The Secret Agent

Chapters

Off to a good start
An Above-Average First Week
An alright start to the Weekend
Back on track... right?
The Useless Week
The end of the tangent
A Little Talk
The Day After
Back at it
Answers?
What Now?
Not quite herself
Don't fail me now, body
The Contest
Drops and The Siren
And then there's Lyra
The Final
A Mission well done
Epilogue

Off to a good start

Canterlot High school, why did it have to be here?

This was the thought that had kept going through Sweetie Drops’ head ever since she had been given the assignment. She had thought it when she read through her papers, when she was driven out here, and she continued thinking it as she walked down the streets to her first day at the school.

It being busy was her only consolation as she made her way through the crowd of people. She could easily blend in with her white dress after finding it didn’t take much effort not to stick out in such a… let's say ‘diverse’ crowd.

This was good for her because, while she was considered by her peers to be exceptional at hiding in plain sight, she was putting more effort than usual into making sure her breathing and mannerisms were normal.

It wasn’t as though she was worried—that’s too strong a word. She was merely nervous due to the fact she wasn’t expecting to return to her home town so quickly.

Granted, every spy has to go back to their old home eventually; it would have happened to her sooner or later. She just hoped it would be the latter. But she couldn’t complain that much, as this mission was too important.

Not the mission in general per say—it was a generic, low level, magic sighted, make sure it’s not a security threat mission—but it was very important that Drops, personally, could do it.

Whenever a mission pops up that happened to be in a spy’s hometown, they were usually shipped there immediately. The higher-ups say it’s because they have a better understanding of the area already, but Drops knew, just as everyone else did, that it was to make sure you’ve severed all personal ties.

If you could get through the mission without getting emotionally involved or risking its success for someone you cared about, then you were fit to be trusted fully with the responsibilities of spywork.

This mission could end with her being put on the shortlist towards moving up the ladder of authority, or leave her perpetually as a go-to for low stakes missions for many years to come. So, she considered a little nervousness to be understandable.

To get her mind off from the consequences of her mission, she examined the crowd that she was currently part of.

For the most part, it seemed like a very friendly school. All around were groups of friends walking and talking together, seemingly happy to be in one another's company, and most people were with at least one companion.

This did raise a little concern for Sweetie Drops, as her being one of the few people alone could draw some attention. But that was nothing a bit of posture shrinking and confident walking couldn’t fix.

She was always taught that as long as you walk confidently, people will assume you know what you’re doing and, by extension, not pay much attention to you. A combination of many other subtle tricks was the art of staying out of sight.

As she continued to walk, a group that had not mastered any of these tricks caught Sweetie Drops’ attention. There were three people sitting on a bench opposite to the bulk of students walking into school. All male, late teens, quite athletic, and presenting themselves with a tough guy act.

While they were being very loud and obnoxious, Sweetie had initially done her best to ignore them. That was until she noticed they had started to become even more distracting, laughing and making funny faces in a particular direction.

Following their gazes, she could see they were directing this behaviour at a particular blond haired girl who had just started to pick-up in speed, trying her best to ignore their loud slurs.

Drops had noticed her before. She was one of the few girls who was without a companion.

Ignoring any sensible thoughts going through her head, Drops found herself sliding through the crowd to get closer to the girl. She couldn’t see her face, but she was obviously distressed, something that only seemed to just encourage them.

As the shouts got louder, Drops found herself getting angrier despite them not directing anything at her personally. With every passing “dipstick”, “crosseyed”, and “retard”, she got increasingly hopeful that someone would tell them to shut up or comfort the girl at least.

But, to her ever growing disappointment, no one did any such thing. A couple huffs and quiet jeers were the most the crowd could muster. To be fair, she couldn’t do anything for her either, only wait for them to get out into the school and feel bad for her.

But as the girl got close to the gate, she, without noticing, entered a clearing without anyone else within a couple of meters from her.

Sensing an opportunity, one of them—the shorter of the three—stood up with his football in hand and raised it above his shoulder.

He yelled “eyes on the ball!” and threw it with a laugh.

The girl turned and, upon seeing the ball, flinched, covered her face with her arms, and shut her eyes.

She stayed like that for a couple of seconds, but nothing happened to her. There was no pain from getting hit by the ball, or any laugh from her flitching so violently at a ball that missed her.

Upon opening her eyes, she was greeted by the ball, staying stationary a couple inches away from her face. Examining the situation, she quickly realised it had been stopped by a pale yellow hand that had caught the ball.

Sweetie Drops was looking at the girl, making sure she was okay, when their gazes met. Her expression was a mix between confusion and shock, and when Drops noticed her crossed eyes, she found herself filling with even more rage.

She turned, shooting a look at the boys who were all staring at her in a stunned silence. Narrowing her eyes, she, almost instinctively, pelted the ball back.

The boy’s face flashed with shock, as his arms desperately tried to flinch upwards to block the ball. It was too late. He was hit square in the face, knocking him off balance and backwards where he tripped over the bench and fell, head first, onto the pavement.

All Drops heard was a faint whimper of pain.

The other two, who Sweetie Drops was happy to see were no longer laughing, exchanged looks between their newly injured friend and the menacing glare of Sweetie Drops.

With almost no hesitation, they quickly helped their friend up, who seemed confused and wobbly, before running off down the street.

Drops glared at them the whole time, making sure they didn’t say anything they’d soon regret. But—as they went out of sight, and her anger calmed down—she quickly realised she had probably just messed up. Messed up badly.

Turning around slowly, she found that not only was the girl she helped staring at her with an amazed expression, but almost everyone else that had just seen what happened had stopped walking and were staring as well.

Drops paused, but before she thought of something clever to say or do, she received a loud cheer from the students.

Crap. Despite her best efforts to stay unnoticed, she had failed miserably. And despite her best efforts not to blush at the sudden attention, she had failed just as miserably.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, as everyone continued walking they felt obliged to give her even more unwanted attention.

“Great job standing up to those bullies. They had it coming.”

“Erm, thanks, but it’s wasn’t that big of—”

“Nice throw. You’ve got one hell of an arm.”

“Well, that’s, uh, thanks, I think, but—”

“I’ve always wanted to teach those ass-holes a lesson myself, but I’ve never had the courage. You’ve got guts.”

“I’m not really sure if that’s it, I wasn’t—”

“That was great! I can’t wait to tell my friends about this!”

“That’s really not necessary.”

This, regrettably, continued until the street was left with only Sweetie Drops, the girl—who had been standing there awkwardly—and a handful of stragglers who continued to walk past them.

Drops went silent. This was, potentially, a major setback, and it was so early in. She normally had a good understanding of the situation before she did something stupid, or, at the very least, had started the investigation.

“... I, er… Thank you.”

Drops turned to face the girl again, this time with a modest smile. She took a second to take in her finer details, noting that, even without her eyes, she seemed to be a unique character.

Her dress sense was, in the least mean way possible, messy. The wrinkled blue shirt clashed with her green skirt, and her yellow tie wasn’t done properly. Again though, not in a mean way, she genuinely thought she still looked pretty. Her long blond hair, especially, looked surprisingly good messy.

But her mannerisms seemed a bit timid, never quite facing her directly and noticeably scrunched in posture. She obviously didn’t know what to do in the situation she found herself in.

Drops decided to try and ease her nerves as best she could.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” she chuckled, waving off any amazement thrown her way. “Pretty good at sports, happened to be close by, no big deal. Anyone else would have done the same.”

The girl gave her best attempt at a chuckle. “Well, it kind of was, ‘cause they normally don’t.”

Drops frowned. “They don’t come here often, do they? If so, I can walk on that side of the road to make sure they stay well away. Give me enough time and I’m pretty sure I can get you a written apology.”

The girl gave Drops a genuine giggle. “It’s fine, really. I don’t want you going ‘round beating people up for me.” She smiled. “Thanks for the offer, anyway.”

Drops let out a little giggle at the girl’s innocent ‘thank you’, happy to see her smiling.

“Fair enough,” Drops said. “Though, I don’t usually resort to violence initially, it just kind of happens sometimes.” And, on occasion, at times when she probably shouldn’t have. A fact her mentors have often scolded her for.

“I honestly prefer to settle things maturely and in a state of calm,” Drops continued. “I just don’t have a long enough temper to achieve that all the time.”

“Then I’ll do my best not to anger you,” she said, smile still wide.

“I’m sure you’ll do a good job at that, and I can be fairly certain I won’t resort to violence with you.” She held out her hand. “I’m Bon-Bon, by the way, this is my first day here.”

The girl stared at it for a split second, but then shook it with a surprisingly firm hand and confident look. “I’m Derpy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s lovely to meet you too… You can stop shaking my hand now.”

“Oh, sorry,” Derpy said quickly, releasing her hand with an apologetic look.

“It’s perfectly fine.” She let out another giggle, but then quickly realised all the other students had long gone. “Oh, I think we may be a bit late.”

“Don’t worry, it’s the first day back. They only have introductory assemblies in the mornings, which aren’t too important,” she said nonchalantly. “Anyway, didn’t you say you’re the new girl? You should be having a guided tour right now.”

“Oh, really? Alright.” Drops had been unaware of this. She probably should have payed more attention to the transfer arrangements. “Where should I go to get this tour?”

“The principal's office. I can show you there if you’d like. I could also, probably give you the tour. They normally just use a volunteer, so I’m sure that’d be fine. If you want me to, that is.”

Drops gave her a warm smile. “That would be nice, thank you.”

She considered a tour a good way of getting some much needed information anyway. And maybe Derpy could pose a good source of help for info and secrets.

Perhaps she could salvage something useful from this early mess-up.

After a quick walk to the principal’s office, Derpy was indeed allowed to give Drops the tour. She did think it was a bit too easy for her to simply change her schedule for the day, and was surprised at how laid back the school system was.

That being said, Drops had an education that was most likely harsher than others. A quick look at the school timetable made her realise how different the school was to her seven to nine training days. Sure that sounds bad, but weekends and fridays it was only nine till five.

Derpy was a surprisingly good tour guide. Drops found herself giggling like a small child every time she overenthusiastically explained details about each individual classroom, something that only seemed to encourage her.

She especially enjoyed Derpy’s explanation on the detailed movement patterns and actions she used to get muffins at the canteen before anyone else. It came complete with a demonstration on how she moved through any crowd without annoying or bumping into people, which she did admit was easier in theory than practice—a fact made evident when she almost knocked over a metal barrier.

While Drops did see several ways it could be improved, she decided against saying anything. It was fine as is. Infact, it made her realise that despite her outwards appearance, she was actually a really smart girl. Not the most coordinated, but smart nevertheless.

It was during one of these events that something caught Drops’ eye.

“Who are these pictures of?,” Drops asked, motioning Derpy over to her.

“Oh, those. That’s, er, Sunset Shimmer.”

Drops stared inquisitively at the pictures. “What kind of event did she win?”

“That’s, erm.” She started scratching the back of her head. “The end of year prom, I think.”

“Why does she look more and more… evil year to year?”

“Heh, does she?” she replied awkwardly.

“Yes, cartoonishly so.”

Derpy looked off to the side. “Does she? I’ve never really noticed.”

“How? She’s genuinely doing an evil laugh in the last one. That’s pretty noticeable.”

“T-that’s probably just a bad picture.”

Drops turned to look at Derpy for a second, but then forced a smile on her face. “Fair enough,” she said, making a mental note of the girl’s name. “Is there anywhere else you need to show me?”

Derpy, happy to move on to a different subject, showed Drops around the remaining classrooms upstairs, taking the time to show her which seats had the best views.

Drops must have lost track of time though—something most unlike her—as, before she knew it, the bell to signal lunch had begun.

They decided to make their way down to the cafeteria, with Drops excited to see the quick muffin technique in action.

Drops had noticed just how much Derpy’s physicality had changed since she first met her. Her posture had got better, hands no longer fiddly, and she even spoke a lot more confidently.

Once in the canteen, Drops started making sure she was standing in places that wouldn’t draw the eye. Mainly because someone noticed her and congratulated her for the morning’s display. The last thing she needed was to be treated like a celebrity.

While in the line, she made pleasant small talk with Derpy—who had decided against quickly getting a muffin and stood with Drops instead— which was mainly about muffins. But, all the while, she kept half her mind on observing the students.

Again, it was very evident how friendly and tolerant the school was. People seemed perfectly happy leaving this dorky kid with his curly haired boyfriend in peace, and a handful of their friends later joined them at the table.

It was a nice sight to see, and it actually made her job slightly easier. She still hadn’t quite lived down the mission she had to leave after breaking the arm of some ass-hat, who was picking on a young girl with some rainbow armbands.

“Excuse me Derpy, where do you normally sit?”

“Hmmm, Wha, Sorry?” She turned away from the muffins she had been examining for a good minute.

“Well, it’s just I’ve got all my food.” She showed Derpy her full tray. “So I was just wondering where you were going to sit. Do you normally sit with other people, or is there a specific place you like to sit?”

Derpy stiffened up slightly. “Wherever there’s a spare seat really. I normally sit on my own.”

“Oh, I’ll find us both a seat then,” Drops said with a smile.

Derpy seemed only too happy to return a smile of her own, a much bigger one. “Thanks, I’ll catch up. Just need to decide between these two muffins.”

Drops nodded before turning to find a seat. After a couple seconds looking, she found two seats she concluded were sufficient. Good vision of the cafeteria, unlikely to be noticed, a handful of available contingency plans. Yeah, they’d work.

While she sat and waited, Drops couldn’t help but find herself looking at Derpy, standing by herself, trying to decide on a muffin. It seemed odd to her that in a school so tolerant and friendly, Derpy sat alone.

There seemed to be no end of weirdly dressed, slightly odd people in this school, no offence to them, so why was Derpy the only one of them seemingly friendless? It wasn’t as though anyone was being mean to her.

But Drops managed to pull herself away from those thoughts. No time for distractions. She was on the job, after all.

Continuing to examine the crowd, her person of high interest entered the cafeteria: Sunset Shimmer. And she looked nothing at all like she’d expected.

Well, not exactly, she physically looked the same as in the picture, but her mannerisms didn’t fit the image at all. Maneuvering through the cafeteria awkwardly, doing her best not to get in anyone's way, almost scared of being noticed. She didn’t exactly seem like someone who’d laugh evilly after being voted prom queen.

Now that she thought about it, how on earth was she voted prom queen? There was not an air of confidence about her or the evident carisma that you’d expect of someone that popular.

It couldn’t have been from shy adorableness that people tend to universally like; that didn’t make sense either, as she didn’t seem to be that well liked. Infact, Drops picked up on a handful of people giving her a little glare when they noticed her.

So much for a friendly and tolerant school.

Once Sunset got her food, she quickly made her way to a table with a pink fluffy haired girl sitting there already. It was definitely weird. Finding out what was going on with this Sunset character was definitely priority number one.

Before too long, Derpy came and joined her by the table. She had two muffins on her tray, which Drops thought was probably the best decision. With a little “hello” from both parties, they ate their lunches with some pleasant small talk.

“So why did you move to this school? What happened to your last one?” asked Derpy.

“I got kicked out of my old school after getting into quite a bad fight.” She was still annoyed about being given that backstory. She knew it was one of her mentors poking fun at her. “Wasn't my fault though; he didn’t give me any other option.”

“Oh.” Derpy gave her an almost concerned look.

She was gonna kill that mentor… Well, she wasn’t, because she’s not prone to violence. “I’m really not like that,” she persisted. “I spent years at that school without getting into any fights.”

Derpy nodded. “I mean, you don’t seem like someone who uses violence without a good reason.”

A look of genuine gratitude appeared on Drops’ face. “Thank you.”

Granted, that response may have seemed a bit weird for Derpy, but sometimes she was just happy to hear a bit of reassurance. Luckily, the conversation promptly moved on.

She still kept an eye on her surroundings though. It made sense to every so often check if Sunset was doing anything noteworthy, which, she normally wasn’t. But she also kept an eye on those still entering the cafeteria, just in case.

While there was a wide array of people coming through the entrance, they were unimportant. Some girl with her headphones on made her question if there was any need to wear those sunglasses inside. She saw three kids walking around, and questioned why they were the only girls their age at the school. She also saw this mint haired girl with a lyre necklace who… wait... Oh crap.

“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” Drops muttered, maneuvering her body so she was turned away from the entrance, with her hand obscuring the side of her head facing it.

“What’s wrong?”

“You see her?” Drops motioned towards the aforementioned girl. “The one with the Lyre necklace and light pink dress, who is she?

Derpy glanced at the girl. “That’s Lyra heartstrings. She’s—”

“Crap,” she groaned.

“She’s Crap?”

“What? No, that’s not what I meant.” She leant in closer to Derpy, changing her voice to a whisper. “I knew her when I was little. She was my oldest friend here.”

Derpy raised an eyebrow at her. “You lived here when you were little?”

Drops replied with an unintentionally patronising look. “Yes, I used to live here, but that’s not the point. The point is she can’t see me.”

“Why not?” she asked, getting more confused at Drops’ actions.

“I’m not ready for that,” she admitted. “It’s been years since I last saw her and, well, there is a very real chance she won’t be over the moon to see me.”

“Then you’re gonna have to get ready quickly. She’s coming this way,” Derpy said, turning forward. “I wouldn’t worry though, Lyra’s never been one to hold a grudge. I’m sure if you’re old friends, she’ll be more than happy to see you, Bon-Bon… Bon-Bon?”

She had gone. Derpy spun round on her seat, but there was no trace of her. She just looked around with a perplexed expression planted on her face.

“Hey Derpy. Didn’t see you there.”

“Oh, hey Lyra,” she replied, still trying to figure out what happened.

“So,” she said, moving a bit closer to Derpy, “I heard some mystery girl saved you from a bunch of bullies today. She apparently gave them a pretty strong argument as to why they should get lost.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.” She looked around again. “I think you just missed her actually.”

“Ah, that’s a shame. I’d have really liked to meet her.” She thought for a second. “I wonder if she’ll be up to teaching me how to throw a football hard enough to knock someone over.”

“I’ll have to introduce her to you at some point.”

Lyra chuckled. “That would be great, thanks. I’ll be knocking over bullies before you know it,” she said with an almost heroic pose. “I’ll see you later Derpy.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

Derpy watched Lyra as she walked off and joined the queue to get food. She sighed, unsure what exactly to do about the disappearing girl.

“That was close.”

Derpy almost jumped out of her seat. “Bon-Bon, please don’t do that,” she said, hand on chest to help her sudden heavy breathing.

Drops gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I’ll try not to sneak up on you next time.”

“H-how did you even disappear like that?”

She had sat at the end of the table, meaning she could just slide out instead of wasting time and making noise moving the chair out from underneath. There was also a group of people standing behind of where they were sitting, so she could quickly walk behind them without being noticed. From there, she could just blend in with certain crowds or stand in corner out of their line of sight until Lyra had gone. It was a simple trick.

“That’s not important,” Drops stated. “What’s important is what she said to you.”

“To me? She just heard about you scaring off those people and wanted to meet you.”

Drops groaned, leaning over and onto the table.

Without any hesitation, Derpy began to pat her on the back. “There there. It’s okay.”

Drops sighed. “Thanks,” she said, not mustering any movement.

Derpy continued to pat until Drops pulled herself up slightly, at which point Derpy gave her an encouraging smile. “So what actually happened between you two?” She asked. “Was it bad?”

“You could say that. It certainly wasn’t good.”

Why did it have to be Canterlot High School

An Above-Average First Week

“Okay, let’s see. Ah, Bon-Bon, stand up please.”

Sweetie Drops did as she was told, lifting herself up from the gymnasium floor before making her way past her classmates and up to the PE teacher.

“Seeing how this is your first self defence lesson, I’m gonna take you through this next move slowly,” the teacher said, readying his stance. “Have you done Karate or anything like this before?”

She nodded, vaguely remembering she was about eight when she got her black belt, or maybe she was seven. Regardless, she was a slow learner at the craft.

“Good,” he said with an encouraging smile. “It’s very important to learn this kind of thing. Now, what would you do if someone in the streets did this.”

The teacher went for a little jab at her side with his left fist. Drops, instinctively, grabbed the fist with her right hand, twisting it round to reveal a shoulder. She promptly struck it with her left hand before swinging her fist round to knock him in the jaw, causing him to fall over.

A simple move she’d drilled hundreds of times, used to neutralize an unskilled opponent… oh crap.

‘Oh crap’ had been the thought that really summed up her thinking throughout her first week. Sure, she was still considered a newbie to spying missions, but she has never before failed so badly at simply keeping a low profile.

The knocking down of a teacher in PE, while being the most notorious, was still only an example of the attention she had been gaining, and not even the only one in PE.

It had started off in the changing rooms where she made both the sports team and Derpy, who she was getting changed with, a bit uncomfortable when they noticed her six pack—something that was never considered special back at training—and it really just got worse from there.

During the day one physical examination, she realised too late she should probably underperform in the tests, and not, as she did, win every race, exercise, and endurance test by a huge margin.

It was an unfortunate event that led all the sports captains competing to get her on their teams. One day she even found them all outside her locker, holding gifts and arguing why their team specifically needed her.

Other lessons weren’t much better. In maths she had the clever idea of finishing the lesson’s work in about ten minutes, so she could make notes on what her classmates were doing. Which, at the time, seemed like a great idea because she shared the class with Sunset Shimmer.

That was until her teacher noticed she had stopped writing in her book.

“What do you think you’re doing, missy? This is no time for gazing into space,” her maths teacher snapped, walking over to her.

“Oh, sorry, I was just—”

“Give it here,” he said, snatching the book from her. “Let me see where you’re at. I’m here to help, you know.”

He scanned her work, face growing paler as he did so. “Oh… You’ve already done everything—” he glanced at the clock “—in just fifteen minutes…”

Drops blushed. Not at all liking the fact her whole class—the top maths class—had stopped to stare at her with either shock or awe. Most notably, and most embarrassingly as far as her spy work was concerned, Sunset was also staring at her.

“Would you like some extra work?” The teacher finally asked.

“Yes please,” she replied with an awkward smile.

English wasn’t much better either. They were, unfortunately, doing Shakespeare. Not ‘unfortunately’ in the normal student sense of ‘man, Shakespeare is so boring and none of the words make sense’.

No, Sweetie Drops used to, and still did to an certain extent, love Shakespeare. When she was twelve, the Shakespeare complete collection was the only book she liked in the training school’s library—though, that wasn’t much of a competition.

What made Shakespeare an unfortunate topic came from how they used him when she was fourteen. Because trainee spies had to practice learning their backstories by heart for missions, they all had to play a ‘game’ where anytime a mentor said a line from a play, they’d have to say the next.

And these weren’t ever simple lines. She'd have killed to just once hear the line ‘To be or not to be’, but she never had such luck. At any moment, a mentor could walk past, say ‘Denmark’s a prison’ and she’d have to immediately reply ‘then is the world one’. She had to learn those books inside out.

Which is why, considering the fact Drops had not left training that long ago, she hadn’t quite gotten out of the habit.

It didn’t take long into the lesion for the teacher to say. “Now, I know when doing Hamlet there’s a lot of focus on one particular speech, but my favorite is actually ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I—’”

“Is it not monstrous that this player here,” Drops instantly replied. It was a couple of seconds later that she realised how weird she looked and, additionally, how impressed her teacher was.

So, considering that one of the first rules of being a spy is not being noticed when you don’t want to be, she was a massive failure on that point, having become the most talked about girl in the school within a week.

But, as most spies know, this kind of work isn’t about doing everything perfectly, it’s about making the best out of bad situations and good opportunities. Which she actually had been able to do.

Even with a, let's say, traumatic first week, she’d still been able to collect a lot of much needed data, Sunset Shimmer data.

The first conclusions she made was that the glares she noticed on her first day were universal. Only five people in the whole school seemed to actually like the girl, while the rest tried to be as far away from her as possible.

What’s odd was that these five girls, Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, all seemed to be very popular in the school, with all of them having a lot of other friends and all well liked throughout the school.

But, despite this, they were normally only found around each other. It was a peculiar situation, and one that she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about. It didn’t help that Derpy continued to dodge any question about her.

Speaking of Derpy, Drops had seen her walking on her second day, and ever since then they had been going to school together. Just in case Drops needed to stare down those boys again.

They also started eating lunch together regularly. Drops even managed to see Derpy’s quick muffin technique in practice, something she was most impressed with. It also quickly became a mutual expectation to sit next to each other whenever they were in the same class.

On a side note—a very small side note, she doesn’t even know why she noted it down; it’s probably not important, definately not important—she noticed that Lyra seemed quite close with all of Sunset Shimmer's friends. Again, not important.

Drops still hadn’t talked to Lyra yet, and she was intent on it staying that way. She already severed those personal ties years ago. There was no reason to retie them, and that way she wouldn't have to sever them again upon leaving. It was a win-win.

But, to her surprise, at the end of a hard week Drops had been given a reward, something she was very excited about.

Thinking of said reward, she gleefully walked to school with something very close to a skip in her step. So happy she didn’t even mind putting the effort into not being noticed by the netball captain, who was a few feet in front of her.

“Still excited for baking class I see,” Derpy giggled, very much enjoying this Bubbly version of Sweetie Drops.

“You know it,” she exclaimed. “It’s gonna be great! I haven’t done proper baking in years.”

Her superiors never let her have the correct ingredients. It was all health drinks and low carb, high protein food. Though that didn’t stop her from trying to make something more… edible.

“I’m looking forward to it too. I wonder what we’ll be baking.”

“Hoping for some muffin making, am I right in saying?” Drops gave her a playful nudge.

“I’m not that obsessed with muffins,” she stated. “But yes, that is what I’m hoping for.”

“I’ll be happy regardless of what we’re making. I just can’t wait to get the oven mittens on again.”

“Now you’re just getting me excited to see what you make. If you’re as good at baking as any of your other subjects, I’m in for a yummy treat.”

Drops fought back the urge to gulp. “I wouldn’t get too excited. I’ve never really had the time to practice it, so it won’t be anything special to eat.”

“If you say so. I’m sure you’ll do fine though.” She gave her an encouraging tap on the back.

Once in the school, they separated with a wave and a ‘goodbye’, as they headed off to their individual maths lessons.

