“So, a little birdie told me that you let an LCPD sergeant know where he could stick it,” Daisy said with a broad grin as she brought out the salad that I’d asked her for. While I’d been fully expecting the little yellow earth pony to remark on what I’d said to rebuke Dandy in the van, I hadn’t expected her to comment on my performance during the operation at city hall. The mare used her talisman to drop off my salad and then made a loud, exaggerated, sniffling sound as she wiped a hoof across her eyes. “My little filly’s all grown up!”

“Ha ha,” I replied, snatching up the fork with my own arcanetic-supplied magic. I hesitated briefly before taking my first bite, eying the earth pony. “...Was that purely a figure of speech, or did either Gerry or Harriet actually tell you about it?”

The other mare blinked, then she sniggered. “Well, looks like somepony had some mild racism installed along with their new spine!” Her laughter only ratcheted up further in intensity when she saw me blanch at her remark. “I’m kidding!” She assured me, poking her tongue out from between her lips. “And, to answer your question: while I did just mean that as a figure of speech, I did hear about it from Harriet, yes.

“So it looks like I’m subconsciously bigoted too!”

“Gee, I feel so much better…” I deadpanned.

Somehow, Daisy’s grin got even broader. “Wow, I am loving this new ‘Sassy-Pel’! Tomorrow I’m taking you out and we’re going to get you a new look to match.”

I eyed the mare warily before looking myself up and down. That was when I realized that I was still wearing the police uniform that we’d been using as disguises to get past the barricades around city hall. Still, I knew that Daisy would have said the same thing even if I’d been wearing my usual blue vest, and while I wouldn’t profess to be any sort of trendsetter when it came to fashion, I hardly thought that there was anything that needed to be done to my ‘look’ which would ‘match me better’.

“What’s wrong with how I dress?”

Appearing to pick up on the fact that she’d struck something of a tender nerve, the other mare’s expression softened a little and the earth pony took a seat on a nearby couch. “Oh, honey, I’m not saying that because I don’t like how you dress,” she assured me, “but I do believe that the right outfit can help to inspire us to be the pony we want to be.” She paused, eyeing me with a little knowing smile. “Or, in some cases, the pony we wish we could be.

“Sometimes it can even give us that little nudge into becoming that pony we were scared of being, for whatever reason.”

I regarded Daisy with a mildly wary expression, not entirely what it was that she was talking about, but also unable to keep myself from imagining the sort of wardrobe choices she had in mind for me, given the sorts of outfits that I’d seen her wear in the past. It didn’t escape me either that those ‘joy-toy’ getups we’d dressed in to rescue the zebra had come directly from Daisy’s personal closet, and not some sort of communal ‘mission costume arsenal’, or whatever. The new me might be a little bit less timid, but I wasn’t feeling quite that confident!

The little yellow earth pony was sniggering again. “Oh, don’t look at me like that; I’m not getting all philosophical or anything. I’m just saying that pairing the right outfit with the right mare can help to bring out the real her…and not just the front that she’s been putting up to try and keep herself safe.” I balked, and the other mare’s smile waned slightly. “Like, say, dying her mane because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself?”

I would have denied the insinuation, had I not been so caught off guard by the question that I’d immediately reached for my mane with a conscientious hoof. It was a ridiculously useless gesture, of course. It wasn’t like my hoof would be able to determine if the color had gotten washed out since I’d last touched it up. Still, my ‘secret’ was quite plainly ‘out’, not that it appeared to have been much of one. I sank in my seat, glowering at the other mare. “So I dye my mane; so what? Lots of mares dye their manes. Gerry dyes his crest!”

“Yeah, but most of us do it to add more colors, not to hide the ones we already have,” Daisy pointed out with a toothy grin. “Like Gerry’s crest.”

That gentle look of sympathy chased away the yellow mare’s mirth once more. “I’m not going to ask you why you do it; that’s none of my business. But I will say this: if you’re doing it because you think this new color adds to who you are, and is expressing the ‘you’ that you want to be, then great! I personally don’t think that color is very flattering on you, but that’s just my opinion; so feel free to ignore it and tell me to go fuck myself,” Daisy quipped with a wink and a brief poke of her tongue between her lips. Then the seriousness returned. “However…if you’re doing it to hide or not draw attention to yourself…

“I think that’s really sad. And I’d want to help you not feel like you have to do that.”

