Servant of the Queen

“There she is,” Indigo Zap whispered to Lemon Zest.

Both girls were sitting in the cafeteria of Crystal Prep, hiding behind a stack of books that they had ‘borrowed’ from Sugarcoat’s bag, the owner of said bag currently talking to Dean Cadance about something to do with the Eastern Fair. Lemon and Indigo’s eyes peered out from a crack in their book fort at Silver Rose. The daughter of Ebony Wings was sitting a couple of tables away, talking animatedly with Canvas Splash about something.

“Do you really think this will work?” Lemon asked Indigo as they pretended to read a book about snakes that was upside down.

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but what if she’s really a demon or something?” Lemon whispered back. “If she goes berserk or something, someone could get hurt.”

“Relax,” Indigo held up a piece of red paper with Eastern characters written on it in black ink. “We just walk up to her, and stick this on. According to the guy I bought it from in the city, it’s supposed to shut down malevolent spirits.”

“Okay…” Lemon seemed less sure.

“You have the salt, right?” Indigo checked with Lemon.

The lime haired girl held up a large packet of sea salt. “Yep. Got it right here.”

“Then let’s roll.”

They stood up from behind their wall of books and almost bumped into Sugarcoat.

“Where are you two going?” Sugarcoat sighed.

“We’re gonna test if Silver Rose is really a demon or something!” Lemon chirped happily.

Sugarcoat facepalmed and put her hands on her hips. “I thought we agreed to lay low?”

“Yeah, we did,” Indigo replied, looking over at Silver Rose, who was now eating her pudding. “But I’m not going to just stand by and do nothing if she really is some kind of demon witch thing. I’m going to save CPA from her!”

“But she hasn’t done anything to CPA. It’s just Sunny Flare,” Sugarcoat said, exasperated.

“Well, are we going to wait until she does do something to CPA?” Indigo challenged.

“That’s not very good logic…” Sugarcoat pointed out with a sigh. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“Too late.” Sour Sweet’s voice came from behind Lemon Zest. She and Indigo ignored it.

Indigo and Lemon left their friends at the table and crept over to where Silver Rose was sitting. The daughter of Ebony Wings didn’t seem to notice, so absorbed was she in talking to Canvas. Quick as a flash, Indigo rolled from behind one chair to another, then slid, baseball style, into the cover of a pillar. Lemon followed suit somewhat less acrobatically, skulking over to where Indigo was crouching like a ninja.

“There she is,” Indigo whispered. “Ready with the salt?”

Lemon unsealed the packet of seasoning and nodded. “Ready.”

“Let’s do this thing.”

Making sure that Silver Rose wasn’t about to turn around, Indigo slid over and surreptitiously placed the paper talisman onto Silver’s back, while at the same time Lemon poured out a thin circle of salt around the seated girl’s chair. Then Lemon Zest and Indigo Zap scurried back to their own desk where Sugarcoat, Sunny Flare, and Sour Sweet were waiting, looking a little unimpressed.

“Mission successful!” Lemon high fived Indigo, grinning at the rest of the Shadowbolts.

“Yes, congratulations,” Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “You stuck a piece of paper onto someone’s back and poured salt on the floor. Surely you two are on your way to becoming professional demon hunters.”

“Hay yeah!” Indigo pumped her fist into the air. “Just like Vante and Dergil!”

“She was being sarcastic,” Sour Sweet grunted.

“Doesn’t matter. It was said.”

“I don’t think Dergil is even a proper demon hunter…” Sugarcoat mused while she shook her head. “He’s more of a cool, handsome foil to Vante who happens to be his twin brother. It would be more appropriate to say Vante and Ne-”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Indigo said as she sat back down and began to watch Silver Rose through her book fort. “Now let’s see if anything happens.”

“...so my aunt’s been giving me lessons about the East,” Silver said to Canvas, who was doodling something in her sketchbook. “She figured it would be useful to know since we’re throwing a festival that’s Eastern-themed.”

“Your aunt has been to the East?” Canvas asked in awe as her pencil worked furiously.

“Ahaha, yeah,” Silver nodded. “She was working there for a while as some kind of cultural appropriator, so she learned a lot about Eastern traditions and culture.” A bit too fond of it if you ask me. She thought privately.

“She must have so many stories to tell!” Canvas said with a grin. “It will probably be helpful to know once Cinch inevitably drops that test on us after the fair is over.”