Maths, now that she’d convinced her teachers against getting her a private tutor, still remained mainly observing Sunset for suspicious activity—which to be perfectly honest there wasn’t much of. People did seem a lot more inclined to ask Drops for help though, bringing more unwanted attention.

But, before she knew it—and without any more useful notes—the class was done, and she could head on over to the food tech room.

Upon making her way to the room, she was happy to see Derpy waiting for her with a wide smile. The room was long with two rows of worktables on either side of the room, which had a gap between them to walk through.

“You ready for some baking?” Derpy asked enthusiastically, displaying the table she’d saved for them.

“I would like to say I was born ready, because I was, but I’ve actually got to set everything up first.” Leaning down, Drops opened the drawers to look for the mats and ingredients.

“Oh, you ready to set up for baking then?”

Drops shot her a confident smile. “You know it.”

She carefully looked through all the pots, pans, and ingredients in the drawers, loving every second of it. The weight of flour in her hands again, especially, filled her with glee. It took a good amount of her willpower not to take a big whiff of it.

“Sorry I’m late.”

That voice

Drops peered over the worktop. She froze. In front of her, looking slightly embarrassed by the teacher now scolding her, stood Lyra Heartstrings.

She moved her head forward, resting it on a drawer, and let out a long sigh. And baking seemed like it was gonna be such a nice time.

Derpy exchanged looks between Drops and Lyra. She leant down slightly, placing her hand on her shoulder. “I guess this means Lyra’s in our baking class.”

“That is a sound deduction,” Drops replied, voice weaker than she’d have liked.

“What you gonna do?”

Drops, for a second, thought through the logistics of hiding from Lyra as she passed and sneaking out to request a class change, but quickly realised the impracticality of it.

“Now, no more time wasting,” the teacher snapped, “get to a workspace quickly. I have to get out my cooking tools.”

Drops sighed. “I’m going to do the only thing I can do, Derpy.” She stood up with her best attempt at confidence. “Face her, and the repercussions.”

With a gulp, she walked past Derpy, placing herself in in the gap between each side’s workstations. Lyra, who was awkwardly hurrying to the back of the class stopped when her path became blocked by—

“Bon-Bon?”

Drops nodded. “Lyra.” She coughed immediately, realising how shaky her voice was. “Hello again.”

Then, to Drops’ disbelief, Lyra’s face of shock was replaced with one of great joy; and, to her complete and utter surprise, she ran in for a hug.

Drops’ face froze, plastered with an almost scared, bright red expression on it. She was close to getting knocked over by the speed of the impact, but she put her foot back to stop herself from falling.

For the next couple of seconds, Drops felt incredibly uncomfortable. Lyra was hugging tightly, while her own arms were extended out, just kind of wobbling about with no idea of what to do. She, eventually, settled for hugging back slightly, hesitantly touching Lyra’s back.

Lyra—after what felt like far too long a time for hugging someone to Drops—loosened up, moving to a face-to-face position. Lyra beamed gleefully at Drops, who returned the same bright red, flustered look from the beginning of the hug.

“Bon-Bon, I can’t believe you’re actually back!” Lyra practically cheered at her. “It’s been forever. I didn't think I’d ever see you again.”

Drops gave an awkward chuckle. “Yeah, small world, huh.”

“I know! Here you are. So much bigger as well. Then again, we are both a lot bigger, so we’ve kind of stayed the same proportionately.” She giggled. “Sorry, I’m being silly. It’s just so crazy that you’re back! I don’t know how to react.”

“You can say that again,” Drops said, doing all she could to seem casual.

“I know.” Lyra snapped her finger. “We’ll have to catch up some time, some time soon. Let’s exchange numbers quickly.”

“Y-yes, good idea.”

They both got out their phones. Sweetie Drops read out her number to Lyra, who noted it down into her contacts and promised to message her later.

With a very energetic wave, Lyra headed to a workstation at the back of the room before the teacher had finished setting up. Drops, of course, returned the wave, but hers was slow, and her face didn’t quite know what expression to make.

Derpy, who had watched the whole thing with a huge grin on her face, nudged up to Drops. “You see, what did I tell ya! Lyra’s incredibly happy to see you again!”

For a couple of seconds, Drops just stared at Lyra, as she frantically took out all her equipment. “Yeah,” she replied quietly, “I guess you were right.”

Sweetie Drops’ first baking lesson in years was frustratingly slow. Not much was said between her and Derpy after it became evident that she was answering every question with either ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘uh-huh’. And so, their lesson fell into a heavy silence.

The teacher showed them how to make a cake in the end. Theirs turned out pretty well all things considered. Drops let Derpy have it. She wasn’t hungry anyway.

Lunch was similar. She didn’t really pay much attention to her surroundings, and pretty much ignored Derpy’s questions of concern. She simply waved them off with ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m just a bit tired’, well aware that Derpy didn’t buy it for a second.

The evening lessons were also a bit of a drag, but she got through them without having to say much at all. She had noticed in her last lesson, Physics—a class with a seating plan that placed Derpy behind her—that the blond haired girl kept glancing at her with a worried expression.

Drops did her best to ignore it, just focusing on getting through the day so she could get back to the apartment.

This was almost pulled off perfectly. They had made it through the final lessons and were walking back together as normal—well, the complete silence wasn’t normal. But, as Drops approached her turning, Derpy moved in front of her, blocking her path.

Drops stopped, backing down slightly to the very serious looking Derpy.

“Bon-Bon,” she said firmly. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting upset ever since you met Lyra again, even though she was super happy to see you. What’s up with that?”

Drops glanced at her turning just a couple meters up ahead. “Derpy, I’m fine, I just need to get ba—”

“Please, Bon-bon,” she persisted. “I’m asking you this because I’m worried about you.” Derpy’s firm stare wavered slightly, revealing a look of genuine concern.

Drops sighed. “Please, Derpy, I don’t want you worrying about this. It’s just me overreacting about something that shouldn’t matter. It’s just, you know, sometimes when you haven’t…” Drops desperately tried to articulate her thoughts for her.

“Listen, you know how in life you always have people where the relationship is different for each party. Fans to celebrity, student to teacher. You can’t help but see each other differently because the numbers are so different.

“And you have to accept that even though you’ll never forget your favorite teacher, you’re only one of hundreds to them, even if that’s a hard fact to swallow.” Drops’ mouth went dry. “And it’s even more difficult to accept that when the uneven relationship is between friends.”

Derpy frowned, her eyes still full of worry. “Bon-Bon, what happened between you and Lyra?”

“Nothing, it wasn’t as big a deal as I’m making it out to be. I’m just acting like a child.” She moved forward, sliding past Derpy and towards her turning. “Sorry, I need to get back. I’m already late.”

Drops practically ran the rest of the way, leaving Derpy in her worried state. She felt terrible about it, but she knew it wasn’t important. Her main concern needed to be regaining a clear head.

Reaching her apartment building, she jogged up the stairs as fast she could and headed straight for her room, without so much a passing nod to the other people living there.

Slamming the door behind her, she took a second to lean on it and sigh.

The apartment room was rented out by herself with part of the mission budget. It was messy, unkempt, and still had many of her belongings unpacked. But for her purposes, it worked as a base of operations.

She stared at her desk, knowing that the week-in report needed to be written up and sent off to the mission managers soon, and that she should probably get started on it.

But instead, she just stayed leaning on her door. All she did was slide down so she was sitting, legs scrunched up in a ball like position. She knew she was being stupid, childish; unprofessional, but she couldn’t help it.

She stayed like that until her phone buzzed. Taking it out, she saw it was a message from an unknown number.

Hi, it’s me, Lyra. Sorry I didn’t text you my number during lunch, it completely slipped my mind. Still can’t believe I actually have your number in my phone.

Anyway, give me some dates on when we can have that catch up. I know the cutest little cafe that we should do it in. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Send me some times you’re free :D

Drops stared at the message. Her hand was shaking. Her breathing had stopped. She sat in complete silence.

Without meaning to, a flash of anger rippled over her and she threw the phone at her sofa.

This left her hands free to push into her head in frustration. Frustration at herself. Why was she acting like this? She hadn’t let her emotions control her this badly before. Not since she started training.

Drops felt herself getting angier. This couldn’t do, this was pathetic. She forced herself up—still slightly wobbly, but she was stable enough to walk—before making her way to her desk.

With gritted teeth, she pulled out her chair and sat down. She managed to pull off some breathing exercises, calming herself down enough to make a start on her report.

Luckily, the report managed to take her mind off Lyra. Sorting through all her notes and writing them out in a useful manner wasn’t particularly challenging, but it required enough concentration to keep her focused.

This was, that is, until she revisited her notes on Lyra’s closer than average relationship with all of Sunset Shimmer’s friends.

For a moment, she considered not including those notes, but decided that was silly. She shouldn't leave out relevant information just because of her personal feelings, even if they weren’t that important.

She also, if not a little reluctantly, included her mistakes when it came to keeping a low profile, but insisted that they had in no way jeopardized the mission.

Within a couple of hours, Drops had finished laying out all she knew about the potential people of interest, giving Sunset the most detail in the report.

She was happy with it. It contained as much information as one would expect from the first week’s report, maybe even a little bit more. And so she emailed it off to her higher-ups via the secure system.

It didn’t take too long for them to reply; the teams that oversee all the missions normally work on overdrive when it’s Friday.

She read it over quickly. It was mainly just confirmations that she was doing the correct thing, a handful of questions about details of the school, and a comment next to her retelling of the football incident that simply read ‘Classic Sweetie Drops’.

But after reading through all that, under the subtitle recommendations, she found something that made her feel a little ill.

I would recommend, if she is indeed close to all of them, using Lyra to find out much needed information about the ‘people of interest’ and, potentially, use her friendship to get close to them.

Drops just stared at her screen with a look of hopelessness. This was going to be a difficult mission.

An alright start to the Weekend

This feels so wrong.

Sweetie Drops was sitting outside a coffee shop, reading a book while peering through the window of a local boutique opposite her. Inside, looking through the variety of expensive dresses, was Lyra Heartstrings, today's target for close recon. A fact Drops felt very uneasy about.

Sure, she had done this kind of thing many times before. Following someone around, making notes on every phase of their routine, learning their interests, and finding the best possible way to get close to them, it was nothing new to her. And, if she was honest, it was probably the part of spying she felt most comfortable with.

Not this time, though. From the very beginning of the day, Drops had felt terrible for what seemed like a massive invasion of Lyra’s privacy. Which it was, but feeling bad for it was something new for her.

The initial searching of Lyra’s room after she headed out on her errands was incredibly awkward. Once there she almost couldn’t bring herself to go through with it, but the the thought of being spotted while scaling up the side of Lyra’s house pushed her to go in.

She’d trained to search through all kinds of rooms, from a snake keeper to a dominatrix, without so much as a slight hesitation. And yet, she couldn’t even stand in Lyra’s room without blushing like a schoolgirl.

To be fair, Lyra’s room was not exactly as she had expected it to be. Not that she really knew what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t bright pink with posters of some weird kids cartoon—not that she judged; you couldn’t in this business.

Luckily, being a professional, she managed to pull herself through any embarrassment and searched for potential points of interest.

She noted down what kind of books she had on her bookshelf—manga, comic books, and academic books, with the first two looking considerably more worn—as you could always tell a lot about a person by what kind of books they own.

Some things are subtle and require time to figure out. One of her mentors once explained to her how he used a suspect's list of favorite romance novels to craft the personality of her perfect man, an impressive accomplishment.

Others were much more easy to see. Like the big collection of mangas named things like ‘GirlFriends’ or ‘Yuru Yuri’, usually with pictures of two girls very close to each other. It didn’t really leave much to Drops’ imagination—but, then again, it also really did.

At the same time, this was only low-level deduction. It would take a lot more information to reach any conclusions. It’s perfectly reasonable for a straight girl to enjoy that kind of literature in this day and age.

Unfortunately, other than her books, everything else in her room didn’t help much. A look through her wardrobe made it evident she knew a lot about fashion, but not much else. And a look on her desktop—that luckily wasn’t password protected—didn’t help because she seemed to regularly delete her history.

Though, that did give the mind a pretty good idea of what she needs to keep deleting.

Her social media was equally as disappointing. After looking through her messages, it quickly became evident she must use texting as her main communication. She had already searched through all her posts last night on her own computer, anyway.

Apart from that, she’d rather not look too far into those weird cartoons on her wall if she didn’t need to, and finding a Lyre in her room didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.

It wasn’t a complete waste, though. Drops uploaded a program that showed her what website Lyra visited and saved them all to get past her lack of history. And the knowledge of what Books Lyra liked should not be underestimated.

In fact, Drops had decided to get one of her more worn books from the local bookshops. It was what she was reading while tracking her in a boutique. A little comic book about superheroes and their adventures, nothing too exciting.

She’d prefer her to be into books more along the works of Eric Hobsbawm or Jared Diamond, as she’s already read most of theirs. But she couldn’t complain too much.

She had followed Lyra round most of her errands, keeping close enough to get a good look at what she was doing, but never too close to risk her being seen. Hence why she was sitting across the road from her.

While you’d expect her not to be able to see Lyra from such a distance, Drops’ Sunglasses had a zoom function that made observing very easy. Which was a relatively low-cost tech that could be obtained without a fuss for this priority mission.

Drops made a note on what kind of dresses she was looking at. While, as stated earlier, Lyra’s wardrobe and fashion sense was impressive, her clothes were all relatively low cost and had a more casual look. The clothes she was looking at, on the other hand, were some of the fanciest clothes in the store, and it was already a quite up-market shop.

Drops had originally believed it to be just window shopping. But as time went on, and Lyra continued to look through them, holding onto some but shaking her head at others, painfully looking at the price tags, and constantly shortening her selection, Drops questioned that assumption.

Lyra must have some kind of special occasion she needs a dress for coming up soon, thought Drops, believing that to be the most likely answer.

Lyra, for her part, had no idea she was being followed. Drops could easily see the unintentional hesitations or panics people get if they believe someone's watching them.

Drops, from an objective point of view, was on a roll as far as scouting was concerned. But her success did nothing to help the growing pain in her chest. There was part of her that wanted nothing more than to run away or go over to Lyra and beg for forgiveness. A part of herself she hated.

She needed to distract her mind from those thoughts quickly. Unfortunately, the ‘book’ she was reading didn’t take much of her concentration.

Something to eat, maybe? That was probably her stomach talking. She had forgotten to eat any lunch during the recon activity, and it was finally starting to catch up to her.

“Menu, madam?”

Drops looked away from the boutique to see that a menu had been placed in front of her when a waiter walked past. With a smile, she picked it up and started scanning through it. At least she did, until she realised something.

Wait, Costa doesn’t normally have hand out menus... or waiters.

She looked up, immediately greeted by the smug smile of a man sitting on the opposite side of her table. Middle aged, but still visibly athletic, he looked incredibly well dressed in his black suit, black tie, and sunglasses, and sat as smugly as he smiled.

“Hello, Sweetie Drops,” he said with a charming tone.

“Fast Glider?” She said, initially confused but quickly turning angry. “What on earth are you doing here?”

He chuckled. “Is that how you speak to your old mentors now? Honestly, you rookies lose all respect once out on the field.”

“What on earth are you doing here, sir.” Drops asked, more firm this time.

“Much better.” He shifted his body, getting more comfortable in his seat. “There’s no need to worry though. I’m not here to check up on you or anything. We simply don’t have enough agents to send one every time you make a mistake.”

Drops narrowed her eyes.

“Relax,” he chuckled, “I’ve got my own mission here. I just happened to see you keeping an eye on that girl—” he motioned towards the boutique behind him “—and decided to say hello. Not exactly mission protocol, but when have we ever let that stop us.”

Drops let out a breath, easing up a bit. It was unlikely the higher-ups would get such a skilled operative to keep an eye on her, and it’s hard to believe she wouldn’t have noticed him all this time.

“Alright,” she conceded, “I apologise for my quick judgement, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re in the middle of a stressful mission, a ‘home mission’ tends to be. It’s perfectly reasonable to feel a bit on edge, especially as you’re doing it so young.”

Drops raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read my mission statement?”

“And your report,” he added. “The bit about you punching a teacher really got me laughing. I’ve never heard such an event that was so ‘Sweetie Drops’.”

She let out an embarrassed sigh. “I couldn’t help it. We’ve drilled those moves so many times—on occasion, without me knowing before hand—that it’s practically second nature to counter when someone throws me a punch.”

He shrugged. “That’s to be expected. I had to infiltrate a play of Macbeth recently. And I tell ya, the amount of time I almost blew my cover by saying the next line, it was embarrassing.”

Drops let out a little chuckle herself. “Is that an attempt to make me feel better about my English lessons?”

“Something like that,” he admitted. “But it’s also because you’re one of few people who won’t judge me for it. Not completely out kindness mind you, but out of never being in a position to judge.”

“It would seem that way,” she sighed.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’ll soon be the one judging people for all their rookie mistakes. We did nominate you for ‘recruits with most potential’ for a reason, and you won it for the same reason.”

“Yes, because I’ve got ‘above average skills’ but can’t ever do a job without messing up at least once. Most ‘potential’ is never the title people want.”

Fast glider gave her an unimpressed look. “Trust you to take a reward in the most self-deprecating way.” He thought for a second, but quickly returned to Drops. “You remember your third unobserved mission, while I was still your mentor.”

She responded with an inquisitive look, but complied nevertheless. “Yes, It was meant to be a simple low-level arrest mission, but the culprit turned out to be part of an underground group.”

“Exactly, that mission quickly turned into something you were in no way prepared for. But instead of getting out and letting someone else handle it, as we had advised, you worked through it.”

He leaned forward. “You came back with a broken leg, cut lip, and more bruises than I could count, but you also arrived with him in custody. And do you remember what I said to you?”

“‘What the bloody hell happened to your face?’”

“Yes, but I also said that ‘you did an amazing job out there’, because you did. At the very least it cemented the idea in my mind that you had great things ahead of you.”

“And the idea in many people's minds that I was too reckless for my own good.”

Glider Frowned. “Have you always been such a mood killer?” He sat back in his chair. “Throw yourself a bone for once, assuming you won’t just leave it because you’re ‘not good enough’.”

Drops fell silent, lowering her head slightly. Her eyes began to linger anywhere but her old mentor, who, for his part, seemed perfectly happy letting the silence linger. But, eventually, she managed to force herself to restart the conversation.

“So,” she said, “why did you read my report in the first place? I wouldn’t think you have the time to keep up on your old students.”

“I don’t. I would say I made a special exception for you, but that would be a lie. In all honesty, my mission is also based here for now, so I thought I should keep up with other missions going on alongside me. You never know when you might need back up.”

“And it just happened to be me, one of your old students?”

He nodded. “Not too surprising. I’ve been a mentor for a very long time.”

“Indeed,” Drops admitted. “What mission are you working on?”

“Nothing too special, just tracking down the Sirens.”

Her eyes Widened. “The Sirens are here?”

“This town is where I’ve tracked them to, yes.” His tone turned more serious. “I found a restaurant near here filled with people under the siren's spell. With some luck we’ll finally be able to stop our biggest ever security threat.”

Drops had gone stiff. “T-That’s easier said than done. We’ve been after them since the organisation was set up.”

“Tell me about it.” He sighed. “Don’t worry though, they’ll probably be in a different town by the end of the week. It’s very rare for them to stay in the same place for long.”

He started to lift himself up from the table. “But good luck with your investigation. Hopefully you’ll find all you need to know about your target. Who are you following, by the way?”

She hesitated slightly. “I’m performing recon on Lyra Heartstrings.”

Fast Glider raised an eyebrow, giving her an inquisitive, if not a little surprised, look. “Lyra Heartstrings? But your report said she… ah.” He gave her a sly smile and a wink. “Say no more, I gotcha.”

Drops blushed. “Sir, I’m only doing what was recommended on my report. I want you to know I’m being completely professional about this mission.”

He Laughed. “It was indeed recommended to get close to her, but I believe they were thinking more along the lines of an easy initial friendship that bypassed the need for recon.”

Drops fell silent. The only thing her body could do was brighten her already red face.

“Again, relax,” he said with a smile. “This is your ‘home mission’. No one is expecting you to be perfectly professional about everything. These missions may be about severing personal ties, but they’re just as much about giving you some closure.”

He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Which is something I would strongly recommend you get, as those who don’t always come to regret it.”

He used the same hand to pat her back. “Careful though, if the Sirens are indeed connected to your investigation—which I highly doubt—you’ll be off the case faster than you can say ‘With them they think on? Things without all remedy’.”

“‘Should be without regard: what's done, is done’.”

“Exactly.” Fast Glider gave her one last encouraging smile before making his way down the street.

Drops watched him as he left, but stayed quiet.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” he called back, “just try not to beat anyone to a pulp this time.”

Drops’ gaze lingered on Fast Glider for a bit longer as he walked out of sight. Once she was sure he had gone, she let out a heavy sigh.

She wanted desperately to take a couple minutes out just to think everything through, but she forced her attention back to Lyra, who was walking out of the bouquet with a newly purchased black dress.

Drops for a second thought it good luck that she hadn’t left before the conversation ended, but quickly realised that Fast Glider had most likely done that intentionally.

As Lyra walked down the street, Drops knew that if she wanted to follow her, she’d need to move quickly, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to.

Fast Glider had been right, after all. The only reason they recommended getting close to Lyra was because it would be quick and easy. This wasn’t quick or easy.

Not only that, but she didn’t even have to get close to Lyra, it wasn’t an order. There had even been other recommendations, it’s not like getting close to Lyra was the be all and end all of plans. Others were available and were, most likely, more advantageous.

That report had just been a huge excuse, an excuse to do something she didn’t even want to do. To do something she shouldn’t want to do. She’d always known that spy work would require many, many sacrifices. And right now, her friendship with Lyra was one of them.

So, she let her walk away. Out of sight and out of mind.

Glancing back at the boutique, Drops noticed someone. Rarity. It would seem, while looking at Lyra, she completely missed that one of Sunsets friends was working there.

More importantly, she missed an opportunity.

Placing the comic book straight into her bag, she stood up and made her way over. Agent Sweetie Drops was filled with determination and, for the first time today, a plan that would point her in the right direction.

Back on track... right?

“Hello, is there anything I can help you with?”

Sweetie Drops turned to be greeted by the wide smile of the purple haired lady, her new target for the day.

Drops hadn’t been in the shop for much more than a minute, but her awkward physicality and confused looks had, as expected, caught the fashionista's attention quickly. She had just brushed over a wide variety of dresses, moving closer to Rarity as she did so.

“Yes please,” Drops said with a bashful smile. “Sorry, I don’t really know all that much about fashion, but I need to find a smart dress for a wedding that’s coming up.”

“Well, fret not,” Rarity said, “I’m sure I’ll be able to find the perfect dress for you.” She glanced at the clothes Drops was looking at with a frown. “But first, we must get you back into the smart section, these are all casual attire.”

Drops gave her an apologetic look and followed her lead.

Even though Rarity obviously knew a lot about fashion, Drops was still quite impressed seeing her in action. She would brush her hand through a variety of clothes, picking out specific ones as if she could tell which would look good on her with just a glance.

Rarity held two dresses up next to Drops, who thought both of which would look surprisingly good on her—almost good enough she considered getting them just because—but quickly placed them back and found some that looked even better.

Drops had originally been putting on an act of fashion ignorance, but compared to Rarity, she did, actually, know very little.

Drops gave Rarity a smile as she picked up to more dresses. “I really appreciate all the help, Miss…”

“Oh please, just call me Rarity,” she said, frowning before putting some back.

“Rarity, It’s nice to meet you. I’m Bon-Bon.”

“Bon-Bon?” Rarity stopped looking through the clothes and turned to face her again. “You haven’t just happened to move to CHS recently, have you?”

Drops hesitated. “Yes, just this week actually.”

“Ah yes, Sunset told me all about you. You’re in her maths class, right?”

It took a lot of Drops’ will power not to groan at the knowledge that Sunset, the very person she was meant to be most discreet with, was telling her friends about her. “Yes, that’s right,” she forced out.

Rarity laughed. “Well, it’s nice to meet the girl who’s suddenly become the talk of the school. I’ve been hearing so many rumours about you.”

Drops raised her eyebrows. “All good I hope.”

“That’s putting it mildly, dear. I don’t mean to intrude, but is it true you did so well in the running endurance test that they had to stop you because they ran out of lesson time?”

Drops held down a gulp. “It wasn’t as impressive as it sounds. They did the test quite late in the lesson.”

“Did you knock a teacher over in a self-defence lesson?”

“I come from a rough neighborhood.”

“Can you recite any line from hamlet instantaneously?”

“I like to read, okay?”

Rarity paused for a second, looking Drops up and down with an inquisitive look. “Did you throw a ball at someone who was picking on Derpy.”

“He deserved it.”

Rarity scoffed. “Well, I would have thought so. Had I walked that way, I would like to think I’d have done the same. Although, I probably would have missed him.”

Drops chuckled. “I just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with a good aim. It was no heroic gesture.”

Rarity raised her eyebrow at her. “You’re certainly a modest one.”

“It comes from having a lot to be modest about.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow, letting a silence grow between them. It wasn’t awkward though. Rarity was giving Drops a look of admiration, and maybe even a little awe. Sweetie Drops did her best to stay firm, but getting so much praise for those actions unsettled her.

Sure, to everyone else, her protection of Derpy is easily seen as something that should be applauded. But she knew the truth, that it had been an avoidable risk to her mission’s integrity, another time her emotions had gotten the best of her.

This silence was interrupted when Drops’ stomach growled, causing Rarity to giggle.

“Sorry,” Drops said with a blush, “I haven’t had any lunch yet. You don’t by chance know any good places to eat here.”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Rarity grinned. “My break is in a couple of minutes. If you wait for me, I can take you to it.”

Drops gave her a warm smile. “That would be nice.”

Rarity did her best to pack up her things as quickly as possible, not wanting to keep her new acquaintance waiting. She had asked if Drops wanted to get a dress before they left, but she insisted it was fine.

Rarity began to lead Drops to a small cafe that she and her friends frequented. Drops saw any details about her friends as potentially useful, and Rarity seemed only too happy to give said info when posed with the right questions.

