“Hiiii, miss Gem!” Three waves with as much vigor as the shackles connecting his forelegs allow.

“Three, we’ve seen each other yesterday,” Gem rolls her eyes, but a genuine smile grows on her muzzle like always, “I haven’t had anyone be so enthusiastic to see me since I lived in Canterlot and had a puppy.”

“Woof!” Three chuckles, hops onto the long table interrogation room and then right into Gem’s lap, “So, how was your day?”

“After your yesterday’s visit, they put more chains and ropes around me to satisfy a moderate bondage party, and then locked me back in my underground cell that’s about as fortified as the Crystal Empire central bank vault, so take a wild guess.”

“Miss Gem, I’m working on a way to get us all out of prison, but I need some help.”

Hearing Three’s voice through a hive link doesn’t make a top-notch infiltrator like Gem twitch a muscle, though she does glance at the group of eight Prominence’s guards standing ready between them and the locked door.

“Does your plan account for Magpie, Harriet, and Thirteen?”

“Of course!” Three’s mental reply sounds almost hurt at the idea that Gem would consider him able to leave friends behind. Out loud, though, Three says, “Yesterday, they let me off sooner, because the engineers are finished with the prototype of the underground farm.”

“Really? That’s great to hear,” Gem smiles, keeping the real world chatter up to distract the guards while concentrating on the hive link conversation with Three.

“I think I’d like to get out at this point. I could, but leaving Harriet and you all here is my absolutely last resort. Promi visited me yesterday as well, and told me that even though your work with Cadance’s unicorns is going well, Twilight and Celestia want us all locked up until we rot. I find that rather boring. What’s that plan of yours about then?”

“A group of unicorns in the surface part of the prison are planning to break out, and the first step is to get rid of our suppressors. I know exactly what they’re made of and I can share the information through our link, but I need a recipe for an acid that would dissolve them.”

Three bundles up all the knowledge he gained from the examination of the broken suppressor and sends it to Gem.

“Pretty simple stuff,” comments Gem, “You want Thirteen to do it, don’t you?”

“Yeeeah. All I can make is goop candy...”

“We all have our roles to play, Three,” Gem chuckles and within a fraction of a second Three’s head fills with the exact method even an inexperienced changeling could synthesize the right kind of acid inside themselves, “I made it extra simple for Thirteen. This should melt the alloy within few seconds and don’t harm living tissue. At worst, the unicorns might lose few hairs around the spot. Don’t let it get to anyone’s eyes just in case, though.”

“Thanks, miss Gem.”

“Just be careful. Three. Us getting out is bound to cause a lot of trouble, but since Brauheim is gone and I doubt the ponies will be able to track dad, I think that once you’re done with the farms here, we should dip.”

“Any idea where to go then?”

“Not really. With so few settlements and cities in Equestria, there’s no place where we could just disappear, but I’d like to get Harriet to the Griffon Empire. She deserves to be able to go home. That means Manehattan.”

“Wooooow, that’s so far!” Three hesitates. He’s not particularly deceptive on the best of days, but to someone like Gem he’s an open book even without her reading his mind through the hive link.

“There’s more, Three. Tell me.”

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

“Three, I’m not mad even at Promi, and it’s her fault we’re stuck here. Go on.”

“I said it before, but I still want to go to Tartarus.”

“This again?” Gem rolls her eyes, “Okay, why do you think Flow would want to help you even if by some miracle he could?”

“Miss Gem, you weren’t in the pocket dimension with mister Cromach when we made Flow come back. This is all wrong, I know it. Miss Prominence, princess Sunny, and princess of books made a huge mistake. I know what I felt there, and I wish at least someone believed me.”

“Three...” Gem sighs, “You know what? We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. First, let’s get out of here, okay?”

“Mhm,” Three nods, “We’ve got a week, give or take, before ponies can produce the farm machines properly, and there’s a lot to still figure out.”

“Exactly,” Gem pats his head.

“-and then mister Magpie had to pull Thirteen from under the bed again, and almost lost his dinner when she was popping her joints back into place.”

“Seriously, that filly and loud noises...”

“And sudden movements,” adds Three.

“And her own legs getting in the way.”

“She just needs to find her way,” Three nuzzles Gem’s nose, “Miss One pushed her too hard to quickly.”

“She will. I don’t doubt it at all, and she’ll wipe mom’s sneer off of her face.”

