Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor telekinetically tosses the parchment onto Captain Gibraltar's desk. "Sir, with all due respect this is ridiculous!" he exclaims, his face showing fierce annoyance.
"You don't need to tell me twice." Captain Gibraltar wearily replies as he sits behind his desk. "But what can I do about it? You know how predatory these griffons can be whenever they come around."
"I never seen such absurd claims in my life, sir! Even if we accept the premise that the 'Eternal Night' reached into the griffon realms, how can we prove it caused any of the damages they list? They're using what happened at the Summer Sun Celebration for extortion!" Shining blasts out.
"Shining, please, I understand you're upset about all this. But yelling doesn't help anything." Gibraltar gently replies. "I wish we didn't have this problem just as much as you do. But they're here now, and so we have to deal with it. Princess Celestia has the final say on this, and I'm sure she won't let them have a bit from our treasury. But if we stoop to their level, they win, it's that simple. Our job is to keep them from doing anything tricky and to keep the peace, that is all Princess Celestia asks of us. You understand?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. Do you have double guard around Luna's bedroom suite, like I suggested?"
"Yes sir."
"That ought to be enough to prevent trouble with Luna. You have command for the night, but I'll be here for a while yet dealing with paperwork."
"Understood, sir. Good night."
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ABOUT 20 MINUTES LATER...
"Your Majesty, please put that down!" Shining Armor exclaims as he is let into Princess Luna's bedroom suite, him telekinetically carrying a grocery bag full of "junk food" for an all-night game session.
"And pray tell why should we?" Princess Luna asks, looking over at Shining as she speaks. Being levitated by her light blue magic was a colorfully-decorated box with a window in the front showing off a golden video game cartridge contained inside, the box still covered in shrink-wrap.
"There's only three of that kind of 'Harmony Defenders' cartridge in existence!" Shining Armor explains with a distressed look on his face. "When the game was first made, three special golden cartridges were produced and signed by the game's creator. One went to Celestia, one went to Cadance and the third was kept by the company's CEO. The one you're holding is the copy given to Cadance and is worth a significant portion of the Equestrian treasury!"
Luna pauses for a second, then raises an eyebrow in puzzlement as she looks at the box again. Finally, she puts it down on a nearby nightstand.
"If you actually want to play the game, there's a commercial copy in the box somewhere..." Shining explains, walking over and putting down the grocery bag before beginning to go through the box of game cartridges by telekinetically pulling up and putting back down different cartridges.
"Aha!" he finally exclaims as he levitates up a cartridge and whisks it over to the Pony Entertainment System, putting it in too fast for Luna to get a good look. The TV and game console go on, and quickly the suite is filled with bright colors and dramatic sounds. As the game's attract mode begins to play, Luna suddenly becomes transfixed by something she sees on the screen. After a moment, she taps a hoof on the screen.
"There. This." she says, pointing at the depiction on the screen of Princess Celestia and another alicorn, only slightly smaller than Celestia. That alicorn's coat was a deep blue, the mane and tail resembling a starry sky and flowing in the same way Celestia's did.
"That is a fairly accurate depiction of our true form, the one we had before our thousand-year exile." Luna explains, meekly smiling at a confused Shining Armor. "The dark powers twisted this into what both our sister and your sister confronted. We are still too weak now to take this form again, but do hope to do so again one day."
"But I've never..." Shining begins to say, a confused look on his face, before a raised hoof by Princess Luna cuts him off.
"All the storybook and other depictions of what happened were decreed by our sister to use an even younger version of ourselves in visual representation." Luna explains. "She wanted - and we cannot blame her for doing so - to separate what you saw in those books from the perversion of our true self that was called 'Nightmare Moon'."
"But then why is it different here?" Shining asks.
"Only our sister would know the answer to that question." Luna answers with something like a shrug. "But we are glad to see it here, and perhaps that is the entire reason for it to be there at all."
"Knowing Celestia, I wouldn't be surprised if it was." Shining replies with a smirk of a smile.
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Soon Luna's suite was filled with the sounds of the "Harmony Defenders" (representations of Celestia and Luna from before Luna's exile to the moon) blasting away with their "Element Bursts" against "the enemies of peace and harmony" as the two alicorns flew past dramatic backgrounds clearly inspired by locations throughout Equestria, albeit ones as they looked at that time.
The sounds of the game being played and of the players in intense gaming, however, begun to be interrupted by an increasingly loud series of growls and screeches. Were the griffons deliberately being disruptive, or worse had too much drink been allowed to them? Either way, it portended nothing good.
Princess Luna, playing as the depiction of her past self, finally pauses the game and looks in the direction of the growls and screeches with extreme irritation. Shining Armor, playing as the depiction of Celestia, follows her look and seems just as irritated.
