Zanzebrican Boogaloo

Chapters

Cold Open
Meet The Neighbors
Dinner and a Date
Mistakes Were Made
It's My Nature

Cold Open

They say the most honorable thing a pony can do with their life is to serve their country. When I was a foal, I decided I was going to join the Royal Guard and be just like the stallions protecting Equestria from the savage invaders that hated us for our friendship.

It was quickly noticed by my superior officers that I had a particular set of skills, a sense of personal responsibility and a keen ear for the call to action. Also, they noticed I was a fairly small mare and that I wasn’t very intimidating even in armor. Ponies with less initiative might have ended up with a desk job or some kind of undercover work in a backwater town.

I had more initiative than most ponies knew what to do with, and that’s why I was wearing a black catsuit and hanging upside-down on the outside of Canterlot Castle, picking the lock on one of the windows.

You’ve probably got a hundred questions for me already. Why was I breaking in through the window instead of using the door? Why was I hanging from a rope when I could fly? Where did I learn to pick locks so well that I could do it with my mouth, upside-down, in the dark?

The answers, respectively, were that I didn’t want to alert the Night Guard, that I needed to keep myself steady to avoid setting off the castle wards, and that I was one of the top operatives in the Equestrian Intelligence Service.

The rest of your questions have to wait, because this delicate operation (code named CKMuna) was well underway and the locks had finally given up against my gentle encouragement to open up and let me in.

Before pulling on the window, I pulled a spray can of oil from my equipment harness and gave the hinges a once-over. Too many spies were caught because of doors creaking at the least opportune times. I levered it open slowly and evenly before rolling inside, tugging at my rope in the right way to dislodge the hook, catching it and pulling it inside so it wouldn’t betray my presence to anypony with the presence of mind to look at the window from outside.

My hooves sank into the plush black carpet, and I considered my next move. The unfortunate part of gathering intelligence was that you often didn’t know what you were looking for until you found it, and the nature of the operation area meant that the greatest care had to be taken to keep things firmly in the realm of plausible deniability.

The nature of the operation was, of course, to determine if Princess Luna aka Nightmare Moon held any unhealthy views regarding her sister’s continued rule. Some of my superiors in the EIS had suggested as much in the meeting since her return, and so I’d proposed a quick operation on a night when we knew she’d be busy, the night of the Grand Galloping Gala. There was no way she’d miss the first major event since her return from the moon and supposed reformation.

Something immediately caught my eye. An elaborate diagram of the night sky pinned to the wall covered with notes in some code that I couldn’t immediately decipher. Lines and calculations were mixed with astrological symbols and what I recognized as magical runes.

“Bingo,” I whispered, pulling the paper down from the wall and rolling it up.

“Who’s there?”

I looked to my left.

Luna looked over the edge of her desk at me.

“You... didn’t go to the Gala,” I said.

“No. I did not.” Princess Luna stood up. She was much shorter than her sister, but she was still much taller than I was. This would be intimidating if not for my advanced combat training, which made me keenly aware that I should be intimidated by her incredible cosmic power instead of her height.

“I thought you were gone. The, um. The lights were out.”

“I am the Princess of the Night. I don’t need a desk lamp.”

I had to think quickly. “I have a very good explanation for this.”

“I cannot wait to hear it,” Princess Luna cleared her throat. “GUARDS!”

The door burst open, and two Night Guards stood in the doorway, hesitating and sizing up the threat. I ran right for them before they were able to decide what to do, jumping over their heads and banking around a tight corner, my tail tingling as a stun bolt backed by the magic of an angry alicorn skimmed past my flank.

“Excuse me! Pardon moi!” I ducked past a maid and into a service corridor, trying to leave the Night Guard behind in the narrow maze of passages between the major areas of the castle.

The first rule of infiltration is to plan out your exfiltration before you need it. With the event going on tonight, my plan had always been to, as the phrase goes, hide a needle in a stack of needles.

I tore off my catsuit, revealing a slim and very expensive dress that was the largest line item on my expense report for tonight’s operation, keeping the rolled-up intel under one wing and grabbing a wine glass from the tray of a passing servant as I pivoted and ducked through a door into Canterlot’s main ballroom.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly, pushing through the crowd.

The Grand Galloping Gala was in full swing, and by the time the Night Guards got through the door, I was chatting with another pony, casually walking towards the buffet table, and they were hopelessly lost.

That was the natural result of mere Guards trying to keep up with an elite agent of the EIS. While they floundered about, I was in the perfect position to complete my mission.

I followed the stream of ponies entering the Gala back to where my boss’ boss’ boss was shaking hooves and gently greeting ponies who had no idea of the dark and sinister plans being conceived of while they were socializing.

“Excuse me, your highness?” I cut in line. It was rude, but this was a national emergency.

Celestia raised an eyebrow

“Matrix,” I reminded her. “Disposition Matrix. I’m with the Service. Section two.”

“I’m afraid there were a few ponies in line ahead of you.” She looked vaguely displeased. I could understand. If I didn’t know how tenuous the situation was, I’d be disgusted at my behavior too.

“I’m sorry about that. I had to come here right away. I found this intelligence myself and it’s critical that you get eyes on it.” I pulled the map of the night sky covered in code from where I’d tucked it away, unfurling it so she could see.

It was going to be a good night.

Meet The Neighbors

One of the many benefits of being part of the Equestrian Information Service was that you got to travel in style. The Bande d’Or was the most expensive hotel in Zanzebrica Land, a resort right on the beach. I’d arrived in disguise and with the paperwork for a half-dozen identities, dropping my bags off in a suite bigger than most apartments in Canterlot and wasted no time getting to work.

As part of my reassignment, I was supposed to meet with the local agent in a bar near the palace to get caught up on the situation. It would be difficult to determine who they were, as I hadn’t been given any information about them, but I had a challenge phrase to use to ensure I wasn’t speaking to an enemy agent.

The bar was far from empty. Any one of them could be the pony I was supposed to meet. Maybe it was a zebra. A zebra would be able to fit in with the locals. They could even be in disguise. Was it the minotaur? If it was a shapechanging spell or an illusion, how would I know?

I started to panic. Was that griffon hiding a weapon with that newspaper? The zebra in the corner was staring at me. I wiped sweat from my brow and cursed when I saw the streak of black on my hoof. I was ruining my own disguise!

“Over here!” somepony yelled.

I turned slowly, trying to look casual. A unicorn in a shirt so loud it managed to be blinding and deafening at the same time had his hooves up on a table along with a half-dozen glasses. He took off his sunglasses and waved me over.

“You must be Matty,” he said. “I’m Timber Sycamore, you can just call my Timber, Tim, or whatever you want as long as it’s not before noon. I’m not a morning pony. Sit down, I’ll order the first round. This bar makes pretty decent drinks.”

“I’m just a simple visitor,” I said, gritting my teeth and giving the first part of the passphrase. “The sun is shining.”

“Wow, we’re really doing this?” he rolled his eyes. “Let’s see, uh…” he pulled a small codebook from his pocket. “...sun is shining… and the ice is slippery.”

“You can’t just carry secret documents around with you!” I hissed.

“Oh please,” Timber snorted. “Hey everybody! I’m a spy! So is she!”

I froze up.

“See?” He shrugged. “Nobody cares. Everyone here is a spy. The griffon in the corner is with the Talon’shiar.” He waved, and the griffon did something called ‘flipping the bird’, an extremely rude gesture in their culture. “The mino at the bar is a retired Layris agent who likes to keep in touch with old friends. Most of the zebra are with the local groups. There’s three flavors of secret police, some mercenaries, and rebels.”

“You can’t just out me and use my real name,” I protested. He moved a chair with his magic and motioned for me to sit down. I did, hoping it would keep him from making a scene. “And don’t call me Matty. It’s Agent Matrix if we’re in private, and I’d appreciate if you’d call me Papillon to keep my cover.”

“About your cover,” Timber said. “You, uh, really went for the whole disguise kit, didn’t you?”

“It’s important to be hard to recognize.”

“You painted stripes on your face and legs.”

“My cover is half-zebra.”

“Well you should be aware they’re starting to run in this humidity,” he said, nodding towards my fetlock. I looked at it and swore. Black streaks were dripping down towards my hoof. “You shouldn’t have gone with the cheap dye.”

“I’ll fix it later,” I mumbled.

“If you forget, at least you’ve got a great look going. Sort of like running mascara but all over. My daughter back home is going through a goth phase. All the pictures I get she looks like she’s about to cry. Reminds me of that.”

I glared at him.

“Oh! Right!” He waved down a waitress. “Bring me a refill and get my friend here a round on me! She needs something to help her relax.”

“It’s against regulations to drink on duty.”

“You’re right.” Timber looked at the waitress. “Make both of them doubles.” The waitress walked away to get drinks that I didn’t want and shouldn’t have anyway. “So I heard you had some problems in Canterlot before you got reassigned out here.”

“...I was involved in an operation that went badly,” I said.

“From what I hear, you broke into Princess Luna’s bedroom.”

“We were trying to evaluate if she was still a danger to Equestria! I found what I thought was valuable intel, but…”

“But it was her homework,” Timber finished, patting my shoulder. I batted his hoof away with a wing, glaring. “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. You’re lucky it was kept out of most of the papers.” He tossed a local tabloid, the Nightingale, onto the table between us.

The headline story was about a feral batpony foal that had been found in a cave, but right towards the bottom I saw it. ‘EIS Operation targeting the Diarchy?’

I groaned and took the drink when the waitress came back with it, downing half of it. I barely tasted the tart berry, orange, and tequila.

“See? You need to relax,” he said “Not bad, right? Called a Bull Shark. Garrick over there recommended them to me.” He nodded to the griffon.

“You’re not supposed to have unofficial contact with enemy agents.”

“And I can tell you haven’t worked in the field much. How about you take the day, go swimming, and we’ll meet for lunch?”

“I’d rather get to work,” I said.

“You’re very dedicated. Good trait. Grab a shower and wash those stripes off, and we’ll head over to the embassy.”

