The doors of the teleportation room closed behind the two fillies, leaving them in a long, narrow corridor. The walls were bare stone, a rough granite that would have caused a certain Ponyville fashionista to spin around and fling herself upon a teleportation pad, begging to be allowed to flee, had she ever found her way down here. And that was without even knowing the dark secrets and terrible deeds hidden within the secret base.
The fillies had no such reaction, idly swapping banter back and forth, not paying attention to the decor or the large seal that hung on the wall besides them, the coat of arms of The Agency, complete with its "For Princesses and Pony" slogan. The base with its poorly lit corridors was a second home to them, even if it was one without all the comforts of, well, home. No thoughts about the lack of comfort or style crossed their minds as they headed down the corridor, towards the door barely visible at the far end of the hall.
"I wonder what's so important that we're being called in like this," Diamond Tiara said for the upteenth time.
"Still don't have a clue," Silver Spoon replied, "but whatever it is, it must be of huge importance if they're pulling us off the MULE investigation."
"I know, right? V knows how close we are to identifying their leader. No way she'd blow a year-long operation unless there was, like, a really good reason. It's got to be something like a Breezy coup attempt." Diamond Tiara sucked in her breath. "Or maybe… maybe an invasion of demonized teenagers from a parallel dimension."
Silver Spoon rolled her eyes. "You've got to quit reading those tabloids, Di. They're totally rotting your brain."
"It can't all be rot. Equestria Daily is the third-highest circulating paper in the world, after all."
"Being popular isn't the same thing as being good," Silver Spoon replied.
Diamond Tiara tilted her head, giving her companion an incredulous look.
"Well, okay, except when it comes to us."
"Because we're the bestest," Diamond Tiara said with a grin.
"Bump bump, sugar-lump, rump!" the two fillies chanted in unison, giggling gleefully.
It wasn't long before Silver Spoon's mirth wore off, though, and she grew more solemn. "Of course, the downside is that we get all the hardest, most dangerous missions."
"I wonder what the mission is this time."
Silver Spoon sighed and lowered her ears. "Still. Don't. Know." Her head shot up, eyes wide, as a thought struck her. "Maybe Babs will be here to help us. It must be totally super important mission, so it'd make sense if they called her in from the Manehattan branch."
"Or maybe we'll, like, have to go to Manehattan to help her with something..." Diamond Tiara directed a wicked smirk at her friend. "Like an impending invasion of demonized teenagers from a parallel dimension."
"You know I know fourteen different ways to knock you out with just my bare hooves, right? Sixteen if I don't mind chipping a hoof."
Diamond Tiara grinned. "Good thing you love me."
Silver Spoon settled her hoof on the door handle. "As if. I know you've got eyes for nopony but Apple Bloom."
"Well, maybe if you wore a really big bow?"
Silver Spoon snorted and pressed the handle down, opening the door.
The two fillies entered the office, settling into a pair of chairs facing a large oaken desk. Piles of folders covered the desk, each containing the details of some operation or intelligence. In one corner, a pair of goggle-like glasses sat, the purplish lenses facing upward. On the other side of the desk was a single chair, its high back turned toward the fillies, as it always was whenever the fillies entered the room.
Slowly, it swiveled around, revealing the white-coated unicorn within, her two-toned blue mane in its usual half-wild state. V, the chief of the Ponyville branch, and the second highest member of The Agency, answering only to L. She looked her agents over with a single eye, the other covered in a black eyepatch.
"Sorry I had to pull you in, but something important has come up." She pulled the third folder from the top out of the stack to her left, and tossed it to Silver Spoon. Settling back, she waited for their reaction.
Silver Spoon opened the folder, as Diamond Tiara leaned over to look as well. Together, the two fillies read the single piece of paper within it. Their response was the same, and almost perfectly in sync. First, their eyes slowly widened, then their jaws slowly dropped, followed by a head shake and a second reading of the paper. A brief moment silence, and then both fillies erupted out of their chairs.
With a solid thunk, Silver Spoon's forelegs came to rest on V's desk, knocking a pile of folders askew. "Cookies? We're supposed to sell cookies?"
At the same time, Diamond Tiara slammed her hooves together. "We were this close to finding out the identity of the head of MULE, V. And you're blowing it all for cookies? You realize our contact will probably take off when we fail to make our meeting."
"Are you done, Agents?" The command, for it wasn't really a question, and it took but a moment to take hold of the two fillies, their bodies settling into their seats, even as their protests remained evident in their eyes. V took a deep breath. "I" —she stressed the word heavily— "am not doing anything. This came straight from the top. From the top, you hear. Straight from L's mouth. And before you ask, no, I don't know why it is so important. I asked, and L told me it was above my paygrade, that there are to be nothing documents about this op, and to put my best agents on it, no matter what I had to pull them off of. That's how big of a deal this cookie thing is. I don't like it anymore than you mares." She took a moment to straighten the folders Silver Spoon had disturbed. "Now get out there and sell some cookies, for princesses and ponies. Operation Confection Clearance must succeed."
Diamond Tiara frowned, but stayed silent.
"We'll do it, Chief. We always do our duty," Silver Spoon said. "So what's the plan?"
V shook her head. "There isn't one. You'll have to improvise."
"No plan?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"Are you hard of hearing, Agent?" V asked. "There's was no time to plan, and I know nothing of selling cookies. So you improvise. Just try not to start a war with Yakyakistan like the two of you almost did the last time you decided to wing it."
"That was, like, not our fault; you know that, Chief. How could we—" Diamond Tiara fell silent under the weight of V's glare.
"Why are you still here?" The unicorn raised a single foreleg and pointed toward the door. "Go. Sell cookies. The very future of Equestria hangs in the balance. Probably."
