Dash had never taken a lot of time to think about Bulk Biceps. Who would? Certainly now wasn’t the time. Twilight was, by now, back in her office, fuming and leafing absently through memos and reports while cradling her head in her hooves. She had refused to go back to the hospital. There wasn’t time for it, evidently.
No one had ever really been able to figure out why Bulk had joined the Night Guard in the first place. He wasn’t a Cloudsdale native (and grounders weren’t particularly popular with the swaggering pegasus types that tended to sign up), a moonie fanatic, or a sadist, which wiped out nearly every possibility. He didn’t get a kick out of any of it, just the opposite: that’s why he was stuck pushing paper and handling requisitions. Well, besides the fact that he just had to be terrible at it, and Dash prized incompetence.
Bulk must have been in the Guard academy at the same time as Dash, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing him. Surely she would have run into him in the gym? Well, there he was, standing at the door to Sparkle’s office, gingerly holding a clipboard in his mouth.
“Yes?” Dash said. “Uh, not really a good time, Bulk.”
“Mmhmhmm,” he said through the clipboard.
“It’s fine, Dash.” Twilight twirled a pen idly then set it down on the desk, and didn’t seem to look at Bulk. “Put the clipboard down. You need to talk to us?”
“Yeah. Uh...” Bulk fidgeted—it was a weird gesture coming from the small mountain of muscle. “Uh, just you though. Alone. Miss Sparkle, sir. Ma’am.”
This was unusual. Even besides the fact that the Night Guard took the chain of command seriously and that Bulk had roughly as much chance of securing another promotion as he did of flapping his ridiculous little wings and flying to the Moon, Dash had made it a matter of absolute policy that Twilight wasn’t to be bothered by anyone besides her. It was part of her plan to make sure no one who actually knew what they were doing would be able to raise doubts about Dash’s decisions.
Dash glanced at Twilight.
“Anything you want to say to me, you can say to her,” Twilight said.
Bulk stopped in his tracks for a second, then started again just as suddenly. “Uh. Okay. So...”
He retrieved the clipboard and set it down on her desk. Dash peered at it. “Is this from the, uh...”
“Yeah.”
Twilight stared at it distastefully, then wiped it off and flipped through it. “You have twenty seconds to explain why this is worth wasting my time on.”
Bulk mouthed the words “twenty seconds” and glanced fearfully at Dash. She shrugged.
“So... we’re, uh, missing a couple of uniforms. New ones, for mares, you know?”
Shit.
“We go through uniforms pretty quickly,” Dash said.
“Yeah. Uh, I mean, yes, sir,” Bulk said. “But...” He pointed at some numbers on the clipboard. Twilight’s eyes tracked it.
“What am I looking at?” the unicorn asked.
“They’re measurements,” Dash said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “For the missing uniforms, right?”
“Yeah,” Bulk said. “I checked. They don’t fit anypony.” He fidgeted for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other. “I mean, anypony here.”
Dash pointed at a line. “This one looks pretty close to, um... maybe Flitter’s...”
Bulk shook his head.
“Lightning?”
He shook his head again.
“Okay, so somepony took them,” Dash said. “So?”
“I heard there were some mares who got into the palace with fake uniforms.” Bulk fidgeted. “In Canterlot. What if they weren’t fake?”
Twilight finally looked up at him. “So you’re saying,” she said, “that somepony broke into the most secure building in all of Equestria using uniforms that were under your watch?”
Bulk’s eyes widened. “No. No ma’am. No. I’m care...” He swallowed. “I’m very careful, Miss Sparkle, ma’am. Nopony gets to those without me knowing.”
“So...” Twilight’s voice was flat.
Bulk was talking fast now, in that slurred, growling baritone. “I try to do good records but I don’t, uh, always check them against each other, so I only noticed this now, I’m sorry, and the, uh, total count went from eighteen to sixteen just two days before the thing in Canterlot. And there was only one pony in there then.” His hoof went for the clipboard. “Besides me, I mean. That was you, Colonel Dash.”
Dash leveled a stare at him. “Are you accusing me of something, Corporal?”
Bulk breathed in deeply, and met her gaze. His jaw worked for a few seconds. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “I think you took those uniforms.”
Dash froze, and sneaked a glance at Twilight, whose face was as blank as it could get.
“I wonder,” Twilight said, and paused. “This is just the sort of thing that they would try to do. To turn me against the ponies I can trust. Doesn’t that make sense to you?” She didn’t look at either of them.
“I’m sure uh — Corporal Biceps just made a mistake,” Dash said.
Bulk shook his head.
“The princess... she put a lot of trust in me here. And now it’s all going wrong. And now you’re calling Dash a traitor. She’s saved my life a bunch of times. That doesn’t even make sense!” Twilight looked around now. “It doesn’t.”
She set her gun on the table, a faint purple glow surrounding it. “Who told you to do this? Who told you to try to... drive me crazy... with this obvious lie?”
Bulk gulped. “Nobody.”
“I don’t believe you,” Twilight said, evenly, and raised the gun level to his face. “Who told you to do this?”
“Nobody, I swear.”
There was a click from somewhere in the hidden machinery of the gun. “Last chance.”
“I didn’t—”
There was a knock from the door. “Uh, Miss Twilight?” a voice called.
“I’m busy,” Twilight snapped.
Somebody whispered from behind the door. The first voice continued, hesitantly. “But you’re going to—”
A strained and high-pitched voice hissed, “Gonna!”
A pause. “You’re... gonna miss out on a fun...”
More whispering.
“A super... funnerific time if you don’t open the door... right now.”
Twilight caught Dash’s gaze, gestured at the door. Dash nodded curtly, walked carefully to the door, and put a hoof on the handle.
Twilight said, “This had better be good,” and nodded to Dash, who swung open the door and reached for her gun.
There was a guard there — just newly assigned to the city hall building. He looked young, and scared. There was a flare gun pointed at his head. Pinkie Pie was holding it, looking just a little bit crazier than usual.
“Hi!” Pinkie said, and looked around. “What a buncha sourpusses!” She peered at them more closely. “Whatcha doin’?”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the mare who broke into the palace.”
Pinkie grinned.
“Why shouldn’t I just shoot you right now?” Twilight asked.
“Weeelllllll...” Pinkie took a deep breath. “I’d probably shoot him first because I have superfast reflexes and it would be really messy and also you might feel bad about it although maybe not since you don’t really seem like that kind of pony but still you might anyways and also I want to tell you where you can find Shiny.”
Shit, Dash thought.
Twilight considered that for a moment, and then set her gun down on the desk. “I’m listening.”