“I’m sure I have my passport somewhere,” Timber muttered, going through his pockets. Pocket. He only had one on his shirt.

“Really?” I grumbled. “You didn’t bring any ID?”

“Hey, honey, I’m a spy. Bringing ID is usually a terrible idea. It’s a habit you have to break. If you get found where you’re not supposed to be, and you’re carrying an EIS badge, they just take you out behind the shed and get rid of you. If they don’t know who you’re working for, it buys you a little more time to figure something out or get rescued.”

“I don’t have time for this…” I groaned.

Somepony politely cleared their throat. “Well, Mister Sycamore, are you having problems again?”

I looked past the security guard at a well-groomed pony in a tasteful grey silk outfit that hovered somewhere between a poncho, dress, and shirt. The kind of clothing that was almost certainly cultural somewhere else and just slightly exotic.

The kind of thing that a pony wore when they wanted to remind you they weren’t from around these parts, not that any of us were.

“I can never find my ID when I need it,” Timber said. “It’s a good thing the local bartenders all know me on a first name basis or I’d never get served!”

“It’s alright, you can let him in,” the pony said. “I’ll vouch for him, at least for now.”

“Matty, I want you to meet one of our local representatives from the Equestrian Foreign Affairs Department, Black Cherry.”

“I prefer Miss Black,” she said. “Miss… Matty, was it?”

“Agent Disposition Matrix. EIS, Section Two.” I said, shaking her hoof.

“Oh yes, I remember the memo. I wasn’t expecting you quite so soon. Hopefully you’ll find this post as relaxing as Mister Sycamore does. I don’t remember the last time I saw him do any honest work.”

“Darlin, I’m with the EIS. We aren’t in the business of honest work.” He felt around in his pocket and pulled out a slim wallet. “Wouldn’t you know it? I had my ID all along! Last place you look, am I right?”

“Of course,” Black Cherry sighed.

I rolled my eyes and flashed my own badge for the guard to see, Miss Black leading us inside the walls of the Equestrian Embassy. It looked almost like a slice of Canterlot, but with more palm trees and flatter streets. MIss Black took us through the cobblestone paths and into the main building.

“What’s with all the extra security?” Timber asked. I followed his gaze around the embassy. There were dozens of guards posted, some of them just drilling in the courtyard, others standing watch at every door and along the walls.

“It’s not normally like this?” I asked. Timber shook his head.

“We had to increase security,” Miss Cherry said. “Extra troops were stationed here in case of local unrest. There’s some concern about an uprising from the local rebels.”

“Rebels, huh?”

“Miss Matrix, have you been briefed about the situation here?” Black Cherry asked.

“The current ruler is one General Soupe a’L’onione, He was democratically elected after the previous ruler, Emir Legumes, was forced out of power.”

“Right.” Timber said. “So the previous ruler, Emir Legumes, he was getting ready to join up with the LGA, that alliance the Saddle Arabians have been shopping around to keep tight control on certain exports by setting prices and negotiating as a block.” Timber rummaged around in his shirt pocket and pulled out a flask. I was starting to think it wasn’t a normal pocket.

Also I was starting to think Timber had a drinking problem.

“Zanzebrica Land is one of Equestria’s major trading partners for certain crops,” Black Cherry said. “While they’re quite small on the world stage in terms of absolute economic and military power, the climate is perfect for sugarcane and some types of exotic nuts, and both are excellent exports. The LGA and Equestria have been on rocky terms as of late, and our projections indicated that the price of raw sugar in Equestria would double, and that would have a cascade effect on many other goods.”

Timber took a long drag from his flask before he spoke again. “We kind of shopped the idea around that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get rid of Legumes. General a'L'onione staged a coup, and for a couple years things were pretty good. Sugar prices were down, the zebras here were happy, win-win.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Turns out there were some other problems.” Timber emptied his flask down his throat and stopped at unmarked door, pushing it open.

Inside, paperwork covered the walls, two desks, and most of the floor. Black Cherry stopped at the door, not walking in.

“Sorry about the mess,” Timber said. He trotted over to one of the desks and started rummaging through the drawers.

“What kind of problems?” I looked at Miss Black.

“Unfortunately, General a’L’onione has some very expensive tastes,” Miss Black said. “We assumed he was just enjoying his victory, and he did start instituting some policies that were in line with what we were advising, but his appetites grew faster than his means could support.”

“You’ve met Prince Blueblood, right?” Timber asked.

I nodded.

“Well this guy makes Blueblood look like a tasteful gentleman. There was a famine last year because he ordered the farmers growing food to grow commercial crops instead. Sugarcane is technically food, but you sort of need grains in your diet. Meanwhile, he was having feasts every weekend.”

“Sounds like a great guy,” I muttered.

“Now he’s trying to turn it into a cartel operation. You know, strict controls, no sales except through him, driving up the prices. We’ve been paying through the nose and it just keeps getting worse.”

“And what’s worse?”

“Well he’s started getting rid of his political opponents. But don’t worry, he’s totally against capital punishment. They’re just exiled.”

“That’s not too bad. That’s what Equestria does, too.”

“Except General a’L’onione exiles them to one of two places. If it’s nothing personal, you get to go on the long walk into the desert with no food or water. If he’s in a bad mood, you’re exiled over the side of a boat in international waters.”

Miss Black sighed. “It’s one of the major issues Equestria has with his leadership. We’ve offered to take the prisoners for free from him, but he’s refused. He says that his methods are for deterrence, but…”

“Yeah, deterrence,” Timber snorted. “Cherry, you and I both know he just doesn’t want us talking to any of his enemies in case they have dirt on him.”

“And I know you’ve rescued quite a few zebras, despite orders not to interfere,” Black Cherry said, smiling a little. “I had to write a few emergency visas as I recall.”

“So what are we doing about the situation? This guy sounds like a monster.” I leaned against the wall and watched Timber and Miss Black give each other sideways looks at what was evidently a dangerous question to ask.

“The Foreign Affairs Department is negotiating,” Miss Black said.

“But you know what diplomats are like,” Timber interrupted. “They even attend some of his parties. They’ll smile and make apologies and never get anything done.”

“Our options are limited,” Miss Black said. “Our first duty is keeping lines of communication open. Even if we hate what he’s doing, we have to be able to talk to him or we can never do anything about it.”

“Sounds like you’d be better off talking to a brick wall,” I said. “If he’s executing his own citizens he deserves to be locked in a dungeon himself.”

Timber nodded and pointed at me. “You got it, Matty. So we’ve tried a couple things to, uh, get somepony more friendly in charge here.”

“And this is the part where I leave,” Miss Black said, raising a hoof. “I know I’m not cleared to know about these operations and I want to be able to deny knowing about them if I’m under a truth geas.”

“Hey, can you set up a driver for us?” Timber said when she turned to go. “I’ll probably need to take Matty on a trip out of town tomorrow.”

“To anywhere in particular?”

“Oh you know,” he smiled. “Just getting the lay of the land, or whatever excuse you want so you don’t have to know I’m gonna go talk to some terror-”

“Lay of the land,” Miss Black interrupted loudly. “It’s good to see the country once in a while. I’ll make sure someone is waiting for you. A local.”

“Thanks, Cherry.”

She nodded and left, and I stepped in and closed the door to give myself and Timber some privacy. “What have you tried so far?”

“Take a look.” He pulled out a file and a bottle, giving me the file and refilling his flask from the bottle.

“Let’s see… Operation Nettle... you poisoned his food?”

“Nothing really serious. It was a special tonic designed to make his mane fall out. He cares a lot about his image and we thought it’d make him abdicate if he couldn’t be seen in public. Didn’t work, but it makes his food-tasters easy to recognize.”

“Exploding cigars?” I raised an eyebrow.

“That one wasn’t my idea. They didn’t work anyway. All they did was annoy him and make him paranoid.”

“You booby-trapped a tree?”

“Hey, trees fall on ponies all the time! This one missed, unfortunately.”

“What’s ‘Operation Showerhead’?”

Timber hissed, inhaling through his teeth and looking away. “That one is sort of a sore point. We were going to pin this whole illegal arms cache thing on the General but, uh, things sort of went sideways.”

“Let me guess, he took the weapons and used them.”

“That’s not too far off but, uh, you took a wrong turn on your way to the market, to coin a metaphor. Anyway, you’ll probably figure it out once we take that little trip out to the countryside.”

“Why?”

“Hey, you know the EIS motto. Have friends everywhere, especially when they’re your enemy.”

Zanzebrica Land really was a beautiful country. It was a sliver of dense green caught between the desert and the ocean, just barely hanging on thanks to a natural line of hills that acted as a rain wall, allowing for jungle and desert to be only a few miles from each other.

From what I knew about the history of the area, the desert had started forming something like a thousand years ago when the tides and wind changed. Back then it had all been forest, then the lakes dried up, the forest died, and it all turned to sand. Some of that sand was nearly perfect fertilizer from the bottom of those dry lakes and the broken-down remains of the old jungle. A quirk of nature made most of it fall right on Zanzebrica Land, turning the narrow land into one of the most fertile places in the world. Almost half of the world’s sugarcane was grown here, and Equestria needed that sugar.

The road we took out of the city quickly turned from asphalt to cobblestones to dirt.

“So when we get where we’re going, let me do the talking until the introductions are over,” Timber said. “Don’t get me wrong, these are great guys. I just want to make sure that you make a good first impression and don’t get shot.”

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“And you came anyway! That’s a terrible habit, Matty. You shouldn’t trust anypony in this business. What if I was a double agent?”

I gave him a look. One of the patented ones that my instructors always gave me. He seemed a lot less scared than the look usually made me feel. “If you’re on two payrolls I expect you to do twice as much work, not half.”

Timber started laughing, patting me on the back.

By the time we actually got where we were going, the sun was getting low in the sky and my back felt like I’d been sitting on a wooden bench for hours and getting bounced around in a cart that had been made before the invention of shock absorbers.

