Sunset eyed Doctor Zimmer warily. She’d been in a similar situation before and had no desire whatsoever for a repeat of what happened with Mister Burke.

“Oh, is this about the android again?” Twilight piped up suddenly.

…come again?

“You still haven’t found anyone who can find that thing for you?” Applejack asked.

Zimmer shook his head slowly, “Regrettably no, I haven’t.”

Seeing Sunset’s blank look, Twilight explained, “Doctor Zimmer is a representative of the Institute. He’s here looking for a lost android.”

“The Institute?” Sunset was sure that she’d heard that name before, but she couldn’t remember what it meant. After a few moments she gasped as realization hit, “You mean from the Commonwealth! The organisation James mentioned!”

“The very same,” Zimmer replied, holding out his hand, “And on behalf of the Institute I would like to formally welcome you to our world, however little of it that remains.”

Sunset let out a breath as she took the proffered hand, relaxing slightly, “Thanks. So you believe that we aren’t from this world then?”

“Absolutely. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first but after seeing what your friends are capable of, not to mention the little mishaps that occurred when the good Doctor Li tried to study your peculiarities, I see no reason for any doubt.”

Making a mental note to ask the others what exactly had happened during Doctor Li’s ill-fated experiments, Sunset was about to ask about a rather more pressing matter when someone else cut in.

“I’ve already asked about portal technology,” Twilight said quickly, pre-empting her question, “They don’t have anything even remotely like what we need so far.”

Zimmer sighed heavily and shook his head, “It’s such a shame you didn’t arrive at the Institute rather than in one of those obsolete old Vaults. With your co-operation I’m certain we could make great strides in developing such technology.”

“You don’t have any idea what could have brought us here?” Sunset asked hopefully.

Another shake of the head, “Miss Sparkle gave me a description of the item that your friend James supposedly used but without conferring with someone from Advanced Systems I really couldn’t say.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” Sunset said softly, she’d known it was a long shot anyway. “So what’s this about a lost android?” she asked, eager to change the subject.

Zimmer visibly brightened at that, “I’m glad you asked. You see, unlike the glorified gardeners who are content to sit in this forsaken backwater and play with their chemistry sets, we at the Institute spend our time working with real science.”

Sunset frowned slightly at that. From what she’d heard the scientists at Rivet City were focused on perfecting portable fusion power and increasing the yield from their hydroponics experiments. Bringing clean electricity and radiation-free food to the wasteland was hardly something any decent person would mock. Oblivious to her feelings, Zimmer continued his little speech.

“Among our technological achievements are true robots. Not those ridiculous buckets of bolts that the people of yesteryear were so proud of, but true synthetic humanoids, like my bodyguard, Armitage.”

Sunset glanced in surprise at the thuggish man looming over Zimmer’s shoulder, “He’s a robot? But… he looks so…?”

“Real?” Zimmer smirked, “Yes, he’s what we call a Generation Three Synth. Virtually indistinguishable from an ordinary human save for a few small components. Unfortunately a rare few are prone to malfunctions, often getting confused and wandering off or even trying to run away.”

“Let me guess, that’s what happened to the one you’re looking for?” Sunset asked.

Zimmer nodded, “What makes this case worse is that the synth in question was a prototype Courser, a powerful model programmed to hunt down and retrieve other lost units, which means he knows-”

“Exactly how to evade whoever gets sent after him,” Sunset finished.

“Precisely. I tracked him as far as here, but the trail has gone cold. I suspect he’s done something drastic, most likely facial surgery and a mind wipe, or else I would have found him by now.” Zimmer huffed and grumbled angrily, “Of course, if I could just speak to Doctor Li I’m sure I could get this whole mess dealt with a lot faster.”

“And I’ve already told you I don’t have time to play hide and seek with your runaway toy.”

The group turned at the sound of the voice, Zimmer with ill-disguised irritation.

“Doctor Li. So kind of you to grace me with your attention at last.”

Doctor Li was standing with her arms folded, glaring down her nose at him, “As fascinating as your technology is, Doctor Zimmer, the fact remains that my team and I have more pressing matters to attend to than finding a lost robot,” Li glanced sidelong at Twilight, “And that includes you, Miss Sparkle.”

Twilight jolted as if she’d had an electric shock, “Yes, Doctor!”

“Miss Shimmer, I’d like a word with you as well, if that’s alright?”

Sunset blinked with surprise, “Oh, uh… okay?”

Zimmer scowled and folded his arms, “I fail to see what could be more pressing than recovering one of the most advanced pieces of technology this pathetic wasteland has ever seen!”

“I’m well aware, doctor, which is why I refuse to waste my time dealing with you any more than is absolutely necessary,” Doctor Li replied contemptuously. Giving him one last look of disgust she turned to walk away, calling back over her shoulder, “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a ‘pathetic wasteland’ to help.”

