"Look, lady, even if you DID have the proper security clearance to access personnel files, which you don't, I wouldn't want to give it to you, anyway!" He leaned forward and over his desk, pushing her ID back towards her. "Half the ponies around here are convinced you're a whack job, and the other half think you're going to stab us all in the back! As it stands, your clearance is Waning Gibbous level, just like every other new recruit! Without a requisitions form signed by at least three superior officers, you're not getting anywhere close to those files until you're at LEAST Half Moon! And even then, only under extreme circumstances!" He leaned back in his chair, picking back up the book he had been reading when she arrived.

"And knowing the pony whose file you're asking for, you're better off coming back once you've reached Waxing Gibbous."

Orientation had taught her that the ranks of the New Lunar Republic were based off the phases of the moon, with ranks growing higher as the drew closer to the elusive "Full Moon." Even reaching Waxing Gibbous was considered a lifetime achievement, and could take years.

The thought crossed Tempest's mind that the book in his hooves was extremely flammable, but if he was telling the truth about the amount of suspicion on her right now, making trouble was the last thing she ought to do.

A spark of magic leaped from her horn to the spine of the book, lighting a bright orange flame on the spine.

"SON OF A-" The pony sputtered, dropping the book to the floor and quickly stamping out the flames. By the time he turned his attention back to Tempest, she was already halfway out the door.

Tempest turned back, giving him a death glare she had proudly perfected over hears of practice.

"You... you..." The clerk trailed off, shrinking back from her and swallowing loudly. Tempest's foul frown turned upwards into a smirk.

"Sorry, I've been told a lot lately that I have... violent tendencies." She chuckled softly to herself before stepping out.

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"Three superior officers?" Moonstone sighed, leaning back against the pillows of her bed and setting down her book. "I'd be happy to help you out, and I'm pretty sure Quick Strike would, too..."

"But that leaves us with one more signature for a requisitions form..." Tempest sighed in turn, laying back in her bed and staring up at the ceiling. "I'm surprised you're not mad at me for lighting the guy's book on fire, though..."

"You'll get enough crap about that from Scorching." Moonstone shrugged, tapping her chin in thought. "And if there's one thing that I've learned from working alongside HIM, it's that it's redundant to tell somepony something they already know. You know it was a bad move, now work on your decision-making."

"Sorry, intimidation is an old habit. The Storm King always just told me to do whatever was needed to get results." Tempest blinked in realization. "Huh... maybe I DO have some issues with anger management..."

"Well, it's like the old saying goes, 'Knowing is half the battle!' Now you can start to change!" Moonstone hopped down from her bed and began to pace back and forth across the room.

"You make it sound so simple..." Tempest sighed, laying her foreleg over her eyes. It wasn't until she'd laid eyes on her bed that she'd realized how exhausted she was, and she had hardly moved the entire time she'd related the events back to her roommate.

"Simple? Yes. Easy? Not at all." Moonstone chuckled as she passed through Tempest's side of the room.

"Well, I guess two friends isn't going to be enough to cut it..." Tempest muttered. "And I suppose asking you to go and get it FOR me would be out of the picture?"

"I WROTE that file! If I were to ask to read it right after you were turned down, it would definitely raise suspicion."

"Wait, what?" Tempest bolted up into a sitting position. "If you already know it, why can't YOU just give me some dirt on him?"

"Unfortunately, I'm not allowed." Moonstone rolled her eyes as she turned on her heel and back for another lap around the tiny room. "Quill specifically said that I'm not allowed to do much more than advise and observe." She made a sour face, sticking out her tongue in what Tempest assumed was the direction of his office.

"You could advise me on what little facts of his past I could bring up to pressure him..." Tempest grinned until Moonstone gave her an annoyed glare.

"Eh, bending the rules was worth a shot." She flopped back onto her bed. "Maybe we just need to sleep on it?"

"Bending the rules..." Moonstone sighed. "Not so easy in a military environment."