Timber tapped my shoulder. “See that up there?” He pointed. A plume of smoke rose up from a collection of ramshackle huts.

“Looks like a real nice place,” I said.

“Nah, sort of a shithole,” Timber said. “But they’re gonna be our best friends. They’re the local rebels.” He tossed a couple bits to the zebra driving the cart and jumped down, walking towards the camp.

“Wait up!” I flew after him, catching up before he’d gotten too far. “Local rebels?”

“Technically it’s one of those collectivist revolutions,” Timber shrugged. “You know. Smash the state, everypony - or zebra in this case - is equal, redistribution of wealth, big on self-reliance.”

“And they’re our friends.”

“Sure! We’re big on making friends.”

“So why do we have extra troops at the embassy?”

“Well, Foreign Affairs and the EIS have some different ideas on the best way to go about making friends,” he said. “Speaking of, I think you’re about to meet some of mine.”

Two zebras melted out of the brush, invisible until they moved thanks to cloaks that seemed to actually have moss and lichen growing on their surface. They were carrying crossbows that were so beaten up I wasn’t sure if they’d fire or just snap when they pulled the triggers.

“Hey, guys!” Timber smiled and waved. “Is Guava in? I wanted her to meet my new partner and show her around a bit.”

The two zebras looked at each other and there was a wordless moment of communication, and they lowered their weapons, one motioning for us to follow with a toss of his head.

“These guys are big on respect,” Timber said. “So treat them like you would members of any other government. Especially Guava. Officially, she isn’t the leader because they don’t have a leader, but unofficially she says ‘jump’ and they ask permission to come down.”

I nodded, keeping my eyes open. Collectivists or not, the camp was like any other military camp I’d ever seen. There was a mess tent, a bunch of shacks made of corrugated metal and plywood being used as barracks, crates of supplies, an armory…

“Timber,” I said, grabbing his tail to make him stop. “What the buck is that?”

I pointed to the armory, and more specifically to what was sitting in it.

“Oh, yeah. Well, uh…”

“That’s a Griffonian flechette cannon,” I hissed.”Using them is a war crime!”

“Technically it’s not a war crime to use them against airships,” Timber said.

“Zanzebrica Land doesn’t even have airships! And that’s a tanglehoof grenade! Where did they get all this stuff?”

“The cache was captured, from the hooves of corruption: better in ours.” The voice was as smooth as butter but with an edge of hardship and roughness, so maybe more like butter with gravel mixed into it.

The zebra who’d spoken was beautiful, in a sort of wild rebel warrior way. One of her eyes was ice blue, and the other hidden behind an eyepatch. Stripes of red and blue paint were mixed in with her natural black and white, and beads were braided through her mane under a forest-green beret.

“This is Guava,” Timber said. “She’s the one I was telling you about. She’s brilliant. I’m sure you two will get along, or kill each other, you know, one or the other.”

“It’s a pleasure,” I said, holding out a hoof to shake. “I’m Matrix. Disposition Matrix.”

Timber patted me on the back. “Matty here is a great kid. She’s got the gumption to take on just about any mission, even really poorly thought out ones, which is great because I don’t like to actually do anything myself.”

Guava shook it. “Have you come to help? Or just drink like your partner? Much talk from this one.”

“I’m still trying to understand the situation,” I said. “I wasn’t really briefed on the situation. They got me out here as quickly as they could.” I said it with a tone that implied the haste wasn’t because they wanted to get rid of me.

Guava shrugged and was about to say something, but we were interrupted by a commotion from outside. She scowled and stormed out, shouting something in a language I didn’t speak, but you don’t really need to be able to translate to know she was demanding to know what was going on.

Two zebras were on their knees, with a sack full of vegetables in front of them. A few of the other rebels were standing over them with drawn crossbows. There was a quick conversation and a lot of pointed hooves.

“That’s not good,” Timber muttered.

“What’s going on?”

“Those two in the middle were stealing from local farmers,” he explained. “That’d be bad enough, but they told the farmers they were doing it under orders.”

“Were they?”

“No, and that’s why it’s not good for them,” Timber said. “She’s going to order them to be executed.”

“Executed?!” I shouted, and everyone turned to look at me. “Hold on!” I stepped forward, and some of the rebels pointed their weapons at me instead of the prisoners. “You can’t just kill them!”

“They diminish us and by their crimes are we judged, lone wolves gone rabid.”

“If you go around killing ponies, you’ll hurt your own cause. People here don’t want another tyrant that might execute them. You have to lead by example.”

Guava met my gaze for a long moment like she was trying to look deep into my soul. Or maybe, just maybe, she was looking at me because I was making a good argument and I was fairly attractive. I tried to subtly strike a pose and look more enticing just in case it was working.

She shouted something back to the other zebras and walked away.

“...Farmers will decide - we send them back to meet the fate from those they harmed.”

“Good work, Mattie,” Timber whispered. “Quick thinking.”

Guava called back over her shoulder to us. “The evening grows dark. Break bread with us as allies. We are all friends here.”

“Operation Showerhead,” I said, once we were alone, sharing a meal of pulled jackfruit and wild rice with so much spice it brought tears to my eyes.

Timber sighed. “Go ahead and yell it louder.”

“You said it went sideways.”

“Yeah… you want the long version or the short version?”

“The version that’s the truth.”

“Matty, come on, you can’t ask for the truth in this business! You end up with all sorts of answers!” He sighed. “You want some rum? It’s good with--”

“Don’t change the subject. And until I know what’s going on, it’s Matrix, not Matty.”

“Okay so, I told you that Operation Showerhead was basically about an illegal arms cache? Well, we put it together from stuff we confiscated from arms dealers, faked some paperwork to make it look like General a’L’onione bought the whole lot from somepony we have in custody already, and the plan was we’d tip the local reporters off, they’d find the cache and paperwork, then we’d say we were investigating and find the dealer with our usual amazing swiftness--”

“Because you had him on ice already.”

“Right, but we’d wait a week before we paraded him around. He’d sign a confession about selling them in return for a quiet extradition somewhere nicer than a dungeon, and we’d use that as an excuse for whatever we wanted to do next. Sanctions on trade, blockades, maybe even a military intervention.”

“What went wrong? That’s not a terrible plan.”

“Well, uh, so the local reporters we tipped off were actually feeding intel to the Collectivists. They seized the cache before we knew anything was wrong, and we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

“Like you told Guava, you can’t support the Collectivists while they’ve got the cache.”

“I told you things went sideways.”

I ate some of the food quietly while I thought about it. “I see why they sent me. This place is ready to explode.”

“Exactly!” Timber nodded. “Very delicate situation.”

“And we need to set it off.”

“Okay, now we’re talking in opposite directions. Matty, the problem is this place is explosive like nitroglycerin. It’s ready to go off if somepony breathes too hard! We need to cool things down so we can plan things out.”

“There’s an old saying in Hippon. ‘In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.’”

“First, I don’t think that’s actually Hipponese.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“Second, we don’t have permission from the top to do anything except play nice and make friends. Technically we shouldn’t even be out here.”

“But we are out here, and we can’t just go back to the embassy with nothing to show for it. What we need to do is set this off like a shaped charge. We sculpt it just right and set it off and it all goes in the right direction.”

“Well, we go back to the city, we send a few letters, pull strings…”

“Nah, there’s another saying I like. ‘Ask forgiveness instead of permission.’”

“That’s the kind of saying that got you here instead of cooling your hooves back in Canterlot.” He smirked. “Sure, kid, let’s do it.”

Dinner and a Date

The next day, we were invited to see the Collectivists training. I’m using the term ‘training’ very loosely, because I’ve seen cleaner drills from foals playing during recess.

“They’re all going to die,” I said, watching them run laps and shoot crossbows vaguely in the direction of a target.

“You’re a very negative person, Matty,” Timber said. “They’re trying really hard.”

“No, they’re not. Look at them - they’re making okay time on the path where it’s flat and level, but every time they get to where the rocks are or where they cross the stream, they stop and pick their way across.”

“Not all of us have wings.”

“That doesn’t give them an excuse for being afraid to get their hooves muddy. And their aim is even worse. They’re holding the crossbow wrong and might as well be firing blind. One of them managed to shoot himself in the flank!”

“That wasn’t entirely his fault.”

“What they need is an EUP tradition during training,” I said. “They need to sing a rousing training song to get everypony’s morale up and get them in rhythm!”

“Birds sing joyful songs. We move with silence until joy comes here again.” Guava said, trotting over and passing me a small gourd filled with some kind of powdered herbs and hot water. It was very nearly not like tea at all, but the water had to be boiled to make it safe and the herbs were at least some kind of flavor. Maybe they had vitamins.

“Fine,” I sighed. “But they need to be serious about this if they’re going to win.”

“You think this a lark, these zebra ready to lay down lives for a cause?”

“You have a point,” I admitted. “They wouldn’t be out here if they were afraid of hard work. Maybe they just need the basics.”

I flew over to the firing range, stretching my wings. I set down next to a zebra with particularly poor skills and motioned for him to give me his crossbow.

He looked back at Guava, and after she nodded he gave me his weapon.

“This is a Talon-pattern crossbow,” I said, loudly enough for my voice to carry to all the training zebra. “They’ve been making them with the same mechanism and only a few changes to the stock and grip for the last two hundred years. They’ve been used in every war for the last two centuries, usually on both sides.”

They were watching me, and hopefully spoke enough Equestrian to understand. I held the crossbow up, showing the intricate carvings on the grip.

“I don’t know who the artist is, but engravings have no tactical value. Instead of spending time making your crossbow look pretty, you should be spending time making sure you can fire it.”

I spun towards the target and fired, putting a bolt just off-center of the bullseye.

“You need to use the proper stance, you need to know how to aim, and you’re not going to stop drilling until you can do it properly.”

I put the crossbow back in the zebra’s hooves, then moved him into a proper stance.

“Look down the iron sights to aim,” I said, pointing them out, then helping him hold it so he could line them up. “Level the front and back. At this range, the bolt doesn’t have time to really drop, so focus on keeping your aim steady.”