Something chimed from the direction of the kitchen, drawing the earth pony’s attention. “Oh, looks like the panettone’s done!” The little earth pony flashed me another warm smile before leaving me to my meal.

I sat in the Green Room for a bit, mulling over her statement, all the while my hoof idly combed at the back of my mane. It had been a little concerning to me exactly how accurately Daisy had managed to identify the reason I’d started to dye my mane. It had been as a means of keeping myself just a little less noticeable in Grinder’s boosterherd. While I didn’t know whether or not it had been particularly effective, given how often I’d seemed to draw the crimson stallion’s ire anyway, it had helped to at least make me feel like I was less noticeable.

Grinder was dead now, of course. As was the rest of the boosterherd. I also didn’t feel any particular need to hide from any of the creatures here―Jenny notwithstanding. So, I supposed that there wasn’t any great reason why I needed to keep bleaching out the colors in my mane…

It was food for thought anyway. Speaking of ‘food’, my salad was getting less crisp by the minute.

I couldn’t say as to whether the mission at city hall had really given me any sort of permanent boost to my self-confidence or not, but it had certainly given me quite the appetite. The salad didn’t last very long once I finally got started on it. Once it was gone, I messaged Daisy about the empty bowl and decided that I might as well head on up to the loft and see what there was in the way of dye-removal products on hoof, or if I’d need to go out and pick something up. After that, maybe a shopping trip with Daisy might be fun!

Maybe this time we could even avoid the accosting and dismemberment…

“―on’t give me any of that fucking bullshit, Jen!”

I came to a stop just around the corner as I heard Gerry’s voice carrying down the stairs leading up into the loft. My gaze darted up and down the corridor, but I didn’t see any sign of any other creatures nearby. I clamped my lips shut and craned my head as I continued to listen in on the heated exchange.

“You knew that we wouldn’t be able to get a message out,” I heard the griffon snap, my own eyes widening in response to the accusation. “You knew! I’m not going to ask how you did, but I do want to know what you and Harriet were really doing in that security office. Because you sure as shit weren’t looking out for us!

“There were a dozen different ways you could have diverted that officer that came by,” the griffon continued on. “There was no reason to put Pel at risk like that! So what was it that you were doing down there that you were too busy to lend a hoof?”

I blinked in surprise. Actually…that was a good point. Harriet had warned me about the approaching LCPD sergeant, but only just a few seconds before he came into view. She and Jenny should have known he was coming way before that though, being in the building’s security office. To say nothing of their ability to redirect the officer to other locations, either by giving him new orders, or even by triggering some sort of low-level false alarm. So why had they let us come so close to getting discovered like that?

“What’s the big deal?” I heard the donkey counter. “The filly did fine. Turns out a little stress did her some good. Don’t mind what we were doing―”

“Oh no! Nonononono, we are not playing these ‘compartmentalized information’ games right now!” Gerry interrupted. “This isn’t Purrsia and you’re not leading one of His Majesty’s spec-ops teams! We’re your friends, Jen; not your subordinates.”

There was a short pause and I heard the griffon let out a heavy sigh. “Just what is it that you think you’re protecting us from by not giving us the full picture, huh? What, do you think that if we ever get caught traipsing around inside some corpo’s secure areas that they’re going to take it easy on the rest of us because we didn’t know why we were there?” He let out a derisive snort. “Maybe they’ll only dump half a mag into us instead of a full one?”

“I’m not trying to ‘protect’ any of you,” I only barely managed to hear the donkey respond, as she was talking at a much lower volume than the irate tiercel. “There are just…certain realities that I don’t think all of you are ready for.”

“Ha! Like what?” Gerry challenged. “Exactly what is it that we’re ‘not ready for’?” The skepticism was palpable, as was my own curiosity.

Jenny, however, didn’t appear to be inclined to obliged the griffon. “Maybe someday I’ll clue you in.” There was a pregnant pause shared between the pair. In my head, I could imagine them glaring balfully at one another, as though daring the other to escalate things. Then, “I set up the ops. I call the shots. If you don’t like it, there’s the door. You can walk away any time.”