With only a small amount of small talk, Drops found herself bathing in information that had seemed so troublesome to obtain. She now knew all about Applejack’s farm, Fluttershy’s animal obsession, and Pinkie Pie’s antics.

She was also presented with stories of Rainbow Dash’s attempts to create a band, and how that was eating up all her time. While it didn’t sound like much, it explained why Rainbow was the only sports captain not running after her, something that could have potentially sped up the operation.

Rarity also seemed happy to talk a lot about herself. Not in a cocky way or anything mean, Drops was asking the questions after all, but she just seemed to be rather confident when talking about herself. This was good, as shy people make it harder to get info.

The only issue was that there was one particular friend she wasn’t mentioning.

“So,” Drops said, giving up on subtlety, “what about Sunset Shimmer? Don’t you hang out with her as well?”

“Well, I, erm.” Rarity’s mannerisms suddenly became a lot less confident. “We’re much newer friends than I am with the others, so I don’t know her as well.”

“Oh, fair enough.” She paused for a second to think. “But it’s nice you are all friends with her. She doesn’t really have many others. Everyone else seems to really dislike her.”

Rarity’s mannerisms only continued to get more awkward. “That may be an oversimplification. But yes, our fellow classmates haven’t been very forgiving of her, which is understandable as she was very mean to them.”

“How so?”

Rarity’s eyes widened with what almost sounded like a squeak. “‘How so?’”

“Yes, how so?”

“Well, that’s... well it wasn’t really what she did per se, but more to do with how she did it. Okay, more to do with the way in which those things were done, the charisma of how she did the event that may have led to people not liking her.”

“... And those events were?”

“I-it’s as I said, really, more to do with the way it was done, or maybe it wasn’t, and more to do with the intentions she had while doing said things as those were probably just as bad, if not a little worse, than what she was actually doing, but probably not as bad as the way she was going about these intentions, which was probably the worst part of it all, even if every part of it was pretty bad, and that’s not even going over the things she did before that, as those were also bad.”

Drops frowned. “Rarity, are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly fine. Why do you ask?”

“Because you won’t tell me exactly what it is Sunset did to be so hated.”

Rarity wiped away the growing sweat from her forehead with a shaky hand. “Well, it was awhile ago now. You can’t expect me to remember all the details. Oh, would you look at that, we’re here.”

Drops turned forward to see the cafe, ‘Sugar Cube Corner’, but before she could take it in, Rarity rushed past her and through the door.

Drops sighed. It would seem that whatever the mystery of Sunset Shimmer was, it wasn’t something she could force out of her friends like that.

Doing her best to feel content with this revelation, she followed Rarity’s lead and walked in after her, happy enough to fill up her stomach at the very least.

Regardless, upon entering, she was happy to see that the cafe was indeed the pleasant little place that Rarity made it out to be. It was brightly coloured with a good amount of natural light that gave it an almost upbeat feel, but it also had a relaxing atmosphere she could easily sit and enjoy for hours on end.

Not to mention the food smelled pretty damn good. But that was probably her stomach talking again.

She quickly looked around to track Rarity, finding her talking to a familiar pink friend, Pinkie Pie. A sly grin found its way onto Drops’ face as she went over to join them. She never was one to pass on such a useful opportunity.

“Oh, you should have come round the boutique. There are so many good clothes I know you’d just love.”

Drops placed herself close enough and at such an angle to Rarity that she immediately noticed her.

“Oh, sorry, how rude of me,” she said. “This is Pinkie Pie, Pinkie this is—

“Bon-Bon!” Pinkie exclaimed, throwing her hand out to give Drops an energetic handshake. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long. You’re friends with Derpy, right?”

Drops hesitated, something that surprised her. “Yes, I’d like to think so anyway.”

“That’s great! Get your food so we can talk. I’ll save you a seat.”

“O-okay.” Drops was a bit taken back by her enthusiasm, but she didn’t need to be told twice to get some food.

Scanning over the menu, Drops thought carefully over what to get. The food intake of a secret agent is never as simple as she’d have liked, as every day she needed to meet all the points in specific checklists.

Her carbohydrate intake was limited and harmful chemicals were to be avoided. Any breaking of these rules had to be countered with extra vitamins or protein with intensive workout later, on top of what she already had to do.

So, every time she stared at a menu, it was a constant battle between what she wanted to eat, and what she didn’t want to do later. She normally ended up with the tastiest thing that wouldn’t end with her having to eat some vitamin filled goop later.

And while the cafe didn’t have the greatest selection, Drops could be certain that the chicken wrap with salad would be healthy enough. Something she was perfectly happy with, as it did look delicious.

Once drops returned, she found that Pinkie and Rarity, who had only quickly gotten a drink, were once again engaging in a lively conversation.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Rarity said, “I didn’t know you started working mornings here. I’m surprised you stayed to eat lunch here once your shift finished. I’ve found myself shopping at different clothes shops ever since I started working at the boutique.”

“Nope, I like it here,” Pinkie said with a smile. “And besides, I get an employee discount. Anyway, I thought you made most of your clothes.”

“I do,” she admitted, “but I still like to go shopping every so often. I have to keep an eye on the competition, at the very least.”

“If you do customs, do you think you could make a dress for me?” Drops asked, sitting down at their table. “It would probably be easier than me deciding for myself.”

Rarity blushed slightly. “Well, I mean, it probably won’t be as good as some of the dresses already there, I’ve only ever really made clothes for myself and friends. But if you want me to, I can certainly give it a try.”

Rarity stopped to think for a second. “I’m not really sure how I would begin. I feel like something more casual will suit you, but it’s a wedding so it needs to be formal. Some kind of work-casual attire maybe? Or maybe something more...”

Rarity’s words fell into an indistinguishable mutter, leaving both Drops and Pinkie out of her loop. She whipped out her notepad and started jotting down her mutters, every so often looking Drops up and down before sketching something down.

“So, Pinkie,” Drops said, turning away from the preoccupied Rarity, “what did you want to talk about?”

“Oh, nothing specific,” she said with an innocent smile. “I just normally like to introduce myself to all newcomers to our school as soon as I can, but I haven’t had the chance to with you.”

“Fair enough… Wait, why not? You normally walk past me in the canteen. You could have said hello then.”

“I would have normally, and there were a good number of times when I almost ran up to you, but I was just so happy to see Derpy sitting with someone again. I didn’t want to risk spoiling your time together.”

Drops frowned. “Why would you have spoiled it?”

Pinkie blushed slightly. “I mean, well, I guess I probably wouldn’t have now that I think about it, but you can never be too careful. Derpy doesn’t really have many other friends.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” Drops went to say something else but stopped herself.

“But seeing how you two are getting on so well, I’m hoping that’s a sign of good things to come. Maybe she’ll even start coming to my parties again.”

Again? No, stop. It’s irrelevant.

“Her birthday is actually next week. I’m not sure if she does anything for it anymore.”

Drops no, you need to focus on the mission.

“But don’t worry about it. You two are still new friends, so I don’t want to pile up any pressure to make sure you stay close.” Her smile turned to an inquisitive look. “So what was this rumor about you hitting a teacher?”

“Why doesn’t Derpy have any other friends?” Drops asked firmly. “There are no end to extravagant looking and odd people at CHS, so why is Derpy the only one without any friends?”

The table went quiet. Rarity had stopped jotting down in her notepad and Pinkie became oddly still. They both shot each other a hesitant and almost worried look, with Drops’ impatience becoming visible.

You are genuinely a lost cause.

“Well, erm...” Rarity tried to start, but she lost her confidence.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Pinkie said, waving her arm to hide her nervousness. “You two are friends now, I’m sure she’ll come out of her shell again with everyone soon.”

“Why ‘again’?” Drops voice was firm, trying her best to stop any anger creeping in. “You act as if her friendlessness is new. I want to know what happened.”

There was another moment of hesitation, both Pinkie and Rarity giving each other an uncomfortable look under the pressure of Drops’ gaze.

Rarity sighed. “To be perfectly honest with you, Bon-Bon, it is new. Not that new mind you, but I do remember back in primary school when she was surprisingly popular. I think I still have some of the pictures from that packed birthday party she had at seven, almost everyone in our class was there and we all were good friends with her.”

Drops leant back slightly. “So what happened?” she asked.

“Erm, this may be hard for you to understand,” Pinkie said hesitantly, “but our school hasn’t always been the most friendly.”

“Yes, quite the opposite in fact,” Rarity added. “Very recently, before you came here, the ‘social order’, shall we say, was divided into many groups that didn’t talk to, or even like, one another.”

Drops frowned. “So where did Derpy fit into all this?”

“Well, that was the issue: she didn’t.” Rarity looked away from Drops. “There was never any group for her, and a lot of people were mean to her specifically.”

“I don’t really think anyone was particularly nice to her.” Pinkie’s expression had gone somber. “Even we…”

There was a wave of silence, both Rarity and Pinkie visually saddened by, what must have been, regret.

“Ever since everyone opened up to each other,” Rarity finally said, “Derpy’s avoided any attempt to rebuild bridges, and I don’t blame her for it.”

“I don’t think she trusts most of us anymore,” Pinkie added. “I wonder if she just thinks we’ll exclude and hurt her again. That’s why I was so happy you two became friends.” She looked back up at Drops. “Seeing you two in the cafeteria was the first time I’d seen her smile in years. She deserves friends like you.”

Drops fell silent, feeling a lot of different and conflicting emotions about her new information.

It was a cruel story, but maybe Pinkie was right. If her friendship with Derpy really could lead her to opening up to everyone, finding forgiveness and getting some friends, then that would be a great thing. And she should be content with that, even if she had to leave soon.

Regardless, get your head in the game. This is a mission and that stupid little outburst could have ruined your chances to get close to the people you need. Remember that Derpy isn’t nearly as important.

Drops turned to look Pinkie in the eyes. “You said Derpy’s birthday was this week, right?”

Don’t.

“Erm, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s this Friday.”

Why are you like this?

“I need to ask you a favour.”

This is a terrible idea.

The Useless Week

Sundays. As far as missions go, they are normally one of the most productive days. A day when your target will most likely be relaxing or, in a large number of cases, will head out for some exercise. Drops could happily remember all the successful Sunday missions where she ‘just happened’ to bump into her target while they were jogging.

This is the kind of thing she should be doing right now, as she was fairly certain both Sunset and Rainbow do go for said jogs. But instead, despite the overwhelming number of reasons not to be, she was in Derpy’s room.

To be fair, Derpy had said that she should come over some time. Though sneaking in through the window while she was in the shower probably wasn’t what she had in mind. Neither was Drops carefully looking through all her things what she wanted her to do while there.

But, alas, she was already too far in to give up now. Well, she wasn’t, but she figured if she kept saying that in her head she’d eventually believe it. That train of thought wasn’t helped along by the fact she could leave then and still probably meet Sunset while she was out. She—again, rather foolishly—suppressed those thoughts of the mission and concentrated on looking for what she had come for.

It wasn't as easy to find as she’d have liked, but after a good while of searching, clinging to the windowsill when Derpy came back into her room, and another round of searching while she was eating breakfast—a muffin—she had found it, lying deep within a pile of old primary school books.

The object, of course, was a picture of Derpy’s tenth birthday party. It showed a little Derpy with the biggest smile Drops had ever seen on her, surrounded by equally happy kids all around her.

Drops grinned, seeing not only so many people at her party, but a smaller group of familiar looking kids standing very close to her, some of them even hugging her.

It was these kids, who Drops felt safe in assuming were Derpy’s old best friends, who were now going to be her new targets.

This was going to be an incredibly pointless week.

Still, if she could get this all done quickly, it should be alright. And it would seem as though luck had finally decided to help out, as a little bit of scouting later, her first target was given to her on a silver plate—thanks to an old friend, that is.

Knock-knock

“Do I really have to do this?” Her ‘old friend’ asked.

“Yes. Now shut up until I give you your cue.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The front door was opened by the curly blue haired boy from school and, more importantly, from the picture. He was greeted by Drops’ smile and the worried expression of the boy whose face Drops had previously acquainted with his football.

“Hello,” Drops said before he could react, “I know you probably didn’t want to see this one again today. But he’s done a lot of thinking, and there’s something he wants to tell you.”

Drops tapped him on the back, causing the already wobbly boy to jump.

“I-I’m sorry I used such homophobic language towards you while you were out in the park. It was uncalled for and wrong. I can assure you that it was based on my own issues stemming from a disconnect I have with my own emotions and the fact I can too easily dehumanize people for being different, both problems I will work on. I promise it won’t happen again.”

He looked at Drops, who gave him a nod, and he let out a long sigh of relief.

“Alright, now get lost,” Drops snapped.

He didn’t need to be told twice. As soon as the words left Drops’ mouth, he turned and started running down the street.

“Try to keep out of trouble, and Derpy’s apology letter better be written by Thursday,” she called after him before turning back to Curly Winds. “I hope that kid gets his act together. He’s got a surprising amount of potential. Learnt that speech very quickly.”

Curly winds, for his part, didn’t quite know how to respond to such an unusual act. “Erm... thanks,” was the best he could think of. “You’re Derpy’s friend aren’t you.”

“That’s what I’m known for: hitting a teacher and being Derpy’s friend.”

“Yeah, well I’m glad Derpy’s friends with someone who can stand up for her. She was always too forgiving of those assholes.”

Drops raised an eyebrow. “Did you use to stand up for her in the past?”

He gave an awkward chuckle. “I’d have liked to, but in all honesty I was probably worse than her.” His expression turned a little sad. “But that was all a long time ago now.”

Drops smiled. “Well, if you still think you should start sticking up for her, I have an idea.”

The next target was found through a strike of gold. Drops had formerly made notes on places to avoid at certain times. This list, after her display in PE, had all the locations and times of sports club practice times—a rather simple thing as it was all written down on the school billboard.

While this info had originally been an over precaution, it proved extremely useful in locating the blond haired stand-in sports captain of the girls' football team: Cloud Kicker.

It was during their Sunday practice at a park that Drops had ‘just happened’ to be walking through, one of Cloud Kickers team mates accidentally kicked too hard and too wide, causing the ball to fly off the pitch and ‘coincidentally’ land a couple of meters from Drops.

It was an impressive trick to many, working out who was positioned to mess up and the angles of the mistake—back in training they practiced watching baseball games and having to catch a ball while casually walking to the toilet.

Drops was alright, but every time she did it, her mind went back to the time she was practicing throwing knives at a bullseye and she accidentally threw it too wide. Her mentor, the aforementioned Fast Glider, was seemingly walking past and caught it in mid-air, without so much turning his head to see it, and threw it back, hitting the bullseye head on. She still had lots to learn.

What she didn’t need to learn much more about, on the other hand, was how to handle a football.

Upon the ball landing close to her, and the sports team calling after her to kick it back, she walked over to it and picked it up casually. Turning to see all of them, she noticed that some of them, including Cloud Kicker, were beginning to recognize her.

Drops held the ball up by her shoulder, and with an almost cocky smirk, she dropped it behind her.

Before any of them could react, she kicked up behind her, knocking the ball back into the air and in front of her. From there, she had enough time move into a firm stance and, when the ball was in position, kick forward with enough force to send the ball flying over their heads and straight into the goal.

For the next couple of seconds, what was once a loud and energetic group of late teens playing sports now stood silently, staring at the ball and then back to Drops, who had casually continued walking down the path.

As the path neared the group, who were all still stunned, she gave them all a little wave as she said, “good day to you ladies,” before promptly carrying on in her path.

There was another moment of stunned silence, with a couple of people glancing over at their stand-in captain. Cloud Kicker, after looking back to the ball, which was just rolling quietly out of the goal, started to run after her.

“Excuse me, wait.” A smirk appeared on Drops’ face before she replaced it with an innocent smile to display to Cloud Kicker. “You’re Bon-Bon, right?”

“Yes, and you’re Cloud Kicker. We’re in the same sports class I believe.”

“Yeah, that’s me.” She thought for a moment. “That kick was amazing.”

Drops shrugged. “I’ve got strong legs. That was honestly just a lucky goal for me.”

“That didn’t look like luck. Your technique was spot on.” She glanced back to her team, who had continued practicing. “Listen, we’ve got a match coming up and we’re down our best player. We could really use an ace up our sleeves like you.”

Drops gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry, I’ve been told by many sources that I don’t work very well in groups.” This was actually true. “Anyway, I don’t really have the time at the moment. I’m sorting some stuff out for Derpy.”

Cloud Kicker’s confident demeanor shrunk, looking off awkwardly. ”Oh, okay. I know you’re Derpy’s friend and, er… is she alright?”

“Yeah, she’s doing good. I’m just working on a surprise for her.” She raised an eyebrow. “Were you friends with her?”

Cloud kicker blushed slightly. “Yeah, I guess we were something like that.” She did an awkward cough. “But that’s not really the situation anymore. Things are more… sour.”

Drops grinned. “You know, I think I may have come across some sweeteners.”

Next on the list, Micro Chips, someone from Drops’ maths class, was fairly easy. Once she found out he left his bag in his locker during lunch and break time, it didn’t take much imagination to come up with a plan.

“Oh damn and blast,” he muttered, picking up all his notebooks from the ground.

Drops turned round the corner to see him and immediately got down on her knees as well. “Let me help you there.”

“Ah, thanks, sorry.” He started picking up books a lot faster now that he had help. “I don’t really know what happened. I just swung my bag round like always and my books just went everywhere. Must have accidentally left my zip undone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Drops said, passing him the final notepad, “it happens to everyone.”

“Yes, I guess, thank you.” He held his bag close to him. “Erm, you’re Derpy’s friend aren’t you. We’re in the same maths class. Not sure if you’ve noticed me as I’m nearer the front.”

“No, I’ve noticed you, but speaking of Derpy—”

Lunch time, a free hour for everyone to do anything they liked. Some people were very liberal with what they did, taking every day as it came. These people were annoying to recon. Others, Sweetie Drop’s favorite kind of people, did the exact same thing every lunchtime, to such an accuracy she would notice it without even having to follow them.

Octavia Melody, a charcoal haired girl who was always dragging around a huge cello with her was one of the latter. Drops had noticed her before, partly from her seemingly being far more refined than most other people at the school, but mainly because of the aforementioned cello.

Noticed her so much, in fact, that she knew she spent every lunch time in her favorite music room practicing her music. Drops could see why it was her favorite; it was spacious, nice acoustics, a lot of natural light, easy to hide a camera in, it had it all.

It just happened to be that Monday lunch time that the girl was struggling with her music. It was Beethoven's sixth symphony, and no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t get this one bar right.

Visibly frustrated, she repeated the former bar again. Moving into the pesky bar, she faltered at the same bit.

She let out an angry groan at her ineptitude, but instead of bitterly trying again, she paused. An inquisitive frown appeared on her face, as she swore she heard the bar being completed.

Going silent, she confirmed that she could faintly hear the symphony being carried on. She stood up slowly, following the noise to the door and out of the classroom.

When Drops saw this, she turned off her phone’s display and continued with a smile.

Octavia followed the noise to the music room opposite her. Opening the door, she was greeted with the sight of Sweetie Drops playing a violin with her eyes closed. She was elegantly moving her arms, giving off a calm atmosphere, as the sound of Beethoven's sixth symphony could be heard beautifully throughout the room even with its sub-par acoustics.

With one final seamless movement, Drops finished playing, letting out a little breath before opening her eyes.

When she did, and her eyes met Octavia, she did a little jump at the sight of her. “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she said naturally. “Sorry, was I being too loud?”

Octavia shook her head slowly. Her mouth was ajar slightly, giving Drops a look of awe, something that was getting awkwardly commonplace. “T-that was Beethoven's sixth symphony, you were playing it perfectly.”

Drops waved off the compliment, giving her a bashful smile. “You’re too kind—my old teacher would certainly have disagreed. I just heard someone playing a good song and decided to join in.”

“Yes, that was me.” She peered around the room. “You don’t have any music sheets. Do… do you know the sixth symphony off by heart?”

Drops gave her a modest smile. “Not really. I had to google it on my phone as a reminder, and even then I only know some of it. I’m a bit rusty as well, haven’t played a violin in ages. This isn’t even mine.” She showed her the school logo on the violin. “It was the only instrument I play that they had.”

Octavia, for her part, was becoming more visibly shocked by the second. “You play other instruments?”

“Only guitar, trumpet, and piano. A piano they actually do have, but I couldn’t just push it all the way here.” Drops snapped her fingers. “Oh, I’m also practicing theremin.”

“Oh…” Octavia fell silent, but Drops just continued to smile. “Erm, pardon my intrusion, but you’re Derpy’s friend, aren’t you?”

Drops’ smile widened slightly. “Yes, and you’d be surprised how many people know me as that.”

“Ah, well, good…” The girl began nervously rubbing her arm. “Is she doing well?”

“She’s doing well. She has a naturally bubbly personality.”

Octavia let out a sad little chuckle.

“Did you used to be friends with her?” Drops asked.

Another chuckle. “Emphasis on ‘used’. We haven’t talked in a very long time. I said some… well, frankly mean things to her. I don't think she wants to see me again.”

Drops stepped forward with a comforting smile. “Now, I don’t know about that. Infact I’d say she’d be happy to—”

The other targets weren’t nearly as easy. Luckily there was only two left, so Drops had the time to gather the information she needed on them.

Sure, this meant having to not walk back with Derpy so she could follow two of them home, Raspberry Fluff and Blueberry Pie—no relation to Pinkie Pie—who were walking home together.

It was during this walk home, Drops heard through the bug she had planted about a certain bar that Raspberry was going to that night. The details were very vague, but from what Drops gathered, there was only one bar in town that fitted that description.

The lights were bright, the music loud, and as Raspberry strutted into her favorite club to the familiar theme of Saturday Night Fever, wearing her signature green jacket, she was ready to show off her moves.

But, as she made it over to the dance floor, she noticed that there was a big crowd around it. She frowned, as it was the first time she was seemingly outside one of these crowds.

Making her way towards it, her frown grew. Not to seem obnoxious, but she couldn’t think of anyone else who could get such a big crowd while dancing to 70’s music.

Only a couple of meters away she was stopped by the sudden presence of tallish grey haired boy standing in her way.

“Hey, Raspberry. Have you seen the new girl?” he said with a smile.

“Huh, new girl? Is that what this crowd is ‘bout, Silver?” she asked, frown still plastered on her face.

“Yeah, she just showed up and is like, crazy good,” Silver said, leading Raspberry round the crowd and into a position to view.

Once they reached the gap in the crowd, Raspberry could clearly see the girl in question as she continued to perform to the audience she had gathered.

The black flare trousers and purple shirt, all sparkling with some kind of glitter, were the first things she saw. Next was the girl’s big heart shaped glasses, something she was wearing inside this dimly lit disco.

The third thing she noticed was the fact she knew the girl. That’s Bon-bon, she thought. The infamous girl who made all the sports girls question what they were doing with their lives.

She groaned. ‘Had she now come to make me question what I’m doing with my life?’

“She’s pretty good,” Silver said with a grin. “We might now have someone to get the party going if you’re not here. It might be nice having someone to fall back on.”

“Fall back on,” she repeated quietly.

Giving Drops a closer look, she realised that while she was doing some nice moves, all good enough to gather a crowd, she was no pro. Her moves were all fairly simple, and while she seemed to have a knack for it, it had some rough edges.

Raspberry let out a little sigh of relief, knowing that she was not gonna be replaced.

She continued to look at Drops inquisitively. She was impressed by her, even if she wasn’t doing anything too exceptional. Drops’ moves were mostly fluid and worked with the beat, though she seemed more like an aerobics champion than a dancer at times. But she could feel her passion and could tell Drops was enjoying herself.

She’s got potential, she thought to herself. If I were to give her some pointers she could really start to improve her technique. Maybe I could train her. Show her some of my more impressive moves. I could be like her sensei or—

Without warning, Drops fell into a perfect splits, then rolled onto her arms and lifted her lower body into the air, all while keeping her splits perfect. She then pointed her legs up before pushing herself forward and up onto her feet to the loud applause of everyone watching her.

“I don’t like her,” she said with a scowl.

“Ooh, scared of a little competition are we?”

“Shut up, let’s go get a drink.”

“But we’re 17?”

“I mean a drink of cola.”

Raspberry stormed over to the bar and took a seat, being promptly followed by Silver who sat next to her.

“Come on Raspberry.” Silver let on a sly grin. “There’s no need to have a panic at the—”

“You make that joke and I leave right now,” Rasberry said with a scowl.

“... Disco.”

Raspberry gave him a blank expression and faced forward. “One Cola please,” she asked the barman.

“I’ll have one cola please.”

Both Raspberry and silver jumped at the sudden presence standing next to them.

“Bon-bon,” Raspberry verbally gasped.

Drops sat down in her seat. “Hey there stranger. Should I be worried that you know my name?” she said, feeling very suave after her dance performance.

“You know her?” Silver asked with a confused face.

Raspberry directed her full attention towards Drops. “Sorry, I’m Raspberry. We go to the same school.”

“Ah, well then it’s nice to meet you formally,” she said with a smile.

Raspberry stared at her for a couple seconds, before realising that was in fact quite rude. “Sorry, I just had no idea you were into seventies dancing.”

Drops shrugged. “I’m not really. I just quite enjoy it and fancied it today. I’m more of a gymnast than a dancer.”

“Oh, that explains it.”

“Explains the rough edges?” she asked with a chuckle.

Raspberry panicked. “No, sorry, I was just.” She stopped herself and let out a little sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m being rude. Please forgive my missteps.”

“You’re never this apologetic with me,” Silver muttered.

Drops smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not taking any of it to heart.”

Raspberry nodded, but stayed silent. “So, I heard you’ve made friends with Derpy,” she said eventually. “Gave some bullies what they were asking for too.”

“You heard right.”

“Good.” Raspberry clenched her fist. “That girl’s aways needed someone who can stand up for her. She was far too nice at times, could never admit when a bit of head smacking was the answer.”

Drops raised her eyebrow at the girl. “Were you that friend she needed?”

“You’re damn right. Gave a few of those bullies what they had coming.” Her voice was getting fired up. “I tell you this one time at the park, when we were eight, three of these older kids came up and started picking on her. Beat the hell out of all three of them I did.

