//------------------------------//
// Dinner and a Date 
// Story: Zanzebrican Boogaloo 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

The next day, we were invited to see the Collectivists training. I’m using the term ‘training’ very loosely, because I’ve seen cleaner drills from foals playing during recess.
“They’re all going to die,” I said, watching them run laps and shoot crossbows vaguely in the direction of a target.
“You’re a very negative person, Matty,” Timber said. “They’re trying really hard.”
“No, they’re not. Look at them - they’re making okay time on the path where it’s flat and level, but every time they get to where the rocks are or where they cross the stream, they stop and pick their way across.”
“Not all of us have wings.”
“That doesn’t give them an excuse for being afraid to get their hooves muddy. And their aim is even worse. They’re holding the crossbow wrong and might as well be firing blind. One of them managed to shoot himself in the flank!”
“That wasn’t entirely his fault.”
“What they need is an EUP tradition during training,” I said. “They need to sing a rousing training song to get everypony’s morale up and get them in rhythm!”
“Birds sing joyful songs. We move with silence until joy comes here again.” Guava said, trotting over and passing me a small gourd filled with some kind of powdered herbs and hot water. It was very nearly not like tea at all, but the water had to be boiled to make it safe and the herbs were at least some kind of flavor. Maybe they had vitamins.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But they need to be serious about this if they’re going to win.”
“You think this a lark, these zebra ready to lay down lives for a cause?”
“You have a point,” I admitted. “They wouldn’t be out here if they were afraid of hard work. Maybe they just need the basics.”
I flew over to the firing range, stretching my wings. I set down next to a zebra with particularly poor skills and motioned for him to give me his crossbow.
He looked back at Guava, and after she nodded he gave me his weapon.
“This is a Talon-pattern crossbow,” I said, loudly enough for my voice to carry to all the training zebra. “They’ve been making them with the same mechanism and only a few changes to the stock and grip for the last two hundred years. They’ve been used in every war for the last two centuries, usually on both sides.”
They were watching me, and hopefully spoke enough Equestrian to understand. I held the crossbow up, showing the intricate carvings on the grip.
“I don’t know who the artist is, but engravings have no tactical value. Instead of spending time making your crossbow look pretty, you should be spending time making sure you can fire it.”
I spun towards the target and fired, putting a bolt just off-center of the bullseye.
“You need to use the proper stance, you need to know how to aim, and you’re not going to stop drilling until you can do it properly.”
I put the crossbow back in the zebra’s hooves, then moved him into a proper stance.
“Look down the iron sights to aim,” I said, pointing them out, then helping him hold it so he could line them up. “Level the front and back. At this range, the bolt doesn’t have time to really drop, so focus on keeping your aim steady.”
He fired, and hit the target, only a little further away from the center than my hip shot had been.
“Not bad. Once all of you can fire from this stance, we’ll work on kneeling and lying down, which are better if you need a steadier shot, or if you don’t have real cover--”
A roar like thunder cut me off, drowning my voice out with a rolling, shattering sound, like a hundred lightning bolts one after another. One of the targets vanished in a spray of splinters, the ground around it peppered with steel spikes.
Guava and I got to that side of the firing range at the same time, grabbing the Griffonian Flechette cannon out of a confused Zebra’s hooves.
“What the buck is wrong with you?!” I yelled, my ears still ringing. Guava was yelling at him too, and he looked at both of us with wide eyes until he finally collapsed in a faint.
Guava grumbled and kicked him.
“We need to talk,” I said, hefting the heavy weapon.





I put the cannon down on the table between us, the dark gunmetal of the thing gleaming in the dim light of the tent. It was a long weapon, using unstable alchemy to launch a spray of darts, and poorly maintained ones had a bad habit of exploding. Well-maintained ones just had a bad reputation after their infamous use in quelling riots permanently.
“These weapons are illegal,” I said. “They’re banned.”
“You bind a blade’s edge because your foe has sworn only to use a club?”
“No, she’s telling the truth, Guava. There are all sorts of treaties. I’ve tried to explain this before.” Timber sighed. “It’s not that simple.”
“I am but simple and you seek to disarm us, so explain better.”
I motioned to the cannon. “That weapon cache you found - a lot of it is illegal under the rules of engagement. When you start your revolution, you can’t use them. If you’re seen committing war crimes, we’ll never be able to support you.”
Guava sighed but nodded agreement.
“What would be great is, after the revolution succeeds, you make a show of contacting us and turning these weapons over. We can spin a story that they were captured from the former government and extend a hoof of friendship with our thanks for getting these weapons out of circulation. You get to look good, we get an excuse to officially and openly support you, and the tabloids get to run a story about how the General was ready to commit war crimes. Everypony wins.”
Guava frowned. “I dislike the lie: the revolution is real.  Friends are made with truth.”
