In Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps

by AugieDog

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Romance, Original Character, Adventure, Prince Blueblood, Main 6
Length: 26465

The name's Blueblood. Prince Blueblood.

Prince Blueblood dislikes being secret agent Double-O-Zeta, but since no pony does it better, the princesses won't let him quit. Trailing the mad unicorn Green Briar to Ponyville, though, Blueblood runs into Rainbow Dash, already investigating the odd new pony in the area. She resents this jerkwad of a prince suddenly butting in, and when circumstances force the two to work together, the unexpected feelings they arouse in each other might prove more dangerous than anything Green Briar has planned.

Inspired by TAW's Shipping Contest and finished with much thanks to Casca on mlpchan's /fic/ board, Aquillo and cheeze sauce over at Saltblock, and Bad Horse, Cloudy Skies and Skywriter here at FiMFiction. The adventure continues as well in the second Clandestine Corps adventure, Piefall!

Published 2012-11-03 03:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-24 17:44:57 UTC

Act I - The Stallion with the Gold Horn

"At last!" Green Briar's whinnies echoed off the polished steel walls of the egg-shaped room. "The symbol of all that's wrong with modern Equestria lies helpless before me! And yes, you may have stopped my previous attempts to reignite the primal magic we unicorns are heir to, Double-O-Zeta! But now that my researches have shown me the proper way, I'll bounce my theory off you—quite literally—till you confirm it!" His eyes bulged from his pale-yellow face, his odd golden horn twinkling. "Then the world will again be as it ought!"

The tingle around Blueblood's fetlocks and horn tightened as Green Briar's spell pulled him even flatter against the stone slab, but the prince refused to acknowledge his discomfort. "You're ruining my tuxedo, you know," he drawled in the lazy voice he spent several hours every day practicing. "Not to mention all this ranting. I mean, do you even know what you're talking about anymore?"

Nostrils flaring, Green Briar lurched a step closer, his horn sparking more violently. "And do you have any idea how extraordinarily annoying you are?!" Little flecks of spittle sprayed from the corners of his mouth. "Believe me, your Highness, before this night is done, you'll be begging to give me the information I want!"

Blueblood sniffed. "Surely you don't expect me to talk to somepony as common as you?"

"No?" The air around them began to hum, tiny lightning bolts arcing back and forth between the tip of Green Briar's horn and its base. "Never mind, then! I'll simply slice you in half like an overripe casaba melon! That ought to give me answers enough for now!" More and more lightning flashed till it became a jagged cloud roiling above Green Briar's forehead, and Blueblood couldn't help but wonder if he might have miscalculated a bit.

A smoky scent tickled his nose, though, and he turned his face away just as the explosives he'd planted in the crawlspace earlier finally went off, part of the wall blasting into a stinging spray of metal dust. It smashed Green Briar sideways, the glow puffing from his horn, and the various spots of fire that held Blueblood in place sputtered out like candles in the rain. He rolled to the floor, lashed out with his hind legs, and winced at the solid thump of his hoofs hitting the other unicorn. All the unpleasant things he was constantly being asked to touch during these little escapades for his aunt!

Something in the walls started whining: magical circuits overloading, no doubt, in the various odd pieces of equipment Green Briar always had tucked away. Blueblood had learned from their previous encounters that this meant it was time to leave, so racing out the doorway, he sprinted down the circular staircase, the whole tower shaking now under the onslaught of the explosions rumbling everywhere.

Gritting his teeth at the realization that a civilized descent was out of the question at this point, he rammed his shoulder against the first window he came to, hitting it again and again and again till cracks spiderwebbed across the glass and it shattered outward. Without a second thought, he leaped into the empty midnight air as the rumbles all around built into a roar, fire flooding down the stairway behind him.

A snap of his teeth at the third button along his vest set the framework expanding inside his tuxedo jacket, a mechanism of some sort that was supposed to be unaffected by the magic-dampening field Green Briar had wrapped around his workshop. But when the hang glider's wings actually unfolded along Blueblood's back—and just as smoothly as when that unkempt little minion of Aunt Celestia's had demonstrated it to him, too—his surprise nearly made him forget to pull out of his dive. Auntie would never send him into the field with defective equipment, of course, but who would've thought something built by earth ponies would actually function?

Extending his front legs and bending his spine, he aimed for the stars, the lights of Canterlot shining atop the ridge to the east. A glance over his shoulder showed him flames engulfing the tower he'd just left, but then this wasn't the first time he'd watched one of Green Briar's labs burn. Still, he found himself hoping against hope that this time, the plebeian unicorn would finally have the decency to die.

Dust in his hair and the stink of burning machinery in his nostrils, Blueblood angled the glider to catch the heated air and left the conflagration behind.

***

"Boring!" The moan woke Rainbow Dash from her after lunch doze and made her blink at the little curl of cloud floating beside the one she was sprawled over.

Something squished below her, and Apple Bloom's unmistakable twang rang out: "Hey!"

"Scootaloo!" came Sweetie Belle's voice, sharp as an arrow. "Rarity says that when you're a spa worker, you're s'pposed to spread the mud all gentle over the client's face, not make it into a ball and throw it at her!"

"You mean ev'rything about this job's s'pposed to be dull as dirt? 'Cause that's all mud is if it isn't a mudball, y'know! Just boring ol' dirt!"

"What?!" Rainbow Dash managed a pretty decent cry of outrage, she thought. Flipping backwards off the cloud, she swirled a quick spiral down to land on the stream bank, and the surprised happiness on the girls' faces—especially the huge smile stretching across Scootaloo's snout—got her grinning. "Nothing's boring when Rainbow Dash's around!"

Scootaloo sagged. "Well, yeah, but—" She dipped her hoof into a bucket of mud Dash figured they must've scooped from the streambed, Apple Bloom sitting next to it with a bib around her neck and half her face coated with brown goo. "What's exciting about this?"

Sweetie Belle gave a stomp. "Rarity says it exfoliates, detoxifies, relieves stress, and—!"

"Kid?" Dash tapped Sweetie's horn. "Your sister's one of the best ponies I've ever known, and if it wasn't for her, I would definitely not be here right now. But the way she looks at mud, and the way I look at mud?" Dash put one hoof under Scootaloo's arm to steady it and whirled the other hoof faster and faster around the mud the little pegasus was holding. Fluttering her wings just enough to set up the cross current she needed, she focused her attention and began pulling a tiny mud tornado into the air. "Two totally different things."

Letting the twister grow another inch higher, she felt the balance of moisture and silt shift till it was right where she wanted it. Then slamming her hoof down, she cracked the quick-dried clay coating, let the wind from her wings puff the dust away, and grinned even harder at the stunned gasps of the fillies, staring at the cone of rainbow wavering in the air. "'Cause, yeah," she said into the sudden silence. "Mudballs are great. But why settle for that when you can whip up a mudbow?"

"Wow," they breathed in unison, then they were bouncing around her, their voices running together: "How d'you do that?!" "Where'd the mud go?" "It...it's just hanging there all swirly!"

Dash fluffed her wings. "A little water, a little sunlight, and that special Rainbow Dash magic can make anything cool." A quick breath spattered the rainbow into colored shards and scattered them into sparks like tiny fireworks. "Once you learn that, the rest comes pretty easy."

***

"I tell you, Chives!" Blueblood threw himself back onto the chaise lounge in his dressing chamber, the familiar silky smoothness of the smoking jacket against his hide taking a bit of the edge off his anger. "It was absolutely abominable!"

"Of course, sir." His brownish-orange earth pony valet was laying out his evening clothes, the words emerging crisp and clear despite the lint brush in his mouth. "I honestly don't see how you can continue taking these assignments."

"Well, if Aunt Celestia would learn to manage these sorts of things without me, I'd happily be done with this nonsense!" He shuddered. "The dirt in that hovel of Green Briar's! I spent two hours in the bath this morning, Chives—two hours!—and I swear it's still with me!" He pressed a foreleg to his snout and sniffed, sure he could sense some horrible mustiness lurking behind the jasmine and talc mixture he'd had Chives lace his bathwater with. "But never again!" Leaping to his hoofs, he struck a dramatic pose, cocking his head to check his profile in the nearest of the several full-length mirrors he kept around his rooms for just that purpose. "I shall attend this afternoon's debriefing, report that Green Briar is dead, request a congratulatory leave of absence, and head out to supper and the theater while you draft my letter resigning from the CC! Simple! Direct! Tidy!" He tapped the carpet once for each word. "And I shall be well and truly quit of Her Highness's Clandestine Corps!"

"Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps, your Highness means, of course."

"What?" If Chives had one fault—and he exercised it so rarely, Blueblood tended to forget about it till it reared its ugly head—it was his tendency to say things that didn't quite make sense. "What are you on about now?"

Chives cleared his throat and gestured toward the desk by the dressing chamber door. "As I mentioned when you emerged from the bath, sir, a dossier arrived."

"Dossier?!" Striding to the table, Blueblood sent his magic out to open the cream-colored folder lying there, a single sheet of paper within. "It says I'm to report to headquarters for debriefing." He narrowed his mouth, knowing all too well that it gave him wrinkles but too annoyed to care overly much. "See?! She treats me like a child! Did I not finish my mission last night? Where else, therefore, would I go today but to the debriefing?!"

"Indeed, sir. But if I might direct your attention to the dossier's cover?"

Blueblood slapped the thing back onto the table and saw that the usual HHCC stamp on the front had been replaced by one with THCC on it, the delicate lettering around the stamp's edge definitely spelling out Their Highnesses' rather than Her Highness's.

Taking a breath, Blueblood expelled it. "I hate mysteries. Did you know that, Chives?"

"I was aware of the fact, sir."

"Then stand aside!" One blast of magic tossed his smoking jacket to its hook on the bathroom door while another spun his white tie, ruffled shirt, and black swallow-tailed coat into place around him. "I shall have some answers from Aunt Celestia!"

***

One more turn along the edge of the Everfree, Dash figured, and she'd be all limbered up for her afternoon practice runs. Besides, with the autumn sun as warm and crisp as one of Pinkie's big sugar cookies, the air soft and smooth and just right for flying, it was her favorite time of the year to stretch her wings over the big, wild woods.

Because while the rest of Equestria'd already had Nightmare Night and the Running of the Leaves and was rolling steadily on toward the first snowfall and Hearth's Warming Eve, the Everfree just plain wasn't. And sure, the way the forest here did whatever it wanted to usually made Dash more than a little twitchy—a bunch of its trees still showed green even now!—but the weird summery days that sometimes hung around halfway through fall were just plain perfect for perfecting her moves.

An acrid, mediciney stink jabbed her nose, movement below catching her eye as she whisked past: a lone pony in a long cloak straining to pull a wagon over the lumpy grass, then slipping, falling, a little gasp hissing up to Dash's ears. Back-winging, she banked, looped around, and settled to the ground beside the cart. "You OK, buddy?"

The stallion was struggling to his hoofs, and while he wasn't as big as most of the guys around Ponyville, he was still bigger than her. "Relatively speaking," he said, the hood of his cloak muffling his already soft voice. He turned to face her, and Dash kept herself from flinching by sheer willpower. He was completely wrapped in white cloth bandages under his cloak, only the golden horn spiraling up from his forehead uncovered, his eyes too shaded for her to make out their color. "And thank you for asking."

"You, uhh..." She didn't want to intrude or anything, but how could she not check? "You need any help with that thing?" She flapped her wings and gave a little laugh. "I mean, not from me, but I've got a couple burly earth pony friends who run a farm just down the—"

"Thank you again, young lady, but the pain potion I've taken will be wearing off in approximately thirty-five minutes." Light wavered from his horn. "I hope to have reached my destination within the forest by then, so unless you've got your friends hidden somewhere about your person and can produce them forthwith..."

Dash couldn't help another laugh. Sure, the way the guy was slurring his words and the liniment smell reminded her of ponies she'd visited in the hospital, but he still talked like Twilight at her eggheadiest. "Sorry. But you're on the right track for Zecora's if you're looking for potions." Gesturing with a hoof, she pictured the route from here to there as if she were flying it. "Head due west, and you'll come to the path in, like, fifteen minutes. Turn right, and it'll take you straight to her door maybe ten minutes after that."

The eye holes in his bandages fluttered, and Dash realized the guy was blinking at her. "Do you often appear to strangers in their moments of direst need, miss?"

"Yeah, kind of." Dash shrugged, the old familiar tug of her ego wanting to swell up, but no. After getting kicked in the teeth by Discord and Mare-Do-Well and the near-disaster of raising the lake water to Cloudsdale, she'd been keeping extra-careful watch on her boastfulness. "Name's Rainbow Dash, and I've had friends who've been all bandaged up like that." She shook her head. "Lightning burns're pretty much a regular hazard in the weather business, y'know?"

"I suppose so." His eye holes fluttered some more.

"Oh, but hey." Dash leaped into a hover. "You're in a hurry, so good luck with Zecora and ev'rything, OK?"

"I..." His voice trailed off, and he shook himself like he was coming awake. "Yes. I'll say thank you once more, then, and bid you good day."

Dash nodded and shot into the sky, wings pumping to get her back to training speed.

The cloaked stallion watched her go. "Rainbow Dash," he muttered. Aiming the glow of his golden horn at the cart's wheels, he set them in motion again and guided it up the hill into the shadows of the Everfree Forest.

***

"Put it on my account," Blueblood told the cabby. Hopping from the carriage, he strode across the plaza toward the gates of Canterlot Tower, and yes, it was only perhaps half a block from Hippocras, the estate his family had maintained in town for hundreds of generations. But traveling by cab meant he could avoid—

"Bluey!" rang out a female voice, pitched high enough to make his ears fold. "There you are!" The milling crowds—tourists taking photos and gawking at Auntie's fabled palace; tradesponies scurrying past on whatever mundane deeds absorbed their humdrum lives; a few of the lesser nobility skulking about, no doubt trying to scrounge a dinner invitation—they parted as if they'd been practicing the maneuver for days, and a dusky-pink unicorn mare trotted through the open space toward him. "It's been weeks, darling! Where have you been hiding yourself?"

As tall and slender as they all seemed to be these days, she could've been anypony, her shining silver mane cascading like mother-of-pearl around her horn and falling over one eye in exactly the current fashion. Blueblood didn't even try to stifle his sigh. "You might at least attempt to get your facts straight. I've been out of town exactly ten days. Now if you'll excuse me—"

"Ten days?" Reaching him, she struck a pose on the sidewalk, her front legs slightly crossed at the ankles, her hips slightly cantilevered, her chin slightly lowered, and her eyes slightly raised. She was nicely shaped, certainly, but no more so than any of the others who threw themselves into his path wherever he went. "It felt like ages!" She batted her lashes and pouted. "I was afraid you were avoiding me!"

The pout almost seemed familiar, and for a moment, he thought he could picture a love seat in the darkened parlor of some lavish apartment somewhere. But, well, there'd been so many of those... He cleared his throat. "Certain of us work for a living is the thing." He stepped around her. "Now, be a good girl and run along."

"Bluey?"

There'd been so many female voices saying his name with exactly that intonation, too, a wounded sort of disbelief that brought another sigh to his lips. "Try not to make a scene," he murmured, neither turning around nor stopping; moving through the palace gate, he trusted that the guards could keep out all unauthorized and unwelcome visitors without subjecting him to any further awkwardness...

Along the marble hallways and carpeted passages, he finally pushed through the nondescript door just off the third-floor landing of the Tower's easternmost staircase, magically whisked his opera hat across to its usual hook, and winked at Auntie's confidential secretary. "Afternoon, Miss Hyacinth."

Seated behind her desk, she didn't wink back, but then she never did. This time, though, she glanced at the watch dangling from her slender fetlock. "I was asked to inform your Highness that you are late: eighteen minutes at this point, to be precise." She focused on her typewriter again, the glow of her horn making the keys dance. "You're to go in as soon as you arrive."

