Lemon Peel’s room at Sweet Apple Acres.
Still March 6, but rewound to late morning. Still Sunday.
It was the last day that Lemon Peel’s husband, the royal guard Ragamuffin, had on leave before he had to return to duty in Canterlot. He was spending it in bed cuddling with his wife. Ragamuffin was a light orange earth pony stallion of slight stature, with a messy blonde mane and tail and green eyes. He had a cutie mark of a black star with a fancy black underline, the same as was used on the Griffon Isles Conspicuous Bravery medal.
“You haven’t said much about what you’re working on in the Guard, Rags,” Lemon Peel said.
“That’s because a lot of it is hush-hush, Lemon,” said Ragamuffin.
Peel smiled craftily. “I bet I could find out if I wanted,” she said.
Ragamuffin looked at her with an appraising eye and nodded. “You probably could. You might even be able to do it without being caught.”
“Are you insulting my abilities as a spy?” she asked.
“I just think they might have gotten a bit rusty from disuse,” he replied. “You haven’t exactly been up to anything covert since you got here.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m just a little bit sneakier than you give me credit for,” Ragamuffin said, holding two hooves close to each other to demonstrate “how much”.
Lemon Peel huffed. She got out of bed. Even in this intimate setting, she insisted on wearing something fashionable: a see-through white silk nightie with a ruffled deep neckline and cuffs to match, over a white lace bodystocking with three-quarter length sleeves. She walked straight to the corner of the room, where a brass tuba was being used as a makeshift planter, containing as it did a half-dozen giant yellow zinnias. She sat down, effortlessly lifted the large instrument into her lap, and began playing Moozart’s Rondo for Horn, transposed.
“I think you’re supposed to remove the flowers before you do that,” Ragamuffin commented as he got out of bed. He himself was wearing a pale silk pajama top, and from a wall hook he removed and then donned a dark half-dressing gown to go over it.
“Nonsense,” Lemon said, taking a short break. “They act as an excellent mute.” A realization came over her and she snapped her hoof. (No, the author has no idea how a pony would do that.) “The Mutes!” She put the tuba down and looked at her husband. “What has the Guard been doing to stop the Basilisk and her Mutes?”
“Is this because of Blueberry Frosting?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Peel said, hanging her head. “Her poor roommate is heartbroken. Neither of us suspected for a moment that she would join them. I still don’t understand why. She seemed too happy to join some crazy cult.”
“And you’re looking for an excuse to exercise your special talents?”
“…Yes. You would figure dealing with the occasional monster attack would be enough to scratch that itch.”
“No, I know you,” Ragamuffin said with a smile. “As a matter of fact, the Mutes have just become one of our hush-hush cases. They’ve recently escalated into taking recruits that we very much think did not join the gang by choice. These are highly prominent business ponies that are disappearing, and always immediately after a rail trip that was supposed to be an overnight visit.”
“Where to?”
“An obscure little hamlet named Hollow Shades. Used to be on hard times, made frequent requests for aid…until last year, when the requests just stopped. That’s the same time the business ponies started making their one-way trips.”
“Sounds pretty cut-and-dried to me,” commented Mrs. Peel. “Why haven’t the Guard cleaned it up?”
“We’ve tried,” Ragamuffin replied, sitting down on the ground before her. “Only the ponies sent to do so disappear themselves. We would prefer to handle this quietly, so we’re not quite ready to overwhelm the town with a whole division. That leaves the problem of being able to go in there alone and crack the problem. A pity we don’t have any changelings with enough seniority to be assigned to the case. I’m too new.”
“Well if I know ponies, I doubt the entire town is up to no good, so yes, a good…no, a great changeling should be able to accomplish a great deal.”
“A great changeling like yourself?” Ragamuffin asked with a tilt of the head.
“Well…if I had the proper setup.”
The following Friday, the 11th, Lemon Peel set out for her secret mission, having made arrangements with the Apples to take care of her son in the meantime. Deliberately boarding the train late, she sought out one particular train car and knocked on its door. “Excuse me?” she asked.
The door opened, revealing a surly gray unicorn stallion with a messy orange mane and a black half-overcoat. “What is it?” he growled.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, “but the other cars appear to be completely full. Could you possibly spare a seat for me?”