“Kicked the boy in the privates—‘cause I knew that was their weakness— pulled the first girl’s hair till she cried and got into a slapping fest with the second girl, ‘cause that’s the eight year old version of a fist fight. Sure, they won in the end, and ma mum wasn’t happy, but it was still a moral victory.”

The girl’s immense enthusiasm for the story suddenly faltered. She started looking down at her hands.

“Things didn’t really stay that way,” she said slowly. “We drifted apart and… I’ve said some pretty horrible things to her. It made her really upset. So I’m really glad she has someone to stand-up against stupid bullies like me.

Raspberry scrunched up her face, trying to hold back tears.

“Hey, don’t cry,” Silver said, wrapping his arms to bring her into a hug.

“Shut up you frickin’ dufus,” she muttered, but hugged back tightly.

Drops stared at the sight for a moment. “You know, if you feel that bad about it, I have something that could help you make amends.”

“Today we have a special treat for you all.”

There was a collective moan from everyone in the karate class, including one from Blueberry. This was expected, Drops had been told beforehand that when the instructor said this, it was normally followed by something weird or tedious.

“Settle down. You’ll enjoy this one. I Promise.” He motioned towards Drops, who was standing by the wall of the gymnasium and signaled her to come over to him. “Now, this is Bon-Bon. She just moved here and happens to not only be a karate black belt, medalist, and trained teacher despite being crazy young, she also wiped the floor with all the other teachers when we practiced sparring earlier.”

Drops turned to face all the karate students now looking at her, noticing that Blueberry looked as though she definitely recognized her. She gave them all a bow, which they returned, and looked back to the main instructor.

“She will be taking you through some moves that I will also be practicing in an attempt to save something from my five-nil sparring with her. Speaking of which, she’ll be sparring with all of you later so invest in extra padding.”

He left the front of the room and joined the black belts on his left. Drops nodded at him before returning to the class.

“Okay, I’ll start you out with something easy. This first one is a simple move designed to take out an unskilled opponent.”

The lesson went on as any normal karate lesson would, only Drops always had part of her mind on not accidentally teaching them a judo or ninjutsu technique, but she was fairly certain she wouldn’t accidently teach them a gatka.

She also kept part of her mind on her target, noting that she was picking everything up fairly well for a purple belt. She obviously had a lot of natural skill and enthusiasm, so she must have started Karate fairly recently to not have started making her way up the black, or even brown, belts.

That all being said, Drops noticed that the look she was giving her wasn’t just the normal ‘oh, I recognize her from school’, but more as though she was trying to figure out what she was doing here.

Whatever reason why, she’d soon find out, as it was time for sparring.

The main instructor came back in charge, organising everyone into pairs, making jokes the whole while that Drops’d quickly get through everyone. Drops had originally waved off the compliments, but when she realised it was organised so she’d have to get through all the blacks and browns to even get to Blueberry, she ended up having to prove him right.

Five minutes in, seven black belts down, he made a joke about how setting up each fight took more time than the fight themselves. Ten minutes in, all black belts down, he made a joke about them only having so many students. Fifteen minutes in, all the brown belts down, he had ran out of jokes.

Now, finally against Blueberry with plenty of time to spare, she could relax. “Don’t worry, seeing how you’re a purple belt, I’ll go easy on you,” Drops said to her with a smile.

She smirked. “Much obliged, but I think I’m gonna need a little more than that if I am to stand a chance.”

Drops raised an eyebrow at the girl. “Fair enough. How’s this?” Drops put her hands behind her back and relaxed her stance. “Free hit.”

Blueberry didn’t waste any time, taking full advantage of her opportunity, she rushed forwards to throw a punch at Drops’ chest. Just as Drops had expected.

Drops jumped back slightly, moving out of the girl’s reach, readying her stance again to dash forward after she had definitely missed. With her right foot, she quickly moved it in between the girl’s legs and, with a firm sweep, she knocked her off balance.

The girl stumbled, but Drops had purposefully done it light enough that she could quickly regain her composure. She readied herself into a lower stance and put her arms back up to block a second attack that Drops decided not to go for.

“Your stance needs work,” Drops said.

There was a flash of annoyance on the girl’s face. She tried for another punch at Drops’ side, but it was sloppy and Drops blocked it with ease, and then moved her hand to the top of the girl’s chest.

A little nudge caused her to rock backwards, making her realise that a simple shove would knock her to the floor.

“Your lower stance is even worse.” Drops stepped back, giving Blueberry a chance to get up properly. Drops did a little twizzle and put her arms behind her back again. “Another free hit?”

The girl chuckled. “Are you toying with me?”

“Maybe a little.”

Despite her previous failed attempt, the girl smirked. She moved her arms and readied her stance, but made no aggressive movement. “How about you come for me,” she said, “I’m better at blocking, anyway.”

Drops looked the girl up and down, unsure of what to make of her actions. Drops knew she had seen what happened to everyone before her when they went on the defensive: a quicker defeat.

She, nevertheless, readied her stance, slowly moving closer to her.

“I know who you are by the way,” Blueberry said with a grin.

Drops lowered her stance slightly. “Do you now?”

Her grin widened. “Yes, and I know your secret.”

“My secret?”

The girl rushed forward, using her left hand to knock Drops’ arms out of their defensive position and quickly moved her other arm to strike at her chest.

Despite her arms no longer being in a position to block the strike, they were still close enough to the girl’s left arm that she was able to grab it, twist, and spin the girl around so that she completely missed her strike and was pulled off balance for good measure.

The girl hit the ground with a thud. “Ouch, you couldn’t let me land just one hit, huh?”

Drops smirked. “I would have loved to, but I didn’t want to hurt your teacher’s pride.”

Drops held out her arm towards the girl who, with a smile, used it to pull herself up.

“Thanks,” she said, “and thanks for not knocking me around too much.”

“No problem.” Drops glanced at the clock on the wall, confirming it was the end of the lesson. “Alright, I think it’s time we stop,” She said to the instructor, followed by a sigh of relief from all the lower belts.

The instructor nodded. “Alright, you heard the young but scary lady, get your stuff and leave before she comes after you.”

Drops chuckled at the… compliment. She took it as a compliment anyway.

Back in training she wasn’t exactly the top of her combat class. She had originally fit in very well in second set, faced against people closer to her skill level, she could normally put up the better fight. But once her teachers decided to move her up due to her “relentlessness”, and she found herself up against the most gifted and talented the agency had to offer, things became considerably worse for her.

The first few weeks she couldn’t land a punch on anyone, quickly making her the out of place one in the class. She still didn’t understand why Fast Glider kept her in the class after what was three years of her walking back to the dorms with more bruises than anyone else combined.

Though, as traumatic as it was, she still fondly remembered the first time she won a fight. It was up against one of the crazy acrobatic fighters that the higher-ups love. The kind that could jump at your chest and you’d find her legs wrapped around your neck, slamming you down to the floor before you could even blink.

This specific girl didn’t like Drops much, as one take down was usually enough to give her a win, dealing with the fact that Drops almost always managed to pick herself up for another beating, extending the time of fighting. This with the fact she considered fighting Drops a waste of time anyway, she just found her an annoyance. She normally ended up just putting Drops in a choke hold until the teacher gave her the win.

It was during one of these chokeholds, Drops on the floor, desperately trying to unwrap the girl’s legs from her neck, that she had an idea.

Drops tensed her chest, moved her arms up so she was grabbing onto the girl’s torso, steadied her legs, and with the last of her strength pulled herself and the girl on top of her up and into standing position and then straight down in front of her, slamming both of them down to the floor.

Drops instinctively managed to jump back up into a wobbly stance, with her left hand covering her now bloodied noise. Her vision was now blurry and she didn’t think she could stay conscious for much longer, but the fact remained: she was still standing, and her opponent certainly wasn’t.

Despite spending the rest of the day at the medical office, it was still one of her proudest moments.

“Hey, Bon-bon.”

Drops snapped herself out of that memory and back to her current situation, turning back towards Blueberry.

“You’re the infamous new girl, aren’t you. Raspberry told me she met you at her disco last night.” She folded her arms. “What exactly are you up to?”

Drops raised an eyebrow at her. “Is it so hard to believe someone can do martial arts and dance?”

“I also know you’ve been going round the school talking to a bunch of Derpy’s old friends.”

Drops smirked. “And you think this is all slightly suspicious because you were also Derpy’s friend.”

Blueberry gritted her teeth, her confidence wavering slightly. “Yes… I was a very good friend of hers, way back then. Listen, I don’t know what you’re planning, or how you found out I went here, but if it involves Derpy, I want in.”

Drops smiled, placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder to calm her down. “It’s okay, had I known you and Raspberry were friends, I would have told her to include you yesterday. And while I can assure you that us meeting like this is a coincidence, I think it’s only fair to tell you what’s going on.”

Raspberry let out a sigh of relief.

“So,” Drops began, “What’s your opinion on surprise parties?”

The end of the tangent

Sorry, I had to rush home early so I won’t be able to walk back with you.

Derpy put her phone back in her pocket with a sigh. “You could have told me that a little earlier,” she muttered to herself.

Sweetie Drops would usually meet her by the side of the school, where Derpy would normally be looking at all the students walk past as she waited. But today Derpy had waited so long that there was no one left to watch.

With a huff, Derpy began walking home by herself, adding to her already sour mood.

Luckily the walk wasn’t very long, not giving her much time to feel bad for herself in public. That way I can spend more time moping in private, she thought to herself.

She had originally intended to ask Drops if she was free tonight to do anything, but had decided against it. Drops had already told her she was incredibly busy this whole week, and she didn’t want to be a bother.

She did her best to feel okay with that though, it was nothing new after all.

Derpy sighed as she walked. It felt weird. She had spent the last five years walking home by herself, but she’d never been this lonely while doing so. Well, not since she started being by herself that is.

It left her feeling a bit bittersweet. She was incredibly happy that she made friends with Drops, but she knew being reliant on her wasn’t ideal, especially when she’s so busy.

It was almost easier before, she thought. In a weird kind of way.

Balancing the fact that she would much rather be with a friend than anything else and not being too clingy was a new level of stress that she didn’t need.

Upon getting to her house and reaching her door, she let out one last sigh. Maybe I should just have an early night.

“Surprise!”

Derpy froze. Her plain and empty home had been exchanged with bright party decorations, lots of smiling people, and a banner that read ‘Happy Birthday Derpy’ hanging up by her lounge wall.

Her face had shock plastered all over it, with a little head movement to scan the room now filled to the brim with people being all she could muster.

She quickly began to recognize the guests. There was Pinkie in the middle of it all, covered in confetti and holding what looked like a giant party popper. To her sides stood Raspberry and Blueberry, holding their drinks up in the air and striking very energetic poses. Around them stood the familiar faces of her old ‘gang’ as they called it.

Seeing them all together, seeing all their happy faces directed at her, it filled her head with a flood of memories that hit her straight in the chest. It was so overwhelming she had to hold back tears.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t get what was going on. That’s when she saw Sweetie Drops.

She was off to the side of her lounge, standing behind a couple of people in the crowd, but Derpy could see her clearly. She held up her drink to her and then gave her a little wink.

“Hey Derpy.”

Derpy felt her hands being grabbed and was pulled back to face forward. She was greeted by the smiling face of Blueberry, and all her friends around her.

“Listen,” Blueberry said, “we know we’ve all done and said terrible things to you, and you shouldn’t have to forgive us for any of that. All I know is that I feel terrible about it. We all do.” She motioned behind her and everyone nodded in agreement.

“We all miss those days when when we were friends, and I know there’s no going back to how things were, but if you’re willing to give us another chance we’d love to be your friends once more.”

Derpy gave them all one last look. They seemed cautiously optimistic, except Raspberry who was practically sweating with nerves.

That’s when Derpy went in for a hug. “Sounds good to me,” she said, tears rolling down her face.

There was a little cheer from everyone in the room as the rest of her friends went to join the now group hug.

“Hey, we got you something by the way,” Blueberry said as the hug naturally began to end. She reached over to the corner where a long wrapped present lay. “Here you go.”

Derpy wiped her tears away and accepted the gift with a wide smile. She carefully began to open it. “A saw?” she asked upon seeing its contents.

“Not just any saw, a professionally made musical saw,” Blueberry corrected. “We all remembered how much you loved playing that old saw you had, so we decided to finally get you a proper one.”

Derpy blushed. “Thanks. I love it.”

“See, told you she’d love it,” Blueberry said to Raspberry, giving her a little nudge. “This one thought it was a stupid idea.”

“I didn’t say it was stupid, I said you were stupid,” Raspberry countered.

Drops let a little smile apear on her face as she watched Derpy begin to laugh with her friends.

“Come on Derpy, let's try out your new musical saw,” said Blueberry, hurrying her to sit down.

Derpy gave Sweetie Drops a hesitant glance, but Drops gave her a reassuring nod, letting Derpy happily follow her old friend into their makeshift performance area.

Drops stood back and watched the party’s gears begin to turn, glancing over the people talking and snacking on the little buffet. She chuckled to herself and gave one last smile towards Derpy before quietly making her way to the back door.

She carefully moved the door handle, glancing back slightly to make sure no one had noticed her, not wanting to distract anyone from the party,.

Entering Derpy’s garden, she took a breath. With a quick look round, she decided to sit on the edge of Derpy’s porch. She leant back slightly, giving herself a moment to relax.

This was something she never normally found herself doing, as her strict sleep patterns and diet kept her vigilant, so it all felt a bit awkward.

The truth was that she had been going on nothing but adrenaline for the past week, going from event to event without letting herself question the logic behind it. This whole party had been a gut decision that ended up taking a week of solid work.

It was that, all while trying to suppress the fact she knew it was a unimportant sidetrack, and worrying about how to link in back to the mission in the report, that made the week incredibly exhausting.

And yet, seeing that smiling face on Derpy, knowing that she was happy, knowing that she’d have friends once she left, it made Drops feel as though it was worth it.

Her eyelids closed as she rested her eyes. ‘You really are a weird one Drops,’ she thought to herself. ‘What would your mentors think if they saw this, they’d never let you live it down. Just imagine what you could have done if you’d put that energy into the mission.’

Drops chuckled. “Derpy does have a really sweet smile though.”

“You still haven’t returned my text.”

Drops’ eyes shot open. The sudden voice almost made her jump up and take a defensive stance. But, upon recognizing the voice, she instead froze with a blush. “L-Lyra?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you there,” Lyra said with a giggle.

She was quietly pushing the door closed behind her, same confident demeanor and cute pink dress as always. She gave Drops an innocent smile and started making her way over to her.

Drops’ blush reddened. “No, I mean, I didn’t know you were coming.”

Lyra sat down next to her. “What, stay at home and miss Derpy’s first birthday party in years? I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

“Oh.” Drops did her best to breathe properly and get rid of her blush, before looking over at Lyra. She was looking forward, out into Derpy’s garden, just looking calm and comfortable, the opposite of Sweetie Drops.

“Again though,” Lyra said, still blissfully happy, “you haven’t returned my text. Did the idea of going somewhere cute turn you off?”

Drops looked down at her feet. “No, I, it didn’t. Somewhere cute sounds great. I was just… busy.”

Lyra glanced over to the increasingly awkward Sweetie Drops. “You know, anyone else and I wouldn’t believe them, but from you, I guess it’s pretty fair. I hear you pulled all this off in a week.”

“I didn’t really do much. Most of the Party planning was Pinkie’s job. I just gathered her old gang back together.”

Lyra laughed. “Yeah, and I’ve heard all those stories of ‘coincidental meetings’”—she did air quotations—“and assembling Derpy’s avengers seems to have taken a lot of work.”

Drops was visibly shocked at the statement. “How did you know?”

Lyra laughed again. “I talk to my friends and they tell me things. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was really going on.”

“Oh.” Drops’ gaze returned to her feet.

“Hey, don’t worry about it champ. I won’t reveal your grand conspiracy.” Lyra gave Drops a playful nudge. “I just don’t know why you didn’t just go up to them and invite them.”

“It’s… more difficult then that.”

This was true. As simple as it would have been to ask them all individually, this opened up too many problems. A cover story of how she knew about their relation to Derpy had to be thought-up, of course, but the main issue was that telling people about their past and saying they had to do something about it limited the chance of success. They were much more likely to agree if they came to that conclusion themselves.

And, in reality, when normal citizens find these kind of patterns, the most that comes of it is them saying ‘hey, that is really strange’.

“It’s weird though,” Lyra continued. “Hearing all these amazing stories about you from everyone, all the rumours. A couple weeks ago you were just someone that I used to know, and now you’re the whole school's top mystery.”

Drop’s expression went somber. “Just someone you used to know, huh.”

“Well, you were a bit more than that, but you were still mine, you know? Like I was the only one at school who ever knew about you, but everyone knows you now, so it’s, like… strange.”

For the first time Lyra looked as anxious as Drops did, and a silence emerged, with neither of them able to think of what to say next.

“But anyway,” Lyra eventually said, “I’m really happy that you brought Derpy’s old friends back to her. I knew she didn’t really hate them, but they were always too scared to approach her.”

The statement reminded Drops of one of her old psychology lectures. “Sometimes people carry guilt with them for a long time,” she recalled out loud. “Giving them the opportunity to apologise, even when it’s not needed, can help give them get some closure.”

Lyra smiled. “Yeah, I know none of them could imagine Derpy wanting to forgive them for all the things they said, but Derpy was just happy to have her friends back again.”

There was a moment of quiet as they both let the words sink in. Both parties glanced at each other, but quickly looked away. Drops with a blush and Lyra with a giggle.

“Hey Lyra,” Drops began with a gulp.

“Yeah, Bon-bon?”

“I… I never really apologised. Apologised for just leaving without a trace one day and not even saying goodbye.” Drops stopped, trying to regain some composure. “I said I wouldn’t leave you, even though I knew that wasn’t possible, but I still could have said goodbye, even stayed in touch, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that.”

Drops felt an arm wrap around her shoulder and her heart began to rush as it brought her into a warm hug.

“I’m just happy you’re back,” Lyra said with a giggle. “And instead of dwelling on the past, I’m happy to pick up where we left off.”

Drops looked up at the gleefully faced Lyra, and let herself have a moment of calm. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“Great,” Lyra said with a cheesy little fist bump. “I officially declare our friendship reinstated. No going back now, you’re stuck with me in the chains of our friendship.”

Drops giggled. “I’m sure there are worse places to be stuck.”

“You say that now, but you’ll be begging for help soon,” Lyra said with a sheepish laugh. “Anyway, I promised to watch Derpy practise her new saw, so I gotta get back to that.”

Lyra stood up and made her way to the door. “Just don’t leave me for seven years while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try,” Drops said with a wave.

Lyra gave a little finger gun to Drops. “Back in a few.”

Drops watched the door close and stared at it for a couple of seconds.

After a suitable amount of time had passed, she let out one long pained groan as she began to curl up into a ball.

“Why, why, why,” she moaned. “What on earth is wrong with you? What were you thinking? You looked like a complete idiot.”

Drops continued to mope around in her new ball of regret, wondering how she managed to forget every lesson on interaction with civilians she’d ever learnt and why she had to look that much like a mumbling idiot for a couple more minutes.

She eventually did regain her composure, sitting back up in her previous position, but continued to feel incredibly bad for herself.

“Maybe I should go back to low stakes clean-up missions for a few more years,” she muttered. “It’s gotta be easier than this.”

It was then that she heard the sounds of a door opening. At first she panicked, thinking Lyra was already back, but quickly noticed it was the second back door, the one connected to the kitchen, that was opening. Out of it came the last person she expected.

Sunset Shimmer walked out into the garden slowly with a sigh. Drops quickly realised she hadn’t noticed her, so she just watched as she folded her arms and continued to stand awkwardly.

This was it. The chance to salvage this wasted week was standing right before her, and she was not going to let it slip through her fingers.

A Little Talk

Sunset Shimmer sighed. She hadn’t been in Derpy’s garden for long but was already beginning to feel uncomfortable, just standing by herself and looking around at nothing in particular.

“You alright there?”

Sunset jumped, suddenly realising she wasn’t actually alone. Turning around, her eyes met with Sweetie Drops’, who had been waiting for the perfect time to speak up.

“Oh, sorry, I’m fine. I just came out here to get some air,” Sunset said, visibly trying too hard to seem casual.

Drops gave her a comforting smile to ease her nerves. “Not much of a party person either? That’s why I came out here too,” she said, moving closer as to join her.

Sunset let out an awkward chuckle. “Not exactly. I’m just finding this party in particular a bit too uncomfortable for me.”

“Why? Did someone bring some drama to the party while I wasn’t looking?”

“Not exactly, if anyone brought any Drama to the party it was probably me… by showing up.” She sighed again.

Drops gave her an inquisitive look. “How so?”

“Oh, it’s a bit of a long and complicated story. I’m sure you don’t want to be bored by it.”

“Try me.”

Sunset Shimmer, despite her awkwardness, let a little smile appear on her face. “Well... oh wow, I don’t even know where to start.

“The thing is that not too long ago I wasn’t exactly the nicest of people.” Sunset stopped to think for a second. “That’s actually a pretty big understatement. I was manipulative, aggressive, and just kind of angry towards everyone.”

Drops listened intently. Whatever had happened, she could see that Sunset felt incredibly guilty about it.

“I think I just got angrier and angrier,” she continued. “I kept looking for new ways to take out that anger on everyone, and I wanted to get powerful enough to do that. Things got out of hand without me stopping to think.”

“Powerful enough?” Drops asked.

Sunset panicked at the question. “Oh, sorry, that probably wasn’t the best way of putting it. Let’s just say I did a whole lot of bad to a whole lot of people, and they haven’t exactly forgiven me for it.”

“I see.” Drops was beginning to gain a much clearer picture of what had happened here. “But you seem pretty sorry about it. I’m sure people will come around eventually. As long as you don’t do whatever you did again, that is.”

Sunset chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry. I don’t plan on doing anything like that again.”

“That’s good. I mean, you’ve already got some friends, so things must have been all sorted out.”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah, once the girls stopped me, they accepted me with open arms.” Sunset looked away. “For the most part.”

Drops raised an eyebrow but stayed silent. The words ‘stopped me’ surprised her. From the sound of her story it seemed as though it was another case of a civilian finding a magical device and using it for their own means. But these cases were normally sorted out when the civilian lost control of the power or couldn’t figure out how to use it. The agency would normally clean up the mess and in most cases didn’t need to actually stop them.

Hearing that her friends had stopped whatever was going on bothered her. How could a group of teenagers possibly stop someone who got a hold of magical abilities? They could have used reason, but that didn’t sound right.

“How did they stop you?” Drops asked, viewing it as too important to leave.

Sunset hesitated. She was obviously regretting how this conversation had unfolded. “Aggressive diplomacy,” she eventually said. “But, listen, sorry, I need to head back, my friends will start to wonder where I’ve gone.”

Drops gave her a smile and a wave as her target left her. She knew that question would end in their conversation being cut short, but she needed that information.

Unfortunately, if her deductions were indeed correct, this was indeed more complicated than it had originally seemed.

Still, how could they have stopped her? Did they have magic too? If so, what happened to it, did they still have it? A bunch of teenagers running around with magical abilities was a messy situation.

On top of that, if she did use magic on the students here, it meant there was some kind of school level cover up. This couldn’t be allowed to continue without any agency oversight.

This was a lot of info to digest at once, but, despite everything, Sweetie Drops grinned. She was finally getting somewhere with all this, and it might be something pretty interesting.

The Day After

The rest of the party went off swimmingly. Drops headed back inside to see Derpy’s first musical saw performance, which was backed up by Blueberry playing spoons. She and the rest of the crowd laughed and clapped along to the enjoyable and, in Blueberry’s case especially, enthusiastic display.

She then spent the next hour talking and having fun with Derpy, consistently brushing off any ‘thank you’ that came her way. She was just so happy to see Derpy in such high spirits.

The party reached its peak of excitement when seventies music started playing and Raspberry challenged Drops to a dance battle. Something she would have turned down had she not been in such a good mood.

The battle had been fairly even, with Drops managing to push ahead with some physically impressive moves. This was until she noticed Lyra watching her intently and she began to falter.

In the end, she happily declared Raspberry the better dancer, and went on to have a little and fairly uncoordinated dance with Derpy.

Once they had finished and managed to stop laughing at the muddled mess of a dance they had performed, Derpy stepped aside and Drops continued alone until Lyra came up to her and offered her a dance.

Drops couldn't think of anything smart to say and just accepted the request. The dance went… alright. Minus the nervous stiffness, the fumbled talking, and the fact her face was bright red the entire time. But all that was fine.

What wasn’t fine, was that Derpy noticed all this and asked Pinkie, who was in charge of the music, to put on a romantic song next.

Drops would rather not recall that part of the night and has actively tried to repress those memories. But safe to say it was embarrassing enough that Derpy and her new-old friends all teased her about it for the rest of the night.

The party did wind down eventually with people leaving one after the other. It soon just left Drops, Derpy, and her new gang all just talking and catching up with each other. But soon enough they all left too.

It ended with just Derpy and Sweetie Drops, both feeling a bit worn out from the whole experience. They talked for a bit. Derpy teased Drops one last time, and Drops brushed off one last “thank you”, before she left.

The next morning she began to work on her weekly report, having not had the chance to get it done for friday night. And while it was tricky twisting the week's events in a way that made it look like the mission required such an investment in Derpy’s party, they couldn’t deny she got results.

Though she knew the report would also panic her mentors. Going on the information she had gathered, this low stakes recon mission looked more like a security threat. Five civilians with access to magic was a serious issue, not to mention an unsupervised cover-up opened many more problems.

Once she had finished and sent off the report, she took a break from sitting by her laptop and made herself a vitamin shake. She hadn’t eaten properly last night and was still making up for it.

Taking little sips at a time, as to not make herself vomit from the taste, she took out her phone and started looking through her messages. Doing her best to ignore Lyra’s lingering message, and the fact she promised to reply, she strolled straight to Pinkie Pie.

She and Pinkie had exchanged numbers to keep up to date on party preparations. They had updated each other regularly over the past week.

With Pinkie and her friends all now becoming people of interest and potential problems that needed to be solved, Drops viewed their working relationship as a chance to prod for more info.