Two days later, Three once again returns into the prison in time for the good old ‘outside time’. Normally, he would fly around a little, say hi to Magpie and his minotaur friend, but now he has business to attend to. Bouncing around on randomly switching pairs of legs for shake off the stiffness from not being allowed to move much in the castle to avoid bothering unicorns and crystal earthpony engineers at work, he approaches the unicorn brotherhood section of the courtyard. His silly hopping around is impossible not to notice, and he quickly finds himself face to face with Deep Ambition frowning at him.

“Any news?” asks the unicorn.

“Yep,” Three nods, “I got the recipe for the right kind of acid, but I can’t make it. Thirteen should, which is why I need your help finding her. She’s kinda really good at hiding when she doesn’t want to be found.”

“I do believe we can be of assistance,” he unicorn smirks, “Guys, you know what she looks like. A changeling, shaggy brown mane, short tai- you know what? It’s the only other damn changeling in this place so you don’t need a description.”

“Just tell her I’m looking for her and she shouldn’t freak out,” says Three, immediately taking to the sky and towards a certain griffon doing loops in the air.

Mid-flip, Magpie reaches to the side, snatching Three from the air by his barrel.

“Wooow, nice!” Three beams, “And I was trying to be all sneaky-like.”

“Your eyes glow blue, your body glows pink, and there’s a goddamn eternal night,” Magpie rolls his eyes, “You’re the only bright thing up here other than the spotlights from the guard towers.”

“Heheh, I guess I should leave sneaking to the infiltrators,” Three scratches his head, “Anyway, I need help.”

“What went wrong this time?”

“Nothing, nothing, I just need to find Thirteen. Miss Gem gave me instructions on how to make acid that would dissolve the unicorn suppressors, but I’m a drone and I can’t shapeshift to grow the right bits with this on my head,” he taps a suppressor of his own, “Thirteen is a queenie like miss bad mom, so she can do it all with only tiny changes.”

“Bad mom?” Magpie lets Three go, turns around in the air, and starts looking at the ground. Eagle eye isn’t just a metaphor with griffons, even though Magpie’s eyesight is still below average.

“Chrysalis,” Three sticks his tongue out, “I mean, if I was an infiltrator like miss Gem, I could do it too, but I’m just a drone. I make candy.”

“Do I even want to ask?”

Three spits out a small glob of green goop into his hoof, polishes it a bit while it hardens, and then offers the small disk to Magpie.

“It’s delicious. Try it!”

“Considering where it came from, no,” says the griffon flatly.

“That’s what they all say and then they want more. Come oooooon,” Three presses on, flying next to Magpie’s head.

“You can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“The sun doesn’t shine anywhere anymore, which means I can shove it right here,” Three pushes the goo candy into Magpie’s beak when the griffon opens it to protest.

After a second of gagging and choking, Magpie spits it out with a frown.

“If I say it was better than I expected, will you promise to never do that again? It’s that or me having to explain to Gem why I punched you.”

“See? I told you,” Three beams even wider, “But why did you spit it out then?”

“Mint and licorice,” the griffon sticks his tongue out, “The world would be a better place without either.”

For a mercenary as experienced with tracking his surroundings like Magpie, it takes only the faintest shift of tall grass in the overgrown corner of the courtyard usually occupied by mares banding together for security to make him swoop towards the ground and reach down.

“Eeeeeeeeep!” Thirteen struggles in the griffon’s grasp, but despite the size difference, she’s barely heavier than Three.

“Heya, Thirteen!” Three circles around Magpie after he brings Thirteen back up. She breathes a confused sigh of relief and goes limp like a cat.

“Hi, Three. Hello, mister Magpie. It was hoping no one would spot me, but I guess I’ll have to do something about the sky next time.”

“If you’re trying to sneak in tall grass, you have to use wind to your advantage, or you’re just drawing even more attention to the moving stalks,” says the griffon.

“Right...” Thirteen sighs, “It’s not as if mom didn’t repeat it to me thousand times already, and she’s not even an infiltrator. Her way of staying unseen is knocking out everyone who could spot her.”

Slowly, Magpie lowers Thirteen on the ground and lands himself. Hearing the usual drop in Thirteen’s tone he’s grown to understand as self-loathing creeping in, the griffon rolls his eyes.

“Look, I’ve spent most of my time as a mercenary on night shifts, because it’s quiet and no one wants to chat all the time. That also means I’m used to others trying to ambush me in faint moonlight, if that. Now stop grumbling and listen. Three wants something.”

