Saffron Ree

I groaned as I stumbled out of my bedroom, looked around the main room of the suite, and almost did a double-take. Spike was serving plates of steaming hot pancakes onto the coffee table that my parents and sister were sitting at.

"Oh. Hey Saf. Hungry?" Spike asked.

Sparing not a thought for my wings being askew, or the fact I wasn't a unicorn, I practically magicked my way over to the couch and squeezed on beside Riley. Mom, Dad, and Riley all had their mouths full of pancake.

"Did you make this?" I asked.

Spike pushed a plate in front of me. There was a knife and fork, but I wasn't even sure how to begin at using those. "Uh, can I get some syrup on those?"

"Sure thing. What about some ice-cream?" Spike began applying syrup (I had no idea what kind).

"Ice-cream on pancakes? Sure!" I watched as he added a dollop of ice-cream on my pancake stack, and the heat melted it to dribble all down the side of them. It took just two seconds to work out how to attack the pancakes without knife and fork. I shoved my face down and took a big bite out of the stack.

Flavorsplosion was a word I could remember seeing in some kids breakfast cereal ad at some point, but until now I guess I didn't see the entirety of what it meant. Apparently flavorsplosion meant dragon-cooked Equestrian pancakes with mystery syrup and ice-cream on them.

"Saffron!" Mom said.

"Car taw, eafi," I said right back, my mouth full of pancake. When I looked over, I saw Mom taking her own bite, just as I had last. I wondered how she'd been eating them before that, but with the look of delight at my method working so well, she seemed to completely ignore any further complaints about my way of eating.

"You know," Spike said, "there's no better compliment to a cook than to silence his diners. Well, except for gemstones."

I chewed up and swallowed my mouthful and looked at him. "Gemstones? I thought your hoard was books?"

"It is. Gemstones aren't for hoarding, they're for eating." And with that, Spike pulled a ruby (it was red, I assumed it was a ruby) the size of my hoof out of nowhere, and he bit into it like an apple. He lifted it back from his teeth and I could clearly see the big bite mark.

"That was awesome. How hard are your teeth?" I asked.

Spike flashed me his best smile. Terror shouldn't have been my reaction, but this predator just showed me a huge array of teeth that could cut through a gemstone like it was an apple. I gulped.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. In some ways it's hard to get used to being a bigger dragon. I used to be about the same size as you when we first moved in here." Taking another bite of the gemstone, I could hear his teeth crunching away at it, reducing the ruby to—well—chewed up gem dust.

He just got the mouthful of gems down when he used his fist to bump his chest. Spike's eyes widened, and he quickly tilted his head away from looking at me just in time to let loose a broad green blast of flame.

A scroll dropped out of the fire of Spike's breath, and almost landed on my stack of pancakes. Spike caught the rolled up paper just in time. "Hey, this is from Twilight." He broke the seal and unrolled the scroll, then held it up. "I'm sending the next eight soldiers and Frank Hollings. On your advice, older soldiers were sent. They should be arriving within an hour."

I'd never seen Mom gulp down food so quickly before. She jumped to her hooves and looked around. "Can you send a message back?" she asked.

"Sure. I can even write it out for you," Spike said producing paper, an ink well, and a quill from somewhere. "Alright, go."

"Clair Ree, 28443194, you get that?" Mom waited for Spike to nod before continuing. "Please include a medic with physio therapy experience, specializing in amputation and prosthetic therapy."

"That's it?" Spike asked. When Mom nodded, Spike tossed the parchment into the air and blew on it. Green fire erupted from Spike's lips and incinerated the paper. The paper was gone completely. "All done."

"Thank you, Spike." Mom sat back down and took another big bite of the pancakes on her plate.

I got back to eating, and only just finished the last bite on my plate when there was a knock on the door. Passphrases were exchanged, and the doors opened.

"Hey. I'm here to teach some squirt how to fly?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Yeah. That's me," I said standing up. "We going now?"

"You just get done with a pile of Spike's pancakes?"

I nodded.

"Then come on. Daylight's wasting." She turned and trotted back out.

I looked to Mom and Dad. "Uh…"

"You'd better go. I spent a lot of effort talking her into this." Mom looked entirely too satisfied.

Keeping my wings tucked, I got up and turned to Spike. Carefully, I lifted a hoof and held it up to him. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Hey. No problems. Glad you enjoyed it." Spike stuck out his arm and closed his hand into a fist before it met my hoof. I don't know why, but it felt good to have a friend—even if he was like five times my age. "Don't crash too much."