"Is that a fact?" He leaned sideways against the front of the desk and gave her his most rakish raised eyebrow. "Auntie's got a new grandfather clock, has she?"

The smile that Hyacinth turned up at him had altogether too many teeth in it. Blueblood blinked, and she gestured toward the door into Aunt Celestia's office. "We've had a number of interesting changes around here this past week, Double-O-Zeta. Believe me, you do not want to keep her Highness waiting." She chuckled, something that, till that very moment, Blueblood would've sworn the lime-green unicorn was incapable of doing.

Odd. Still, squaring his shoulders, he stepped to the doors, shoved them open, and began: "Now see here, Auntie!"

But he stopped, the place all shadows where he normally had to squint a bit at the concentrated sunshine Aunt Celestia emitted when in any space smaller than, say, the palace throne room. Blinking, he saw the shadows shift, something like a flow of moonlight washing over the desk at the far end of the room. Dark eyes opened beneath the silver swirl, and Blueblood realized it was not Auntie seated there.

"Princess Luna?" he asked, completely unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice.

"Ah, Prince Blueblood." She sounded like she looked: dark and smoky and as serious as a sleepless winter midnight. Blackish-purple energy flowed from her horn, a silver satin sofa springing from the floor like an oversized mushroom. "Please come in and have a seat. We've much to discuss."

***

Eyes closed, floating upside-down, stroking her wings just enough to keep herself airborne, Dash drew in a deep, perfect breath, all her muscles loose and relaxed. Everything had come together better than any dream—the wind, the humidity, the pressure gradients—and she'd stormed through a routine that would've had the Wonderbolts on their knees, begging her to join.

Picturing the scene gave her a quiet chuckle, but a rumble from her middle pushed away every thought but cookies and dinner, and in that order, too. Because the best thing about being out on her own—she'd almost thought 'being an adult,' but she was pretty sure it'd be a long time before anypony'd be calling her that—the thing that made her spin a slow, lazy loop-de-loop right then and there, was eating dessert first.

Still not opening her eyes, she sucked in another big lungful of air through her nostrils, sifting the scents: all spicy and weird from the Everfree to her right; all wood smoke and cider from Sweet Apple Acres behind her; all alfalfa and damp fur ahead—must be bath day at Fluttershy's. And to her left, oh, to her left...

Ponyville pulled at her in ways even Cloudsdale never had, in ways no place in all of Equestria ever would. This was her town, from the top of City Hall to the bottom of Applejack's cellar, and drifting over onto her side, she let her eyes slide open, a grin on her muzzle at the shops and houses, the parks and the river, the whole place drenched in late autumn sunlight from a sky as clear as she knew how to make it. And right in the middle—

She dug at the air, spun, and swooped across the city limits just above the rooflines with enough speed to bend the bare treetops toward her but not enough to break a single twig. The town square flashed toward her, and she bent her wings into a much tighter loop than earlier—folks were watching her now, after all—let herself stall out at the top, and dropped in a series of flips and twirls smack-dab onto the doorstep at Sugar Cube Corner, the late afternoon sun casting her shadow all the way up the street and practically to the library.

Ruffling her feathers, she grinned over her shoulder at the scattered whoops and applause. But no, she wasn't going to let how incredibly awesome she was go to her head anymore. So she just nodded instead of making a big show out of it, then stepped into the bakery, closed her eyes again, and let the smells of warm butter and cinnamon wash over her.

A laugh tinkled like silver bells from ahead. "No sweeter scents, I think, exist," a lilting voice said, "than these, so spiced and sugar-kissed."

Dash opened her eyes and blinked at the smiling zebra, her saddlebags bulging with pink pastry boxes. "Oh, hey, Zecora. That guy find you earlier OK?"

Zecora cocked her head. "I've not had any visitors come up my path or tap my doors."

"What?" Dash's mane prickled. "I met a unicorn three, maybe four hours ago all wrapped in bandages and smelling like he was burned pretty bad. He was hauling a cart into the Everfree about halfway between town and Applejack's place."

"He didn't seek me out, I fear." Zecora's frown made her look even scarier than usual. "You're sure he wasn't heading here?"

"No! He said—" Dash stopped. "Huh. Y'know, he didn't actually say he was looking for you. I just guessed it when he said he was taking potions for the pain." The prickle along her spine got bigger, and she stomped the floor. "I knew I should've gone with him!"

She turned for the door, but a hoof on her shoulder stopped her. "The sun will set within the hour and make those woods too dark to scour."

"But—!"

"So let me search in my own way." Zecora tapped her snout. "I'll find this pony gone astray."

"You're sure? I mean, I can totally help if you—"

"Dashie!" Pinkie came bounding from the kitchen. "I thought it was you here talking 'cause it's just about time for you to be here talking, and look! Here you are! Talking!" She whirled, vanished into the kitchen again, then came streaking out, a glorious aroma drifting up from the tray balanced across her back. "And 'cause I knew you were coming, I made up a batch of your favorite blueberry and banana chip cookies!"

The growl from Dash's stomach hit her so hard, she felt it down to her knees, and she couldn't stop a blush at Zecora's little laugh. "While you relax, I'll seek our steed and call you in if I have need."

"Well, OK." Somehow, Dash managed to tear her gaze away from the cookies. "But if you find him or if you don't, you make sure to let me know! Because if I don't hear from you by, like, mid-morning tomorrow, I'm heading out to your place to see what's going on!"

Zecora poked her in the chest. "A 'Pinkie promise' I shall make, all flying eye and smashed cupcake."

Pinkie pursed her lips. "That's not how it goes."

Dash had to grin. "It's close enough." She shook a hoof at Zecora. "Tomorrow, mid-morning."

With a bow, Zecora turned for the door. "If lunchtime comes and I have not, then nothing's gone quite as it ought, and you must come out straight along." She smiled back over her shoulder. "But what could possibly go wrong?"

She stepped into the quickly darkening autumn evening, and a sudden clatter made Dash spin, the tray leaping upward from Pinkie's twitching back, cookies flying everywhere. With no time to even gasp, Dash lunged forward, dove and twisted and swirled around without letting herself think, and grabbed the whole batch before a single cookie could so much as brush the ground. "Whoa!" Clutching her precious cargo to her chest, she hovered in front of Pinkie. "Don't tell me. That's the twitch that means I should go with her, right?"

"No." Pinkie's brow furrowed, her snout scrunching like she was thinking. "That was my you really really shouldn't do anything but eat right now twitch, I'm pretty sure." She shrugged. "It's kinda hard to tell 'cause it's so much like my the ants are stealing the light bulbs twitch." She looked around the cafe section of Sugar Cube Corner. "But I don't see any dark lamps. Do you?"

Unable to resist the gorgeous steam drifting from the cookies any longer, Dash plunged her snout into them and sucked up two or three, the sugar rush setting her whole body to tingling. "So everything'll be OK? Is that what you're saying?"

Pinkie nodded so hard and fast, Dash expected her eyeballs to start rattling. "You bet! Unless the ants really are stealing the light bulbs. 'Cause I don't think anypony'd call that OK."

Dash laughed, fluttered backwards to a table, gently set the cookies down while snagging another couple, and dropped into a seat. "Dinner time, then! I mean, after dessert, of course."

***

"And finally," Princess Luna said, shuffling one last folder from the piles and piles arranged across her desk.

"Yes!" Blueblood couldn't keep from exclaiming. How many hours he'd been there, he had no idea—certainly it must be close to midnight by now—nor was he entirely certain what it was the princess had been talking about for most of those hours. And while the frown she gave him would probably have frozen a lesser pony, Blueblood found he could shrug the effect off fairly easily. "I'm merely concerned, Auntie," he went on in as smooth a voice as he could muster. "Won't Equestria's timekeepers be slightly confused by nightfall's continued non-arrival while you've spent so much of your precious time running over—" He waved a hoof at the folders. "What is it you've been running over again?"

Cold silence settled over the whole room, nothing moving across the desk for a long moment but the princess's mane, wafting about her head like smoke. "In the first place, Double-O-Zeta," she said after a long moment, "do you assume that I am incapable of bringing on the night while reclining here in conversation with you? For I assure you, the sun is setting even as we speak, and I am currently performing all actions necessary for an on-time and successful initiation of the evening." Her voice somehow became more formal and glowering. "And in the second place, I am no more your aunt than you are a prince. I'll ask you to remember that."

Blueblood stiffened. "Not a prince?! Now look here! My family has been royalty in Canterlot since before Auntie Celestia married into our line a thousand years ago and came to dwell among us! My pedigree stretches back unbroken to—!"

"What peculiar things my sister did or did not do during my exile," the princess said, her words snapping like branches in an ice storm, "is no concern of mine." She tapped a hoof against a stack of file folders. "What does concern me now that I've returned is the continued success of the Clandestine Corps I established some fifteen hundred years ago, and as I am once again stepping into a leadership role here—"

"You?!" Blueblood put an extra measure of astonishment and disbelief into the word.

Princess Luna didn't respond with indignation or outrage as he'd expected. In fact, she gave a little smile, nodded as if he'd reacted the way she'd expected, then her dark magic was flowing over the file in front of her, flipping it open almost jauntily. "You've been quite an asset to the Corps, Double-O-Zeta," she said, her gaze intent on the papers as she shuffled them about. "For my part, I find you almost completely repugnant, but I must admit that you do good work."

Nearly surging to his hoofs, Blueblood stopped himself, and the part of his brain that he usually employed only during missions flicked into place like a pair of opera glasses, bringing the scene before him into sharp focus. After all, he realized, she was merely doing to him what he did to most other ponies he met. It made him smile, and he relaxed for the first time in what felt like days. "Coming from an individual such as yourself, Auntie, that's quite a compliment."

That got her to glance up, and the slight narrowing of her eyes felt to him like some sort of victory. Until she said, "This Green Briar, however." Her focus moved back to the dossier. "He seems to know you all too well. You've stumbled upon him six times and have proven to be less effective against him at each encounter."

"Not entirely true." He waved a hoof as negligently as he could. "Our sixth little run-in, in fact, will be the last. Perhaps a perusal of last night's fire department records from down the hill will shed some light on the matter."

She slid one of the papers across the desk toward him. "This report here?" she asked. "The one concerning a structure fire in the woods a half mile west of Canterlot? The one that states the rescue teams found no trace of any inhabitant?" Her magic floated another paper to settle atop the first. "Or this report from one of our technicians who, inferring your involvement in some sort of fire from the condition of your equipment when you returned last night, dispatched several agents to the site? By then, of course, so many hours had elapsed that the trail they found had gone quite cold."

"Trail?" Blueblood couldn't stop his ears from folding. "You're saying he got away."

Another curl of her magic returned the papers to the file and folded it shut. Leaning forward, Princess Luna rested her elbows on the dossier and crossed her front hoofs beneath her chin. "Tell me about Green Briar, Double-O-Zeta."

He returned her gaze and had to dig into the stock of insolence he so carefully cultivated to keep himself from sinking into the bottomless depths of her eyes. "Am I to stand and recite, Auntie?"

Her smile actually broadened, his heart shivering: again, not at all the reaction he'd been aiming for. "However you're most comfortable," she practically purred.

Sighing, Blueblood slouched against the back of the sofa. "What's to tell? Brilliant by all accounts, he still washed out of Auntie's academy for failing to do the work assigned him. Y'see, he's rather obsessed with the magic we unicorns employed back in the days of Queen Platinum and that lot. Before you princesses descended upon us, that is." He gave her his most dazzling smile. "Perhaps you should have a chat with him, Auntie. I'm sure he'd change his tune entirely once he got a whiff of your delightful aroma."

The dig didn't even make her blink, her eyes, in fact, seeming to get distant and unfocused. "And Sister thinks he's dangerous," she muttered.

It didn't sound like a question, but Blueblood decided to answer it anyway. "He tries to be, but I'd call him more destructive than anything else, the way his laboratories tend to burst into flames at the first touch of an explosive device." He shook his head. "So few ponies in the construction industry seem to take pride in their work anymore...."

"The trail." The folder flipped open again, the princess examining the top piece of paper. "It was heading west, the investigators said. Away from Canterlot."

"Given up, then," Blueblood started to say, but a bit of Green Briar's rantings from the previous night bubbled up inside him. "Except... He said something about finally finding the proper way, said he wanted me to confirm his theory." Annoyance flashed through him, but for the first time in quite a while, it was at himself. If he'd simply gone back and checked—

"Very well." Her eyes flashed silver, and the sheer magical voltage that radiated from them made Blueblood feel something else he rarely felt: impressed. "You'll catch the next train for Ponyville, Double-O-Zeta. I want you there by sun up."

"Ponyville?!" He couldn't help leaping to his hoofs this time. "What in Aunt Celestia's name could possibly be there?!"

"The Everfree Forest." Princess Luna had that cold and serious look about her again. "If there's anything of the old magic still festering in Equestria, it's likely to be lurking there, especially since Sister abandoned our castle." She drew a breath and blew it out. "Again, however, I'm not concerned with the past. We're looking forward." She aimed a silver shoe at Blueblood. "And you're pursuing Green Briar to Ponyville. Hopefully you'll finally be able to break his winning streak against you."

"It's out of the question!" He pounded a hoof against her desk, and while a part of him knew he was overreacting, the rest of him didn't care. "Culturally, materially, and in every other important respect, Ponyville is nothing but a wasteland!" There was something else about it, too, something direct and personal that gave the name a negative connotation in his head, but his flaring temper kept him from recalling what it was. "I'll resign from the Corps rather than allow myself to be run over in so roughshod a fashion!"

And while he certainly didn't expect Princess Luna to be as solicitous and coaxing as Aunt Celestia was whenever he threatened to quit, he didn't expect her to shrug, either. "Suit yourself. Naturally, I'll have to revoke your Double-O status and your security clearances. And as long as I'm at it, I might as well dissolve your household and strip your family of all its grants and titles." She smiled. "Just to tie up any loose ends."

Her words struck his brain and stuck there like darts in a dartboard. "What?" he finally managed to squeak.

"I would do no such thing, of course, any more than you would truly give up this job." The glare she fixed on him shook Blueblood like a thunderclap and made him realize with a sudden horrible clarity that the creature he was casually exchanging quips with was less a pony than a force of nature.

"For I know you, Prince Blueblood," she continued, her voice so quiet, he had to strain to hear it, yet each word bit at him more sharply than the shards of a shattered mirror. "I know that you'd lose whatever tiny bit of mental equilibrium you possess should you try to quit, and within a week of you walking out that door, we'd be arresting you for some enormously complicated heist you'd just pulled off." The shadows that burst from her wrapped around him till the only light came from her eyes and her mane. "Because you're as hollow as a bell, Double-O-Zeta, and resigning from the Corps would do nothing but tear out your clapper, leaving you not just hollow but empty."

With a soundless snap, the room returned to normal, the princess closing the file folder gently with a hoof before looking back up at him.

Realizing that he hadn't taken a breath in quite some time, Blueblood forced his lungs to move with a choke and a gasp he was just able to swallow. Taking another moment to find his voice, he managed to keep the shivers that were wracking his body from making his words wobble. "So. Ponyville, then."

"If you wouldn't mind, nephew," she said sweetly.

***

It wasn't often that Dash found herself blinking at the very first strokes of dawn's light brushing across her cloudy walls. When it did happen, though, it was always just like this, the way she would be instantly and totally awake, a weird energy humming through her. It made her itch like she had something she was supposed to be doing, but she never had a single idea what it might be.

She sat up, fluffed her wings, and jumped to the window. Outside, black faded to gray faded to blue in the east, and for an instant, she felt like she was the only pony in the whole wide world. It wasn't a good feeling—kinda cold and lonely—but it wasn't bad, either, like she was Daring Do about to leap off into another adventure or something.