“Yeah…” Silver slumped a bit upon thinking of that. “Well, it’s almost time to head back to class. Do you want me to take your tray to the trash for you, Canvas?”

“I’ll get it once I’m done with this,” the girl continued without looking up. “You go on ahead without me.”

Silver got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. There was a faint crunch beneath her shoe as she did so. She looked down.

On the shimmering crystal floor, there appeared to be a sloppy circle of faint white grains around Silver’s chair. She ground the tip of her shoe against it, breaking the circle. It looked like sugar, or maybe salt. Silver Rose frowned, but didn’t give it any more thought as she took her tray over to the trash slot.

Smelling something funny, Silver Rose reached over her back and felt something papery there. She peeled off the talisman and examined it. It was a bookmark-sized piece of red paper that had Eastern characters written on it in black ink. Silver smelled it. It smelled like a certain blue-haired Shadowbolt.

“Mmm…” Silver hummed as she turned around to the Shadowbolts’ usual table. There was a small wall of books piled on the table’s surface, and Indigo Zap and Lemon Zest were peeking out from between gaps at her.

Sighing, Silver put the paper talisman into her pocket and dumped the contents of her tray into the trash, then went back to her artistic friend.

Indigo and Lemon Zest were wide-eyed in awe and shock.

“Did you see that?” Lemon whispered, sweat beading on her face.

“Yeah. I did,” Indigo replied, equally hushed.

“Yes. Your little tricks didn’t do anything,” Sugarcoat said as she began to dismantle the book fort to put back into her bag. “Now will you leave well enough alone?”

“She must be a really powerful demon to shrug off the salt and charm like that,” Indigo Zap muttered.

“Wait, no-” Sugarcoat began, but her protests fell of deaf ears. “Sunny! Sour! Back me up on this.”

“I dunno, I kinda agree with Sugarcoat…” Sour Sweet grimaced. “I think we should just forget all about this. Silver hasn’t done anything to wrong us. Just Sunny.”

“I, uh…” Sunny looked embarrassedly at the wall. “I just kinda want all this to be over. Whatever magic she cast on me, or whatever, we should just leave it at that.”

“What if it comes back?” Indigo poked Sunny on the forehead. “Like, what if you start touching yourself again when you think about her?”

“C-Can we not bring that up? Especially not at school?” Sunny thought back to her encounter at the cafe with Silver and slumped. Not too long ago, she would have been ecstatic to think about Silver Rose in that light. Now it was just slightly creepy and not arousing at all. And just who had the woman in the pink frilly dress been?

Who she is has to be important… Sunny thought to herself while the rest of her friends continued to bicker around her. If only I could find out.

Sunny Flare sighed and drank some of her water, slumping down onto the table. There was too much she wanted to know, but Sugarcoat insisted that they not let Silver in on the secret that they knew about her… eccentricities. It might not end well for them.

But if she’s my girlfriend, it should be safe to ask her. Sunny thought, feeling thoroughly morose. There had been a time when she could have asked Silver anything, and expected an honest answer. Now, though, Sunny wasn’t so sure anymore. Had Silver ever told her the truth about anything, or had she been lying through that pretty smile of hers from the start?

“I just don’t know anymore…” Sunny mumbled.

“What’s that, Sunny?”

“I said I just don’t know anymore,” Sunny whined aloud. “I feel like we’re only looking at a small part of the bigger picture here. There’s got to be more that we’re not seeing.”

The other girls turned to Sunny.

“Are you suggesting that there’s a bigger conspiracy at work here?”

Lemon laughed. “Now what conspiracy could there possibly be?”

“Go on, Sunny,” Sugarcoat prompted. “It’s got to be better than salt and paper talismans.”

“Hey!” Indigo protested. Sugarcoat ignored her.

“I think that there’s a lot that we don’t know, and we can’t draw any definitive conclusions until we do know more.”

“And where would you suggest we learn this knowledge?”

“First, we need to go back to that camera footage,” Sunny said, now building up steam. “We need to find who that woman who shot me is. I have a feeling that once we find her, we’ll know more.”

“What if she’s dangerous?” Lemon asked, with Sugarcoat nodding assent. “She did shoot you, remember?”

“But she didn’t kill me,” Sunny reasoned. “Besides, I’d rather do something than spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had done something. Do you understand me?”

The other Shadowbolts looked at each other. Then slowly, a grin spread across Indigo’s face.

“I’m in,” Indigo volunteered confidently. “Like you said, I’d rather take a risk now than spend the rest of time regretting it. Besides, you can’t go it alone. You need brains like mine to succeed.”

