"They're not home!" Golden Harvest called from her porch.
On the sidewalk in front of the house next door, Derpy looked up blinking from her attempt to shove the much-too-large package into the mailbox.
Harvest ignored the part of her that wanted to growl obscenities at the befuddled mailmare. "Mr. and Mrs. Hug," she said instead, gesturing to the little house whose yard shared a tree-lined picket fence with hers. "They've been in Trottingham all week on another one of their trips."
Derpy did some more blinking, and the mean part of Harvest chuckled at the sight. Harvest shook the sound away and focused on Derpy saying, "But I didn't see a 'stop mail' notice at the post office."
All Harvest could do was smile and shrug and remove the sneer that the mean part of her wanted to put into her voice. "I had Tender and Earnest over for lunch the day before they left, and they said they'd be back tomorrow." When she sighed, she tried to make it sound charmingly wistful instead of teeth-grindingly jealous. "Newlyweds live such a romantic life..."
A grunt pulled her back from her thoughts, and she watched Derpy flapping mightily, her face scrunched and her front hooves dug into the sides of the giant package. Her efforts finally popped the crate out of the mailbox, and she collapsed to the sidewalk, sweat dampening her hide and the box clattering when it dropped beside her. "I, uhh..." She gave a big, goofy grin. "I don't suppose you could accept delivery, then?" she asked.
Of course, the mean part of Harvest immediately started panting in anticipation: it took Harvest several breaths before she could decide that taking the package actually would be the neighborly thing to do. "Sure, I'll sign for it." She gave Derpy a smile that had her meaner self seething and started down the front path. "That way, you won't have to lug it all the way back downtown."
"Hooray!" Wrapping herself around the crate, Derpy hefted it airborne again just long enough to crash it once more onto the sidewalk at Harvest's gate. "Thanks, Carrot Top!"
Harvest almost put a hoof wrong at the name, and the mean little voice moved closer to the surface, actual words forming inside Harvest's head: She's talking to me. Shall I come out and answer her?
"Oh, now, Derpy," Harvest said as cheerily as she could, pushing herself into motion again. "Just call me Harvest." At the gate, she clenched her teeth around the pen Derpy offered her and wrote Golden Harvest in big letters at the bottom of the sheet on the clipboard Derpy held out with her other wing.
"Thanks again, Carrot!" With a leap, Derpy whirled into the air and careened away down the street.
"It's—" Harvest started, then squeezed her muzzle shut instead of shattering the already disturbed peace of the neighborhood by shouting her own name. A featherbrain like Derpy would never remember it anyway, and—
And that was a mean little thought. Harvest shoved it back down to where the Carrot Top part of her lurked, stepped through the gate, lowered her head against the side of the box, and pushed it up the path to her front door. It rattled the whole way with the same metallic clatter she'd noticed earlier. Maybe the Hugs had bought a wind chime for their back patio?
If wind chimes were made of anvils, the Carrot Top part of her muttered internally, but Harvest shook the comment away again before rubbing the little ache between her ears: the box really was quite heavy...
Ignoring Carrot's soundless calls to crack the thing open now and see what was inside, Harvest worked her hooves under the edge of the crate and managed to heave it up the single step onto her front porch. That called for a quick breather, then she bent her neck, huffed and puffed and shoved the thing till it hit the wall of the house beside the door.
Which was as far as she was going, she decided. It had already been late in the afternoon when she'd glanced out the window to see Derpy trying to stuff this monstrosity into the Hugs' mailbox, and she wasn't willing to disrupt her schedule any further. Stepping into the house, she dug out the big red and white checked tablecloth she used whenever she and the Flower sisters had a picnic, brought it outside, and tossed it over the box.
"To keep the dew off," she explained quietly to Carrot Top's confused inquiry. "And haven't I always wanted a table out here?" That got a silently rude response, but she was used to such things from her nasty alter-ego after all these years. She shrugged, went indoors, and had a very tasty carrot and beet salad before going to bed.
A thump woke her, everything so dark, she figured the moon must be very low, maybe an hour away from dawn. No reason for things to be thumping and waking her, at any rate.
Silence filled the bedroom, and she was just closing her eyes, deciding that the thump had been the tail end of a dream—
When something else thumped. It was a familiar thump this time, though, the sound she knew from all the times she'd stumbled a hoof over the leg of that end table she liked so much even though it was ever so slightly too big to fit beside her sofa.