Hey Pinkie, I was just thinking about all the effort and work that went into making the party such a success and thought it would be a good idea to have a little celebratory meet up at a cafe or something.

Let me know if you’re free. I can do anytime.

It was a few hours until Drops got a reply, something she expected as the text was sent so early in the morning. She finished up the exercises she was doing before taking a look.

SOUNDS GREAT :D

I can’t do today though, as me and the gang are doing some band practise, and I’ve already got plans tomorrow. I should have some free time next weekend once the music contest is over. I’ve kinda promised to practise all this week for it. Hope that’s okay :)

Drops frowned, a little annoyed that her plan didn’t work as well as she’d hoped.

Yeah, that’s fine. Just let me know nearer the time.

Drops put her phone away. She thought for a moment, and a little sly smile appeared on her face.

Having seen Rainbow Dash set up all her band equipment in a specific music room at school, she guessed that they were all practicing there. This meant that she knew a room where all people of interest would hang out on a daily basis after school and at lunchtimes.

A little room that could easily have a secret camera placed there.

Drops made her way over to her work desk, once more in high spirits with her new plan. She looked through her gadgets and quickly found a micro-camera with a microphone and began testing it to make sure it worked.

While she did this she looked over some of the notes she made on her new suspects.

They were all pretty conclusive analyses of their character, with Pinkie’s and Rarity’s being the most detailed. But judging on the notes she had collected, none of them really seemed like the type to have magic powers, and if they did, they weren’t using them for anything.

All of them were living fairly normal lives. She would expect Rainbow to use some kind of magic to help her in athletics, but she remained just an above average football player according to her records.

There was also no evidence of a productivity boost at Applejack's farm. Surely whatever magic they had could be used to pick apples in some way.

The more she thought about it, the more she thought whatever magic they used to defeat a potentially dangerous magic user, which she guessed Sunset must have been, they couldn’t possibly still have it.

While this should ease her worry, it did the opposite. If they didn’t have it, where did it go, and how would she find out where it came from? What if there's more dangerous magic that could emerge from it?

Drops frowned. She didn’t like all this speculation, she liked reliable information. And holding up the micro camera in her hand, fully checked to confirm it worked, she was hopeful that this would get her that info.

She spent the next few minutes wondering how exactly to spend her weekend, intent on not wasting it like last week. She looked over her notes and considered her options.

‘Bumping into’ some of her targets was an option, but she was getting the feeling she had squeezed as much info out of them as she possibly could. Her best bet was probably waiting to get the band room recording info.

As she thought, her mind kept wandering back to the school's musical contest. These talent shows never really caught her interest, as most schools tend to have very few applicants, but something about this one seemed different.

She recalled a surprising number of people at the party last night were going to be attending, many who had no formal training in music of any kind. Even Raspberry and Blueberry had convinced Derpy to compete with them using her new musical saw. What they were going to play she had no idea.

Drops flipped through one of her folders and quickly found the music contest’s poster, something she had taken in one of her routine info collections around the school. ’Canterlot High School Musical Showcase’ was the full name.

The longer she thought it over, the more reasons she could think of to throw her hat into the ring. The people of interest were competing together and may mention critical information. It would actually be foolish to miss such a big event and competing would just get her closer to the action.

Yes, she had convinced herself.

But who with? Derpy had her own band now, weird as it may be. She could play by herself, there’s no rule against solo acts. But that might lead to her gaining too much attention. She was still Miss Mystery to the school after all. The last thing she needed was people gathering around, hoping to see a legendary performance.

Who else did she know who plays an instrument? Of course there’s Lyra who plays the… who plays…

“It’s not fair.” Drops plopped her body onto her friend’s bright yellow bed, using the numerous teddy bears and soft toys that littered the whole room as a makeshift pillow. “Why won’t you play for me?”

Drops glanced over to her friend, who was nervously sitting by her desk, hugging one of the bigger teddy bears in the room. She could hardly see her behind it as the small girl used it as a shield to hide her embarrassment.

She poked her head out from behind it, revealing her young face and long straight mint hair. Drops had always been slightly jealous of her hair. Hers could never be straightened no matter how hard she tried, and the curled look she had wasn’t anywhere near as pretty.

“It’s just embarrassing,” she said timidly.

“Come on, I’ve played music for you so many times. It’s only fair.”

Drops could just see her frown above the bear. “That’s different Bon-bon. You’re learning piano for your weird school. It’s just a hobby for you. Me playing the lyre is my, you know, my thing.”

Drops rolled onto her side to better look at her friend. “I know, I know. But I constantly hear from your mum how amazing you are at it, so I wanted to see you in action.”

“She really exaggerates my talents. I’m not even that good.”

Drops groaned. “Alright, I admit it. I don’t care if you're good or not. I know you’re passionate about it, so I wanted to see it.” Drops rolled over so that she wasn’t facing Lyra anymore. “I just wanted to be part of something that was special to you.”

The room went quiet. Drops quickly began to regret making it such a big deal.

“But you are special too…” she heard Lyra say.

Drops turned once more to face her. She was blushing heavily.

“Alright, fine. I’ll play for you.”

Drops shot up. “Really?” she asked with a huge smile.

“Yes, but you better not laugh if I mess up, okay?”

“Yes ma’am.” She happily moved into a sitting position, looking at Lyra patiently.

Lyra slowly placed her bear on the ground and picked up her lyre, which was leaning against the wall. It was small and golden, and she held it perfectly still in her arm. With one long breath, she readied her hand.

Then her hand moved and her little fingers delicately struck the strings as her hand flowed from side to side of the lyre. A soft and calming sound engulfed the room, leaving Drops to hold back a gasp at just how wonderful the song was.

As Lyra continued to play, Drops felt as though she was in a trance. She couldn’t take her eyes off her. Her long hair brushed across her back as she slightly waved her body from side to side. Her eyes were closed and she looked so calm, like there was nothing else but her and her music, a music that was so soft it felt like soothing warmth.

Once Lyra had stopped she took one last breath and opened her eyes. She instinctively blushed when she saw Drops staring at her with a look close to awe.

“So... was it any good?” She asked.

Drops continued to stare for a couple more seconds. “You’re beautiful.”

Lyra’s blush brightened. “Don’t you mean the song was beautiful?”

“Both.”

“Ahh!”

Drops quickly steadied herself, managing to avoid falling back on her chair. She hadn’t realised just how far she was leaning back.

She pressed her hand against her cheek. Hot. She was blushing profusely.

Despite being alone, she was still embarrassed at the fact she got so caught up on her own memory. That memory specifically.

It made her feel like a child again.

She had thought back to the first time she heard Lyra play a lot during her first year of full-time training. She wanted so desperately to see her again, listen to her play just one more time, but knew that was impossible.

“Impossible,” she muttered, repeating the conclusion she had bitterly come to at such a young age.

She started rubbing her temple. Her head was beginning to hurt. None of this was worth thinking about. It was just another distraction from a misguided youth.

She had already come to grips with the fact she’d never hear Lyra play the lyre again. Why am I questioning it now? She thought.

The Musical contest caught her eye for a moment, and her headache eased. She picked it up to stare at it a bit more, then took out her phone and started looking through her messages.

Because it may no longer be impossible.

Her breathing had practically stopped. She stared down at her phone as she firmly clicked on Lyra’s name. She typed out each word slowly, thinking carefully about her choice of wording as she did so.

Then, once she was satisfied, she took one long breath and hit send.

Back at it

“So do you go for these jogs every week as well?”

Drops, who was staying slow enough to keep pace, glanced over to her new company, Sunset Shimmer. She was wearing what seemed to be a makeshift jogging outfit, a plain white t-shirt and loose shorts.

The ‘low-tech’ of it made Drops feel a bit odd in her lightweight polyester shirt and running tights.

“Normally, yes,” Drops replied. “Last week I didn’t really feel up to it, though. Still settling into the new area.”

Sunset chuckled. “It’s weird to think you’ve only been here two weeks. You’ve already made such a big impact.”

Drops did her best attempt at a mid-jog shrug of her shoulders. “I’m not too sure. I think it’s more accurate to say I’ve quickly gained some well-circulated rumours.”

Drops caught Sunset giving her an inquisitive look. “That’s true, but I’m mainly talking about Derpy’s party.”

There was a moment of silence. It sounded stupid, but Sweetie Drops hadn’t actually put two and two together and realised that Derpy’s party was a big deal to anyone.

She knew it would make Derpy happy and leave her with friends once she left, that’s why she did it, but the fact it was a ‘big deal’ to those involved hadn’t crossed her mind.

Drops Frowned. “I guess…”

“I’ve certainly had a lot less on my mind since,” Sunset continued. “I kind of always blamed myself for Derpy being alone because, well, it was really my fault, but I couldn’t figure out any way of fixing it. So I’m glad you managed to.”

Drops wasn’t really paying attention. Her mind was lost in thought. “Yeah… wait, did you say it was your fault she was alone?”

Sunset panicked at the sudden confrontation. It was as though she didn’t expect to have to explain herself. “Erm, well, yeah.” She awkwardly looked away from Drops’ gaze.

“How?” Drops asked.

Sunset continued to look away. “It’s kinda complicated,” she said hesitantly.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to follow,” Drops snapped back, harsher than she’d have liked.

“It was kinda what I said yesterday. I was incredibly manipulative and part of that involved convincing people that talking to Derpy was social suicide. I made people think that if they weren’t mean to her they’d be made fun of as well and lose their friends.”

Drops stared at her for a few more moments. “That really was terrible,” she said.

A gear turned in her head and she immediately regretted saying something so unprofessional to the main target but tried to not let that panic show.

Sunset sniffed. “Yeah, it really was. I should never have gone to that party. What was I even thinking? There’s no way Derpy could forgive me for that.”

Drops looked at Sunset’s pained expressions and her disgust at the girl's actions faltered. “Hey, you don’t know that,” she said softly. “All her other friends were sure she’d never forgive them, but she did. You’ve just got to give it time.”

Sunset turned back to Drops. Despite herself, she gave her a little smile. “Thanks.”

After just about managing to avoid a colossal fall-out with someone she was meant to be getting closer to, Drops stayed safe and made polite small talk for the rest of the jog.

Once finished, she waved Sunset goodbye and headed home to change back into her normal clothes. With the few hours she had to spare she ate some lunch and looked through her notes.

When it was time for her to leave, she found herself to be much more nervous than she’d hoped but made her way to school nevertheless.

She arrived through the front entrance, which had indeed been left unlocked over the weekend for the students' band practice. This seemed to be a good call on their part. Drops took note of the many students who were already here despite it still being early.

Luckily her people of interest weren’t one of them, and judging by Pinkie’s text the day before she doubted they were coming in at all today. This made it very easy to put her camera inside the Rainbooms’ practice room—a name she didn’t quite understand.

But her business at school wasn’t done yet, and so she made her way into one of the music practice rooms on the other side of the school. People tended not to use it unless they had to, as it was rather small. The only good thing about it, and the reason it was being used by Drops, was that one of the school pianos had residence there.

Entering the room, she questioned the logic in putting such a big instrument inside such a small room as she brushed against the wall when she walked.

Taking a seat at the piano, she stretched her arms out and loosened up a bit. She then placed her hands above the piano keys and began to play.

It was a simple tune. She hadn’t played the piano in a long time and needed to get the feel for it again, but she quickly remembered why she had found learning the piano to be the most fun of all the early agency activities.

There was the level of focus and control that you needed to hold while playing that had an almost natural calming effect that eased her nerves, but it was mainly the creativity of it that she loved. The feeling of simply moving your fingers and music being created was amazing to her.

Unfortunately, nothing she ever created was any good. She was proficient in playing pretty much anything that was put in front of her, but when she tried to compose something herself, despite all the youthful enthusiasm and energy, it normally came out too simple or plainly bad.

It was during this little bit of reminiscing that she heard the door handle turning. She looked to see a little mint head poke through the door.

Lyra looked a tad awkward but she quickly saw Drops and gave her a big smile before skipping into the room. “Heya Bon-bon,” she said before sitting next to her.

“Hey Lyra,” Drops said, returning a smile. She felt too much pride in managing to hold back a blush. “You ready to practice together?”

Lyra gave Drops a little finger gun and wink. “You know it.”

Drops chuckled at her cheesiness. “Great. You said you had an idea of what we were going to play. I’m curious to see what song would work with just piano and Lyre.”

Lyra let out an awkward chuckle. “Actually, I’ve been learning the piano recently, so I thought we could do a duet instead.”

Drops Frowned. “But wouldn't you be better playing the lyre?”

“Well, not exactly.”

Drops gave her a shocked look. “You haven’t stopped playing the lyre, have you?” Her voice was noticeably pained.

“Oh no, don’t worry. That’s still my main thing, it’s just...” Lyra’s posture shrunk, her cheeks reddening. “Outside concerts and exams, the only people I’ve performed for are people who’re special to me, and I want to keep it that way.”

“Oh.” Drops thought for a second and then blushed herself. “Oh.”

Lyra waved her arms awkwardly, brushing off the implication. “Yeah, so, anyway. Piano duet it is. I’m thinking about this song.”

Lyra quickly reached into her pockets and took out a folded piece of paper that she handed to Sweetie Drops. She unfolded it, revealing it was a music sheet. Looking over it, it didn’t take her long to find the glaring issue with the song. An issue that made her blush redden

“Erm, this… this is—”

“The song from the party, yes,” Lyra confirmed with an innocent smile. “It is a good song, don’t you think?”

Answers?

Drops started her Monday as she did most weekdays. She woke up early to do some stretches and basic cardio, made herself breakfast while looking over her notes so she was sure of what she had to do that day, and then set off down the road to wait for Derpy.

Their meet up before school had always been nice, but today Derpy arrived with an even bubblier mood, something that Drops was more than happy to see. With a little hello, they set off to school together, exchanging pleasant small talk as they went.

But they hadn’t spent much time walking together before Drops stopped suddenly. She spun around and into a defensive stance, blocking with one arm and pushing the other forward to stop the upcoming threat.

Blueberry, who had now been stopped dead in her tracks by the firm hand of Drops hitting her stomach, gave them both a surprised and pained expression.

Drops’ face flashed with panic. “Oh, I am so sorry.” She immediately lowered her stance and went to help her. “I heard someone running up behind me and just went on the defensive.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m alright,” Blueberry squeaked, hand holding her chest.

“I told you trying to surprise Bon-bon was a stupid idea.”

Drops looked up to see Raspberry walking over to them with Octavia.

“I saw that coming a mile off,” Raspberry continued.

Drops placed her arm around Blueberry to help steady her wobbly movements. Derpy also helped out, letting blueberry lean on her slightly and smiling awkwardly at the students giving the scene an inquisitive look.

“Yeah, probably should have as well,” Blueberry admitted. “I forget you’re like some kind of superhero.”

Drops blushed at the statement. “I’m not sure if punching random people in the stomach is something a superhero would do.”

“Or hitting a teacher,” Raspberry added. “I still don’t know how you got away with that.”

“Wait, that actually happened?” Octavia gave Drops a startled look. “I thought that was just a rumour.”

Drops sighed. “Can we please not go over this now.” She held Blueberry as straight up as she could. “Are you okay to walk?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Blueberry said, her voice still noticeably pained. “You just knocked the wind out of me… Is it okay if you guys walk slowly?”

“Sorry Blue, you dug your own grave,” Raspberry said walking past them. “We had a good run, you and I. There will definitely be moments of sadness before I eventually, but inevitably, forget about you.”

Derpy giggled at Raspberry’s eccentricities, much to the annoyance of Blueberry who shot her an annoyed look after being betrayed in her time of need.

Luckily, Blueberry was just about able to walk, even if she was a bit slow for the next five minutes. Everyone slowed down to walk with her—including Raspberry, despite her jabs—with Drops staying close. She still felt very bad for punching her.

As they approached the school's main door they saw Lyra standing by it while talking to Curly Winds, who was leaning against the wall. Curly was the first to see everyone approach and shot them a smile and a wave, followed by Lyra who turned and joined in. They waited for the group to come over before heading into the school to wait for the bell to ring.

Drops originally stayed silent as the group talked, content by just being in such a cheery group. This was until Lyra made her way over to stand next to her.

“Hey Bon-bon,” she said nonchalantly as to not distract from the other conversations going on around them. “You want to keep practising at lunch?”

Drops did her best to seem casual. “Sounds good. I’ve still got a way to go with some of the verses.”

“Don’t be silly, you’re doing great!” Lyra shuffled a bit closer. “All you need to do is practice keeping your eye on the music sheet instead of constantly glancing at me.”

Drops let out an awkward chuckle but didn’t recline in posture. “That’s big talk coming from the girl who stopped playing because she was staring at me.”

Lyra Blushed. “That’s not fair. I just never knew you were so good at singing. I wasn’t expecting such a beautiful voice. You have to promise me you’ll never learn how to play the lyre.”

Seeing Lyra begin to shyly twiddle her hair, it gave Drops a sudden boost in confidence. “Well, I love the sound of the lyre, so I might have to start learning it myself unless I can find someone who’d play for me.”

Lyra stopped twiddling her hair and raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised to see Drops play such a game. “You know, I might know someone who’d be happy to help you out there.”

This was when Drops’ confidence wavered. “Oh, I’d… I’d really like that,” she said timidly.

There was a moment when Lyra looked a tad disappointed at Drops’ lost confidence but then gave a genuine smile. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

They stood silently for a couple seconds, which was how they both realised that the rest of the group was no longer making any noise.

They turned to see that everyone had finished up their conversations and were all giving them both very knowing grins.

“Come on guys,” Raspberry finally said, “let’s give these two some privacy.”

Drops couldn’t help but blush at the statement; the implications laid heavily on her. Lyra, for her part, gave Raspberry a cheeky glare, as if she was half annoyed with her, and half enjoying what happened.

As the group dispersed to their different classes, leaving Drops and Lyra standing awkwardly, Derpy and Curly Winds turned round to give them each a grin and a thumbs up. Drops’ blush deepened while Lyra simply chuckled at the sight.

Lyra glanced back to Drops, letting out a little giggle. “They mean well, I promise. Even if they can be a tad too enthusiastic.” She gave her a playful nudge. “Seems as though Derpy’s got your back anyway.”

Drops felt in over her head but forced herself to remain calm. “That’s one way of putting it. I still haven’t forgiven her for asking Pinkie to put on that song at the party.”

“Ah, so it was her idea all along. I thought the sudden change in mood was a bit suspicious.” She shot Drops a grin. “You should have told me before. I’ll have to thank her sometime.”

There was no reply to that, not one Drops could think of anyway. She gave her a shy smile that Lyra once again giggled at.

There were a few more moments of silence, but they were interrupted by the school bell instructing them to go their separate ways, which they did with a wave and Lyra’s signature finger guns.

The school timetable had slightly changed for the day. The second lesson had been exchanged with poster making for the musical showcase. She spent the time painting with Lyra.

Despite Drops being proficient in the techniques of painting, having needed the skill when camouflaging oneself, she relied heavily on Lyra’s artistic vision. After Drops’ initial idea of black letters simply saying their name and song, all concepts were brought under Lyra’s supervision. She expertly designed the outline for their logo.

Drops was happy using her ability to bring Lyra’s idea to life and made it look professional. It was a lot of fun painting something so unique and personal for once. The logo was a piano combined with a lyre on a bed of sweets—Lyra had obviously not forgotten about Drops’ affinity for sweets.

Mid-way through painting, Drops got a painful reminder that Sunset was still an outcast in the school. She had asked the crusaders if she could help. They declined, seemingly not over the moon about her being here, and she walked over to her friends as the rest of the school jeered at her, something that only increased when Principal Celestia mentioned the Fall Formal.

What surprised Drops most, however, was Lyra’s reaction. She seemed angry at first when she noticed Sunset but did her best to hide that anger, as if not to let Sunset know about it. Her look then changed to one of sadness when she noticed everyone getting angry at her. She definitely felt sorry for the girl, even if she still hadn’t forgiven her.

From there they went to their first break. Her phone’s feed of the hidden camera showed that the Rainbooms had gone to practice together, meaning she only had to bide her time till some lingering questions were hopefully answered.

Break passed fairly quickly. They had met up with Derpy’s new band in their practice room, having been promised a rehearsal of whatever they were going to be performing with cowbell, triangle, and musical saw.

This, unfortunately, didn’t happen as Micro Chips and Cloudkicker stopped by with a bag of biscuits Cloudkicker’s mum had given her. She wasn’t taking part in the Musical showcase so her mum had made them for her to eat so she had something to do, but Cloud got permission to spend the time practising instead and therefore didn’t want any.

Expectedly, after they arrived, the practice room turned into a talking and eating biscuits room. Drops even had one, not being able to resist freshly baked goods, even though she knew she’d have to make up for it somehow. Overall, a pleasant break.

Maths was the last lesson before lunch. With her still being on good terms with her maths teacher, who was just happy having such an overachiever in the class, she was allowed to leave early to get on with practice.

Reaching the practice room, finally alone and with some time to spare, Drops took out her phone. Putting her earphone on, she looked through the footage from her hidden camera. She pressed rewind back to the beginning of break and hit play.

...A Demon. I turned into a raging she-demon...

“Huh.”

...And Tried to turn everyone here into teenage zombies for your own personal army...

“Huh!”

...Princess Twilight Took her crown back to Equestria...

“WHAT!”

What Now?

“You’ve seen the video?”

“Yes. This is big, this is really big.” The voice through her phone seemed almost as excited as Drops. “I’ve already sent it up to the higher-ups. This could be the find of the century.”

Drops was pacing up and down the practice room. “I know, I know, but what do I do? How am I meant to proceed?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “If this really is equestrian magic, then this is well out of my jurisdiction. Carry on as you are. We'll get back to you with some instructions once the higher-ups see it.”

Drops breathed slowly, trying to calm down. “Alright, confirming mission objective: Proceed as normal until instructed otherwise.”

“Confirmed.” The sounds of him tapping a keyboard as he put the info into the system came through the phone. “Good luck agent Sweetie Drops. You may have just stumbled across the biggest advancement in agency work in our generation.”

Drops heard the phone hang up and she calmly slipped it back into her pocket.

She then proceeded to giddily jump around the room in excitement. She couldn’t believe it. Equestria. Equestrian magic. It was hard to believe.

The agency had many past records on it but any real case had been closed decades ago. It had almost become a sort of great myth within the agency, with much of the info only available to the most important agents.

And Drops, a junior recruit who’d only spent two years on the field without supervision, had just found citizens that not only have equestrian magic, but also made contact with an actual equestrian. She may have just made agency history.

She eventually brought her miniature celebration to an end. Now that her adrenaline had worn off, she decided to sit down. Her head was running wild, but she knew remaining calm was now more important than ever.

Taking a breath, she began to go through her thoughts. What happens now? Well, most likely they’ll need to bring in a higher up agent with experience or knowledge of Equestria. They’ll be placed in charge of the operation and I’ll… I’ll most likely be taken off the mission.

Drops froze. This was a low-level recon mission after all. ‘Discover the source of magic sighted and remove security threat if able’. She wasn’t able to deal with an equestrian related security threat.

She’d have to leave. Leave Canterlot high. Leave Derpy. Leave Lyra.

Drops leant her head into her hands. She could feel her eyes begin to water. “Damn it.” Her voice was shaky and bitter. “Why am I like this.”

Drops had known this mission wouldn’t last forever so reacting like that was stupid. But it hurt. It hurt so much she thought she might throw up.

Before she could stay like this for long, she heard the door begin to open, revealing the familiar face of the mint-haired girl who was occupying her mind. “Hey, thought I might find—”

Lyra stopped when she saw the state Drops was in and immediately rushed down to her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Drops looked away. “I-It's nothing,” she said, voice still shaking.

“Hey, don’t be silly Bon-bon.” Lyra lifted Drops’ head so she was looking at her directly. “What’s going on? Last time you wouldn’t tell me what the matter was you left for seven years.”

Drops let out a whimper. “T-That… Well that’s the thing, isn’t it. I have to leave again.”

Lyra’s encouraging look faded, replaced with a sorrowful expression. Seeing it made Drops lose what little strength she had left. She began to cry.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay.” Lyra spun around so that she was leaning on the wall with Drops and wrapped her arm around her, bringing her into a tight hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she continued softly.

Drops held onto Lyra as she sobbed. It felt terrible to feel so vulnerable in front of her, the very person she was going to hurt once more after all this time.

“It’s okay,” Lyra said again. She held Drops tightly with one arm and began to use the other to delicately stroke her long hair. “You can cry as long as you need.”

“I’d rather not,” Drops managed to get out between sobs. “We’d be here far too long.”

Lyra chuckled, continuing to stroke through Drops’ curly hair. “It’s weird. You remind me of me back when you left the first time.”

“We’re lucky I’m not like how I was back then. I was much worse than this,” She said with a sad little laugh.

Lyra looked at Drops, giving her what seemed like a bittersweet smile. “This might sound bad, but part of me always thought you didn’t really care when you left.”

Drops looked at her somberly through her blurred vision. “Not at all. When I had to leave, it was the worst day of my life.”

There was a pause, then Lyra wrapped her other arm around Drops and pulled her into a hug. “I’m really glad you came back.”

Drops looked up to her, wiping a tear away. “But I have to leave again.”

“I don’t care. You’re here now and I couldn’t be happier,” Lyra said with a warm smile.

Drops managed to return the smile despite herself. She didn’t know how happy hearing those words from Lyra could have made her.

Lyra nodded towards the door. “Come on. If you’re not here for much longer then we can’t spend the whole time moping around.”

Drops wiped away the remaining tears from her face and replied with an affirmative nod. Lyra held out her hand to help Drops up and they left the practice room hand in hand.

They decided to head to the canteen as they imagined the gang would be there. They thought it best not to tell anyone else about it, at least not till she knew the exact time of departure, but Drops decided she would tell Derpy when they had some time alone together, even if it wasn’t agency protocol

Drops had explained that she didn’t know when she would have to leave, but imagined it would be soon. Lyra, probably sensing the mood of the situation, decided not to ask why she had to leave.

Once they reached the canteen and found their friends, they were greeted merrily by the whole gang. They were discussing something about the performances; Drops didn’t really pay much attention to it. She just sat quite contently with Lyra, who had nudged up towards her.

