Right in the Middle of Her Forehead

As soon as I heard that bright pink voice, smooth as a Canterlot lie and chipper as an axe among kindling wood, I knew that the quiet life I'd enjoyed for the past year was over.

"OK, Shiny!" she was calling just outside the shop's front door. "I'll see if they've got any of those chocolate peanut butter puffs Flurry likes so much and catch up with you!"

My brain froze, but my body kept moving: neck bending, teeth grabbing a little white box with Bon-bon's Bonbons printed in fancy gold script along the side, one hoof scooting six chocolate peanut butter puffs out of the display case and into the box.

Then she stepped through the doorway, a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one pretty, poofy, princessy package.

I'd seen her around town a few times—this was just before Twilight moved out of the castle here, so her brother, sister-in-law, and niece had been stopping by Ponyville regularly for quite a while—but I'd done everything I could to keep out of her sight. She was a princess, after all.

Don't get me wrong: Twilight becoming a princess and taking over the government in Canterlot was the best thing to happen in Equestria since the founders first named the place. Why? Because she's no more a princess than I am a candy maker. She can do the princess stuff—and do it with the best of 'em—but deep down, she's something else entirely.

This Cadance, though? I'd heard that she'd started out as a pegasus up north somewhere, but looking at her spun-sugar glow as she moved into the shop, I could tell. Even before her alicoronation, she'd been a princess through and through.

I didn't bother smiling or saying, "Welcome to Bon-bon's!" or asking, "Can I help you?" or any of that. She was here for one reason and one reason only: to chew me up and spit me out.

That she looked nervous should've clued me in right at the beginning, but I can be a little mule-headed on some topics. All I was capable of seeing then and there was a princess striding through the shop to kick me over sideways.

"Tonight," she muttered across the top of the display case. "Midnight. Where can we meet?"

"Here," I replied, pushing the box of chocolate peanut butter puffs toward her. "The kitchen door's around back. I'll be waiting."

Her hornglow levitated the box. "Thank you," she said, and that was the second clue I missed. Princesses in my experience don't thank the ponies who clean up their messes. But like I said, I wasn't able at that point to contemplate the ways in which this princess might not be exactly like the other princesses I'd dealt with.

Would things have turned out differently if I had noticed those details then? I like to tell myself that they would have, but, well, I like to tell myself a lot of things that aren't necessarily true.

"All night?" Lyra asked, and as much as I love her, I can't deny that she had just a little bit of a whine in her voice. She floated the dishes from the dining room table through the doorway and, I hoped, in the general direction of the sink. "But why?"

I shrugged. "Percheron truffles take at least eight hours to make, and the mixture gets too hot if you put it together during the day. You know that."

Her lower lip wavered.

Fortunately, I can play her as neatly as she plays that lyre of hers. "I'll save the last one in the batch for you," I said in a singsong voice. "It's always the richest, the gooiest, and the most chocolaty."

"Chocolaty..." she murmured, her eyes losing focus. Then she shook her head, everything about her sharpening again. "Wait a minute. You're not just saying this so you can really go off on some monster hunt without me, are you?"

"Are you kidding?" I blew a breath through my lips. "I learned my lesson a long time ago about trying to keep you away from that stuff."

It wasn't technically a lie. She can read me pretty well after all these years, so I've gotten a lot more careful. She trusts me, and I only betray that trust under certain, clearly defined circumstances.

It's a whole system.

Anyway, she went upstairs to bed, and I went down the block in the cool darkness of an autumn night to the candy shop. I had a couple hours till my appointment, so I grabbed the ingredients and mixed up a batch of Percheron truffles in the old style. I got the concoction to the point where it has to sit and breathe for at least forty-five minutes, so I dug my old work saddlebags out from the secret space behind the oven. I'd just finished checking that all the supplies inside were present and up to date when a quiet tap-tap-tap came from the kitchen door.

That was the first time I actually wrinkled my forehead during all this. Princesses in my experience didn't tap-tap-tap quietly on anything: doors, floors, the heads of their lackeys.

