It was about an hour later when Newman walked back in, flanked by Stockman.

"Good news! Princess Twilight has resolved the matter with the Heart of the Forest, and the forest is retreating. The crisis has passed!"

Everyone in the auditorium cheered.

Newman crossed her arms and smirked. "And now you can all assist in cleanup and repair to the school."

Just about every student let out a distressed groan.

"No groaning or complaining," Newman said as she started walking in. "I want you to form into groups of three. Once everyone has gotten into your groups, you are to go out and start surveying the main building for damage. Once I have a full account of what damage has been done here, we will do the same with the dorm buildings."

"I am not a common laborer!" Gilt Leaf protested.

Newman looked at him. "But you are a master of a craft—a specialized laborer. I'm assuming that some of the detailed work on some of the school's paneling may have been damaged. I would be shocked if it were not. It is a much bigger job that needs expert care that I cannot entrust to the students. The school will need to hire someone to take care of it. I presumed your company might be interested in the contract to do so, given how profitable it will be, and you are already here to claim dibs on it. Not to mention the fact you need to recover money after your accountant stole . . . excuse me . . . you haven't confirmed yet . . . allegedly stole from you, but I suppose we could hire someone else . . . say . . . Pleated Yolk."

"Charlotte, don't you have some sort of word for this . . . overkill . . . I believe it was," Inkwell said with exasperation.

"I am simply saying that he can choose to let us go to his competitor instead. I understand he may dislike me too much to agree to anything I suggest. We've already established how such things guide his decisions," Newman said innocently.

Inkwell sighed. "Mister Gilt, I apologize. My colleague's primary tactic when faced with opposition is to incite. As a successful businesspony, you must recognize this as her negotiating tactic—paired with her frighteningly extensive knowledge of others and their dealings. The school would deeply appreciate your assistance, but you are free to do as you choose. If you do choose to help us, I will make sure it isn't Professor Newman who negotiates the terms with you. I assure you, I will speak to Headmaster about it and ensure it."

Gilt Leaf glanced at Newman, and I noticed a slight flinch at her gaze, before looking back at Inkwell.

"Well, of course I will assist. I simply wanted to remind everypony that I have specialized skills, no more. My wife and colt will join me in helping survey the damage," Gilt Leaf replied haughtily.

Inkwell smiled and nodded. "No one will fault you for wishing your skills to be utilized fully. I don't expect repairs to be done today, but you can get a good survey of the damage to the embossing and give us a proper financial estimate for how much it will cost us to have you repair it, along with a timeframe. I will present it to Headmaster when he returns."

Gilt Leaf gave a small bow. "Of course, Professor Inkwell." He then gathered up his family and headed towards the door, making sure to give Newman a lot of space as they passed.

Inkwell turned her attention to us. "I want Turnip Jones and Bright Pear to remain with me. I expect that somepony will come to check on you soon. Hannah Moonbow and Summer Blaze, please join your parents in helping survey the damage. Rocky Road, you stay with me as well; I would expect somepony will come to check on you as well. Lunar Light . . . um . . . I hadn't heard if you were getting visitors."

Lunar looked away. "No, no one is coming."

"Then you are with me, Mister Light," Newman instructed. "I prefer to keep you close by so I don't lose track of you. I am going to gather some of the other strays. Come along, you as well, Mèng."

Stockman gave an irritated flap of his wings. "Can you stop saying my name? You're going to get the students doing it."

"I'm not even saying your name. Have you heard me say 'Hǎo Mèng' even once? I'm leaving out half the name and mispronouncing the other half," Newman said defensively.

Stockman looked her in the eyes. "How about I try addressing you by another name? After all, as a spymaster, you've got a lot of them. Some of them, I'm sure, some people will be quite fascinated to hear."

Newman grunted. "Fine, you win. I just won't call you anything."

Stockman scowled.

She looked at him. "Oh, don't give me that look. I've been in service of the family for longer than you've been alive. I may not have witnessed your birth, but I was there when you were being potty-trained. No one here knows you as well as I."

"Why do you always have to be this way?" Stockman said in frustration. "I'm not a little colt; treat me like an adult."

She pointed at nothing in particular in the distance. "You had your chance to go out and make your own life—you still do. If you insist on keeping so close, you can expect me to behave likewise. I never asked you to hang around so closely. Your social skills are worse than mine. You should be out socializing, maybe trying to find romance. You're a healthy young stallion. You've got the exotic allure of being from Earth. Mares should be throwing themselves at your hooves. You should be living a happy life with a family of your own, not worrying about me.”

"You don't push him away!" Stockman fired back.

Newman blinked, and her eyes very briefly drifted to us before locking back on Stockman. "That's an entirely different situation, and you know it. It's also one we aren't going to discuss here. So help me, if you decide to push this conversation here, I will see you fired from your job and find some way of confining you to Mountain Shade."

Stockman sneered. "Wow, way to respect my independence. That's a bluff. I don't think you could convince any princess to do that, and I don't think you would even do it if you had the power to convince them. Still, I'll be quiet, but we're having a long conversation later."