“Mister Magpie, can you make sure no one disturbs us for few moments?”

“No problem,” he shrugs.

The drone looks at Thirteen and furrows his brows. Hive link communication through a suppressor is difficult even at short range and doing so with someone as inexperienced as Thirteen makes it rough if the one controlling it is Three. Still, he manages to transfer the bundled up knowledge of how to make the acid to Thirteen in less than a minute.

Normally, Magpie would have yawned in the meantime or looked around, but he was fascinated by a loading bar popping up across both of Three’s eyes and curious about what would happen when once filled up. Unfortunately for him, all it does is make Three rub his temples as Thirteen sits down.

“Got it?” asks the drone, “The plan as well as the chemistry.”

“I… I guess so, but it’s difficult. I don’t think I can shapeshift enough to make acid like this with the suppressor on my horn.”

“Miss Gem said she made is as simple as she could.”

“For her maybe,” Thirteen frowns, “For someone like me-”

“If you spent more energy on thinking about a solution than on putting yourself down, we’d already be out of here,” grumbles Magpie.

“That was just a simple statement of truth,” Thirteen looks down on the ground.

“Been there, done that. It doesn’t lead anywhere,” a hint of anger finds its way into his annoyed tone.

“I don’t know how to make the acid!” Thirteen stomps her hooves, tearing up a bit as she glares at Magpie, “I mean, not how to make it, but how to transform in such way that I can make it.”

“Then you go tell Gem and Harriet that they’re staying locked up down in a cell where they’re not even allowed to move for the rest of their lives.”

“I’m not seeing you figuring out a way out!” she raises her voice.

“I’m not a species who can change their body in ways most creatures can’t even begin to imagine. I know what’s my role in this plan, and that is to protect Gem from a blow that might catch her unaware, as unlikely as it is. I’m not running away from it, I’m not hiding from it, and I’m running through possible scenarios in my head over and over. Now shut up, idiot, before a warden hears you and play your damn part!” Magpie hisses at Thirteen.

Thirteen glares for few seconds before lowering her head and turning around. Three gives Magpie a frown which the griffon faces with a stern stare of his own until the drone realizes that there’s no apology coming. In light of that, Three nuzzles Thirteen’s foreleg.

“I can’t do it...” whispers Thirteen.

“Sleep on it,” says Magpie.

“What do you think is going to chan-”

“Sleep on it,” repeats the griffon and pounces into the air, turning the jump into a backwards loop which launches him into the air.

“I… I don’t like him,” mumbles Thirteen.

“Miss Gem does,” Three shrugs, “She also says he’s a big dummy who needs a kick in the butt, though.”

“I volunteer,” Thirteen pouts at Three who snickers and boops her nose. Faced with Three’s smile, she admits defeat, “I’m sorry, Three. I’ll do what little I can.”

“And I’ll always be here if you need a hug,” he gives her a preemptive one around her foreleg, “Unless, you know, I’m in the castle and stuff, but you can always imagine I’m here hugging you, because if I was with you then I would for sure do it.”

Thirteen snorts as the corners of her mouth curl up and shakes her head.

“You’re something special, Three.”

“That’s what both boss and miss One say too, although it feels like they each mean it in a different way,” Three’s ears suddenly perk up as he looks around, “Oops! My unicorn friends are still looking for you. Let’s go tell them you don’t need finding anymore.”

“I’d rather n-” she’s talking to no one, because Three’s already walking off, “Nevermind. I wouldn’t listen to myself either if I had the option anyway,” she picks up the pace to catch up with Three.

Now, Thirteen. Be quiet and let Three talk. Everyone just gets mad when you open your mouth.

Deep Ambition whistles to catch the attention of the unicorns searching nearby and points at Thirteen who ineffectually tries to hide behind a drone half her size. Seeing that, the unicorn smirks and approaches her and Three with confidence.

“A pleasure to finally meet you face to face,” he offers a hoof over Three’s head which Thirteen shakes with some hesitation. She has no idea what it is, but the unicorn feels wrong on so many levels it makes her shudder, “I’m Deep Ambition.”

“Sorry, I’m not used to ponies being friendly here,” she covers her body’s involuntary response, “I’m Thirteen.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of me or anypony else from the brotherhood. I’m sure Three told you about our deal.”

