Twilight arrived at the Bethesda lab and looked around. Three humans were gathered around a large cage on a table—the one that held the cockatrice, if she remembered correctly. One was a staff researcher, who was studying the creature; another was Agent Fowler; and the third was… Agent Reubens? She hadn’t seen him since he helped remove the mirror from the Crystal Empire.

“What do you think of it,” she said, mostly to announce her arrival, and walked towards them.

They turned around. “I’m just glad I’m seeing it here, where it’s harmless,” Fowler said.

Their movement had given Twilight a direct line of sight to the caged creature. She looked it directly in the eyes. The cockatrice returned the stare, sticking its beak through the bars of its cage. Being an alicorn gave her the ability to fight off ossification, though not without effort. There was no need for that here.

Twilight stopped well before reaching them. “Which is why I shouldn’t come any closer. While it can’t turn you to stone with magic in this realm, it can still paralyze you.”

“Only temporarily, though,” the researcher added, as she stroked its beak. It seemed to enjoy it. “There are no lasting effects. When feeding it, we put a magic generator nearby. It doesn’t seem to mind just paralyzing its prey; it adapted quite quickly.”

“Okay…” Fowler said as she began walking towards Twilight. “I won’t ask what you feed it.” She paused long enough to address her partner. “We should get going.”

“Yes, we should.” Agent Reubens followed her. “It’s been a long time, Your Highness.”

“Indeed it has,” Twilight replied. “A last minute change of plans? I wasn’t told to expect you.”

“You could say that.” They both came to a stop in front of her before he continued. “The President is taking this very seriously. We’ll continue this conversation once we’re in Equestria.”

Twilight could take the hint. There would be no eavesdropping in her castle, not from spies hired as lab staff and not from hidden listening devices. “Then let’s be on our way,” she said, grabbing them with her magic.

One return spell later and they were back at the castle, inside the room that held the van and boxes of stolen materials. “I assume you’ll want the vehicle,” Twilight said. “As for the rest…” Her eyes scanned the boxes. “I could return it all to their rightful places, unless you have other plans.”

Agent Reubens looked over the boxes for himself. “It’s probably best if you held onto it for now, if you wouldn’t mind. The attempted theft is outside our jurisdiction; the FBI will handle that, once we know who can be trusted. The attempted kidnapping of a foreign leader, on the other hand, that we can investigate.”

Agent Fowler had put some kind of gloves on her hands and was now opening the front door to the vehicle. She started taking pictures of the interior with her phone. “Obviously, you removed the boxes, but did you disturb anything up front?” she asked Twilight.

“No, I figured you wouldn’t like that.”

She opened a compartment in front of the passenger’s seat. “You’re catching on. At least we don’t have to worry about your fingerprints messing up theirs.” She took a picture of the compartment’s contents. “Technically, you shouldn’t have removed the boxes from the van, or taken custody of the vehicle for that matter, but what’s done is done.” She shrugged. “But if you hadn’t, it all might’ve been gone by the time the FBI arrived. Theft is the least of their crimes, anyway.”

“Or high on our list of concerns,” Reubens added. “But how Mr. Tanner had gotten hired is high on that list.”

“Were you able to discover anything from the—license plate, was it?—that I sent you the picture of?”

Fowler was busy examining the contents of that compartment, so Reubens answered. “The van was rented by Jackson, the apparent ringleader. He paid for it with his own credit card. The car still parked behind the building belonged to Tanner, their plant in the organization. It confirms their presence at the scene.”

Meg stood in the doorway. “What about the stuff from my office? Any leads on that?”

All eyes were on her. “We were told you were in Las Pegasus?” Fowler asked.

“We returned early,” Meg replied. “None of us were in the mood considering… what happened.”

“I suppose I can understand that.” Fowler approached the pegasus. “No, we don’t have any leads. You had a chance to confront them, right?”

“Yup. One moment I was at the Planet Do casino shopping mall, and the next I was in Celestia’s throne room, human once more.” Meg forced a wry grin. “Stuff like that happens here, especially when Discord’s around to lend a paw or talon.”

Twilight was about to speak, but Meg cut her off. “You’ve already apologized enough, Twilight. A little advance warning would’ve been nice, but my presence was justified.”