He fired, and hit the target, only a little further away from the center than my hip shot had been.

“Not bad. Once all of you can fire from this stance, we’ll work on kneeling and lying down, which are better if you need a steadier shot, or if you don’t have real cover--”

A roar like thunder cut me off, drowning my voice out with a rolling, shattering sound, like a hundred lightning bolts one after another. One of the targets vanished in a spray of splinters, the ground around it peppered with steel spikes.

Guava and I got to that side of the firing range at the same time, grabbing the Griffonian Flechette cannon out of a confused Zebra’s hooves.

“What the buck is wrong with you?!” I yelled, my ears still ringing. Guava was yelling at him too, and he looked at both of us with wide eyes until he finally collapsed in a faint.

Guava grumbled and kicked him.

“We need to talk,” I said, hefting the heavy weapon.

I put the cannon down on the table between us, the dark gunmetal of the thing gleaming in the dim light of the tent. It was a long weapon, using unstable alchemy to launch a spray of darts, and poorly maintained ones had a bad habit of exploding. Well-maintained ones just had a bad reputation after their infamous use in quelling riots permanently.

“These weapons are illegal,” I said. “They’re banned.”

“You bind a blade’s edge because your foe has sworn only to use a club?”

“No, she’s telling the truth, Guava. There are all sorts of treaties. I’ve tried to explain this before.” Timber sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

“I am but simple and you seek to disarm us, so explain better.”

I motioned to the cannon. “That weapon cache you found - a lot of it is illegal under the rules of engagement. When you start your revolution, you can’t use them. If you’re seen committing war crimes, we’ll never be able to support you.”

Guava sighed but nodded agreement.

“What would be great is, after the revolution succeeds, you make a show of contacting us and turning these weapons over. We can spin a story that they were captured from the former government and extend a hoof of friendship with our thanks for getting these weapons out of circulation. You get to look good, we get an excuse to officially and openly support you, and the tabloids get to run a story about how the General was ready to commit war crimes. Everypony wins.”

Guava frowned. “I dislike the lie: the revolution is real. Friends are made with truth.”

“Ma’am, if I may?” I interjected. “You’re right. The last thing either of our groups needs is to be in debt and have to keep up a lie. Honor is important.”

“Okay, okay,” Timber sighed. “As long as the weapons are destroyed and they don’t end up in the news. Heck, dig a deep hole and toss ‘em in.”

“We will discuss it. The decision is not mine - we all must agree.”

“That works for me. Just let me know. If we keep things quiet maybe we can replace them with something a little more local, right?” Timber smiled.

“Thank you for meeting with us,” I said. “If everyone here keeps up with their drills, they’ll stand a good chance when things get serious.”

Guava nodded.

“We’ll be back in a few days, and then we’ll put our heads together and get a plan of attack going.”

“It was my pleasure. Prove your words weight with action, and we will be friends.”

I shook her hoof, and she leaned in to kiss my cheek.

“It’s sort of a local tradition,” Black Cherry explained. A day had passed and I was still blushing a little. “Like a promise to see each other again.”

“I think Mattie is smitten,” Timber said. “I can’t blame her. Guava has that certain... charisma that you can’t teach. I’d have fallen for her myself, but I’m spoken for.”

“You have a marefriend?” I asked, surprised.

“I have a wife,” Timber corrected. “Well, ex-wife. Sort of ex. It’s complicated. Trust me, Mattie, don’t get involved with mares on assignment, especially when you’re spying on them. Things get really awkward when they find out you bugged your own bedroom. Had to play it off as being some kind of pervert.”

“What I’m hearing is that I should never take relationship advice from you,” I said.

“Probably,” he agreed. “Do you have that letter ready?”

I nodded and gave him the scroll containing my official report on the situation. “It’s going to take a couple weeks to get a reply.”

“We can do better than that,” Black Cherry said, smiling. “We can get a message to Canterlot in less than a day.”

“How?”

“All Equestrian embassies have a stock of these.” She patted a stack of forms, the thick paper tinged an odd green, giving them a tinge the same color as the patina on old copper.

“I don’t see how more forms are going to help,” I said. “We do enough paperwork in the EIS already.

“They’re really good forms, I promise,” Black Cherry said.

“I’ve seen forms before.”

“Not like these,” Timber said, pulling one out and holding the corner over a lit candle. The whole thing went up like flash paper and vanished. “They’ve got this alchemical dragonfire stuff in the weave. I have no idea how it works. I’m not a technical stallion.”

“They also cost several hundred bits each,” Black Cherry said, sighing.

“...And you just used one,” I noted.

Timber paused. “You know, we’ll chalk that up to a training expense.”

“It’s coming out of your department’s budget,” Miss Black said. “Delivery only takes a few hours, maybe a day at most. We can’t quite communicate in real time, but they’re impossible to intercept and extremely reliable.”

“And because the original is burned to send it, it means no evidence,” Timber said. “Great for our line of work.”

“What do you even need them for?” Cherry asked. “You almost never send anything back to Canterlot unless your superiors ask directly.”

“You probably don’t want to know,” Timber said.

“If even you’re warning me, it must be bad. What did you do? Did you drug the water supply again?”

“Cherry, baby, that only happened once and it was a total accident!” Timber sighed. “It wasn’t even my idea, by the way. Some spook in psyops thought it would be a good idea to dump hallucinogens into the only water supply. Terrible plan. Ended up poisoning a crop of sugarcane.”

“As I recall, you had that sugar sold to the Burrexicans as a party drug,” Black Cherry said, with obvious distaste.

“Don’t be silly, the EIS had it destroyed,” Timber said. “Anything else would be against department standards.”

“Just don’t get me mixed up in whatever trouble has you both so worried,” Cherry warned.

“That spook from psyops is the guy you replaced,” Timber told me. “He had some wild ideas, made a lot of enemies.”

“What happened? Did he get recalled to Equestria?”

“You know, we’re not really sure. He ended up taking a lot of that drugged sugar and flew off. He said Celestia came to him in a vision. Legend has it that he’s still out there.”

“Really?”

“The smart money is on him flying into the desert and never being seen again, but who knows? Maybe he’s deep undercover and he’ll show up someday with a couple medals on his chest.”

I stared at Timber for a few moments, trying to decide how serious he was.

“So you want me to fill out these forms for you?” he asked.

“Just copy the scroll I already filled out,” I said.

Black Cherry cleared her throat. “In the meantime… you’re, what, a size six?”

“Four," I lied. "Why?”

“So I can get a dress that fits you. There’s a dinner at the palace. Why don’t you come along? Networking is an important part of your job and mine, and unlike what your partner thinks, it doesn’t always have to happen in bars or at swordpoint.”

The dress Cherry had found me was a little tight around the barrel.

“I thought you said you were a size four?” She said, when I complained.

“I might have exaggerated,” I said.

“Don’t worry. Form-fitting is a good look on you,” she assured me, as we trotted in with the other dress. The purple and black sequined number I was wearing was the nicest thing I’d ever worn that wasn’t armored. It probably cost as much as my entire discretionary budget for the next decade.

I still felt underdressed compared to the other guests. They were so gaudy that it put the Canterlot nobility to shame.

We were led through the palace by a hooful of guards in armor older than I was. I suspected they just repainted it every few years when the government changed. We passed through the ballroom and through hallways, following a red carpet that had been laid out as a path to our final destination.

“A private airship dock?” I asked, surprised.

“Indeed. And my new yacht. It is nearly as beautiful as my guests.” The zebra in front of us parted, and a larger stallion with more grey stripes than black, wearing ceremonial armor over a modern dress uniform, stopped in front of us. “You must be the guest Miss Cherry said she would bring along. Are you here to help persuade me to sign the treaty she keeps offering?”

“Disposition Matrix, this is General a’L’onione,” Black Cherry said. “I like to think we’re close to reaching agreeable terms.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t going to be rude and actually say it.

“It is my pleasure to host you,” he said, taking my hoof and kissing it. “If Equestria keeps sending such beauties, it may well sway me!”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, a little awkwardly. There are two kinds of spies. The ones that go and talk to people and lie, and the ones that actually do work. I was the latter, and I didn’t do my best work in a tight dress. “You speak Equestrian quite well. You don’t even have an accent.”

“Your Princess Celestia must be crazy not to keep you at her side,” the General said. “But perhaps she is crazy like a fox, hm? She is a wise ruler and knows that when dealing with a stubborn stallion, mares are best for keeping him in line. Even an old war horse like me.”

I smiled a little. “I like to think I’m just the best pony for the job at hoof.”

He nodded. “Good. Confidence is important! Come.” He turned and motioned for us to follow, leading us towards his airship. His guards followed at a respectful distance. They didn’t seem concerned, probably because I obviously wasn’t hiding any weapons.

“She looks fast,” I said. The small airship was sleek, even the gasbag looked like it was designed to cut through the air.

“The fastest ship in the country,” he agreed. “The shipwright based it on the kind of skiffs pirates use, though instead of illicit cargo and weapons it merely carries comfort and sport. And tonight, an old General and his guests. Come, I’ll get you your first drinks myself as a welcome to my nation.”

“That’s very generous of you,” I said.

He led us up the gangplank. A few of the other guests were onboard already, and with how small the ship was, it was either going to be uncomfortable intimate or we were among the last to arrive.

“Wine is excellent for celebrating,” he said. “Something my predecessor knew too well. He had such a bad drinking habit that some of the local taverns included entrances to the palace just to smuggle him in and out without the people learning their ruler was a slave to the bottle. Moderation is the key.”

He poured two glasses of wine that tasted more like burning rubber than grapes.

“I think Miss Matrix is more the type to go all-in,” Black Cherry noted.

“I can do moderation,” I countered. Then I downed the glass of wine in one drag. “I just prefer excitement.”

“It wasn’t a total waste,” I said, my head still pounding even two days later. “I was able to get the guard schedule on my way out.”

Guava smiled and took the papers, shuffling through them. “To know yourself and to know of your enemy is truly vital.”