“Ma’am, if I may?” I interjected. “You’re right. The last thing either of our groups needs is to be in debt and have to keep up a lie. Honor is important.”
“Okay, okay,” Timber sighed. “As long as the weapons are destroyed and they don’t end up in the news. Heck, dig a deep hole and toss ‘em in.”
“We will discuss it. The decision is not mine - we all must agree.”
“That works for me. Just let me know. If we keep things quiet maybe we can replace them with something a little more local, right?” Timber smiled.
“Thank you for meeting with us,” I said. “If everyone here keeps up with their drills, they’ll stand a good chance when things get serious.”
Guava nodded.
“We’ll be back in a few days, and then we’ll put our heads together and get a plan of attack going.”
“It was my pleasure. Prove your words weight with action, and we will be friends.”
I shook her hoof, and she leaned in to kiss my cheek.





“It’s sort of a local tradition,” Black Cherry explained. A day had passed and I was still blushing a little. “Like a promise to see each other again.”
“I think Mattie is smitten,” Timber said. “I can’t blame her. Guava has that certain... charisma that you can’t teach. I’d have fallen for her myself, but I’m spoken for.”
“You have a marefriend?” I asked, surprised.
“I have a wife,” Timber corrected. “Well, ex-wife. Sort of ex. It’s complicated. Trust me, Mattie, don’t get involved with mares on assignment, especially when you’re spying on them. Things get really awkward when they find out you bugged your own bedroom. Had to play it off as being some kind of pervert.”
“What I’m hearing is that I should never take relationship advice from you,” I said.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Do you have that letter ready?”
I nodded and gave him the scroll containing my official report on the situation. “It’s going to take a couple weeks to get a reply.”
“We can do better than that,” Black Cherry said, smiling. “We can get a message to Canterlot in less than a day.”
“How?”
“All Equestrian embassies have a stock of these.” She patted a stack of forms, the thick paper tinged an odd green, giving them a tinge the same color as the patina on old copper.
“I don’t see how more forms are going to help,” I said. “We do enough paperwork in the EIS already.
“They’re really good forms, I promise,” Black Cherry said.
“I’ve seen forms before.”
“Not like these,” Timber said, pulling one out and holding the corner over a lit candle. The whole thing went up like flash paper and vanished. “They’ve got this alchemical dragonfire stuff in the weave. I have no idea how it works. I’m not a technical stallion.”
“They also cost several hundred bits each,” Black Cherry said, sighing.
“...And you just used one,” I noted.
Timber paused. “You know, we’ll chalk that up to a training expense.”
“It’s coming out of your department’s budget,” Miss Black said. “Delivery only takes a few hours, maybe a day at most. We can’t quite communicate in real time, but they’re impossible to intercept and extremely reliable.”
“And because the original is burned to send it, it means no evidence,” Timber said. “Great for our line of work.”
“What do you even need them for?” Cherry asked. “You almost never send anything back to Canterlot unless your superiors ask directly.”
“You probably don’t want to know,” Timber said.
“If even you’re warning me, it must be bad. What did you do? Did you drug the water supply again?”
“Cherry, baby, that only happened once and it was a total accident!” Timber sighed. “It wasn’t even my idea, by the way. Some spook in psyops thought it would be a good idea to dump hallucinogens into the only water supply. Terrible plan. Ended up poisoning a crop of sugarcane.”
“As I recall, you had that sugar sold to the Burrexicans as a party drug,” Black Cherry said, with obvious distaste.
“Don’t be silly, the EIS had it destroyed,” Timber said. “Anything else would be against department standards.”
“Just don’t get me mixed up in whatever trouble has you both so worried,” Cherry warned.
“That spook from psyops is the guy you replaced,” Timber told me. “He had some wild ideas, made a lot of enemies.”
“What happened? Did he get recalled to Equestria?”
“You know, we’re not really sure. He ended up taking a lot of that drugged sugar and flew off. He said Celestia came to him in a vision. Legend has it that he’s still out there.”
“Really?”
“The smart money is on him flying into the desert and never being seen again, but who knows? Maybe he’s deep undercover and he’ll show up someday with a couple medals on his chest.”
I stared at Timber for a few moments, trying to decide how serious he was.
“So you want me to fill out these forms for you?” he asked.
“Just copy the scroll I already filled out,” I said.
Black Cherry cleared her throat. “In the meantime… you’re, what, a size six?”
“Four," I lied. "Why?”
“So I can get a dress that fits you. There’s a dinner at the palace. Why don’t you come along? Networking is an important part of your job and mine, and unlike what your partner thinks, it doesn’t always have to happen in bars or at swordpoint.”





The dress Cherry had found me was a little tight around the barrel.
“I thought you said you were a size four?” She said, when I complained.
“I might have exaggerated,” I said.