"Eh, not as military as the Storm King." Tempest sighed. "I mean, lower-ranking recruits only got an hour a day for meals, six hours for sleep, ugly, uncomfortable uniforms... I only lived the high life because I had important intel about Equestrian magic." Her thoughts wandered back to the misery she always saw in the Storm King's ranks. At the time, she'd always brushed it off as the weak getting what they deserved: to be mistreated until they made themselves strong. Now, she felt a smudge of guilt for reaping the benefits of such a system at their expense.

"There weren't comfortable beds, certainly no heat on those airships outside of the decks near the engines, no nice food or friendly faces! And EVERYTHING was focused on collecting as much magic as possible, at any cost! At least the New Lunar Republic is a bit more noble and open-minded in their goals..." She chuckled to herself, her mind running back through Quick Strike's tour of the facility.

"You ponies have competent training facilities, good food, and you take every advantage you can! Magic, natural talents, even those computers and radar in the Command Center!" As she chuckled to herself, the trip down Memory Lane was beginning to finally lull her to sleep. "I remember this one time, I watched the airship with all our dumbest recruits crash right into a mountaintop because they couldn't see-"

"THE COMPUTERS!" Moonstone shouted, surprising Tempest back into full consciousness.

"Wha-" Once again, Tempest found herself cut off as Moonstone jumped up onto her bed and gave her a strong punch on her shoulder.

"Tempest, you genius! That's it! We can use the computers! A machine doesn't care if you nearly destroyed Equestria, and it can't check if your face matches your credentials!" She waved her hand back and forth in front of her eyes to illustrate the point.

"Oh, it doesn't..." Moonstone snickered, reaching down into her pocket and retrieving her ID. Slowly and deliberately, she held it out over the edge of the bed, then dropped it, letting it flutter to the floor.

"Hey! I can't watch you AND all of my personal effects!" she shrugged nonchalantly and fluttered over to her own bed, hitting the light switch to the room and tucking herself in.

"The night and day shifts change places in ten minutes, that's your best chance to get back into the archives."

Tempest rolled out of her bed and picked up Moonstone's ID, barely able to see it in the dark. She trotted her way over to the door, pausing beside Moonstone's bed.

"If I don't see you leave, I have plausible deniability. Get out of here before you waste the whole day and don't get any sleep."

Tempest nodded and cracked open the door to their room, peeking outside for any signs of someone watching.

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Tempest quietly slipped through the halls of the facility, keeping Moonstone's ID hidden in her mane. Moonstone hadn't been lying, evidence that the facility was starting a new shift for the day was everywhere. Tired-looking ponies were on their way to the showers, some still with bed-head, some practically stripping off their uniforms from a hard night's work.

"Oh, sorry, I-" She drew up short as she found herself staring at the same unicorn who had tried to attack her earlier that night, the one Moonstone had threatened.

The mare looked horrified to see Tempest, quickly sprinting past her and down the hall.

"It's after lights out, I did what she told me to, I swear!" She shouted as she disappeared around the corner.

After the surprise of the encounter had worn off, Tempest remembered her earlier questioning about exactly what kind of rank Moonstone could have to inspire such fear in a new recruit. Reaching up into her mane, Tempest retrieved the ID. There was a precise scorch mark over her age, as well as a collection of scratches, singes, bends and dents that made it look as though the small card had been through Tartarus and back. It was, however, still legible.

Name: Moonstone Chalcedony Alis Adelinda
Rank: Royal Agent
Sex: F
Age:
ID Number: 9E8EDE

A... royal agent? Does that mean that she works with the Princesses? If so... why on earth is she stuck as an assistant to some stuck-up field agent author?

She quickly returned the ID to its hidden place in her mane and began trotting along again, a whole new slew of questions spinning around in her brain.

When she finally reached the archive, she passed by the same pony she'd nearly lit on fire going out. Seeing that he was about to say something, Tempest gave him another of her searing glares as a deterrent. It worked, the pony shrinking back and quietly shuffling along.