Reubens took out a notepad and pen. “Since you’re here, would you mind giving a statement?”

“Might as well,” she said. “I’ve never seen any of them before, except Tanner of course. They somehow got my key card. I had left it at home. I did hop over there last night, and it was missing. Nothing else was disturbed, nor was there any sign of forced entry. It was as if whoever took it had a key to the apartment and knew exactly where my key card was to be found.

“They claim they got it from me when they broke into my office at work and kidnapped me. That’s why Celestia had requested my presence, to expose their lies. I wasn’t in the office that day; I was in Las Pegasus. But they wouldn’t budge. They insisted I had to be a changeling or one of Discord’s puppets or something, because I was their prisoner or whatever.”

Reubens finished writing his notes before addressing Twilight next. “And you know for certain that this is the real Meg. Not a changeling or… something.”

“Absolutely,” Twilight declared. “When they departed for their vacation, I picked them up from their home and personally saw them off at the Ponyville train station. Meg would not have had the means to return to your realm even if she’d wanted to. As for being a changeling in disguise, Celestia’s throne room is warded against that.”

“And being one of Discord’s puppets?”

“Well, I suppose that’s not impossible,” she had to admit, “but he wouldn’t risk angering Celestia and me with a stunt like that, and he knows we’d find out sooner or later.”

“I would have to be that puppet,” Meg said, “since I know what happened in that throne room.”

Twilight cast a detection spell on Meg. “And she is not a puppet.”

Pen furiously worked its way across paper. Once he had finished writing, he looked up and exhaled. “I’m definitely not in Kansas anymore.” He looked down, once more, at Meg. “What about the ‘Meg’ they supposedly kidnapped? Any chance that could be a changeling?”

Twilight answered for her. “I consider that highly unlikely, but without access to this hypothetical changeling I can’t rule it out. The possibility was mentioned to them, but they rejected it, along with an offer to determine their captive’s true nature.”

“Big surprise.” He sighed. “Hypothetical changelings in our midst. Wonderful.” He wrote it all down.

“You should note that their transformation magic cannot work in your realm, so it’s not clear how much of a threat they can be, even if they are present there.” She tilted her head in thought. “Actually, I have no idea how the lack of magic—never mind the conservation laws—would affect changelings.” She looked up at him. “The best part is, neither do they.”

Reubens wrote that down. “I’ll take whatever good news I can get.” He looked back at Meg. “What about the computer they took from your office. Anything sensitive on it?”

“Plenty, but it won’t do them any good. I use full disk encryption. And a proper password.”

“That’s nice to hear, for a change.” Addressing Twilight, he said, “I saw your email concerning the events of the attempted kidnapping. Anything to add?”

Twilight shook her head.

Reubens returned notepad and pen to his coat pocket. “And you still have Jackson’s gun that you crushed and took?”

“Yes. I can go fetch it now.”

Reubens waved his hand. “It can wait until we return home. But before we see the prisoners, we need to talk about the Tartarus option.”

“Tartarus option?” Meg asked, not quite believing what she heard.

“We can talk about that on the way to Canterlot,” he said.

Twilight had mentioned threatening the prisoners with that in her report, but only as a means of scaring them into cooperating. Naturally, she had included information on Tartarus. Was that what had sparked interest in this option? “We can do that,” she said. She had planned on doing so anyway.

“So how will we get to the prisoners?” Fowler asked.

“A royal chariot is waiting for us on the balcony,” Twilight replied.

“Uh… balcony?”

Meg smirked, briefly extending her wings. “Pulled by pegasi of the Royal Guard.”

“Definitely not in Kansas.”

Twilight teleported to just outside the interrogation room. Through the large, one-way window, Agents Fowler and Reubens were questioning Tanner across a table. Two Royal Guards snapped to attention upon noticing her arrival, but said nothing—not because it would disturb the questioning, for the window was one-way for both sound and light, but so the princess could listen without distraction. She stepped up to the transparent crystal.

“—sister totally buys in to that crap. Look, I never understood it, but it seemed harmless enough, even when she volunteered at that bronycon.” Eric glared at the agents. “Then they showed up. It all became obvious.”

“What became obvious?” Agent Fowler asked.