And yes, fine, neither Celestia nor Luna had ever kicked me or anypony else as far as I knew. That was my job, after all.

But when you're one of the ponies they pay to do their dirty work, they have a way of kicking your insides, a way of narrowing their eyes in disdain and saying exactly the words that'll tighten your guts and empty your lungs. Your bladder, too, if I'm being completely honest. And I'm never being completely honest.

Still, if it had been Celestia outside? She would've sent that molten golden glow trickling out from her horn, undone the lock, pushed the door soundlessly out of the way, and stood there like the living embodiment of every Equestrian virtue till her target noticed and lost all bladder control. And Luna? She would've been worse, not even bothering to use the door and just oozing from the room's shadows even if there hadn't been any shadows before she showed up. Princesses were more presences than ponies, more embodied ideas or manifested concepts than hide and hair. They were beyond mortality, beyond morality, and beyond annoying.

Yeah, I've got some issues...

But even I had to stop and stare at hearing that little tap-tap-tap. Of course, I immediately decided she was playing some kind of mind game with me because, well, what else would a princess do? "It's unlocked," I called, forcing my teeth not to grind.

The knob turned slowly, the door cracked open, and that pink face peered in, her folded ears and wavering eyes like nothing I'd ever seen from a princess. "Are we alone?" she asked.

And for all the second-guessing going on in my head, the icy clench in my gut was pretty much an instinctive reaction. "Forgive me, Princess," I said, slathering the sarcasm on as thickly as I could manage. "I can certainly gather together a baking party or a strike team if you want. But you didn't come to me for my candy making skills or for my monster hunting ability. You've got something extra specially nasty you want done, and Agent Sweetie Drops is one of the few ponies in Equestria you princesses can turn to in those situations." I let my voice go harder and colder. "Or am I wrong?"

The princess slipped inside, her pinkness somehow way more subdued than earlier. Closing the door, she didn't meet my gaze. "My daughter," she more whispered than said. "I need you to kill her."

"Whoa," I said before I could stop myself. But, I mean, how else was I supposed to react to that? Because, yes, all right, I have indeed killed ponies on orders from the princesses. Two ponies, to be exact, one for Celestia early in my career and one for Luna just before I retired from the business.

Not that ponies like me ever really retire. But when the princesses announced that they were getting out of the game, I informed them that I would greatly appreciate it if they vaporized my records rather than passing them on to Twilight Sparkle. They assured me that they would, but, well, that I was standing there having a conversation with a princess showed that getting out was less of an option for some of us than it was for others.

"Please," Cadance whispered, her eyes squeezing shut, her face still turned away from me. "I've known she wasn't a pony since the first time I felt her move inside me. Then she was born and shattered the Crystal Heart, and ever since then, I've been on the alert, doing what I could to keep her in check. But she's getting older and stronger and I can't...can't—" She clenched her eyes even tighter and whispered it once more. "Please..."

I hadn't compiled a formal dossier since stepping away from the game, but I still kept my ears open. I knew the same things everypony did about Princess Flurry Heart, the first natural-born alicorn in recorded history, but I'd never heard a breath of anything like this. "Not a pony, Your Highness?" I asked. That seemed a good place to start.

Cadance shook her head, her mane still perfectly coiffed. "I don't know how else to put it. It's almost like a scent she gives off that only I can smell, or a second layer to her magic that only I can detect." Opening her eyes, she jerked her head over, tears welling out to leave streaks as dark as blood down her pink cheeks. "She hasn't hurt anypony yet—I've been watching her too closely for that. But if she does, I...I mean, it'll all be my fault, and I can't...can't let that happen."

My mind was racing in ways it hadn't in quite some time. Every twitch of her muscles told me she was serious about this, but those same twitchings also told me she hadn't had a good night's sleep in way too long. Whatever the truth was about her daughter, she believed what she was saying, and all the old 'damage containment' protocols sprang to the front of my brain. "If I might ask, Princess, how did you get my name as the pony to talk to about this?"