I grinned like an idiot and and walked for the door. I didn't realize it at first, but when I passed the door way faster than what I intended, I realized I wasn't just walking—I was trotting. I'd seen ponies doing this, but now that my legs had found their rhythm, it just felt right.

"Hey. You're movin' pretty good there. What's got you're engine going all of a sudden?" Rainbow Dash slipped in beside me, her hooves easily matching mine.

"Just stuff that is better here. Back home I only kinda had two friends. One of them grew up to be an asshole, the other almost wound up being my girlfriend. Spike is—He's pretty awesome." I tried to shrug my shoulders, like it wasn't anything, but it broke the spell I had going. My forelegs lost time and I started to fall sideways.

A blue wing shot out faster than I could fall and grabbed my back. Rainbow didn't need much to brace against my mass, and she kept all four hooves on the floor. "Keep the gestures for when you aren't trotting. Or at least wait another twenty years before trying that again." It rolled off her tongue like she'd just said one year. It was an amount of time, but in the pony scheme of things it was nothing.

"Thanks." I got my hooves under me again and balanced on them. "How long until we start being able to balance on these?"

"You could be already if you didn't spend so much time reading books. Don't get me wrong, some books are totally awesome, but Spike has no idea what a good book is." Rainbow stepped up to the front door and pushed it open. "You're problem is you have new limbs now, I get that. I've even helped somepony else with hers.

"But your new limbs come with complications. Legs, wings—heck—even your tail is new, right?" Rainbow waited for me to nod. "So come on, lets get outside and move."

She didn't give me time to complain or say anything at all. Rainbow Dash took off at a trot and left me to catch up. I walked a few steps, and then trotting just clicked again. My wings kept wanting to spread out, but I kept them tight at my sides.

Rainbow Dash jumped into the air with ease and began flying backwards. "Spread your wings a bit. Don't try to open them, just stop holding them closed."

"I'll just fall over," I said.

"Maybe. And if you do, so what. Get back up and try again." Rainbow floated to my right side, her wings not just keeping her upright, but moving sideways at the same speed I was trotting. She used her forehooves to carefully tease my right wing away from me.

As soon as Rainbow got enough force on my wing to overcome my urge to keep it pinned down, both wings snapped out and began moving in time to my forelegs. "How is this better?" I asked.

"You can feel the air pushing back on your wings, right?"

"Yeah." It took a second for it to click what was happening. "Yeah, it is!"

"That should keep them a little out of sync with your legs, which should help train your brain to the difference between them." Rainbow Dash dropped back to her hooves and was immediately trotting at my side again. "Let's do two laps of town like this, okay?"

It was good to exercise, and better to have company while doing it. I nodded and tried to lengthen my trot a little as Rainbow Dash did.

After one lap of the town I barely felt like I'd been working, but by the time we swung back to the castle after the second one, my legs were starting to feel like they'd done work. Not to mention my weakly flapping wings.

We had a crowd of ponies watching us pull up after the second lap. And I mean crowd. I could see a pile of unicorns, earth ponies, and a few pegasi. One of the pegasi—a mare that everyone else made room for—stepped out front. "You're Rainbow Dash?" she asked.

"Yeah, gimme a sec to get Saf cooled down." Rainbow Dash pointed at the lake behind the castle. Beyond it was another big, crystalline building but I could tell she was pointing to the lake. "Get your butt in there and guzzle down as much water as you feel you need. Looks like the rest of my class is here.

"Now! Who's in charge of you lot?"

I ignored the milling mass—and Rainbow's loud voice—and did as I was told. My everything felt warm, and that water looked really good. I didn't stop as I reached the bank, just walked right in.

"H-Hello? You're one of the new people Twilight sent over, aren't you?" a female voice said barely above a whisper.

My ears had turned to track the voice, and I saw a yellow mare with pink hair doing her best to hide behind a bush. I stepped further into the water so that my wings were resting on the surface. "Yeah. My name's Saf."

"I-I'm Fluttershy. Rainbow asked me to come and teach you about wing care," she said, still not giving up the safety of her bush.

"Wing care?" I tried to lift a wing, and my foreleg on that side twitched. If I weren't in the water I would have fallen. "Like what?" I asked.