Quickly changing her expression back to a pleasant one, Tempest turned to the new pony sitting behind the desk, an orange-coated unicorn with shoulder-length red hair and thick-rimmed glasses.

"I... was just having trouble sleeping. Thought I might come print off some of the more boring field reports to bore me to sleep." Tempest had thought of the lie easily on her way there, and it rolled off her tongue naturally.

"That's alright, I'll just be a few minutes." Tempest strolled past her and into the tall rows of shelves, lined from top to bottom with books. She had to admit, it felt rather nice to be surrounded by books again. Princess Twilight's castle had been filled with them, and they brought back memories of the safety and friendship she'd had there.

Finally, she caught sight of the computer terminal and the printer hidden away shamefully in the back of the room. Stepping up to it, she tapped a couple of times on the space bar, trying to wake it up.

The machine whirred to life and the screen lit up with a soft click. The design of the interface looked simple enough, just an empty box with a magnifying glass next to it, and a smaller, second box with an arrow with the word "keywords" inside.

After a brief pause, the computer screen changed to a list of results, each arranged alphabetically.

Considering the standing Moonstone and Quick Strike had implied he had, Tempest had expected pages upon pages of results to pour through. Field reports, incidents he'd been present at, all the different kinds of paperwork associated with high-ranking members of any military force.

Instead, there were only nine. Not even enough to reach the bottom of the page. Sitting at the top was a personnel file, but not one with Scorching's name.

Pennington Inkwell - Personnel File
... ... ... aliases: Scorching Quill, Howard Phillips, Cha'li Qued....

This file requires Waxing Gibbous clearance.
Please enter credentials.

After a quick glance to make sure no one was nearby, Tempest retrieved Moonstone's ID and copied the information from the bottom.

Tempest resisted the urge to start reading the full article then and there, clicking the tiny printer icon in the corner and sending the printer into a frenzy of clicking and whirring.

Tempest quickly backed out of the computer's search program, making certain that Moonstone's credentials were logged out before returning it to the blank search page she'd started with. She picked up the substantial pile of printed pages in her mouth and quickly hurried out of the archives, giving the librarian a grateful nod before hurrying back to her room as fast as her hooves could carry her.

When she got back, she slipped Moonstone's ID under her pillow and threw herself onto her bed, trying to repress gleeful giggles. Finally, she had every dirty little secret of Pennington Inkwell's that could help her fight back against his constant disapproval.

She lit up the stump of her horn as brightly as she dared without sending off sparks and began to read, far too excited to sleep now.

As she read deeper and deeper into his history, however, her glee turned into shock, then anger.

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"So... when were you planning on telling me?" Tempest asked, sitting back after her morning workout with Quick Strike.

"Guess you've been doing a little digging, huh? Who'd you have to beat up to get that info?"

"I heard you call him 'Penny' that day I came in early, remember?" Tempest still didn't want to get Moonstone into trouble, and had thought all morning of ways to get around the topic of the source of her information.

"Ah! Well, as much as I'd like to see the fireworks, you really shouldn't call him that." Quick Strike chuckled again, rising to her hooves and beginning her stretches to cool down from their sparring. "I just do it 'cause it pisses him off."

"Heck if I know, I just know it makes him mad! But only his close friends can get away with calling him that! If you try to use it, there's about a 50/50 chance he's going to either double down on not approving you... or you'll both be working things out in here!" She motioned to the dojo around them for emphasis.

"Pfft! I think I'd rather have it that way." Tempest made a few quick jabs at the air.

"You know... that's definitely a matchup I'd love to see..." she muttered, stroking her chin in thought. "Not to mention that it's been a while since we had a good exhibition match around here..."

"If you can arrange it, I'm on board!" Tempest sighed, rubbing at her neck as she headed towards the door to the dojo.

"You Do NOT Pass!"

by Pennington Inkwell

Doing Some Digging