Spies: Jr

CAT – THE EVIL SISTER!

Pancake and Lyra bolted out of the classroom and slid down the banisters to the first floor. They flung their heavy saddlebags into their bedroom, making a noise that startled the two guinea pigs who lived in cages on the window ledge.

          ‘I’ll just give Chip and McFlurry some carrots,’ Lyra said.

          ‘There’s no time,’ Pancake gasped, as he grabbed another saddlebag that he’d already packed with a towel. ‘We have to get there first and nab some good equipment.’

          Lyra knew Pancake had a point. The ESS paintball shooting range had thirty-five sets of guns and protective gear. If you arrived late, you ended up with one of the tatty old guns that didn’t shoot straight, a battered helmet and a padded suit that smelled worse than feet.

          ‘I’m faster than you, I’ll catch you up,’ Lyra said, as she grabbed a plastic bag filled with carrot sticks and began sliding them between the bars of each cage.

          Pancake ran out of the bedroom, scrambled down to the ground floor and raced off across the squelchy hoofball pitches towards the paintball range.

Paintballing was all about running around in a helmet and padded suit, getting extremely muddy and shooting at your mates with brightly coloured paint pellets. If there was something in the world more fun than paintballing, Pancake had yet to discover it. And today he was even more excited than usual, because he’d been banned from paintballing for the past three weeks.

Getting hit by a paintball doesn’t usually hurt, but it’s dangerous to shoot someone from close range and Pancake had gotten in very serious trouble for shooting his big sister Cat from less than the two meter minimum shooting distance.

          Even though Pancake couldn’t run as fast as Lyra, he was still quick and there was some good kit left when he arrived at the changing hut on the edge of the paintballing area.

The mud splattered room had three long wooden benches. A bunch of noisy eight and nine year olds were excitedly changing into protective gear.

Some had only just arrived and were still peeling off their boots, while others had already zipped themselves into thickly padded suits, strapped on protective helmets, pulled down their face visors and slid on gloves.

Pancake happily grabbed the last two really good guns and rummaged inside a plastic crate until he found overalls for himself and Lyra. All the overalls were muddy and disgusting, but he’d found a couple that were slightly less disgusting than some of the others.

‘Thanks, mate,’ a filly growled from behind him.

Pancake turned to see the grim faces of his sister Cat and her half Germane best friend, Gerda.

Cat was only a year older than Pancake, but she was much bigger. She looked more like an eleven year old, with a beefy neck and powerful shoulders. Gerda wasn’t quite as scary, but was still bigger than Pancake.

Pancake backed up to the wall and shook his head.

‘This stuff is for me and Lyra,’ he said. ‘I got here first.’

‘I got here first,’ Cat squeaked, mocking her brother’s voice as she gave him a shove and snatched the gun out of his mouth.

Gerda quickly grabbed the other gun and the two suits. ‘Danke,’ she growled, using the Germane word for thank you, but clearly not meaning it.

Pancake was upset, but he’d never let it show in front of his sister. He screwed up his face and tried to sound fierce.

‘I don’t care what guns me and Lyra have got,’ Pancake said. ‘We’ll still wipe the floor with you two.’

‘Oh, I’m sooo scared of little Panky,’ Cat giggled, as she gave her brother another shove. ‘You sad little shrimp.’

WHEN I GET HOLD OF THEM…

Ten minutes later, fifteen pairs of colts and fillies stood eagerly at the wire gate of the paintball compound, with their visors down and pockets stuffed with ammunition.

          Pancake scowled at Lyra. ‘I’m gonna get my sister so bad,’ he said. ‘I don’t care if I’ve got a rubbish gun. When the gates open, I’m gonna follow her and…’

          But Lyra shook her head firmly. ‘We’re not here to go after your sister. We’re here to have fun and win the game.’

          ‘But we’ve got to get my sister back,’ Pancake said indignantly. ‘She ripped off our guns.’

          ‘Cat and Gerda are bigger, faster and older than us. If we pick a fight with them we’ll lose,’ Lyra said sensibly.

          Lyra usually acted a bit more grown up than Pancake and he realised that she was right, as usual.