“I left Timber back in town to keep an eye on things,” I explained. “He’s going to keep an eye on things and make sure this intel is good. He didn’t want to make an extra trip out here, I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing, so we’re splitting the responsibilities.”

Guava nodded, then motioned with her head for me to follow her.

It had only been three days, but the changes were obvious. The zebra at the firing range were holding their crossbows correctly, and they were actually aiming them like they wanted to hit something. The ones doing laps were splashing through the mud without stopping to pick their way across cleanly. Somepony had even put a few logs on the path for an extra challenge, and they were clambering over them and barely slowing down.

“They’re starting to look like a real army,” I said. “Give them some uniforms and you’d think they were professionals.”

“Yet warriors, all, they gave up their lives to serve - no going back now.”

I nodded, watching them for a little longer. “So you’ll have troops that are worth something. If we have long enough maybe we can drill some basic tactics. We might need a real EUP soldier to help with that, though. I usually work alone so squad tactics are a little outside my field of expertise.”

“Fighting they can do... if among themselves mostly, if some virtue that.”

I looked to where she was pointing. A ring of zebra were surrounding what looked more like a dog fight than any kind of real training. One zebra had ten years and double the body weight on his younger opponent, and had total control of the match.

The smaller zebra fell after a particularly heavy blow to the chin, and I didn’t need to speak the local language to know he was saying uncle.

The larger one sneered and reared up, ignoring his opponent’s surrender and getting ready to smash his skull in.

He wasn’t expecting me to fly over the crowd and crash into his side.

The zebra fell into the ring watching the match, three of his comrades catching him before he hit the ground.

“What are you doing?!” I demanded. “The fight was over! You don’t go around killing ponies for no reason! Even if he was an opponent it would be wrong!”

The big zebra said something I didn’t understand. The crowd parted and Guava pushed to the front. She looked at me, then him. They had a conversation I was totally unable to follow but included several significant looks at me. Eventually, he nodded.

“You will fight him now. I have told him of your skill. It should be easy” Guava said.

“What? But--”

“A wolf is not tame! You must defeat him, to win, to make him obey.”

I sighed and nodded, wishing I’d had time to stretch.

“Alright, come at me whenever you’re ready,” I said.

Fighting is a job like any other. A real master of any craft can make it look easy. I struggle when I cook - chopping vegetables takes forever and I burn half the stuff I put in a pot. A good chef can take a knife and mince a carrot in seconds and make it look effortless.

The big guy I was fighting, he had never learned how to fight. He just used muscle and pushed ponies around and it had worked out for him. I’d been taught by some of the finest martial arts instructors who had ads in the back of comic books, and I’d learned secret techniques that were so secret the pamphlets cost like fifty bits a pop.

He just saw a little pegasus pony, but he should have seen a dragon.

I let him come to me, grabbed his hoof, and--

And I strained and struggled, and used his weight--

Actually, he was a lot heavier than I thought, and flipping him over my shoulder wasn’t working. I just needed more practice with that move. It had always worked in the Black Dragon Society Dojo. I’d have to make sure to sign up for more lessons when I got back to Equestria. I’d been sort of counting on using it to impress Guava so she’d trust me more.

Moving on to the next step of the Dance of Death, since the first movement had failed, I slammed my hoof into his liver while I still had him confused. That got him real interested in what I had to say, and when I put him in a headlock, I had his full interest until he passed out.

“He’s gonna wake up in a little while with a bad headache,” I said. “But because he’ll wake up, there aren’t any grieving widows or orphaned foals, and everypony gets to go home at the end of the day. All the ponies you’ll be fighting are your neighbors and most of them just want to get paid for a job. When the war’s over, they’ll be your friends and they’ll help you rebuild the country.”

Guava translated for me. At least I think she was translating. I wouldn’t know if she was just providing snide commentary or not but I was hopeful she liked me enough not to be sarcastic.

“So since that’s settled,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow. “How about we go over what your strategy is actually going to be?”

“Let me see if I understand your plan.”

I was being very generous using the word plan for what I was getting from short-form poetry, hoof-sketched maps, and a lot of zebra arguing about details until Guava had an opinion for them.

“You want to take everyone you have and march up the main street to the Presidential Palace. With no artillery or air support. Just all of you right out in the open.”

“We have to be seen! We cannot hide in shadow - we march in the light!” Guava yelled, slamming her very well-manicured hoof into the table and turning my cup of tea into a new lake on the map we were using of the capital.

“I just don’t want this to be for nothing,” I protested, while trying to clean up the mess. “I did some training with the EUP and this isn’t how they’d conduct an operation like this. This is about the zebras and ponies that worked hard to make this country prosperous, right?”

Guava nodded.

“If you march down the streets like this, a lot of your freedom fighters--” Now there was a euphemism I hadn’t had to use for years. “--are going to get hurt or worse. You’re fighting for each other, so you need to do what you can to keep each other from being hurt. If this was a demonstration or a protest, going out and being visible, even being attacked, that would be the point. If you want to win a fight, you don’t charge straight into the enemy’s strongest point.”

“Victory is all, so what would you have us do? Run and hide like dogs?”

“Instead of marching all together into the city, split up into smaller cells and filter in over a few days. Pre-arrange a time or signal to begin the attack. If this was Equestria we’d probably have some kind of big musical number, too,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any big revolutionary songs you can sing, really get the blood pumping?”

Guava looked at me wordlessly.

“Fine. You don’t have to sing.” It wouldn’t hurt but I had a feeling they didn’t want to stake their revolution on their ability to hit a high C. “There have been plenty of effective military actions undertaken without the need for a marching band.”

“I will never get, why you ponies have to sing, during everything.”

“It just sort of happens,” I shrugged. “You start doing something, you fall into a rhythm, and then you sing, and other ponies join in.”

“...Equestria is a very strange place, and I am glad to be here,” Guava sighed.

“It’s probably got something to do with the magic of harmony or something. Princess Celestia likes making speeches about it. Personally, I believe more in the magic of effective military intelligence and preemptive action.”

Guava chuckled and shook her head, smiling.

“Smarter than I thought. Most ponies fall in line and will follow the herd.”

“In the morning I’ll go back to town and make sure nothing is going to get in the way.”

“The night is chilly. I would like it if somepony helped warm my bunk.”

She gave me a look that could have made a brick wall blush and made my hair stand on end. Clearly I was hypnotized by her twitching tail, because I followed it all the way back to her tent and didn’t manage to escape until the next morning.

Mistakes Were Made

Timber hadn’t been in the office when I got back and I didn’t feel like looking through every bar in town, so I spent a day filling out paperwork and left him a note. It was quiet and pleasant, though I was sad Black Cherry was out on business, and I got a lot done before I collapsed into my hotel room among my still-packed suitcases.

Compared to Guava’s bunk, the bed at the hotel was much softer, but less comfortable than the cot in the jungle since it lacked any company.

At least, it briefly lacked company.

I woke up at an hour that even Celestia would consider to be pretty early to somepony pounding on the door. Because I was always ready for anything it only took me like two minutes to realize something was wrong, and I tried to roll out of bed and grab the crossbow I kept on the side table.

I got tangled in the hotel sheets, my hoof hit the crossbow and knocked it to the floor, and the bolt went wild and smashed the window at the same time I did a tactical roll and took cover face-down on the carpet in the middle of the room.

The door opened, and I readied myself for an ambush by General a’L’onione’s enforcers. He’d probably sent a dozen or more henchponies at me, and I’d have to use every trick at my disposal to fight for my life.

“Looks like you had one heck of a party in here, Matty,” Timber said, putting a set of lockpicks back into his pocket. They looked much nicer than my set.

“What are you doing here?” I mumbled. I tried to stand, and the sheets around my back hooves tripped me up again. Timber caught me this time, helping me untangle myself.

“We kept missing each other,” he said, steadying me on my hooves. “I’ve got bad news and worse news. Which do you want first?”

“What about good news?”

He rubbed his chin, thinking. “Fresh out. I didn’t even have a chance to grab coffee before I came here, and you look like you need three cups just to wake up enough to appreciate my witty banter.”

“What?”

“So, bad news, turns out that Black Cherry has been working on a treaty with a’L’onione. I mean, from the perspective of international cooperation and peace it’s good news! But for us specifically, it’s pretty bad.”

“She mentioned something about that,” I said, starting to wake up enough to contribute to the conversation. “I didn’t think it was getting anywhere.”

“Well, not only was it apparently signed in secret while we weren’t looking, it’s front page news and everypony in the world found out at the same time we did.”

He held up a copy of the Nightingale, with a picture of the General signing one of the huge scrolls they liked to use as props for big events.

“Oh buck,” I muttered.

“So now he’s officially a friend of Equestria,” Timber said. “Not that we’re out of a job, since the Princess likes keeping tabs on friends even more than she likes spying on enemies, but we’ve got bigger problems, because now our job is making sure that General a’L’onione, friend and trade partner of Equestria, stays in power.”

“What about the Collectivists?”

“Princess Celestia would probably tell us we need to find some way to have them resolve their differences peacefully and leverage the treaty to get the General to the negotiation table.” Timber shrugged. “I might have already unofficially asked Canterlot, and they might have unofficially told me that I needed to clean up this mess and make sure it’s all settled quietly.”

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“How could it be a problem? We just need to go tell Guava that things have changed. I know she didn’t have any kind of real plan of attack, so they’ve just been spinning their wheels in the jungle.”

“I sort of helped them work out a plan of attack.”

“That’s good,” Timber said. “That’s just wonderful. You’re an overachiever, Matty.”

“Hey, we agreed we were going to beg forgiveness instead of asking permission! I just thought their idea of marching down the middle of main street was stupid and gave them a few small tips.”

“What kind of small tips?”

“You remember how the Serpent’s Grip attacked Kludgetown twenty years ago?”

“Yeah, they infiltrated over a long time, then all attacked at once. It only took a few dozen of them to bring the whole city to its knees and everypony in the EIS thought there were hundreds of them until it was all over and we had a chance to really investigate.”

