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// Suspicious Beginnings 
// Story: Spying Gone Wrong 
// by Star Sage 
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“Ya’ll wanna run that by me again sugar cube?” asked the orange pony farmer as she looked at her multi spectrum friend, who was staring just over a bush that the two were hiding behind at their mutual friend and acquaintance, a purple unicorn mare who seemed to be lightly trotting down the path toward the local city park.

“Well, I heard tell that Trixie, you remember, the blue unicorn who made us all look like foals and then destroyed part of a town with that Ursa Minor thing?” asked Rainbow Dash, still peeking over the bush at Twilight Sparkle.

“I don’t think that’s exactly how that happened, but yeah, I do have a mighty sharp memory of that silly little mare and all her tricks. What’s that got to do with spying on Twilight?” asked Applejack, sticking her nose into the bush, and pushing it through so she could watch as Twilight stopped by one of the diners on Ponyville’s bustling main street.

“Well, I heard from a very reliable source-” began Dash.

“You mean you Spike told you after ya’ll done wheedled it out of him,” AJ said, filling in the blanks that the rainbow pegasus probably never would admit to.

“I deny everything. Anyway, my sources told me that Trixie sent a letter to Twilight, calling her out in the park today, and I figured that could only mean she’s going to challenge that egg-head to some kind of magic duel or something, and that’s so not cool of Twilight to cut us out of that sort of action,” said Dash, continuing to stare at Twilight as she sat down near the diner’s front window, probably to wait for whatever she’d ordered to get ready.

“That don’t sound like Twilight…well, not the Twilight of today anyway. She might have been like that during her first year here in Ponyville, but I doubt she’d go off and get herself involved in some big ol’ battle in the middle of town without telling her friends,” said the farm girl, pulling her head from the bush and shaking a few stray leaves from her hat as she faced Rainbow Dash.

“That’s the point, maybe this is some kind of unicorn honor duel thing, and she can’t involve us without breaking some kind of code,” said Dash as she lofted down from the top of the bush, and then leaned in close to Applejack.

“Well then, wouldn’t it be rude of us to go pokin’ our muzzles into somethin’ that ain’t really none o’ our business?” asked AJ quite matter-of-factly, turning to find that thanks to Rainbow Dash trying to look like she was keeping a low profile, almost everypony in the street save Twilight, who was currently buried in a book, was staring at the normally attention seeking pegasus.

“Oh come off it country girl, do you really think that Trixie is going to follow rules like that? She’s probably got a dozen pegasi and a hundred unicorns here to help her win through some cheating trick,” said Rainbow Dash, and Applejack, remembering what had happened before with the blue mare, tapped her hoof against her chin, thinking that over. While those numbers were ridiculous, it wasn’t too farfetched that Trixie would indeed pull some cheat and try to humiliate Twilight publicly, for that embarrassment the last time the show pony had been in town.

“Even if ya’ll are right, what are we two gonna do about it? We kinda stand out in a crowd, even if the whole crowd wasn’t staring at us,” said AJ, motioning with her hoof towards the onlookers. None of them were stopping of course, it was a busy summer day, with autumn close at hoof. No time to really stop and stare at two strange ponies, but enough time to do some rubber necking, which even Twilight would notice, once she got her nose out of her book.

“Well, we’ve just gotta stay close to Twilight, and not let Trixie know we’re onto her, right?” asked Dash, as she rummaged in her saddle bags for something.

“Exactly, so we aren’t gonna be able to do nothin’, so we might as well mosey on home. Twilight is a big mare, and can take…what is that?” AJ queried as Rainbow Dash pulled a jar out of her saddlebag. While the jar itself wasn’t familiar at all, the label on it, as well as the shade of liquid that it was filled with was. The liquid was blue, and the label on the front had the image of a poison joke on it, a most unfunny flower, despite its purported sense of humor.

“Oh, just something I picked up a while back from some unicorn guy that was visiting Twi a while back,” said Rainbow very off hoofedly, which was suspicious in and of itself.

“You mean that purple unicorn stallion that Twilight said not to take stuff from, since his experimatatin’ was libel to blow us all to Celestia come?” asked AJ, staring with a look of what could almost be called fear at the jar.

“Yeah, him, that DawnChaser guy. He said he’d distilled the essence of Joke down to its purest form, and we could even get the same joke twice, if we wanted. He said it was for parties or whatever, and I should have fun with it,” admitted Dash, tossing the jar from one hoof to the other, making AJ even more nervous.

“So it’ll cause those same jokes to happen to us again? I didn’t think ya’ll would enjoy crashin’ into the trees and walls like ya did afor,” said the earth pony, knowing that that probably wasn’t what the pegasus intended, but hoping she was wrong.

“Well, that’s only if it touches me first. If it touches, say, Pinkie Pie, and then I touch her, we’ll both get big tongues. At least, I think that’s what he said,” Rainbow responded, her tone becoming a little less sure at that last part.

“Oh no, you are not dragin’ me off on some spy on Twilight thing. Aside’s, what help could we be if weren’t both hoofheld size anyway?” demanded Applejack.