The stallion looked up and down the aisle, to indeed see that all of the other cars he could see had “OCCUPIED” signs on their doors. “I suppose so,” he grumbled. “Come inside.”
Mrs. Peel did so. She was wearing a button-up white turtleneck shirt (pearl buttons) with a gray vest and miniskirt, white stockings with a diamond pattern, and black patent leather pumps. A pair of white hoof gloves were tucked into a white belt and she had a white and black target-pattern beret on her head. She removed her matching gray saddlebags and placed them in the overhead rack—she gave the stallion plenty of opportunity to offer to help her, but he pointedly looked away. “The name is Mind Garden,” she said as she sat down. “Miss Mind Garden. I’m headed out to Hollow Shades to become their new schoolmistress.”
This finally got the stallion’s attention. “What a coincidence,” he said in his low rumble of a voice. “Headed there myself for an exclusive golf tournament.” He pointed up to the set of clubs located above his seat. “You might have heard of me…Pierce Boil.”
Peel pretended to be surprised. “Not the Pierce Boil from the news?”
“The same,” he said with a grimace. “Former vice-president in pony relations for the Outer Equestria Development Corporation. Had to serve six months in prison while my boss’ lawyers got him off scot-free! Not that I didn’t do my share of nastiness, mind you. But I was just following orders.”
“Oh well that’s too bad,” Peel said, faking sympathy. In reality she knew full well that Night Lancer’s orders to keep his employees in the Isles in line were mere generalities; it was Boil who always came up with the gruesome details, safe from retaliation in his office in Canterlot. “I hope you’re doing alright financially.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry your pretty head about that, Missy! There was a bit of a bidding war between the various development companies after my release. Those businesses might claim to be ‘working for the betterment of Ponykind’, but kindness doesn’t improve the market share!” He laughed for a full minute, quite impressed by his own joke. “I’m working for Price/Cook now, and doing what any PR head is supposed to do: become the most-hated pony in existence.”
“Thankless job,” Mrs. Peel commented.
“…But somepony’s got to do it,” Boil said, completing what he thought was his companion’s thought.
Talk after that settled into vague generalities.
It was quite late at night when the train finally stopped for a few minutes at Hollow Shades. Peel and Boil were the only ponies to depart on the desolate station platform, whipped around by a fierce wind.
“Well, I’m going by the bar for a drink before turning in. Come along and I’ll pay for the first round.”
Mrs. Peel didn’t need to be able to read a pony’s emotions to tell how Pierce Boil wanted this night to end. Nevertheless, she decided to accompany him, in case the gang made their move tonight.
Along the way they passed the blacksmith’s shop, which was still in operation. The burly earth pony smith, nearly as big as Big Mac and completely filling the small shop, was bent over an anvil, pounding a glowing horseshoe into shape. Something about his silhouette didn’t seem…right, but as Pierce Boil was still walking, Peel decided to continue walking with him.
The sign outside the pub identified it as “The Inebriated Imp”. Inside were a couple of mares sitting quietly and nursing their glasses.
After waiting for a few seconds for somepony to recognize his greatness upon entering, Pierce Boil slammed his hoof on a bell a few times. “What does a pony have to do to get some service around here!” he bellowed.
From behind a curtain emerged a female griffon: tawny body, brown wings and tail tip, yellow foreclaws and beak, white head and breast, and grayish-purple flame-shaped masks and feather highlights over her yellow eyes, with an apron tied around her front. She had on a smile most uncharacteristic of any griffon that Mrs. Peel had ever met and even stranger, the emotion behind that smile was genuine. There also appeared to be an object concealed under the top of the apron, held in place by a thick string around her neck. “Good evening, good evening!” she exclaimed. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. Hollow Shades always welcomes new visitors and so does the Inebriated Imp! What can I get for you two? A jar or two of a salty splash, eh?” She laughed good-naturedly. “The name’s Gertrude. Gertrude Ganache.”
“Pierce Boil—no jokes about the name, please. Get us two large spicy tomatoes, Gertie,” said Boil. “Heavy on the salt.”