Indigo Zap put her hand on the table on top of Sunny’s, like she would before any major sports event. “C’mon girls, what do you say?”

It didn’t take long for Lemon Zest to fold. “Aw hay. If you’re really going to do this, then I’m in too. Footage is on my computer anyway.”

Sour Sweet groaned and scooted over. “You knuckleheads are really going to do this, huh? Well, then, someone has to keep you all in line. That’ll be me.”

The four of them looked at Sugarcoat. The bespectacled girl sighed in defeat. “Fine. But if the situation becomes life-threatening, then I think we should stop. Is that reasonable?”

“Nope,” Lemon Zest said happily. “You still with us anyway?”

Reluctantly, Sugarcoat put her hand on the stack and rolled her eyes.

“This is going to get us all killed.”

“You want me to do what?”

The Shadowbolts were all gathered outside Twilight Sparkle’s house. The now-Wondercolt was staring at her former classmates in bewilderment. They were holding out Lemon Zest’s laptop which had the footage from the cafe running on it in a loop.

“We need your help to track down the woman in this video,” Indigo said again. “The one in the frilly dress.”

“Yes, but why me? Why do you need to find this person?”

“That’s top secret,” Lemon Zest said haughtily. “But it is pretty cool, so I’ll tell you. Sunny Flare here thinks that Silver Rose is a vampire or something, and that there’s some kind of big conspiracy going on around her. We reckon finding the woman who shot Sunny is our best bet at figuring out the truth.”

Twilight stared at Lemon Zest as if looking for any signs of drug abuse. But when she didn’t find any and none of the others refuted her statement, Twilight at last slumped down and beckoned with her hand. “Come on in…”

The six girls went into Twilight’s room, where Spike was sleeping in his basket. She set Lemon’s laptop on her desk next to her own computer and began fiddling with the wires.

“I think I should be able to get a clear shot of that woman’s face from the camera footage,” Twilight booted up her PC and began clicking and typing rapidly. “From there on, it’s just a matter of cross-referencing it with the Canterlot police force’s own security cameras and profiles until we get a match. Assuming this woman lives in Canterlot. If she doesn’t, then I can’t help you.”

“Why do you have access to the Canterlot police force’s profiles?” Sugarcoat asked suspiciously.

Twilight coughed. “Well, my big brother is the police chief in Canterlot, and I sometimes help him organize the files on the database. Anyway, that’s not important. I’m going to run a scan for basic facial features. It’ll take a while, so don’t hold your breath.”

“If it can help find out what’s really going on, I’ll wait here all night,” Sunny said resolutely.

“You might just have to,” Twilight said heavily. “Come on. I’ll get some snacks out for us.”

Twilight was about to get up out of her seat when there was a knock on her bedroom door. “Twilight, you in there?” Came a familiar voice.

“Who’s that?” Sour Sweet hissed as she and the other Shadowbolts dived behind Twilight’s bed. Twilight got up to answer the door.

“Oh, Sunset! You’re here early,” Twilight said, welcoming Sunset Shimmer into her room with a smile. Sunset was carrying several books, all about Eastern culture which she set down on the bed.

“Yeah, I thought that we should make sure that our presentation about the Mareji dynasty matched up to the books and sources,” She caught sight of Twilight’s computer. “Whatcha working on, Twilight? Some kind of new invention?” Sunset leaned over the screen, when her attention was caught by the frozen camera footage on Lemon’s laptop. The color drained out of her face, leaving it a chalky white.

“Twilight?” Sunset said shakily. “Why do you have that person on your computer?”

“What?” Twilight exclaimed. “Oh, no, no, no, this is just a… thing I’m looking into.”

“Twilight, that woman almost killed me!” Sunset intoned.

“What?!” The Shadowbolts all said at once, jumping out from their hiding place.

Sunset jumped backwards and fell over backwards, windmilling her arms to keep her balance. “What are you all doing here?”

“We might ask you the same thing!” Indigo accused, pointing a finger at Sunset.

“I… I’m here to do work with Twilight on the Eastern Fair! Why were you all hiding behind the bed?”

“Never mind that,” Lemon interrupted. “You act like you know this woman. How?”

“You said she almost killed you,” Sugarcoat probed. “Tell us what happened.”

“Yeah, Wondercolt,” Sour Sweet added. “Spill it.”

Sunset looked around at all the expectant faces and sighed. “All right. It all started before the beginning of summer vacation…”