Wonderful Mechanical: Keen Eye and the Wonderbolt Saboteur.

by Monocrome_Monogatari

Spitfire's Blue Fire

“So…would you care to explain this?”

It wasn’t clear who Spitfire was asking this to: me, rivet, or the security stationed by the door.

Maybe it was all of us. Maybe it was none of us. Maybe she was interrogating the universe, the fabric of reality itself.

Right now she seemed like a mare who could get results from that.

“Well?”

Looking at her now, I get the feeling that spitfire was born with the wrong color scheme. She was fiery, yes, but it wasn’t the kind of fire you would associate with yellow and orange, wild and unfocused, spreading its heat wherever there’s a flammable surface.

No, right now, Spitfire’s fire was definitely blue. Everything about her demeanor, from her rigid forward posture, to her cutting glare, to every harshly enunciated syllable in her statements, were focused, purposeful, and so much more intense. She wasn’t yelling, yet my ears were still ringing, completely overwhelmed.

“Ah..e-er…um… s-s-s-s-oor-r-r-r-y aaah I mean…” Rivet was looking everywhere but her eyes. He was stuttering more than normal. His leaned into himself more than normal, tried to make himself look smaller than normal. His main, tail, and coat were more disheveled more than normal. He looked like he lost more sleep than normal. Rivet was being Rivet much more than normal.

Even the security was sweating in this pressure cooker. Their facial expressions were equal parts regretful and fearful. Regretful that they eventually read the letter and let me in, and fearful that they would be the next target of Spitfire’s ire. Sure, they kept the composure their job commanded, but they kept shifting their weight on their hooves, with a nervous energy unbecoming of them, their ears kept twitching, like they wanted to fold them down in submission, and their eyes kept flicking to the door. The only thing keeping them from trying to slip out is that Spitfire’s presence probably melted their shoes to the ground.

Me? I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t also taking a similar strategy to Rivet. I’d like to believe that my experiences in my old life had steeled me, but with the right fuel even steel will start to melt. Still, I had a bit more composure than the other 3 victims in the room, so I had enough sense to start taking stock in my surroundings.

I’ve heard you can tell how hard a person works by either how clean or how messy it is at the end of the day.

A clean desk is someone methodical, who you can trust got a sizeable amount of work done just by going through the motions.

A partially messy desk is low to average, a person tepidly punching in and punching out.

An extremely messy desk however, is either a sign that the person has given up on work entirely, or has given up their entire selves to work. No time to clean when there’s still the next thing to be done, after all.

Judging from the state of Spitfire’s office, she was the first type until very recently, and then became the third. Looking at the shelves, filing cabinets, and placement of the few decorations she allowed herself, she was someone who had a definite order and method to her work. Recently, however, something had overwhelmed it. Her desk was strewn with papers. Her posters on the wall had a few maps laid over it, with some pins marking several spots. The bin for her mail seemed to be overflowing, and a set of blue envelopes with wax seals seemed to almost burst out. Her filing cabinet drawers were half open, and while things were properly in their proper order, they had corners poking out here and there, like the papers had been hastily pulled out and shoved in.

“I didn’t ask for a ‘Sorry’, I asked for someone to explain THIS.” She slammed my letter onto her desk. “WHY exactly are you inviting non-Wonderbolt personnel onto the compound? Without telling anybody? NOW of all times?” Her teeth grit harder with every sentence passing.

“I-I-I-Thought I t-t-t-told y-y-“ I didn’t know whether he looked more ready to cry or to vomit. I couldn’t stand this tension, so I decided to play the ace up my sleeve.

“Is this about how I’m not supposed to know that the Wonderbolts are secretly a military organization?”

For the next few seconds, you could hear a pin drop. Wide eyed and gaping, no one dared to make the slightest move.

The calm before the storm.

“YOU TOLD HIM?!”

“NO! NO I DIDN”T! I-“

“He DIDN’T. That’s exactly why I know.”

Her eyes narrowed into slits as she zeroed in on me. I felt like I was staring down a snake ready to strike. “Explain. If you can’t make that make sense in 1 minute then I’m WELL within my authority to detain you.”

“Well, Rivet is the kind of pony where, if he’s in his element, or he has an audience that he feels will listen, will talk your ear off about whatever he’s working on. It was like that when I first met him in school years ago, he was like that when we became pen pals, and I would bet money it’s how he still is today. I used to find whole schematics shoved in the envelope to elucidate a point he made in a single paragraph.”

“That habit stopped abruptly when he was hired for the Wonderbolts. He would make passing references to something he was working on, but he would never go into detail. His letters got shorter and had less of a spontaneous air to them. It was almost like he was being asked to limit the details of what he was doing for you guys, and he had to write much more reservedly and deliberately as a result.”