Besides, she knew Applejack was already up and doing whatever farm pony things she was always yammering about, and Pinkie would be baking, too, her and the Cakes getting the donuts and pastries all ready for the morning rush. Thinking that made the good feelings get bigger, and when the rim of the sun poked all golden and bright over the mountains to the east, Dash couldn't keep it all inside; grabbing the windowsill, she heaved herself out into the autumn-frosty air.

As much as she wanted to just cut loose, slice through the stillness like a knife, and leave nothing behind her but swirling shards of sky, she knew that'd royally screw up everything the morning shift was supposed to be doing with today's weather. It made a part of her grin, thinking of the crew trying to settle things down after she'd gone tearing through, but it wasn't that big a part.

A whistling toot drew her attention to the night train from Canterlot chugging along the valley floor over the hill to her left. That got the rest of her grinning, and she veered toward it. The old earth pony engineer Coal Porter always groused whenever she saw him at Sugar Cube Corner about how boring the red eye run was. Maybe she'd do a little fly-by and give him a thrill.

***

Among the many things Blueblood prided himself on was his ability to sleep anywhere and at any time. Even after the more life-threatening moments of these excursions, he'd always been able to catch a few winks whether he was sprawled over the crates in an airship's cargo hold or bobbing across the sea in a lifeboat.

Yet here he was, propped up in the fold-out bed of his train compartment, the pre-dawn sky gray out the window and Chives snoring lightly in the room next door. He'd stomped home after his meeting with the princess, had ordered Chives to pack him a bag, and then as a sort of existential protest had ordered the earth pony to pack one for himself as well. If Auntie Luna wanted to punish him with this assignment and have him chase her wild hunches to the backside of nowhere, well, he would allow himself an amenity he never did while traveling on Corps business and bring his valet along.

But how could Princess Luna doubt his hatred for the Corps? Was she unaware of how tired those in his social circle had become of his constant litany of complaints every time he was forced to leave the civilized precincts of Canterlot for the trackless wastes of the Equestrian countryside? Truly, it had gotten to the point that, when some boor or hanger-on would dare inquire where he'd been for the past week or three, those who frequented the same salons as he did would heave the sighs for him! "Please don't ask!" they would exclaim with almost as much exasperation as he could himself, and the talk would quickly move on to other subjects! Wasn't that proof enough?!

The brightening sky, though, seemed to bring a strange and sudden clarity to his thoughts despite his sleepless night. For perhaps the first time in his life, Blueblood found himself not only unable to summon his usual bluster but also thinking honestly about the princess's words. After all, it made for a nearly impenetrable cover, the way he'd conditioned everypony not to ask about his frequent absences. And he could never deny the exquisite rush of pursuing these foul miscreants and dragging them in to face justice. Or as had happened four times in the years since Aunt Celestia had granted him Double-O status, leaving Miss Hyacinth to contact their next of kin...

He blew out a breath, touched a hoof to the moisture that condensed from it over the compartment's window, and vowed that Princess Luna would never hear these words pass his lips. Because she'd been right. The Corps was his life.

And he wasn't at all sure how he felt about that.

Out the window, a speck of sky seemed to tumble out of alignment, its streaming double rainbows drawing his attention. What in Equestria—?

Drawing rapidly nearer, the speck developed outstretched wings and hoofs as well as a short but sleekly feminine shape. She whooshed past the train like it was standing still, the rumble and roar shaking the car even more than it already was, and Blueblood caught the briefest glimpse of squinting violet eyes before she was gone, only her colorful trail showing she'd even been there. The shimmer of it made Blueblood smile. He didn't know many pegasi—they more often stood guard at the gatherings he found himself invited to than attended them as guests—but when compared to the snobby unicorns and sniveling earth ponies of his acquaintance, the lack of affectation most pegasi seemed to display always struck him as quite refreshing.

A rap came from the compartment door, and Chives's thick voice trickled through: "Your pardon, your Highness, but the conductor's just informed me that we'll be arriving in five minutes."

"Confound it!" Leaping to his hoofs, he pulled on his usual characteristics like a comfortable jacket. "Am I to be rousted off like some hobo?! This conductor and I shall have words!"

***

Relaxing on top of the outgoing mail bags, Dash sipped a paper cup of Ponyville Station's magnificently horrible coffee—Twilight was sure they used fish sauce in it somehow, but Pinkie kept insisting the sign that said 'fresh ground' must be literally true since it tasted so much like dirt. Of course, Dash wasn't planning on drinking the stuff; she just wanted something she could mess with, stirring it and blowing on it while she pretended not to see Coal Porter glaring at her from the engine as it pulled in.

But when the train's single passenger stepped down onto the platform, a stallion as big and white and gold and glowering as a thunderhead moving in front of the sun, Dash couldn't look away. His plain gray traveling cloak alone looked more finely woven than the bed sheets Rarity had gone on and on about at the last sleepover they'd all had at her place.

Not bad at all, she found herself thinking. And then—

"Hurry up with those bags, Chives!" he barked to the earth pony hovering in his shadow, and that was when she recognized him. His nose went all wrinkly like he was smelling something worse than the coffee, and the way his gaze jumped from spot to spot around the station made Dash think he was afraid that looking at anything for too long might get his eyeballs dirty. They were nice eyes, she had to admit—which, of course, was right when they locked onto hers.

"Ah." His smile was just as nice—or maybe it would've been if she hadn't known who he was. He moved across the platform and gave her a little nod. "Our aerialist from this morning. Quite the display."

Well, if he was going to be polite, Dash figured she could be, too. "Welcome to Ponyville," she said, nodding back.

His face brightened. "Say, perhaps you could help me, you being an 'eye in the sky' as it were." He sidled even closer. "I've a friend I'm told is in this neighborhood—a unicorn like myself—and I was wondering if you might perhaps have seen him."

"Him?" For half an instant, Dash had thought the jerk had finally come out to apologize to Rarity, but—

"He's smaller than I, a bit older, and of a more sallow coat. His cutie mark's something like a sprig of green wheat with thorns about the base, and he's got the oddest golden horn, not at all the same color as any of the rest of him."

The golden horn struck a bell with her, but since he didn't mention the bandages... "Guy must've done something pretty serious if a Canterlot prince is chasing him all the way out here. He insult your necktie or something?"

The gleam came off his smile just a bit. "I take it, then, that you recognize me."

Dash nodded. "It's just the last time I saw you, you were wearing a cake."

She could almost see the connection getting made in his head, and that smile grew even chillier. "Of course. That group from Ponyville at the Gala last year. Rainbow something, aren't you?"

"Rainbow Dash." She flicked her mostly-full cup of coffee across to the nearest trash can, spinning it in such a way that none of the spatter came anywhere near him, and had to give him a point when he didn't flinch. "Sorry I can't help you with your friend." Taking off straight up, she figured she'd get enough altitude so he couldn't see her, then head to Sugar Cube Corner and see if Zecora had checked in yet. Beause if as big a jerk as Prince Blueblood was out here looking for that guy, he probably had more problems than just getting lost in the Everfree Forest.

***

Blueblood watched the pegasus dwindle to a spot of sky once more. That she knew more than she was letting on was obvious, and keeping his eyes fixed on her, he used a bit of magnification magic to follow the arch she transcribed. She would be setting down somewhere in the middle of town, he calculated, no doubt eager to spread word of his arrival amongst the rest of the bumpkin-laden populace.

"Chives?" he called. "Hire a cart and rent us some rooms at whatever passes for a hotel here. They have a mayor, I seem to recall, so leave word for me at City Hall as to where we're staying." He shrugged his cloak closed against the autumn morning and started down the steps to the street. "I believe I'll take a bit of a walk."

***

"You're sure?" Celestia asked, and Luna, settling onto the platform atop Canterlot Tower, was surprised to see something very close to worry on her sister's face. "It's just that Blueblood, he's, well, he's..."

Her voice trailed off, so Luna finished for her: "He's a grotesque and bloated toad." But she gave Celestia a quick nuzzle to take the edge off it.

"Starry..."

"Well?" Luna took a breath, let go the reins of the world, and felt the wonderful flow of creation surge out of her.

The glow of it swept like the sun's first kiss over Celestia, but her scent still came to Luna all musty and troubled. "Blueblood has so much potential! I mean, you've seen the reports, and the things I've watched him accomplish when he actually applies himself, well, the result are nothing less than astounding!"

And as much as Luna wanted to— "I can't disagree. But with all due respect, Sunny, he needs a bit of tough love."

With a smile, her sister nuzzled her in return. "Your specialty."

"I should say so!" Luna looked away from the rising sun, extended her senses all the way to the Ponyville train station, and felt Blueblood's aura there as hard and cold as a lump of undigested oatmeal. "He'll either fail and doom everything we've tried to accomplish in Equestria the past few millennia, or he'll succeed and enter into a life more wonderful than anything he's ever dared dream." She turned back to Celestia and grinned. "His choice."

Delight sparkled through Celestia's mane. "You've even more faith in him than I do!"

Luna laughed. "He and I are kindred spirits, I'm afraid." And with less than a thought, she dispersed herself on the winds of the gathering dawn.

Act II - Octopony

When off on one of these little jaunts, Blueblood had found that he could determine his distance from Canterlot by the time of day the locals began going about their business. The earlier ponies started work, the further from civilization he deemed it.

So he wasn't at all surprised to see that, mere moments after Aunt Celestia had given the sun its daily heave-ho, Ponyville already swarmed with activity. The hats, yokes, and carts led him to guess the traffic was mostly farm workers meandering along toward whatever cargo awaited them at their charmless little train station.

Well, all right, it hadn't been completely charmless. Until she'd started speaking, that pegasus had presented quite the fetching picture, all sky blues and rainbows reclining atop the plain dun background of those sacks. Her toned and compact elegance made for yet another contrast—albeit a much more pleasant one—between Ponyville and Canterlot, and Blueblood found his mouth going sideways at the thought of the spindle-legged females back home whose spidery embraces he constantly found himself trying to dodge.

A pity he was here on assignment. And even more of a pity that, by choosing not to give him the information she so clearly possessed concerning Green Briar's whereabouts, this Rainbow Dash had made herself a part of that assignment.

Leaving Chives to see to the luggage, he squared his withers in the plain black suit coat he wore beneath his traveling cloak and set off for the center of town, his eyes still tracing the trajectory of Rainbow Dash's flight from the train station.

***

"Nothing?!" Dash waved a hoof. "Zecora said mid-morning, and it's already—" She glanced at the clock ticking happily away beside Sugar Cube Corner's coat racks. "OK. So it's hardly even seven yet. But she could still be in trouble!"

Smearing glaze over a freshly-fried batch of donuts, Pinkie shrugged. "No twitches here," she said around the brush in her mouth.

"And that means what?" Dash had a healthy respect for Pinkie's twitches, sure, but they just weren't reliable. It wasn't like with weather, after all, where certain moves would always help a pony chase down lightning or pile up cumulonimbus clouds and certain other moves would just get her singed or frozen.

Pinkie shrugged again and dropped her brush into the bowl of glaze. "Silly Dashie. It's twitches that mean stuff, not not twitches!"

Dash folded her front legs, flopped backwards against the wall and slouched to the floor, her real feelings too turbulent for words. "It's just so unfair! This weird guy with the bandages is the only excitement we've had all week, and I'm missing it! If I'd've stuck with him, I'll bet I could totally be fighting monsters right now!"

With a flick of her hoofs, Pinkie slid the donuts off her big metal tray into the display case, empty after the morning rush. "Most monsters turn out to be really nice guys once you get to know 'em." Her face brightened. "Remember that manticore? Or the Ursa Minor? Ooo! Or when Cerberus came to town?" She started bouncing in place. "They were great!"

"Yeah, yeah." Dash blew air through her lips and hoped Pinkie was right. "Wimpy little monsters we get around here..."

"Indeed?" asked a deep voice, its snooty accent one she'd already heard enough of today. "You prefer your monsters more robust, Ms. Dash?"

"Ooooo," Pinkie said again, but this time she put so much movement into the sound, it made Dash think of a leaf wafting around on the breeze. "I know you! You're that guy! With the hat! No, wait: I was the one with the hat! You were Captain Snooty Pants! Or Prince Porpoise Head! Or something!"

It took a little effort, but Dash didn't so much as glance over. Had he followed her? How long had he been standing there? Had he heard her mention the bandaged pony?

His shadow moved across the floor, polished hoofs and the edge of that fine gray cloak gliding casually into her field of vision. "I've met a few monsters in my time," he said, his words all zephyr-smooth and velvet. "They and I didn't get along."

And, well, there was no way Dash could let that go. "Really?" She snapped a big grin up at the prince, his deep blue eyes half closed like the sky glimpsed through a layer of clouds. "Somepony you don't get along with? Imagine that!"

Those eyes hardened into something pretty close to a glare, and Pinkie gave another drawn out squeak. "Hey! If you want monsters, you and Dashie should go into the forest looking for that guy she—"

It took Dash less than a twentieth of a second to leap across the room and jam a front hoof into Pinkie's mouth, but the way Blueblood's whole face tightened up, she knew she'd been too slow—he was a jerk, sure, but he wasn't an idiot. He took one step forward, and she suddenly realized just how big he was: maybe even Big Macintosh big. "Where is he, Ms. Dash?" he asked, his tone a couple degrees colder than before.

She fixed her gaze on his. "What do you want with him?"

He didn't so much as blink. "Why do you care?"

A wet little wiggle against her hoof made her remember she still had it stuffed into Pinkie's mouth; she wrenched it out with a pop, Pinkie smacking her lips and exclaiming, "Mmmm! Rainbowy!" She waggled her eyebrows. "You wanna try some, Cap'n Prince?"

Not even bothering to groan, Dash turned back to Blueblood. "I don't care. Except he was hurt pretty bad, and then a scumball like you comes skating into town looking like you want to hurt him even worse!" Shaking her hoof to dry it, she tapped her own chest. "Because I've met some monsters, too, buddy, or maybe you've never heard of Nightmare Moon? Discord? The Queen of the Changelings? And I don't like it when big guys like that start ganging up on us little guys!"

"Yay!" Pinkie dove behind the counter and came up with pom-poms on her front hoofs. "Go, Dashie, go! Go, Dashie, go!"

Dash gave Pinkie a grin, but she kept her attention focused on the prince. And for all the disdain she saw in the curl of his lips, she could almost smell him thinking, a sharp and fiery scent like lightning flashing so deep in the clouds, most ponies wouldn't even know that it was there. "Very well, Ms. Dash," he said after a moment. His gaze flickered over to Pinkie. "Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?"

***

Blueblood believed quite strongly in the snap judgments and intuitions that his compass rose cutie mark symbolized, especially since trusting them had saved his life on these missions more times than he could count. So when that feeling of crystal-clear certainty came over him while looking down at this tough pegasus, he quickly shifted his approach. As she'd pointed out, after all, she was practically a colleague, nor was she entirely unused to being a pawn in his Aunties' various machinations. "Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?"

She blinked as if it was the last thing she'd expected him to offer. "Yeah, sure, I guess." She gave a quick nod to the odd baker, the earth pony tucking her pom-poms away under the counter. "See you later, Pinkie."

"You better believe you will!" she said, her cotton-candy mane seeming even larger than when Blueblood had come in.

Rolling her eyes, Rainbow Dash sprang over the counter with a fluid grace that made Blueblood recall her title as the current Best Young Flier in Equestria. She settled to her hoofs and started for the door. "C'mon."

A part of him wanted to slip into his accustomed haughtiness and demand that she refer to him as 'your Highness,' but it didn't seem the sort of thing that would serve the mission, either, not with somepony this prickly. So instead, keeping his voice down as they stepped outside, he asked, "How much do you know about Green Briar?"

"Nothing." Stretching in the morning sunlight, she answered so easily, he thought she must be lying again, but those big, violet eyes didn't hold the slightest trace of guile. "His cart was giving him trouble, so I flew down to see if he needed a hoof with it."