‘Us getting banned from paintball was totally bogus,’ Pancake moaned. ‘Cat shot me from close range before we shot her, but we were the only ones who got done for it.’

‘Forget Cat,’ Lyra said. ‘There’s nothing you can do about her.’

‘Why does Cat always have to pick on me?’

          ‘You’re almost as bad as she is,’ Lyra reminded Pancake. ‘You broke her CD player, you poured water on her school books, you even put itching powder in her underwear drawer that time.’

          Pancake cheered up enormously as he relived one of the happiest moments of his life: ‘Oww, oww! Miss, my private bits have gone all red!’

          The paintball game was being run by a fearsome looking instructor called Mr Pokey. He stomped his giant hooves on the ground to get everypony’s attention.

          ‘OK you horrible brats,’ Mr Pokey yelled. ‘The rules are simple. You must obey the safety code at all times. The game lasts for forty minutes. Each team has ten envelopes and there are ten letterboxes hidden around the paintball compound. Whichever team posts a letter in the most boxes wins the game. If you get shot three times by a member of another team, you’re dead. As soon as you’re killed, you must raise your hooves above your head and leave the training compound by the nearest exit.

          ‘Today we also have one extra rule. We’ve had a lot of rain over the past week and some of the trenches are very muddy and waterlogged. Therefore, all trenches are out of bounds.’

          Mr Pokey raised a whistle to his lips as he opened the gate of the compound. ‘Spread yourselves out and don’t start shooting until you hear my whistle.’

          The thirty youngsters all cheered as they raced into the compound. Lyra watched to see which way Cat and Gerda went before dragging Pancake in the opposite direction.

UNDER FIRE

‘It’s so good to be back playing paintball,’ Pancake grinned, as his hooves slipped and squelched across the muddy ground.

          It was spitting with rain. The canopy of dripping leaves over their heads made it dark and creepy as they jogged past tree trunks splattered with brightly coloured paint from hundreds of previous battles.

          As well as the trees, the compound had a number of ponymade features designed to make paintball games more exciting: small wooden forts, climbing nets, rusted carts with all the glass removed and pitch black tunnels full of mud and rats that only the bravest colts and fillies dared venture in to.

          Lyra stopped running when she spotted a red plastic box nestled between two trees. It was lucky to find one of the mailboxes before the exercise had even started.

As Lyra crouched down to post one of the ten letters, Pancake twisted his boot deep into the soggy ground. When Lyra turned around, Pancake flicked his leg forwards and splashed her with mud.

‘Aaarghhh!’ Lyra giggled, as she retaliated by skimming her hoof through a deep puddle.

A great wave of muddy water pelted Pancake’s protective suit.

The mud fight might have turned more serious, but Mr Pokey blew the whistle to start the game. Within a second, Pancake and Lyra heard the distinctive pulse of air from a paintball gun and ducked down as two green pellets whizzed between their helmets and splattered into the tree trunk behind their heads.

‘Ambush,’ Lyra shouted.

‘That was too close,’ Pancake gasped as he and Lyra ducked down and started running.

More paintballs whooshed through the low branches and soggy leaves around their heads.

After trotting twenty metres, they reached a wooden fence and dived behind it, but not before Pancake felt a distinctive stinging sensation in his flank.

‘I’m hit,’ he yelled, as he looked over his shoulder at a splat of yellow paint stuck to his fur.

But there was no time to stand around worrying. Pancake and Lyra both raised their guns into firing positions and peered through slits in the wooden fence.

‘Can you see them?’ Pancake whispered, knowing that his companion had a knack for spotting tiny movements in the darkest places.

Lyra nodded. ‘See the branches moving between the two trees over on the left?’

‘I see ‘em.’ Pancake nodded.

‘You move around that way,’ Lyra said, pointing towards a line of shrubs. ‘I’ll blast them out and you can nail them as they try to escape.’

‘Good thinking,’ Pancake nodded, as he crept away.

He crawled through the undergrowth on his belly, to a position twenty meters away between two prickly bushes. He gave Lyra a wave to signal that he was ready and eyed his opponents – two friends of his called Stars and Cirrus.