Zimmer opened his mouth to retort as Twilight and Li walked away, but was cut off by Sunset, “I’ll help look for your android, er, synth. I can’t promise anything while I’m still recovering, but I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“Thank you, Miss Shimmer,” Zimmer said brightly, throwing a glare at Doctor Li’s back, “It’s nice to see that someone around here can appreciate the importance of real science.”

It took all of Sunset’s willpower not to roll her eyes at that. Luckily neither the old coot nor his bodyguard noticed.

“He won’t be easy to find, though I suspect your particular… ‘abilities’ will expedite matters,” Zimmer continued obliviously, “I’d recommend speaking to any doctors or techies you can find. He’d have needed someone of considerable talent to perform facial reconstruction and a complete memory scrub.” He glared once again at Doctor Li as she stepped out through a doorway at the far end of the room, “Which is precisely why I came to find that impossible woman in the first place.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sunset replied.

Zimmer fixed her with a serious look, “If you do find him, please be careful. He may not even realize that he’s a synth anymore and talking about it may upset him. Just come to me immediately and I’ll handle it.”

Sunset nodded, “Okay. Well, I guess I’d better go and see what Doctor Li wants.”

“Very well, Miss Shimmer, and thanks again.”

Raising a hand in farewell, Sunset headed towards the door Twilight and Doctor Li had disappeared through, Applejack and Fluttershy following in her wake. Counting the seconds in her head, she got to six before the inevitable came.

“Uh, are you sure that was a good idea?” Applejack asked.

Sunset couldn’t resist a small smile at the question she’d known was coming, “It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do, and it gives me an excuse to go around and get to know some of the residents here.”

“What if this ends up being another Burke incident?”

“It won’t,” Sunset replied firmly, “If things start to look dangerous we’ll go straight to Chief Harkness, tell him everything we know, then barricade ourselves in the most secure room we can find.” A grim smile worked it’s way across her face, “Either that or you get to rip a robot limb from limb.”

“That’s fine by me,” Applejack muttered darkly.

A moment later the three stepped through the doorway, emerging in a long corridor with a number of doors leading off on both sides. Each of the doors was sealed shut, with the word DANGER painted across them in large, white letters. A bright, rainbow-colored sludge was seeping out from under one, while one of the others was covered in an odd, glittering sheen. Doctor Li and Twilight were stood in front of the latter, inspecting it. They looked around as Applejack closed the heavy door behind them.

“Hey, Sunset.” Twilight smiled.

“Hey,” Sunset returned the smile before looking to Doctor Li, “You wanted to speak to me?”

Doctor Li nodded, “I did yes. First of all let me congratulate you on your recovery. It’s good to finally see you on your feet.”
Sunset just about caught the sound of a tiny snort from Fluttershy, who’d maintained a stony silence ever since they’d set foot in the science bay. She couldn’t blame her, Sunset herself wasn’t sure how she felt about the woman.

“Er, thanks.” she said, after a few moments of awkward silence.

Doctor Li’s stole a quick glance at Fluttershy, “I assume you’ve already been told about what happened during your surgery.”

“I have, yeah,” Sunset replied stiffly.

“I thought so,” Doctor Li sighed, her shoulders slumping, “Look, I realize you probably think I’m an evil bitch who was quite happy to let you die, but you have to understand just how dire your situation was. Being asystolic for that long, you should be a vegetable. It’s a miracle that you survived at all. The fact that you aren’t severely brain-damaged is, frankly, impossible.”

“L-look, it’s fine, okay?” Sunset spluttered. She shivered as cold fear gripped her, as it always did when she was reminded of the surgery.

“Sunset, are you alright?” Fluttershy asked softly.

“I’m fine, just a little cold.” Desperate to change the subject, Sunset gestured to the sparkly door, “S-so… uh… what happened here?”

Applejack smirked and tilted her hat back, “Heh, a whole bunch of failed experiments, ain’t that right, Doc?”

Doctor Li scowled at the glittering door, “In a manner of speaking. That’s actually something I wanted your help with.” Straightening her shoulders, she cast an appraising look at Sunset, “I understand you’ve previously attempted to analyse your friends powers scientifically. I was hoping you would share the results with me.”

“Now hold on a second,” Applejack interrupted, “You know you ain’t supposed to be doing any research on magic anymore, the Council won’t allow it.”

“I’m well aware of that, but if I know what Sunset’s results were I’m sure I can devise a safe method of studying your powers.”

Sunset shook her head, “I’m sorry, but the only results I ever got from studying our magic were bruises and a really weird mess to clean up.”

“Just trust us on this one. Messing around with magic when you don’t know what you are doing never ends well,” Twilight said softly, “You’re lucky that no one was hurt with the basic analysis you tried.”