He waited for her to go on, but she didn't. "That's all?"

"Yep." More than a little of that earlier belligerence seeped back into her gaze. "So how 'bout you tell me what you know?"

A few of the ponies setting up their booths in the market square, he noticed, were giving them wide-eyed looks, but Blueblood ignored them and shrugged. "Simply put, Green Briar's mad. He's become convinced that Princess Celestia has usurped some ancient power we unicorns once wielded, and he's spent his life seeking a way to wrest this power back from my darling aunt. Or rather, the princesses and my darling aunts, I should say, now that they're back to their full complement and all. Still, I've been asked to use any and all means to stop him."

It gave him a warm shiver, discussing a subject he'd spent most of his adult life doing his best never to mention, and it inspired in him a feeling he wasn't sure he had a name for. Pride, perhaps? Not his usual sort, of course, the sort that put a strut in his step and a sneer on his lips for all those unfortunate enough not to be him, but a pride in...in...

In what?

He couldn't say.

"Huh." Rainbow Dash's scratchy voice pulled him from his thoughts. "So Princess Celestia would've heard of this Green Briar guy?"

A breath got him centered again. "It was Auntie who first set me on his trail some years ago, in fact."

"OK." She cocked her head and gave that big grin again, the one that he was starting to find both aggravating and endearing. "Hope you don't mind if we stop off and check your story before we do anything else."

"I beg your pardon?" But she was already trotting away through the market square, an annoying little perk to her ears and an even more annoying little bounce in her walk. Was she truly impugning his character? Tightening his lips, he hurried after her. "Now see here, Ms. Dash! I am not in the habit of lying!" Which wasn't entirely true, of course, but—

"Trouble, sugar cube?" The interruption came in a voice so twangy, Blueblood couldn't keep from wincing, and the speaker's hat, hair style, and entire demeanor shrieked 'farm pony' even more loudly than her accent.

"It's OK, Applejack," Rainbow Dash called with a flick of her tail, her pace not slackening. "You remember Prince Blueblood from the Gala, right?"

The suspicion on the farm pony's face deepened into something even less pleasant. "Reckon I do," she more grumbled than said, and Blueblood hurried past lest her actions take a similar ugly turn.

Catching up with the smugly smiling little pegasus, he made his words both quiet and clipped. "Drawing attention to myself, Ms. Dash, is very much the last thing I need to do here!"

"Good luck with that." She flashed her grin again. "Maybe you didn't notice, Princey, but you kind of stand out in a crowd. Especially when we don't have a crowd around anywhere."

Which was more than enough of that, he decided, intuitions or no. "You may address me as 'Your Highness,'" he told her, drawing himself up to his full height.

"Yeah?" Her ears flicked just enough to tell him he'd made a mistake, and for perhaps the first time in his life, a little twinge of remorse tugged at him. "Well, you can call me 'Dash,' your Whoness. And you can do some other things, too, though I don't think you'd enjoy most of them."

The part of him that wanted to bluster swelled up, but she had flitted ahead to a large tree planted at the far end of the town square, windows and awnings sprouting from it as much as branches and leaves. The candle painted on the door told him it was the town library, and quite the impressive feat of biomancy it was, too, he had to admit.

Rainbow Dash—or Dash, he supposed, especially if she'd only told him to call her that to annoy him—Dash started pounding on the front door, and Blueblood pursed his lips. "Surely the Ponyville library doesn't keep such early hours."

"Nope." She pounded some more. "That's why we need to knock so loud."

The reasoning for this continued to elude him until he heard a mumble from within: "Yeah, yeah, yeah." The lock clicked, and the door swung open to reveal a juvenile dragon, purple and green and somehow familiar. "Rainbow? Can't you just crash through a window like usual? I'm trying to—" The dragon's gaze met Blueblood's, and his squinting eyes burst open like oversized popcorn kernels. "Prince Blueblood?! How—? What—? Why—?"

"Spike, isn't it?" he asked, memories coming back to him of the little creature waddling about the castle; Blueblood had always been so jealous that Auntie's special ed. student got a dragon and he didn't. "It had slipped my mind entirely that you and—"

"We're closed!" came a young mare's voice, sleepy and slurred, and a tousled purple head peered around the corner of what Blueblood supposed was a stairway. "Spike, if you and your friends want to—" She stopped, her eyes doing much the same thing as Spike's had. "Your Highness?!"

Trying his best to keep the irritation from his face and voice, he nodded to her. "Ms. Sparkle. I had no intention of rousing you from your bed, but—"

"Yeah, that was me." Dash pushed through the doorway past the little dragon and into the foyer. "Spike, we need to get a letter to the princess."

Ms. Sparkle did some more blinking. "Rainbow? What's going on?"

Dash was rooting through a writing desk along one wall. "Just something I've gotta check on."

"O...K..." A little rustle of magic partially smoothed Ms. Sparkle's mane, and she gave what Blueblood thought to be a very gracious smile under the circumstances. "Please, your Highness, won't you come in? I can have Spike whip up some tea and—"

"Hello?" Dash had a quill clenched in her teeth, and even though she wasn't nearly as accomplished at speaking that way as Chives was, Blueblood could still understand her clearly enough. "Spike needs to write a letter to the princess! This jerk can get his own whatever."

***

Twilight's gaping face would've made Dash laugh if she hadn't had a mouth full of pen. "Rainbow Dash! When a prince of the royal household comes all the way from Canterlot, you don't—!"

"Yeah, yeah." Good thing Twilight was so organized; the paper was right on top of the desk. Dash spat the pen into the waiting inkwell and turned back to regard Blueblood's scowl. It didn't look real, though, not like the guy she'd glimpsed for maybe half a minute in the middle of their walk here, the maybe kind of interesting guy who'd peeked out at her from behind the prince mask before snapping it back into place again. "But he's not here being a prince. He's here on a mission, he says, and I want to have you check with Princess Celestia and see if he really is or not."

"A mission?" Twilight shifted her head back and forth between Dash and Blueblood. "I...I don't understand."

Blueblood sighed and dropped some of the overblown arrogance again, Dash was glad to see. "I assume, Ms. Sparkle, that you acquired a security clearance during your years as Auntie's student?"

Dash hadn't thought they could've, but Twilight's eyes got even wider. "Of course!" she whispered. "You're in the Clandestine Corps, aren't you?

Clandestine Corps?! Dash tried not to, but she knew she was staring at him, too. Daring Do had worked with CC agents in a couple of the books, and everypony knew they were the best! But how could this jerk really be—?

"Your clearance, Ms. Sparkle?" he asked, but his blank expression struck Dash as another mask, like a morning mist burning away only to reveal more clouds beyond.

"I—" Twilight swallowed. "For some of my research, Princess Celestia gave Spike and me Delta Four status."

He nodded. "That should be sufficient." He waved a hoof at Dash more like he was brushing away a fly. "Perhaps you know enough to reassure Ms. Dash about the legitimate threat Green Briar poses to the crown?"

"Green Briar?!" Twilight's mane ruffled up, and Dash could see the goosebumps rising along her neck. "That crazy pony who tried to kill Princess Celestia?! You're saying he's come to Ponyville?!"

Blueblood's face didn't change at all, but that didn't stop Dash from wanting to smack him. Still, Twilight's folded ears and Spike's quivering spines told her all she needed to know. "All right, fine. Let's go get him."

"Wait!" Twilight had gotten all jittery like she did sometimes. "We've got to—I don't know! Do something! Green Briar's dangerous!"

Dash opened her mouth to tell Twilight to chill, but the quiet steel of Blueblood's voice cut the words off before she could even get them out: "Ms. Sparkle, every scheme Green Briar has ever thought up, I have stopped, and I shall stop this one as well." He turned for the door, Spike frozen and staring like some weird statue on somepony's lawn. "I'll ask you to treat this as a matter of utmost secrecy and will bid you a good morning." He looked back, that weird blank expression still on his face. "Ms. Dash?" And he stepped outside.

"Yeah, OK." She gave Twilight a shrug, her friend's gaping mouth not quite so funny all of a sudden. "See you, Twilight." A couple wingstrokes took her through the doorway and settled her beside the prince, his steady steps continuing west along the road toward the edge of town. "You could've told me you were Clandestine Corps," she said, not trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

He glanced sideways, a tiny smile cracking the edges of his big-time serious spy face. "Would you have believed me?"

She laughed. "Not even a little."

"Well, then." He looked forward once more. "Now, where was it you saw Green Briar?"

A thought struck Dash, and she couldn't keep from leaping into a hover. "Can you run?"

"Run?"

Dash swallowed. "I sent a friend of mine into the forest last night looking for that guy. And I'm getting real worried now that she maybe found him."

All he did was nod, and Dash took off—not at top speed, of course, but fast enough to satisfy the tightening dread in her stomach. Past the little houses to the meadows that surrounded Ponyville, she flew over the dry grass toward the dark jagged line of the Everfree Forest, then headed north along the trees to where she'd seen the bandaged unicorn and his cart. The couple times she looked back in that ten or fifteen minutes, Blueblood was galloping along right behind her, and when she finally landed at the spot, she gave him another point for pulling up maybe half a second later, his breath not coming all that much faster than hers.

She gestured toward the woods. "He smelled like he was burned pretty bad, and when he said he was taking potions for the pain, I gave him directions to Zecora's place: she's a zebra who lives out here and does that sort of thing."

"A zebra?" His eyebrows arched. "Ponyville's apparently more cosmopolitan than I thought."

"Yeah, well..." She didn't want to go into all that, so she just shrugged and started up the slope.

***

Blinking at Rainbow Dash heading for the tree line, Blueblood called, "Excuse me, but might I ask where you're going?"

She gave a wrinkle-browed look over her shoulder. "After Green Briar. Isn't that what we've been talking about this whole time?"

He tapped his chest. "I am going after Green Briar. You are going back to Ponyville with my thanks."

"I'm what now?" She turned completely, and Blueblood prepared himself for what was doubtless going to be a temperamental diatribe of historic proportions. But instead, she began flapping her wings just enough to hold her up while she folded her front legs against her chest. "Or are you saying you don't need a guide through the Everfree?"

"Why would I need a—?"

"Monsters." She jerked her head toward the silent forest behind her, not a single breath of wind stirring the leaves anywhere. "You said you didn't get along with them. Well, this is where they come from, and the friends I've had go in there by themselves usually end up having a real bad day."

A snarky comment rose in his throat about how odd it was for her to consider him a friend after such a short acquaintance, but he couldn't quite make himself say it. So he switched tacks entirely: "You let Green Briar go in alone."

Her gaze shifted away, a dry and guilty sort of scent drifting up from her. "Yeah, well, I've been kicking myself about that all night. And now that I find out he's a nutjob and that I sent a friend to deal with him instead of going myself..." Her jaw tightened, and she turned that determined face of hers back to him. "You can try and stop me, your Whoness, but I don't see that leading anywhere but to bigger problems than we've already got."

The blustering part of him tried to bristle up immediately at both her tone and her implication that Prince Blueblood might need the help of some common bumpkin. But when his intuitions kicked in again—she did know the terrain, after all, and he certainly couldn't dismiss her simply as a well-meaning local, not with the experience she'd had confronting peril—he swallowed his outrage for the third time in as many hours. "Very well." He padded through the grass to join her at the forest's edge. "How adept are you at tracking?"

With a little laugh, she tapped the muddy ground: two parallel ruts, he saw then, carved into the dirt and disappearing into the shadows between two trees. "How's that?" she asked.

He gestured with a hoof. "After you, then, my trusty native guide."

Flicking her tail, she turned. He followed, and after fewer than a dozen paces, the eerie silence and half-light of the place had settled around him like a second coat and cloak, no sign at all that open daylight lay not far behind them.

He activated his horn, its pale glow better than nothing, and nodded to the cart tracks. "Did he follow the directions you gave him to your zebra friend's house?"

Her mouth went sideways; she looked back, looked at the tracks, looked up, and then said, "Hang on a minute." Flexing her knees, she sprang into the tree canopy with barely a rustle, Blueblood's stomach clenching. What did she think she was—?

Almost instantly, she dropped back into her previous hoofprints. "Nope. I told him to head due west, and he's already veered off to the north."

"He had a destination in mind." Blueblood started along between the wheel ruts again. "Any idea where he might be heading?"

Beside him, Dash rolled her eyes in thought, the tip of her tongue playing at the corner of her mouth, and Blueblood found that not only couldn't he hide his grin, he didn't much want to. She caught his reaction immediately, he could tell, and her full prickliness snapped back into place. "Something funny?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Merely the absurdity of asking a pegasus to figure directions while she's on the ground."

That seemed to mollify her a bit, her shoulders relaxing. "Yeah, well, once I get my bearings, I'm usually pretty good whether I'm on top or down below."

And the places his mind took that statement. "Indeed?" he asked, unable to keep an eyebrow from arching.

She blinked, and her blush turned her face a lovely violet color. "I...I didn't mean that! I just meant—!" She took a breath and gestured toward the darkened trees ahead. "I'd say he was heading for the castle."

"Castle?" Bits of old stories started tickling his brain and mixing with something Princess Luna had said yesterday, something about—

"It's just a ruin now," Dash was saying. "But I guess the princesses used to live there before the first Nightmare Moon thing a thousand years ago. It's where we beat her the second time and turned her back into Princess Luna, and it's pretty much the only building out here except for Zecora's place." Her lips tightened. "And if Green Briar's trying to find this unicorn magic from before the princesses—"

"Yes." A chill rustling his mane, Blueblood picked up the pace.

"Ummm..." Dash fell in beside him. "Shouldn't we maybe—I dunno—go back and get some of your super spy stuff or something?" And the way her gaze traveled up and down the length of his body took his thoughts in certain directions again. "Or you got it all hidden under your cloak?"

He didn't, of course—he'd just gotten off the train, after all, and hadn't been expecting to already be on Green Briar's trail. Still, he knew Chives would've packed as much of his equipment as would fit, and Blueblood smiled, thinking of his valet conscientiously laying out his collapsible crossbow and miniature camera alongside his dinner jacket. It might be quite convenient, he thought, having Chives along on these missions.

Dash was still looking at him, so he widened his smile a bit. "It's just reconnaissance at this point," he told her. "After all, we can't do anything till we find him, can we?"

Part of him bristled again at the word 'we'—he was Prince Blueblood, Agent Double-O-Zeta, undoubtedly the finest individual operative the Clandestine Corps had ever seen! But Canterlot seemed very far away at the moment, even farther away than it did on most of these missions, and having somepony with him who he knew could take care of herself let him overrule that bristling part once more.

She gave a shrug and a nod, and they pushed steadily onward. The path of Green Briar's cart wound through the trees, Dash assuring him it was keeping a generally northward course, and after a half an hour or so of slipping through the shadowy stillness, a breeze brushed the tip of his nose.

"Whoa," Dash said at the same moment. "Must be a clearing ahead."

"The castle?"

That big grin spread across her snout. "Let's find out."

Arching her back and spreading her wings, Dash began creeping forward, and after dousing the light from his horn, Blueblood followed. They were definitely coming up on an open space, the air moving sluggishly, damp with the scent of age and disrepair. Dash stopped, pressed herself against the trunk of some big gnarled tree with scaly bark, and peered around it into the gloom beyond; Blueblood slid in close to look past her.

Stone walls loomed, and even the trees seemed taller here, their canopies stretching over the castle's tower and blocking out most of the sunlight. In the near-darkness, a glow wavered from the lowest window of that tower, a flickering spot perhaps thirty feet above the ground. The smell of stagnant water drew Blueblood's attention as well, and he saw a jagged ravine cutting the forest floor on the castle's far side. A rope bridge sagged over the chasm, and he realized they must have approached the castle from the rear.

