//------------------------------// // L.A.U.G.H. // Story: Stormageddon: Changeling Spy // by Shakespearicles //------------------------------// Looking back on it, I wish I had said something more profound. Something more in tune with the gravity of the offer that had just been given to me. There, on the patio of the West Castle Courtyard of Canterlot, dancing under a thousand stars with Luna, the Princess of the Moon herself. My changeling form, bare to her. Taking me in her hooves, and whispering the offer of a lifetime into my ear. 'Join my team.' My legs trembled. My heart pounded in my ears. My mouth was dry. My breath, ragged. My mind raced as she held me there in the final pose of our dance. Her warm body against mine. 'Join my team.' Her sensual cheek, held to mine. Her delicate blue ears awaiting my answer. My response? "Okay." Just the memory of it makes me cringe. She broke her embrace of our dance, setting me back down. She began to walk away. "Come," she commanded. I followed after her to the doorway of the courtyard. She reached for the handle, but paused to look to me. "You may want to..." she trailed off, motioning to me with her hoof. "Oh. Right." I shape-shifted back into Storm Cloud. She opened the door and stepped through. "Your Majesty," I heard from just outside. I followed Luna to see Echo rising from her bow to the princess. "Storm?" she asked, surprised to see me again, as if she had forgotten. "Agent Storm," Luna corrected. "Agent!?" We both said in shock. "Yes, Agent Echo," Luna said. "I'd like you to meet the newest member of L.A.U.G.H." Echo and I followed Luna into the bowels of Canterlot Castle, down the stone stairways to the wine cellar. "Okay, so what is L.A.U.G.H?" I asked. "Luna's Agency of Undercover Guard Horses," Echo said as we walked past endless racks of wine bottles from ages long gone, "Spies." We walked between the rows of massive barrels. Another bat pony with an eye-patch waited at the far wall of the long cellar. He bowed as we approached. "Your Grace," he greeted Luna. "Agent Sunshine, what are you doing in here?" Luna asked. "Why, guarding the wine, of course," he said with a smirk. "Of course," Luna said. "Are the others already assembled?" "Yes ma'am," he said. "Well then," she waved him away, "after you." He nodded, then turned and walked through the stone wall. He walked through the wall. I don't mean that a door opened, or that it was a curtain. He walked, and vanished into, the solid stone wall. I imagine the look on my face was quite entertaining to the other mares. "Your turn," Luna said to me. I followed after him, and headed to where he had stepped through. And my head collided with very solid stone with a thud. "Ow!" I rubbed my head. Behind me, Luna and Echo shared a snicker of laughter. "Just a bit of hazing for the new agents," Echo said before walking past me into the wall with a shimmer, leaving me alone with the princess. Luna kicked a stone against the wall. It ricocheted off. "You'll need the enchantment," Luna said. "Kneel." I took a knee before the princess. "I officially dub thee, Agent Stormageddon." She tapped me on the shoulder with her horn as it glowed blue. Her magic ran through me. It wasn't anything amazing. It was a barely noticeable sensation. Like a gentle breeze, over as soon as it started. "Rise." I got back on my hooves. She motioned to the wall. I took a deep breath, and stepped through. The dank, cramped darkness of the wine cellar gave way a well-lit space. My eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden brightness. It wasn't so much a room as it was a cavern. The walls were lined with massive, reflective gems that made good use of the light. The space was filled with desks, and freestanding walls with maps, photos, and all sorts of notes. There were lockers and shelving units filled with all sorts of equipment of which I could only begin to guess at the purpose. A couple dozen various ponies milled about. The wall behind me shimmered. "ROOM TENCH' HUT!" Agent Sunshine shouted beside me, snapping to attention as Princess Luna entered the room. Everypony stopped what they were doing and turned to face her. "Carry on," she said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. Everypony resumed whatever it was that they were doing. "What is all this?" I asked her. Luna huffed in frustration. Her tone, a mix of maternal and vaguely flirtatious while we were dancing in the courtyard, had shifted to direct no-nonsense. "There's no time," Luna said. "I have a briefing to prepare. Echo, deal with him," she ordered. "Aye, Princess," Echo said with a quick salute before turning to me. "Come on, Newbie." Echo pulled me in a different direction from where Luna was headed. "I can't believe she picked you," she said as soon as we were out of earshot. "You, of all ponies!" "What?" "Hmmf. Figures," she grumbled. "Clueless." We walked towards the row of lockers. Each one was numbered and had a name on it in decal paint. "This will be your locker," she said. Another bat pony was scraping some lettering off of one of them. AGENT GAS "Who's Gas? Does he have a flatulence problem or something?" I asked. Echo glared