"Charlotte . . . you need to be nicer to him. I know you're stressed about . . ." Inkwell said quietly. "But you can't treat him like that. You can't just keep driving everypony that cares about you away."

Stockman shook his head. "Don't waste your breath trying to reason with her. She'll do the same thing to you eventually. She always does. She's too scared. All you can do is leave or choose to not let her get away with it. I'm not letting her get away with it. I'm too stubborn. I know her harsh words are hollow, and I know she isn't going to run from this school. She can't get rid of me. If she keeps trying, I'll take the matter up with Princess Luna."

"We're done discussing this matter," Newman said harshly. "Change of plans. You will escort the majority of the strays on a survey of the damage. I think I'll just keep Mister Light with me—I don't trust him not to try to slip away unnoticed in a group setting. Raven can keep Mister Jones, Mister Pear, and Mister Road with her."

Stockman looked around. "Gather up the strays, fine. I can do that. I'll see you later tonight." He then walked off.

Newman looked at Inkwell. "Stress to them they are not to go digging into this."

Inkwell sighed and stared downward. "I will, but I'm unsure how successful I will be. If you had just treated him nicer and not tried to drive him away, you wouldn't have to worry about this at all. You're smart, but you've sabotaged yourself this time. You let your emotions get the better of you. Be glad that most of this auditorium wasn't paying us any mind. Luckily, these foals already know about your former position as a spymaster and can assume that you got involved with a lot of dangerous things in the past that you don't want coming back to haunt you or those around you, so there's not much to explain. That you earned numerous enemies, too many to list, who would do you harm is no surprise, as is the idea you've used a number of aliases yourself that could be damaging if the wrong ponies heard them being used."

Newman grunted. "Thank you, Raven." She looked at Lunar. "Come along, Mister Light. Let's go check for damage.”

"Guess we should get going too," Hannah said, getting up to go join her parents.

"Yeah," Summer said, getting up and heading towards her parents.

As Newman and Stockman left the immediate area, Inkwell bent down to whisper to us. "I'm going to head you all off from digging by directly telling you what's going on. Stockman's adopted mother is Professor Newman's old employer. Stockman hangs around because he hopes to see his adopted mother by being near Professor Newman. Professor Newman has been around Stockman for decades, so there is a personal connection between them that goes beyond business. Stockman and his siblings are all refugees from China who are the biological foals of a very important pony. China thinks it can use them as leverage against this pony if they capture them. China also hates Professor Newman's old employer and wants her dead—for entirely unrelated reasons. Since China is likely watching Professor Newman, given her decades of service to that family, she prefers to keep the members of that family away from her, practically driving them away with her abrasive attitude. You now know the important details, so your curiosity should be sated. It's a tragic situation, and you shouldn't get entangled in it."

Inkwell seemed to be special-delivering us all the information and tying it up in a neat little bow, but there was a huge missing element. Why was Newman tied to the school? If she was always running, why had she hunkered down at a school that had more contact with the Chinese, thanks to magic games, than almost any other institution in Equestria? She didn't even bother to hide her identity. She put herself on display and basically drew the target on herself.

I tried to look through a chess lens. She puts a high-value piece out in a spot in what seems a very vulnerable position. The only reason to do that is if you want your opponent to move to take it, or you want your opponent to think you want them to take it. Ultimately, the fact that it is there is going to disrupt your opponent's game plan. There's this obvious trap sitting there, but at the same time it is such a valuable piece to remove from the board. Newman was a master strategist; she wouldn't expose a valuable piece like that for no reason, and her opponents would know that. If there's no obvious danger for striking at the piece, it leads to her opponents having to spend a lot of time figuring out the gambit she's playing. Of course, this would be much harder than chess, since her opponents wouldn't know the positions of all her other pieces or even the identities of them all—only know that there is a very obvious looking trap.

So . . . do they believe she is just using herself as a distraction? If that's the case, the school is not what they should be looking at. At the same time, they could anticipate that she expects them to view her gambit as a distraction meant to draw eyes to the school and look elsewhere as a result, but knowing this is her plan could force them to refocus on the school since she is trying to . . . this was way too complicated. It all depended on how far back and forth the parties involved anticipated the other expecting the other to figure out, and always one step forward for good measure. It was an endless, inescapable cycle.

In the end, I believed the strategy was to just create a gridlock. She's buying time. Time for what? If the Chinese realized the same thing, did they know what she was buying time for? If they didn't, what was their counteraction to this? The best answer seemed to be to bite the bullet and do something that breaks the gridlock—remove her from the board, even if it risked triggering a trap. So, there probably was a trap, and Newman expected it to get triggered, and she expected it to be triggered quickly.

"Ya seem deep in thought there, Turnip. Ah can practically see the steam comin' off yer ears. What ya thinkin' 'bout?" Bright asked.

"Chess," I answered.

Author's Note

There's a little play going on with how dhe pronounce his name snd how it is supposed to be pronounced for anyone interested in wordplay.