Doctor Li sighed heavily, “I suppose you’re right. But I still think it’s worth looking into. Just imagine all the good we could do if we could replicate your abilities, or even just some of the results we saw in these rooms. We could save lives, make the wasteland a better place again! People wouldn’t have to struggle just to… oh for fuck’s sake.”

Sunset gaped as a soft glow washed over Doctor Li, her hair lengthening and turning a pale blue while a pair of lime-green pony ears sprouted out of the top of her head.

“You ponied up,” Sunset said flatly.

“I noticed,” Doctor Li muttered grumpily.

“But… how?”

“I wish I knew. It’s been happening ever since I got covered in whatever that stuff is,” she replied, pointing at the rainbow-slime dribbling out from under the one door.

Sunset squatted next to the slime. It looked to her exactly like the stuff that had erupted from the computer when she tried to study Rainbow Dash’s magic, back before the Friendship Games. She ran her Pip-Boy over it, just to be sure, but it wasn’t giving off any form of radiation.

“It doesn’t seem to be dangerous in any way,” Twilight said quickly, crouching next to Sunset, “However, after everything that we’ve had to deal with in the past we decided it would be best to seal off the rooms Doctor Li used for testing our magic, at least for now.”

“You’re darn right,” Applejack supplied, “The last thing we need right now is rogue Equestrian magic getting loose in the Capital Wasteland.”

“No arguments here,” Sunset agreed.

“Has anyone else ponied up?” Fluttershy asked, her ire with the doctor forgotten for now.

Doctor Li shook her head, “Not as far as I know. The only other person I allowed to help me with these experiments was Anna, and she hasn’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary.”

“Good,” Sunset stood and stretched, wincing as her stitches pulled, “Does anyone else have access to this corridor?”

“Just me. I keep it locked when I’m not in here.”

Well, at least that’s one less thing to worry about.

Applejack frowned, her gaze flicking from the slime to the sparkling door, “Do you think we should try and clean all this mess up before it gets loose?”

“What would we do with it though?” Fluttershy asked, “It’s not like we can just wash it into the river or something.”

Sunset shivered as the thought of magically mutated mirelurks danced through her mind.

“Fluttershy’s right. We should keep it sealed for now and see if we can find a way of storing it properly,” Twilight said firmly.

“That’s all well and good, but what are we going to do about this?” Doctor Li pointed to her new ears, twitching them for emphasis.

Twilight shrugged, “I don’t think ponying up is going to cause you any real harm, if anything it seems to have a mild healing effect.”

“For now you should just make a note of what you’re doing whenever you feel it happen. We always seem to pony up when we do something that expresses the deepest, truest part of our nature,” Sunset explained, “If you can figure out what that is for you, maybe you can find a way to control the change?”

“Observe, record, hypothesize. The simplest form of science,” Doctor Li sighed, “Start with the basics I suppose.”

“It’s the safest way of doing things, especially when concerning magic,” Sunset replied.

“Yeah, trust us on that one,” Applejack smirked and gave Twilight a nudge, earning a sheepish smile in response.

Doctor Li raised an eyebrow at that, then shrugged and started back towards the main science lab, “Very well, I shall defer to your experience in this case. Come on, I’ll lock this corridor up again and then we really should get back to work.”

“Fair enough, I guess I’ll make a start on finding Zimmer’s robot then,” Sunset said as she was chivied out of the corridor.

“You agreed to look for it?” Doctor Li asked in surprise. At Sunset’s nod she frowned and turned to lock the door, lowering her voice as she did so, “Just be careful. Zimmer is more interested in science for the sake of science than anything else, he doesn’t give a damn about ethics or the greater good.”

“We’d noticed,” Sunset, Applejack and Fluttershy all said in unison.

Doctor Li allowed herself a small smirk, “Very well. Come on, Twilight, we should get back to our experiments.”

“Yes, Doctor. I’ll see you girls later tonight.”

After a quick wave goodbye as the two eggheads wandered off, Applejack turned to Sunset, “Alright then, where do you think we should start?”

“Zimmer did say we should speak to a doctor. Maybe we should see if Doctor Preston knows anything?” Fluttershy piped up.

Sunset nodded, “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Works for me. Let’s get moving,” Applejack said brightly.

Following Applejack’s lead, the girls headed back to the science lab’s upper walkway and back out into the main corridors of Rivet City.

Sunset still wasn’t used to the maze of bulkheads and tight passageways, and she had absolutely no idea where anything was in relation to anything else yet, so she was quite surprised when she learned that the clinic was only a short walk away from where they were on the Upper Deck.

Fortunately the way was mostly empty, there being little in the way of foot-traffic between the lab and the clinic. Even more fortunately, Doctor Preston was actually present at the clinic, something Fluttershy had assured her wasn’t always a sure thing, as he had a tendency to wander off if his services weren’t immediately required.