at me. "Agent Gaston. He was our contact in Gryphonstone. But he's been terminated." "As in... fired?" I asked. She gave me a dubious look. "What do you think?" she said. I gulped. She sighed, regaining her composure. "Look, I'm not trying to scare you." She paused. "Actually, yeah, I am trying to scare you. I want to make sure that you understand exactly what you're getting into. In our work, lives hang in the balance. When we make mistakes, people DIE!" "Isn't it the same with the Royal Guard?" I asked. "It's not even remotely the same. And the very fact that you think so only proves your ignorance." "Well I'm sorry. I only just found out that this place even existed a few minutes ago," I said. "Exactly. We kind of make a point of keeping it that way." The other bat pony finished scraping off the rest of the name, the bits of paint falling to the ground. The last bit of evidence of Gaston's existence was swept off the floor into a dust pan. "This will be your locker," she repeated. She punctuated her sentence slamming her hoof against the locker. "If you live long enough, we might even bother to put your name on it." We walked to a desk at the end of the rows of equipment shelves. There sat an elderly unicorn. "Agent Storm, meet Agent Quill Pen, our equipment manager. He's in charge of all of our-" "Equipment?" I finished. I reached to pick up a slick-looking wrist watch on the shelf. "Hooves off!" Quill snapped at me in a Trottingham accent. I withdrew my hoof. "Anything here needs to be checked out through me. This isn't some buffet that you can just go for a rummaging spree through!" "Sorry." "If you just take something without proper training, most of these things will kill you before I'll get the chance to," he added. "Anything you need for a mission, you can get here," Echo explained, pointing at the various items. "Most of it is pretty standard. Grappling hook, night-vision goggles, tranq dartsss," she hissed through her fangs. "A lot of the stuff we have is disguised as other stuff. A camera that looks like a purse, flash-bangs built into a briefcase, audio recorder necklacesss. He can make our tools of the trade look completely innocuousss." "What about this?" I asked, picking up a plate with a sandwich on it. "Pull the toothpick out of the top to activate the grenade?" "Don't touch that!" Quill barked, quickly grabbing it from my hooves, "That's my lunch!" "Come on," Echo said, pulling me away, "We've got a briefing to get to." I followed Echo through the complex. "So, where are we exactly?" "The caves beneath Canterlot. Once home to greedy unicorns who wanted to claim the gems that could be found inside. And now, our headquarters," she explained. Many of the other agents were heading in the same general direction, to the briefing. "So is it mostly bat ponies?" I asked, seeing nothing else aside from the unicorn, Agent Quill. "Yes and no," she said. "Mostly yes, now, here. But there are quite a few agents of other walks." "And where are they?" "Sleeping through Princess Luna's beautiful night, I would assume," she said with an air of contempt. "Day-trotters tend to get assigned under a bat pony for assignment delegation. They have civilian covers to maintain, after all." "Day-trotters?" "Oh, it's what we call the rest of... you people." She winced. "As I was saying, we attend the briefings to exchange information updates, and then we each delegate assignments to our diurnal counterparts." She gave me an examining look. "And by the looks of it, you've been assigned to me." "Yay?" I said. She rolled her eyes. "What about her?" I asked, motioning to the mint-green unicorn with a harp cutie mark taking a seat across the aisle from us. I recognized her as Lyra Heartstrings from Ponyville. "What's her story?" "Her story... is a bit above your pay grade," Echo said to me. "Agent Heartstrings" Princess Luna said, quietly to me, as she walked past, "is our double-agent contact in S.M.I.L.E." "Smile?" "The Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria," Echo explained. "They operate by and for Princess Celestia." "Don't we, as well?" I asked. Echo smirked. "My sister is a bit of an idealist," Luna said. "That she thinks that everything can be solved by the power of love or friendship." She smiled. "I'm a bit more pragmatic than that," she said before heading up to the front of the room. "We understand that sometimes, one must get their hooves dirty," Echo said. "When it comes right down to it, for the sake of Equestria, we must sometimes fight, and die for it. And, when necessary, kill." "But I thought Princess Twilight took care of most of the major threats to Equestria," I said. "HA!" Echo laughed out loud. "And she just always happens to know what's going to happen. She always just happens to find the magical artifact in time, the Elements of Harmony, keys to rainbow powers, or the secret to a monster's weakness. She just happens to always survive in the face of impossible odds." "Um, yes?" "Storm, you're so naive, you're almost cute." "Really!?" "Almost." "Oh." "S.M.I.L.E. does its part protecting Equestria, certainly, and Celestia likes to think she has the corner on the spy market. The