A hoof tapped his chest, and he looked down to see Dash looking back. She jiggled her wings, nodded to the glowing window, and cocked her head. Sending her alone was out of the question, of course, so giving the ruins a quick glance, he pointed to a path up a collapsed wall and along a ledge that would allow him to reach the window as well without relying on his levitation spell. It was odd that he didn't feel the tell-tale tingle of Green Briar's usual anti-magic shield at the base of his horn, but once again, taking chances here was simply out of the question.

Dash nodded, stepped into the clearing, and drifted as quiet as a cloud toward the base of the wall directly below the window. Blueblood crossed what must once have been a courtyard, the stones' thick layer of moss muffling his hoofsteps, and quickly clambered up to the ledge. He glanced over to see Dash rising silently at about the same rate, and she reached the right side of the window just as Blueblood inched his way over from the left. She gave another nod; he returned it, steeled himself for whatever might lay beyond, and stretched his neck to—

"Ah, good," an all-too-familiar voice said from within, and Blueblood felt the stones move. Whirling, he tried to shove Dash out of the way, but the whole wall was flexing and writhing, closing over them like a clam shell snapping shut. He spun again in the total darkness to lash out with his hind legs, but the surface beneath his front hoofs gave way and plunged him forward, a cry and a warm solid pressure against his back telling him that Dash had been caught in the trap as well. Trying to activate his horn only produced a dull buzzing, but then the blackness whisked away to reveal a stone floor rushing up. Doing his best to turn in the air, he still struck shoulder-first, his coat and cloak cushioning the blow, and managed to bounce back onto his hoofs, something binding him tight around his midsection.

"And here I was afraid we might have to start without you," that voice continued. Blinking, Blueblood saw the back of a cloaked figure in the center of the dimly lit room he'd just fallen into, seven stone slabs stretched in a semi-circle behind him. The figure turned, and even though the bandages masked him completely, the voice and the storm cloud above his golden horn told Blueblood everything he needed to know.

Putting on his most disdainful expression, Blueblood took a step forward. "So very typical, Green Briar," he said. "I mean, seriously. Don't you ever get tired of living the cliché?"

Green Briar's horn flared, but instead of the tantrum Blueblood was expecting, the room just got brighter. "Cliché, you say?" His chuckle was high-pitched and not the sort of thing Blueblood had ever heard from him before. "How's this, then?"

The shadows across the stone slabs lessened, and Blueblood blinked to see ponies lying on their backs: two unicorns, two pegasi, two earth ponies, and a zebra. Rings of fire circled their fetlocks, and Blueblood couldn't help but think of the spell that had bound him in Green Briar's tower two nights ago. Getting an eye roll and a cutting remark ready, Blueblood had to stop when the earth pony on the end groaned.

It was Chives.

"No!" Dash shouted behind him, his back suddenly alive with squirming. "Fluttershy! Rarity! Are you guys OK?!"

***

It was like the stones themselves had flowed around her, pushing her belly-first against Blueblood's cloak, then lashing her there on top of him like a foal riding her poppa's back. At least the rocky ring had clamped itself around her hindquarters below her wings, but even flapping as hard as she could wouldn't let her slip out of it. And no way could she lift a big lump of a stallion like Blueblood!

Frantic, she craned her neck to see past his head, and the sight of Roseluck, Fluttershy, Rarity, Zecora, Lyra, Gusty, and some earth pony she didn't know streched over the stone slabs set her to struggling again. "What're you doing, Green Briar?! Let 'em go! You hear me?!"

"Well, well!" The cloaked and bandaged unicorn gave another weird giggle, a broken-glass edge to it that made Dash's ears fold. "Rainbow Dash, isn't it? I should've known, Double-O-Zeta. You'd never have found me this quickly without help."

Blueblood's ears flicked, and Dash could just make out a whiff of uncertainty in his scent. "That's a new look for you, isn't it, Briary?" His accent dripped with scorn. "A bit worse for our last run-in, I'm guessing."

"On the contrary!" Green Briar's little cloud flashed and rumbled, and Dash's stomach clenched. A unicorn should not be able to control weather that well. "Passing through the fire of our last meeting, Double-O-Zeta, opened my mind in so many fascinating ways that I'm delighted I shall have this opportunity to thank you before I kill you." He swept a hoof through the air. "For now that I've seen the truth, have deciphered the mystery of the Octopony, and have set it in motion with the help of my new friends here, I will finally have my vindication!"

Dash blinked at him. "Octopony?"

With a snort, Blueblood tossed his mane. "Check your notes, Briary. I only count seven."

"And not to call your theory phony," came Zecora's slurred voice from behind Green Briar, "but I fear I'm not a pony."

"Silence!" Green Briar spun, lightning slashing from his cloud to wrap around the zebra, her body going stiff. "You have no idea what you're talking about! None of you ever have!" He snapped his head back around, and Dash was sure she could make out a sickly yellow glow where the bandages covered his eyes. "This is the ceremony those foul monstrosities used to steal our power all those millennia ago! Two members of each pony tribe, a non-pony to ground the system, and one to cast the spell and reap its benefits!" He reared back and spread his front legs, his cloak flapping behind him even though Dash couldn't feel any wind. "On this very spot, they robbed us of our heritage! And on this very spot, I shall reclaim it for all unicorns everywhere!"

That the guy was a dangerous nut was beyond question, but seeing her friends lying there blankly blinking at the ceiling, Dash couldn't help shouting out, "A trade then, OK?! Me and his Whoness here for Fluttershy and Rarity!"

A breath gasped beneath her, but fortunately Blueblood didn't say anything so Dash didn't have to start kicking him.

Green Briar, though, just shook his head. "You're to be commended for your generosity, Ms. Dash, but I fear you've yoked your wagon to poor unfortunate Prince Blueblood." The ring across her back seemed to tighten, her inner ear telling her she was rising; looking down, she saw Blueblood's hoofs leave the floor. "And that means you have but the one option available to you."

Blueblood snorted. "You always were a terrible planner, Briary, using a binding spell you yourself can't break."

They began drifting toward the partially-fallen arch that Dash knew from her last time here lead out into the castle's main courtyard. "Ah, yes," Green Briar said behind them. "That's how I want to remember you, Double-O-Zeta: bloviating and exasperating till the last." His voice echoed along the walls as they wafted like dandelion fluff out into the deep-green shadows of the forest morning, Dash beating her wings to try controlling their course but getting nowhere. "Once I've killed your precious princesses and set all ponies free, I assure you, I shall think fondly of the buffoonish oaf who spent so much of his time in a vain effort to stop me!"

Straining, Dash gave a snort of her own. "We can't let that guy do...whatever it is he's trying to do!"

"Oh, we shan't," Blueblood rumbled, the words coming tight and strangled to Dash's ears. "I take it, however, that you know several of the ponies in there?"

"Two of my best friends in the world!" Flapping harder didn't even slow them down, and they floated out the castle gate toward the rope bridge, the spot she remembered so well from the last time she'd come out to these ruins and had faced down Nightmare Moon's Shadowbolts. "And the rest of them, too, except the guy on the end!"

"Yes, well." The tremble in Blueblood's voice made Dash stop, more emotion there suddenly than she'd heard all day. "The one you didn't recognize was my personal valet, Chives." A shaky breath rattled in and out of him. "And the only reason he's lying in there now is because I in my arrogance and stupidity brought him straight into the teeth of mortal danger." His head came up, a fire in his eyes. "So we will find a way out of our predicament, Rainbow Dash. We will storm Green Briar's lair, we will rescue our friends, stop the villain, and save the princesses!"

And as much as Dash wanted to start cheering, she couldn't quite manage it. "Any idea how?" she asked.

"By being clever." Muscles tightened in his jaw, the edge of the ravine coming closer and closer. "For while something's definitely happened to Green Briar since I last tangled with him two days ago, something that's given him more power and confidence and unhinged him even further, this magic dampening field of his weakens with distance. The spell's gotten better since I first felt it, but it hasn't changed that much. So once we're away from its influence, I can undo this belt we've got around us and we can—"

The air made a fizzling noise as they sailed out over the open chasm. Whatever was lifting them cut off abruptly, and gravity's gentle but insistent pull was something Dash knew way too well. "Hang on!" she yelled, stretching her wings again.

"To what?!" he shouted, but Dash tuned him out to focus on their fall, the rim of the cliff passing, the wind picking up, the sluggish stream at the bottom rushing toward them. Because air and earth, sky and ground, the eternal dance between them, this was stuff she'd known since before she could talk. And even with the band of stones tying Blueblood's useless weight to her belly, well, if there was one thing Rainbow Dash could do, it was crash with style.

Not forcing it or pushing it or shredding her muscles trying to stop something that was going to happen anyway, she made suggestions instead, gave their fall a little direction, evened them out, and slowed the drop enough so that Blueblood could maybe—

"Got it," he said. Knees bending and body shifting, he slid around into pretty much the position Dash would've taken if she'd been landing this way by herself. She tightened her grip on the smooth weave of his cloak, then the mud was rising the last few feet to meet them. Blueblood made a sound halfway between a grunt and a cough and skidded into the slime right legs first, his left legs folding. They kind of cushioned the impact though Dash's teeth still snapped together so hard, her eyeballs jiggled. The canyon floor was wet enough so that they kicked up a good-sized wave but mooshy enough to absorb the force of the crash, and they slid to a halt without—she hoped, she hoped, she hoped—snapping Blueblood's legs or ribs or anything else for that matter.

It took a few seconds of panting and listening to him pant, the air stinking of rotting plants, for Dash to get out, "You OK?"

"In a way," he said, and the anger in his voice made her ears fold. His horn began to glow, and he gave a crisp nod. "There. We're out from under his dampening spell. I should be able to—"

"No!" A thought hit her hard, and as much as she wanted to get out of that hole, race back to the castle, and start kicking things over, she figured she really needed to be alive to do that. Stretching quickly, she wrapped her front hoofs around his horn. "No magic!"

"Gah!" He writhed like a storm cloud under her. "What do you think you're doing?! You can't grab a unicorn's horn while he's—!"

"That dampening spell thing!" Dash tightened her grip. "Why didn't it stop Green Briar's magic?!"

"Because he exempted himself, of course!" Blueblood leaped to his hoofs, mud dripping from his cloak. "He fashioned the spell to work on everypony other than him!"

Dash's stomach fell. "You...you can do that? Because, I mean, if I spin up a wind, it'll blow me around as much as everything else. I...I guess I figured that unicorn magic would work in, like, the same way..."

Blueblood snorted. "Well, obviously you know nothing about—!" He stopped, his ears jerking straight up, and he slowly swiveled his head around to face her, his eyes wide. "A blanket spell like a dampening field. To make it work on everypony except you, the variables involved would be vast, practically incalculable! And any exemption spell you cast on yourself would dissipate once the general magic dampening went into effect! There's no way Green Briar could've...could've—!" He went very still under her then, his gaze far away and unfocused. "Unless..."

After a few seconds, Dash cleared her throat. "Unless what?"

"The magic dampening spell." Blueblood sounded as smooth and calm as ever, but Dash knew the calm before the storm when she smelled it. "He tailored it specifically for me."

Taking a breath, Dash blew it out. "That's what I was thinking, yeah. I mean, you said you're always the one who stops him, right? Soon as he figured that out, seems to me that he'd start making plans for when you showed up." She pulled her hoofs away from his horn. "We need Twilight. Her magic'll work, and—"

"But how?!" Blueblood stomped a hoof with a splash. "He would've needed articles of my clothing! Clippings from my mane, from my tail, from my hoofs! He would've needed—!" And when he stopped this time, Dash felt a shudder run through his whole body. "He would've needed Chives," he finished in a whisper.

***

Mud clung cold and foul to every part of Blueblood, but it was nothing compared to the wretched, frozen horror crackling inside his chest. "Chives?" he heard Dash ask from his back. "You mean your friend who's in there?"

"Friend?" Blueblood's mind flailed. Never! the louder parts of him wanted to shout. Merely a valued employee and a trusted servant!

But the quiet part of him, the part he hadn't even know he had in him till Princess Luna's combination of logic and threats had slapped it awake during their meeting yesterday, the part that had stopped him from sleeping the whole way out here from Canterlot and had been forcing him all day to face the truth whether pleasant or unpleasant, that part gave a little sigh. Then you're saying you have no friends at all? it asked.

"No." He scrambled for some other explanation, for any word except 'betrayal,' but the timeline was absolutely clear now that he thought about it. Two days after his second run-in with Green Briar, his previous valet White Glove had come into a sudden and sizable inheritance; the ungrateful wretch tendering his resignation on the spot had forced Blueblood to visit the employment agency his family had used for countless generations. There, he'd met Chives entering the building at the same time, the earth pony impeccable in his black coat and white shirt as he'd held the door for Blueblood, and the easy but restrained conversation they'd fallen into, it had all been...had all been...

"A set-up," he heard himself say. "From the beginning. Chives has been working for Green Briar all along."

"What?" Dash squirmed again, trying once more, he figured, to work herself free from Green Briar's stone ring. "Then why's he tied up in there with the others?"

"Because they think I'm a fool!" Unable to hold back any longer, Blueblood let his anger and his outrage burst forth. "Seeing Chives in danger was supposed to get my temper flaring, was supposed to get me acting even wilder and more rash as I always do! Green Briar would dump me into this ravine, just out of range of the dampening spell, and I would come charging out in a white and magical fury to—" He gasped as the thoughts ricocheting through his head started sticking together into a coherent outline. Craning his neck around, he demanded of the pegasus strapped to his back, "Your friends! Did you see them yesterday?!"

Dash blinked at him. "Well, yeah, in the morning. It was their spa day, so they would've been there all afternoon, then they usually grab some dinner when they're done since it gets dark so early this time of year."

Blueblood looked up at the top of the chasm. "If they've been in Green Briar's clutches since last night, why hasn't he done this Octopony spell yet?"

She made a little sighing sound. "You're saying he was waiting for you and Chives to get here," she murmured.

"He needs me to trigger it all." Blueblood didn't understand the details, but with everything he knew about Green Briar, it had to be true. "I was supposed to let loose with my magic and set off whatever trap he's prepared here, a trap that would no doubt kill me and provide the initial impetus for his spell. And I would have done just that if..." He swallowed and turned back to Dash. "If you hadn't stopped me."

Shrugging, she shook her head. "So. No magic, I can't lift you, and we're still tied together. Any suggestions?"

With Chives's apparent treachery as sharp as knives in his gut, lying down in the muck here and never getting up again was his first thought. But instead, Blueblood began wading through the fetlock-deep mud for the far wall of the canyon. "Climbing, I'd say. You keep your wings flapping to help me stick to the wall, and I do my best not to slip."

He heard Dash blow out a breath, the cool pressure of it brushing the back of his neck. "OK. Then what?"

"Then back to Ponyville." Admitting that he'd failed clawed at the inside of his throat, but ponies' lives were at stake. "Green Briar's done quite the effective job of rendering me useless, so it's as you said: we need Ms. Sparkle." Reaching the cliff face, he touched a hoof to it and looked back at Rainbow Dash, her face serious, her wings cocked and ready. "As soon as we've left the range of any possible spell Green Briar might've set up to explode in the presence of my magic, I break this binding and you fly for town. Gather Ms. Sparkle and Spike, and I'll be waiting for you at the spot where we entered the forest earlier this morning with a plan." Please, Auntie Celestia, let me have a plan by then.

"Right," she said, and when her wings started flapping, he could feel the lift they gave him. "Let's go!"

***

In his spot at the apex of the seven stone slabs, every quaver of his magic in place as it had been since last night, Green Briar waited for the explosion, waited for the power to come flooding over him, waited for the knowledge that Double-O-Zeta had reduced himself to ash while enabling the very restoration he had so often prevented—

And it just kept not happening!

"Gahhh!" He stomped a hoof, galloped for the window, and peered out through the forest's gloom at the ravine. He'd planned this all so perfectly, and he knew Blueblood better than the fool knew himself! What could possibly have gone wrong?!