"Your feathers need to be preened, oiled, and checked. I-I can help you, but you need to learn how to do it on your own, too." Fluttershy advanced on me, apparently realizing that I was probably less capable of chasing her than she thought. "When you feel comfortable again, you can hop out of the water and I can show you what you need to do."

I moved slowly, not because I was trying not to startle her, but because the water combined with my tired legs forced the matter. As I climbed out of the water, I couldn't believe how much heavier I was. Water poured off me, but the weight of what was still in my fur was too much.

"Oh dear! You poor, poor thing." Fluttershy hadn't caught me in time from faceplanting on the ground. Soft hooves carefully rolled me to my side and probed my legs, chest, and face.

I had a flashback to Candy, and a little shiver ran through me as I relaxed. When she took her hooves away, I jerked to and opened my eyes. "I'll get used to these legs sooner or later."

"Well, nothing broken. Can I please take a look at your wing?" Fluttershy asked.

My brain had the consistency of a well-trained puppy at that point. I rolled over to my belly, secured my legs by dint of laying on them, and tried to stretch out my wing.

I could still feel my legs trying to move under me, but my weight (and the weight of the water in my fur) was plenty to keep them from dancing about. Not that I had much control over my wings. I could stretch them most of the way out, but flapping them didn't seem to do much.

"Look at the state of these feathers." Her tone had changed from concerned for safety to mother hen berating a chick. "The first thing you need to learn is proper preening. Lift your wing further forward, and turn your head toward it."

It was easier said than done. I tried to stretch the wing forward, like she asked, but when I turned toward it, my wing seemed to retreat from my face. "Ugh. This is impossible," I said.

Fluttershy giggled at my frustration and used her hoof to help push my wing forward. It would have been infuriating if she weren't so—so nice about it. "There. You'll get better at controlling them, but for now I can help. Look along your feathers until you find one a little bent—which seems to be all of them."

I stared in shock as she bit my wing. Okay, she didn't bite-bite it. Fluttershy closed her mouth around a group of feathers and I could feel her using her teeth and tongue to work at one.

The feeling was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I hadn't noticed it before, but feathers were sensitive with a capital S. I only realized I was pulling a silly face when Fluttershy's giggles met my ears.

"Have a look at that, and try the next feather along," she said.

Shaking my head a little, I turned to look at my wing and it was painfully obvious which feather she'd straightened. The ones beside it had little kinks in the shafts, and I could tell now that she'd used her mouth and teeth to straighten it. "Alright. How do I know if I'm doing it wrong?"

"It's your feather, you will feel if it isn't right. Go ahead." Her every word was encouraging and soft at the same time. It was like she was the shyest cheerleader of all time.

Using my eyes, I guided my mouth down to the bunch of feathers and closed my lips around them. Too late, of course, I realized I was putting my mouth on the same feathers as Fluttershy had. It was practically a kiss.

Blushing, I felt around with my tongue and froze. Fluttershy's motions had been gentle, delicate. My own tongue felt like a wrecking ball.

"You should have seen Twilight when she first tried this. She pulled much sillier faces than you just did," Fluttershy said.

I pinched the base of the feather carefully between my teeth to hold it, and started working on straightening it. It took ten times as long as Fluttershy did, and I felt it start to feel wrong a few times, stopped, and tried again. Eventually, however, I released my teeth and lips and pulled back.

"There! You did it!" It was the softest cheer I'd heard from anyone—ever—but it wasn't for nothing.

I now had one perfectly straight feather, and one that was mostly straight and covered in saliva, but at least it looked better than the rest. "Let me try that one again."

"W-Wait. Don't do that. Move on to the next one. You'll get better, and when you do you can come back and do an even better job on these ones."

So soft and quiet. Fluttershy wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a high school on Earth. I nodded to her and bent back to my wing, spirits lifted on yellow wings and soft words.

Philip Ree

I looked at the next instruction in the book. "Sparks. Not in here, little book."

The meditation methods were, without a doubt, the best I'd ever experienced. I'd tried yoga, T'ai chi, and several others, but nothing compared to feeling real magic flow through you. The meditation had focused on control and building the flow. I liked it a lot.

But, despite how much the little book for foals reassured me that sparks were every unicorn's first step, and that it was safe, I wanted to go somewhere without flammable coverings everywhere. I slipped the book into a pair of saddlebags and slung them over my back.