“Damn it, Jen,” came the guitarist’s exasperated reply, “I don’t want to leave, I want to help! We all do; so fucking let us!”

Another brief pause. “If you really want to help, then you can rework the chord progression for the bridge in ‘Alicorn Princess’. It doesn’t have the right feel; it needs to be way more aggressive. It’s going to be the lead song on the next album, so it needs to really grab the listener’s attention or they’re not going to buy it.

“The label needs this one to do decent sales or they’re going to drop us.”

“You’re un-fucking-believeable, you know that?” Gerry admonished in a thoroughly deflated tone. He let out a frustrated sigh. “...Fine. ‘More Aggressive’, huh? I’ll toy around with it and see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Whatever,” was Gerry’s disgusted snort, followed quickly by the sound of paws padding their way heavily down the stairs.

I immediately stiffened as I realized that I risked being found out for eavesdropping. I glanced around in a panic and locked eyes on the nearest door. I bolted for it and tugged on the latch with my hooves, but it didn’t so much as budge. A muttered curse escaped under my breath as I looked around for somewhere else to hide…only to lock eyes from the purple-crested griffon as he rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

“...Hey!” I greeted, mustering up as much cheer as I could manage, while propping myself against the locked door in what I hoped looked appropriately nonchalant. “Fancy seeing you here!” I instantly felt my smile grow strained as I heard the words escape my mouth. I’d have given the remainder of my organic body parts for the ability to snatch them back out of the air and shove them back down my throat, with the ultimate goal of choking to death on them.

Why was I so bad at this?

Mercifully, Gerry appeared to decide that I was making a sarcastic joke and gave a little chuckle. It seemed that he'd managed to shed the ire that he'd been feeling just a few seconds ago, which I was glad to see. “Like you, I finally figured that I should take this crap off and put it away,” he said, gesturing first to the LCPD uniform that he was wearing and then indicating the door that I was leaning next to. It was only then that I realized that the room that I had been attempting to hide in just moments ago was actually the band’s armory.

I immediately seized upon the offered opportunity to look more competent and forward thinking than I actually was. “Yeah, I can’t wait to get out of this shit,” I insisted. The earlier conversation with Daisy still on my mind, I followed up the statement with, “not my preferred clothing style at all!”

“I definitely think you’ll look better with it off, yeah,” Gerry agreed as he stepped up to the armory’s door and proceeded to unlock it. Which I found to be timely, as it meant that the tiercel wasn’t looking in my direction when my face flushed a deep crimson in response to how he’d phrased that last remark. My head whipped towards the Green Room as I could have sworn that I’d heard a mostly-muffled sound that was remarkably similar to Daisy wheeze-laughing. I might have only imagined it though. Maybe.

“You coming?”

I jerked in surprise and looked away from the direction of where I might have heard the earth pony mare listening in on our exchange, flashing him my best genial smile as I suppressed any intrusive feelings related to undressing next to the griffon. There was absolutely no reason that getting out of these disguises had to be treated as anything other than mundane and professional.

“After you!”

Okay, that time I definitely heard a laugh coming from the other side of the Green Room’s door. I flashed a quick glare in its direction before following Gerry into the now open armory so that we could put away our uniforms. Thanks to my being self-conscious as a result of Daisy’s surreptitious reactions, the process involved me giving way too much thought to how it was best for me to be oriented in regards to the guitarist while we undressed. Facing him meant that I would be watching the―quite well toned―tiercel as he stripped down, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that I could do that without outright staring. Conversely, facing away and disrobing while he was nearby made me feel like I was getting ready to do…other things.

In the end, I’d managed to settle from standing parallel to the griffon and pointed looking anywhere else in the room that wasn’t him. It was like being back in the locker rooms at school all over again…

The silence wasn’t helping matters. It meant that I could hear nothing but the sound of clothing leaving bodies, and that was doing my imagination no favors. I elected to try my hoof at conversation and hope that this time I could keep my mind from diving headlong into the gutter again. “So…any idea what our next move is going to be? Since that whole ‘call Equestria’ thing turned out to be a bust?” I cast an aside glance at the griffon, hoping that I’d managed to make it sound like I hadn’t overheard his conversation with Jenny while still broaching approximately the same topic. I was curious to see if he’d reveal to me what he’d learned from the donkey.