That pegasus, Rainbow Dash. She was the only variable he hadn't accounted for! But how could he have foreseen her? Double-O-Zeta always worked alone! He had to! No pony could stand being in his Highness's presence for longer than a few minutes! Green Briar's bank account certainly showed that, the way he'd so often had to increase the amount he paid Chives just to keep the pony working as the prince's valet!

Maybe Blueblood had broken his neck during the fall into the chasm? A pretty thought, but not one Green Briar could count on. He should go out and check, peek over the edge and—

Something moved along the far side of the canyon. Green Briar squinted, his teeth grinding, and felt every inch of his burned flesh tighten when the figure of a large muddy pony pulled itself over the rim, blue wings blurring the air behind it. The figure flopped forward onto the ground for a moment, then sprang up and ran into the cover of the trees.

Red spots popping at the corners of his vision, Green Briar turned and stomped across the room to the farthest of the seven slabs. "Chives!" he shouted, blasting away the pall of magically induced sleep from the earth pony lying there. "It didn't work!"

Chives shifted, inhaled, and blinked, confusion as thick as maple syrup over his face. "But...how could it not?"

"Doesn't matter!" Green Briar cast his magic back to pull the dagger from its hiding place in his cart, the blade flashing golden with the light from his horn. "Time for plan B!"

Act III - Thunderbow

The entire way up the cliff face, Blueblood encouraged memories to flash through his head: the harrowing night he'd spent far to the north last winter evading an enraged polar bear, for instance, and the several times he'd found himself clinging to various runaway railway carriages. As long as it kept him from thinking about the way his life was falling to—

But he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about his adventures and how not a one of them had been anywhere near as arduous as this climb. Had he been alone, in fact, he was absolutely certain he would've slipped and fallen several times. Fortunately, however...

One final heave slung him over the edge, and he collapsed into the dirt with a grunt, his cloak a filthy mess of mud, moss, dust and sweat. Wind continued blowing around his mane as it had throughout the climb, and he twisted his head to see Rainbow Dash still firmly bound to him by Green Briar's enchanted ring, her face clenched and her wings pumping. Just then, though, she shivered to a halt and slumped forward, flopping limp across his back.

Blueblood leaped to his hoofs and forced himself to scramble into the trees that rimmed the clearing. Several minutes of running brought him into sight of a massive willow bowing its curtain of leaves all the way to the ground, so he slipped through to the relative shelter within before allowing his knees to bend and settle him onto his stomach. "Dash!" he hissed quietly, craning around once more. "Still with me?"

Her ears flicked, and she groaned. "Ever consider losing some weight?"

The sound of her scratchy voice made him happier than anything had in quite some time. "It's all muscle, I'll have you know."

She looked up, that by-now-familiar wicked grin curling her snout, and he caught his breath at the gentle stroke of her wings, reaching past the edge of his cloak to run along his flanks. "Yeah, I noticed." Her playfulness vanished immediately, though, her front hoofs moving to tug on the rocky band that encircled them both. "So how about muscling this thing off? I mean, we ought to be out of range of whatever magic trap Green Briar set up, shouldn't we?"

About to nod, Blueblood stopped, wracked with doubts of the sort he rarely if ever entertained. He'd been wrong about so much for so long, after all—the hatred he'd always thought he felt toward the Clandestine Corps, for instance, or the trust he'd placed in his valet Chives...

Swallowing, he tried to dig for his usual bravado and just couldn't manage to find it. "I...I don't know," he finally got out, pressing his face between his front legs.

"Oh, no you don't!" A hoof smacked him hard in the back of the head. "You're the super spy here, your Whoness, so you don't get to lose it, not when my friends are lying back there strapped into Green Briar's Octopony spell! Now, you get this thing off us, and we'll go kick some tail!"

Her intensity vibrated through him; Blueblood grabbed hold of it, breathed it in, and let it fill him with the warmth he needed. "Yes, I—" He twisted his neck to look back at her scowl, sweat matting her rainbow mane. "Thank you," he said, a part of him wondering how long it had been since he'd said that to anypony, and a bit of his old self stirred to life. "For having my back, as it were."

She rolled her eyes, and he activated his horn. Touching his magic to the stone ring, he found it to be such a simple ensorcellment that a slight flexing of his will crumbled it to dust.

"Yes!" Dash sprang into the air, Blueblood feeling suddenly cold without her pressed against him. "OK! I'll get Twilight, and you come up with a plan for—"

A rumble shook the ground, the willow tree dropping a cascade of leaves around them, and an even colder chill iced through Blueblood. "Spell discharge." He pushed himself to his hoofs and wished this were the sort of situation where praying to Aunt Celestia might be effective. "Quite powerful, too. He must've had a back-up plan for activating the—"

The rumble this time accompanied a burst of light that tore away the forest's shadows and made the earth feel like a river flowing around his fetlocks. "The Octopony," he finished as a peal of maniacal laughter swept through the trees.

***

Her wings and back aching, Dash could barely keep herself hovering. "But wait!" She spun to face Blueblood. "I thought you said he needed you to make it work?!"

He winced, and Dash winced, too. As annoying as she found his snootiness, it twisted her gut to see how much smaller he looked without it. Because even if Blueblood was a jerk—though by now she'd come to realize that he wasn't as much of a jerk as he wanted everypony to think he was—he sure didn't deserve getting betrayed by this guy Chives the way he had been. "Sorry," she said more quietly.

"Don't be." His jaw tightened. "After all, my entire life has apparently been one continuous mistake. Why should today be any different?"

"No!" She managed to rein in her shout this time, but she couldn't keep from swooping over till her snout was practically pressed against his. "Green Briar's the bad guy, and we're the good guys! That's not a mistake! It's, like, the truest thing ever!" She jabbed a hoof against his chest. "And it's why we're gonna stop him, you and me! You got that?!"

He blinked those big blue eyes, and the smile that curled his muzzle was tired but real. "Well, if you insist...," he murmured, and all she could think of suddenly was how close his lips were to hers.

Face going hot, she pulled back, but he was already moving, his smile vanishing. "Let's see what we're up against, then." Light still poured through the hanging boughs of the willow, and Blueblood pushed them aside, Dash settling to the ground beside him to peer out.

Above the Everfree Forest's thick canopy, the sun sat high in the sky. Of course, it was hanging in a part of the sky way north of anywhere the sun ever went, and it was also shining a whole lot brighter than the sun ever did. "That's right over the castle," Dash heard herself say.

Blueblood's breathing seemed to get louder. "Green Briar said the princesses used the Octopony spell when they took on responsibility for day and night all those years ago. If he's cast it successfully—"

"Double-O-Zeta!" a voice thundered. Wind stirred the uppermost branches of the forest, and squinting, Dash could just make out a winged, shadowy figure floating in the middle of the big, wrong sun. "Perhaps you'd like one final opportunity to beg Lord Thunderbow, the new King of Equestria, not to pop your head like a balloon!"

"Yeah." Cold shivered down Dash's spine. "I'd say he cast it, all right." Wanting to scream and kick things, she instead grabbed the collar of Blueblood's cloak. "I'm going up there to distract him! You get back to the castle and...and—" See if my friends are OK! she nearly shouted. But out loud, all she could manage was, "Do something!"

He was shaking his head, his gaze fixed on the figure above. "This isn't your fight, Ms. Dash."

"What?!" She slung herself right into his face again. "Those are my friends he's kidnapped! That's my town right down the road! They're my princesses he's threatening! How exactly is this not my fight?!"

His expression, a weird mixture of fear and anger, made her gut twist again. "Please, Dash," he choked out. "I...I don't want my stupidity to get you killed as well."

She shook him. "No pony's getting killed! Now, we're doing this!" Wrenching her hoofs away, she spun for the sky. A part of her almost expected his teeth to clamp around her tail like AJ always did to stop her from storming off like this, but it didn't come; looking back down just as she reached the flailing tree canopy, she saw Blueblood charging through the woods in the direction of the castle.

Then she was bursting into open sky, the winds swirling and intense like a storm cell forming. Angling her wings to create a backdraft, she used the partial vacuum to slew herself around and squinted at the glowing figure ahead of her.

His golden horn seemed the same, but the big golden wings spreading out behind him were definitely new. And while she'd seen plenty of lightning-burned ponies in her time working the weather, the jagged white scar ridges that covered Green Briar were so jumbled and thick, Dash couldn't even tell what color his hide actually was. Only a few ash-gray hairs whisked around his neck where his mane should've been, and the way the bandages still wrapped his hindquarters and rear legs, it looked like he didn't have a tail at all. A grin seemed to split his snout from one ear to the other, and while the air all around him was definitely glowing, most of the light, Dash could see now, spilled from his eyes.

And that was when she suddenly realized those eyes were fixed directly on her. "Ms. Dash," he said in a voice that was kind of his and kind of a blast furnace's. "What a pleasant surprise."

***

Hoofs pounding the dirt, Blueblood refused to think about Rainbow Dash racing up alone to face Green Briar when it should be him doing it. He refused to think about what a mad pony like Green Briar could do now that he'd drawn so much power into himself. He refused to think about—

He almost stopped to bash his head against a tree in the hope that it would keep him from thinking about all these things he didn't want to think about, but he didn't have the time. Because, yes, Green Briar had apparently been dozens of steps ahead of him for years now, but Blueblood had learned one thing unequivocally about his arch nemesis in that same time.

Green Briar was a slob of the lowest degree.

So it had to be that the other unicorn had overlooked something, had left something undone, or had simply forgotten something in his haste. It had to be. Refusing to think otherwise, Blueblood lowered his head and upped his pace.

The trees blurred by on either side till he was charging into the open space around the ravine, the rope bridge ahead. Crossing at a gallop, he rushed through the castle gate and skidded up to the doorway Green Briar had floated him and Dash through earlier. The room beyond was darker than before, but he didn't dare try his magic in case the trap Green Briar had laid for him was still in effect. So he just stepped inside, perked his ears, flared his nostrils, and widened his eyes.

He could hear breathing, and the smell of living pony sweat mixing with the dry mustiness of the castle banished a whole slew of unpleasant options. He couldn't see the fiery rings of the immobilization spell, though, and that brought his worry levels back up. If they weren't restrained any longer, why would any of them still be here?

Moving carefully brought him to the spot where he'd last seen Green Briar, and by then his eyes had adjusted enough to the gloom to show him the seven stone slabs arrayed in a semi-circle, the same seven individuals still lying upon them. He let his eyes dart over to Chives at the far end, his former valet staring blankly upward, his chest rising and falling slowly under his white shirt front and black cutaway coat.

Some effect of the spell must be holding them here. So the first step to breaking the spell, Blueblood reasoned, would involve waking them up.

With a stomp, he barked, "Confound it, Chives! On your hoofs, sirrah! Or do you think I pay you to loaf about like this?"

Chives stirred, blinked, and raised his head. "Prince...Blueblood?" he muttered. "But you...he...he said you'd be dead by now..."

"Ha!" Whirling on the rest of them, he pitched his voice like it was a rock and they were windows. "The rest of you as well! And you two unicorns! I require a light! Come along, now!"

The mint green unicorn blinked once, but the white one with the purple mane—

Which was when Blueblood recognized her, and he almost laughed at the wonderful synchronicity of it all. He should be able to get her roused easily enough. "Yes, you with that tired hairstyle! Your name's Reveille or something, isn't it? Surely you can manage to spark up some light for the stallion you were so desperately fawning over at last year's Gala?"

The white unicorn's face twitched, and her head rolled to aim narrowed eyes at him.

He gave his best snort of disgust. "Or is even that small a request too great for your meager abilities?"

She was shaking all over now. "How...dare...you?!" she demanded, gasping between the words. Flopping to her side, she levered herself up on one front leg, a pearly glow beginning to waver from her horn. "You pompous...jackanapes!" Her voice got stronger with each syllable. "You almost tempt me, sir, to misremember that I am a lady! Fortunately for you, however—" She took a breath, tossed her head, and gave him a glare he could almost feel. "I am not given to such displays of pique!"

The others were stirring now as well, and Blueblood thanked Aunt Celestia that Ms. Rarity's voice was indeed every bit as piercing as he recalled from that fateful night. Still, he couldn't risk the spell reasserting itself. "Then perhaps you could manage to stir yourself from your lethargy and help?"

"Help?!" She looked away with a sniff. "I'd sooner assist a Diamond Dog than you!"

Actual anger flared inside him. "You listen to me, confound it! Your countrymare Rainbow Dash is confronting the fiend who kidnapped you even as you blather inanely, and the sooner you—!"

"Rainbow Dash?" The butter-yellow pegasus on the slab beside Ms. Rarity stirred: another of Dash's friends, he recalled from the Gala. "She's in trouble?

And as much as Blueblood didn't want to think about it— "Yes! So I must know what Green Briar did while casting the spell he used on you all!"

Ms. Rarity just blinked, the light of her horn fizzling a bit. "I...I fear I've been largely unconscious during most of today's events..."

The others were likewise looking uncomfortable, their eyes shifting, but on the center slab, the zebra sat up rubbing her forehead. "I thought he meant to take a life, the way he slung about that knife."

"Knife?" Blueblood glanced quickly around the room. "What did he do with it?!"

"What indeed!" spat a voice he almost recognized, and Blueblood spun to see Chives off his slab, a very unpleasant dagger clenched expertly in his teeth. "I have it on good authority, sir, that due to my actions these past several years, you are unable to use your magic in this place." Every word, of course, emerged crisp and clear, the knife not wavering so much as a hair's breadth. "Therefore, as you are powerless to stop me, I shall begin by agreeing with the lovely young lady that you are a pompous jackanapes! I shall then continue with all the terms I've been wishing to apply to you for the past thirty-four months, terms which will include such simple ones as fool and dolt and insufferable as well as more complex epithets such as—"

Leaping forward, Blueblood spun and smashed a hind hoof into the side of Chives's head, the earth pony sailing across the room and into the wall with a wet sort of crunch. And as much as Blueblood wanted to descend upon him with further blows, he hadn't the time; eyes following the arc of the knife, he sprinted after it, judged the whirl of the blade as well as he could, and snatched its handle in his teeth before it could strike the floor. Tucking it into his coat pocket, he looked at the others, all now sitting up and staring at him. "Tell me what you remember of Green Briar's spell!" he demanded. "The entire fate of Equestria rests on you!"

***

"So lovely to see you again." Green Briar cocked his head, and it looked so much like a skull, Dash couldn't stop a shudder. "I was, however, expecting my old friend Blueblood." He folded his front legs across the maze of scars coating his chest. "I seem to recall leaving him in your company, Ms. Dash, so might you tell Lord Thunderbow where he could find him now?"

Dash had never felt so out of her league in her entire life. But still, she had a job to do, didn't she? "He's real sorry," she told the horrible winged unicorn in front of her. "Some stuff came up at the last minute, y'know?"

For a few seconds, he just stared at her. Then a twitch pulled at that wide slash of a mouth, his teeth suddenly looking pointed, and he laughed: not the full-blown, wacko laugh she'd heard echoing through the forest earlier, but a little giggle like something she'd expect to hear from Sweetie Belle. "Hide and seek, is it? Well, I suppose the look on his face'll be all that much sweeter when he gets his first and final glimpse of my new self." He twirled, the shredded ends of his bandages dancing around his rear legs. "Do you like it, Ms. Dash? Tell the truth, now."

Not wanting to come within fifty furlongs of that question, Dash thought quickly. "Hey, wait! I thought this whole Octopony thing was supposed to give you back the unicorn powers the princesses took away! So what's with the wings?"

His forehead wrinkled, but he was nodding. "Very good, Ms. Dash. Perhaps I've finally met the brains behind Double-O-Zeta's little organization." He looked down at himself, the fiery glow of his eyes flickering a little. "In truth, this is not at all what I was expecting." When his head came back up, though, that way-too-wide smile was spreading over his muzzle. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you." He made a pushing motion with one front hoof, and Dash felt the wind shift, shoving her sideways. "This will do quite nicely, I think."