As Cirrus crept towards the little red mailbox to post his letter and score a point, Lyra jammed the muzzle of her paintball gun between a broken section of fence and began rapid firing.

The first shot hit Cirrus on the flank and Lyra’s blaze of paintballs forced him and his companion to retreat.

Unfortunately for Cirrus and Stars, they ran directly into Pancake’s line of fire and he showed no mercy, blasting Cirrus once and Stars twice before they made it into the trees.

‘Run and hide, you wimps,’ Pancake yelled triumphantly as the two colts scrambled away.

‘Two hits on each of them,’ Lyra smiled as she walked towards Pancake.

They made a hoof bump with their mud covered hooves.

‘Nice shooting,’ Lyra said.

‘This is the greatest game in the world,’ Pancake said, as he grinned from ear to ear.

          Lyra spoke breathlessly, ‘Let’s go find another mailbox.’

HALF AN HOUR LATER…

After thirty minutes of paintball action, Lyra and Pancake were exhausted. Their legs ached, they had sweat pouring out of their manes and they could hear their hearts banging in their chests. But they didn’t care because they were having so much fun.

          ‘Do you think they’ve gone?’ Pancake whispered, as he lay flat on the ground behind a line of shrubs.

Brown water dribbled down Pancake’s visor as he pulled his face out of the mud and looked up for an enemy that had shot at them a few moments earlier.

          ‘Only one way to be sure,’ Lyra said.

She sat up, half expecting a paintball to come flying out from behind a tree and explode against her helmet.

          But it didn’t.

          ‘Whoever they were, it looks like they’ve cleared off,’ Pancake said.

The pair stood up and looked around cautiously. They each had two splats of paint on their suits, meaning they’d be dead if they were shot one more time.

          ‘It was definitely around here somewhere,’ Lyra said as they started walking.

          ‘Right there,’ Pancake grinned, as he spotted the red mailbox hidden in a bush.

          They’d seen the box before they’d been shot at, but hadn’t been able to post their letter because they’d come under attack as soon as they got close.

          ‘Now we’ve got nine points out of a possible ten,’ Lyra smiled, as Pancake slotted the envelope into the box. ‘Eight or nine points usually wins the game, so we must be in with a chance.’

          ‘Seven minutes to go,’ Pancake whispered, glancing at his watch as they scurried up a small hill. ‘Where do you think that last mailbox is? If we get to it, no one can beat us. They can only draw at best.’

          Lyra shrugged, ‘We’ve hardly been over the east side, I bet it’s over there.’

          ‘Oh wow,’ Pancake gasped, as he looked over the top of a hill into a meadow.

          Lyra thought he’d spotted a mailbox, but then saw that it was Cat and Gerda. Gerda was leaning against a tree, holding on to her forehoof like she’d twisted it or something. Cat had her back to them, with a distinctive blob of green paint across her flank.

          It was perfect. Within a second of seeing his sister, Pancake raised his gun up to eye level and blasted off three well aimed rounds. Each one splattered into Cat’s back between her shoulder blades, making her stumble forwards.

          ‘You’re dead, fat head,’ Pancake hooted.

          Lyra had shot Gerda in the side, but Gerda dived forwards and managed to crawl away into the undergrowth, despite clearly having something wrong with her forehoof.

          Cat spun around angrily with her gun and almost pulled the trigger. But the rules of the game said she was dead, which meant she wasn’t allowed to shoot back and there were surveillance cameras all over the compound to make sure nobody cheated.

          ‘Flank head,’ Cat yelled sourly, as she stood up.

          But Pancake and Lyra had allowed their triumph over Cat to interfere with their concentration and Gerda had slipped out of sight.

Despite being injured, Gerda managed to scramble up the hill through the undergrowth and rattled off a shot that hit Lyra in the thigh.

          ‘Now I’m dead,’ Lyra complained, as she scrambled behind a tree and gave the final envelope to Pancake. ‘Take it, try and find the last mailbox.’

          Pancake gave Lyra a friendly pat on the back. ‘There’s not much time, but I’ll do my best.’