Which meant somepony was in her front room.
Shoving her blanket to the side and rolling to her hooves, she was bursting through the bedroom door and galloping down the hallway before the Golden Harvest part of her even knew what was happening. Past the bathroom door and the kitchen, she could make out a shadow moving among her furniture, a pony-shaped shadow, the spot of light at its forehead telling her it was a unicorn.
She peeled back her lips, and a monosyllabic word for manure hissed out between her bared teeth. Leaping, she launched herself spinning from the hallway door and scissor-kicked her hind legs through the spot where she felt sure the unicorn's head would be.
At the satisfactory impact, manic joy pumped through her mind, body, and soul, her lips peeling back even further into a grin that Harvest let her know in no uncertain terms she was very glad she couldn't see. The unicorn's low grunt following the impact told her he was a stallion, and the way he didn't crash instantly to the floor told her he had some training.
Inside her, Harvest cringed, but outside, Carrot was nothing but nods. She liked a little challenge now and again.
Unicorns, though, were trouble: best to put this one down quick. Bending in ways she knew she'd regret in a few hours, she hit the easy chair beside the fireplace with both forehooves, pushed off, and rebounded hard into the still-off-balance unicorn. Her inner self winced at what might've been bones cracking, but there wasn't time to dwell on it. No way was this guy working alone.
Which was when strong fetlocks seized her barrel, pulled her roughly onto her hind legs, and squeezed her firmly backwards against a muscular chest. "We don't want any trouble, Ms. Harvest," a low voice growled into her ear. "We just want the box."
An earth pony stallion, the grip, the muscles, and the filthy stink told her. "Call me Carrot Top," she said, and flexing her hind legs, she flipped herself upward before the guy could adjust his grip. Keeping her shoulders fixed, she slammed her withers into his mouth and let gravity do the rest, crashing him heavily back onto the floor with her on top, another crack telling her that the impact had at least dislocated his jaw.
It also loosened his hold on her, and she pushed away, sprang for the front door, sure that a team like this would have a—
She flung the door open just as the expected pegasus was turning away from the nets, ropes, and grappling hooks attached to the gondola of the hot air balloon floating about three yards above the front lawn. This one was a mare, Carrot could see in the light from the street lamp, lashes plainly visible around her eyes, the only part other than her dark-green wings that didn't seem to be covered by her black skin-tight suit.
Those eyes widened, but Carrot was already aiming her front hooves at them, her rear hooves propelling her off the porch with enough force to meet the pegasus halfway. Her first strike rolled those eyes back in the mare's head, but Carrot wasn't willing to leave things to chance at this point: she managed to smack the pegasus four more times in the face before they hit the grass, and she once again made sure that she was on top when they hit.
"Amateurs," she muttered, grabbing the rope coiled at the mare's waist. A quick lasso hauled the balloon down, then she bound the pegasus into the nets under the gondola, dragged the other two unconscious bodies from inside, and tied them up the same way. Some toothwork tore the sandbags, and she stood watching the balloon drift up and away till it vanished in the pre-dawn darkness.
Inside, Harvest's little voice wondered if the three were going to be all right.
Carrot barked a laugh. "Are any of us?" Turning, she headed back inside, and while she closed the door, she didn't bother locking it.
When it came to newspapers, Harvest subscribed to the Canterlot Evening Standard despite the misleading name: the paper went on sale every day at lunchtime in the capital. Still, by the time the train brought the copies all the way out here to Ponyville and Ink Slinger tossed one onto her front walk, Harvest had usually already had her tea and was getting ready to start supper. So it was an evening paper for her.
Nowhere, however, did today's edition mention last night's attackers or their balloon being found, but Harvest chose not to feel guilty about that. The earth pony had called her by name, after all, and since the only connection between her and the package had been her signature at the bottom of the receipt, they must've had access to the post office's records. That, their equipment, and their training, then, could only mean one thing, really.
They'd come from the Agency. Just not her branch of it...
All very distressing, though she couldn't help smiling a bit at Carrot's chuckles inside her. At least a part of her would enjoy the little trip downtown she would need to make later.
At the bottom of the paper's third page, though, sat the actual news Harvest had been looking for: a report of a warehouse explosion in Trottingham. The story didn't have many details, Harvest was glad to see, but Carrot still ground their collective teeth so hard that Harvest felt the need to employ a few chocolate-covered hazelnuts in an attempt to save her enamel. Carrot could get terribly jealous when reading about other ponies' mayhem.