“I sort of gave them the blueprints for that plan.”

“At least we might have time. Until they get everypony in place, they won’t do anything.” Timber started pacing. “If we know what they’re using as a signal, we can make sure they never actually attack, and take our time digging up the cells and convincing them the fight’s over.”

Outside, fireworks burst in the sky.

“Is that a celebration for the treaty?” I asked.

“I didn’t hear about any parade,” he said, slowly. “Let’s go take a look.”

“Oh buck,” I whispered. “Timber, tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

“That depends, Matty,” he said. He pulled me behind a large cement planter before continuing. Steel bolts from a repeating crossbow made a distinctive scraping, rattling sound as they impacted the road where we’d been standing.

“It looks a lot like war has broken out,” I said.

“Okay, yeah, I see that,” Timber agreed.

“And it looks like the EUP soldiers at the embassy are siding with General a’L’onione’s forces against the Collectivists,” I said, watching a pegasus in gold trimmed armor fly over the building with the zebras firing into the street. I could just barely hear him call for their surrender from here.

“Hold on,” Timber said, looking around the corner of the concrete planter. I peeked over the top to look.

A squad of pegasi converged on the cell of Collectivist rebels across the street, smashing through the windows and dragging them outside. Within a few moments, they had them knocked out and hogtied.

“Yeah, you know what?” Timber said. “I think you’re right, Matty. But you know when you really look at this from another angle, we’re golden!”

“Golden. How is this golden?”

“We’re on both sides! No matter who wins, we’re going to come out on top!”

“Timber, if the Collectivists win, we’ll have helped overthrow an Equestrian ally! They’ll never be able to officially support them after our army tried to stop the rebellion! And if the Collectivists lose, they’ll be captured and the General is going to find out that we provoked the rebellion, and the treaty will be revoked, and either way we’ll be blamed personally!”

“That doesn’t seem likely--”

“It doesn’t seem likely except the rebels know our bucking names, Timber!”

“You know now that you point it out it would have been a good idea to use some kind of classy nom de guerre, huh? Hey, you live and learn. Bet we could make some kinda pithy friendship lesson out of that.”

“Do you ever offer useful advice?”

“Hm. You’re asking for a lot here, Matty. Useful advice… how about we ask somepony where Guava is?”

“Who are we gonna ask? You think we can just stop in a corner store and they’ll have a bucking map?”

“Actually, I was thinking we had some zebras over there who might want to talk.” He pointed to the zebras the EUP soldiers had tied up.

I raised my eyebrows.

Timber stood up and walked over to the soldiers. “Hey, great work guys. Really, smooth operation. Think we can borrow one of them for a few minutes?” Timber flashed his EIS badge and smiled.

“So,” I said, sitting on the zebra’s chest. “I didn’t think it was a great idea, but it was better than going house-to-house. All of you seem to look to her as a leader, so I figure you’d want to keep track of Guava, am I right?”

He mumbled something through the burlap sack over his head.

“I know. You’re a collective group with no leader, just ideals that you all work individually towards as equals with no hierarchy. I know what the rhetoric is like.” I shrugged. “I’m not saying she’s officially a leader, okay?”

The zebra struggled, but the ropes didn't loosen even a little.

“Timber, I gotta admit, you’re good at tying knots.”

“It’s easier with telekinesis,” he said. “I can barely manage a square knot with my hooves.”

“Can you pass me the bucket?” I asked.

Timber gave me a sloshing bucket full of water. The zebra’s struggles got stronger.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I said, as we approached the hotel we’d be pointed towards.

“It’s not pleasant,” Timber countered. “I mean sure, waterboarding sounds like something fun you do at the beach, but it’s definitely not my idea of a good time.”

“I agree it’s not how I’d spend a weekend, but there’s no real harm done. You ever seen what the griffons do?”

“I try and forget what I know about what the griffons do, Matty. Don’t remind me.”

Two zebras stood at something somewhat like attention at the front door, though any EUP officer would have chewed them out for how sloppy their stance was.

“Hey gents,” Timber said. “We’re just here to see Guava. She’s upstairs, right?”

They nodded silently but didn’t move to allow him access to the door.

“Come on, guys. This is important. We’re unarmed, we just wanna talk, okay?”

The silence became uncomfortable, then one pushed the door open and nodded for us to get inside.

“Thank you,” Timber sighed.

If my hotel was like a Las Pegasus resort set on the beach, this one was a dump a few miles outside of Reino. The walls were cracked and it looked like somepony had tried to repaint and given up halfway and tried again with another color.

“Old crumbling hotel, a little pony came here, seeking the zebra?”

Guava stood at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down at us. The mare could look down at people like an expert. It probably came with the whole revolutionary ideal thing.

“Hey, hot stuff,” Timber said. “We need to talk.”

She narrowed her eye, then tossed her head, motioning for us to follow.

Upstairs was a hallway lined with windows on one side, looking out over the street, and doors leading to rooms on the other wall. From here I could see a lot of smoke. A worrying amount of the city seemed to be on fire.

Guava was waiting for us in the last room, a suite where she had a map of the city laid out on a table.

“Oh,” I said, once I got a look at what was behind her. “You brought all the weapons from the cache. The illegal ones. The ones we told you not to use.”

“Calm down, Matty, if they’re here, they’re not being used,” Timber said. “She probably just wanted to turn them over to us in person. Right, Guava?”

The zebra shrugged.

“See?” Timber smiled like she’d actually confirmed what he said. “You shouldn’t be so suspicious of ponies, Matty. It’s rude to assume the worst.”

“The pony came here, on this revolution day, to talk to this one?”

This was going to be an awkward discussion. I looked at Timber.

“Since I’m bad with ponies, why don’t you explain?” I suggested.

“Guava you know I’ve been looking out for you, and I gotta say I really like you and your Collectivist buddies. I think you’ve got the right idea - one supreme leader has just not worked out the last couple of times here and maybe it’s time to give something else a go, right?” He smiled. “Now the problem is, I’m not the only pony involved. It turns out that there might be a little issue.”

“Meddling as ever, the pony makes excuses, always a problem,” Guava muttered.

“Okay, I mean a big issue.” He pulled the message we received out of his shirt pocket and put it on the table. “Foreign Affairs has been working on a treaty and it looks like it’s all coming to a head. So long story short, hon, we gotta call this little operation off,” Timber said. “We just picked the worst time, you know?”

“We didn’t know about the treaty,” I said. “It was all negotiated in secret.”

“So we are betrayed, ponies show their true colors like a snake sheds scales,” Guava said, slowly, through clenched teeth.

“Here’s what we can do,” Timber said. “You have to have some kind of recall or stop signal ready. We’ll put out the word to get away, go back to camp, and I’ll keep the army off your back until we can broker some kinda peace between you and the General. We can probably get some of your demands pushed through. We’re in a pretty good position with this treaty.”

“Like a rockslide we fall, upon oppressive evil, we cannot be stopped!”

“You can’t stop them?!” I looked at Timber.

“Guava, honey, things are gonna go bad. We know this means a lot to you-”

The zebra swung a crossbow up to point at us.

“Okay, maybe it means more than I thought.”

“Back to a corner, even the most timid prey, becomes a fighter!”

“Let’s calm down,” Timber said, backing up. “We’re not going to--”

I grabbed the crossbow from Guava’s hooves while she was distracted by Timber. It was one of those really cool moves where you slap somepony’s fetlock and they lose their grip and you spin it around- look, you’d know it if you saw it. I’d practiced it in front of a mirror at least a hundred times.

“We’re going to talk like reasonable people,” I said.

Guava looked at the crossbow in my hoof, unimpressed

“Hesitation kills, dare you strike me down swiftly, you are no killer.”

Guava picked up the Griffonian flechette cannon. Timber and I bolted for the door at the same moment, fighting to be the first pony out of danger. We collided in the bottleneck and bounced out into the hallway, fleeing from the door as the cannon roared behind us. I’d dropped the crossbow in my panic like an idiot.

The wall erupted with steel spikes, flechettes tearing through the material like it wasn’t even there. I grabbed Timber and shoved him to the ground, the wave of destruction passing over us, the windows in the hallway exploding into a storm of glass shards. I held him down and waited, doing a rough count in my head. The roar of the cannon tapered off, and I pulled Timber to his hooves.

“Those things take ages to reload!” I yelled, my ears still ringing.

Ages, in this case, meant like, fifteen seconds for a trained crew. That might not sound like much but if you were in a situation where something you fired at wasn’t harmless after one volley, those fifteen seconds were going to feel like fifteen years.

The guards that had been waiting at the door downstairs decided this was an excellent time to investigate. I assume they were smart enough to keep their heads down and wait for the explosions to stop. You never wanted to walk right into the middle of a fight. I saw them trot out of the stairwell, weapons at the ready.

I was unarmed, and while I could probably have taken them out - the EIS doesn’t offer any kind of organized martial arts training for its agents but I took Krav Pega classes in my spare time - the first thing you learned about self-defense was that the best way to defend yourself was to not be in danger in the first place.

I jumped out of the window, getting a few scrapes in the process. I got control of my descent before hitting the ground, and looked up just in time to see Timber follow my lead, leaping out and landing on the awning below, the fabric holding him until the zebras got to the windows and fired out, missing him with their crossbows but tearing holes in the straining fabric that weakened it enough to rip completely free and deposit Timber on the ground in a heap.

“I think they’re unhappy with the plan,” he said. “Also I think my hip is never gonna be the same. I’m too old for this.”

I helped him up. “You’re not that much older than I am.”

“You wouldn’t believe what drinking does to your body.”

Something sharp and deadly bounced off the cobblestones next to his hooves.

“I think their aim is getting better,” he said. I grabbed his ear and yanked him into an alleyway, getting us off the street.

“We’ll go back to the Embassy, tell them we tried to stop things, and let the EUP soldiers take care of things,” I said.

“That’s a great plan, Matty,” he said.