"You know, it's too bad we can't just order Randolf to take care of this," Silver Spoon said as the two ponies walked down Mane Street. So far, they had proposed sixteen different plans to each other, and each had been summarily picked apart and discarded.
Diamond Tiara couldn't help but giggle, despite her mood. "It'd be nice, wouldn't it. Too bad he's on vacation."
"Plus V probably wouldn't like it. So that plan's a no-go as well." Silver Spoon sighed.
"If only this wasn't the same week as the Filly Scouts' cookie sale."
"I know, right? Selling these cookies would be hard enough even if that wasn't the case, what with how many there are and how they totally—" Silver Spoon cut off at Diamond Tiara's raised hoof.
"Don't remind me. I swear I can still..." Diamond Tiara stopped, swivelled her ears, and sniffed the air. "Something's off."
Silver Spoon titled her head at her partner, then looked around, first toward the store to their right, then the street to the left. "Hmm… You're right. There's, like, not nearly as many ponies wandering about as usual."
Diamond Tiara nodded. "And the ones that are here, they're… on edge. I wonder what's up."
"I don't know, but we'd better find out," Silver Spoon said.
Diamond Tiara nodded, and pushed open the door of the shop. "Nopony gossips like quilters. They'll totally know what's up."
Five minutes later, the two fillies exited the shop, shaking their heads in disbelief.
"See, this is why I hate pranks pulled by anypony other than me," Diamond Tiara said with a scowl. "Nothing good ever comes from them."
"And could you just imagine if someone tried to pull one on us? With our training, we could seriously hurt somepony." Silver Spoon pursed her lips. "Again. We could totally hurt somepony again."
Diamond Tiara nodded slowly. "Though, like, we only used a little glue on her flight feathers. How were we to know that'd make her spin and loop out of control?"
"But at least she agreed not to tell on us, in exchange for us pulling a few strings to get those pesky breaking and entering charges dropped. And she agreed not to prank us ever again if we did the same for her." Silver Spoon paused. "You know, that's probably why we didn't know what's been happening."
"But that still leaves her free to prank everypony else, and it looks like that's gotten a little out of hoof. To the point that Mayor Mare herself had to ask the princess to ask the pink menace to intercede." Diamond Tiara stamped her hoof in frustration. "You know, this is totally going to make it even harder to sell those Nightmare-darned cookies."
Diamond Tiara made it half a block down the street before she noticed Silver Spoon wasn't with her. A quick glance behind revealed her partner standing still, one hoof jabbing and poking the air. Diamond Tiara watched for several seconds with raised eyebrows, before walking back to her friend. She settled on her haunches, letting Silver Spoon finish her calculations, mumbling mostly incomprehensible gibberish, though Diamond Tiara could make a few words phrases. Things like "sale", "Pinkie" and "median acting ability of the entire town over a period of twelve point two hours". At last, Silver Spoon dropped her hoof to the ground.
With a wicked grin, she said, "I've totally got the best plan ever. And by best I mean one that could well fail, but it's the only plan we got that just might work. And it won't even break the deal we made." She pondered that for a second. "Well, not technically, anyway."
Celestia floated the tea cup up to her lips and took a small sip, savoring the special blend that had been gifted to her the previous year by the visiting Arabian royalty. Setting the tea cup back down, she looked over at her sister and co-regent, Luna.
"So, I heard that your new charity completed helping its first case yesterday."
"Oh, yes," Luna replied. "You should have seen how happy the little colt was. I don't think I've ever seen a foal as happy, well, outside of Nightmare Night." She settled back in her chair, took a sip of her own tea, and closed her eyes in contentment.
Celestia tapped a hoof on the table, to no avail. "Well, don't leave me hanging. My little sister's charity's first big case. Details. I need details."
Luna rubbed her hooves together as she composed her thoughts. "Well, there's not much to tell, not really. See, this colt from Baltimare had been having these dreams about his class's upcoming bake'n'sell, about selling more cookies than anyone in class, all on the merit of his cookies. And then, wouldn't you know it, tragedy struck. He got a minor touch of the flu and wouldn't have been able to sell a single cookie to a non-family member.
"But that's when my Have a Dream Foundation stepped in. We took the cookies, found some volunteers, and sold them all, thereby fulfilling the colt's dream. And that's about all there was to it. Easy-peasy."
Celestia nodded with approval. "Have I said already how proud I am of you for starting a charity?"
"Only a few times, but I don't mind if you mention, say, a dozen or so more," Luna said, with a wink.
"Well, I am proud. It's good to see you helping our subjects outside of the dream world." She raised a hoof, warding off Luna's interjection before it could start. "Not that your nighttime work isn't important or beneficial. It truly is. The foals of Equestria have been sleeping much better since your return, and you can notice a definite uptake in their parents' wakefulness as well, all thanks to your tireless work." Celestia took another sip of her tea, watching as her sister did likewise. "Now, time for more serious business. How are things on the intelligence front? If I recall correctly from our last meeting, that operation to identify the head of MULE was about to come to fruition, no?"
Luna nearly spit out her tea, but managed to swallow it, instead. "Um, yeah… I'm afraid that operation didn't work out. The contact we'd been cultivating got cold feet and ran, and my agents haven't been able to reestablish contact."
"Really?"
"Oh yes, for realsies." Luna shrugged. "It's a bummer, but just one of those things, the nature of the intelligence game. We'll figure out who the head of MULE is sooner or later, though, no doubt of that." Luna's eyes drifted down to the table. Seeing Celestia about to ask a follow up question, Luna nodded toward a plate of confections. "Want one of the foal's cookies?"
Celestia blanched. "Those were the cookies? Oh Lady. Those cookies are horrid. And the way they stained your teeth..."
"I know, right?" Luna shuddered. "That's one foal who won't be getting a cutie mark in baking."