Gerry sighed. “I don’t know what Jen has planned,” he admitted. This was a true enough statement, given what I’d managed to hear. I noted that it left out some key details though. “She keeps a lot close to the vest.”

“Does she not trust you or something?” I’d meant the question to sound more innocent than it seemed the griffon took it, because I saw his talons instantly flex while he was holding his uniform, managing to tear a small hole in the shirt. I hastily added, “I mean like: all of us. Does she think we’ll run to the cops or something?”

He let out a resigned sigh and shook his head, hanging up the damaged uniform and then turning to collect mine. “No, nothing like that. I think what Jen’s worried about most is that we’ll think whatever she’s got in mind is either not worth the risk, or just too ambitious.

“She tends to set high expectations for herself.”

I passed Gerry my uniform, casting a wry smile at him. “Higher expectations than infiltrating Aeriesaka Tower and having us just…walk right in the front door of city hall under the muzzles of the entire LCPD? Exactly how much more daring does she think she can get?!”

I’d hoped to earn another chuckle from the griffon by highlighting the absurdity at the idea that Jenny could hope to top our already extremely risky and ambitious missions. However, I felt my own smile begin to wilt beneath his decidedly unamused expression. The griffon shrugged before putting away my uniform next to his. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “and that’s what worries me.”

Silence dominated once more as I passed over my pistol using my arcanetic levitation for him to put back in the cabinet. The pair of us finished locking everything back up and then exited the armory. Gerry secured the door behind us. “I’m gonna go get some lunch. Do you want anything?”

“I actually just ate,” I replied, nodding my head back towards the Green Room. “Maybe next time?”

“Sounds good.” A smile had finally returned to the griffon’s face. He stepped past me on his way towards the building’s rear exit, giving me a little wave of his talons on his way out. “Catch you later, Pel!”

“Bye…” I watched the door close behind him.

My eyes darted once more towards the Green Room door, narrowing slightly as I considered whether or not Daisy was still listening in on my conversation with the tiercel and if I should confront her about it. My interactions with Gerry were awkward enough without me having to also be self-conscious about whether or not the earth pony mare was hovering around the corner ready to revel in my missteps. Ultimately though, I decided that there were other―more pressing―issues that were worth my attention.

Such as whether or not Jenny and Harriet really had knowingly placed me in harm’s way back outside the comms hub, and why they might have done it. I felt my lips pulling back in a tight line at the idea that I was being toyed around with just for shits and giggles. If the donkey didn’t want me hanging around here any more, all she had to do was tell me to fuck off and leave. She didn’t have to try and get me killed!

I strode up the stairs into the loft and looked around for any signs of the singer. It wasn’t hard to spot her, as she was presently laying on one of the lounges, sipping a beer clutched in her hoof as she looked over some sheet music. Her sapphire eyes glanced in my direction over the tops of the sunglasses she always seemed to be wearing, noting my arrival, before turning her attention back to the music she was reviewing.

I stood at the top of the stairs for several long seconds, chewing on my lip as I mustered up the courage to speak. There was no denying that the donkey intimidated me. Our first meeting, and the feel of the gun barrel she’d pressed against the side of my head, were still vividly clear in my head. As was the look of cold fury on her face as she’d slowly and deliberately gunned down Grinder. And while I might not believe that anything I said to her here now would actually prompt her to outright kill me, I was still fairly sure that there were plenty of other things that she could come up with to do to me that would make me regret getting on her ‘bad side’.

Still, I had to know where I stood with Jenny if I was going to stick around here any longer. Because if she was just going to exploit and toy with me like Grinder had…well, I didn’t need more of that in my life.

“...Is what Gerry said true? Did you and Harriet really put me in danger with that cop deliberately?”

Jenny didn’t reply at first. She just looked back at me past her sunglasses for another silent moment before looking away again. I saw her lip tug back in a slight smile, though it was hard to read exactly what it was that the donkey was finding amusing right now. Did she find it funny that I was daring to confront her like this at all? I could imagine Grinder cackling in the cruel way that he did if I’d questioned any of the orders he’d given me.