“He did,” Thirteen nods

“Speaking of which, you said there was something for me to do too that you’d tell me once we’re close to being done in the castle.”

“Ah yes, that,” the unicorn lowers his voice, “We need to dig a tunnel. So far, we’ve figured out where, how to cover it, and the right direction, but we can’t do it effectively without tools. Somepony with harder hooves, though...”

“Ohhh, a tunnel out of here,” Three nods.

“No, that wouldn’t work,” Deep Ambition shoots the idea down immediately, “There’s a magic field in the ground just like it’s above the prison. No, the tunnel needs to be shallow and lead into the power control room, because getting there the normal way is downright impossible. From what we know, the magical field is an oval around the entirety of the prison, which means the underground too, so digging between the underground floor hallways should be safe. The walls of the power control room itself are made of reinforced concrete, not like the cells, and we need a tunnel to get there in order to knock a hole in the wall and destroy the power core to disable the magic field and turn everything off. Coupled with the fake suppressors, we should easily get out of our cells, release the other prisoners, cause a riot, and escape.”

“So you just need me to dig?” Three’s eyes light up, “I’m sooooo ready for that! How deep and in what direction is the room supposed to be?”

The unicorn stands up, nods at Three, and says:

“Follow me. We spent last week doing some ‘gardening’,” he smirks, leading Three, Thirteen, and the returning unicorns towards the northeast corner of the courtyard which is even more overgrown with wilting vegetation than the mares’ corner where Thirteen was hiding earlier, “A friend smuggled in a growth potion, otherwise this would be impossible without sunlight. Here, between the piles of ripped out weed.”

Three notices a circular spot filled not with dirt but with nettles, grass, and other greenery that’s not rocks and as such doesn’t interest him too much.

“This is the most covered spot in the courtyard. If we station four or five unicorns sitting around, you should be able to dig and hide the dug dirt under the piles. There’s a lot less grass in those piles than you’d think, but we’re barely a pony length deep.”

“Hmmm, do you need just me to get into the power room, or does someone want to come as well?”

“Preferably just you.”

“That makes it a lot easier. Which direction then?” Three looks up at Deep Ambition who points to his right.

“Exactly that way, fourteen pony lengths down. That should lead directly to the right wall.”

“Heh, easy. Watch and learn how a drone works.”

Three starts vibrating.

So does the ground.

He stomps the ground few times, which makes it wibble like the surface of a lake hit with a rock.

Deep Ambition, as well as the other unicorns around, shield their eyes from a sudden explosion of cut greenery as Three disappears, leaving behind only shifting circle similar to quicksand.

Thirteen feels soft tremors under her hooves, but that’s about it. They all watch the suspicious patch shake for about a minute after which two black hooves come out and pull the rest of Three up on the solid surface. To everyone’s shock, there’s no hole left behind him, only strangely soft dirt mixed with the previous covering of grass.

Three shakes off the thin layer of brown dust all over himself which rises like a small cloud.

“What was that?” whispers Deep Ambition.

“I’m a drone,” Three smiles, “If we know one thing, it’s how to dig. I’ve gotten almost to the right depth, and I should be there on the next dive.”

“Fourteen pony lengths...” Deep Ambition breathes out, “You know that’s pony lengths, right? Not the size of you changelings,” he adds in disbelief, as if even the other way was possible or believable.

“Don’t worry, I know the standard lengths reeeeeally well now,” Three recalls the endless translation of dwarf-to-pony measurements done in the past weeks, “Anyway, I’ve just prepped the ground in such way that I could get deeper next time. It’s soon going to get a bit slower since I can’t transform to breathe in more air, but it should be done in few days.”

“Three...” Thirteen furrows her brows, “You did shapeshift your hooves even with the suppressor. I can’t do it but I know the theory. No other drone could do that. How did you just ignore the suppressor?”

“What?” Three gives her a puzzled look, scratching his head, “Nope, still can’t transform,” he shrugs after a second of concentration, “I guess digging is just different. Besides,” he beams widely at Thirteen. “I’m doing this to make the world a better place, and the power of good can’t be stopped by some silly ring!” he punches the air victoriously.

“That explains-” Deep Ambition opens his mouth.

“-absolutely nothing!” Thirteen eye twitches.

Three looks at the faces surrounding him and then shrugs as if he hasn’t just ignored most laws of magic and reality.

“I dunno then. I just dig.”