I left the room I shared with Clair, and walked into the living room. There was eight new ponies that all stood in a line along one wall. Another new pony was speaking with my wife. The pegasus mare Clair was engaged with noticed me, her eyes drinking in every detail of me in the fraction of a heartbeat that she did so, then looked back to Clair.

"Oh, there's Philip now. Honey, this is Colonel Maria Richards. Colonel Richards is here to be the head of our security detail," Clair said.

"Pleased to meet you, Mister Ree. Captain Bell spoke well of your decisiveness when—pardon my language—everything went to shit." The Colonel was a little taller than Clair, and sported orange fur and gold-blonde hair for her mane and tail—she looked like an inferno. "You'll excuse us?"

I'd never actually been told in quite so firm manner to fuck off before. Even Jeff hadn't excluded me in that way. I looked to Clair and smiled. "Oh, don't worry. I'll get out of your hair. Don't get your tail in a twist about little me." It was petty of me, maybe. One of the pegasi against the wall pulled his mouth into a half smile at my words, then quickly schooled it back to neutral again.

Eight plus one brass meant that nine had come over. I was willing to bet anything that the smiling pegasus had been Frank Hollings. Lemon-yellow fur and a dark pink mane made him look softer than I knew him to be. Everyone knew of Frank's record back home—he was the first human to leave our universe—but the contents of the record was limited after his acceptance to a navy base in Little Creek.

Clair's eyes said it all—the Colonel was a bitch. She wore her politicians' smile, and wore it well.

I left the suite to find our four original guards standing at the outer door, and from the look of them they were mid-conversation with the two Royal Guard that were present. They were good soldiers, on both sides, and I barely even saw them lean back from where they'd been chatting.

I closed the doors behind me and watched six pony faces relax. "Your new commander's a bitch."

No one spoke, though there was four silent nods.

Headed for the entrance of the castle, I got to where I thought it should be and instead had what looked like a mile of hallway. I turned around, intending to backtrack, and nearly walked into a mare. "Woops! Sorry, Moon Dancer."

She wasn't a soldier, a politician, or even someone of note. Moon Dancer, I'd found out, was just a very clever unicorn. She looked up from the book she'd been reading and holding in her magic and blinked a few times behind her glasses. "I-It's okay! I should have been keeping an eye on where I was going. Uh, where are we?"

My heart sank at her question. "I don't know. I was trying to find the font door, so I could practice the next thing in this book." I pulled the book out of the pack using my teeth.

"R-Right. You're learning magic from scratch. What are you up to?" she asked.

I tried to speak around the book (as I'd seen other ponies do the previous day), but when I did it slipped from my mouth—fortunately, right into Moon's magic grip. "I'm up to making sparks. I wanted to go somewhere less flammable."

"Magical sparks don't make fire. The book should have said it was safe." Moon Dancer's head dipped down as she flicked through the book.

It was obvious that the mare didn't need much of an excuse to attack a book. I cleared my throat. "I saw that, I just don't want to be the silly pony who has to admit to Twilight that I burned her castle down."

Moon Dancer's eyes widened in surprise. "A sensible unicorn? Someone alert the media." Her droll tone set off the hyperbole beautifully. "But I think I can help you move a little quicker. Did you do any of these exercises?"

I looked at the page Moon showed me in the book and nodded. "Most of the morning. Why?"

"I've done some tutoring of foals, and those exercises are the first thing everypony skips," she said, casually leading the way back whence she'd come.

"Are you kidding? They were great! I felt more alive like that than any other meditation I've tried. Magic is—it is life!" I was like a school kid, begging for teacher's praise. I didn't care how I sounded, I really did enjoy those exercises.

"This one. Where you channeled magic into your horn and then let it drain back out?" When I nodded to her, Moon Dancer raised an eyebrow. "Prove it then," she said, "do it while we're walking."

Trying to block out the feel of my hooves walking, I centered myself and breathed in. Magic rushed into me, and through me into my horn.

Moon Dancer looked at me critically. "Now push again. Let the magic flow out through your—"

Bright silvery sparkles shot into the hall before me. They rained down in an arc that looked like it would ignite everything. I stared in shock as the fountain went on and on, and only realized it was time to stop when Moon Dancer started chuckling. "Sorry!"

"I asked you to do it. No sense in feeling sorry. That was some good sparks. Try it again."

By the time we found a corridor we recognized I have a little sweat going from all the magic. It was the strangest thing in the world (I knew I'd be saying that a lot lately, but not quite so quickly) to get so tired from something seemingly non-physical.