If she'd asked Celestia or Luna, they would've had questions for her, and with the state of mind I was observing, I couldn't imagine her lying to them. So either they knew about this and had sent her to me without the slightest sliver of a 'heads-up,' something about which I'd have to exchange a few words with them if it were true. Or—

"The monster-fighting agency," she said, not quite as much of a wobble in her voice. "I knew that Aunt Celestia and Aunt Luna had one, so when I felt Flurry's powers outgrowing my ability to contain them, I went digging through the files to see who their best agent was. Because she's a monster, Agent Sweetie Drops, make no mistake about that. And she needs to die before she destroys Equestria and everything it stands for."

In some ways, that was a good answer. If I was the only pony she'd spoken to about this, that would make whatever I ended up doing easier to manage. But if this princess was insane, there was just me to deal with it. And if her daughter, also a princess, was indeed a monster, again, there was just me.

It took some doing, but I refrained from launching an inner stream of invective cursing the entire concept of princesses. I was just too tired, I guess. "You're staying with Twilight at the castle?" I asked out loud instead.

She blinked, tears tangling those mascaraed eyelashes. "You...you believe me?"

I nodded toward the door. "The castle's across town. You'll have the whole time we're walking to convince me."

What twitched across her face this time was closer to a smile than anything I'd yet seen there, relief wafting up in her scent like the smell of rain on warm concrete. But then it all twitched away, and she looked at the floor. "I...I don't think I can do that. I mean, it's not like she's been pulling the wings off flies or blowing up birds in flight or even misbehaving any more than any other filly."

One thing I want to make clear at this point: nothing Cadance had been saying this whole time had been shouted, not even when she'd called her only child a monster who needed killing to save Equestria. Her voice wavered, scratchy and whispery and almost intimate, like she was talking to herself.

"She's just started going outside the palace to daycare," the princess was going on, her downward gaze going unfocused, "and she's been loving it, loving the lessons, loving the other foals, loving the staff, everything you'd expect if she was truly our daughter—me and Shiny, I mean. And when she and Twilight get together, there's just such joy there, such a rapport..." Her legs buckled, and she dropped to the kitchen's tile, her front hooves covering her eyes. "What's wrong with me, Agent Sweetie Drops?" she asked, everything still calm and quiet. "What's wrong with me that I think my daughter's a monster?"

The sobbing that followed was just as quiet. I let her do it for a while before I said, "All right. Let's go."

"No!" And this time, the word burst out of her, her head coming up, only anguish on her face. "You...you can't! I didn't—! It was just—!"

"Princess?" I gently put a hoof on her withers, my voice as quiet as hers had been. "Something's happening here, something that needs to be resolved. So we're going to go over to the castle, you're going to get me in, we're going to go to your daughter's room, and we're going to observe her." I pressed my hoof down a bit more firmly. "Observation only. And then we'll move on from there."

By this time, her make-up was a mess, and through the ruins of it, I could see a whole slideshow of expressions twitching. None of them stayed long enough for me to puzzle out, but after several heartbeats, she nodded sharply and rose onto all fours. I was half expecting her to turn brusquely, order me to forget any of this had happened, and leave. But all she did was get her horn glowing, the blue of its energy reaching out to turn the doorknob. "I don't know if I should thank you," she said, her words quiet again. "But thank you."

She stepped out into the night. I flipped my saddlebags into place across my back and followed.

Damn princesses...

The walk to Twilight's castle was quiet, too. After midnight on a Wednesday in early autumn, Ponyville tends to be indoors cuddled in bed instead of wandering around contemplating regicide—or whatever assassinating a princess is called. Knowing Celestia and Luna, I'll bet they made extra sure that that concept didn't get a word in modern Equestrian.

Cadance cleaned herself up pretty well as we walked, and the thing she said, as far as I can recall, during the whole trip was, "Then you won't be killing my daughter?"

Her tone of voice was absolutely flat, leaving me with no clue as to her mental state. Was she accusing me of being unwilling or unable to do it? Or was she pleading with me to call off the operation before it had even begun?

I refused to grind my teeth. "That's not a 'yes' or 'no' question, Your Highness. But I will say that most of the operations I've been involved in over the course of my career haven't ended in death."