threats that reach Twilight are only the ones you know about. The tip of a very scary iceberg. We have a responsibility greater than most ponies can possibly fathom. We are burdened with a knowledge that the rest of the world would rather not think about. That there are things that go bump in the night. And we-" she grinned, "are the ones who bump back." "Celestia has S.M.I.L.E." she continued, "Princess Luna knows this. And Celestia knows that she knows. But Luna likes to pretend that she doesn't know. And Celestia likes to believe that she doesn't know, but knows that she knows. Everypony knows." "And what about L.A.U.G.H?" I asked. "As long as Luna doesn't try to overthrow her, Celestia turns something of a blind eye to her nocturnal activities. Including L.A.U.G.H. Call it a show of faith in her sister's reformation." "I mean with regards to S.M.I.L.E. Are we so certain that they don't know about us?" I asked. "We would know," Echo said in a serious tone. "It's our business to know. And secrecy is our profession." "So is S.M.I.L.E's," I said. "But we have the upper hoof," she said, motioning to Lyra. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, how do we know she's not playing both sides? A triple agent?" I asked. "We would know," she repeated with certainty. "Attention to order!" A bat pony standing behind a podium at the front of the room called out. The idle din of the room fell silent. Princess Luna stepped up beside him. "Thank you, Agent Meadowlark. Good evening everypony. First order of business, I'd like everypony to meet our newest agent, Agent Storm Cloud," she said, pointing me out. The other's turned to look at me, including Lyra. "I'd like you all to give him a warm welcome." Lyra put her hooves on her ears. That right there should have been a sign. SKREE SKREE SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE The bat ponies all around me called out in shrill unison. I could hear it in my eyes. Lyra and Luna both grinned at my surprised discomfort. "All right, settle down," Luna said. "We've got a few things to cover tonight. Agent Heartstrings, anything from S.M.I.L.E?" "Negative," Lyra reported. "The Manehattan branch is looking into a minor development in Appleloosa. But nothing really of note." "What about the on-going situation in Gryphonstone?" Luna asked the general assembly. "Agent Grey Fin is looking into it," Echo spoke up. "Well he had best find somepony to fill in for Agent Gaston soon," Luna said, "or else he's going to be getting a promotion." "He's aware of that ma'am," Echo said. "Okay. What else do we have?" Luna asked the room. "Hey," I whispered to Echo, "Isn't a promotion a good thing?" "No. I'll explain later. Be quiet," she whispered back. "We're still putting together a case regarding the allegations of Prince Shining Armor's extra-marital affair," another agent spoke up. I put my hoof up. "Yes Agent Storm?" Luna asked. "Something to add?" "Look, I'm sorry, I know I'm the new guy, but is an affair really a matter of national security that we have to worry about?" "No," Luna answered curtly. "But if it is true, and we can find out about it, it means somepony else may as well. And they, or more likely, his illicit lover, may use this knowledge to blackmail and extort one of the most important and powerful ponies in the world. And that is something we simply can not allow." She turned back to the other agents. "Now then, do you have any actual hard evidence?" Luna asked. "Well, nothing that you would really call rock hard," he responded. "It's actually pretty limp," the pony beside him said. "Well then I suggest that you had better get some!" She demanded. "If somepony is going to try to have one over on my nephew-in-law, I want to be one step ahead of them!" "Yes ma'am!" they answered. He continued. "According to witnesses, the target, known only as 'Dawn' was last seen in Ponyville. The trail ends there." "I saw her in Canterlot with the Prince the previous day," Echo reported. "And our contacts in the Crystal Empire reported seeing him with a mare matching her description shortly before that. She never left his side until Ponyville. Then she disappeared." "Do you suspect foul play?" Luna asked in a grave tone. He hesitated a little. "We can't rule it out. He may have suspected that he had been found out and had her... 'disappeared'." "How do you want to proceed?" Luna asked. "We could assign tasking of Day Guard to investigate a missing pony report. Anything they find may be useful." "Very well," Luna said. "Agent Storm?" "Ma'am." "I'm going to task you with this matter. I'll have the duty assignment sent to your section chief in the morning,"" Luna said. "Echo," "Ma'am?" "You will accompany him and provide supervising oversight and support. Report any finding back to me while Storm maintains his cover." "Aye aye!" Echo said. Luna looked at me again. "Agent Storm, uncovering the facts in this matter is what is important. One way or the other, we need to know the truth about Dawn's fate. But discretion in this matter is paramount. Is there somepony in your squadron that you can trust to work with you?" "Yes ma'am... I can think of somepony."