…Right before he reared back and smacked me across the muzzle for my insolence.

I steeled myself for any sort of similar violent response on the part of the donkey. However, much to my relief, she didn’t lunge at me. She didn’t even scream at me. If anything, her response was as calm and collected as I’d ever heard it; if not a response that I particularly cared to hear. “We sure did.”

I balked, shocked both by the revelation as well as her willingness to brazenly admit it to my face. “Why?”

“To see how you’d handle yourself,” Jenny replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “I wanted to see if you’d actually stand up to an LCPD cop when it mattered, or if you’d tuck your tail between your legs and roll over for him.”

“It was a test?” I said in a bewildered tone, my eyes wide. Jenny had put my life on the line to test me? I glared at the donkey. “What the fuck? I could have been killed!”

The donkey did not seem to be at all impressed by my righteous indignation and simply rolled her eyes dismissively at me. “We could all have been killed,” she retorted, still not sounding particularly concerned. “You breaking could have fucked the whole op. But you didn’t.”

“Why in the fuck would you gamble the whole mission on me?!” I demanded. I wasn’t even aware that the volume of my voice had risen, or that I was stomping closer to the jenny until I was only a few feet from her. By the time I was aware of it, I recognized that backing down would completely destroy any point I was trying to make. I was committed now, so I did everything I could to maintain my glare at the donkey. “I’m some dumb fucking filly you barely know off the street! How stupid do you have to be to risk the whole operation on whether or not I wet myself in front of an armed griffon twice my size!”

At least I managed to evoke a reaction out of Jenny this time. However, the fact that it was laughter both stoked my ire and undermined my confidence. I’d been doing my level best to intimidate her, but clearly that was not the effect I was having, much to my chagrin. “Depends,” she quipped, grinning at me, “how ‘stupid’ would you say somecreature was for thinking that they could take on Aeriesaka, or any other megacorp? Or to walk in the front door of city hall like we did in the first place?”

Now Jenny’s smile fell away, and in its place was one of her annoyed glowers that I’d come to associate with the donkey’s resting state. Much to my consternation, I recoiled and took a step back in response. “If I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t have brought you along in the first place. Gerry would have been able to stand outside a door just as well as you could have.”

“Wait…was this whole operation a test?”

This question earned me a derisive snort. “You’re not quite that special, kid,” she informed me. “There was a real purpose to the op. I just took advantage of an opportunity to test your mettle.”

I was frowning now. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t entirely appreciate being deceived like that/ On the other hoof, it wasn’t like I wasn’t aware that I was being trained in some way or other by the rest of the crew. I was being taught to shoot and fight, I was being introduced to their contacts and shown how they do business, Gerry was even teaching me to play in their band―though I highly doubted that I’d be joining Hussar on stage any time soon. So it shouldn’t have been too surprising that, sooner or later, I’d be expected to perform ‘for real’ out on operations while not being directly supervised.

Not that any of that made me feel any better about being deliberately set up…

Then something that Jenny had said finally penetrated, prompting me to cock my head in confusion. “...did you just imply that I was special at all?” I gave my question a slightly mocking tone, thinking that I’d caught the donkey inadvertently giving me a compliment. I fully expected to receive some sort of denial or rebuke from her. Instead, I found myself surprised once again by the jenny’s seriousness.

“Every creature is at least a little bit special,” she said in a somber tone. The look that she gave me showed me eyes filled with a lot more remorse than I’d have ever expected to see in the donkey. “The greatest crime ever committed against us was when we were tricked into believing that our worth to the world was directly tied to the number of digits in our bank accounts.

“Why wouldn’t you be special?”

“I…” Words failed me for a moment as I unexpectedly found the conversation turned on me in a way I hadn’t been prepared for. Never mind that it felt like a question with an entirely obvious answer to it. “I’m not smart, or talented, I don’t have any real skills.” I gestured broadly at my flank. “I don’t even have a cutie mark,” I reminded her lamely.

Jenny didn’t seem to be the least bit impressed by my arguments. “Nocreature is born a genius who knows how to do everything,” she pointed out. “And a lot of you ponies don’t get your marks until later in life these days. Considering they’re supposed to be tied to discovering some great lifelong ambition or whatever―and hardly any of us down here at the bottom get the chance to ever be ambitious―that’s hardly a surprise.”