“Don’t worry. Form-fitting is a good look on you,” she assured me, as we trotted in with the other dress. The purple and black sequined number I was wearing was the nicest thing I’d ever worn that wasn’t armored. It probably cost as much as my entire discretionary budget for the next decade.
I still felt underdressed compared to the other guests. They were so gaudy that it put the Canterlot nobility to shame.
We were led through the palace by a hooful of guards in armor older than I was. I suspected they just repainted it every few years when the government changed. We passed through the ballroom and through hallways, following a red carpet that had been laid out as a path to our final destination.
“A private airship dock?” I asked, surprised.
“Indeed. And my new yacht. It is nearly as beautiful as my guests.” The zebra in front of us parted, and a larger stallion with more grey stripes than black, wearing ceremonial armor over a modern dress uniform, stopped in front of us. “You must be the guest Miss Cherry said she would bring along. Are you here to help persuade me to sign the treaty she keeps offering?”
“Disposition Matrix, this is General a’L’onione,” Black Cherry said. “I like to think we’re close to reaching agreeable terms.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t going to be rude and actually say it.
“It is my pleasure to host you,” he said, taking my hoof and kissing it. “If Equestria keeps sending such beauties, it may well sway me!”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, a little awkwardly. There are two kinds of spies. The ones that go and talk to people and lie, and the ones that actually do work. I was the latter, and I didn’t do my best work in a tight dress. “You speak Equestrian quite well. You don’t even have an accent.”
“Your Princess Celestia must be crazy not to keep you at her side,” the General said. “But perhaps she is crazy like a fox, hm? She is a wise ruler and knows that when dealing with a stubborn stallion, mares are best for keeping him in line. Even an old war horse like me.”
I smiled a little. “I like to think I’m just the best pony for the job at hoof.”
He nodded. “Good. Confidence is important! Come.” He turned and motioned for us to follow, leading us towards his airship. His guards followed at a respectful distance. They didn’t seem concerned, probably because I obviously wasn’t hiding any weapons.
“She looks fast,” I said. The small airship was sleek, even the gasbag looked like it was designed to cut through the air.
“The fastest ship in the country,” he agreed. “The shipwright based it on the kind of skiffs pirates use, though instead of illicit cargo and weapons it merely carries comfort and sport. And tonight, an old General and his guests. Come, I’ll get you your first drinks myself as a welcome to my nation.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said.
He led us up the gangplank. A few of the other guests were onboard already, and with how small the ship was, it was either going to be uncomfortable intimate or we were among the last to arrive.
“Wine is excellent for celebrating,” he said. “Something my predecessor knew too well. He had such a bad drinking habit that some of the local taverns included entrances to the palace just to smuggle him in and out without the people learning their ruler was a slave to the bottle. Moderation is the key.”
He poured two glasses of wine that tasted more like burning rubber than grapes.
“I think Miss Matrix is more the type to go all-in,” Black Cherry noted.
“I can do moderation,” I countered. Then I downed the glass of wine in one drag. “I just prefer excitement.”





“It wasn’t a total waste,” I said, my head still pounding even two days later. “I was able to get the guard schedule on my way out.”
Guava smiled and took the papers, shuffling through them. “To know yourself and to know of your enemy is truly vital.”
“I left Timber back in town to keep an eye on things,” I explained. “He’s going to keep an eye on things and make sure this intel is good. He didn’t want to make an extra trip out here, I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing, so we’re splitting the responsibilities.”
Guava nodded, then motioned with her head for me to follow her.
It had only been three days, but the changes were obvious. The zebra at the firing range were holding their crossbows correctly, and they were actually aiming them like they wanted to hit something. The ones doing laps were splashing through the mud without stopping to pick their way across cleanly. Somepony had even put a few logs on the path for an extra challenge, and they were clambering over them and barely slowing down.
“They’re starting to look like a real army,” I said. “Give them some uniforms and you’d think they were professionals.”
“Yet warriors, all, they gave up their lives to serve - no going back now.”
I nodded, watching them for a little longer. “So you’ll have troops that are worth something. If we have long enough maybe we can drill some basic tactics. We might need a real EUP soldier to help with that, though. I usually work alone so squad tactics are a little outside my field of expertise.”
“Fighting they can do... if among themselves mostly, if some virtue that.”
I looked to where she was pointing. A ring of zebra were surrounding what looked more like a dog fight than any kind of real training. One zebra had ten years and double the body weight on his younger opponent, and had total control of the match.
The smaller zebra fell after a particularly heavy blow to the chin, and I didn’t need to speak the local language to know he was saying uncle.
The larger one sneered and reared up, ignoring his opponent’s surrender and getting ready to smash his skull in.
He wasn’t expecting me to fly over the crowd and crash into his side.
The zebra fell into the ring watching the match, three of his comrades catching him before he hit the ground.
“What are you doing?!” I demanded. “The fight was over! You don’t go around killing ponies for no reason! Even if he was an opponent it would be wrong!”
