//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7:  The Secret Investigator 
// Story: The Element of the Island 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

It’s a disaster.

That’s my opinion.  Yes, I’m one of the youngest Agents to ever be made an Investigations Agent- and like any other IA, nopony- even the mission commander- knows I’m one.

That’s my job, as an IA.  Everypony assumes I’m a regular Agent, like them.  My job is to investigate Agents.

In this case, I’ve been sent to a secluded, sand-covered island to investigate claims of an Agent attacking a non-Agent he believed to be an Agent.

It’s a disaster.

There are Agents everywhere, for one.

For two, this black sand was uncomfortably warm under my hooves during my “tour” yesterday; now, I’ve teleported myself to the island at the normal start of shift today, and it’s uncomfortably cool.

For three, all the Agents are crowding the blackened remains of the village.

For four, most of the Agents here have been assigned for over a month, and they’ve all been on the island for fourteen hours a day, cramming two meals, a daily report, and sleep into those remaining ten hours.

Each of those points would create tension on their own.  All together, and I can almost taste it in the air.

It’s no surprise violence has broken out.  They haven’t been filtering for aggressive tendencies; there’s eighteen Agents on the list with competitive streaks.

But it’s not my job to flag the areas as sensitive.  I go on a quick trip around the island once everypony is here, teleporting back to the ship to note that in my report.

Then I teleport back to the island, back in that around-the-island location, and continue my circuit.

I pause when I get back to the ring the Transit Duty Agents are using as their destination point.  These Transit Duty Agents are simply Unicorn Agents that are good at teleporting- and have been assigned, on this mission, to transport the rest of the Agents to the island and back.  I haven’t been assigned as one because I’m too young- and inexperienced, for that matter.  Not only do I have to brace myself, both physically and mentally, before I teleport- but I can’t bring anypony else with me, and don’t have the thaumic reservoir depth for successive teleportation.  As it is, those three jumps- spaced out throughout the last hour or so- have drained me almost to nothing.

Well…  not really.  If they had, I would’ve passed out after the second.  In actuality, if I were drawing on my own, innate thaumic reserves, even a single teleport will take more power than I have- so the spell will fail and I’ll knock myself out.  Rather, it’s the storage crystal hidden in my mane that’s almost empty.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to- with some creative spellwork- connect it to my innate reserves…  thus, when I use magic, I draw first from the crystal, THEN my reserves.

Then of course, my magic regeneration goes in reverse order- and I won’t stop regenerating magic until the crystal is fully charged.

And like most ponies, I already have more than half my eventual adult thaumic regeneration rate, even if I have nowhere near the reserve capacity.

…  I think.  We don’t actually know what my future numbers will be.

But in any case, I pause, looking at the crates and crates of supplies that came to the site with me.  I did come on a supply boat, but I thought most of it was food and the like, not…  mission supplies.

So I crack one open, lift the lid.

…  Snorkels.  Magic, diver’s snorkels, to be specific.

I check the other crates.  Same.

There’s only one possible reason there’d be this many snorkels on-site- and that’s that they think we’d use them.

Or, more specifically, that there is good reason to use them.

Now I’m curious.

I pull one out of one of the crates, and trot into the water at the nearest point.  It burns so little power I can keep it charged indefinitely- without burning so much power I won’t be able to jump back to the ship at the end of the day.

The water is chilly, but not painfully so.

There is nothing here.

So I return from the water, travel a short distance along the shore, and head under again.

And repeat.  Many, many times.  I lose count of how many times I repeat this process, before I find something.  Looks almost like a shipwreck.

I swim deeper, squinting in the darkness.  My hornlight doesn’t cut through the water very well.

Yes, it’s a shipwreck, all right.  There’s another next to it; I’ve found one end of a field of such wrecks.

I swim slowly down the row, quickly inspecting each one as I go.  It looks like they’ve all been stripped recently; none of them have flags, all the doors are wide open, the deck plates look to be recently moved.  In a few of them, I even spot the places where chests used to stand.

Just past the ships, I find row after row of chests, boxes, and barrels, lined up as if waiting to be pulled out of the ocean.  I peek in a few of them, finding a veritable treasure trove, and at least two boxes stuffed full of pirate flags.

This is far more than even the ships I see here might have in them.

I decide to take a few photos, for evidence.  However, the snorkel is sticking up in just the wrong spot, marring the image I can get with my spell.  So I draw a deep breath, and remove it, letting it hang from my neck while I take the photo.

Then I shift to the side, and take another photo.  Swim to the other side of all the rows of boxes, and take an image of the whole set of them.

Then I stop, and blink, before lifting the snorkel, hanging on its lanyard, in a hoof.

“What the hay…?”

Then I look up, at the surface of the water.