Moon Dancer led the way to the kitchen where we could hear someone inside cooking. "Spike? Are you in there?" Moon asked.

"Yeah. Just making some lunch for—Oh! Hi Philip!" Spike was a dragon of exceptional culinary talent, or so I'd found, and he seemed to be practicing such right now. "What's up?"

"Our latest unicorn wizard here needs a four-pack of magic fuel." The way Moon spoke, it was clear this was an in-joke between them.

Spike reached for something and then held out a tray of cupcakes. "Lucky. I just baked a batch. They should be cool enough to eat quickly, and sweet enough to power your afternoon."

I stared at the cakes for maybe a second before one floated up—held aloft in pink-gray magic—and aimed itself at my mouth. It felt like he had fashioned a cupcake out of one huge sugar crystal. The frosting melted, the cake itself so light it danced over my tongue, and the flavor rushed through me. The fatigue I'd felt seemed to melt away for a moment.

"That's one. How do you feel now?" Moon Dancer asked.

"Like half a day spent doing magic was a lot less work than I know it was. I have to ask—how fast does a pony body metabolize sugar into energy?" While I spoke, my eyes noticed another of the cakes float off the tray. I had to speak faster to get the last bit out before Moon fed me another.

While I ate, my body breaking down the cupcake into fuel in seconds, Moon Dancer explained further, "It's mostly the sugar. Of all the races in Equestria, unicorns break it down fastest, closely followed by pegasi and dragons. Earth ponies bring up the rear of the pack. At least, that's how it works for the majority—there are some earth ponies that rival or beat the average unicorn's sugar metabolism."

The second cupcake was just as much of a hit of sugar as the first. Even as the last of the treat faded, I was still salivating for more. "You know a lot about this. Are you a trained nutritionist?"

"Go on, Moon Dancer. Tell him your qualifications." Spike passed me the next cupcake himself, leaving a suddenly wary Moon to glare at him. "Well?"

"I have a degree in food and nutrition."

Spike smirked a little. "A masters degree. Among others."

Clearing my throat by dint of gulping the cake down, I looked at Moon Dancer. "'Others'?"

"Well, once you've done all the prerequisite classes to qualify for four or five degrees, you already qualify for final-year of basically all of them." Moon Dancer's ears had a red tint to their inside that I realized was her blushing. "I have fifteen degrees. Five of them are masters and two are doctorates."

Numbers chased themselves around my head until I forced them to sit still in the corner. "With the messed up time difference thing, how long does a degree take?"

"Five years for a bachelors degree, seven for masters, and around ten for a doctorate. I'll point out," Spike said, "that one of her bachelors degrees is in medicine."

"Doctor Moon Dancer?" I asked.

Moon nodded, more red appearing in the visible flesh of her ears.

I smiled a little—for someone in their nineties, Moon Dancer seemed a lot younger. "Perfect. Any more questions I have will be coming to you. But on a serious note, how would you like to be addressed? Am I breaking any social rules by not calling you doctor?"

"J-Just Moon Dancer is fine."

"Why not Princess of Knowledge?" Spike assumed a dramatic pose bowed to Moon.

"Spike…" Moon Dancer said.

"I bet your wings are just lost in the mail." Wearing the smile of someone who couldn't be taken seriously, Spike apparently couldn't leave the joke alone.

"Spike!"

Stuffing the last cupcake in my mouth, Spike turned around to his prep area again. "Just remember who makes your magic fuel, Moon Dancer." Before Moon could get another word in, Spike produced a fifth cupcake and tossed it to Moon Dancer.

Proving how deft she could be with her magic, Moon caught the treat and started eating it. Turning, she swallowed the first mouthful while I was working on the whole thing the dragon had stuffed in my mouth. "Thanks, Spike."

"Don't mention it, Moon Dancer," Spike said.

I chewed as fast as I could, working away at the last of the four cupcakes as quickly as I could. Truth be told, the first three had filled my reserves back up—the last one made me actually buzz with energy.

Outside in the hallway, Moon Dancer led the way to a different room. "This will be your new home away from home. She threw open a pair of double doors and gestured inside. "This is where we practice our biggest magic. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all warded against damage or magic overflow.

"Now, let's see some sparks."

Clair Ree

"No. That won't work." None of the ponies, not Starlight Glimmer, not Moon Dancer, and now not Princess Luna could understand the point I was getting across. "To be a secure and wholly American embassy, the purchase needs to be made entirely by us—without any interference."

