BANG! Without warning, a door rapidly swung on its hinges until it hit a wall, creating a small dent and threatening to wake up everypony in the neighbourhood. This would have possibly been considered forgivable if the pony who had kicked the door open hadn’t then shouted at the top of her lungs, “WE’RE HOME, BABY!” as she entered the house and dropped the saddlebags she was carrying to the floor.
“Vinyl!” the pony’s companion hissed. “Be a bit more quiet! It’s ten o’clock at night!”
“Oops, sorry, Octavia,” said Vinyl Scratch as she cast a simple illuminating spell to erase the darkness. She quietly closed the door once Octavia was out of the way, saying, “I’m just so excited to be back home. I can’t wait to live out the suburban dream! You’ll be out all day, playing cello or whatever, while I stay at home and cook and clean and generally stay in the kitchen, and then every day at five o’clock you’ll come through with a, ‘Hi honey, I’m –’”
“Wait, shouldn’t I be the traditional housewife now that we’re married?” Octavia asked as she found some fireflies and allowed them to fly up into a light fitting, brightening up the entranceway better than Vinyl’s spell had. “Seeing as how I am the more traditionally feminine?” She dropped her saddlebags beside Vinyl’s. She probably should have unpacked them, but it was late, and she was tired. Instead, she followed Vinyl, who was heading to the kitchen.
“You’d think that, yeah, but do you remember the vow I made at our marriage ceremony?” Vinyl asked. She had gotten herself a can of cider and thoughtfully put on the kettle in anticipation of Octavia wanting a mug of tea.
“I remember a lot of things about our marriage ceremony,” said Octavia. “For example, I was unaware that we had invited any ninjas -”
“Or is it ninja?” Vinyl wondered out loud.
“ – but there they were, at the reception. That was a bit of a surprise.”
“Yeah, it was a bit of a weird one, wasn’t it?” asked Vinyl. “And I don’t think that banishing Ynn-Thopet, The Chaos Who Always Crawls Up To You With A Smile, is really a traditional form of entertainment at a wedding , is it?”
Octavia shuddered, remembering the dark and many-angled god’s unexpected appearance, thanks to a group of raving cultists who had booked one of the church’s wings for use the day of the wedding. “Well, at least the honeymoon made up for it,” she commented as she poured hot water from the kettle into a mug with a teabag already in it. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather spend a honeymoon with you other than exploring one of Equestria’s deepest and most interesting caverns.”
Vinyl grinned and nodded, recalling the spelunking trip which they had just returned from. “Yeah, I’m definitely going to return there again some time,” she agreed. “I mean, where else in Equestria could it flood but you end up having a great time anyway? That’s the mark of a good holiday destination!”
“Absolutely agreed,” said Octavia as she and Vinyl headed to the lounge room with their drinks. “Perhaps we could make it an annual trip, or – argh!” Entering the lounge room, Octavia literally jumped about a foot into the air – spilling her tea in the process – as she realised that there was a pony standing in the lounge room as though he owned the place.
He was a unicorn with dull grey fur, wearing a heavy coat. He had a short blue mane and tail, both of which had been combed, but in a way which suggested it had been done hastily, with little patience. Octavia also spotted a small scar on his head where none of his mane grew.
“Who in Equestria are you?! What are you doing in our house?” Octavia demanded. She was already angry at this stranger for his apparent infiltration of her house, but to make matters worse, she had spilled some of her tea on herself, wearing her temper slightly more thin.
Vinyl, for her part, whilst surprised, was taking it a lot better than Octavia. “Dad?!” she exclaimed.
“Vinyl!” said the stranger, walking forwards and hugging Octavia’s wife.
Octavia, for her part, merely watched in confusion, unsure what to do about all of this. “What in Equestria…?” she muttered.
“What are you doing here?” Vinyl asked as she and her father broke off their hug. “Shouldn’t you be dead?” She put a hoof to her chin in thought. “Yeah, no, last thing I remember is you definitely dying. Are you a zombie? Or a spirit?”
“I have a great many explanations for you, Vinyl, but the most important thing is that no, I am not and never have been dead,” said Vinyl’s father. “And if the implants do their job, I never will be!” He walked over to Octavia, who was still standing there stunned, and held out a hoof. “You must be Octavia. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said.
“…Yes?” agreed Octavia, weakly shaking his hoof. “I – sorry, could we please backtrack a few steps? You’re…Vinyl’s dad?”
“Yes,” confirmed Vinyl’s father. “My name is Spyglass, and I…” He ran a hoof through his mane, thinking things over for a moment. “I suppose I’d best explain at the start who I am and what I’m doing here. Please, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to Vinyl and Octavia’s couch.