She glared at me again and poked me in the chest with her arcanetic hoof. “So cut that sad-sack shit; it’s getting old. You’re making a difference. You matter. Someday creatures are going to depend on you―they’re going to look to you for what’s right. You can’t be coming down on yourself over maudlin bullshit.”

“Why would anycreature look to me for anything?”

“Because the world isn’t frozen in place,” Jenny said with a mildly frustrated huff. “Time moves on, the older generation dies, and the next one has to pick up the slack. I’m not going to be around forever. Somecreature will need to pick up where I leave off.

“Why shouldn’t it be you?” She rolled back over onto her back and picked up her beer and the sheet music again. “You know…someday.”

I remained where I was, staring at the donkey in mild confusion. In my mind, I replayed all of the instances where Jenny had seemed to take an unexpected interest in me. Like bringing me in on her meeting with the minotaur. I’d thought that she was just trying to get me familiar with how things worked in general with this group. Now, I wasn’t so certain…

“Now get out of here,” Jenny said, giving me a dismissive wave of her hoof before I could delve into any further questions on the matter. “I’ve got shit to do and I don’t need you distracting me. Go find Barkly. She’ll probably appreciate help repainting the van.”

For a brief moment, I considered refusing the command and pursuing answers to my questions. However, while I might not quite be the same timid little filly I had been a week ago, I couldn’t deny that the prospect of pissing off Jenny scared me more considerably more than back-talking an LCPD griffon. Perhaps my curiosity could wait to be sated. In fact, who was to say that I couldn’t get some of my questions answered by the diamond dog I was being dispatched to help?

“Sure thing, boss,” I elected to say instead and turned to leave, nearly bumping into Daisy on my way out of the loft. The little yellow earth pony was floating a tray behind her that was topped with either a small cake or an oversized muffin. It was honestly hard to tell. I presumed that, whatever it was, it was the thing that Daisy had been baking in the oven earlier.

“Oop! Careful there, girl!” The smaller mare cautioned me as she deftly sidestepped me and trotted past. “Here you go, boss! I followed the recipe as best I could, but fair warning: there are exactly zero fresh eggs in Light City. I subbed in some applesauce which should have done the trick and not thrown off the taste too much…” Daisy let the caveat hang as she set the tray down next to the donkey, who was once more putting down the music and her beer.

“It’s fine, DC,” Jenny assured the mare. I paused in the doorway just before leaving, my ear twitching at what had sounded like an almost whimsical tone coming from the usually quite abrasive singer. I spared a moment to glance back at the scene. It was then I noticed that it wasn’t just the donkey’s tone which had softened. Her facial features looked uncharacteristically distant as she spoke. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to even get this close.” A pause as she took a moment to inhale deeply over the tray’s contents, followed shortly by a contented sigh. “It smells just like I remember…”

That was about the moment that Jenny seemed to notice that the loft was not nearly as empty as it was supposed to be, and she glanced in my direction with the more severe look that I associated with her. “Don’t you have someplace to be?”

“Right; sorry!” I winced and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs.

It didn’t take me much time at all to locate Barkly and the van, as neither had moved very far from where it had been parked when we returned from city hall. As I’d been led to expect, the band’s bassist was currently repainting the van in an effort to cover up the LCPD color scheme and lettering which had allowed it to pass―at a glance―as a police vehicle. Curiously, while it was clear that the van wasn’t being restored to its original City Center Cleaners appearance, I did find that I recognized what the colors being used were typically associated with.

“...Redheart Medical?” I asked the nearby diamond dog.

“Si!” Barkly nodded as she continued to spray down the van with an undercoat of ‘hospital sanitized’ white that it was hard not to associate with a medical vehicle. “Don’t know what exactly we’re gonna do with it,” she admitted with a shrug of her shoulders. “Stealing drugs and such ain’t our kinda thing.”

“Maybe we’re going to try and sneak in somewhere?” I suggested. “I bet a lot of creatures would just waive through an ambulance. Even private security and such,” I pointed out.

“Quizás.” She paused her painting and took a step back, surveying the van with a skeptical expression. “I ain’t never seen no ‘ambulance’ look like this though,” she remarked.