Princess Luna looked at me with her huge eyes and expressive face, and I could start to see a hint of realization dawning. This was only the fifth time I'd had to remind her that we would not accept any gifts to pay for our Embassy or any staff to run it. "Then you will need to survey sites when you reach Canterlot. We thought selecting one for you would be sufficient—the other human ambassador agreed to such terms."

I smiled, smiling was about fifty-percent of my job. Listening to comments about what "the other human ambassador" said or did was almost entirely the rest of it right now. Whatever world these other humans were from, they apparently didn't have as strict laws there regarding international embassies.

Nodding, I used a hoof to flick through documents. "Ah. And you have quarters for us until then, good. Might I ask what markets would be best to trade goods on? We are waiting to send back a message for the last group, to find out what will be suitable to import."

"I believe the best thing to trade, right now, is some of those computers." Princess Luna was very careful about enunciating the word, it was rather new to them.

I knew what she wanted. Princess Luna had been tasked with buying computers from us. My job was to get the best price possible for as little as possible. It wasn't like we could teleport over an unlimited supply. "How many do you think would fetch us…" I looked down at my notes. "…fifty thousand bits?"

"Five hundred should be equivalent."

She'd said it so evenly and so calmly that I didn't manage to keep my calm face in place. I opened my mouth to reply when she continued.

"Given the market value of the machines, I'd say one million United States dollars would match up quite nicely with the cost of a medium-sized building." Princess Luna held my gaze still, and I could sense she was going to continue. "That said, you will be providing the first such examples, so a tenth of that would be sufficient."

She was bypassing any attempt at haggling by making an offer I shouldn't refuse. Fifty laptops for fifty thousand bits. That put our dollar roughly at one bit. I wanted to just admit defeat and tell her she had about a hundred-to-one advantage on me in years, but Jeff hadn't given me this job to give her all the concessions. "The platform won't fit that much. If you were willing to—"

Luna's face held very little of the carefree mare I'd met the previous night. "I have notified Princess Twilight. Without needing to send people she could make another, quick teleport before you are due to leave. You could always accept this as a gift—"

"If Twilight says she can manage another transfer, she can. Fifty laptops for fifty-thousand bits." I took pains to keep any hint of annoyance from my voice or face, but she knew she'd outplayed me, and had done it ensuring we both got what we wanted.

"Was there any further business you needed to attend to?" Luna asked.

"Not business as such." My answer caused Luna to raise an eyebrow. "Thank you for taking care of my daughter last night. It gave me some time to help acquaint myself with some of Twilight's friends. I already had to put off Miss Rarity's appointment until tomorrow."

"You are new to this role, correct?" Luna asked. When I nodded, she continued. "Then some adjustment is expected. I was told to offer you the bits as a gift of friendship, but it makes me glad that you will not take it as such.

"Despite my sister's pacifistic ways, I have always valued strong allies—equal allies. There will be plenty of time for gifts later."

"You mentioned someone told you to offer us gifts. Princess Celestia?" It was a reasonable guess considering Twilight had hinted Celestia was the most senior princess.

"My elder sister, yes. She has a few years on me, so far as running a nation and managing relations with others. I defer to her." There was the hint of something strained in Luna's voice.

When sisters didn't see eye-to-eye, it was usually accompanied by catty behavior and angry words thinly veiled. I had little concept of what thousands-of-years-old rulers would do to each other, but I could guess that it wasn't minor. "You'll forgive me for asking, Luna," I said, stressing her name without the title, "but is there something I should know about you and your sister?"

"Jealousy of my sisters power and position—as ruler of the day—ate me up inside and made way for evil. She was right to banish me, she probably should have done worse. I returned still full of anger and evil, but it was a new mare who wielded the magic of friendship, and with her friends they drove the evil from me. I don't—I don't enjoy looking back at that time, but with my sister and my new friends, I have forged myself stronger. There is no way for the evil to return." Luna spoke in a stream, unbreakable and impossible to interrupt.

"Twilight?" I asked.

"She is as much my sister now as Celestia. She could have sent me back to the moon—in exile for another thirty millennia, but she chose to make a friend that day." Luna's smile broke the veil of darker emotions she'd been wearing. "I will not let her down, you understand."

I nodded solemnly. "Were there any other notions your sister had about dealing with us?"