The sound of the front gate opening perked her ears, and Harvest glanced out the window to see an earth pony couple coming up the front walk. The delight that sparked through her drowned Carrot's muttered curses, and she stepped out onto the front porch in the late afternoon sunlight with a smile on her snout. "Tender! Earnest! Welcome back! Did you have a wonderful time?"
Both the Hugs returned Harvest's smile, but the way their eyes kept darting sideways forced Harvest to stifle Carrot's snort.
"We did," Tender said, a little blush pinkening her dun-colored cheeks, and Harvest awarded her some extra points. She sounded very much like a pony who'd actually had a wonderful time somewhere recently.
Harvest nodded. Tender was definitely the better of the two when it came to this nicer part of the job. "Won't you come in?" Harvest asked, and since she truly meant it, she didn't have to fake any of her enthusiasm. "I'd love to hear all about whatever you'd like to tell me!"
Earnest shuffled his light-blue hooves. "We don't want to keep you from your supper, Harvest..."
"That's hours away," Harvest answered, aiming a tiny prod at Carrot to show her how this sort of thing could be done without even the slightest bit of meanness. "Still, I understand. You've just returned, after all, and must be tired. You can tell me all about the trip tomorrow or the next day: whenever you're feeling up to it." The little prod she got back from Carrot made Harvest add an extra layer of sincerity to her words.
"It's just—" Earnest did some more hoof shuffling. "We, uhh..."
Tender's mouth tightened, and Harvest sadly subtracted the extra points she'd just awarded the mare. "We forgot about the box, all right?" Tender said quietly, her voice rougher. "We admit it. Is that what you want?"
"Me?" Harvest's shock and confusion, she knew, would've sounded entirely genuine had anypony been passing along the street at that moment. "Why would I want anything other than to hear about the wonderful trip from which my new neighbors have just returned?"
Carrot's grudging admiration for her use of the phrase 'from which' warmed Harvest's kind and gentle heart as did the honest embarrassment on Earnest's face. "We screwed up," he said quietly. "We screwed up bad. We'll take whatever punishment you deem appropriate, ma'am, but—"
"Whatever punishment?" Harvest lowered her own voice, let the slightest bit of Carrot's growl come into it. "Did you actually just say that to me?"
Both the Hugs went completely pale, and it took some effort for Harvest to keep Carrot from fully bursting out right then and there to haul the two indoors for some of what Harvest would only let herself think of as 'corrective physical therapy.'
Earnest swallowed. "If that's what you deem appropriate, ma'am." And the real salty stink of his fear told Harvest everything she needed to know.
"Oh, you two!" Harvest giggled, stepped forward, and touched a hoof gently to each of their snouts in turn. "When you're conducting multiple operations at once, it's vitally important to remember the little things. Fill out one 'stop mail' form, and you've got the protective power of Equestria's postal system working to keep your packages safe. Because you and I won't always be neighbors, you know." Turning, she grabbed the tablecloth in her teeth and pulled it away to reveal the crate underneath.
The wave of relief that washed over her from the Hugs was more than a scent. It was as if she could feel their tensed muscles relaxing. "Thank Celestia," Earnest more breathed than said.
"No," Tender said, and Harvest turned back to see the mare looking at her with her emerald eyes wide. "Thank you, ma'am."
Harvest giggled again. "You two are maybe the best agents I've ever mentored," she said, and even Carrot didn't grumble at that. "So mark this down as another lesson learned and tell me you'll join me for lunch tomorrow." She clapped her hooves together. "I can't wait to hear what fun you had on your trip!"
Earnest had already wrestled the crate up onto his back. "Wouldn't miss it for the world," he said.
All of Tender's bubbliness had returned. "It's definitely a date!" She spun for the front walk. "Oh! Lemme get the gate, honey!"
As they headed down the sidewalk for their own gate, Harvest saw exactly what she expected to see: two nice young newlyweds. It was what she'd trained them to be, after all.
What Carrot had trained them to be, of course, was another matter entirely, and one that Harvest didn't much like thinking about. Sometimes, though, well, if Princess Celestia couldn't avoid banishing her own sister to the moon for a thousand years, what hope did any other pony have of life being fair?