I had to agree with the diamond dog there. However closely we managed to match the livery, there was no way that any creature who saw this van was going to mistake them for a bona fide emergency vehicle. Which begged the question: why were they bothering then? I filed the question away for later, since it was obvious that Barkly hadn’t been let in on the secret yet either. They’d all just have to trust that Jenny knew what she was doing again.

That last thought prompted a sour expression to cross my face as I recalled how Jenny had apparently kept most of us in the dark about her intention to ‘test’ my resolve during the last mission. Thinking back over everything I’d overheard, I recalled a few other points that had stood out as well. For a number of reasons, I hadn’t taken the opportunity to ask Gerry about it―chiefly because I hadn’t wanted to reveal I’d been listening to their conversation. However, Barkly offered a similar chance for me to get my answers, and I could frame my questions as innocuous as I wanted with her being none the wiser.

“...So how did Jenny gain and knack for this sort of thing?” I prompted, finally stepping over to lend a hoof with the painting. “I mean, I feel like all of this underground secret shit isn’t something you pick up singing in bars?”

The diamond dog chuckled. “You’d be surprised what you learn in a bar.” She flashed me a sly wink, but then elected to give me a more grounded answer. “Na, jefa got proper trained. His Majesty’s Ebon Knights.” At my confused expression, she elaborated. “Griffon army. Special operations soldiers. They do all the things that aren’t fit to report on respectable television, but still needed done, ya know?

“Assassinations, bombings, that sort of thing.”

I was staring wide-eyed at the bassist, waiting to catch her lips cracking into a wide grin as she revealed that she was having more fun at my expense. The grin never came. Instead, when Barkly finally noticed my staring, she gave me a solemn nod. “Oh, yeah. She was a big bad bitch back then. Doing all the king’s dirty work.

“Then, one day, an op go bad. She lost half her squad and her leg. They discharged her the day she was let out of the hospital.”

“Hold on, wait; I thought she lost her leg in an accident at some factory? That’s what Gerry said…” Was everycreature here lying to me?

Barkly rolled her eyes and nodded. “That’s the ‘official story’, yeah,” she explained. “It’s what Jenny tells fans. Adds to the whole ‘the system fucked me, so now I’m fucking the system’ vide, ya know?

“I mean, she did work at that processing plant, and there was an accident that killed a few creatures that made her decide to leave. But that wasn’t how she lost her leg.” Another shrug. “The label figured our audience wouldn’t want to listen to counter-culture music if they thought the lead singer used to crack skulls for ‘the establishment’, ¿entendes?”

“Yeah, I…I guess?” I replied in a slightly listless tone as I struggled to process this new information. A part of me was still waiting to find out this had just been some absurdly long drawn out joke on Barkly’s part, but I was pretty convinced that it wasn’t. Especially since it lined up with Gerry’s comment on Jenny ‘not being spec-ops anymore’ that I’d overheard from earlier.

“Does everycreature in the band know about this?”

Barkly shook her head. “Daisy don’t. Dandy neither. The rest of us do though. Harriet and I were in her squad back then.”

Once more I found myself struck―to a degree that was almost physical―by how forthcoming the diamond dog was being about all of this with me. If there were indeed long-time members of the crew who didn’t know this―apparent―secret about Jenny’s past, then why was Barkly being so candid right now? Why was I entitled to know this?

I asked her, and the answer I received shocked me into silence: “Jenny told us the other day ain’t no secrets around you. None. You ask; we answer.”

I spared a moment to digest the irony that Jenny herself was apparently still willing to keep quite a few secrets from me, regardless of whatever her alleged instructions for the rest of the band might have been. Then I thought back over my experiences with the rest of the group’s members, almost trying to see if I could find an example which would undercut Barkly’s assertion. I wasn’t sure why. I supposed that I mostly wanted to assure myself that I wasn’t being treated so brazenly different from the rest of them for whatever reason. I wasn’t coming up with anything though.

To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t been lied to, or had any question I asked go unanswered―except by Jenny, that is. I’d apparently been ‘tested’ by one or two of them over the past week―

A thought occurred to me which prompted me to narrow my eyes in annoyance. I glanced over at the diamond dog and decided that I was going to put her honesty to the test: “...Was Dandy really hitting on me this whole time; or was he just trying to see when I’d stop putting up with it?”

