"C'mon, Davenport! Seriously?" ranted Knox, clearly upset. "You said you were getting another sofa shipment today!"
Cozy Glow was standing a few feet away, watching intently as Knox leaned into the couch/feather salespony. Then, a familiar voice came from outside.
"Cozy? Can we talk?"
Cozy's blood ran cold as she recognized the voice. She hadn't heard that voice since before she was locked in Tartarus.
"Sweetie Belle," she said with awkward enthusiasm, the discomfort of their last encounter still fresh in her mind. "How are you doing?"
Sweetie ignored the question and instead chose to repeat herself.
"Can we talk?"
"Sure," Cozy replied as she turned to Knox. "I'm going to go with Sweetie for a while, OK?"
Knox took a short break from verbally beating Davenport and nodded his head in approval before returning his attention to the yet-to-be-phased salespony.
"Well," said Davenport calmly, "you should've had me hold one for you."
"You never told me that was an option!" yelled Knox.
Cozy followed Sweetie outside, and she was about to say something, but Sweetie beat her to the punch.
"I'm sorry... about the other day," she said.
"It's just..." she trailed off once again. "I get really worried when I don't agree with Scootaloo and Apple Bloom."
"Why?" Cozy asked, genuinely curious. "What are you so worried about?"
"If I lose their trust," she started, "I run the risk of losing them as friends."
"I understand that," said Cozy, "and I know you're all great friends, but it doesn't seem like it would be the end of the world."
"Don't you see?" asked Sweetie as she began to cry. "Look at my flank. All three of us have the same special talent, and we can only succeed at it if we work together. That talent is what makes us who we are. If I lose them as my friends, I literally lose my destiny."
Cozy sat in stunned silence as Sweetie continued.
"I wouldn't be me anymore. It would be like taking my Cutie Mark and ripping it off of my flank! I'd be nothing!"
She slowed her rant as Cozy placed a supportive hoof on her shoulder.
"It's the fear that keeps me up at night," she concluded.
After taking a minute to calm down, she shifted the subject.
"You know," she said, "after we left you the other day, we started discussing your Cutie Mark."
"What about it?" Cozy asked as she gazed towards the chess piece on her flank.
"Well," Sweetie started, "you're obviously a master manipulator."
She playfully slugged Cozy in the shoulder.
"And that makes sense with a chess piece," she continued, "but as we talked more, we ended up agreeing that there was an underlying message hidden somewhere in the type of chess piece: the rook."
Cozy sat quietly, not wanting to miss a single word her friend uttered.
"Scootaloo & Apple Bloom both thought it had to do with rook meaning 'to scam or cheat.' After all, you did an awful lot of that."
"And what did you think?" Cozy interrupted, fearful of the response.
"It took me a long time, and I thought a lot about it. You nearly got us banned from the school with one of your schemes, but you were only trying to help us. And you did everything you could to protect us when it backfired, even though you might've gotten in trouble. Then, you locked us in a closet. However, you thought we were perfectly safe in there. You said it yourself. You thought you were actually taking us out of a dangerous situation."
"So... what does all that mean?" Cozy asked.
"Well, rook might mean to scam or cheat, but that's not what it means in chess. Think about it, Cozy. Each time you nearly screwed us over, the ponies you truly considered your friends, you still did everything you could to keep us out of harm's way."
Cozy looked at her wide-eyed. She'd never been thought of like that before.
"You're not just a schemer, Cozy," she paused for dramatic effect. "You're a defender."