CAT’S REVENGE

As Pancake raced off between the trees towards the eastern side of the compound, Lyra trotted downhill towards Cat and thought she’d try being nice.

          ‘Good game today,’ Lyra smiled.

          Cat looked Lyra up and down stiffly, trying to decide if she was worth talking to.

‘Wasn’t bad I suppose,’ Cat said, as she unscrewed the ammunition clip from her paintball gun.

The two fillies headed towards the gate together, eyeing each other warily while holding a forehoof in the air to show that they were out of the game.

‘We posted eight letters,’ Cat said. ‘I reckon we’re in with a chance of winning.’

‘We’ve got nine already,’ Lyra said brightly. ‘I don’t suppose Gerda will get any more with her dodgy forehoof.’

Cat didn’t like the idea that she wasn’t going to win and gave Lyra a mean look.

‘You were out of order, shooting me when Gerda was injured.’

‘Oh give over,’ Lyra said acidly. ‘It’s not against any rules and it serves you right for stealing the guns off Pancake in the changing room.’

Cat held her chunky hoof in Lyra’s face. ‘Maybe you should shut that mouth of yours, before I cram this in it.’

‘It’s sad that you and Pancake don’t get on,’ Lyra said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, I know most brothers and sisters have fights, but you two really hate each other.’

‘Shut your gob,’ Cat said. ‘It’s none of your business.’

Lyra didn’t fancy pushing her conversation any further. Cat was tough, clever and would probably make a very good spy when she passed basic training. But she certainly wasn’t a very nice pony.

A few seconds later, Cat proved that she wasn’t very nice by grabbing Lyra around the neck. She dragged her away from the path and into a giant boggy puddle.

‘What are you doing?’ Lyra screamed, as Cat’s beefy fore arm crushed her windpipe. ‘Leave me alone. I can’t breathe.’

‘You think you’ve got problems now,’ Cat sneered, as she stopped walking at the edge of one of the trenches that had been declared out of bounds. ‘See how you like it down there.’

Cat let go of Lyra’s neck and gave her an almighty shove. Lyra skidded down a slippery embankment, before splashing head-first into thirty centimetres of runny mud.

The freezing sludge blinded Lyra as it poured inside her helmet and filled her nostrils. She coughed violently as she sat up, ripped off her helmet and spat out a mouthful of foul tasting liquid.

‘Ooops,’ Cat grinned, as she kicked a giant clump of mud down on to Lyra’s head. ‘Well tootle-pip, I’d better be going.’

‘I’m gonna get you for this,’ Lyra shouted, as the lump of mud slithered out of her mane and splashed into the water. ‘You wait and see if I don’t.’

THE LAST POST

Pancake had to locate the final mailbox and post the tenth letter. He was puffed out, but that didn’t stop him trotting as fast as he could towards the eastern side of the compound.

          A couple of shots rang out as he trotted. One whizzed by just a few centimetres in front of his chest, but he didn’t stick around to shoot back, because there were only three minutes until Mr Pokey blew his whistle to end the game.

          With less than two minutes to go, he spotted the last mailbox. It was strung up between two trees, several meters off the ground. The only way to post the letter was to climb up a rope net tied beneath it.

          Normally, Pancake would have taken a good look around to make sure nobpony was hiding out in the trees, but there wasn’t enough time left to be cautious, so he grabbed the letter out of his saddle pouch, jumped on to the net and began clambering up.

          His heart thudded as he reached up and pushed the soggy envelope through the metal flap. As the flap noisily snapped shut, another sound erupted and a splat of red paint hit Pancake in the back. A second splat hit his hoof, making him lose his grip and a third whacked his flank as he slid down the net.

          ‘OK, OK,’ Pancake grinned. ‘Stop shooting, I’m dead.’

          He didn’t care that he’d been shot. It didn’t hurt and he’d posted the tenth and final envelope before getting killed, which meant that he and Lyra couldn’t be anything less than joint winners.

          As Pancake grabbed hold of the net to haul himself off the ground, he heard Mr Pokey blowing his whistle to signal the end of the game. Pancake flipped up his face visor as his friends Stars and Cirrus jumped out of the trees. Their padded suits were caked in mud.