Barkly paused in her painting, looked over at me…and smiled broadly.

“...Mother fu―!”

Most of my explicative was being drowned out by the raucous laughter of the diamond dog, who was forced to drop her painting equipment in order to steady herself as she doubled-over from laughter. Meanwhile, I was stomping around in a furious huff like a filly in the midst of a tantrum―which probably wasn’t far off the mark, honestly. I wasn’t even entirely certain what I was pissed off at. I was just fairly pissed in general at being fucked around with.

No wonder all of that stallion’s slimy pick-up lines had seemed so hackneyed! They’d been intended to get under my hide! Although, now I was suddenly finding myself wondering whether or not I’d have had the same view of the stallion if he’d actually been trying to hit me up…

I cringed at the thought that the unicorn might actually be able to talk me into bed…and immediately felt a sense of relief at the realization that the thought repulsed me. I was probably safe. Hopefully.

After a few minutes, Barkly had recovered enough to be able to operate the sprayer again and the pair of us resumed painting the van. I didn’t ask her any particularly intrusive questions about either Jenny or the past of herself and Harriet with regards to their time in the Ebon Knights. Instead I kept things to Hussar and their music. Apparently it had started as some sort of ‘musical therapy’ or something that a counselor had suggested to deal with the mental trauma brought on by the years spent with the Knights. Eventually playing to relieve stress had evolved into playing to get out a message and they’d recruited the rest of the crew by drawing them in with that message.

Jenny really did believe in fighting against corporate greed and control. Not just because of the lethal factory accident she’d been a witness to either. It turned out that the operation that had gone sour and cost her a leg and most of her team, hadn’t strictly been in the interests of ‘protecting the nation and His Majesty’s subjects’. The donkey had learned later that the reason that they were in Purrsia to stage a coup…was because the new administration which had been elected wanted to renegotiate some trade deals with the Griffon Kingdom that would allow them to start collecting tariffs again. At the time―and presumably currently―only the Kingdom could levy import dues on trade with the abyssinians. The Purrsian government couldn’t collect anything.

However, it seemed that a number of corporations in the Kingdom didn’t want things to change, as it risked increasing the price of their goods in Purrsia, and thus cutting into their sales as the abyssinians moved to encourage domestic markets. So the executives of those corporations pressured the king to orchestrate a coup, which he did. While the assassination of the Purrsian’s head of state went off without a hitch, Jenny and her team were discovered, and not all of them made it out alive…or intact.

When Jenny finally learned that she hadn’t taken out some megalomaniac demagogue like she’d been led to believe, but instead some genuinely honest―by politician standards―cat trying to do right by their own country…she’d packed herself off to Light City as a way to leave her past behind.

That had been a sobering story to hear. It also explained why the donkey really seemed to have it in for organizations like Aeriesaka. This was quite personal for her. Not too unlike how it was for me, in a way…

My attention was drawn to a car pulling up to the back of the converted building. I’d initially felt myself tense up in anticipation when I caught sight of the armored limousine. However, when a batpony I recognized stepped out, I relaxed again. He took note of the pair of us and waved a leathery wing in greeting. I returned the gesture with my hoof and debated whether I should go over and speak with him, but before I could, Barkly regained my attention and put me back to work painting.

I obliged, but still kept some of my attention on Baton Rouge. If he was here, then that suggested that there was a pretty big mission in the works, right? Perhaps it even involved this van somehow?

A couple minutes later, I spied Jenny stepping out of the building and approaching the batpony. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but given the―surprisingly passionate―embrace the pair shared shortly afterward, I deduced this meeting was of a personal nature, rather than a professional one. A minute or so later, Jenny followed the batpony into the limousine and it left. I watched it leave with some curiosity. Perhaps they were going to work out details for an upcoming operation somewhere else? Back at The Glue Factory, maybe?

“Hey, chica!” Barkly called my attention back to the van. “Less staring, more painting!”

With that, my thoughts about the donkey and how she was going to spend the rest of her evening evaporated, supplanted by the need to transform our van.

Author's Note

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