Spies: Jr

(This is not a real chapter, but an explanation as to what ESS is)

WHAT IS ESS?

You’re not allowed to know where the ESS campus is and don’t bother searching on any maps, because you’ll never find it.

          ESS Campus is so secret that you’re not even allowed to fly over. But if you could, you’d see more than a dozen buildings, a forest big enough to get lost in and lots of neatly trimmed grass. You’d also see tennis courts, hoofball pitches, an outdoor swimming pool and one of the scariest, muddiest, assault courses in the world.

If you looked down if you were a pegasus with binoculars, you’d be able to make out some of the colts and fillies who live on ESS campus, Playing sport and walking along the gravel paths between lessons.

          You might think you were flying over some posh boarding school

Only very clever colts and fillies are picked to become ESS pupils and they are expected to work extremely hard in school. As well as normal classes like history, Equestrian and maths, ESS pupils have to do special lessons: karate, kick boxing, survival skills, espionage, and computer hacking. These lessons aren’t always as exciting as they sound. In fact they can be just as difficult and boring as normal lessons. But ESS pupils have to learn tons of extra stuff because they’re training to be spies.

WHAT USE ARE FOALS AS SPIES?

The most important thing for any spy is that the ponies you’re spying on don’t know that you are one.

Because no sensible grown up believes that foals work as spies, ESS pupils can get away with all kinds of stuff that grown up spies can’t.

WHY ARE ALL THE ESS PUPILS ORPHANS?

Mums and Dads are very protective of their foals. So are grannies, granddads, aunties, uncles, foster parents, or whoever else looks after them. They like making sure that you cross the road safely, they like tucking you into bed at night and always knowing where you are and what you’re up to.

Mums and Dads would never let their foals go off on dangerous missions and become spies. That’s why every foal on ESS campus is an orphan.

And since it’s impossible to be born without having two parents, it means that every single ESS pupil has a sad story to tell about how they became an orphan. This fan fic starts with one of those sad stories.

If you don’t like sad stories, you might like to skip the first part of the next chapter.