Another technical truth: the Agency had been founded by Starswirl the Bearded, after all, so we did a lot of banishing to other existential realms. My answer seemed to satisfy her, though. At least, like I said, that was the only thing she said the whole way.

Turning left on Water Street brought us into view of the castle for the first time, glowing ever so slightly in the darkness just outside of town. The thing always made me think of a giant bruise, dark purple and out of place against the background, but that seemed absolutely appropriate. Twilight wasn't a princess, after all, so she had to work at it. And any sort of real work is likely to leave bruises behind.

"This way," Cadance said, stepping off the path as soon as we'd passed the last buildings at the edge of town and heading away from the school, now visible off to the castle's right and also glowing slightly. I assumed we were headed toward some sort of more private entrance to the living quarters, but I didn't actually know, of course. Unlike some princesses I could name, Twilight had never summoned me to report to her secretly, thank Harmony, so I hadn't the slightest idea how the rooms, halls, and passages of the palace were laid out.

But I was still thinking like a mortal. Because the princess, once we'd put a hill or two between us and everything other than the castle, simply sparked up her horn and popped us directly into a warm, dark space that smelled of talcum powder and wet cookies. "I've put up a silencing spell," she said, my ears spreading at how muffled she sounded. "So we won't be disturbed no matter what you end up doing."

My eyes were getting used to the dimness, and I glanced back to see her standing not just against the wall beside the door but practically pressing herself into the crystal. Her wavering blue hornglow told me that she was indeed doing something magical; I nodded, slung off my saddlebags, stuck my front hoofs in, and slipped on the anti-magic bracelets I always kept right there on top. They wouldn't stop either Cadance or Flurry Heart if one princess or the other decided in any more than desultory fashion that I needed to die, but they were better than nothing.

I also grabbed my protective goggles, brought them out, and strapped them into place while trying to think of the best way to do what needed to be done here. "All right, Your Highness," I said, ducking under my saddlebags to get them settled over my back again. "If I might ask you to accompany me to your daughter's bed, please?"

The bed was the standard size to hold a three- or four-year-old foal, as far as I could tell, but the rest of the nursery? Bookcases lined the walls, of course—this was Twilight's castle, after all—with pictures between the cases displaying sunny meadows dotted with butterflies, a wooded lake, the ocean lapping against a white-sand beach, that sort of thing. The floor held toy chests, art tables, puzzle boxes, enough sheer stuff to keep maybe half a dozen young princesses occupied and entertained.

I noted it all peripherally and made my slow and careful way toward the little bed. I'd started moving without looking in any obvious way to see if Cadance was following, but I think it'd be safe to say that I had my senses more focused behind me than I did ahead.

"Must I?" I heard her whisper, but the voice was coming from a spot a lot closer to me than the back wall. I was picking up the sour scent of her fear more clearly, too, and a glance over my shoulder showed her right behind me, her ears folded into her salt-water-taffy mane, her nostrils flaring with each shallow breath.

"Please," I said again. A veneer of civility helped smooth things over with princesses sometimes, I'd found. Not all the time, but sometimes.

Fortunately, this seemed to be one of those times. Shoulders hunched and hooves dragging, she came up beside me, her gaze firmly fixed on the abstract shapes and patterns of the nursery's carpet, and stuck close as we crossed the room.

The foal in the bed looked like a foal in a bed. Not that that meant anything, of course, not when the princess next to me had tangled with a certain bugpony-queen-turned-lawn-ornament. Yes, the changelings were quite literally reformed now, and yes, no intel had ever indicated that Equestria had more than one changeling hive. But none of that meant anything in the monster-hunting business.

A great deal of practice over the years let me slide my saddlebags soundlessly to the floor, and reaching in, I scooped two small gems onto the frogs of my hooves. My plan was to place these on the pillow beside Flurry's sleeping head to see if Cadance's original pronouncement about Flurry not being a pony was true. The blue gem detected changeling magic, and the red one emitted a frequency that interacted with the magic at the base of every disguise spell known to ponies. Very useful items to have.