“Are you blind?!” he shouted. “That cartoon! It was all part of their plan to lull us into a false sense of security.”

“What evidence do you have for that?”

He gaped at them, unable to immediately answer. “What other possible explanation is there? Ponies have been secretly among us for decades. They somehow created all the versions of that damned cartoon—all those dolls and toys—preparing for this day!”

“So they could just trot in and take over without a fight,” Reubens suggested.

“Exactly. The future of the human race is at stake! You should be helping us. Doing whatever it takes to defeat them.” He glared at the agents. “You should be investigating Hasbro’s role in all this.” He waved his hands about the room. “Not… this!”

That investigation had already taken place, Twilight knew. There was not the slightest evidence that any aspect of that cartoon, in all of its so-called “generations,” had originated anywhere but in the minds of the humans who had worked on it.

She could almost sympathize with him, the need to make sense out of an impossible situation.

Reubens continued the interrogation. “It’s a little hard to help if we don’t know who you mean by ‘us.’”

Eric shook his head. “Oh, no. You’re not getting me that way. How stupid do you think I am?” He leveled his gaze at him. “You’re on their side, doing their dirty work for them. Just like that traitor, Meg. Did you know she’s been ponified, turned into a pegasus?”

“We’re trying to negotiate for your release,” Fowler said. “You were not involved with the kidnapping attempt. You do not have to be sent to Tartarus for what Jackson did.”

Twilight found that a bit worrisome. How did he know that about Meg? That was on a need-to-know basis at her workplace, at Meg’s insistence. Those with a need made for a short list, and Eric wasn’t on it.

“It’s an empty threat. There is no Tartarus.”

“Why would they believe that?” Twilight muttered to herself.

“It was in the cartoon, was it not?” Reubens said.

Tanner threw up his hands. “So what? They decided to throw in some Greek mythology to make it more believable, or create a phony connection to us, or whatever. Didn’t Twilight herself say the show wasn’t totally accurate?”

Touché. Not that she had ever said Tartarus was one of those inaccuracies. But neither had she said it wasn’t. The subject had never come up. To be fair, though, their depiction of Tartarus was way off.

Reubens laid his palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “For what it’s worth, Twilight had led me to believe Tartarus is quite real. Are you willing to take that chance?”

Tanner sat in silence.

“You’re both changelings, aren’t you?” he finally said.

As much as she wanted to stay and continue observing, Twilight had a meeting to attend. She teleported away.

Meg settled onto a cushion opposite Princess Celestia, who was occupied with making tea. To her surprise, Luna was present as well, sitting next to her sister. It was well past her bedtime and she showed it; that she was here anyway was a sign of this meeting’s significance. Twilight would be joining them soon.

“I understand you’ve become tired of hearing it,” Celestia began, “but I do regret it had been necessary to interrupt your vacation.”

Meg offered a wan smile in reply. It was best just to let her get it out of her system.

“You’ll be reimbursed for your vacation expenses, of course. It’s the least I can do.”

They already had more bits than they knew what to do with in Equestria, but it wouldn’t do to refuse. “Thanks.”

Twilight appeared in a flash of teleportation. “Not very promising so far,” she said as took a seat at the mahogany table. “It’s being recorded. We’ll be able to listen to it later.”

“That should prove interesting.” Celestia poured tea for everypony. “Now that we’re all present…” she said. “Let’s start with you, dear sister, before you fall asleep.”

Luna did not return the jab, proof of just how tired she was. “I tried entering their dreams last night, but as I suspected I could not. Humans are not magical creatures.”

Meg’s eyes went wide. Sure, she had been visited by Luna in a dream, but as a means of interrogation? Just as well it’d failed. Neither she nor her husband had ever slept in Equestria as humans; it was an experiment they had considered trying, but had yet to get around to doing.

“Turning them into ponies would address that,” Luna added.

Meg’s eyes went wider. “No. I’m sorry, but that’s a bad idea.”

Celestia put down her teacup. “We’re listening.”

“It’s not that it wouldn’t work—obviously it would—it’s the consequences. If word got out back on my world that you turned a human into a pony against their will, never mind for the purpose of invading his dreams for information…” She caught her breath, momentarily having run out of words to say. “The reason people like those in your dungeons exist is because they fear that sort of stuff will happen. The worst thing you can do is confirm those fears.”