Drops looked over to her with a little smile. She was chatting and laughing with the rest of the gang. She’d always been much more sociable than Drops. When they were young Drops used to wonder why she spent so much time with her when she could have easily spent that time with a dozen other friends.

Drops’ train of thought was interrupted when the cafeteria doors were slammed open loud enough to catch her attention, revealing three girls strutting into the canteen together. They were all eccentrically dressed in clothes oozing with style. That, and their eye-catching hairstyles and confident demeanour, made it almost impossible for Drops to look away.

Then they started doing the strangest thing. They all began singing a melody together. They sang loud enough so that everyone could hear them and they quickly gained the attention of the entire canteen.

Drops’ first thought was just how weird the sight in front of her was. Three teenage girls casually walking around and singing for no apparent reason. She couldn’t quite comprehend the sight.

But as they continued, singing about the upcoming music competition, it began to make sense.

Yes, I am the most talented person in this school. I’ve trained harder and sacrificed more than anyone here could comprehend. They don’t stand a chance, and why shouldn’t I be proud of that.

This battle of the bands was the perfect way to prove that fact. She’d already shown everyone up at everything, only holding back because she had to for the mission.

But her mission would be over soon, and what better way to end it than by showing everyone here just how inferior they were. Yes, these girls definitely knew what they’re talking about.

Not quite herself

“Is this necessary? We’re gonna have them all beat soon enough so why spend time humouring them?”

Lyra, who was standing in the middle of the gymnasium with Sweetie Drops, gave her a confident smirk. “We’ll beat them soon enough, but let's just eye up our competition for now.”

Drops looked around the pre-event party and at the other contestants. “Competition is a strong word,” she said.

Out of the many people throwing their hat into the ring, very few were of any worry to Drops. And even then, she wasn’t exactly worried.

The only ones who Drops had her eyes on were the Rainbooms, who were gathered around the snack bar. They better not use their equestrian magic to rob me of my much-deserved victory, she thought.

She also noticed they had brought along a purple-haired girl who was awkwardly standing with them. Must have brought in back-up once they heard I was competing. They’ll need it.

“Well, it would seem you two are blissfully confident.”

Both Lyra and Sweetie Drops turned to see that Octavia had come over to them, giving Lyra a little smirk. “Wasn’t confident enough you could win by yourself you had to bring in the school's mystery girl to help.”

Lyra glared at Octavia, but she had no retort.

Drops moved over to close the distance between them. “Listen, Cello girl, you may be skilled at your craft but I don’t consider you a threat. Why? Because I’ve already noted that your lack of self-confidence undermines your abilities to get where you want. As soon as the prospects of winning become within reach, you’ll falter. You won’t make it past the semi-finals.”

There was a flash of anger on Octavia’s face. “Oh, that’s big coming from you. You act as though you can do anything, and yet you can’t even be honest about your own feelings. You’re just a repressed prodigy.”

Drops backed off slightly but kept her glare. “That’s funny, considering I recall observing your repressed feelings when it came to a certain sunglasses wearing—”

Drops suddenly felt a piercing pain in her head. She recoiled, clenching her head in her hand.

“What’s the matter,” Octavia scoffed. “Did I say something you weren’t ready to hear?”

Another pain hit her. This time it was more intense, causing her to lose balance.

Lyra quickly grabbed her so she wouldn’t fall. “Hey, are you alright?” She asked.

“Yes, I just—” Another pain. “I just need to go to the toilet.”

Drops moved off Lyra’s support and headed straight for the exit. As she rushed along the corridor the pains became more frequent and intense, causing her to almost fall over a few times.

She managed to make her way into the toilets and to the sink. Using the sink to steady herself, she looked into the mirror. Her vision was getting more and more blurry. Another minute of this and she was certain she’d lose consciousness.

“What’s happening? What on earth is happening?”

“Come on Drops. You can do this.”

“It hurts!” She cried.

“That’s good. It means you’re in control.”

Drops clenched onto the arms of her chair. Her eyes were closed and she was desperately trying to slow her accelerated breathing. “Sir, I don’t know how long I can do this.”

She opened her eyes slightly. She could just about see her mentor, Fast Glider, watching over her through her blurred vision. “You’ll do as long as it takes. I know you can.”

Drops flinched as her headpiece shot another beat of pain through her head.

“Come on, damn it. Stay with me,” Fast Glider practically yelled.

Drops clenched her jaw, just about holding onto consciousness.

“You can feel it can’t you,” Fast Glider said, moving closer. “You know which thoughts aren’t your own. Now you just need to fight them.”

He was right. Through the pain she could see her thoughts distorting, her memories blurring. Her head was filling up with anger that had no origin and was quickly becoming impossible to suppress. A flash of hatred spread over her face.

“Don’t let it win Drops,” he yelled again. “Focus on something you know to be true. Remember who and what you are.”

Drops tried to think but the pain was unbearable. Her thoughts were distorting and combining. She could barely remember where she was, what she was doing. The only thing she could clearly see was the anger, the anger she knew wasn’t hers.

“Sir,” began the man operating the machinery to Drops’ left, “we’re beginning to lose her. We should probably turn down the intensity.”

“Not yet.” Fast Glider walked closer to Drops and knelt down in front of her. “Come on Drops. Show me that determination of yours. Remember where it stems from.”

Drops could just about make out what was being said through her ringing ears. It made her remember something. Between the anger, she could just about hear the calming sound of a lyre. She focused on it, and it slowly filled her mind.

For a moment, her mind was focused. She had control. Quickly, she isolated the foreign thoughts and anger in her mind and moved them to the side as she was taught. She grunted as she used what was left of her energy to crush them together and shrink them until they were no more.

She let out an exhausted breath, finally able to breathe properly. She slowly opened her eyes and was greeted by Fast Glider’s smile.

“You did good kid,” he said, a hint of pride in voice. “A couple more successful tests and you’ll have built up a defence against mind control.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Drops said.

“The bucket’s to your left.”

Mind control.

Another head-splitting pain rushed through her. This was her defences kicking in. Her mind was trying to remove a foreign presence.

She was in grave danger.

Drops tensed her muscles and focused her mind as she had been taught. “Get out of my head damn it!” She yelled.

Without warning, her body spasmed violently and her legs fell through, barely managing to use her hands to shield her impact as she hit the floor.

She shook her head. Her body was weak, but her headache had stopped. It had worked, she was in control.

Trying to pick herself up, she faltered and feel back to the floor. Whatever had controlled her mind, it was strong enough that removing it had caused her serious damage. She instead started to use her arms to drag herself towards the door.

What could have done this? she thought. Her mind quickly went over just how out of it she was, only focusing on the battle of the bands. Those three girls, ever since they sang that song… sang that song.

That’s when everything made sense. The Sirens. I have to get out of here.

She pushed herself through the door and moved to lean on the wall next to it. She pulled up her legs close to her and started massaging some of the nerves.

“Come on legs,” she muttered, “Don’t fail me now.”

“Now what do we have here.”

Drops froze. She slowly turned her head to see the three girls from the canteen standing above her.

“See, I told you I saw someone suspicious,” the one in the middle said with a smirk. “Now what would an agency junior recruit be doing here all alone?”

Don't fail me now, body

Drops stared at the three girls. More accurately, she stared at the three Sirens, the agency’s biggest and most dangerous security threat. Her heart was in her throat.

“How do you know she’s part of the agency, Adagio?” the blue haired one asked with a confused look. “I thought she was just sick.”

The one with purple hair rolled her eyes with an annoyed groan. “We’ve seen agents’ reactions to mind control so many times. How do you still not recognise it, Sonata?”

“Be fair to her, Aria. This one seems to have got a much more violent reaction than we’re used to,” Adagio said, giving Drops’ leg a little poke with her foot. “She can’t even move to run away.”

Despite it only being a little kick, it hurt. These were magical creatures in front of her, and they were much stronger than they looked.

“Wait, why are there still agents after us?” Sonata asked. “I thought we had dealt with them all.”

A flash of panic spread across Drops’ face.

Adagio laughed. “Aw, this poor little one didn’t know about it.” The Siren knelt down so that she was level with Drops and used its finger to lift up her face. “The agent who had been on our heels for a while now started to get all excited once he realised we would be staying here for a while. Brought in all the agents located close to here.”

It shortened the gap between them, leaving no more than an inch of space from Drops’ face. She could feel just how strong the Siren was in just her finger. She couldn’t move her head away even if she tried.

“But we couldn’t have them interfering with our plan now, could we. So, when they were looking into a place we’d grabbed a snack at recently, all unprepared and ripe for the picking, we paid them a visit.”

Drops’ heart was pounding. Her face had fear plastered all over it. All she could do was sit helplessly as Adagio continued to smirk.

Adagio then flicked her hand sideways, snapping Drops’ head to the left. It stood up and returned to her companions. “Alright, I’m bored with this.”

“What do we do her?” Aria asked as Drops managed to nudge back slightly. “She might get in our way.”

“What’s the matter Aria, scared of a little junior agent?” Sonata teased.

Aria shot her a glare, but Adagio stepped between them to stop the fight. It then looked down the hall to see three scruffy looking boys down the hall, all of them seemingly too deep under their spell to come over and question the scene.

“Hey boys, over here!” it called.

Drops saw them begin moving over to join them. She recognised them as three contestants in the band named Diamond Dogs.

“Now you wouldn’t believe what we’ve stumbled across here,” Adagio began as her eyes flashed green. “This contestant seems to be worried you’d beat her and was planning on sabotaging your act.”

“She’s going to do what?” One of them growled.

“Yes, if only there was someone who could stop her. Keep her locked away for the next two days so she can’t compete. Locked in one of the cupboards upstairs for example.”

Adagio smiled at them before turning around and heading down the hall. “See, dealt with,” she said as the other Sirens followed her.

Drops watched as the Sirens walked away nonchalantly and fought the urge to let out a sigh of relief. She turned her attention back to the three boys who were slowly moving in.

She still couldn’t feel her legs, her arms were shaking, and her movements were dulled by a lingering dizziness. As she did her best to shuffle back, she started using her wobbly left arm to hit her right arm, trying desperately to get some blood flowing again.

“Come, this ain’t gotta hurt,” the closest one said, leaning down so he could pick her up.

Drops desperately flung her right arm forward, hitting him in the throat with her fist.

He immediately backed off, coughing as he did so. His friends helped steady him, but they quickly returned their attention back to Drops. Her arm was still weak so the blow didn’t do enough to stop him.

“I guess this does gotta hurt,” he said, rushing forward to grab her arms as his two friends went for her legs.

Drops quickly moved her arms so that instead of him grabbing her, she grabbed his arms by the pressure points and clenched as hard as she could. He let out a whimper and tried to back off. With a whack to the back of his leg his stumble quickly led him to fall over.

The other two, who had grabbed each leg, saw this and loosened their grip in surprise. Feeling a little bit of control in her right leg, she used her opening to kick the boy holding it in the crotch and then move it to kick the other one in the hip, freeing her completely.

Now with enough space to maneuver, she used her arms and leg to push herself up into a kneeling position, with her still numb left leg being used as a support beam with its knee on the ground. She readied her arms into a defensive stance, although not a very firm one.

The three boys picked themselves up and raised their fists into a fighting position. They all looked very annoyed at how difficult this was proving.

Drops did her best to seem confident, but now that it was coming down to a fist fight, she was a sitting duck until her leg started working.

Two of them went in for a punch. Drops just about managed to dodge the first, returning a hit to his side, but didn’t have the time to avoid the second, and was hit square in the face.

Her stance faltered, but—to his surprise—she recovered quickly despite the pain and returned the favour with a punch to the chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

She had kept an eye on the third boy as he snuck behind her, and so when he ran in for a tackle she readied herself so that he didn’t manage to knock her over.

Unfortunately, her arms hadn’t recovered enough to push him off. He instead managed to pull her up into a standing position with her legs dangling down.

The other two smiled. They moved in to take full advantage of their opening. The first one punched her in the chest, causing her to grunt in pain, followed by the second one hitting her square in the face.

The first one, now feeling confident, went in for a punch in the face, but Drops wiggled enough room to dodge and the fist hit the third friend’s face instead, causing him to lose his grip.

Drops just about managed to remain standing with her now spasming left leg. She took full advantage of the boy’s confused expression, hitting him in the chest and throat respectively, before turning to the other boy who had backed off.

The three of them now circled her but decided against going in for another attack straight away. She wiped her nose, realising that it was bloodied.

This wasn’t working.

With a quick scan of her surroundings, she noticed a school locker to her left that was slightly ajar. She whacked the side of her left leg to try and lessen the spasms.

She then slowly moved to her left, a movement that caused the boys to ready their stances, and positioned herself so that her back was up against the lockers.

The three boys then took their moment to move in. The one in front went in for a kick which she easily stopped by grabbing his foot and flinging it upwards so he fell to the floor, giving her enough time to dodge the punch on her right.

A quick whack to the back of the boy's throat was all it took to get him to back off as he coughed in pain.

Putting her now full attention to the boy to her left, who was going in for another punch, she grabbed his arm and used her other hand to knock his head into the locker. She then swung open the ajar locker into the boy’s face with enough speed to knock him over. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t get back up.

One down, two to go.

She turned to the other ones as they picked themselves up. There was a flash of fear on their faces when they saw their friend, but they quickly pulled up their fists for another go.

Drops readied her stance. A moment passed and she raised her eyebrow. Her arm was no longer shaking. She glanced down to her left leg, which was no longer spasming, and gave it a little shake.

She was in control again.

Well, this just got a lot easier.

The first boy went for a punch. Drops used her right arm to knock the punch off course and elbowed him in the face. She moved both arms down to grab his leg which she pulled up to make him fall over and then pushed down to heighten the impact. He hit the floor with a thud.

Drops turned, swiping her foot along the floor as she did so to trip over the last boy as he began to rush her. The speed and strength of the leg was so great that his legs were completely knocked into the air. His head was the first thing that hit the ground causing his body to spasm before also hitting the ground with a thud.

He was out cold.

Drops stood up straight and dusted herself off, looking over her newly unconscious schoolmates as she did so.

That was far closer than she’d have liked. Her chest and face were both aching from the punches. But she had made it. Now she needed to get back to her apartment.

Drops ran the whole way back, ran as best she could that is. Her legs were still in bad shape and hurt when she moved them, but she bore through the pain.

As she did she checked her phone. There were a lot of messages and missed calls from the agency that she had ignored while under the Sirens’ spell. She decided to skip checking the messages and call the agency directly.

“Hello, Sweetie Drops, is that you?” An agent asked through her phone.

“Yes, I’m here,” she said in an exhausted voice.

“Oh thank goodness. We thought the Sirens had compromised you.”

“They did. I’ve only just managed to escape.”

“They got to you? Are you hurt.”

“Nothing too bad.” Drops stopped to gasp some air before she headed up the stairs to her flat. “What happened to Fast Glider? The Sirens said they got him.”

There was a pause. “Fast Glider and every other agent in the vicinity are in the hospital.”

“What do you mean they’re in the hospital? What Happened?” Drops paused. “Every other agent in the vicinity?”

“Fast Glider reported he was closer than ever to getting the Sirens and requested every agent near him to be transferred to his mission. When investigating a shop the Sirens had been in to feed they returned and hospitalized everyone there.”

Drops felt cold. “Is he okay?”

“His condition is stable but he’s badly injured, much like everyone else who was there.”

“Why wasn’t I—

“Fast Glider requested that he not interfere with your home mission.”

Drops started making her way up the stairs. “How did I not know. I spoke to someone just before I met the Sirens.”

“We got the report about an hour after you called us. We’ve been trying to make contact with you since then.”

“Yes, sorry about that. I was unfortunately under the Siren's spell.” Drops made it to her front door and went through. “So what do I do now.”

“I’ve been instructed not to tell you anything. One of the higher ups wants to talk to you personally.”

“Alright, I’ll wait.” She put the phone on loudspeaker and placed it down on her table. She then laid down on the sofa next to it and let out one long groan.

Her head was spinning, her body aching, and she was barely keeping up with everything that was going on. She rested on her sofa until she heard a click from someone picking up the phone.

“Agent Sweetie Drops,” said a gruff and stern voice through the speakers. “This is High General Dusk Speaking.”

Drops instinctively straightened up. She wasn’t expecting someone that high up to speak to her. She had met only two High generals in all her time in the agency, and she had never spoken to one.

“Yes, sir.” She sounded more nervous than she’d have liked.

“It’s good to hear you’re still with us agent. Unfortunately, we must skip past any pleasantries, as we are all in grave trouble.” Drops heard the sound of notes being picked up. “If your report on equestrian magic is indeed correct, which we believe it to be, then we are under the belief that the Sirens are after said magic.

“This, unfortunately, is a huge danger to us and everyone on this world. If the Sirens get their hands on it, their true powers will be unleashed and we will stand a very slim chance of survival indeed. It is for that reason the High Generals have unanimously called an Order Red.”

Drops stared at her phone for a moment, unable to fully believe what she just heard. Order Red, the complete mobilization of everyone in the agency towards one threat.

Drops thought back the urge to gulp. “What are my orders, sir?”

There was a long pause. The General then coughed. “Normally protocol would state that you would move to your nearest mission base and await a division assignment, but with all operatives near you out of action, we need someone keeping an eye on the situation.”

Drops couldn’t say anything, her heart was beating too fast.

“I know you are still a junior recruit, a level bronze junior recruit in full, and this mission has already far surpassed your training and experience, but we are out of options. A division capable of stopping them won’t be formed and arrive until late tomorrow night. Sweetie Drops, we need you to stall whatever they’re planning until they can get there.

“Can you do this?”

The Contest

Drops woke up feeling drained. She hadn’t got much sleep last night. Too nervous.

No, that wasn’t the right word. Anxious? Scared maybe? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. All she knew was that she didn’t feel right, and that her morning exercises were some of her hardest in years.

It didn’t help that many of those punches she had received the day before had done more damage than she’d had hoped, but at least her body had recovered from ejecting the Siren's spell.

She had spent most of last evening looking through all the gadgets she had lying around the apartment, hoping that there was something that could be useful. Unfortunately, being a junior recruit, she had never been given any of the high-end gadgets that situations like this called for.

The only thing of any use to her was a little contraption known as a ‘hand flash’. It was so small you could hardly see it attached to the palm of your hand. A little slam to the back of your hand and it gave off a one-use flash that blinded anyone looking at you. She figured she could use it to get away if they cornered her.

Once her morning exercises were done and she made her breakfast, she didn’t look through her notes as she normally did. Instead, she sat silently in her sofa, looking at nothing in particular.

Once it was actually time to go, Drops walked past where she’d normally meet and walk with Derpy and headed straight to school. Derpy was under the Siren's spell anyway, and she didn’t fancy dealing with an egotistical version of her friend.

Walking through the school, she made her way straight to the performing hall. All the lessons were off for the day because of the contest, with those not competing either watching or getting the day off.

When Drops entered the hall, which was also the gymnasium, she found that most people were already there, including Derpy, Lyra, and more worryingly, the Sirens.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking at them, and it didn’t take long for them to notice her. Adagio raised an eyebrow once she saw her but then gave her a little wave with a sly smile.

They’re mocking me, she thought. They consider me so little of a threat they're not even worried I’m here.

Drops made her way over to Lyra, doing her best to ignore the Siren's gaze.

“There you are,” Lyra exclaimed upon seeing her. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it after you left yesterday.”

“No, I’m fine. Just had a bit of a headache,” Drops said, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

“Great, now we get to show everyone here who really deserves to win.”

Drops did not wish to deal with Lyra, as she wasn’t sure how much of Lyra was conscious while under the spell. It definitely didn’t seem like her to be so competitive and disregarding of other people.

Besides, Drops had a mission to do. She needed to keep an eye on both the Sirens, who were thankfully keeping to themselves for now, and the Rainbooms, who weren’t actually here yet, despite the contest starting very soon.

If what the high general told her was correct, then the Sirens were after the equestrian magic. And if her video was anything to go on, the Rainbooms had said magic, meaning they were in serious danger.

Unfortunately, she had no idea how the Sirens would extract the magic. If they could have done so already, why hadn’t they? If it was just an issue of capturing them, then they’d had every chance to do that already.

Whatever the issue, she knew that their plan had to involve a way to get around it, so she needed to keep very close tabs on them both. If the Sirens got a hold of that magic, well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Drops jumped slightly. She looked up from her feet to see Lyra looking at her with a concerned expression. Drops was surprised for a second, but then recollected herself. “Yeah, I’m fine, just a bit nervous.”

Lyra chuckled. “Nervous? Come on, you’re the best. We’re the best. We’re an unstoppable team. There’s nothing to be worried about.”

Drops, despite herself and the situation she found herself in, couldn’t help but smile. “I guess we do make a good team.”

The reply seemed to satisfy Lyra, but Drops regretted it immediately. She didn’t have time to think about Lyra. She didn’t even know how much of Lyra was still there.

Surprisingly, the contest went on more or less uneventfully. They lost just before the semi-finals. Drops would admit it was her fault. She was too busy worrying about the Sirens and couldn’t drop the feeling that she’d be better off losing so she could focus on the mission more.

Lyra wasn’t happy about this fact, but luckily aimed most of her anger towards Trixie, who beat them, and the judges, who “had no idea what they were talking about”.

Apart from that the only notable thing that happened was Drops and Lyra having to hold Derpy back from starting a fist fight with Snowball, the insanely buff boy who played the violin.

In the end, the Rainbooms and, more expectedly, the Sirens made it to the finals, which would be taking place later at an arena the school had booked for the evening.

What caught Drops’ attention about the Rainbooms winning was the fact they had a rather disastrous last performance. It was obviously worse than Trixie's performance, and based on the booing, everyone else agreed.

Drops had noticed that before the principals made their decision, the Sirens had come over to talk to them. Well, it’s more accurate to say they sang to them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the Sirens had rigged it so they’d be up against the Rainbooms.

Whatever their plan was, it now seemed to be converging on the performance that night. This worried Drops, as the division being sent to deal with the Sirens was not going to get there until an hour after they were set to perform.

She had messaged the agency this, as she had every other important detail of the day, and they said that the division was already working on ‘triple time’, so there was no way they could get there early.

This was why, as she and Lyra exited the hall and headed towards their lockers, she felt a shiver of dread spread through her. She knew that her mission was to stall them. And with the Rainbooms already off to set-up their instruments, she knew that this was her last opportunity to do so.

“What I will say is that even though the Rainbooms did not deserve it at all, I am happy Trixie didn’t win.” Lyra had been rambling the entire way back. “But the Dazzlings, now they deserved it. If I’m gonna lose to anyone, it better be them.”

Drops did not respond to any of this. Once she made it to her locker, she simply took one last long breath as she stared at it for a few more moments.

“What did you want to get by the way?” Lyra asked.

Drops unlocked the door and reached into the back wall. She grabbed the edge and yanked it out, revealing it to be a fake layer which she threw to the floor, very much to the confusion of Lyra.

Behind the fake wall hung a smart black suit with sunglasses resting in the pocket. She took it out and began to change into it.

“What are you doing?” Lyra yelled as she turned away with a blush.

Drops ignored her. She buttoned up her shirt, wrapped her belt around her, and did up her tie as quickly as she could. Reaching into her pocket she took out a hair bobble and put it on. Finishing off, she did up her blazer and put on the sunglasses and a watch that were in her other pockets.

Looking at her watch, she tapped a button in the middle and it let out a beep in conformation. Her glasses flashed and she felt her body straighten as the suit activated.

This was her ‘Agent’s Suit’ as it was simply known. It was the most expensive piece of kit that every operative had to have. A grand creation, made by infusing a suit with a machine operated carbon fibre that was not only incredibly strong, but would reinforce your movements, making you faster and stronger.

This made it the ultimate armour and weapon against any opponent. Not to mention the various gadgets that came with it. This was every unit’s last line of defence, only to be used if all other options were exhausted. This was due to its extreme cost to repair and the fact that many parts need replacing after just one use.

“Please tell me this is some kind of cosplay,” Lyra said, staring at her completely bewildered.

“Shut up!” Drops snapped at her before reaching into her pocket to take out a gadget.

“Is that a gun?” Lyra asked hesitantly, backing away slightly.

Drops looked at the gadget. It looked exactly like a military pistol. “Not exactly. It’s a stun gun,” she explained. “It shoots large pellets that should knock someone out when hit in the head with them.”

Lyra looked so confused she almost seemed angry. “Why do you have that? What on earth is going on?”

“Right now talking isn’t going to help. Your mind is being controlled, and the best way to get a civilian out of that spell is normally a heavy blow to the left frontal lobe.” Drops pointed the gun at Lyra. “Sorry about this.”

Lyra was knocked straight to the floor as soon as the large yellow pellet hit her.

Drops sighed. She took out the magazine and placed another pellet in so that it was full, before turning down the hall. She knew the Dazzlings would be leaving right about now, and she needed to catch them.

Drops and The Siren

“Come now girls. Our destiny awaits.”

The Sirens continued to walk down the school halls, each radiating in their unique confidence to the point of looking annoyingly smug. Drops had been following them for long enough. It was now or never.

The sound of a trigger being pulled three times in quick succession startled the Sirens, but their reflexes weren’t fast enough to avoid the three pellets that hit them each in the back of their heads. They let out little grunts at the impact before turning around to see who dared interrupt their gloating.

Now facing Drops—who stood at the opposite end of the hall, holding her pistol steady—they gave her an annoyed look.

It seemed as though those pellets, which would have knocked out a normal person, annoyed more than hurt them. This worried her as, even though she knew some of what the Sirens capable of in a fighting environment, no one really knew just how powerful they were.

Her worry intensified when Adagio grinned. “Awh, the poor little junior recruit is trying to stop us. How cute.”

Drops stepped back slightly, causing the Siren to laugh.

“It’s just so foolishly brave. I almost feel bad for what we're gonna have to do to her,” she said with a wide grin.

Drops fought the urge to step back once more. She managed to hold firm, but her face was sweating. The top corner of her glasses’ computerised display showed her heart rate was increasing too fast. She did her best to ignore that and focused on the left-hand side of the display. Right now, the glasses were scanning the Sirens for any weaknesses, but they were so far coming up empty.

“Why is she in a suit?” Sonata asked.