“Woohoo! Exposition!” said Vinyl, following her father’s suggestion.
Octavia scowled, not pleased that a complete stranger was inviting her to sit on her own couch. “Vinyl, who the hay is this?” she asked her wife, choosing to ignore Spyglass for the minute.
“He’s my dad, Octavia!” said Vinyl, practically bouncing on the couch in excitement. It was hard to tell how much of her enthusiasm was thanks to the cider she’d had and how much of it was due to her reunion with her supposed father. “And he’s apparently alive! Hooray!”
“Yes, about that…You’re taking your father’s apparent resurrection very well,” said Octavia, frowning.
Vinyl shrugged. “Eh, dad used to fake his death all the time when I was a kid. Unexpected resurrections by him are pretty par for the course.”
“You…used to fake your death?” Octavia queried Spyglass. “But…why? Vinyl told me you were an explorer, but…”
“Yes, I’m afraid that I have something to admit to both you and to Vinyl,” Spyglass admitted. “Vinyl, I’m sorry, but all of those years when you were growing up and I told you I was an explorer…well, that was only a half-truth. In reality, for almost all of my life, I have been an agent of CHIELD, with the explorer explanation being merely a cover story.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Vinyl. “What a twist!”
“CHIELD?” Octavia repeated. “Celestia’s Highly Intelligent Equine Law-Enforcement Division?” She and Vinyl had encountered agents of CHIELD previously when they had mistakenly been working for a terrorist organisation.
“Precisely,” said Spyglass. “I’ve mostly been a field agent for them, although I’ve also done some desk work from time to time.”
“And when Vinyl says that you’re supposed to be dead…” said Octavia, thinking. Back when she had first met Vinyl, the unicorn had roped her into retrieving a rare flower from the Amarezon Jungle, to be used to cure her supposedly dying father. Octavia had never met Vinyl’s father, and Vinyl had never mentioned the outcome of saving her father, so Octavia had assumed that it had been unsuccessful. Out of respect, Octavia had chosen not to pry, knowing that if Vinyl wanted to talk about it, she would have.
“I was well and truly at death’s door when she brought back the flower from the Amarezon,” said Spyglass, correctly assuming that Octavia knew the context surrounding his supposed death. “And whilst it was successful in saving me from death, my superiors at CHIELD decided to let everyone think that I really had died, and that the flower had failed to save me. It allowed me to move underground, and perform some of the most important missions CHIELD required in years.”
“So all of this time when I assumed you were dead, you were really alive!” exclaimed Vinyl. “Wow! So what are you doing here then?”
“And how did you get inside our house?” Octavia asked.
Agent Spyglass gestured. “I’m a spy. I make my own entrance.”
Following his gesture, Octavia was appalled to see – “The window! Did you have to break it?”
Agent Spyglass shrugged. “What was I supposed to do, open it? Doing that sort of trick in the business will get you caught faster than you can say ‘Life Model Decoy’”.
“Well, it was good timing, dad!” congratulated Vinyl. “How did you know that we would be coming home tonight?”
===============================
Agent Spyglass bounced slightly on his hooves, both to stretch his muscles slightly in anticipation of what he was going to do, and to warm himself up faintly in the cold air. He gave his body a quick shake before patting himself down to check that he had everything he needed. As they should have been, the files he had were still with him, and he wasn’t missing anything.
“Alright Spyglass,” he muttered to himself, “quit your delaying and get the hay in there.” After only the briefest flicker of hesitation, he cantered towards the small, suburban house, and leapt at it. Crashing through a window, he rolled forwards as he landed, both dissipating the energy of his landing and allowing the coat he wore to absorb any of the miniscule glass shards which would now be scattered across the floor. (He wasn’t so successful in avoiding the larger glass shards, and ended up with a nasty piece of glass jutting from his leg, but Spyglass ignored it. If he’d allowed himself to acknowledge pain whenever something hurt him, he never would have been able to stop Yellow Peril back in the day).
“Nailed it,” Spyglass grunted. He picked himself up from the floor and examined his surroundings. It was entirely dark, because of course there were no lights on. “Vinyl? Octavia?” he called out into the darkness after hearing no mares rushing out to find out what had just broken through their window. He was greeted by silence. “Vinyl?” Spyglass called out again. Still nothing.
Spyglass slowly walked from the lounge room to the next room, which was a hallway, and then from there to the next room, which was the kitchen. There was still no sign of either pony, nor of them having been here for at least several weeks. Every now and then, Spyglass would call out one of the two mares’ names, awaiting a reply which never came.