Watching the Hugs till they'd made their way into their house, Harvest sighed, got her saddlebags from the closet, and headed down the front walk to the street. She still had to deal with the source of last night's attack, after all.
With evening rapidly approaching, the activity in the center of town was well on its way to wrapping up. Harvest said hello to Applejack and Junebug and a number of others, but she kept things short, just exchanging a few words before insisting, "I don't want to keep you from getting home for supper, so I'll talk to you later."
As she'd hoped, the time of day meant the candy store was empty of customers. And with it being Monday, Lyra would be away giving her regular music lessons for at least another half an hour. Which meant—
The bell above the door tinkled as Harvest pushed her way in, and Bon-Bon looked up from the counter beside the display cases. Harvest smiled, of course, and Bon-Bon smiled back. "Golden Harvest!" Bon-Bon exclaimed. "Welcome! How wonderful to see you!"
"Thank you, Bon-Bon." And because Harvest was the one visiting, agency etiquette required that she ask first. "And how is she?"
The slightest bit of a twitch jostled Bon-Bon's left cheek, but her smile didn't waver. "Honestly? Sweetie Drops wants nothing more than to burst out of me right now and paint this whole room with your blood." She cocked her head. "And how is she?"
Harvest didn't even have to consult her inner self. "Carrot would like very much to hop up onto your counters and dance in such a way that her hindquarters would be constantly pointed toward you while she crowed and defecated everywhere."
Bon-Bon nodded. "And since that's not happening, shall I assume that there's something else I can do for you?"
Dropping her smile, Harvest once again let just the slightest touch of Carrot come into her voice. "You can leave my students alone till they properly graduate."
"Students?" Bon-Bon's smile dissolved as well. "Do you know what the Hugs did two days ago in Trottingham? Do you? Or do you not really pay that much attention, 'teacher?'" She made little air quotes with her hooves when she said that last word.
Air quotes were high on Carrot's list of pet peeves, but Harvest kept her corralled. "Tender and Earnest are preparing their thesis for my appraisal, and as I'm sure you recall from our days together in Princess Celestia's—"
"No." And Harvest could clearly hear Drops's clenched tones behind Bon-Bon's words. "You don't say her name. Not after you betrayed everything—"
"I?" It was taking an increasing amount of effort for Harvest to hold Carrot Top at bay. "Refresh my memory, Bon-Bon: which of us was it exactly who allowed the bugbear to—?"
The shriek Sweetie Drops gave then was typical of her: Harvest dodged easily to the side as the mare who was no longer Bon-Bon leaped the counter, the knives strapped to the fetlocks slashing wildly. "Oh, now, really." Harvest barely had to let Carrot loose at all to strip the knives away and give Drops a roundhouse kick that crashed her face first into the wall. "One of the reasons you're not still training agents is that tell-tale scream of yours. When you mean to attack, you know, it's best just to attack."
Carrot wanted to kick Drops ten or twelve more times, but the way the mare had slumped after impacting the wall told Harvest that Drops wasn't in control over there anymore. "Get out," Bon-Bon muttered thickly, and Harvest didn't need Carrot's heightened senses to smell the blood in the air.
Sighing, Harvest unslung her saddlebags and dug out some gauze pads. "I'm sorry," she said, tossing the gauze in Bon-Bon's direction. "It was very rude of me to come storming in here the way I did. I allowed my emotions to overwhelm me once I realized the goons you sent to my house last night weren't after me, and even seeing my students arrive home safely an hour ago wasn't enough to mitigate my venomous rage."
Bon-Bon had snatched the gauze out of the air and was now holding the whole wad to her nose, red seeping across the white surface. "You smug, self-righteous, horse-faced bucket of—"
Harvest let Carrot growl deep in their collective throat, and Bon-Bon's words cut off, her ears pulling tight against her head. "The antipathy between us," Harvest went on, "is between us. And while we work for different branches of the Agency, we both still follow Their Highnesses' regulations, regulations that exempt trainees from—"
"From any responsibility?" Bon-Bon's eyes flickered with a fiery light, Sweetie Drops right there at the surface. "From taking sensible precautions? From showing the smallest amount of restraint when confronting a problem as big as griffon slave traders?"
"Their actions," Harvest said, purposefully focusing her gaze directly on Bon-Bon's so both she and Drops could see how well Harvest and Carrot were integrated, "will be reviewed in course by me, Princess Luna, and Princess Celestia. If any of us find those actions to be excessive, inappropriate, or unfounded, well, that will affect my students' final grade, now, won't it?"