Then we got to the other side of the alley, looked down the street, and I saw my plan fall apart like a cloud sculpture in a hurricane.

“That’s a huge mob.”

“I guess the Collectivists had a lot more support than I thought,” I said, quietly.

“And that giant plume of smoke looks like it’s coming from our Embassy.”

I nodded wordlessly.

“I changed my mind, Matty. It’s a terrible plan.”

“Do you know any way we could get to the port?” I asked. “Maybe we could get a ship.”

“Sure. We just have to go through the angry mob. The problem is, I’m pretty sure most of the ponies who would be on the boats are in said mob, and I’m not big on nautical expertise. I barely know my port from my starboard.”

And then I remembered a fast little ship kept somewhere very safe.

“I have a plan,” I said, turning to where the palace loomed in the distance.

“Look, Matty, no offense, but your plans keep going a little poorly. How about you let me come up with the next one?”

“I know where we can get a ship,” I said, suddenly getting inspired.

“You’d have to work hard to convince me.”

“What if I told you we’re gonna go to that bar you like?”

“I’m convinced. You’re very persuasive.”

He seemed a lot less happy while we were trotting through a dank tunnel that smelled like it had once been part of the sewer system. If it wasn’t for Timber’s magic, I would have had to find a torch - if there were lights built into the dank space, I couldn’t find them.

“When you said we were going to the bar, this isn’t what I had in mind,” he said.

“I let you take a bottle of rum,” I reminded him.

“The bartender let me take a bottle of rum in return for letting him go after he told us where the secret passage was,” he corrected. “I’ll be honest, would have let him go anyway. He makes a great Old Fashioned. How’d you even know this place existed? I never found it and I’ve been here for years.”

“At the palace, General a’L’onione mentioned that the last ruler had a drinking problem and they had secret passages to the bars near the palace,” I explained. “And I realized that they’d want to have ponies stationed there at all times, like how in Canterlot they always keep a couple EIS agents on duty in the donut shop Princess Celestia likes.”

“And the bar we met at was full of secret police and spies,” Timber said.

“Right, because even if the new guy isn’t drinking in secret, you’re gonna want to have an excuse to drink on the job, and a bar that’s been heavily vetted over and over again by the previous administration is the safe place to do it.”

“Still, you’d think they’d have something more classy than something right out of a dungeon.”

“Not much of a secret if you have to do a ton of construction,” I pointed out. “Renovating a bar is one thing, but the tunnel? It’s a lot easier to just send some ponies down and wall off a section of the sewers, wash everything down so your great ruler isn’t walking in fertilizer, and call it a day.”

“Have you given any thought to how we’re going to explain this when we get back?” Timber nudged my shoulder and pointed his hornlight to where spiral stairs, obviously not original to the sewer passage, occupied one corner.

I took point up the tight stairwell, and on the landing above I could see a door set into the wall, the stairs passing through a rough hole in the floor.

“No guards yet,” I whispered.

“Good work,” Timber whispered back. “Very good observing, Matty!”

“Be ready for anything,” I hissed, pushing the door open.

The moment I stuck my head through the gap to check for traps, there was a crashing sound like very expensive pottery hitting somepony’s skull and I was abruptly on the ground. It took me a few seconds to realize that the shards of uncomfortable ceramic I was lying in had been a vase, and the throbbing pain in my head was a concussion from being hit with it. I would have figured it out sooner but, like I said, I had a concussion.

“Oh stars! Agent Matrix?! What are you doing here? I was worried you got caught in the fire at the Embassy!”

I looked up at the elite enemy agent who had managed to down me.

“Black Cherry?” I asked. “Are you a master of martial arts?”

“No?” She sounded confused and looked worried.

“You should really go to my dojo. You’ve got a lot of talent.”

She helped me to my hooves.

“Oh hey, you’re not dead!” Timber stepped out of the doorway. “Great to see you, Cherry. We’re thinking of taking a few days off, catching a cruise, see the world. You know. Flee from the danger.”

Cherry narrowed her eyes, and even through my concussed haze, I could tell she was suspicious.

“What did you two do?” Black Cherry demanded. She looked a lot less friendly now, despite the oddly formal dress she was wearing. “I leave you alone for a little while so I can get this treaty signed, and there’s a revolution in the streets!”

I looked at Timber.

“Would you believe me if I said we had nothing to do with it?” I asked.

“No!”

“It was worth a shot. Look, we tried to stop it, and Guava didn’t want to listen.”

“So you’re on a first name basis with the rebel leader,” Black Cherry said, flatly.

“I’m not sure she has a last name,” I admitted.

“Wonderful. Why am I not surprised the EIS has bucked up something we’ve been planning for months?” She sighed.

“That’s a very nice dress,” I said.

“Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere,” Black Cherry said. “But thank you. I was having brunch with Equestria’s newest ally before everything went to Tartarus. I’m told our guards got everpony in the embassy evacuated to a cruise liner, but I was already cut off and you two were missing.”

“A cruise liner?” Timber groaned. “Matty if we’d tried for the port we could have sailed home in comfort!”

“You know your way around the palace, right?” I asked. “Like to that private airship I saw the other night?”

“You’re going to steal it,” Black Cherry sighed.

“That was the plan, yes,” I admitted. “Do you have a better one?”

“General a’L’onione was preparing it for launch to take me and a few of the more important guests here at the palace to somewhere safe. We don’t need to steal it, we just have to ask nicely.”

“What do you mean, no?” I demanded, shocked.

“I am afraid that my fast little ship is, as I have suggested, a little ship. I cannot carry everypony who wishes to escape.” General a’L’onione sighed. “I am sorry, but if I make an exception for you, then how could I answer to my own people who would also wish passage? They have infinitely more right to my protection and I must even refuse them.”

“You mean you’re going to save your own skin and buck everyone else!” I accused.

“Of course not,” he said. “I am saving my three wives and culturally important artifacts.”

I flapped my wings a few times to hover up and get a look over his shoulder where several burly guards were loading crates of bits and gems onto the ship.

“You’re looting your own palace,” I corrected.

“It will be expensive running a government in exile,” he said. “I will of course be happy to tell your Princess that there are still some of her citizens here in need of rescue. Perhaps she will be more motivated to lend aid to the rightful ruler, hm? If not, I will still be able to live in comfort for some time until the fires have burned out and I can hire an army large enough to retake what I have lost.”

“I’m getting on that ship,” I snarled, giving him my most fearsome Tiger Face, a technique used to demoralize and frighten ponies into submission.

“I think not,” he said, turning away. Obviously, he was terrified. “You two.” He motioned to some of the guards standing by. “Take these three outside and make sure they don’t come back. The rebels are already coming over the walls, so be quick about it.”

“Wait, what about me?” Black Cherry gasped.

“I am concerned that if you were to come along, you may give a less than positive report to your superiors,” the General said. “If circumstances were different, I would have been pleased to share your company on this voyage.”

I launched myself at him, and promptly got knocked out of the air by one of his guards, tackled right in midair. If I wasn’t so focused I would have been able to dodge it.

“Get off!” I yelled, kicking at him.

“Matty, stop,” Timber said, carefully.

“Why the buck would I--”

“Because if you don’t stop, you’re going to get shot,” he hissed. I looked up to see the second guard training their crossbow right between my eyes.

“So when they’re not looking, you sweep the legs of the one on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right,” I whispered. “Then Cherry can grab a crossbow and--”

“You know they speak Equestrian, right?” Timber asked. “They can hear you making this plan even while they’re deciding which shed they want to shoot us behind.”

“They might not speak Equestrian.”

“The General was giving them orders in Equestrian. Probably for our benefit so we’d know we were going to be executed.”

I frowned and looked back at the guards who were forcing us through the palace. “Do you really speak Equestrian?”

They nodded.

“So you heard me planning all that?”

They nodded again.

“...and when I called you incompetent?”

They nodded slowly and a little angrily.

“Buck,” I muttered, turning back around to get on with the march to our deaths. “I really shouldn’t have been calling them names.”

“We’ll add that to the official operations manual when we get back,” Timber assured me. “If we get back.”

He pulled the bottle of rum out of his pocket. It couldn’t possibly have fit inside.

“Hey, maybe we could share a friendly drink?” He offered, looking back at the guards.

The guards shouted something that didn’t need to be translated, and we stopped.

“Maybe at least let me have a drink as a last request?” Timber was still smiling, somehow.

We were in a courtyard between one side of the palace and the outside wall, and I could have waxed poetically about the way the sun shone down from above into that narrow space, the heat radiating off the bricks as we were made to line up against the wall, the looks the two guards had when they raised their weapons.

The roar when the Giffonian Flechette Cannon opened up on them.

“Feathering buck--” I jumped at the noise and the sight. The guards weren’t an issue anymore, but we were left with a bigger problem as a certain very attractive zebra stomped into the sunlight, flanked by rebels that were, if nothing else, using appropriate trigger discipline and stances like I’d taught them.

“I’m so happy to see you!” Timber said. “You wouldn’t believe what the last few hours have been like--”

“Death comes on swift wings for all the enemies of the revolution!” Guava said. The barrel of the flechette cannon swept across us, but there was no roar of death. Not yet.

“Guava, I know things haven’t gone like we wanted,” I said. “You know this wasn’t ever the plan. You don’t really want to hurt us.”

“You two betrayed us! To my foe behind my back, but never again.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “I’ve always been on your side. We had something special. We had no idea that there was a treaty in the works! And even if we did, General a’L’onione just tried to have us killed. We’re obviously not on his side.”

Guava gave me an appraising look. “Love is a sharp knife. You drive it into my back and we both are hurt.”

Timber snorted. “Matty, I’m impressed. We’re not supposed to get attached to intelligence assets in that way but I can’t blame you.”

“This isn’t the time to pat me on the back,” I hissed.

“I might not be able to congratulate you later.” He leaned in closer. “Distract her for a second. I’ve got an idea.”

“How am I supposed to distract her?”

“You two have a very special connection and I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

I stepped forwards, freezing when the rebels raised their crossbows.