“Miss Shimmer! I wasn’t expecting you back so soon!” he exclaimed as the girls entered the room, “You haven’t popped your stitches already have you?”

Sunset huffed a laugh, “Nothing like that yet, Doc. Actually we’ve got sort of an… odd question to ask you.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow and turned his chair to face them, his curiosity obviously piqued, “I’m all ears.”

Sunset rubbed her neck awkwardly, wondering how best to ask him, “Well, this is going to sound really random but… have you ever heard anything about an android, or a synth, asking around about facial reconstruction?”

The three girls had expected a blank look, or perhaps even another check to make sure Sunset wasn’t brain-damaged. What they hadn’t expected was for Doctor Preston to frown and start rifling through his drawers, searching for something.

“Funny you should ask, I have actually heard something about that. Just let me… ah! Here it is!” With a little flourish he pulled out a dusty old holotape, “I received this a few years ago. Here we go…”

Brushing the worst of the dust off, he slotted it into a player on his desk and hit the ‘play’ button. A moment later a man’s voice crackled out from the speaker.

“Hey, doc, I'm only sharing this with you because you seem like someone we can trust. Have you heard about the synthetic men they make up north in the Commonwealth? Well, the rumors are true. They're called androids. They're men like us, just made out of different parts. I know one of these androids. He's looking for a trustworthy doctor to perform some facial surgery. Can you do it? Do you know someone who can? Also, do you know anyone who's really a wiz with computers?”

There was a short beep and the tape stopped playing.

Silence reigned for a few seconds as everyone digested what they’d heard.

“Is that it?” Applejack asked.

Doctor Preston nodded, “That’s it. I received that from a total stranger some years ago now. He asked me to listen to that when I was alone then give him an answer the next day.”

Sunset frowned, wondering if the stranger might have been the synth himself, “What did you tell him?”

The doctor just shrugged and shook his head, “I told him I couldn’t help him. I’m not confident that I’d be capable of performing that kind of surgery, and I don’t know anyone who I’d say is really a ‘whiz with computers’.”

“Have you seen that stranger since?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Darn. Well, I guess that’s the end of that,” Applejack grumbled.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Doctor Preston said quietly.

“It’s fine, it’s not really a big deal,” Sunset sighed, “Thanks anyway.”

“It was my pleasure, dear.”

Leaving the Doctor to his work, Fluttershy assuring him that she’d be back bright and early the next morning, the girls congregated in the corridor to discuss their next move.

“Well that was a bust,” Applejack muttered.

“Doctor Zimmer did say this wasn’t going to be easy,” Fluttershy said reasonably.

Sunset smiled and patted them both on the shoulder, “Don’t worry about it, girls. We made an effort, but I’m not planning on losing any sleep over this. The android is probably better off away from that old grump anyway.”

Applejack smirked at that, “Ah reckon you’re right about that. What to you fancy doing now then?”

Sunset hummed softly as she considered, “I’m not sure. Do you think maybe we could go and take a… look… at…”

She trailed off as she spotted a woman sneak around the corner. She was wearing tatty old clothes and a dirty white head-wrap, and kept peering around nervously as she rounded the corner. The moment the woman spotted the girls her eyes widened and she hurried over.

“You… you’re Sunset Shimmer, aren’t you?” She spoke quietly, her whole body trembling, “Please. You have to help me!”

“Hey, it’s okay. Just relax,” Sunset placed a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm the poor woman, “What’s wrong?”

“M-my name’s Mei. I used to be a slave. I escaped a while ago and I’ve been living here ever since.”

The girls couldn’t help but gasp upon hearing that. They’d heard in passing that slavery existed in the wasteland, but this was their first time encountering someone who had suffered such an awful fate.

“Don’t worry, sugarcube, we’ll help you,” Applejack said soothingly, “What do you need?”

Mei looked pleadingly at Sunset, “It’s him. He’s here for me, I’m sure he is, but the security teams can’t do anything about it without proof.”

Sunset shared a shocked look with the others, her thoughts immediately jumping to Zimmer. He’d implied that the synth they were looking for was male, but that didn’t prove anything. In fact, given the synth’s reputed history, it made an odd sort of sense. If your captor’s were looking for a man, the best way to hide would be to become a woman.

“It’s okay. We won’t let anyone hurt you,” Fluttershy said softly, “why don’t you tell us who’s after you?”

“Sister.”

Sunset blinked stupidly, her train of thought utterly derailed, “Sister?”

Mei nodded slowly, “He’s a slaver.”

Apologies for the delay, now that Christmas and New Year's are out of the picture we should be back to our regular schedule from now on.

Comments and criticisms are welcome and, as always, thanks for reading.