"We see the manners of griffons have not improved in a thousand years." Luna scoffs out with a contemptuous sniff.
"I don't know why that's happening - they aren't supposed to have anything that would make them drunk. The Captain made those orders very clear." Shining Armor states with a worried look on his face.
"Well, get them to stop. Now! Most annoying things..." Luna growls out.
"I'll try, Your Majesty. But I can't guarantee anything." Shining Armor replies with a mortified expression as he gets up to investigate the ruckus.
"Sir, the griffons..." one of the door guards says as Shining approaches the door leading out of Luna's suite.
"Already been ordered by the Princess. Two of you follow me." Shining answers, not even stopping as he trots out the door and down the hallway...
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Arrival at the guest suite the griffon ambassador and his party were staying found a very unpleasant sight - they had clearly been allowed access to hard drink and were proceeding to make a mess of the room, screeching and roaring in spats and what the Equestrians could only guess was some kind of drinking song.
But the worst part was the lame winged servant, who had been chained to one of the walls. Some of the drunk griffons pulled at his useless wings as if they were ends of a tug of war, lashing at him with talon and claw whenever he cried out in pain. Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor felt for the poor thing, but knew he was helpless to change the situation.
"Most disgusting creatures." one of the guards with Shining whispers out.
"Ambassador! Ambassador!" Shining shouts over the din, immediately drawing the latter's attention.
"Leave us alone, unless the decision about our request has been made!" the ambassador growls back out in annoyance, his eyes seeming to glow fiercely.
"Princess Luna says to cease the racket immediately! This is not a tavern!" Shining exclaims, glaring fiercely in return.
"Bah! What can she do to us without her powers?" the ambassador scoffs, followed by a combination of growls that suggest an insult in tone. Some of the other griffons, having turned their attentions to the conversation, start laughing as well.
"I'd like to know who let them access the hard stuff and give them a piece of my mind! Come on, let's go." Shining says to the other guards, turning away from the scene and back toward the waiting Princess Luna.
It was not his job to escalate the situation, nor was it his job to bring Luna to try to convince them to pipe down. The chained "defective" servant, battered and in terrible pain, broke his heart, but he had to steel himself from trying to play hero. If it were an Equestrian chained up, then he might have right to intervene. But a native griffon... no, he had to stay out of it. Keeping the peace was first and foremost, regardless of what was "right" or "valiant" in this situation.
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TEN MINUTES LATER...
"Outrageous! If we were at full power, we would thrash them all for their impunity right now!" Princess Luna exclaims in indignation, angry at her order being so crudely rebuffed.
"Well, Your Majesty, you are unfortunately not at full power, and trying to attack them as you are would not be a good idea." Shining gently points out. Luna simply gives a huff, sitting on haunches and crossing forelegs with a pouting expression on her face.
"Sir, Lieutenant Stratocumulus has just arrived." one of the guards at the door says.
"Just a minute, Your Majesty. I'll need to debrief the Lieutenant." Lieutenant Captain Shining Armor states, before walking out the door and approaching the at-attention Lieutenant Stratocumulus.
The pegasus Lieutenant gives a salute as Shining Armor approaches, seeming to show nothing more than solemn attention despite being called away from his post at very short notice.
"Sorry about the short notice, Lieutenant, but this is very important. Somepony authorized the griffons to obtain hard drink in defiance of explicit orders from the Captain. I need you to go down to Quartermaster Tallymark's office and see who put in that authorization. Understood?" Shining Armor orders.
"Yes sir, I'll get right on it!" Lieutenant Stratocumulus exclaims, smartly turning around and beginning to march away from Luna's suite. Shining Armor, satisfied, proceeds back into Luna's suite to resume the video game that had been previously paused.
As soon as Stratocumulus is out of earshot of anypony near Luna's suite, he very quickly diverts in a different direction, still going in the standard march to avoid drawing suspicion. Finally, he ducks into a staff-only bathroom, looking for a stall with a closed door. He opens the door to find a figure covered completely with a cloak and with cloth tied around his hooves, the only identifying feature the white unicorn horn sticking out from a hole in the cloak.
"Well?" the figure asks of Stratocumulus moments after the stall door is opened.
"Just as you planned, completely clueless. We seem to have gained the ambassador's trust, Agent Snake." Lieutenant Stratocumulus says to the figure.
"Excellent work, Agent 3. The confidence the shining one has in you will prove invaluable to the success of our mission." Agent Snake answers. "The Quartermaster is of no more use to us, and I have already dispatched another Agent to silence him completely. His office is open for the evidence planting operation. When that is complete, give the forged documentation to the shining one. That will buy us enough time to execute the joint operation with the ambassador."
"Yes, Agent Snake." Stratocumulus replies with a salute before closing the bathroom stall door and marching back out of the bathroom to do the orders of what seemed to be his true commander...