“Have they been captured?” Spyglass wondered to himself. “Or have they – wait a second,” he interrupted as he spotted something nearby. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. Holding up the item – which was a calendar – to his eyes in the darkness, Spyglass quickly scanned it before letting out a sigh.
“Crap. What am I going to do for the next week?”
===============================
“I had good intel,” replied Spyglass cryptically. “But the time for questions has passed. It’s time for me to tell you the reason why I have unexpectedly and dramatically appeared in your lives at this very moment.”
“C’mon, Octavia, pull up a seat!” said Vinyl, patting the couch cushion beside her. “Dad’s going to tell us a story!”
Still not happy with the situation, Octavia reluctantly walked over to Vinyl and joined her on the couch. She should have known that after a month or two off, events would conspire to force her and Vinyl into some grander-than-life adventure. It was never more than a few months – if that – before she and Vinyl moved onto the next adventure, as though there were some sort of destiny that forced the two of them into dangerous and mildly entertaining set pieces. Octavia sighed internally. If there really was some sort of destiny, couldn’t it be a bit more consistent with the frequency in which it forced them out of their mostly-idyllic life?
“I suppose I’d best start at the beginning,” began Spyglass.
“As opposed to the middle,” Vinyl agreed, serious.
“Do you recognise this pony?” asked Spyglass, placing a folder from his overcoat to the table and flipping it open, revealing a photograph.
Vinyl Scratch gasped, as Octavia simultaneously drew in a sharp breath. “The Bartender!” said Vinyl.
“Baron von – wait, who?” Octavia asked, turning to Vinyl.
“You remember, the bartender? At that one bar?” Vinyl explained. Octavia gave her a blank look. “When we went out drinking?”
“…This is a picture of Baron von Darkhoof, the self-proclaimed noble who hindered our progress in acquiring the flower for your father in the Amarezon, and later forcibly shipped us together,” Octavia pointed out, shuddering internally at the memory of being shipped with Vinyl. “How could you not recognise him?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I totally saw him,” Vinyl said, “I was looking in the background.” She pointed a hoof of the photograph. “See? That one guy – or girl actually, that’s kinda ambiguous – has colouring similar to the Bartender. It must be him!”
Octavia squinted. “I… guess? It is somewhat hard to see. What did this bartender look like again?”
“Like that!” Vinyl said, pointing again. “Only much less blurry, and possibly the opposite gender!”
“Well…sure,” said Octavia, “that may be the case, but I suspect that your father gave us this photo because he wanted to show us Baron von Darkhoof.”
“Correct, Octavia,” said Spyglass. “Now, this information has been kept under wraps at CHIELD, but we believe that Baron von Darkhoof is currently in the midst of blackmailing the government.”
“Wait, why aren’t you guys sure of it?” Vinyl asked. “Is his ransom note, like, super illegible or something?”
“I would certainly believe that Baron von Darkhoof has terrible hoofwriting,” Octavia agreed. The two ponies shared a conspiratory nod before listening to what else Spyglass had to say.
“We’ve had a pony on the inside of Darkhoof’s organisation for a while, and in his last communication, he told us that Darkhoof was planning something big. That was several weeks ago, and we haven’t heard anything from him since,” Spyglass exposited. “Either he’s gone native, or he’s been found out.”
“Who is this inside pony?” Octavia asked.
“Stumblefeather,” answered Spyglass and Vinyl at the same time.
“Stumblefeather?!” Octavia exclaimed, looking between the two of them. “That klutzy, incompetent sidekick of Darkhoof’s?”
“He’s played his part well, and is one of our best agents,” confirmed Spyglass. “Or, he was one of our best agents. Or… will be one of our best agents?” Looking to Vinyl, he asked, “But how did you know that he was a double agent? That’s supposed to be top-secret information.”
“Oh, he told me!” Vinyl said cheerfully.
“What?!” Octavia asked. “When?”
“Do you remember when we were fighting Baron von Darkhoof and Stumblefeather in the Amarezon ruins? Just before we found the flower?” Vinyl asked.
“Vaguely,” said the Earth pony.
“I asked him why he was working with Baron von Darkhoof, and whilst you were busy fighting said boss, he explained to me that he was actually a double agent, and that he was sorry that he had to act antagonistic towards us but that it was part of his cover.” It was all said very matter-of-factly, as though Vinyl was describing meeting a friend for coffee.
“And you never thought to tell me?” Octavia asked.