"Do?" Getting him to talk about himself, she figured, would be the easiest way to stop him from thinking about whatever Blueblood was doing down there. "What exactly are you going to do, anyway?"

"Ah, Ms. Dash." He spread his hoofs. "The golden age that Lord Thunderbow will usher in shall last forever!" His shoulders rose and fell. "After the inevitable purges, of course, but such unpleasantness is to be expected when replacing one multi-millennial reign with another. Still, it's not anything you'll need to worry about." His grin got wider somehow, his teeth growing even sharper. "You and the other Elements of Harmony are rather high on my purging list, you see, and as long as I've got you here..."

His front legs flexed, but Dash didn't wait around to see what he might make the wind do this time; she flicked her pinion feathers to a steeper angle and let herself drop toward the tree canopy. "Not so fast, Ms. Dash!" she heard him shout, and the air around her just vanished, her wings suddenly beating against emptiness like she'd dropped into some intense vertical turbulence. "For you are in my element now!"

It wasn't the worst wind shear she'd ever been caught in; she let herself roll with it, felt how the pressure gradients had changed, and slid sideways into the updraft she knew had to be there beside it. The column of rising air grabbed her like a griffon's talons and whisked her past Green Briar, the winged unicorn diving toward the spot where she'd just been. Grinning, Dash managed to flail a hoof out and bash him smack in the middle of his startled face as she swept up and away toward the tropopause.

Because, yeah, maybe he could control the air now. But Dash knew the air, knew it better than she knew Fluttershy or Applejack or any of her other friends. And if Green Briar wanted to play this game, she was more than happy to show him how it was done.

He shouted in wordless rage, and the air behind her began bulging in a way that told her he was chasing her. Of course, the leading edge of his rising bubble fell off with such a nice downdraft that Dash just slipped along it and let it whisk her back toward him. A few flaps of her wings boosted her velocity enough so that when she shot past, missing his rear hoofs by a feather's breadth, her own trail of turbulence crashed into him like a tidal wave, spun him ears over fetlocks, and made him cry out once more.

The whole frontal system he'd been riding broke up, too, so Dash spread her wings to catch one shattered wave of it and surfed forward, adding its speed to her own. Rainbooming him might be her best bet, but the way he could twist air pressure would make it really risky. Still, she—

"Enough!" he shrieked from somewhere, and she slammed headfirst into a mass of air suddenly as solid as a block of concrete. The jolt rattled every single one of her bones, the breath rushing out of her and leaving her gasping, flailing, and then falling, her wing muscles exhausted, colors flashing over her vision.

The air thickened again till she felt like she was sinking in the pond outside town, and she came to rest, her inner ear told her, flat on her back two hundred and seven yards above the forest. No bones seemed broken, but when she finally blinked her eyes clear, a very unhappy Green Briar floated beside her. "My original plan had me crushing you and Blueblood together like lumps of clay into one lovely off-white mass." His lips pulled back from clenched teeth. "I dislike changing my plans, Ms. Dash. But in your case, Lord Thunderbow is more than willing to do so and crush you on your own right here and right now."

***

Every second ticking by set Blueblood's teeth to grinding, but his infernal whispering doubts kept making him hesitate. Would acting on incomplete information make the situation worse than doing nothing?

Thinking of Rainbow Dash up there with that monster decided it, though. "All right, all right!" he shouted at the others gathered around him at the spell's center spot, their voices a babble of thoughts, opinions, and advice. "We have one chance, so back to your slabs!" With a grunt, he muscled Chives's unconscious form onto the last of the flat stones and turned to see the others climbing atop theirs. "I must ask you to remain as motionless as you can throughout this process. For once I've begun, I sincerely doubt I can stop."

A general murmur rose from the six of them, Ms. Rarity gazing at him with something close to the dewy look she'd worn at the start of their first meeting back in Canterlot. "Good luck, Prince Blueblood."

Snorting, he let his nervousness feed his sarcasm and his ego. "Luck will have nothing to do with it, thank you. And perhaps it didn't occur to you, but when I said 'don't move,' I meant your jaw as well."

Her lips went thin, and she threw herself backwards onto the slab, the light of her horn flickering out. Silently breathing a sigh of relief—she was a complication he most certainly did not need—Blueblood couldn't help but swallow at the winds roaring outside. "Stand by, then," he said into the shadowy dimness that filled the chamber. Bending down, he nosed his cloak open and closed his teeth around the hilt of Green Briar's dagger tucked there. He held it aloft and spun the smallest levitation spell he knew, something just strong enough to raise the knife into the air.

Light burst through the room as if the entire castle had caught fire, and the trap Green Briar had set for him snapped shut. It ripped into Blueblood's body and tore every last drop of magical energy from him, the pain more intense than any he'd ever felt. Before he could cry out, though, the magic flooded back—he was standing at the center of Green Briar's pattern, after all—and filled him to overflowing, power pouring into him in orders of magnitude far greater than that which had just been wrenched from him.

Where it might've come from, he had no idea at first, but then his magically enhanced senses showed him the fiery sheets of energy rippling upward from the figures on the slabs, each sheet dangling but a few tendrils to stroke the pony lying beneath it. And while he certainly didn't understand the intricacies of the Octopony spell, the jagged edges at the bottom of those sheets made him think of the dagger and the cutting motions Zecora had described. For if Green Briar had slashed the life energies from these ponies and was using the vast majority of it to fuel himself and his spell—

Quickly, he used the power engorging him to send the dagger slashing at the top of the sheets where they disappeared through the ceiling. They split like damp paper, the cacophonous clangor of it making him recall the time he'd pushed a nosy reporter into an open grand piano. Each sheet dropped as heavily as a collapsing brick wall over the pony below it, and their eyes all bulged, their bodies going stiff. Thick strands still reached out to Blueblood, though; slicing through them, he gasped to feel the power rush out of him again, the room snapping over into darkness once more.

He staggered back, hoping he'd guessed correctly, and his ears pricked at a shriek echoing from outside. Letting the knife drop, he turned, took one step toward the doorway and the light showing through it from the castle courtyard—

And the light vanished with a huge thunderclap, the stones shaking beneath his hoofs. At his next step, rain crashed down in a solid mass, water like a curtain on the other side of the arch. He raced out regardless, shrugging the hood of his cloak over his head as he ran. Barely able to see two yards in front of him, Blueblood pushed through the gate into the clear area between the castle wall and the ravine, craned his head upward, and couldn't stop himself from shouting, "Dash! Rainbow Dash! Can you hear me?!"

In the waterfall roar of the rain, he could barely hear himself, and when lightning crackled on the other side of the tree canopy, the thunder smashed against his ears almost immediately. He refused to let himself think how hard it must be raining above the branches and instead tried to think how he could get up there. With the Octopony spell broken, the two pegasi in the castle might soon be recovered enough to fly. He would get them to—

A blast of wind bent the trees into a crazy thrashing dance, Blueblood wincing back against a sudden burst of water from directly above. Coughing, he glanced back up and almost thought he saw a winged figure descending rapidly through the storm, another figure seemingly draped across its front legs. He blinked, looked again, and saw it more clearly, the figure landing hard in the dirt not far from where he stood, the sky-blue of her wings shining in the next lightning flash.

"Dash!" He sprinted along the castle wall and reached her, down on her side and panting. The other figure lay sprawled in the mud beside her, the unicorn so heavily-scarred, Blueblood barely recognized him as Green Briar.

With some quick telekinesis, Blueblood stripped the cloak from his own back and draped it over Dash, but he had to jump when she snapped her head up, her face wild and frantic. "No time!" she shouted over another roll of thunder. "All the weather magic Green Briar was flinging around must've fouled every system from here to Manehattan! He's spun up a storm like nothing I've ever even heard about!" She slung his cloak back at him, her wings flaring. "Was everypony OK on the slabs?"

"Fine! But what're you—?!"

"Forty-five minutes!" She leaped into the torrents flooding down around them. "I'm guessing that's when the real storm gets here, and if we don't wrestle it down, half of Equestria'll be underwater! So tell Gusty to rouse up every pegasus in Ponyville, then you get Rarity and Fluttershy and Zecora and the rest of them out of this forest and back to town! This place'll be the epicenter even if we do get a handle on it, and I don't want any ponies down here when it hits! So go!" Whooshing straight up, she vanished.

Not stopping to think, he cast a spell to sling Green Briar across his back, a feeble cough telling Blueblood his arch nemesis had survived yet again. "Gusty!" he yelled, and running through the castle gate once more, he wheeled around the corner into the room where he'd left the others.

Except for Chives, they were all on their hoofs again and much more alert than before. The tan pegasus was turning to look over her shoulder, so Blueblood barked out Dash's orders as authoritatively as he knew how.

At least this Gusty seemed to grasp the severity of the situation. Without a single question, she sprang into the air and sped outside. "Now!" Blueblood spun to face the others. "Ms. Dash informs me that this area will quickly become unsafe due to the winds and the rain!" Extending his spell, he grabbed Chives, draped him beside Green Briar, and bound the two of them together across his back with his cloak. "As unpleasant as it will be, we must proceed on hoof for Ponyville." He aimed his glare at the zebra. "I don't suppose you know these woods well enough to lead the way?"

She gave a sniff. "I trust that I can find the path despite the raging weather's wrath."

Her words sparked the darkest level of his imagination, and it spat up an image of Dash impaled by lightning, the gale-force winds hurtling her body into the stratosphere or slamming her to the ground. "Confound it!" He stomped a hoof. "Why then are you all standing around like morons?! You, zebra, will make for town as quickly as you can! The rest of you will follow her, I shall bring up the rear, and I promise, any pony who lollygags or drops behind, I shall mercilessly chivy along with rough language and possibly even biting! Now, we shall be on our way!"

***

She felt like a filly out on her first weather flight, the wind slamming and roaring around her in a way she'd almost forgotten nature could. Air like this was no pony's friend, and she found herself using every bit of her training as well as every wing roll, hoof jab, and body spin she learned these last couple years on the job just to keep the storm from smashing her to rainbow colored bits. "Not today!" she shouted into the teeth of it more than once, the memory of Blueblood's smile warming her against the lashing rain. "Maybe someday, yeah, but not today!"

Green Briar's spell had sent stress fractures through the entire atmosphere as near as Dash could tell, multiple eyewalls forming, heat exchanges trying to swirl into existence, and convection waves deepening everywhere she looked. She knew that the crazier the storm, the more subtle a pony had to be with it, but smoothing over the damage in one piece of sky just seemed to make cracks burst out somewhere else. Where in Celestia's name was the rest of the—

A whistle cut through the screaming wind, the simple cadences of the standard 'here and ready' signal. Dash pulled up and felt more than saw the five dozen spots of warmth whisking in her direction. Swooping toward them, she fired off whistle signals of her own, directing the night shift pegasi to keep the smaller storms that were spinning off the super storm from expanding into civilized territory, the swing shift pegasi to do what they could over the Everfree itself, and the day shift to follow her.

Whistles of 'OK, got it' reached her, and twenty ponies shot through the air to surround her. "OK!" she shouted. "Hope you got your big pony wings on! Because we either knock this monster down, or we got no homes to come back to! Is that understood?!"

Manes and tails dripping, they were still grinning like true weather wranglers. Dash snapped them her sharpest salute. "Company?! Fall in!" She turned and dove with her team into the very heart of the onrushing super storm.

***

The slog was every bit as horrible as Blueblood had thought it would be, the hard and constant rain making the mud cold and slippery. After Dash's friend Fluttershy had nearly collapsed the third time under the weight of her waterlogged wings, Blueblood had heaved a loud sigh and had begun to say that he would carry her alongside the two unconscious ponies he already had slung over his back. But Ms. Rarity had cut him off with a look that could've curdled milk, had informed him that his help was in no way necessary, and had wedged herself against the swaying pegasus's side. They both kept themselves upright and moving, at least, and that was all Blueblood would let himself focus on.

Fortunately the others seemed to be made of sterner stuff, and even more fortunately, Zecora actually proved to know where she was going. The trees thinned after half an hour's march, and they came out from under the canopy at the edge of the forest, open sky over his head for the first time in what seemed like days.

In another small mercy, the rain had begun falling with less severity as well—he'd been more than a little worried about how bad the deluge might be once they no longer had the branches to partially deflect it. It was still a downpour to be sure, but he could actually see a few hundred feet across the meadows, the roar of the water dropping to more of a sizzling sound now. "Head for the library!" he called to Zecora. It was the closest large public building he know of in town, and he needed to utilize whatever direct line to Canterlot Ms. Sparkle possessed.

The rain continued to decline in ferocity during the next half hour's miserable plodding, and Blueblood began noticing pegasi darting through the clouds. His heart quickened every time he detected movement, but it slumped again so hard when no rainbow trailed in the figure's wake that he forced his gaze to remain on the ground, his mind not wanting to think about her but unable to think about anything but her.

At last the outskirts of Ponyville come into view, every shutter firmly latched against the weather, and Zecora led their sodden steps to the front door of the library. She tapped a front hoof against it, but by this time, all Blueblood could see was an obstacle he could finally overcome; shouldering past the others, he spun and lashed out with his hind legs, channeling every last ounce of his current frustrations into the kick.

The door shattered, and he gestured to the open-mouthed ponies in his group. "Inside! Now!" He stumbled in himself, shrugged Green Briar and Chives off onto the floor, and managed a bow to Ms. Sparkle, staring back at him from where she stood by the library's fireplace with her dragon and two earth ponies, one the farmer he'd brushed past earlier and the other the odd baker. "My apologies, Ms. Sparkle," he told her. "But we have something of an emergency."

The next half hour flashed by in a flurry of activity, Ms. Sparkle bundling Zecora and the others in blankets and tea and settling them onto cushions before her fireplace while Blueblood commandeered Spike to get word through to Auntie. Fears still lingered in his mind about what Green Briar's Octopony spell might have done to the princesses, but the message that the little dragon coughed up in answer to Blueblood's note was overflowing with reassurance. Both Celestia and Luna were well and were much more concerned about the storm than they'd ever been for their own safety.

His second message filled in what details he knew—writing Rainbow Dash's name made his horn falter and the quill shake, but he forced himself to continue—and he asked for a troop of soldiers with an armored chariot to transport the two prisoners back to Canterlot. Auntie's reply informed him that she'd just dispatched the soldiers, but the turbulence of the super storm made flying with any sort of chariot simply too dangerous. Since the weather had also delayed the regular morning train from Ponyville back to Canterlot, the soldiers were bearing a message to the station master requisitioning one of the carriages. Blueblood was to wait for the armed pegasi at the station with his prisoners, then return with them to headquarters for debriefing.

He glanced over to where he'd dumped the two beside the improvised door the earth pony farmer had put together to keep the storm out. The bare flicker of Green Briar's magical aura told Blueblood that the unicorn remained unconscious, but Chives's cold, sullen eyes were staring directly at him.

And as much as Blueblood wanted to get up and kick those eyes closed once more, the awful little nagging voice of his doubts started whispering to him as it had for most of the day: All your fault, it told him. If you'd treated Chives better, he wouldn't've sold you out to Green Briar. Green Briar wouldn't've been able to do any of the things he did today, and Rainbow Dash wouldn't be out there now getting torn to shreds by this—

Springing to his hoofs, Blueblood stomped across the room, fired his levitation spell at the cloak that bound Chives and Green Briar, and slapped the whole thing across his back, the hood stretching just enough to cover his head. Focusing the spell on the make-shift door, he lifted it out of the way and stepped into the rain.

"Your Highness?" a tentative voice asked, and he looked back to see Ms. Sparkle, a cup of tea suspended in the purple pulse of her magic. "Is...is everything all right?"