Unfortunately, when I straightened up to set the gems on the bed, Flurry's eyes were open and looking directly into mine. "Ah," she said, her voice more resonant than I'd expected. Her gaze shifted to where Cadance was standing, and when she went on, the words came out much more clearly than a pony had any right to expect from a three-year-old. "You know, then."

When princesses get into disputes with each other, the one place not to be, I've found, is between them. Literally and exactly where I was, in other words.

Not that anypony was doing any disputing at that point, Flurry looking with those calm but wide eyes past me and up at her mother, Cadance staring back, I saw when I glanced that way, with eyes just as wide but much less calm.

Flurry's gaze flicked to mine again. "Those gems," she said in that honey-smooth contralto, "will tell you nothing, but feel free to deploy them if you wish." She spread her little front hooves. "I have nothing to hide."

"What..." Cadance murmured, and the way the word trailed off, I thought maybe she didn't have anything else to say. She continued, though, a long couple of seconds later: "Are you?"

It was a very good question. Putting the gems down and triggering them, as the possibly younger of the two princesses had foretold, got me no reading whatsoever. But then that only meant that this wasn't a changeling and wasn't using a standard disguise spell. Just in case, though, I left them sitting on top of the little yellow blanket covering Flurry from mid-chest down.

"Mother?" Flurry said, and the word wavered ever so slightly. "I know it's difficult to believe, but I am indeed your daughter Flurry Heart. I'm not a monster who's taken her place, nor am I a monster who's determined to bring all of Equestria under my fiendish and despotic rule." The smile that tugged at her snout wouldn't have looked out of place on a toddler experiencing a bit of internal gas. "For one thing, I imagine that Auntie Twilight would speak to me very sternly should I attempt such a thing."

When Cadance didn't start screaming immediately, I tucked away two of the ten worst-case scenarios I'd unpacked a moment earlier. This could all still go horribly, terribly wrong, of course, but, well, stopping that from happening was pretty much my job description. So I kept things as calm and quiet as they'd been up till now. "Forgive me, please, Princess Flurry Heart, but you've just told us what sort of monster you aren't. May I ask, then, what sort of monster you are?"

This wasn't nearly as good a question as Cadance's when it came to not getting me blasted by one or both of the princesses. But it needed asking, and I was obviously the pony to ask it.

Behind me, Cadance sucked in a breath, and I readied my response to the worst-case scenario where she refused to believe everything that was occurring, indignantly denounced me for calling her daughter a monster, and vented her indignation in fiery wrath along my cream-colored flanks. So when she ended up just blowing her breath out very slowly, I tucked that particular scenario away with the others that seemed unlikely to explode over me in the immediate future.

"Ah," Flurry Heart said then, and the continued quiet calmness about her let me tuck away another unhappy scenario. "I've asked myself that question many times, Agent Sweetie Drops. And no," she added quickly, "I didn't learn your name by employing telepathy or anything similar. I've simply been making it a point to gain familiarity with the files Mother's been consulting of late. And while I don't believe that I qualify as any sort of monster in the more traditional sense, I can't deny that there's almost nothing normal about me by most definitions of that word."

Unhappy scenarios dropping on every side, I started feeling something I very rarely did during my missions: optimism. I didn't let any of it seep into my face or my scent, though. I just nodded and said mostly for the benefit of the older of the two princesses, "As the first naturally born alicorn in Equestrian history, you're definitely something unique and special."

"Yes," Cadance whispered, and I had to struggle against that damn blooming optimism again. "But," she went on, and I almost puffed out a sigh of relief, "I can't ignore the waves of strength and power that ripple out from you every hour of every day. And looking at you, I...I'm almost overwhelmed by the fierce desire you feel, a desire to rule ponies and reshape the world."

"Well?" Those little front hooves spread again. "I'm the child of the Crystal Empress and her Prince Consort. Even if I weren't a magical being unprecedented throughout the entire course of time and space, I'd still be a being within whom a great deal of political capital dwells." Her eyes wavered, and she reached a hoof toward Cadance. "I promise, however, Mother, that I shall never force myself upon any pony, and I shall always rely upon your love and support throughout the centuries and millennia we will spend together."