Vinyl shrugged. “I assumed you knew, since you never asked,” she said.
“Unbelievable. I’ll have to talk to him about this lapse in cover if I ever see him again,” growled Spyglass. “Anyway, with no new information from Agent 13 – that’s Stumblefeather – in several weeks, we need somepony to head to Baron von Darkhoof’s last known location, find out what he’s up to and how much danger he currently presents and then, if he presents a valid threat, stop him. Naturally, I’ve volunteered you two for this job.”
“Because we have had experience in dealing with Baron von Darkhoof before, correct?” asked Octavia.
“Because we’re badass?” Vinyl prompted.
Spyglass nodded. “Yes,” he said, not specifying which pony he was answering. “I’d love to send another set of CHIELD agents in, but if Stumblefeather has switched sides, not only would he be anticipating CHIELD agents and would know all of their tactics, it could also indicate corruption further in the organisation. I can’t be too sure of who I can trust with an operation like this.”
“Are you sure?” Octavia asked. “I…I think we’re both ready for this, but…surely you wish for somepony more competent than either of us?”
“Yeah, you know we’ve got criminal records, right?” Vinyl said, eliciting a wince from Octavia. “If our names hadn’t been unexpectedly and conveniently cleared by a mysterious party, then we should still be in jail!”
At that, Spyglass frowned. “A mysterious party?” he questioned, sounding confused. “You two did read the note I left you, didn’t you?”
It was now Vinyl and Octavia’s turn to be confused. “A note?” Octavia asked, not sure what Spyglass was on about now.
“You expected me to learn how to read by now?” Vinyl added.
“The note, explaining that I had investigated the allegations which had led to the two of you being put into jail and cleared your names behind my superiors’ backs,” explained Spyglass. “I left it in that apartment you two rented whilst you were in Manehattan. Didn’t you read it?”
Vinyl and Octavia exchanged blank looks with each other. With neither having an explanation for the other, Vinyl asked, “When was this?” to her father.
“Not too long after the two of you escaped from prison,” Spyglass said. “Did you two hear about those terrorists, COBRA, stealing that rare scroll from the Manehattan library last year? It would have been…maybe a week or two after then?”
Vinyl and Octavia looked at each other again, understanding now what had happened. Unbeknownst to Spyglass, they had been two of the COBRA troopers who had stolen that rare scroll, and had used the spell inscribed upon it to jump through several different points in time. The closest they had been able to get to their original time was roughly a week after initially leaving – Spyglass must have cleared their names and written the note during that week, and they would have missed it in all of the confusion.
“Oh. Well, thank you for that,” said Octavia. “Ever since hearing that our names had been cleared, I was wondering who had done it and what ridiculous escapade it would lead us into next... It’s good to finally know the answer to both of those questions.”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Vinyl. Turning to Octavia, she said, “See, Octavia? Didn’t I tell you my dad was the best? He was callously manipulating our lives from behind the scenes before you even met him!”
Octavia gave Vinyl a look, then turned back to Spyglass. “Anyway, as I was saying, aren’t there any CHIELD agents more competent than either Vinyl or I whom you would rather use for this mission?”
“You two are the most competent ponies I know,” Spyglass said. His voice was as gruff as ever, but there was an undertone of kindness to it. Somehow, Octavia knew that he didn’t make compliments like that often.
“I think that says more about the quality of the current agents at CHIELD than it does us,” Vinyl pointed out to Octavia, nudging her as she said so.
“And besides, if you guys pull off this mission, everyone in the office owes me two hundred bits. Each.”
“What was that?”
Agent Spyglass hastily cleared his throat and took the folder he had placed onto the table back. “Well then, do you both agree? This may be a difficult task, but nevertheless I expect the two of you to blindly agree.”
“Hell yeah!” said Vinyl. “This can basically be Honeymoon 2: Electric Boogaloo. Hey, do you think I could get a note for work saying I can’t come in because I’m too busy saving Equestria?”
Octavia nodded, having made her decision already. She knew that if she attempted to resist, she’d just be drawn in further. And besides, a little action – rather, some excitement; she and Vinyl had gotten plenty of action on their honeymoon – would be quite fun. It had been a while since Vinyl and Octavia had had an adventure like this, and as a result, Octavia felt almost obliged to have one.
“Of course,” Octavia confirmed. “We’ll both undertake the mission.”
“Excellent,” said Spyglass. “Follow me outside. I’ll give you the rest of the briefing on the way.”
Getting up from the couch, Vinyl and Octavia did as Spyglass bade. It was time for them to start their first mission as agents of CHIELD.