No! he wanted to bellow at her, but instead he forced a smile, his still-damp mane hanging in tendrils before his face. "I've been ordered to escort the prisoners back to Canterlot on the next train. Again, please forward the bill for repairing your door to me at the palace." He slid the piece of wood back into place over the opening, turned, and began his march through the soggy streets.

Because he couldn't deny it. All of this was his fault. And Dash, he knew, would figure that out as soon as she had a minute to think about it—with all the smart and clever ponies he'd met working for the Clandestine Corps, he'd never met another as intrinsically sharp as Rainbow Dash. She would put all the pieces together, and once she came to realize what he'd done not just to her but to her town and to her princesses—

At the very least, she'd certainly never want to see him again.

So. Back to the station. Back to Canterlot. Back to being the same horrible pony he'd always been, living among ponies every bit as horrible, and hoping his next assignment—

Hoping his next assignment might finally be the one he didn't come back from...

***

The tipping point wasn't any one thing—it never was with a really big storm. But Dash could still feel it when the torrential rains and winds subsided just to the other side of the line that divided 'uncontrolled' from 'controlled.' Even better, that moment came more quickly than she'd imagined: not even an hour and a half after Green Briar's snarl of victory had crumpled into a howl of defeat, his wings and power vanishing and all Tartarus breaking loose.

She gave a couple blinks, took a couple sniffs, let the air rush through her pinions to make sure, then finished her arc over the top of the main supercell. Her whistle got Thunderlane's attention, and she dropped into the space beside him at the front of the team carving chunks of cloud from the storm's perimeter. "You guys got this?!"

He looked at her, the swirling wall behind him towering a good seventy thousand feet into the air. "Oh, yeah!" he shouted. "No problem!"

She punched his shoulder and swooped away, knowing they could manage it. This close to the Everfree, Ponyville's weather wranglers had to be the best. Besides, she had some urgent business to take care of.

Because for all that she'd had a few other things on her mind, she'd found Blueblood not far from the center of her thoughts the whole time. Without him unplugging Green Briar when he did, that would've been it for, like, all of Equestria. And she trusted him with the even more important job of getting her friends out of the forest before the storm could hit. Knowing that he was down there taking care of things had let her focus on all the stuff going on up here, and she wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him a lot of things, wanted to hear if he maybe had any things he wanted to tell her, things he might maybe say in the sweet deep voice he slipped into when he wasn't wearing his whole snooty 'Your Highness' face and pretending to be the pony she absolutely knew by now he wasn't.

Or something like that.

Streaking through the more corralled parts of the storm system, she tingled like the times she and the girls had faced down Nightmare Moon and Discord and the changelings. Except that this right now was even better. Not to say anything bad about AJ and Twilight and the others, of course, but this had been just her, Rainbow Dash, and just him, Agent Blueblood of the Clandestine Corps. And while the guys she'd dated since flight school had all promised her fun and excitement, not a one of them had given her anything even close to a day like this.

A little cloud ahead was trying to form up into a thunderhead; she did a loop around it before stomping it into vapor, then she shot out query whistles to the ponies riding the air around her. The signals she got back were all positive, and she finally skated over the Everfree boundary into Ponyville territory with the rain stroking her back more softly and gently than any she'd felt all day. Blueblood would've headed for Twilight's place, she was sure, so he could let his spy bosses in Canterlot know he had Green Briar. Angling her flight to land her right in front of the library tree, she reached for the door—

Or not the door. A big sheet of wood stood leaning over the hole where the door used to be.

But the storm shouldn't've hit town that hard, not unless somepony on the night crew had really messed up. Stepping forward, she nudged her nose at the crack, slid it aside, and slipped in, calling out, "Knock, knock! Anypony home?"

"Rainbow Dash!" A pink blur swooshed from the library's main room, and the tiny bit of uncertainty that had been floating around in Dash's middle vanished, all her friends sitting there...except Pinkie who was now hopping up and down in front of her. "We were all so worried about you! Well, OK, not really worried 'cause, I mean, you're Rainbow Dash! No stupid bunch of clouds or evil magical mad geniuses could ever do anything to you!"

She touched a hoof to Pinkie's nose. "Pinkie? I'm still in a little hurry right now." Because the one face she realized she wasn't seeing here meant she had more work to do. Moving past Pinkie, she focused on Rarity, bundled up next to Fluttershy on a cushion beside the fireplace. "Look, Rare, I know this prob'bly isn't the right way to do this, but like I said, I'm not quite done today, so I'll just say it flat out." She swallowed, her heart pounding, rainwater dripping from her wings and mane. "If you still want Blueblood, tell me, and I'll back right off right now. Because you and me? We're friends. So say the word, and you'll never hear me bring it up again, OK?"

Silence froze the room, Rarity looking like somepony'd just told her the cocoa she was sipping was really mud. "Blueblood?! Are you mad?! After the way he treated me today?! And not to mention poor Fluttershy!"

Fluttershy's face became as pink as her mane. "It was fine, Rarity, really. He was only offering to—"

"Ha!" Turning her head away, Rarity closed her eyes and pushed her lower lip out. "If I never see that blackguard again, I shall count my life as one well lived!"

The pounding in Dash's chest turned to something more like a soaring, and she felt a goofy smile spreading over her face. "You mean that?"

Rarity looked back, and Dash could almost smell the ozone of her brain straining not to put the pieces together. "Rainbow? You...you can't seriously be saying that you...that you—!" She flailed her hoofs at the ceiling. "But he's so horribly obnoxious!"

Mostly because she knew it would drive her friend crazy, Dash put an edge on her smile and said, "Isn't he, though?"

With a little choking sound, Rarity's jaw dropped, and Dash turned to Twilight. "Where'd Blueblood go, anyway?"

From the way Twilight's brow was wrinkling, Dash figured she didn't even know there were any pieces to put together. "Well, he said he'd been ordered to take the prisoners back to Canterlot, so—"

"Canterlot?!" Dash couldn't keep from leaping into the air. "Did he say—?! I mean, did he leave a...a note or anything?!"

More confusion filled Twilight's face, and it was Rarity who spoke, her voice quiet and trembling: "Oh, Rainbow Dash, you mustn't blame yourself. Prince Blueblood, he's...he's not to sort who leaves notes."

Dash held up a hoof, her mind flying faster than when she'd been wrangling the super storm. "They couldn't've flown Green Briar out, and the way this weather's all because of his spell, I'm betting magic wouldn't've worked, either. Which means—" She spun, blasted around the wood covering the doorway, and arched herself through the rain outside so quickly, she didn't feel one drop. A trail of smoke puffs from the other side of town told her the train had pulled out of the station maybe two minutes ago, but she knew she could catch it no problem. The only question was—

It nearly froze her in place in the gray, chilly air. Should she catch it? Should she bash her way on board, grab Blueblood—Prince Blueblood, she had to remind herself, Princess Celestia's nephew, whatever in Equestria that meant—and demand that he tell her—

Tell her what?

'Cause what if Rarity was right? What if he was just an obnoxious, stuck-up, lousy—?

But he wasn't! Not really! Not more than Dash was herself, anyway... Because she knew she'd seen the real him a couple times today, and what she'd seen, she...she kind of liked.

She reached the station then, the lights reflecting in the splashing puddles along the platform. Pulling into a hover, she stared down the tracks. If today really had meant nothing to him, fine. Whatever. She was Rainbow Dash, right? She could get any guy she wanted any time she wanted!

A shiver rustled through her, and she told herself it was from the cold. But if he really wanted to vanish from her life and slink back into the towers of Canterlot, he would have to tell her that to her face. She bunched up her wings, ready to take off after the—

"Dash!" a voice gasped from the platform to her right, and she snapped her head over to see the shadows move, a figure emerging in a soaked and muddy cloak, blue eyes bright, a smile spreading over his muzzle.

Her heart jumped into her throat, and it took her a couple seconds to swallow it. "Oh. There you are," she said not quite as coolly as she wanted to, and she flapped over to settle on the platform beside him. "I—" She had to clear her throat again, and as much as she wanted to, she found she couldn't look at him and get words out at the same time. So she faced forward and watched the raindrops spatter. "I thought maybe you'd left. I mean, since you had to take Green Briar back to Canterlot and all."

"I couldn't." It was barely a whisper, but it hit her ears harder than the thunder she'd had crashing around her all morning. She stole a glance over and saw he wasn't looking at her, either, his gaze fixed on the tracks, wet and shiny in the dimness. "Not without telling you..." The air turned solid in her lungs, but then he finished: "How sorry I am about all this."

"What?!" Dash felt like she'd finally been hit by one of the thousands of lightning bolts she'd been dodging. "You're sorry?!"

He whirled on her, real pain in his eyes. "If I hadn't been such a bloated, pompous ass the past several years, I would've stopped Green Briar long before this and would never have put you in such terrible danger!"

It took a second for his words to sink in, and when they did, she couldn't help laughing out loud. "Wait! That's what you're sorry about? Putting me in danger?"

His expression hardened, started edging toward his Royal Whoness face. "Yes, it was unforgivable, but I don't see what's so funny about—"

"You wanna know?" She couldn't keep the grin off her face. "See, I was afraid you might say you were sorry you ever met me."

He blinked, then huffed out something that could've been a laugh. "Oh, no," he murmured, turning back to the tracks again. "I shall never be sorry about that. For you see, I seem to have fallen utterly, madly—one might even say stupidly—in love with you, Rainbow Dash."

***

"Sir?" the captain had asked, the other pegasi in the troop securing hoofcuffs around Chives and Green Briar as well as sliding an inhibitor ring over Green Briar's horn. "Our orders are to leave for Canterlot immediately."

But Blueblood had found himself unable to step aboard the car. "There's one more thing I need to do, captain." Even if Dash never wanted to see him again, he had to apologize to her pony to pony. He owed her so much more, but he couldn't imagine she'd accept even that... "Go on ahead. I...I'll catch the next train."

The captain had shrugged, saluted, signaled the conductor, and Blueblood had stepped back into the meager shelter of the station wall to watch the train pull out. Never mind that he was disobeying direct orders. He had to tell Dash—

Not just that he was sorry, though that had to come first, of course. No, he also had to tell her how much she'd inspired him today. Tell her how all he wanted to do with the rest of his life was make her happy...even if that meant leaving so she would never have to see him again. Tell her how, of all the revelations he'd had as large chunks of his life had begun crumbling to pieces around him during these past twenty-four hours, the revelation that she'd sparked in him with her steadfastness and grace, the revelation that he could actually feel this way about another pony—

And then she was there, hovering above the tracks, and he stepped forward calling her name, his heart suddenly too big for his body. She came over, and when he tried to apologize, she laughed. Laughed! As if the way he'd thrown her into the midst of the worst storm Equestria had ever seen was all in a day's work for her! The old part of him tried to rise up all haughty and resentful at this, of course, but the new part popped that bubble pretty easily by speaking the simple honest truth in the way he'd been doing since meeting her: "I seem to have fallen utterly, madly—one might even say stupidly—in love with you, Rainbow Dash."

He hadn't been able to look at her while saying it, and even in the silence that followed, the only sound the constant hiss of the rain falling around them, he still couldn't look, more terrified of her eyes at that moment than of anything he'd ever encountered before.

"Huh," she finally said. "OK. I guess I can see how that might happen."

Her cavalier tone froze him solid, but she was going on. "I mean, it's like when you see some guy at the train station, and he's this jerk who once blew off your friend. But then, y'know, what with one thing and another, you end up saving each other's lives and stopping some bigger jerk from taking over the world, and, well..." Movement caught the corner of his vision, Dash stepping directly in front of him, those incredible violet eyes fixing him like he'd been run through with a spear. "And you maybe get to thinking you'd like to get to know this guy better." She was moving again, her neck stretching, her lips—

Oh, her lips touched his so soft and gentle but so firm and assured, like she'd kissed ponies before but wasn't quite sure how to do it in this particular situation. At least, that was how Blueblood felt, the memory of every other mare he'd ever kissed puffing away like smoke and leaving him as uncertain and wonder-filled as a colt at his first dance.

How long it went on, he had no idea...except that when she stepped back, her chest heaving as much as his, he realized it had been much, much too short. Unfortunately, that was also when reality chose to crash down around him, and he heard himself blurting out, "I can't leave the Corps!"

She blinked those beautiful violet eyes. "I'm not asking you to. Just like you're not asking me to leave Ponyville." Those eyes narrowed. "You're not asking me to leave Ponyville, are you?"

He cleared his throat. "Well, now that I know better, I'm not."

For a moment, he just looked at her, the rain pattering down. Then he was laughing, the situation too absurd for any other reaction, and Dash was joining in. "Maybe one thing at a time?" she asked after a moment.

"I should say so." He touched her face, the pure happiness he saw there reflected twenty times over in his chest. "After all, how did you put it? We just saved the world. We should be able to come up with some solution here." He turned a sour look upward. "Perhaps if we get out of this blasted rain..."

"OK," she said simply. Her legs flexing and her wings flaring, she shot up from the station platform like an explosive device, the blue streak of her reaching the clouds in a fraction of an instant. A flash of rainbow sparked where she hit and spread out in an irregular pattern, a crack of thunder folding his ears. The clouds seemed to boil, melting away like snow on an April morning, and a large, heart-shaped patch of blue sky opened up above him. It grew wider as he stood gaping until, with one final raindrop tapping his nose, it uncovered the sun, and another larger rainbow blossomed where clouds still floated over the Everfree Forest.

The blue streak descended, Blueblood not wanting to blink for fear of missing yet another of her marvels. Dash gave her wings a little flip as she landed in front of him, that glorious grin on those delicious lips. "You want anything else, your Whoness, you just let me know."

"Well, actually," he said; leaning forward, he reached for her—

And her front legs were wrapping around his neck, her lips pressing his more fervently than before. He caught her up, held her so perfect and warm, and knew his life was never going to be the same again.

***

"Ha ha!" Luna crowed, dancing through the spaces between space to the platform atop Canterlot Tower, the note dancing with her in the dark light of her horn. "Didn't I say it? Didn't I?"

Smiling that little smile of hers, Celestia cocked her head. "Good news, I take it, Starry?"

She wafted the note toward her sister. "Double-O-Zeta! Not only does he stop the threat of the Octopony by capturing Green Briar before he can do more than foul up the weather a bit, but then he also requests permission to form a new branch of the Clandestine Corps centered in Ponyville! And look who he's requesting be granted admission into the Corps' ranks! Look!"

Celestia was glancing along the page and nodding. "Spitfire's already in the Double-O program; she'd make a perfect mentor for young Dash, I would think."

"And you'd think correctly!" Luna did a few more steps of some gavotte or other she hadn't remembered she even knew till just then. "But isn't this what I said? Having succeeded, Blueblood will now enter into a life more wonderful than anything he's ever dreamed!"

That lecturing look started to come over Celestia's face. "Let's not get carried away, now, Starry. These are promising first steps, but Prince Blueblood's journey will no doubt be—"

"Nonsense!" Luna brushed the idea aside with a toss of her mane. "You mark my words, Sunny: Blueblood will soon become not just a credit to the Corps but a credit to all Equestria!"

"Indeed." Celestia's smile came back. "You know, you almost speak of him as if he were your faithful student."

Ready to laugh, Luna paused. She'd not had a student of her own since, well, since she last danced a gavotte, truth to tell....

"And will you grant his request?" Celestia asked.

Luna pretended to be thinking it over. "I don't know. Haven't we had enough excitement around here recently?"

Her horn flickering, Celestia laughed, and the reins of the world snapped away from her directly into Luna's face. "You, my dear sister, have not seen anything yet."

Adjusting creation's joyous weight across her back, Luna pursed her lips. "I believe the phrase is, 'You ain't seen nothing yet.'"

With a wink, Celestia flowed away into the gathering evening. "Well, if you want to be ungrammatical about it..."