          ‘So we’re wimps are we?’ Cirrus grinned, giving Pancake a friendly shove. ‘At least we didn’t get killed. How many letters did you post?’

          ‘All ten,’ Pancake said proudly.

          ‘Oh,’ Stars said, sounding a little sad. ‘We only got nine. We thought we were in with a chance of winning.’

          ‘Never mind,’ Pancake said. ‘You might have won if you’d killed me a second earlier.’

          Stars and Cirrus both nodded in agreement.

‘We won last Friday though,’ Stars shrugged. ‘You can’t win ‘em all.’

          ‘I’d better run back and tell Lyra. She’ll be well happy when she hears that I posted the last envelope.’

CAT’S PUNISHMENT

When Pancake arrived back at the noisy changing hut, he stepped past all the other colts and found Lyra sitting on a bench with tears streaming down her face. Her hair was caked in mud and she had a big graze down her cheek.

          ‘What happened to you?’ Pancake gasped, putting his arm around his best friend’s back as he sat on the bench beside her.

          ‘Your idiot sister happened,’ Lyra said, pointing at Cat.

Cat stood at the opposite end of the hut, facing the wall with her hooves on the wall.

‘At least Mr Pokey caught her doing it on the video cameras,’ Lyra continued.

          ‘Doing what?’ Pancake asked.

          But Mr Pokey charged into the hut before Lyra could tell him.

          ‘RIGHT,’ Mr Pokey shouted furiously as he slammed the metal door.

He grabbed Cat by the scruff of her muddy vest in his magic, bundled her into his office and shut the door so that nopony could hear what he was saying. But Mr Pokey shouted so loud that everyone heard anyway.

‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at, young mare…? Pushing Lyra into a trench is unacceptable and don’t you dare lie to me. It was not an accident. I saw exactly what you did and you’re going to be severely punished.’

Pancake smiled at the thought of his sister being severely punished, but nothing seemed to cheer Lyra up.

‘Come on, mate,’ Pancake smiled, giving Lyra a squeeze. ‘You’ll be fine once you’ve warmed up in the shower and had some dinner.’

Mr Pokey continued to rave at Cat in the office. ‘You are banned from all paintball activities for two months. You are going to clean the staff toilets over the next week and do you see this?’

Pancake looked through the glass in the office door and saw that Mr Pokey was holding up a grubby towel.

‘When all the others have taken their showers, I am going to give you this rag and make you clean the entire changing room with it,’ Mr Pokey yelled. ‘You are going to scrub every bench, every floor tile and every wall until there is not a speck of mud to be seen. I don’t care if it takes you an hour, two hours, or even if it takes you until midnight. That room is going to gleam.’

Mr Pokey stormed back out of his office and glowered at everypony else.

‘I am now in a very bad mood,’ Mr Pokey shouted. ‘Unless you lot want to join Cat on cleaning detail, I suggest that you take your showers quickly and quietly and then head off to the main building for your dinner.’

Pancake noticed a tiny smirk on Lyra’s face as he rubbed her back.

‘That’s the spirit,’ he said.

Stars and Cirrus sat on the bench facing towards Pancake and Lyra. They’d already pulled off their muddy kit and started to go in the shower.

‘Here’s the thing,’ Cirrus said, as he pushed a hoof inside his jacket. ‘None of us likes Cat, and the muddier it is in here, the worse her punishment is, right?’

‘So, what are you getting at?’ Pancake asked

‘This,’ Cirrus said, as he squished the muddy vest against the wall and used it to draw a thick brown line.

          ‘Oh yes!’ Pancake giggled. ‘Cat’s got to clean that up, hasn’t she…? And this,’ he added, as he scraped his own jacket across the front of a radiator.

          Lyra cheered up quite a bit as she swept her hoof through her muddy hair and made brown hoof prints on the wall.

There were quite a few colts and fillies in the room who’d been pushed around by Cat and it wasn’t long before they were all rubbing muddy clothes along the walls and scraping them on benches.

By the time everypony had showered and headed off for dinner, it looked as if Cat would be lucky if she finished her punishment by midnight.