The New Recruit

The only responsibility Ace had over the next three days was to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole academy. On Tuesday, the second-year students were performing, which he watched to make sure his first acquaintances and training buddies were doing well. Gent wasn't there, which Ace would later find out was because of a funeral service he was attending. He'd be taking the tests on Friday, after his return.

On Wednesday, the third-year class would go, and Ace didn't have a reason to watch them. There was an inherent reason why he should, that being the fact that they had more experience, but the same was true of all classes, and to a much higher degree on the fourth-year students on Thursday. These ponies were experts, with Spitfire picking apart tiny details of their performance, which Ace was unable to notice. It really put into perspective for him how far he would need to go. But if he even made it to year four, he'd probably be used to it by then.

Friday was a true day of rest for everypony that wasn't part of the infrastructure. The cooks, cleaners, masseurs, mail carriers and so on had to keep working, but were given free reign to move around once that was done. Ace was glad he'd done all of his relaxation early, because the hot tub was over capacity, and several rules were being broken. Not to mention the various parties in the dorms.

He'd been kicked out of his dorm for the day by Blitz. Peregrine had gone home for the day, wanting to spend time with his family for the first time in two months. Ace locked his hooflocker, so he knew his stuff was safe, then walked about the school, just sort of passing the time.

Early in the afternoon, he ran into Soarin. "Can't decide what party you want to attend?" he asked, eating what looked to be a whole apple pie.

"I wasn't invited to any," answered Ace. "There's one going on in my room, but I was asked to leave. I'm just wandering."

"Have you thought of maybe just... showing up to one?"

Ace shook his head. "My classmates are... well, for the most part, they think I'm cheating."

"I noticed. In fact, there's somepony here to see you about that. Somepony from a credible news source."

Ace froze and looked up at Soarin with his jaw hanging open. "Why didn't you start with that?"

"I told them that most students would be partying, and Spitfire told her she would have to wait until the late tests were done. There's no rush."

Ace shook his head. "Where? Fixing this will give me something to do today."

Soarin waved his hoof. "We need to wait for the captain. Come on, let's go check the field."

When Spitfire was done, Strawberry Lane and Gentle Giant were exhausted, being one of four teams that had to do every test right after lunch. She'd had a few choice words for them, but had still passed them, and was now allowing them to attend their wild parties.

"Did you seriously drag him out of his party and have him bake you a whole pie?" she asked, scowling at Soarin.

"Don't be ridiculous," he snorted back. "I grabbed the pie first and then found him. You know me better than that..."

Spitfire turned to Ace, and he could see the hellfire burning behind her sunglasses. "I was sitting in the dining hall," he answered. "Soarin took the pie from the kitchen, ma'am."

"See?" smiled Soarin. "He even volunteered to come deal with this press issue."

Spitfire leaned back and folded her hooves. "And how did he know about it? Did he osmose that information out of thin air? Read your mind?"

"I told him," answered Soarin. "He decided to come and deal with it, rather than complain."

Spitfire rolled her eyes. "I was hoping to take a break, but I guess not."

Ace lowered his head. Now he felt guilty about wanting to do this right away. "If you need a break, we can do this later..."

"Nope. Here now, let's be done with this. Come on."

As she led the way back to her office, Soarin leaned over and whispered, "It's okay. She's not going to be mad tomorrow. She'll probably apologise at breakfast, too."

Ace swallowed hard. If she wasn't going to be mad tomorrow, that meant she was still going to be mad for the rest of the day.

As they walked through the administration building's front office, Spitfire pointed at a mare that was sitting and waiting. "You! My office, now!"

The mare seemed to not take her tone into account, calmly standing up and grabbing her bag. It seemed as though Ace was the only one hearing that Spitfire was actually mad.

They all walked in, and Spitfire barked at them all to "Sit." Soarin distributed chairs, even going so far as to put a hoof on Ace's shoulder.

Spitfire took a few deep breaths and a drink of water before her mood calmed. "This is Ace."

"Oh, I recognised him from the pictures," nodded the mare, extending her hoof.

"Ace, this is Headline Flair, one of the main investigative reporters of the Cloudsdale Mirror. She's one of the few journalists we don't tend to hide things from. She comes around from time to time to see if there's anything noteworthy going on here at the academy, and she was the one who typed up that article a few weeks back about your injury."

"Call me Flair."

"Ace," nodded Ace, shaking her hoof tentatively.

Spitfire leaned forward. "So, she's here because of the rumours going around. You know the ones."

"The same ones as last time," Flair noted. "I'd have let it lie, but for the fact that all of the reports are new, and for the pictures."

Spitfire's scowl tightened. "You are aware that you can't print those, right?"

"I can if I meet certain requirements, first," smirked Flair. "As of now, though, you're right. These are impermissible."

"Why?" asked Ace.

"Why what?"

"Why are they impermissible?"

Flair pulled out the letters she had received. "Because all of these envelopes are anonymous," she answered. "Not a single one filled out their name. They cannot be used because they can't be verified. The chain of custody goes backwards from me to my mail carrier and no further can it be traced. And since we cannot verify the information shown as being accurate, we legally have to treat these as doctored photos."

"Especially this one," noted Soarin, picking one up. It was especially steamy. "You can see the tape they used to make it..."