“Now, I couldn’t think of a reason why an athletics/showpony team would have him be so tight lipped that he couldn’t even talk about simple things like how your spotlight system worked, so I had to think ‘Maybe there’s much more to the Wonderbolts than meets the eye?’. What else could a team of highly trained flyers with an extremely difficult entry process be doing? Ones where expose articles have shown events like sparring practice? Ones who have been spotted scrambling at disaster zones? It’s only a few steps from there that you reach Military. If you need proof that he didn’t say anything, I still have the letters at home” I could only let my smile grow as I watched her slit-eye glare loosen into a wide eyed stare. Thankfully, Rivet had calmed down, and while he also looked surprised, he was less so, and his smile seemed thankful enough.

“Of course, I didn’t really have any proof until you confirmed it for me.” I finished off.

She groaned and rested her forehead on the desk, all the tension she held before slipping right off of her. “Great. Just great. We’ve got ourselves a detective in our midst. Our secrets are doomed.”

“Hahaha. Don’t be silly. I’m just a painter, here to visit my good friend Rivet in his time of need.” I stretched my smile as far as it could go. “Besides, you shouldn’t feel bad about this. Most secrets are secrets just because no one bothered to look into them. Your cover is solid enough that only weirdos like me will question it.”

“Hmm?” She looked at me with a raised eyebrow “Whatever…” she started to go through one of the cabinets beneath her desk. “Of course, now that you’ve gone this far, I’m going to have to ask you to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Even if you didn’t use illegal means to find it out, we can’t have you blabbing this to anyone. Don’t think we won’t know either. We have the resources of the princesses on our side.”

“You mean the princesses that are currently ignoring you?”

SLAM

“WHAT THE HELL!” Spitfire yelled, as she rubbed the point where she slammed her skull into the underside of her desk.

“It’s the basket full of mail, namely the blue envelopes. They all have the royal seal of the lunar court on the wax. I’ve heard that our night princess is still pretty old fashioned, and prefers to use scroll and quill. Those all have typewriter marks on the envelopes, not hoof written ink. I’m guessing those are form letters, and you don’t exactly get multiple form letters from someone hanging onto your every word.”

Spitfire had gone from looking impressed to looking annoyed. “Are you SURE you’re not a detective or something? You seem pretty suspicious. If we didn’t have Rivet vouching for you, I’m not sure I’d be giving you the time of day.”

“I know who I am, thank you very much. Still, it’s somewhat refreshing to hear someone speak so bluntly, instead of dancing around their feelings."

She sighed, rubbing her temples. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so short with you, it’s just a lot of unusual things are piling up right now.”

“I can tell.” I said, gesturing to the clutter. Turning to Rivet, I whisper, “I sincerely hope I wasn’t called in to help with whatever this is. I get you have faith in me but I doubt even YOU would be rash and insensitive enough to try and get me involved with a matter of national security. Especially after last time I got involved in something like that.” I shuddered.

“Oh no no no. The problem I called you here for begins and ends within the compound.” He whispered back.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“AHEM!” Spitfire said. “If you two are done gossiping…”

And the sigh of relief forcefully crawled back up my throat.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook yet, Rivet. There’s still the fact that you invited someone here without permission. With the mess you’re in right now, I’m surprised you’d want to do something as risky as this.”

“But I DID get permission! I sent in the proper form! I have it down in my office! You signed it! I can run down and get it now!”

Spitfire looked more confused than anything else. I timidly raised my hoof.

“Miss Commander Spitfire, Ma’am… are you the kind of person who, when overwhelmed with paperwork, might sign something without completely reading it? Or when you see a trusted name, you might automatically assume whatever is written is worthwhile?”

“…”

“You might want to fix that.”

“Just go.”

Comments

[Azure_Shadow]

I see that you use the word "people" in this fic a lot, just to let you know.

[Dusk_Writer]

“Miss Commander Spitfire, Ma’am… are you the kind of person who, when overwhelmed with paperwork, might sign something without completely reading it? Or when you see a trusted name, you might automatically assume whatever is written is worthwhile?”

“…”

“You might want to fix that.”

“Just go.”

[Witching Hour]

“Miss Commander Spitfire, Ma’am… are you the kind of person who, when overwhelmed with paperwork, might sign something without completely reading it? Or when you see a trusted name, you might automatically assume whatever is written is worthwhile?”

“…”

“You might want to fix that.”

“Just go.”

I'm with SOARINDASH1 here...

I've been meaning to read this for a while, and I'm QUITE enjoying it.