"Clairilee,"—as Luna said the nickname I'd managed to pick up the previous night, she smiled—"I am not going to hand you an advantage on a platter. I have given you what would be common knowledge to anypony in Equestria. I'm just saving time you might have to spend prizing it out of them."

Somehow, I think I liked Luna's forthright way with words and devotion to the protecting of her country more than Twilight's open friendship and nerdy ways. "I wonder how the Colonel is doing with her exercise?"

It was a complete change in topic, and I saw a smile grace Luna's mouth as she contemplated the question. "She was the noisy pegasus?"

The description fit Colonel Richards to a T. "That would be her."

"Come. We can watch them from the balcony of the second floor. Rainbow Dash had promised she wouldn't actually harm any of them." Luna led the way out of the room. We picked up the four younger marines at the door and made our way out and up some stairs. When we reached a balcony, Luna stepped out on it and immediately had to cover a giggle.

The five guards and myself did likewise—stepping out and giggling.

Rainbow Dash seemed to be trotting along in a distance-gobbling stride that seemed likely to go on forever. Behind her, struggling to keep up, was eight marines and a beaming captain of the navy.

"I think the Colonel has—" Sergeant Roberto started saying something, but was bopped on the back of the head by Captain Bell.

"Trap shut, marine," Bell said.

"Keep in mind that Rainbow Dash already ran your son until he was ready to give in. This,"—Luna gestured with a hoof—"is Rainbow showing off."

"She seemed a little prideful when I met her last night. Quite eager to train Saffron and our guards." I watched the group led by Rainbow Dash head around the side of the town. "She won't run them to collapse, I hope?"

"The only time Rainbow Dash would disregard safety is to either show off or if somepony she cared about was in danger. What she's doing is neither of those." Luna turned to look at the four guards who were beside us on the balcony. "I wouldn't laugh too much. She'll be coaching you tomorrow."

"Speaking honestly, Ma'am, without the drain of teleportation in the same day, I don't think we'll have a problem. Also, since Ambassador Ree's son gave us the idea, we've been training when not on duty. She'll probably still run us into the ground, but we'll fight it all the way," Captain Bell said.

I let out a sigh. "Speaking honestly? Captain Bell, I wish you were thirty years older and a rank higher."

Hendricks, Clark, and Roberto all barked a laugh before Bell stared them down. He turned back to look at me. "Ambassador, I'm not cut out for that. Colonel Richards may be a little rusty and tight, but she knows what she's doing. There's a reason why she's a colonel."

"Well, Captain, how are you at spelunking?" I asked. When he served me a confused expression, I continued. "If you can maybe get up her ass to yank the stick out, we'd all be doing a lot better."

While Captain Bell danced around actually insulting his commanding officer, I considered where the woman was coming from. Sure she arrived here feeling fatigue and trying to get used to a body she'd never had before, but that didn't mean she had to insult my husband.

I was working on another good analogy for what could be the Colonel's problem when a trumpet sounded and ended with a loud shriek, a thump, and the remaining three soldiers in my detail turning to see what had happened to their captain.

"Don't shoot!" Luna's voice felt like it had thousands of years of leadership behind it. I'd heard stories of drill sergeants able to order civilians around with the power of their voice, but what Princess Luna used was that dialed up to one hundred and eleven.

Everyone froze.

"S-Sorry!" A gray-pelted mare untangled herself from Captain Bell, ruffled her wings, and then offered the soldier a hoof to help him up. "I can fly really well, but landings are always tricky when I have this much weight."

What she was talking about, of course, was what looked like the same armor the Royal Guards wore right down to the physical size of it. So fitted to a mare maybe two-thirds their physical size was quite a feat of fasteners and hope. She shook her whole body and sounded like a church bell.

Luna surprised me by approaching the mare and checking her for harm. "Miss Hooves. Please try to be more careful."

"Thank you, Princess Luna." Clanking followed every movement the mare made, and it suddenly struck me how quiet she'd been in the air.

"Derpy, what did we tell you about how heroes are to address princesses?" Using her magic, Luna lifted Captain Bell up and set him back on his hooves.

Derpy Hooves, an apt name only if one didn't consider her flying ability too, blushed around her ears. "Th-That we don't have to call you princess, Princess." Hero, "we"... things came together as I watched the mare attempt to straighten her armor—Derpy Hooves had apparently done something very brave.

Luna dipped her head in what I'd come to realize was a show of respect, then she went further and crouched down on one leg. "Correct, Derpy."