“Guava, things don’t have to be complicated. We can work together, stop General a’L’onione from leaving, call the whole treaty off because he tried to have Equestrians killed, and we can paint you as a big hero. We can show off the weapon cache, make up some kind of story about finding it, and before you know it, we’ll be laughing about all these misunderstandings and how it all almost went bad.”

I leaned in and kissed her. I figured that’d be much more distracting than just a speech, and if nothing else I’d get a kiss out of it before I got blown apart by a cannon that weighed more than I did.

Our lips parted, and she slapped me.

“Ow,” I muttered.

“Thanks for the distraction, Matty,” Timber said. “It gave me time to grab these.”

He held up a few small metal pins.

“What are those?” Cherry asked.

“These are the arming pins for the Tanglehoof grenades they’re wearing,” Timber said, pointing.

Guava’s eyes went wide and she turned to the other rebels with her, yelling something that got cut off by a wet splat as a half-dozen of the crowd-control grenades went off at once. They’d been banned after they found out what quick-hardening foamed glue did if it got in your nose and mouth.

I had to fly up to avoid the rush of adhesive. Timber shoved Black Cherry away.

He wasn’t so lucky himself. The paste anchored his hooves to the ground, foaming up and crawling halfway up his legs.

“Tartarus,” he swore. “I thought we’d be out of the blast radius...”

“We’ll get you out of there--” I said, grabbing for him. He shoved me away with his magic.

“Don’t,” he warned. “You’ll just get stuck too. Get out of here. I’m stuck until this sets and starts breaking apart, and that’s gonna be hours. You have a ship to catch.”

“Timber...”

“Get Black Cherry out of here,” he whispered. “She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this mess.”

I nodded. “I will. I promise.”

“Good!” He smiled and held up his bottle of rum. ”Safe travels, Matty.”

I grabbed Black Cherry and carried her over the mess, trying to avoid Guava’s glare, a look hot enough to set my feathers on fire if it lingered too long. I managed to meet it just long enough to mouth the word ‘sorry’ before I had to turn away.

The gangplank was already up when Cherry and I got back to the ship, the slim vessel rising into the sky.

General a’L’onione waved from the deck.

“That mule,” I hissed.

Cherry groaned. “What are we going to do now? We don’t have anywhere to go, and the rebels are right behind us!”

I cleared my throat and flapped my wings.

“Oh,” she said.

“Just hang on,” I warned her. “I don’t really carry other ponies much. I’m more of a solo act.”

Cherry nodded, and she wrapped her hooves around my neck as I took to the air. And almost lost it entirely a second later. The Foreign Affairs office definitely needed to get their agents to get a little more exercise.

“What was that?” She asked, sharply.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes, you did. I can see why Guava wasn’t swayed by your charms.”

“Well, uh… Just keep hanging on!” I looped, trying to build up speed. I’m not going to try to explain how to fly, because it’s something that just comes to me naturally, but the important thing is that if you want to get moving with any kind of heavy load, you need to start out going fast enough that you won’t stall when you pull up.

Black Cherry was a heavy load. Not an unattractive one, mind you, but after the way my last relationship had ended, I wasn’t looking for anything yet.

“What are you doing?” Cherry asked. “We’re too high!”

“I can’t catch it just climbing,” I said. “He wasn’t kidding about it being a fast ship.”

“So how are you--aaaaaAAAAAA!” She started screaming for some reason when I snapped my wings back and went into a dive. I wasn’t nearly as fast as a Wonderbolt, but there was no way some floating bag of gas was going to outrun me at full crash dive speed.

Don’t let the name scare you. I didn’t actually crash into the deck of the airship. I crashed into the gas envelope. It was much softer. We bounced, and Black Cherry screamed again when she lost her grip on me and started falling.

I grabbed a rope with one hoof, Cherry with the other, and swung down to the deck of the ship, finding another soft landing thanks to the guard that had been standing on the railing.

“That was very impressive,” General a’L’onione said. He even did the slow clap to let me know he was being sarcastic. Several empty bottles of wine sat at his hooves, as he’d apparently already been celebrating his escape.

“Tie the guard up with the rope,” I told Cherry. “I’ll handle this.”

“If you were considering a new career as a pirate, you would no doubt be excellent at it,” the General said. “I haven’t seen such swashbuckling since I attended an Equestrian production of The Sea Hawk. A wonderful play. It’s a pity you’ll never get to see it.”

“I’m more a fan of Daring Do,” I said.

The General drew a curved sword that was unbalanced, covered in jewels, and perhaps most importantly, razor-sharp.

“I’ll make sure to look that up when I get to Canterlot,” he said. “Now, get off my ship.”

He lunged. The General clearly hadn’t actually been in combat for a long time, because he was slow. He knew what he was doing, but his brain was faster than his body, and he had forgotten about the wine bottles. One rolled under his hooves, and he slipped, stumbling.

I dodged the clumsy sword swipe, grabbed his hoof, twisted my whole body, and this time, everything came together, aided by the General’s near-fall.

The sword clattered to the deck as he lost his grip, and he flipped over my back thanks to his own momentum. I knew I just needed a little more practice with that move.

He hit the railing at the side of the deck and fell overboard. I waved, and he vanished into the clouds below us. I probably should have tried to save him. It’s what Princess Celestia would have wanted. If I’d asked permission to throw him overboard I’d never have gotten it.

I’d have to beg forgiveness instead.

“So, anypony know how to fly this thing?” I asked.

The guard Cherry had tied up nodded.

“Great!” I smiled. “You get to stay onboard.”

It's My Nature

The trip back was pretty dull, though it did turn out that the General’s three wives were excellent poker players. We played with the national treasury as the pot, and I went bust pretty early on. Not that I was trying hard - as far as I was concerned it was their money anyway.

I was escorted off the airship before it even docked, debriefed in a windowless room for a while, and was wondering just what happened if somepony got fired from the EIS when an Ensign came in with a folder and gave me my answer and a new assignment.

I wish they’d given me time to pack a new suitcase.

Shetland was technically part of Equestria, but only technically. It was as far to the north as Yakyakistan and that was all the average pony knew about it without consulting an atlas. Actually, the average pony heard about Shetland once, during grade school geography classes and then promptly forgot about it.

A scholar, or someone in the intelligence agencies, knew that Shetland had been an Equestrian territory for over a thousand years, when some event had cut it off from easy travel. The details of the event varied widely, from the fantastic and stupid (an entire nation and all the associated roads vanishing overnight in a magical accident) to pointing fingers (it was all somehow Nightmare Moon’s fault) to the prosaic and likely (it wasn’t economically viable and everypony in Shetland was a jerk anyway).

My assignment, as far as I could tell from the papers I’d been given, since my superiors hadn’t even spoken to me about it, was to find a local group pushing for independence and gather information.

There was a note, in very large letters, underlined three times, that I was to take no action without express written orders.

“Fifty bits?!” I would have dropped my duffel bag in shock if I was able to feel my hooves. “It’s just a coat!”

The pony on the other side of the stand looked at me for a long moment. Of course, he was wearing a thick wool coat and had the thick coat of a northerner - he was going to spend all day in the cold no matter what I did, and the idea didn’t seem to bother him. I didn’t think he could even feel it, despite the ankle-deep slush on the ground that was pretending to be fluffy snow until an unwary (or poorly-briefed) pony put their weight on it and discovered the fun of being soaked to the skin in freezing water.

“Fifty-five, now,” he replied.

I rummaged around in my saddlebags, not sure if I even had that many bits.

“This one’s on me,” a familiar voice said.

A bag of bits dropped onto the counter and was quickly snatched up by the owner and replaced by a grey coat.

“Agent Sycamore?!” I blurted out, shocked.

“In the flesh,” he said, dropping the coat onto my shoulders. He was still wearing that same awful shirt, though he had a coat almost identical to mine over it. “How’ve you been, Matty? It’s been ages!”

“I thought you were dead!”

“You should know by now that EIS agents have a knack for getting into trouble,” he said. “And occasionally we get out of trouble too. You can dissolve Tanglehoof glue with strong alcohol.”

“You had that bottle of rum,” I said.

“Bingo. Heard about that thing with the ship. Real tragedy with the General. Couldn’t have happened to a better stallion.”

A new voice cut in from the shadows. “He, like all cowards, fell from grace to bitter end, and soon forgotten.”

My eyes went wide. Guava was leaning against the side of the stall, watching us. I’d have recognized her anywhere, even wrapped up in layers and scraps of fabric that concealed almost her whole body like a patchwork mummy.

“Oh, let me introduce our newest intern,” Timber said. “Actually, you two might have met already.”

“What the hay is going on?” I demanded.

“Long story short, she’s the newest member of the EIS. Things back in Zanzebrica are complicated, and turns out they just really like overthrowing leaders, even if they’ve only been in power for a few minutes. I helped her get out of the country, and in return, she’s assisting the EIS. The Princess was pretty impressed with my report on the whole thing.”

“Your Princess can be... very persuasive, I found. I could not say no.” Guava muttered.

“You talked to the Princess? I just got stuck in a debriefing room.”

“And you must have said the right things because now you’re here!” Timber smiled. “Hope you’re ready to get to work. I’ve got some great leads.”

“On the independence movement?”

“What? No. On the best local bars!” He smiled and trotted off.

“The same side now. I will enjoy being your partner, or perhaps more?” Guava said, shrugging. She paused as she went past me and kissed my ear.

“Maybe this assignment won’t be too bad,” I whispered, a new spring to my step and a warmth in my chest despite the chill.

Author's Note

I have to admit, I had a lot of fun writing this. I took inspiration from real-life CIA operations all around the world, and many of the crazier details of this story happened in one form or another in the real world.

I'd like to thank DoomManta for being patient with me as I worked on this, and for being kind enough to commission me.

If you see a mistake in the story, it's probably the work of intelligence agencies trying to discredit the truth behind the truth! If I disappear, it's because I found out too much about the link between tiny pastel horses and the CIA.