“That’s the beauty of it. According to the nutty professor, this stuff should keep us from getting hurt, like at all, and so we should be able to do some damage to Trixie, enough to make her magic worthless so Twilight can zap her and send her running away crying,” said Rainbow Dash, and Applejack looked at her, wondering what that absentminded unicorn had really meant by, ‘hurt at all’.

Not that he’d lie, Applejack as the Element of Honesty, was pretty good at spotting fibbers, but still, Rainbow might not have been paying good attention, and then there was the fact that the source of this stuff had also, without meaning to, caused one of her apple trees to come to life and start fighting back against her family, before Twilight got there to remove the spell.

“Okay, before I agree to be part of any crazy plan you got cookin’ in that speed addicted brain of yours, I wanna know exactly what he said,” demanded AJ, hoping that Rainbow Dash had forgotten, giving her a good excuse to back out of this, and drag Rainbow with her, and then find some less painful way to help Twilight out.

“Alright, he said…umm…right, he said that ‘As long as you’re joked, you’ll be the in danger, from accidents, so I included something in this to make you immune to damage from heat, cold, acids, bases, magic, and penguins’…not sure what bases or penguins are, but that covers everything, right?” said Rainbow Dash.

“Are ya’ll sure he didn’t say pressure?” asked Applejack.

“Wait, yeah, that was that last one. He said even if I crashed head first into the ground, while doing a Sonic Rainboom I’d be fine,” she responded, nodding as it sounded right to her memory.

“Well, I suppose if he promised we’d be okay, all we’ve got ta do is be car-HEY!!!” the last was a shout as Rainbow Dash knocked off her favorite hat, and then poured the stuff in the jar, that turned out to be a powder, onto her head. Rainbow Dash, showing surprising restraint, didn’t just dump the whole jar out, using only a tiny bit on her friend, and then capping the jar again, before setting it, Applejack’s hat, and her own saddlebags in the hollow of a nearby tree.

“Don’t get your ponytail in a knot, cowgirl. It’s one of Pinkie’s trees, so our stuff will be just fine, and so we don’t lose it during this important mission,” said Dash, as she floated upward towards the top of the bush, to look over at Twilight. After confirming that her quarry was still in sight, she looked down to find Applejack already shrinking out of sight, and quickly descended, bopping her friend on the head, collecting some of the powered on her hoof, and rubbing it on her own head.

“Okay, that should be good enough. I’ll start flying towards Twilight, and we should get there just as I get tiny too, so we can hide somewhere close to her and follow her around Ponyville,” said Rainbow to her diminutive companion, plucking her up with her hoof, and then setting her on her back. Dash then waited until the bush started to get taller to her, before taking off into the sky.

Of course, Rainbow seemed to have underestimated the rate at which AJ shrank, as she was filly sized when she went skyward, but as she reached a few feet up, slowly became the same size as AJ, and thus, had far more trouble keeping her up, as the cowpony tried to find a good way to lay across her friend’s back.

While the pair try to sort that out, the diner gets its delivery boy back, Thunderlane, a black haired pegasus with blue and white mane, comes in from delivering stuff around Ponyville, his head  thumping to the music in his head as he goes, his eyes closed. After all, it was just a hop, skip, and flight back to the diner to pick up the next order.

When he suddenly slams into something, he’s jarred out of the tune in his head, and has to correct his vectors and everything, adjusting his wings and making sure he’s level, before looking around at whatever he’d hit. By the time he’d finished tough, whatever it was had already flown off, and he figured it was just another bird, being annoying. Oddly he thought he heard some odd shouts from far away, however, looking around, he didn’t see anything, and resumed his course towards the diner below.

Also making their way down to the diner below were Rainbow Dash and Applejack, the pair screaming as loud as their tiny lungs would allow. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very loud, as they couldn’t get much air, and with the wind drag from Thunderlane as he straightened himself out, Dash couldn’t get herself stable, and so the pair fell into the pipe pumping out white smoke that was atop the diner’s roof.

The pipe is not straight, and both of them oomph and grunt as they smack metal sides of the thing, both noticing in their heads that it didn’t seem to be doing anything at all to them, which was good, though because they seemed to bound against it, neither was able to stop themselves either, as they kept going down the pipe, which was bad.

At last the pair emerged into the diner, the bright lights as opposed to the dark pipe momentarily blinding them. That meant that it was a complete surprise to AJ when she suddenly splashed down, landing in something cold and bubbly, which instantly got up her nose, and made her wish she’d just told Rainbow no when she’d proposed this, as she let her body’s buoyancy carry her to the surface.

Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, flared her wings out as far as they would go, trying to catch any updrafts she could to start flying, which, luckily, worked, and so she was able to soar upwards, her eyes opening as she did so, allowing her to make two observations. One was she was much smaller than AJ had been before, instead of being hoofheld size, she was about the size of a fly. Two, the owner of the diner hated flies, and swatted her with a newspaper, sending her spiraling down again, landing on something soft and fluffy, before being covered with something green, and then sealed down with something heavy.