Bon-Bon sat up straighter against the wall. "My agents had been watching that warehouse for months, waiting for the right time to move in!"
Stooping down, Harvest managed to keep Carrot from raising their voice above a hissing whisper. "While ponies were torn from their families, bought and sold, suffered and died!" As much as Carrot wanted to smack Bon-Bon's probably broken snout, Harvest instead redirected the hoof into tapping her own chest. "We have a responsibility to the ponies of Equestria, Bon-Bon—the normal ponies, I mean—and if your agents can't handle it, mine'll always be happy to step in!"
Most of the fire in Bon-Bon's eyes had guttered out, but "baleful" was still the only word Harvest could think of to describe her expression.
It just made Harvest sigh. "You and I, Bon-Bon, we're privileged. With Sweetie Drops in you and Carrot Top in me, we could've ended up monsters more horrible than any manticore or chimera." She leaned even closer, Carrot as always alert for any twitch than might mean an incoming attack. "The Agency has given us Psychos the training we need not to become those monsters, but it's our duty every hour of every day and night to use that training to watch ourselves so that we conduct our business with wisdom and restraint."
Little bloody bubbles popped when Bon-Bon snorted. "Get out," she said again, but she moved carefully when she stood, Harvest stepping back without feeling a single twinge of alarm from Carrot. "And don't let me catch your agents meddling in my affairs again." A flick of her hoof tossed the red-stained gauze to the other side of the candy-filled display counter.
Harvest shrugged. "File a complaint with the front office, then." But dark thoughts from Carrot made Harvest cock her head. "Unless, of course, there were aspects of your operation that you didn't want the princesses to look too closely at. It makes a pony wonder if you're mostly upset because the actions of my agents will shine lights in places you'd prefer to remain shadowy..."
The salty stink of fear that wafted out into the silence of the candy store lobby was almost enough for Harvest to let Carrot loose. But instead, she just said, "Oh, Bon-Bon..."
"It's not like that!" Bon-Bon's eyes had gone so wide, they had a rim of white around them. "I didn't—! We weren't—! They never—!"
It was Carrot who turned away in disgust with a growled, "Shut up."
Harvest recovered quickly, though, and added, "My conclusions will be a part of the report I'll be submitting along with my students' thesis. I suggest you prepare some sort of a defense."
On the walk home, Carrot kept her eyes and ears perked, hoping against hope that Drops would come barreling out of the evening darkness and let them finish this thing with teeth and blood and flying hooves, snapping bones and smashing skulls.
That didn't happen, though. It hardly ever did.
Still, Harvest's distracted inner mumbling let Carrot do something she hadn't done in a long, long time: take a nice little evening walk through Ponyville.
And yes, the thought that Drops might've been working with those slave traders made her want to kill and kill and kill, but, well, if she was being honest, just about everything made her want to kill and kill and kill.
She didn't, though. She hardly ever did. Harvest wouldn't like it. And having Harvest in her head, she knew, was the best possible outcome for the pile of stinking manure that could've been her life.
Not like Drops, that idiot. Carrot almost turned around, almost set off at a gallop back to the candy shop. She'd known it the instant she'd first caught Drops's scent back at the Psycho Academy, back before Bon-Bon or Harvest had even existed: she and Drops were destined someday to stomp on each other till one of them didn't get up. Most of the other Psychos the Agency took in to run its various branches had a fairly balanced relationship with their sensible sides, but from the very beginning, Drops had been nothing but bad news.
Still, Carrot kept strolling toward home. She could wait for Harvest to do all the proper paperwork—get the 't's dotted and the 'i's crossed, so to speak—before she went to work pulling Drops's various internal organs out.
Like she always taught her students, happy little surface personalities were vital equipment for any Agent, even those who weren't full-fledged Psychos like her. After all, most ponies only had happy little surface personalities, so they needed neighbors like the ones Carrot trained to handle the less-happy parts of life.
Harvest was stirring now, recovered from her shock, rising to take her place as the lid that bottled Carrot in. Puckering their lips, then, Carrot whistled a little tune, enjoying the sensation of controlling the cool, dark air for a moment before casting off and sinking back into the depths.
"Yes," Harvest said, Carrot settling inside her as warm and solid as a lump of undigested oatmeal. "It really is a nice night, isn't it?"
