Twilight Sparkle circled her workbench, occasionally leaning in close to prod at a gear or fiddle with the wires leading to a thaumic crystal. Her creation remained dutifully still, perched on a pedestal that would act as its home and repair station.

It was about the size of Owlicious, and based on a similar avian body-plan. A probe meant to travel through a Worldgate would certainly encounter rough terrain, and couldn’t rely on something as feeble as wheels or a single rotor like Tank’s flight-harness. These wings were covered with a mix of borrowed pony feathers, which meant that they were a scattered mix of colors that friends had donated. Unlike animals, pegasus ponies were powerfully resistant to wind and harsh weather, and that magic was concentrated in their feathers.

Those multicolored wings were wide and single jointed like an ordinary pegasus, though she’d reinforced them with sturdy metal wire. The central body glittered in her laboratory spotlight; a molded metal shell lined with gold tracings to outline the spells she’d cast. The Crystal Empire continued to pour outrageous sums into her research, without any sign of restricting her. Cadence expected daily updates on her progress, but those messages were shorter and shorter now.

The little probe didn’t have eyes, but “saw” through a single blue crystal that protruded from both sides of its cylindrical body. It didn’t have feet either, but a single claw was attached near the bottom, with sharp pincers poised to accomplish the single task she required of it. A a sample of living plant tissue, and Twilight could confirm they’d found the right destination.

“What do you think?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. “An impressive little design, isn’t it?” More impressive that she’d come up with it so quickly. Her alma mater had engineers who could’ve created something like this in a few months. Twilight had assembled the entire thing in a few sleepless days.

“It looks… a little weird.” Spike’s voice didn’t come from behind her, but the other side of the table. Apparently, he’d moved without her realizing it. She’d been so focused on what she was building that Twilight hadn’t even seen. “Are you sure that thing can fly?”

“That’s one of the things we’ll test,” Twilight said. “We need to thoroughly examine its capabilities, then make sure our documentation is exact. The Crystal Empire’s engineers will have to build a dozen just like him, maybe more.”

She levitated a thick stack of blueprints onto the table, spreading them in front of her assistant. “I was working from a central plan, but I’m not sure it’s detailed enough for another pony to use it. That might take me as long as building it.”

“I don’t understand why… you bothered,” Spike said. “If that weird bird is so good, won’t one be enough? We can fix anything that goes wrong between trips, right? I assume it teleports back here just like the bird, uh…” He winced. Fluttershy still wasn’t speaking to them after that. Twilight would have to find the right way to apologize—once these designs got to the Crystal Empire.

Nopony wanted to hurt animals, but we have a princess to save. Can’t she understand that risks come with the territory? That bird was a little hero.

“When we were working with a living creature, a reprogrammable Worldgate would let us test… one configuration a week,” she said. “Assuming our tests returned safe results on the other side. Farcasting spells across a Worldgate takes me hours, and that’s just to measure one thing. A team of unicorns doing the same job would probably take days for each one. Ultimately… I can’t do nothing but conduct this search for the rest of my life, Spike. I’m still a princess who needs to help run Equestria. Dangers haven’t stopped coming just because we lost my niece.”

“So, you think they’ll break the… what are we even calling this?”

“A probe,” Twilight said. She spread one wing defensively, catching his smile. “I know I stole the word; you don’t have to tell me. Lots of new ideas come from thaumic fiction before they’re made in reality. And yes, I think they’ll break it. But that’s what they’re for. If we know we’re only sending machines, then it doesn’t matter if we break some. We can do less testing of each new world we scan. Visit a few each week, instead of just one.”

Spike reached out, poking at the wing with one claw. “Isn’t it kinda creepy you made it from real fathers like that? You could’ve used, like…”

“They’d still be real feathers,” Twilight interrupted. “If we used bird feathers, Fluttershy would just be more upset, and the probe wouldn’t be able to fly through a storm.” She tossed him a clipboard off the table. Spike caught it, producing a quill from somewhere. “I want you taking notes. We can’t send these designs to be mass-produced if it doesn’t even work.”

She waited until Spike was ready, then tapped one hoof on the platform, bridging the metal contacts in her spell.

The probe’s single eye began to glow, a breathing cycle of brighter and darker as it surveyed the room around it. The motors on its wings whirred slightly as it flapped once, a movement test more than any actual attempt at locomotion. “Deploy,” Twilight said, as clearly as she could. Sure, the probe wasn’t an animal that might learn and obey more complex instructions, but it didn’t really need to be.

The probe took off, its wings moving through the complex range required for flight. She watched to see if Spike was properly impressed—did he have any idea how hard it was to translate the flapping motion of a wing into hovering in place like this? Apparently not, though at least he’d started scribbling.

The probe chimed cheerfully; its signal of a command obeyed. One of the few it knew. “Life,” Twilight said. “Locate.”

The little probe hovered there for a moment, then flew straight into the nearby window. It smacked loudly, bouncing backward against the ground. Twilight winced as it struck, making about the same sound as a music-box kicked down the stairs. It stopped moving after that.

Maybe the wings were too much.