangling from the vent. She bites it, pulls it out, and an envelope comes sliding out.

She tosses me the envelope, and I open it. There’s pictures inside. Most of them are dark. I can barely make out the shapes of what they’re supposed to be. The ones that are developed enough to see were taken at extreme angles. Under a table, behind a metal grate, above a shelf, behind the crack of a door. Whoever took these needed to hide in some tight places to get these shots.

The first photo has some ponies dressed in blue trashbags. They’re standing in front of two cages, one with a healthy stallion inside and the other with an infected. The infected is gnawing at the bars, trying to get a snack of the stallion, and the stallion is backing up as far as he can into a corner.

The next photo has more trashbag ponies surrounding a mare strapped down to the table. The mare has some signs of infection, boils, patchy coat, red skin, but she doesn’t appear to be completely turned. They’re poking and prodding the mare with needles and knives and other medical tools. She’s clearly awake and feeling everything they do to her. She’s crying her eyes out, and she might be screaming, but they have a muzzle strapped on her mouth.

There are more trashbags in the third photo. They’re standing around another table, and this one has the severed head of a small colt sitting on it. It has signs of infection, boils and patchy coat, just like the mare. The trashbags are cutting at it with a small saw. What messed up monsters are these ponies?

While the first few are disturbing on their own, the last one caught me off guard. It’s the monster I fought, the big, pink monster pony that I neutered. It’s chained up tight in the eagle position. Its mouth is wide open, as if it was roaring. Its googly eyes are giving the trashbags a mean look. This is unexpected, but what does it for me is the pony leg sticking out of the creature’s mouth, like a cigar. The leg doesn’t have a trashbag or Blackwatch armor on it. It’s just a plain, yellow pony leg, sticking out of the monster’s mouth.

“What in Tartarus are these?” I ask.

“These were taken inside a Genicorn facility,” Pinkie says. “Somepony went through a lot of trouble to get these.”

I look through the photos another time. “I see why these would upset ponies, but why would this make me angry? It’s just shady scientists doing shady things. You can read this stuff in comics.”

“You actually met some these ponies before,” Pinkie says. She points to the photo with the monster in it. “And you’ve met this one a lot. Doctor Eureka, the head scientist at Genicorn. He took you out to dinner twice before the outbreak hit.”

The pony she points out is poking the monster with a long stick. “Dinner, as in a dinner date?”

“More like a celebration dinner. Rainbow Dash was with you too, along with Twilight, and a couple of Eureka’s assistants.”

She says the name Twilight like I’m supposed to know who that is. I know I should, but my damn amnesia strikes again. “What were we celebrating?”

“Dash’s progress,” she says. “If you still don’t remember what I’m talking about, I’ll tell you. But I have to warn you, you’re not going to like it.”

“Sure, fill me in,” I say. “What should I get angry about?”

Pinkie Pie strolls back over to the office chair and sits in it. There’s a couple of cheap chairs behind be, but I choose to stand. “We weren’t in Manehattan just for your sconeshop,” she says. “Six months ago, Rainbow Dash hurt her wings really bad during a Wonderbolt show. When I say bad, I mean completely shattered, unable to heal, forever grounded bad. It wasn’t pretty.”

I wince as imagine what it would’ve looked like. Wings have to go through something nasty to end up out-of-commission forever.

“She survived, thank goodness,” Pinkie continues, “But the doctors said there was no chance of her ever flying again. Rainbow didn’t take it too well. The first month was the roughest. She almost…” Pinkie Pie trails off. She shudders. “Let’s just say she’s lucky to have friends to support her.”

“I think I get the picture,” I say. I got wings, I can relate. The griffons back in Griffonstone wouldn’t be so caring if something similar happened to me.

“Three months ago, we got a letter from Genicorn. They claimed they could heal Rainbow’s wing with a new technology they were developing. Some of us had our doubts, but Rainbow jumped on the chance to get her wings back. Genicorn is based here in Manehattan, so we all took a vacation and went straight here.”

“And I assume I join in on this trip to open the sconeshop.”