"B-But I have a really important letter! They said I had to be the pony to carry it, and I had to have my best armor on!" Derpy reached to one side and pulled a scroll from one of the bags hanging under her armor.

Groaning, Luna looked like she'd bit into a sour apple. "This is my sister's idea of pomp. Having somepony hoof-delivering a letter rather than having Spike deliver it. Very well, Derpy, please continue."

Bowing her head low, Derpy passed the scroll to me, but when I didn't immediately take it, she looked confused. "W-What's wrong?"

"May I, Ambassador Ree?" Luna asked.

No sooner did I nod than Luna's cobalt blue magic plucked the scroll from Derpy's hoof and unrolled it so that I would be the first to see it. The letter was everything I'd primed myself for. Princess Celestia spent five paragraphs introducing herself, another four congratulating us on our safe arrival, and then twelve extending us a warm invitation to Canterlot under the terms and laws Princess Twilight had already agreed to.

It was a perfect example of diplomatically-couched language, and it filled me with terror at what kind of pony Princess Celestia would be. "What would be the best way of saying yes?" I asked.

"Ambassador, are you asking for my advice on how to handle this gloriously written invitation?" The smile on Luna's face spoke volumes about what she thought of official documents like her sister had sent. "If I were to get a letter like this, I would probably reply with Okay."

"She'll know you wrote it," I said.

"You have the perfect excuse. If you wish, we could even provide you with some ink to blot on your hoof and to the page." As she spoke, Luna used her magic to teleport the items required right to her. Magic, used so rampantly, was still somewhat shocking. It reminded me that—or so Twilight assured me—Luna was the mare who shifted the moon every night.

She used a quill to scribe the word on the back of the scroll, then offered me a blotter page soaked in black ink.

Pressing my hoof to the blotter, I transferred it to the scroll and left a dirty black hoofprint on it. And then I left a hoofprint on the balcony. "Oops. Uh…"

Luna was already wrapping the scroll back up. "Miss Hooves, it is with great urgency that you deliver this back to my sister."

Derpy gasped and quickly took the scroll. Without another word (though she did make a clanging salute) she spread her wings and was off.

I waited for her to be well out of what I hoped was pony earshot before asking, "Hero?"

"In a moment of great peril, when Equestria was on a tipping point of being invaded, she acted to take a hit directed at Princess Twilight. Without Derpy Hooves it is very likely Equestria would not be here today." As she spoke, Luna's eyes never left the departing speck of shiny-clad pegasus.

The news, and the way Luna acted, was sobering. Derpy Hooves might seem like just another pony with perhaps an extra dollop of silliness to her attitude, but she was a hero here.

"Anypony can be the force that tips the scales, Clair Ree. Here and now it is you who must fill that role." Luna stared after the departed pegasus a moment longer before she turned to me. A sense of hugeness, of someone old enough to have seen the first human pick up a rock and shape it into a spearhead, seemed behind her gaze. Then Luna was just Luna again. "Now, about the training. You're going to need to learn how to use your body too."

"I don't have time," I said. "Besides, no wings and no horn."

"You believe earth ponies aren't every bit as magical as unicorns? Clair, you don't want to mention such a thing anywhere a fellow earth pony can hear. Fortunately, I have just the pony to help teach you about the particulars of earth ponies. She'll be arriving shortly." Luna looked entirely too satisfied with herself.

"What about Riley?" It wasn't that I didn't want the training, I just didn't see any need for it. We were only going to be here for a few years—it was the soldiers who would be long-term residents.

"Of course your filly will get training too, but she will also get that at school. You will not," Luna said. She turned to Captain Bell and his men. "Have you seen enough of your commander having rings flown around her?"

"I could go another hour of it, ma'am," Hendricks said with a laugh a moment before Bell elbowed him.

Luna enjoyed a smile at the joke, apparently whatever magic let us speak their language also translating jokes. "You realize she'll be taking you four next? And I can promise you, Rainbow Dash won't be tired one bit. I've heard of her flying or running all day like this."

Author's Note

Clair: Do you think it's important that your 'name' to the ponies isn't your official name?

"I'd rather they get used to our names. And, by our, I mean humanity's. They seem to have culturally diverse names themselves—I've identified several different naming schemes—and I think it was more just someone being too excited to realize what they were saying could cause offense. That's why I earn the big bucks, I can look a pony in the face and smile no matter what." The last I said, of course, with weighted sarcasm.

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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