There was a moment of pause. Adagio stopped moving forward and instead gave Drops a look somewhere between confusion and intrigue.

The sight confused Drops for a few moments, but then she realised what was going on. Discounting their surprise attack on Swift Glider, it had been decades since anyone in the agency had faced the Sirens directly. They had most likely never seen an Agent’s Suit, or its abilities.

This may have become easier. Drops at the very least now had some surprises for the Sirens.

“Who cares why she’s wearing a suit,” Aria groaned, moving in front of the other two Sirens. “Listen, you guys need to go set up, I’ll catch up once I’ve dealt with her.”

The two other Sirens gave her a confused look, something that Drops couldn’t stop herself from also doing.

Aria stretched out her arms. “What? She’s a junior recruit, no point wasting our time on her. I’m just in the mood to let off some steam.”

Adagio turned to Sonata, who replied with a shrug, before giving Drops a quick look up and down. “Sure, why not,” she said nonchalantly. “Have fun.”

Aria didn’t turn to look as the other two Sirens left, the Siren just continued to stare at Drops with an eager grin. “I have a very good feeling you’re gonna regret this.”

There was a temptation to agree with her, but Drops did her best to at least seem calm, remembering she didn’t have to defeat them, just keep it busy.

The Siren began to move forward, walking slowly towards her.

She quickly glanced at her glasses’ on-screen display, checking that her suit was working properly—making extra sure her Agency earpieces were in properly—and saw that the scanner had not yet found any weaknesses.

When she was only a few feet away from the Siren, it went in for its attack. It pounced, raising its fist for a punch.

Drops fired her pistol at the Siren's eye. She knew it couldn’t do any damage, but there was a flinch and, more importantly, an opening.

Drops threw her gun into her left hand, moving her right down to her belt to yank it off. With only a bit of pressure to the right point, the gadget activated and it slid off her waist as she pulled it up, then spontaneously hardened into a stick like weapon which she whacked the Siren in the face with.

Surprised at both the gadget and the strength at which Drops hit her with it—the suit had given her some much-needed extra force—the Siren was knocked off balance and it fell straight into the locker to its left.

Drops wasted no time. She skirted around the Siren and moved a few feet away from it, pointing her belt gadget with her right hand while aiming her pistol with her left.

There was a sigh of relief from Drops despite her still precarious position. That little exchange had at least shown she could damage the magical creature, something she had not known for certain going into this.

The Siren shook its head with a groan. It looked up at Drops, regaining its confident grin. It got back to its feet, revealing the impact had dented the locker it had fallen on. “Seems like you’re gonna be more fun than you look.”

The Siren let out a screech. Drops’ earpieces activated in response to try and block out as much noise as it could, but the magical voice still caused her to flinch in pain. This gave the Siren a chance to rush her.

Drops did her best to dodge the Siren’s punches, her suit adding speed and pulling her out of small errors. She kept this up for a bit and even managed a few jabs back, but she failed to get back on the advantage or do any harm.

This frantic struggle was cut short when the Siren managed to get one punch to connect. The force of the impact was so great that Drops was practically thrown backwards, dropping both her gadgets and landing on the hard floor.

She grabbed her stomach, desperately trying to hold back a scream from the pain. Critical damage to lower stomach armour her suit’s alarm displayed through her glasses.

The Siren chuckled. “You’re annoyingly slippery,” she said, moving forward for another attack.

Drops didn’t have time to concentrate on the pain. She pushed the ground, her suit giving her enough force to fling her up into a standing position. The Siren was surprised to see her do this, which gave her time to reach for another gadget.

With her anger feeling more prevalent than the pain, Drops decided to give the Siren a taste of her own medicine. She reached into her back pocket and whipped out a small device with a speaker on that she pointed at the Siren.

She pressed the button on top of the device and her earpieces activated. She couldn’t hear it, but the vibrations of the high pitched noise rippled through Drops’ arm as the Siren recoiled in pain.

Once used, she quickly threw the device to the side and, seeing that the Siren had not recovered, she lifted up her leg and kicked it as hard as she could in its face.

The Siren was knocked off balance once more, giving Drops enough time to grab her belt gadget off the floor, which she used to give a quick wack to the back of its head. She then backed off, not wanting to get ahead of herself.

The Siren looked up quickly, shooting Drops a look devoid of her previous cockiness; it was now replaced with annoyance.

It placed her hands around the small necklace hanging around its neck and it suddenly started glowing.

Drops’ display showed her scanner was beginning to pick up a massive amount of magical energy and, more importantly, it had found a weakness.

The source of the Sirens’ magic seemed to come from the crystal within the necklace. If they were removed, the Siren would be rendered powerless. The crystal most likely had some kind of defence mechanism in it, but this gave her hope.

Her display flashed with warnings. She had been so distracted by the new information that she had completely missed what was happening.

The Siren flung her arms out towards her and a fire of magical energy headed straight for her. The suit did its best to force Drops out of the way, but her carelessness meant she could only move so fast.

The fire tore through her shoulder padding and sliced open her skin.

She had lost balance trying to dodge the attack and she now found herself on the floor, grasping the wound with her left had to try and stop the bleeding.

There wasn’t time to see how bad the cut was, as the Siren quickly tried to make the most of her advantage. It lifted its foot into the air and slammed it down. Drops only just about managed to roll out the way, and the floorboards cracked open upon impact.

Realising the danger of her position, Drops reached into her back pocket for another gadget which she threw on the floor between them. The gadget, a small metal tube-like device, suddenly began spraying out a thick grey fog that quickly began to cover them both.

Drops quickly attached a little breathing device to her mouth as the Siren began to panic slightly, going in for a few more hits that Drops easily dodged.

The Siren was unable to stop her, and they now both found themselves within the thick fog.

Drops picked herself up and the glasses began showing an infrared display so she could keep an eye on the Siren. To her disappointment, the Siren seemed unaffected by the gas and, while it couldn’t see, there was only a slight cough from the knockout gas it found itself in.

Looking over to the cut on her left shoulder, her scanner noted that the cut hadn’t penetrated any artery, so she didn’t have to worry about suddenly bleeding out. That being said, it was bleeding bad enough to warrant looking through her medical supplies—located in her shoulder holster—for the first-aid foam spray to stop it.

The Siren, getting annoyed with her current lack of sight, screeched once more, again causing Drops to flinch in pain.

She was surprised by the feeling of gas rushing past her, but then she realised the screech wasn’t done to hurt her, it was to push the gas away so the Siren could see again.

Not wasting any time, Drops readied her belt gadget and ran at the Siren. It still couldn’t see properly and was startled when Drops hit her on the back of the head as she rushed past her. It tried to hit her, blindly wailing its arms around, but she had enough distance to not have any worry.

The Siren screeched once more, but Drops fought through the pain and went in for another attack. This time the Siren must have heard her footsteps, as when she went to strike, the Siren swung its arm to try and hit her. Drops just about managed to dodge the hit, but she had lost her balance and gave the Siren enough time to screech the thick gas away at last.

They now found themselves face to face in the clear once more, something that put Drops at a dangerous disadvantage.

The Siren, sensing its opportunity, rushed forward towards Drops. There was a moment of hesitation, but Drops held her position firmly, managing to parry some of the punches the Siren threw at her.

Unfortunately, Drops simply wasn’t strong enough to keep this up for long. The Siren grabbed the belt gadget, pulling it and Drops closer. It then picked up Drops by the shirt.

Drops instinctively hit the back of the Siren’s elbow as hard as she could, but it didn’t release her, only hurt it enough to throw her to the ground with enough force she heard the floorboards crack underneath her.

The onscreen display flashed red with warnings as Drops cried out in pain. Her whole body was hurting and she couldn’t feel her leg. The shirt's collar, which had a built-in neck brace, was the only thing that stopped the impact from breaking her neck and now the display showed it was broken.

All Drops could do to stop the Siren from going in to finish her off was throw a handful of miniature explosives at her, which flickered red before detonating. She knew it wouldn’t stop her, but it might give her some time.

Drops did her best to pick herself up, but the pain was unbearable. Her suit’s display gave her a little heads up that it was going to Execute emergency medical aid and she let out another scream as it forced her hip back into its socket—the dislocation being the reason she couldn’t feel her leg.

She looked down at her watch, viewing all the damaged parts of the suit. This wasn’t working. If she continued on the defence, she’d get herself killed. She needed a change of strategy.

Looking up at the Siren, who was still disoriented by the explosions, and then back to her phone, she had an idea. It was a stupid and incredibly risky idea, but it was something.

She pressed a button on the watch and turned the dial. It read Suit mode 2 and she hit the accept button.

The suit forced her into the upright position. The top of her blazer sleeves disconnected from the rest of it and moved up to wrap around her hands. A few gears turned and the sleeves formed tight gloves with the inbuilt armour working as knuckle busters.

The rest of the blazers sleeves rolled back up her arms and peeled off with the top layer on the back, leaving Drops in a what had become a waistcoat. The removed fabric distorted on the floor and turned into a blocklike device the size of a backpack, which Drops quickly picked up.

The Siren, by then, had already recovered from the explosions. It was too angry to stop in confusion at the sight before it and went straight in for another attack.

Drops threw the box at the Siren and it once again distorted, covering the Siren’s right hand and arm before clasping onto it. The Siren was caught by surprise, giving the gadget enough time to activate its robotic movements which forced the Siren’s arm to the ground.

Now partly demobilized, the Siren was at the mercy of Drops who wasted no time in testing her new gloves on its face. They worked well.

The force of each punch knocked the Siren around wildly and she managed to get a half-a-dozen punches in before the Siren tried to use her left arm to retaliate. Drops dodged the attempt easily and gave the Siren a quick look up and down. It was now or never for her final assault.

She pulled the tip of her tie and it automatically detached at the back to come off seamlessly. She flung it at the Siren’s left hand and it tied around it before activating its magnet, pinning the Siren’s hand to the locker behind.

The Siren tried to pull on it, causing a slight movement from its position, but for now, it was stuck. Drops wasted no time, striking it in the face a few times in the hopes of disorientating it.

As one last punch connected with the Siren's face, it recoiled slightly as if it was close to losing consciousness. Drops knew this would be her only opportunity. She readied herself and moved her hand in to grab the necklace.

She was only an inch away when the necklace’s defence mechanism kicked in. Suddenly a field of dark red magical energy erupted from the necklace. It almost forced Drops to fall over, but she held firm and kept on trying to move that final inch.

The energy was chaotic, with flickers of what looked like fire and lighting radiating from it, cutting through Drops’ suit and into her skin. She used every ounce of her will to keep focused on moving closer, ignoring the pain as she did so. A flicker of energy sliced into her cheek so she moved her left arm to cover her eyes, but continued pushing forwards.

She could just about feel the necklace with the tip of her finger when her glasses’ display shot out a warning and her suit forced her backwards and to the ground.

Looking up she saw a flash of magical fire that would have cut through her stomach had she remained in place. She looked to her right to see the origin of the magic.

“Now this is just embarrassing Aria.”

The other two Sirens had returned. Adigo was standing tall with a smug smile, pointing her arm forward. Sonata was standing to the side of her giggling. She probably found the scene of a junior recruit almost beating a Siren quite funny.

“Shut up and help me,” Aria said with exhausted breaths.

Drops had frozen up. One Siren had almost killed her, three she wouldn’t stand a chance against.

Her display showed her suit’s armour was in tatters and she knew it had run out of cheap tricks to surprise them. It was plan B or nothing.

She took off her glove and pointed her palm out towards the Sirens, hitting the back of it with her other hand. The flash was quick and unexpected. The Sirens shielded their eyes but they weren’t quick enough, giving Drops enough time to get up and run out the school’s back exit, not looking back once.

Out into the street and in safety, she examined herself. Cuts and bruises littered her body, some cuts too deep to ignore. Her joints were screaming in pain, prompting her to realise the suit’s mechanisms were probably the only thing keeping her standing.

Looking at her watch she realised that the musical finale was a few minutes from starting. She may have held them up for a bit, but not much.

Drops grunted in pain as she spat out a bit of blood. She needed to get to that musical final.

And then there's Lyra

“I’m sorry, Bon-bon isn’t with us anymore.”

Lyra frowned. She could only just about see over the desk and at the receptionist, who was giving her a patient smile. “What do you mean. Did she get adopted?”

The receptionist put on a pair of red glasses that were hanging around her neck, and turned to the computer. “Afraid not. She moved to a private boarding school for the gifted and talented.” She typed something in before shaking her head. “Unfortunately we weren’t told where or what it is exactly.”

“...Oh.” Lyra desperately tried to hide the panic and confusion erupting in her stomach. “Do you know when she’ll come back.”

The receptionist gave her a weak smile before taking off her glasses again and leaning over towards her. “Well, that’s the thing. We’ve been told she won’t be coming back.”

“Honey, it’ll be okay. Everything's going to be okay.”

Lyra hugged her mum tightly as she continued to cry into her chest. She kept on being passed tissues every few seconds to blow her nose into. “I-I just don’t understand why she didn't tell me,” she whimpered.

Lyra’s mum began to stroke Lyra’s hair softly. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to. It could have happened on very short notice. Maybe she just didn’t have the time.”

Lyra blew her nose again and continued to cry. She wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “It’s not fair.”

“I know it’s not fair, honey, but sometimes life isn’t.” She gave Lyra a reassuring smile. “But you have other friends, and you’ll make more.”

Lyra groaned. “I don’t want them. I want Bon-bon.”

Her mum nodded understandingly. “I know. She was your best friend for so long, but you’ll soon find yourself a new one.”

“Bon-bon wasn’t just my best friend.” Lyra managed to stop sobbing for a moment to look at her mum. “I think I liked her. Like, liked her liked her.”

There was a moment of surprise, but her mum gave her a warm smile before bringing her in for an even tighter hug. “Oh, honey, it’s okay,” she said softly. “I know heartbreak can hurt, but you’ll get through it.”

Lyra sat alone in the canteen. She never used to come here to eat, as she’d normally take her pack-lunch to see Bon-bon, who also had her lunch break from her private school at that time.

But, seeing how that was no longer an option, she ate her lunch by herself and continued to stare out of the canteen window.

“Hey, you’re Lyra, right?”

She turned to see three girls standing next to her and couldn't help but give them an inquisitive smile. They were a colourful group. The one in the middle was standing confidently with a large purple afro. The one to her left was oddly colourful with her scruffy clothes in colours that clashed, standing shyly and with an innocent smile. And to her right was a smallish girl with short red hair and a bright green jacket.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Lyra replied

“Great, I’m Blueberry,” the one in the middle said. “This is Derpy and Raspberry.” She motioned to her left and right respectively. “We saw you sitting by yourself and decided to come over and introduce ourselves.”

Lyra smiled at the odd display. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said cheerfully.

“We were wondering if you wanted to come sit with us and the gang. I think you know Octavia already.” She motioned behind her towards a group of people including Octavia, who gave her an awkward wave.

“Yeah, we have music class together.”

“So what do ya say?” Raspberry said.

“Sure, sounds good.”

There was a cheesy celebration from all three girls before they led the way to their table. She decided to sit next to Derpy and on the opposite side to Octavia who gave her an apologetic look.

“I’m really sorry about them,” Octavia said with a little disapproving look in their direction. “They don’t mean to be intrusive but they left before I could stop them.”

“It’s fine,” Lyra said nonchalantly. “I actually thought it was pretty sweet.”

“Hah, told you so.” Blueberry smirked. “I’m going to turn this place into a safe haven for the socially inept and you’re not going to stop me,” she said, as if quoting the words from somewhere.

“Oh please, Lyra is hardly socially inept,” Octavia countered. “She could have sat down with anyone if she’d wanted too.”

“Come on, just admit you're mad because I was right again.”

“Nah, me and Micro Chips have been friends since forever. It would just be weird.”

“Hmm.” Cloudkicker leant back slightly, resting herself against her room's wall. She was facing Raspberry, who was sitting on the floor with her. “What about that boy you have your dance classes with, Silver?”

“No no no no, definitely not,” Rasberry said with a serious look on her face. “That is one ship that will never sail.”

“Alright, you don’t have to get defensive.” She turned her head left to face her bed. “What about you Lyra?”

“Huh.” Lyra had spent the last ten minutes laying on Cloudkicker’s bed while reading one of the comics from her shelf, not really paying any attention to the conversation going on next to her.

“Is there any boy you’re interested in?” Cloudkicker repeated.

“I’m not interested in boys,” She said nonchalantly before returning to her book.

“Come on Lyra,” Raspberry said with a little laugh. “You’re thirteen now. You’ve gotta start thinking about this kind of thing.”

“I do think about that kind of thing,” Lyra corrected, “just not with boys.”

They both gave Lyra a confused look that she rolled her eyes at.

“I’m into girls,” she said, flipping to the next page.

There was a moment of pause with both of Lyra’s friends giving her a surprised look. To her quiet relief there was no negative gut reaction from her friends, they just hadn’t expected it.

“Wait,” Cloudkicker said, frowning as she suddenly found herself drifting into a deep thought. “That’s a thing?”

Raspberry ignored her and focused on Lyra. “How come you never told us?” she asked.

“It’s no secret. I just tend not to talk about it.” She then gave Raspberry a serious look. “Just don’t go around telling people.”

“Yeah, of course,” Rasberry said with a nod. “You seem very confident about it though.”

Lyra shrugged. “Both my parents know and they’re super supportive. Sometimes a tad too supportive. My dad told me he’d still beat up anyone that broke my heart even though they were a girl. I can’t tell if that’s sexist or progressive.”

“Wow, I had no idea.” Raspberry thought for a second. “How did you find out that you were, you know?”

Lyra hesitated. “I have—” She stopped again. “I had a crush on this girl a few years ago. Once I accepted that, the rest kind of fell into place.”

“Oh, what happened to her?”

“Erm, it’s not the most fun of stories, but she—”

“Oh no.” Cloudkicker suddenly interrupted. “I think I like girls too.”

“Derpy, are you alright?” Lyra asked softly.

Derpy, who was putting her coat into her locker, turned to face Lyra. Her eyes were red and her body shaking. She gave her best attempt at a nod before returning to her locker.

Lyra sighed, but then moved in closer. “Listen, if you need anything, anything at all, just give me a text. I’ll come running.”

Derpy turned to face her again, giving her a weak little smile which Lyra was only too happy to return.

This lasted a few more moments before Derpy glanced behind Lyra and her face flashed with fear. She quickly turned around and started walking down the hall.

“You know you’re far too nice to her.”

Lyra stiffened as the familiar sly voice echoed through her body. She turned slowly to see the smirking face and familiar leather jacket of Sunset Shimmer.

Sunset moved closer, causing Lyra to press up against the lockers. “I mean, what would everyone say if they thought you were friends with someone like her?”

Lyra put her hands behind her back as she felt her fists begin to clench, but stayed silent.

“Not only that but what would people say if they heard about your little secret.”

Lyra’s eye twitched.

Sunset continued to smirk at her for a couple more moments, before turning away and carrying on down the hall. Lyra glared at her as she went.

Once she had turned the corner, Lyra let out a long sigh and began to lean on the locker. She stayed like that for a while.

Lyra closed her locker and turned around to see Curly Winds by the lockers opposite, talking and laughing with the boy he sits next to in his English class. Lyra wasn’t sure of his real name, as everyone just called him Wiz Kid.

Lyra could hear them perfectly from where she was standing, and she smiled at their cute small talk. Wiz would every so often let slip a compliment which would cause Curly to blush and brush it off before complimenting Wiz on something he said was more important.

Curly was definitely more adorable than flirtatious. Unfortunately, due to the fact both of them were incredibly shy when it came to this kind of thing, the conversation would most likely go nowhere.

Wiz Kid eventually did leave, as he needed to go to some after-school activity, leaving Curly to give him a little wave off, before coming over to join Lyra once he saw her.

“It looks like someone's got a secret admirer,” Lyra teased as he joined her.

“What?” he said with a blush. “He’s just being friendly to me. He doesn’t actually have a thing for me.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. “I was talking about Wiz Kid’s secret admirer.”

“Oh.” He started scratching the back of his head. “How did you know?”

Lyra giggled. “I have these great things called eyes and they have this amazing ability to spot things that are painfully obvious.”

“Ah, yeah, that’ll do it.” He let out an awkward chuckle.

“I wouldn’t worry though. Another thing that’s pretty obvious is his thing for you.”

Curly Winds seemed surprised at the comment. “I don’t think so,” he said with a sigh. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even swing that way.”

Lyra shrugged. “Yeah, I mean what do I know. It’s not like I know anyone who I could talk to confirm this theory of mine. No one like his sister who I sit next to in science for example.”

Curly winds paused for a moment, giving Lyra a sceptical look. “Are you messing with me right now.”

Lyra kept up her confident smile and a blush slowly began to appear on Curly’s face.

“Go get ‘em tiger,” she said.

Curly hesitated for a moment, but then gave her a confident nod and began jogging down the hall.

Lyra smiled as he left. She had hoped he would be able to figure that one out himself, but she had gotten bored of waiting. She hated seeing opportunities like that slip through people's fingers anyway.

With a satisfied smile, she turned around to make her way home but was immediately stopped by the presence of someone behind her.

Sunset Shimmer was standing a few meters away from her. It looked like she was smiling at her but then she panicked once Lyra turned to face her.

There was a moment of stillness as neither of them knew what to do. Eventually, Lyra decided on just turning around and heading out the longer route.

“Lyra, wait,” she heard Sunset call after her.

“I really don’t want to hear it,” Lyra snapped, continuing forward.

“Lyra please.”

She was stopped by a yank of her arm and turned to see Sunset holding on to it. She glared at it and then moved the glare to Sunset who promptly let go with an apologetic look. She kept her glare but did not start moving again.

Sunset took a breath and forced on a confident look. “I needed to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything that I did these last few years.”

Lyra gave her a look of disbelief. “Is that it? You’re sorry? Great, it’s good to know you feel bad for being a crappy person.” Lyra turned once more to keep walking.

“And thank you,” Sunset blurted out.

Lyra turned back towards Sunset with an inquisitive look. “Thanks for what?” she asked.

Sunset hesitated. “Listen, I know I’ve done terrible things and using your sexuality against you is one of the worst, but since the Form Formal, seeing you be so open and confident about it again gave me the courage to do the same for the first time. Towards my friends that is.”

The feeling of anger focused towards Sunset dulled and she relaxed her body. “So you’re also like that?”

“Yep,” Sunset said awkwardly. “Kinda knew the whole time as well.”

Lyra sighed. “Sunset, I know you’re really serious about making amends, but right now, everything you’ve done, it still hurts. I think you’re just gonna have to wait till it stops.”

Sunset nodded. “That’s fair.”

Lyra gave her a weak smile. A few more moments passed in silence before Lyra began to walk home once more, leaving Sunset to stand there for a bit longer.

“What’s wrong with Lyra?” Cloudkicker asked.

Lyra was slouched over in her chair, staring at her phone that was placed on the canteen table. Her eyes were wide and she remained perfectly still as everything continued around her.

“She’s been like this for ten minutes already.” Octavia, who was sitting opposite Lyra, looked up from her food to check on her. “Apparently some ghost from her past has jumped back into her life.”

“What am I meant to do,” Lyra suddenly said. “I said I would text her. I can’t text her. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Steady on there Lyra,” Cloudkicker said, sitting down next to her and putting her arm around her. “Who is this person exactly?”

Lyra gave her a worried look. “You remember I told you about that girl I knew when I was little?”

“Erm, oh, you mean your first crush?”

Octavia looked up from her food, suddenly interested. “You mean the one who made you realise you were gay? She’s back?”

“Yes, her.” Lyra pushed her head into her hands. “I thought I’d never see her again. How am I meant to deal with that?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s been like seven years or something. You don’t have a crush on her anymore, right?”

Lyra brushed off the idea. “Yeah, I’m being silly. It’s been years since I’ve even thought about her properly. I’ve been over her since I was twelve.” A flash of horror spread across her face. “Oh no, I still have a thing for her!”

Cloudkicker laughed. “Oh come on. You can’t be serious.”

“Don’t make fun of her,” Octavia interjected. “Often seeing someone after a long time can bring back the feeling you had for them. I can only imagine it’s worse for first crushes.”

“I don’t need you to analyse me, Octavia. I need you to help me.”

“Relax,” Cloudkicker said, standing up once more, “you don’t need the help of Miss Single over there when you have the relationship expert ready and at your service.”

Octavia frowned. “Cloudkicker, you’re single too.”

Cloudkicker picked up an orange from her food tray and smirked. “I wasn’t talking about me.”

Without warning, she threw the orange across the canteen. It hit Curly Winds, who was sitting two tables down with his friends, on the back of his head. He turned around to see Cloudkicker motioning him over to her.

He rolled his eyes with a sigh before saying goodbye to his friends and moving over to them.

“You have really got to stop getting his attention like that,” Octavia said bluntly. “He’s only a few seconds away.”

“What do you want Cloudkicker?” Curly asked once he arrived.

Cloudkicker frowned. “Is that how you say hello to your favourite friend.”

Curly smirked. “But I haven’t said hello to Lyra yet.”

“That’s a bit harsh, but seeing how you’re so fond of her, I guess you can’t really refuse helping Lyra in her moment of need.”

“How so?” Curly asked, glancing over at the awkward looking Lyra.

“Lyra’s in need of some serious romance help and we are all going to spend all of lunch figuring out the perfect text for her.”

Octavia frowned. “I need to go practice.”

“You can have one day off dammit.”

“Okay… are you guys sure it doesn’t sound too weird?”

“Please, just send it,” Raspberry practically begged. She had been lying face down on Curly’s bed for the last ten minutes.

“Come on now. Don’t act so negative,” Curly said, entering his room with a plate of teas he had brewed for everyone. “We all said we’d help Lyra make the perfect text.”

Lyra didn’t pay much attention to Raspberry’s moaning; she was far too stressed. When the lunchtime brainstorming failed to produce any results, everyone who was free agreed to meet up after school to help finish the job. They had decided on Curly’s house simply because it was the closest to the school.

“While I agree that was the promise we made, I didn’t quite imagine such a commitment,” Octavia said. She looked very deflated in Curly’s desk chair. “I’d also like to add we’ve had many satisfactory versions of this message, including this one.”