“They attacked a princess,” Luna reminded her.

“Not in Equestria, they didn’t. Twilight was in a foreign land, and the laws of that land apply.”

“They will hold a trial, correct? Do they not need evidence to convict them?”

“Of course they need evidence, but that… isn’t the sort of evidence that’d be admissible in court. I guess. I’m not a lawyer.” Meg slumped. “And then there’s the court of public opinion.”

“Is there to be no justice?” Luna demanded.

“I’m not saying that!” Meg said.

“Luna, please. I’d be more than happy to forget the whole thing if they would just cooperate.”

“There is a bigger picture here,” Celestia said.

Luna assented with silence.

“I’d have to appear at this trial as a witness?” Twilight asked.

“You don’t have to, but the odds of a conviction go way down if you don’t. You’re the only witness to your attempted kidnapping, after all.”

Twilight looked thoughtful for a moment. “There is the gun I took from Jackson, don’t forget, the one I crushed.”

“Right, that’s physical evidence. They can trace ownership of it. Hopefully. They could still get prints off it.”

“And only Twilight could have crushed it?” Celestia suggested.

“It’d be hard for the defense to come up with an alternative explanation.” Meg stared into her cup, as if trying to divine answers from the tea leaves. “Still would be nice if we could get them to talk, somehow. They’re not important, their organization is.” She looked up. “But I get the impression they’re not worried about a conviction.”

“That’s what the Tartarus option is for,” Twilight said quietly.

“I can’t believe Serrell’s onboard with that,” Meg said, equally quietly. “He’s taking a big risk. If word got out…”

“Then,” Celestia said, “we would get our word out: Tartarus is not the dungeon of torment and suffering that your mythology paints.”

That had been discussed on the chariot flight to Canterlot. Serrell and the agents had already known that, though it had been news to Meg. Tartarus wasn’t really any worse than the dungeons carved into the mountain below them. She had visited those dungeons once. They were more stone than metal, not surprising given their location, but still more modern than medieval.

“So what’s the point of Tartarus?”

“Tartarus is ideal for holding powerful beings,” Celestia said. “Beings who could not be imprisoned for long unless their magic was suppressed. That suppression, along with other measures, renders escape nearly impossible.”

“Nearly impossible,” Twilight repeated.

“Indeed, as we were recently reminded,” Celestia said as she nodded towards Twilight. “But for humans, these measures are academic. I can assure you they will not be worse off for the experience.”

Luna smirked. “Assuming Tirek doesn’t drive them crazy with his ramblings.”

Celestia smiled in kind. “That is a risk we’ll have to accept.”

“You actually got cells next to his,” Meg said.

“That’s what I said to them, so how could I not? It only took some shuffling around of the other prisoners.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “The hardest part was dealing with the bureaucracy.”

“Bureaucracy and Tartarus,” Meg said. “Two words I’d never thought to hear in the same sentence.”

Meg mulled it over, imagining the worse-case scenario press coverage. On the one hand, there was the Greek mythology; it was rather unavoidable. That’s what made it seem like indescribable torture. But on the other, if they were returned intact, subjected to nothing worse than Tirek’s ramblings—assuming that was even a thing—heck, their story might not even be believed. But if it was…?

“I sure hope Serrell knows what he’s doing,” Meg finally said. “Even so, don’t be surprised if human reporters and their camera crews request a tour of Tartarus.” She could already see the navel-gazing: How did mythological Tartarus differ from the real Tartarus? How did the Greeks know about it? The inevitable blockbuster movies about escaping from Tartarus.

“We shall be prepared for that possibility,” Celestia said.

Luna yawned. “Are we about done here? I really need to get some shuteye.”

Sunshine flooded the valley below as Celestia’s Sun cleared the mountains. Through the windows could be seen pegasi towing rainclouds south.

“There’s something I want to discuss,” Twilight said, and she took a centering breath. “Only as a last resort, I want to emphasize.”

Luna quirked an eyebrow. “This should be interesting.”

Twilight flashed a nervous smile in response. “There’s a lot going on we don’t understand. Not just how those prisoners insist they’ve captured Meg, but also that mysterious message Meg was given, not to mention how her doll got bound to the magic leak. Maybe they’re all connected, maybe not, but there’s one sure way to get answers.”