Pinkie Pie shakes her head.. “Not at first. You and Rainbow were writing to each other a lot, and you mentioned you wanted to open up shop somewhere here in Equestria and didn’t know where to start. Fortunately for you, Rarity had connections here in Manehattan, and she found a nice place to do business on Daffodil Street.

“The first thing we did when we got to Manehattan was go to Genicorn. We met Dr. Eureka there, and he told us how they made a new discovery in microbiology that would allow them to heal injuries in no time at all, and they offered Rainbow to try it out first. Of course she said yes, and they started the treatments the next day.

“You came a week after, and you joined up with our group. Every day for the next two weeks, we’d go with Rainbow to Genicorn to support her while they did their thing. We did this as long as we could, but some of us needed to get back home. Everyone but you and Dash left Manehattan at some point, and it was just you two going to the treatment center on a daily basis.”

“But didn’t you help me open the store?”

“We all came back when we could. Rarity and I came around to help you out when we stopped by, but for the most part it was you who stood by Rainbow’s side for the two months she was here.”

I glanced back at the photos, noting the trashbags standing around in them. “And I met those scientists while Rainbow was being treated.”

“Yeah, some of them,” Pinkie says. “At the time, they looked like nice doctors. They were very nice to us, and they were even making progress on Rainbow’s wings. I never thought they would be hurting ponies like they are in these photos.”

“Are you sure they’re the same ponies? They’re all wearing those trashbags. I can’t tell who’s who.”

“Those bio-suits have nametags on them,” Pinkie says. “And I remember the names of everyone I meet.”

I pick up the photos and look at them once more. These trashbags, I met these guys before, and they were helping Rainbow Dash. Now they’re cutting up ponies for science and working with Blackwatch. “You know, I think I am getting a little mad.”

Pinkie leans back in the chair. “I said you’d be angry, and you’re not alone. Both Genicorn and Blackwatch have been pushing my buttons all month, and I’m getting sick of it.”

“It’s not that,” I say. “I’m getting angry for something else. My gut’s telling me there’s more to this than these photos. These ponies, Blackwatch, Eureka, I know all this is just the tip of the mountain. There’s something about this I can’t remember, but I know it’s something that’s making me angry. I just can’t think of what it is.”

Pinkie Pie leans in, resting her elbows on the desk. “I got a feeling too.”

I frown at her. “No you don’t. You don’t have amnesia, like I do.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t have feelings. I have this one feeling, something coming from my Pinkie sense”-

“Pinkie sense?” I interrupt.

She nods. “I get these feelings, my Pinkie sense, and they let me know what’s going to happen in the future.”

That’s… not as unbelievable as I would think. I got this force in the back of my head telling me where things are, so future sense is not too farfetched.

“And I have this one feeling,” Pinkie Pie says, “And it’s telling me Rainbow Dash is alive.”

"Rainbow?" I pause. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shrugging. “She’s been gone as long as you have.”

“Then how do you know she’s alive?”

“You’ve been gone for a month too, yet here you are. You’re standing right here, breathing and talking to me, aren’t you?”

I nod. “Sure. But how is that proof?”

“It’s just a feeling,” Pinkie says. “And my feelings are always right. Rainbow Dash is out there, somewhere. I don’t know where, but she’s still living. I think Blackwatch has her somewhere.”

“And where would we look? She could be anywhere in Manehattan. Heck, she could be in a different city.”

Pinkie Pie taps on one of the photos, the one with the monster. “Dr. Eureka, he’ll know.”

I pick up the photo again, and look closely at the pony in the trashbag suit. “So what, we go up to him and ask nicely to tell us where Rainbow is?”

“I don’t know how we’ll get him to tell us,” she says. “But I know you can figure out a way.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Is that another feeling, or are you just being sarcastic.”

“I knew you were still alive, even before we met in the tent today. Trust in my feelings, they will guide you to truth.”

Okay… Random sage advice aside, this is all coming out of left field. “You’re asking me to talk to this guy?”

“I’m asking you to find our friend,” Pinkie says. “This guy knows how to find her.”

“And if he doesn’t talk?”

“Then I give you full permission to do what you’ve been doing all morning,” Pinkie says. She kicks up her back hooves onto the table and folds her forelegs behind her head. “Ruin Blackwatch’s day.”