The tiniest bit of silence fell over us, then Cadance made a little squeaking noise. "Oh, Flurry!" And I scooted out of the way so she could leap forward and wrap her daughter in a hug.

I had nearly all my implements packed and was eyeing the door when Cadance spoke again. "Agent Sweetie Drops, I...I don't know if I should apologize to you or thank you, so I'll do both. I was so afraid of what I was sensing, I wasn't thinking clearly. I'm so glad I called you instead of acting on my own, and I'm so sorry I dragged you into this whole—"

"Your Highness?" I said, cutting her off as quickly as felt polite and not turning away from my saddlebags. "I'm just glad everything worked out all right in the end." Not that it had, of course. Not by a long shot. Especially since—

"Agent Sweetie Drops?" Flurry Heart asked, and I froze. How I knew exactly what she was about to say, I have no idea. All I could do was wish I'd been able to get myself out of that nursery while they were still caught up in their hug.

"I..." the younger princess said, and the hesitation that filled her voice was absolutely real, I felt certain. "I can't imagine that this will sound at all normal, but I'm very glad that you were willing, prepared, and able to come in here and kill me if you needed to."

That one last worst-case scenario hovered at the edges of my vision, and I realized that I'd stopped breathing as well, still kneeling on the carpet and staring at the door as it seemed to draw further and further away in the shadows.

"I would feel," Flurry Heart was going on, "a great deal better about the world and my place in it if...if you would remain on alert in this same fashion. As I said, I don't believe that I'm the traditional sort of monster, but Equestria can't afford to take the chance. So I would ask that you and any ponies you feel could assist you—"

"Please," I heard myself whisper, unable to tear my gaze from that door. "I have a job, a wife, a life that I love. I can't...can't leave it all behind..."

"No!" Flurry shouted, and a spot of air in front of me burst with scattered sparks, the younger alicorn appearing there with her wings flapping and her face a mask of alarm. "I would never call upon you to abandon everything that means so much to you! In fact, it's to protect those very assets that I request you to form this task force!" She pressed her front hooves together. "Prepare a means of destroying me should I prove to be the wrong sort of monster, and let us all fervently hope that Equestria can forever do without your services."

I lowered my head. Damn princesses...

So, technically, yes, I'm working for a princess again, and yes, my quiet life ended the afternoon Cadance stepped into my shop more than a decade ago now. But I haven't actually spoken to any princess since that night in the nursery when I raised my head, locked eyes with that adorable little monster, and said, "You'll never know we're there, Your Highness."

She nodded, her horn flared, and I found myself back outside in the shallow hills north of the castle. A week later, Twilight had moved up to Canterlot, and a week after that, Starlight Glimmer came trotting into the shop, an envelope floating in front of her confused face. "Excuse me, Bon-Bon," she said, setting the envelope on top of the display counter. "I was just organizing the papers that signed Twilight's castle over to the School of Friendship when I found this." Her magic opened the envelope and unfolded an official-looking document. "You have a rental agreement for the entire basement?"

It was news to me, but I only let myself blink once. "Yes," I told her as steadily as I could. "I'm starting a school of my own, you see."

She's been quite the understanding landlady, and of course there's never been any trouble about the rent that I assume she gets from somewhere every month. My only concern? The operatives I've trained—griffons, diamond dogs, changelings, ponies, even a few dragons—and the techniques they take with them once they've graduated.

Candy making skills, of course: it's the perfect cover story, after all, and it allows them to spread a little joy when they go out into the world. But they have other skills they've mastered, skills they've never so far had to use and, Harmony willing, they'll never need to use.

So, all right, yes, my life didn't end that day. It changed, certainly, and maybe for the better, though if anypony but me ever said that in my hearing, I might have to introduce their heads repeatedly to the side of my hoof. Still, I've done my best to get Equestria ready for something that shouldn't ever happen, and I've gotten to know some wonderful creatures in the process.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I catch myself thinking that things might just turn out all right.