The big zebra said something I didn’t understand. The crowd parted and Guava pushed to the front. She looked at me, then him. They had a conversation I was totally unable to follow but included several significant looks at me. Eventually, he nodded.
“You will fight him now. I have told him of your skill. It should be easy” Guava said.
“What? But--”
“A wolf is not tame! You must defeat him, to win, to make him obey.”
I sighed and nodded, wishing I’d had time to stretch.
“Alright, come at me whenever you’re ready,” I said.
Fighting is a job like any other. A real master of any craft can make it look easy. I struggle when I cook - chopping vegetables takes forever and I burn half the stuff I put in a pot. A good chef can take a knife and mince a carrot in seconds and make it look effortless.
The big guy I was fighting, he had never learned how to fight. He just used muscle and pushed ponies around and it had worked out for him. I’d been taught by some of the finest martial arts instructors who had ads in the back of comic books, and I’d learned secret techniques that were so secret the pamphlets cost like fifty bits a pop.
He just saw a little pegasus pony, but he should have seen a dragon.
I let him come to me, grabbed his hoof, and--
And I strained and struggled, and used his weight--
Actually, he was a lot heavier than I thought, and flipping him over my shoulder wasn’t working. I just needed more practice with that move. It had always worked in the Black Dragon Society Dojo. I’d have to make sure to sign up for more lessons when I got back to Equestria. I’d been sort of counting on using it to impress Guava so she’d trust me more.
Moving on to the next step of the Dance of Death, since the first movement had failed, I slammed my hoof into his liver while I still had him confused. That got him real interested in what I had to say, and when I put him in a headlock, I had his full interest until he passed out.
“He’s gonna wake up in a little while with a bad headache,” I said. “But because he’ll wake up, there aren’t any grieving widows or orphaned foals, and everypony gets to go home at the end of the day. All the ponies you’ll be fighting are your neighbors and most of them just want to get paid for a job. When the war’s over, they’ll be your friends and they’ll help you rebuild the country.”
Guava translated for me. At least I think she was translating. I wouldn’t know if she was just providing snide commentary or not but I was hopeful she liked me enough not to be sarcastic.
“So since that’s settled,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow. “How about we go over what your strategy is  actually going to be?” 





“Let me see if I understand your plan.” 
I was being very generous using the word plan for what I was getting from short-form poetry, hoof-sketched maps, and a lot of zebra arguing about details until Guava had an opinion for them.
“You want to take everyone you have and march up the main street to the Presidential Palace. With no artillery or air support. Just all of you right out in the open.”
“We have to be seen! We cannot hide in shadow - we march in the light!” Guava yelled, slamming her very well-manicured hoof into the table and turning my cup of tea into a new lake on the map we were using of the capital.
“I just don’t want this to be for nothing,” I protested, while trying to clean up the mess. “I did some training with the EUP and this isn’t how they’d conduct an operation like this. This is about the zebras and ponies that worked hard to make this country prosperous, right?”
Guava nodded.
“If you march down the streets like this, a lot of your freedom fighters--” Now there was a euphemism I hadn’t had to use for years. “--are going to get hurt or worse. You’re fighting for each other, so you need to do what you can to keep each other from being hurt. If this was a demonstration or a protest, going out and being visible, even being attacked, that would be the point. If you want to win a fight, you don’t charge straight into the enemy’s strongest point.”
“Victory is all, so what would you have us do? Run and hide like dogs?”
“Instead of marching all together into the city, split up into smaller cells and filter in over a few days. Pre-arrange a time or signal to begin the attack. If this was Equestria we’d probably have some kind of big musical number, too,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any big revolutionary songs you can sing, really get the blood pumping?”
Guava looked at me wordlessly.
“Fine. You don’t have to sing.” It wouldn’t hurt but I had a feeling they didn’t want to stake their revolution on their ability to hit a high C. “There have been plenty of effective military actions undertaken without the need for a marching band.”
“I will never get, why you ponies have to sing, during everything.”
“It just sort of happens,” I shrugged. “You start doing something, you fall into a rhythm, and then you sing, and other ponies join in.”
“...Equestria is a very strange place, and I am glad to be here,” Guava sighed.
“It’s probably got something to do with the magic of harmony or something. Princess Celestia likes making speeches about it. Personally, I believe more in the magic of effective military intelligence and preemptive action.”
Guava chuckled and shook her head, smiling.
“Smarter than I thought. Most ponies fall in line and will follow the herd.”
“In the morning I’ll go back to town and make sure nothing is going to get in the way.”
“The night is chilly. I would like it if somepony helped warm my bunk.”
She gave me a look that could have made a brick wall blush and made my hair stand on end. Clearly I was hypnotized by her twitching tail, because I followed it all the way back to her tent and didn’t manage to escape until the next morning.