She looked down into her tea, not making eye contact.

“And that would be?” Celestia gently prodded.

Twilight did not look up. “I’m suggesting we use Star Swirl’s time travel spell.”

Meg couldn’t believe her ears. Was this the same Twilight who had forbidden any contact with the show’s writers, in order to avoid a possible time loop? “Just to be clear, this is the same spell you used to go back one week to warn yourself, and wound up causing the very problems you were trying to avoid?”

“You got it,” she said. “Hence the ‘last resort’ part.”

“I thought that spell could only be used once.”

Twilight finally looked up and met her eyes. “Who’s the magic expert, me or M. A. Larson? A spell that can be used literally once doesn’t even make sense!”

“Okay, point made,” Meg conceded. “What about the ‘going back one week for only a few moments’ part? Did he get that wrong also?”

“That’s… more complicated to answer. I have a better understanding of the underlying physics now, thanks to your husband, and my magic has become much stronger, of course.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Meg asked. “Go back to yesterday and watch the ones who got away with my stuff? See where they went?”

“Actually, no. Regardless of whether the prisoners talk, I don’t think that situation calls for such drastic measures. Your office computer is easily replaceable, and the one they took is useless to them. Furthermore, your government is on the case and we have five of them in captivity.”

There weren’t many other possibilities. “Then the plan is to go back a week or so and see who put that message in the green room.”

Twilight grimaced. “I don’t think that’s possible. You and Agent Fowler were in that room. We can’t change what either of you observed; the past cannot be altered. Unfortunately, that room had a magical field, which shuts off our bubbles. Maybe I can keep us invisible anyway, but there’s a more fundamental problem: whoever did this was invisible themselves. Piercing this invisibility without drawing our past selves’ attention is… problematic. I’m not even a hundred feet away on stage; I’d sense the magic. We can try, but I believe the time travel spell will fail. Something about quantum mechanical destructive interference.”

“What if the letter was magically delivered, by teleportation perhaps?” Luna asked.

“There was no magical trace on the letter,” Celestia said. “It had to have been delivered in person.”

“And neither of us had the slightest hint someone else was in the room with us,” Meg said. That left only one possibility.

Twilight drank some tea. “So that leaves the doll. Going back more than two years is not something I can do by myself. I’ll need Discord’s assistance. He’ll have to come along anyway. The plan is to go through the mirror and then into hyperspace, just before my battle with Sunset Shimmer, and watch as the magic leak forms. We’ll observe who guides it to that doll and performs the binding.”

“And whoever bound the leak to my doll is probably the one who left me that message.” So long as they didn’t interfere with the binding of the leak to the doll, it seemed they were free to do whatever they wanted. Maybe capture, or at least question, whoever was behind this. Maybe find out, why me?

“I’m coming along,” Meg declared.

Twilight studied her face. “I thought you might want to. But like I said: last resort.”

Luna stood up. “And with that, I really do need to go to bed.”

“Good night, dear sister,” Celestia said with a warm smile. “I’ll let you know of any developments, naturally.”

Luna smiled in return and departed, closing the door behind her.

“I should be heading back to the dungeons to check on their progress,” Twilight said.

“By all means,” Celestia replied.

Twilight stood up and teleported away. Not for the first time, Meg wondered how great it’d be to be able to do that herself. Even amongst unicorns, it was a rare ability; for a pegasus, it was impossible. Twilight thought Steve could learn how to do it because of his cutie mark and special talent. So far, he hadn’t; the required magical theory and practice was still beyond him.

“There is no need for you to take on the risk of what Twilight’s proposing,” Celestia said, interrupting her thoughts. “Whatever there is to discover, I am confident she shall discover it.”

Just how risky was it? She’d been to hyperspace once before. It hadn’t been that bad. True, she had been under Discord’s protection, but he’d be present this time as well. Nonetheless, Celestia had a point: what could she do that those two could not?

“It’s not just about that,” Meg said. “That… event utterly changed my life. I wouldn’t be in your presence—here, now, as a pony myself—if not for that.”

“What would you accomplish by witnessing it for yourself?”