I’m at least thirty feet down, well out of range of even the best remote breathing spell, yet I’m breathing just fine.  What’s more, my oration came out perfectly clear, despite my underwater position!

In other words, I’m breathing water…  like a fish.  Or not like a fish; I run a hoof quickly down the side of my neck, checking for gills or the like, but find only dry fur.

Dry fur.  Thirty feet underwater.

I take a deep breath, and let it out.  It feels like I’m breathing air, but no bubbles emerge at all.

Then I blink again, and extinguish my hornlight.  Nothing darkens, even though very little sunlight is making it down here, if any.  I can still see way far, all the way to the shoreline, a good six hundred feet away.

…  This is weird.

I blink, glancing up at the water’s surface.  I can feel the teleportation signatures starting off once again; it seems everypony is going back to the ship for the night.  I raise my eyebrow; I’m not feeling that tired, though.  And, since I can teleport myself, I’m on a come-and-go schedule- I’m allowed to return to ship, or stay on the island, whenever I want, so long as I spend at least ten hours each day on the island.

I’m also not hungry.

So I make my decision.  I will take ruthless advantage of this strange effect, and continue exploring into the night.


Hardly two minutes pass before something happens.  The Agents finished teleporting back to ship just fifteen seconds or so ago when I hear a siren, emanating out from the island.

That’s exactly the signal we were warned to flee from, because that means it’s going to shoot something.  I rocket for the seafloor, landing firmly between two crates of treasure.  What is going on?  I look sharply left and right, but see nothing, so I crouch between the crates to wait.  If it’s targeting me, I don’t want to lead it to the ship; if it’s targeting the ship, I don’t want to get caught in the blast.

I freeze solid, eyes wide, as something touches the top of my head.

Then, without warning, two somethings flick down in front of my face and punch me in the eyes, so fast I couldn’t even blink.  Then of course, they flicked right back away.

Funny.  Those punches didn’t hurt, really- sure, it stings a little, but there’s no pain…  I blink, staring off into the distance.  I…  I can see for miles.  Much further than I could before.  I can see a dozen ships, sailing resolutely for the island.  I can see the tops of those ships as well, despite the water’s surface being in the way.

Something stings slightly in my ears, then the something leaves the top of my head, disappearing somewhere.  I look around, looking for it, but I don’t see anything, so I return to looking at the ships.

There’s something new, now.  A line, connecting to a target floating in the water just inches off the bow of one of the ships.  There’s something riding that line, racing towards the pirate ship.  I watch it go, even though I know I’m so far away I shouldn’t be able to see even the slightest hint of its presence.

I glances upwards, at the pegasi launching from the ships.

Then back down, in time for the object to meet the ship.

The ship explodes.  Simply…  explodes.  A glance up shows targets painting themselves on the pegasi, before they start falling out of the air, dead before they hit the water.

I look back at the remaining ships.  Is it possible for it to sink them instead of destroying them outright?  Perhaps to leave some of them alive, for questioning?  Even, to capture the ships undamaged?

I suddenly understand the answer to be yes.  I don’t know how I know, I just know it’s a yes.

No more strange spear things charge at the incoming ships.

Rather, two ships rise up from the seafloor in front of them, forming a blockade.  Three more match the motion from behind them, and three on either side- effectively boxing them in with what looks like some kind of weapon.

I listen to the orders given to the pirates.  Watch a few of the ships suffer damage when they fail to obey.  Spot the swarm of metallic ponies, they look like, rocketing through the water on approach.

The metal ponies explode from the surface of the water, landing solidly on the decks of the pirate ships as they start the process of taking the ships.

Then I pause.

They’re only doing that because I wanted them to!

…  This is officially weird.

Then I wonder:  Can Agents come aboard safely, to question the pirates and/or transfer them to Equestria for punishment?

Again, the answer is a solid yes.  I don’t know where it came from, but I also understand the entire Agency ship is suddenly completely safe to sail near the island- and the pegasi aboard completely safe to fly near the island.

I blink.  What about me?

…  I could already do that.

I…  I have no clue what’s going on.

But wait!  There was a native- the one that Agent attacked!  She probably knows what all of this stuff is!  Where is she now?

I immediately understand that the native, named “Lyra Heartstrings”, has a last known location on a pegasus carriage towards Ponyville, a couple days ago.

I need to go there.  To Ponyville.

I can come back to inform the Agents of the pirates, unless they can figure it out themselves.  I wish for the pirate ships to be brought and held near the Agency ships, and pick a flag for them all to fly, just below their own flags.

They will do that.  Though it’ll take an hour or two, as the flags need to be made first.

In the meantime, I will go to Ponyville.

In but a moment, a rush of water leaves my lungs, being replaced by air.  In that same moment, I’m suddenly surrounded by a bubble of air- and then, with no magic whatsoever flowing through my horn, I am no longer on the seafloor.