“Rubbish,” Cloudkicker exclaimed. She still had more energy than everyone else combined. “Yes, we’ve had to redo it a few times.” She put the latest paper with rough text idea’s into the bin which was already full of them. “But we can’t rush this kind of thing.”

Cloud moved over to the still panicky Lyra and rapped her arm around her shoulder. She gave the text a little read over before giving Lyra a confident nod. “It’s great. Very you. That’s the most important part.”

Lyra gave Cloudkicker a little smile. Cloud had told her she was free to do this, but she knew she had skipped football practice. This last little bit of encouragement gave her the confidence to make up her mind.

She took a long breath and then hit send.

“I did it,” she said with a long sigh of relief.

Everyone gave a little cheer, with Cloudkicker bringing her into a hug. Octavia, despite having seemed quite deflated, looked quite pleased with the outcome. Raspberry just cheered “I’m free,” with a weak little fistbump.

Curly moved over with two teas in his hands, handing one over to Lyra. “You did great,” he said with a smile.

“Yeah,” Cloud agreed, releasing her friend from the hug and taking her tea from Curly. “We’ll soon have you with this mystery girl, even if it’s the last thing we do.”

“It may just be,” Raspberry joked. “And I thought Curly was slow with this kind of thing.”

Curly chuckled. “Got there in the end though.” He took a sip of his tea and thought for a second. “But speaking of mystery girls, have you heard about the new girl who everybody’s talking about.”

“Oh have I,” Cloudkicker moaned. “I’m in her P.E. class. Saw her now famous pull-up endurance test first hand. I’ve been trying to get her to join the football team ever since.”

“I’ve only heard of her from Wiz. He’s in her maths class. Apparently, they’re trying to get her on some gifted and talented list but she keeps turning them down.”

Lyra had indeed heard many of these rumours about said mystery girl but had never seen her personally. It was then a thought hit her. “Wait... this mystery girl, is she the same girl that saved Derpy from those bullies?”

A wave of harsh silence washed over the room, with everyone suddenly avoiding Lyra’s eyes. She almost regretted bringing her up.

“Yes,” Raspberry finally said. “When I heard about it I went around looking for her. Apparently, Micro Chips had seen it happen and he pointed her out for me in the canteen. She was sitting next to Derpy. She always is. They’ve become good friends.”

Next to each other. Lyra hadn’t really paid much notice to it before, as seeing Bon-bon had been all that could occupy her mind at the time, but now that she thought about it, wasn’t Derpy with her?

“This mystery girl, what’s her name,” Lyra asked.

“Bon-bon,” Raspberry confirmed. “Have you met her?”

Lyra stayed quiet for a moment. “No. No, I haven't.”

The phone showed that there were still no new messages.

Lyra had been checking her phone so often the past week it had almost become a nervous tick. Every little buzz gave her a sudden rush of excitement, only for it to disperse once she saw it was spam or some other notification.

She looked up from her phone at her friends around the table. The whole gang was here with the exception of the berries (Raspberry and Blueberry still got annoyed at Lyra’s nickname for them). They were discussing, as they had been for a few days now, their present for Derpy.

Lyra had watched the whole Derpy’s surprise party business carefully, seeing it all unfold in detail. Conversations between each of her friends and Bon-bon had ended in each of them agreeing to help out in the secret party, and once they found out they were all in on it, Pinkie pie had suggested they all work together to think of a gift for Derpy.

Of course, it was pretty easy for Lyra to see that the strange coincidences of it all didn’t add up, even if her friends were too focused on the job at hand to stop and think about it. She imagined the berries would get there invites to the secret circle soon enough.

There wasn’t any need for Lyra to add anything to the discussion. She wasn’t part of the plan and, in reality, shouldn’t even know about it as Bon-Bon had sworn them to a strict secrecy. Unfortunately for that part of the plan, Cloudkicker always told Lyra everything.

Lyra reached into her bag and picked out a letter. Looking through it, she couldn’t help but smile. Pinkie pie had been secretly delivering party invitations to everyone in the school all day, and hers had just been the same as others.

Before Bon-Bon, Lyra had been the person Derpy was on best terms with. They had texted a fair bit and been friendly whenever they saw each other. Unfortunately, with Lyra’s best friends being Derpy’s old group, it greatly limited just how much time they could spend together.

This surprise party, while she was more than willing to admit that she was still quite nervous about it, could end in Derpy once again moving into her old gang like the old days. Even the idea of that brought a gleeful grin to Lyra’s face.

Though, this idea also made her extremely worried. If Derpy was hanging around with her and everyone, then would Bon-Bon come with? The thought seemed unlikely; she had never been the most sociable person. In their childhood, she never knew of her having any other friends, and now she hadn’t seemed to have made bridges with anyone other than Derpy.

But her main source of worry was whether Bon-bon would even want to hang around with her specifically. It had been five days and she still hadn't replied. What if she didn’t want to be friends again? What if she didn’t want to see her? What if she had found out about her feelings and it freaked her out?

Any one of those ideas made Lyra feel a bit sick.

The music changed. The fast-paced beats of some random pop-song faded out to be replaced with a slower, more familiar love song.

“This is an interesting playlist,” Lyra said slyly, stepping forward as she did so.

Bon-Bon shot an annoyed look behind Lyra before trying to cover it up with a weak smile. Her blush was definitely noticeable even with the dimmed lights, and as Lyra moved closer, she could almost see her flinch back slightly.

Lyra delicately held Bon-bon’s hands. She could feel them shaking as she pulled her closer and placed them on her hips. Lyra couldn’t help but giggle and blush at the situation she found herself in. Finally letting go of Bon-Bon’s hands, she then moved her own up and rested them on Bon-Bon’s shoulders.

“You ever slow danced before?” Lyra asked as they started swaying from side to side with the music.

Bon-Bon didn’t reply, she barely even looked back at Lyra. She did her best to sway with Lyra, but her movements were visibly stiff. The scene must have looked quite odd to the people watching.

A small, content smile appeared on Lyra’s lips. Despite Bon-Bon’s adorably flustered state, she felt quite nervous herself. It had been so long since she last knew Bon-bon, so this was the first time she’d seen Bon-Bon this close up.

She had changed so much. She’d grown out her short frizzy hair and managed to tame it, yet it still had those some signature curls. Her arms were no longer the thin ones of a child, they had bulked up to the point they made Lyra blush, but she could still tell it was Bon-Bon’s soft touch holding her. There was now such a height and presence in the way she held herself, but now they found themselves in each other's arms, Lyra could tell she was an inch, maybe two inches, taller than her—something that made her giggle just a little bit.

Lyra wrapped her arms around Bon-Bon, moving closer so she was only a few inches away from her.

They suddenly found themselves both blushing profusely, with Bon-Bon finally mustered enough courage to look at her directly.

In that moment, Lyra looking into Bon-Bon’s eyes, she could see that even though she no longer wore glasses, she still had the same deep blue eyes.

“I don’t know what's more beautiful,” Lyra said with a cheesy smile, “this music or you.”

Bon-Bon’s eyes widened, almost looking shocked at the statement. “Lyra… Lyra I—”

That was when Bon-Bon tripped over and onto the buffet.

“Wha… ow… damn it…”

Lyra slowly began to pick herself up as her bearings returned to her. She felt very confused as she regained consciousness on a surface she didn’t tend to wake up on.

“Where am I,” she muttered.

Her vision was a tad blurry, but it quickly focused, revealing she was laying down in the middle of the school halls. She forced herself up and began to look around.

“What happened?” she asked out loud.

Her memories were fine until a certain point, but then things got fuzzy. She remembered three girls singing. Then the music competition must have happened, yeah, she remembered that. Why was she angry the whole time though? She’s never normally been so competitive.

‘Mind is being controlled.’

She suddenly remembered Bon-Bon. The hidden suit, the gun that fired pellets. She stopped for a moment. That couldn’t have all happened. Could it?

She turned to see the back panel of the locker laying on the floor where Bon-Bon had thrown it.

She put her hand to her head but was shocked by a sudden pain. Taking out her phone to use the camera, she found a small bruise on her forehead.

“What on earth is going on?” she muttered.

She continued to make her way to the exit when she saw something in the corner of her eye through the window.

“Bon-Bon?”

Outside she saw her friend running down the street outside the school, wearing a familiar looking waistcoat. She quickly realised that Bon-bon was running in the exact opposite direction to her house, leaving her very confused for a few more moments before it hit her. The music final.

Bon-Bon by then had ran past where she could see, but Lyra found herself running after her anyway. She had no idea what was going on, and she wanted answers.

The Final

Drops continued to limp down the road, holding on to the pain in her side as she did so. She had made a detour back to her apartment for some medical supplies and a few more gadgets, but now she desperately needed to get to the stadium.

As she drew closer, she could begin to hear the sound of singing. Her heart raced when she realised it was the Sirens.

Taking a shortcut through the field, she found herself on a hill looking out at the left of the stadium. She could just about see the Sirens performing. They sang an eerie song that filled her chest with dread.

Drops tapped the side of her sunglasses and they zoomed in so she could get a closer look. The first thing she noticed was that their necklaces were all glowing bright red. She knew that meant that immense power was running through them, and that power was most likely equestrian.

Drops looked down at her watch. It was still half an hour until the special division would get there, and there was no guarantee they could beat the sirens at their full strength.

Drops took out her glasses off and did her best to calm herself down. Taking out a little black ball from her pocket, she forced a confident look onto her face and began to make her way down behind the stadium.

“Bon-Bon, wait!”

Drops stopped and turned back around. To her surprise, she saw Lyra running after her. The first thought that passed through her mind was that she needed to keep on going, but then quickly realized having Lyra chase her straight into danger wasn’t good at all.

“What on earth are you doing?” Drops yelled at her.

“I could say the same to you,” Lyra said as she caught up to her. “What do you think you’re…” Lyra froze when she gave Drops a closer look. “What happened to you?”

Drops glanced down. Her now scruffy suit had blood stains and cuts all over it. She had managed to plaster any big cuts on her while at the apartment, but she knew she still looked like she’d been through hell. “That’s not important. I don’t even have time for this. I need to go!”

She turned to keep walking but was stopped by Lyra who grabbed onto her hand. “Bon-Bon, stop lying to me. I’ve had enough of it,” she pleaded. “I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m terrified that you’re about to do something stupid.”

Drops stared at her. She wasn’t wrong.

With a little glance at the stadium, she moved close to Lyra and grabbed both her hands. “Please, it’s not safe here. You need to run, find someplace to hide. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

“Then tell me what’s going on here. Tell me honestly and I’ll go.”

Drops gave her a pained look. “Please, I’ll tell you everything once this is over. Just trust me.”

Lyra stayed silent, but then closed her eyes and nodded. “I trust you. Just don’t go and get yourself killed.”

Drops gave her a weak smile before she turned to run towards the stadium again. She glanced back one last time to see Lyra staying true to her word and leaving. She felt content knowing that Lyra would escape the fallout of whatever was going to happen now.

Once she reached the stage, she snuck into the back area and made her way up the ladder to the lighting equipment. Once there, she scanned the area for any beam that seemed integral to the structure.

She quickly found a metal beam next to the left wall that fitted the mark. She reached out to a couple of little beams and began to climb up to it, making sure they were secure as she did so. She placed her foot on one beam and leaned against the wall so that she was fixed in place.

She was right above the Dazzlings, who hadn’t noticed her and were continuing their performance. She could feel a powerful energy radiating off them that made her hairs stand on edge.

She placed the little black ball on the beam and wrapped some tape around it to hold it in place.

The back ball was a grenade. She had it leftover from one of her older missions. It was a contained explosion though, only useful for destroying structures, so she had left in the apartment when facing off against the Sirens.

Once the grenade went off, it would snap the beam and cause all the beams connected to it to fall, along with all the lighting equipment hanging over the Sirens’ heads.

This wouldn’t stop them indefinitely, but it might just stop them long enough for the agency division to arrive and defeat them.

The only issue was her escape route. The grenade had no accessible timer or remote detonator and would activate exactly five clicks after it was activated. Judging by how fast she could move and how far she had to go to be safe, she was cutting this extremely close.

She looked around to see if there were any faster routes she could take, but it was to no avail. She looked at her watch again, confirming that it was still twenty minutes until the division would arrive.

She glanced down towards the Sirens. Their energy was growing more intense by the second. If she was going to do this, she’d have to do it now.

Placing her shivering hand above the bomb’s activation button, she tried to steady her breathing. Looking back at her escape route, it became painfully obvious she’d get caught in the fallout. She tried to force her hand down, but faltered.

Despite everything going on around her, she took out her phone and scrolled down to her old mentor's number, Fast Glider.

Tell Lyra and Derpy that I’m sorry.

She hit send and slowly put her phone back in her pocket. She looked at her hand—which had stopped shaking—and at the bomb, before finally down at the Sirens.

There was a strong pulse of energy as the Sirens began to lift off the floor and flashes of light enveloped them in a strange bright darkness. Drops could see their full strength begin to return.

Alright, it’s now or never. She placed her hand above the switch and—

“Ooh, I’ve got the music in me.”

“Huh?”

A Mission well done

Drops slowly limped towards the park bench she had agreed to meet Lyra at. She continued to message the Agency as she did so. They had just managed to stop the response division coming in guns blazing once the Sirens were defeated and were now in the very stressful process of demobilizing.

She had recorded the whole thing on her phone and streamed it straight to the HQ in front of all the High Generals. None of them could believe what they were seeing. She still didn’t quite believe it.

A group of teenagers beating dangerous equestrian creatures with the power of music and friendship. It didn’t feel sane.

But as she approached the bench, seeing Lyra there waiting for her, she placed her phone back in her pocket. It had already gotten pretty dark, but she could see her perfectly due to the street light above her head.

Drops took a seat next to her with a groan. Now that the adrenaline had worn off all her injuries were really starting to hurt.

Lyra looked up at her. She looked distressed but managed a smile when she saw her. “You alright?” She asked.

“Yeah, I’ve had worse,” Drops replied with a chuckle. “What about you? I know all this must be pretty weird.”

“Yeah… well, to be honest, we already had a really weird thing at the Fall Formal.”

“That’s right, you saw that whole Sunset Shimmer demon thing,” Drops said, still holding onto some of her stomach injuries.

Lyra raised an eyebrow at her. “Someone told you about that?”

“I wish. I spent two weeks trying to figure that one out,” Drops moaned. “I would have loved for someone to just tell me that.”

Lyra giggled. “Oh yeah, that makes sense. ‘Hey Bon-bon, just letting you know that one of our students turned into a she-demon and tried to enslave our school’. That doesn’t sound like a crazy thing to say at all.”

They both laughed, but Lyra’s expression turned more serious. “But that wouldn’t have been a weird thing for you to hear, would it?”

Drops straightened up slightly. “No, it wouldn’t have,” she confirmed.

Lyra stared at her for a few more moments but then straightened up herself. “Mind telling me why that is?”

“I guess I do owe you that, don’t I. Just so you know I’m breaking pretty much every rule by doing this, so it can not be repeated to anyone.” Drops sighed. “I guess I should start by saying my real name isn’t Bon-Bon.”

Drops woke up late for the first time in years. She then skipped half her exercises and made herself a simple breakfast with a cup of tea, neither of which were agency protocol.

Once she was ready and dressed she notified the school to say she wouldn’t be attending due to sickness and set out for her assignment.

The agency had set up a cleanup team for the quick cover-up and analysis of yesterday's events. They were at that moment cleaning up the stadium and had requested Drops’ help.

Once she arrived, she quickly scanned over the scene. There were about twenty operatives, mainly low-level junior recruits with a few higher level supervisors. The bulk of them were searching and cleaning up the stadium floor, with a few of them picking up the little remnants of the Sirens’ necklaces and putting them into little plastic bags.

Drops ducked under the police yellow tape that circled the whole area and made her way over to them, specifically the heavily bandaged agent in the large trench coat supervising the crystal collection.

“Hello, Sir,” she said as she approached.

Fast Glider turned slowly, revealing a face that bore more bruises and cuts than she had ever seen him carry before. He, nevertheless, shot her a smile upon seeing her.

“What the bloody hell happened to your face?” Drops asked with a chuckle.

He chuckled too, although his was more croaky, before telling his men to carry on as they were before walking to meet Drops halfway.

“It’s good to see your alive and well Sir,” Drops said with a smile.

“Same goes for you. Although I’m not exactly well. Technically I should still be in the infirmary, but when have we let anything like that stop us.” He turned to look outwards over the operation. “We’ve got quite a job cleaning all this mess up, though it could have been a lot worse.”

Drops nodded. “That’s an understatement. This could have been a war.”

Fast Glider frowned. “I’m talking about if you’d gone ahead with that plan of yours.”

A flash of worry spread across her face. “Ah.”

“Do me a favor and never do anything stupid like that again,” he continued. “You should be apologising to your friends yourself.”

“Sorry, Sir.” Drops glanced away awkwardly but then caught a glimpse of some agents putting the crystals into a cardboard box to be filed into the agency vault. “So what’s going to happen to the Sirens?”

“They’ll most likely be left alone from now on. They’ll have to figure out how to live a normal life if they want to stay out of trouble.”

Drops raised an eyebrow. “We’re not going to have them arrested?”

“What do we look like, an independent judiciary? We don’t hand out jail time, we deal with magic. Now that they don’t have any, they’re not our problem.” He rubbed his chest slightly. “And as much as I would like to pay them back for breaking my rib, I’d say taking away their immortality and powers is punishment enough for them.”

Drops gave him an understanding nod. “So what’s going to happen here. High Schoolers with magic, an equestrian, this is the biggest security risk we have.”

“In a way, yes, but they at least seem to be on our side, in a way. There’s no point in stopping them when all they're doing is stopping actual dangers.” He gave Drops a little grin. “The agency was made to help people, remember. If that’s what they're doing then we should let them.”

Drops thought for a second.”I guess you’re right,” she said hesitantly.

“Though that’s not to say they’ll be left alone. We’ve already got an agent assigned to keep tabs on them. Someone suitable to deal with them if they go rogue.”

“Who’s the agent?” Drops asked.

“A pretty good one. She’s the only Level Silver junior recruit to be awarded the Grand Cross.”

“That’s impressive. A junior recruit with the highest honor of the agency. She must be one hell of an agent.”

“I guess. She gets on my nerves a bit though. But that does remind me.” He reached into his coat pocket. “Here is your promotion towards Level Silver and your Grand Cross.”

Drops almost jumped back at the statement. “What? But that—I’m the one who got the mission?”

“My god holmes, you’ve cracked it.”

Drops stared at the Level Silver ribbon and the large iron badge of the Grand Cross that were being held out to her. “But why me?”

“The Grand Cross. ‘To be awarded only to those who have shown immense courage in the face of overwhelming odds.’ If what you did wasn’t that, I don’t know what is.” He gave her a smile. “And we couldn’t let you do all that without a promotion.”

Drops gave the Cross a closer inspection. For those who lived, fought, and died for the greater good, it read.

“But why the mission? Surely there are people better suited to dealing with equestrian magic. I don’t even have access to equestrian files.”

“You do now. Which reminds me, you have a ton of reading to get done, some of which in old English, so have fun with that.” He chuckled. “And to be fair, we haven’t had a case of equestrian magic in fifty years. Anyone who’s dealt with it is retired. You literally have the most experience in the agency.”

Drops stared at him in disbelief. The cross, the mission, everything was so overwhelming that she couldn’t think of anything to say. Anything except “Thank you, Fast Glider.”

“Thanks for what?” he rebuked, doing up the buttons in his coat. “Don’t go thinking I had anything to with this. I was against the whole idea. I thought Swift Strike should get the job.”

Drops grinned. “Swift Strike? The first girl I beat in top group combat training?”

“Yes, not that I remember that, or the distinct feeling that I was right about you after it happened.” He shook her head at her. “You’re very weird sometimes. You’ll end up thinking I care about you or some nonsense like that.”

He started walking back to his team. “The mission officially starts next Monday by the way, so take the week off,” he said as he walked. “It’s at least a year-long mission and will probably be reinstated.”

Drops smiled at him as he walked off. She felt a warm blissfulness that she wasn’t used to. She glanced at her medals. First Level Silver Junior recruit to be awarded the Grand Cross, huh.

Her thought was interrupted when she felt her phone vibrate. She took it out and saw a message from Lyra.

Hey, just wanted to say thank you for everything last night. It was a lot to take in at the time, but I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.

I was also wondering if you were up to coming round mine tonight. I still owe you a lyre performance ;)

Drops smiled at her phone for a little bit before finally replying with an affirmative response.

“Oh, by the way, Drops,” She heard Fast Glider call from his team. “I know you’ve got a year, but don’t spend it all pretending you don’t have a thing for that Lyra girl.”

She blushed slightly but kept her posture tall. “Will do,” she called back.

“That’s my girl,” he said with a little thumbs up.

Drops turned around and started making her way back to her apartment. On the way, she made a little detour into town and started looking through some home improvement stores.

Now that her apartment was no longer a short-term base, she thought it might be good to make it a bit more homely. It was a silly thought, but she liked the idea of living somewhere that didn’t have cold grey walls again, at least for a little bit.

This was just one extra job to be done though. She had a lot on her plate starting now. Lots of research had to be done. She had to organize all her notes. Her final report on her recon mission had to be completed, and it was probably the most important report she’d done so far.

But she didn’t feel like doing any of that right now.

She took out her phone, scrolled through her contacts and began to type.

Hey Derpy. I’ve just had some good news and am in the mood to celebrate. Want to go to a cafe or something tomorrow?

She hit send and put it away again.

“Make yourself at home.”

Drops did as instructed and took a seat on Lyra bed. It felt a bit odd without all the little, stuffed toys to hug from way back, but she quickly got comfortable. That said, she still had a rather noticeable blush from being in Lyra’s room once more.

Lyra was initially quite nervous about showing Drops her room, but that quickly turned to embarrassment once Drops apologetically told her she’d already seen it. While she couldn’t tell Lyra all her agency secrets, Drops had decided to be as honest as she could be with her.

Taking a seat in the chair by her desk, Lyra let out a content sigh, even if she was still a little annoyed to find out about Drops’ previous intrusion.

“So, how long will this new mission of yours last?”

Drops thought for a second. “It has to be reinstated every year, but I’d imagine it’ll probably carry on till graduation. Once the Rainbooms start going off to college I don’t know what will happen.

Lyra thought for a moment, a sly grin appearing on her face. “Graduation huh. Looks like I’ve got you trapped for two years.”

“I wouldn’t call it being trapped,” Drops chuckled, but then turned a little sad. “I won’t be able to stay here forever though.”

Lyra shrugged. “Nothing lasts forever. I’m happy to make the most of the time we’ve got now.”

Drops couldn’t help but give Lyra a wide, genuine smile. She felt content for the first time in as long as she could remember.

“Now,” Lyra began, once again gaining her sly smile, “I distinctly remember promising you a lyre performance.”

The very word ‘lyre’ filled Drops with an excitement that she couldn't hide. She gave Lyra an uncharacteristic giddy nod, something Lyra couldn’t help but giggle at.

She picked up her small golden lyre from the side of her desk. “Just promise you won’t laugh.”

Drops gave her a little salute. “Yes mamm.”

Lyra smiled and ever so delicately moved her hand over her lyre. With one seamless movement, she struck the first note and played more beautifully than Drops could remember.

In the little time she’d been back in her hometown she’d done a lot of stupid things, even for her. And while she knew the agency wouldn’t hold any of it against her, especially given the circumstances, it would all add on to her reputation of being far too recklessly emotional.

Had it not been for the Sirens she imagined she would have to read through a few stern words over her actions, as she normally found herself doing at the end of an assignment. ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much time helping Derpy when you could have used your time more effectively’ or ‘you wasted far too much time with that Lyra girl’ were all things she would have most likely seen.

Though sitting in Lyra’s room, just being there as she played for her like she once did, she didn’t regret a single thing.

Epilogue

“I thought the word you used to describe this place was ‘cute’.”

Drops looked around the restaurant, examining all the paintings on the wall, expensive vases, and the various smartly dressed adults that were also dining that night. Smiling, she returned her gaze over the candlelight and at her date.

“Did I say cute?” Lyra said with a little blush. “Fancy is what I meant.”

Drops chuckled. They both knew the location of this ‘catch-up’ had been changed once the meaning behind it did. Now it was out in the open, Drops felt a lot more confident about the whole situation.

That being said, it hadn't stopped Drops from being very nervous going into this. As embarrassing as it was to admit, Derpy had come round a few hours beforehand to help her mentally prepare for the date—and help with the two moments of hyperventilation that occurred.

Drops would later find out Lyra had done a similar thing. Only she had the help of every other member of the gang, with Cloudkicker and—more surprisingly—Octavia being more emotional than Lyra was. It sounded like a grand affair.

“That dress looks beautiful on you,” Drops said. She had decided against telling her she had seen her purchase the dress during her recon.

Lyra smiled sheepishly. “Thanks. You look amazing in that tux. It really suits you.”

Drops blushed. The tux had been what Rarity designed for her in the end. She was originally quite surprised, but Rarity insisted it would look great on her and decided to wear it. Admittedly, she was right.

“Menus madams.”

Drops politely took the menu that had been placed in front of her. “Thank yo—”

Fast Glider, still in his bandages and arm sling but now dressed as a waiter, gave Drops a little wink before moving onto the next table. Drops glared at him the whole time but failed to hide a little smirk. He was most likely still being forced on leave due to his injuries and was finding ways to fill his time.

“So, how's the reading going?” Lyra asked.

Drops sighed. “Could be going better. When the agency sent over all the files I thought they sent me a boat judging by the size of the package. Most of it is quite useless too.”

“Sounds rough.” Lyra thought for a second. “You gonna have enough time to do the friendship games in a few weeks time? We could use an ace to finally win it.”

Drops gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, while I’ll have finished by then, it’s against regulations to actually win one of those competitions without good reasons. I’ll be able to compete, but I’ll be holding back.”

Lyra looked a bit disappointed, but then shrugged. “Oh well. Should be a good time anyway.”

Drops thought for a second. “Yeah,” she agreed with a smile. “After all the stress of the musical showcase, it should be good to have a little school activity with no crazy magical disaster.”