“The past cannot be altered, I know that. I’m not secretly planning on trying, I assure you.”

Celestia’s face was unreadable, graced by that indecipherable smile of hers. Perhaps the question she had answered wasn’t the actual question asked. Yet the princess did not rephrase it, choosing instead to raise her teacup to her lips.

“Besides,” Meg said, “if it was somehow my destiny to be a part of all this—” she looked at her cutie mark “—then that is the event that made it so.”

The teacup returned to the table. “It is your choice to make; I shall not interfere.”

The last of the enchanted gemstones were set on the floor, completing a large circle. Twilight infused them with her magic, bypassing their safeguards and activating them. Within the circle opened a wide portal.

Fowler and Reubens edged up to the perimeter and looked down into a large cavern, bathed in a reddish-orange light of indeterminate source. Two armored minotaur guards stepped into view and looked up.

Twilight lowered her head to the portal. “Is everything ready?” she asked, almost shouting.

“Yes, Your Highness,” one of them replied. “Five cells near Tirek have been readied.”

“Good. It won’t be much longer.”

She closed the portal. It was a bit of a strain keeping it open.

“That was really Tartarus?” Fowler asked. “What if I tripped and fell in?”

It was a silly question, but one Twilight welcomed. “The portal is one-way, for obvious reasons. You’d have to wait a while until I could retrieve you through the main Gates of Tartarus.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. If that should happen, you’d be treated as a guest, not an inmate.”

“Or a patient. It’s a long way down.”

Twilight looked to Reubens. “Sure you want to do this?”

He looked at the floor where the portal had been and would be again. “The President has decided this is a national security issue. We need to know who’s behind this. If this will persuade them to talk, great. If not…”

Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. “I’ll wait for your signal.” Twilight turned to a guard. “Fetch the prisoners.”

A few minutes later, the five prisoners entered the room, single file, accompanied by three guards. The guards took up position at the door.

Twilight addressed the prisoners. “In the interests of good relations with your nation, I have agreed to release you to the custody of these agents, if you answer their questions in good faith. This is your last chance.” She pointed at the circle of gemstones. “That’s a portal to Tartarus.”

Jackson didn’t even hesitate. “It’d be a more convincing bluff if it was open.”

“We’re trying to take you back with us,” Fowler said. “Do you want to be thrown into Tartarus?”

“Even if Tartarus was real, they wouldn’t dare. It’d just make us martyrs for our cause, waking the public up to their menace.”

If invasion was her plan, Twilight had to admit, that would make her reconsider. What would these agents make of it?

But if they doubted the reality of Tartarus, that was something she could correct. “Look to the circle,” she commanded, and powered up the portal.

Once more, a wide hole in the floor opened up into a large cavern. Jackson warily advanced to the portal. Stopping well short of the edge, he looked down.

Two minotaur guards look up. “Your Highness?”

“Stand by,” Twilight replied.

Jackson edged back. They all edged back. “Just because you say that’s a portal to Tartarus doesn’t make it so,” he said. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“Really?” Twilight couldn’t believe their obstinance. “What do you want for proof?”

“Cerberus?” Eric suggested.

“Sorry, but he’s rather busy guarding the main entrance. You wouldn’t want to see him anyway. He doesn’t take kindly to inmates going anywhere near there.”

“How convenient,” Jackson said, folding his arms across his chest. “Doesn’t matter. It’s all a bluff.”

“Do you really want to bet on that?” Reubens said. “If you won’t throw us a bone, we can’t help you.”

He turned to him. “You mean help you condemn the human race—assuming you’re even human yourself.” He turned back to Twilight. “I’m calling your bluff. I’m tired of this game.”

“Anyone?” Reubens asked.

The silence grew.

Discord was right after all. The plan had failed. All that remained was for the signal to be given.

Reubens threw up his arms. “It’s out of my hands now.”

Signal received.

“Suit yourself,” Twilight said in resignation, not sure if she was saying that to the agents or the prisoners. She levitated the five, who struggled and shouted to no avail, and floated them over the portal. The minotaur guards stepped back in response. She lowered them through the portal. As they passed through it, the effort to keep them levitated soared, but she compensated, having expected that.

They were set down gently onto a cavern floor of Tartarus.

The portal closed.