“Hm, red is a good color, but make mine a raspberry mocktail, Miss Ganache. I’m Miss Mind Garden, by the way.”
The bartender looked between the amused Peel and the frustrated Boil and laughed. “You got it!” she exclaimed. She turned around to begin preparing the two drinks.
Boil, seeing that he was getting nowhere with Mrs. Peel, walked over to the table with the two mares. “So, where do you go for fun around here?” he asked.
The mares looked up at him with bored expressions. “Well…” one of them drawled. “You could go over to the blast site and look over the edge.”
“And then maybe you could fall in!” the other added, causing both of the mares to laugh.
Boil frowned, but then looked over at a large painting on the wall, depicting the “blast site” in question. “Wait, I think I remember hearing about this… Oh yes. The Hollow Magic Testing Grounds. Some of our most-powerful spells were developed here a century or two ago by a multi-species team, one of the first such meetups in the history of magic.”
“Oh, are you a fan of the history of magic?” Peel asked, genuinely interested in the stallion liking a subject not laced with sadism.
“No, just things that explode,” replied Boil. “That’s why I know about this place: The whole project had to be abandoned in 903 PE after a misfire blew the whole laboratory to smithereens! The fireball could be seen all the way in Manehattan.”
“Yes, yes,” Gertrude said good-naturedly, “One of our little town’s many claims to fame. Here are your drinks, by the way.”
Boil and Peel sat opposite each other at a table and drank their drinks for a bit.
“Ah, that’s the stuff!” exclaimed Boil. “So, Gertie, am I the last to arrive?”
“The last?” asked Gertrude.
“For the Invitational! The Exclusive Golf Invitational!”
“Oh!” Gertrude exclaimed. “Oh yes, definitely the last. It will start at dawn tomorrow, Mr. Boil.” With Mrs. Peel’s changeling senses, she knew that these were the first two lies the bartender had spoken thus far. “We have a bed prepared for you upstairs.”
Boil looked over at his unfinished drink, and then over at the clock. “Oh dawn, is it?” he asked. “I suppose I better turn in. Feel free to finish that for me, Dearie!” He then got up and headed out of the pub.
Gertrude walked up to the table, polishing a glass with a wing. “I knew about Mr. Boil’s arrival,” she said with a slightly menacing tone. “We all did!” She looked around her at the two other guests, who hesitantly nodded. “The Invitational is a big event!
“I wasn’t informed about you, though. Are you here to…golf…as well?” In Mrs. Peel’s eyes, the word “golf” assumed the form of a euphemism for…something else.
“No,” Peel said. “I will be needing a room for a night or two, but after that I’ll need to find more-permanent lodging.”
“Oh?” The bartender seemed genuinely surprised. It appeared that Hollow Shades didn’t get new long-term residents very often.
“Yes. I’m to teach at the school here.”
The two mares looked at each other, and then one of them got up. “Excuse me,” she said. “What did you say your name was?” She was a pink earth pony with a pale pink mane done up in a ponytail, made up of very fine strands of hair, and a tail to match. She was wearing a white turtleneck sweater that was concealing an object, just like the bartender.
“Miss Mind Garden,” said Lemon Peel. “I was sent by the Equestria Education Association.”
“I am Miss Stone Mason, superintendent of the school. It’s a little odd…we didn’t ask for another teacher. May I see your paperwork?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Peel said, reaching into her saddlebags and producing the forged papers she had been provided with.
Miss Mason looked the papers over. “Ah, they reduced the maximum student-teacher ratio,” she said regretfully. “Very well,” she said as she returned the papers. “We hadn’t been warned…that is informed that you were coming, or we would have had a place prepared for you.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” Peel said. “I came over early. I wanted to get a look around the place, get my curriculum personalized for the ponies I am to teach. So, I can hit the ground running.”
“What admirable initiative,” Miss Mason said duly.
“Oh, stop your grumping,” the other mare in the room said, approaching the pair. “See it as yet another opportunity. I am Ms. Harshwhinny, education inspector. I just arrived today—thought I’d treat myself to the golf tournament before beginning work on Monday.”
Now this looked like an inspector: a pony who frowned for a living—the deep lines in her face proved that. The current smile on her face seemed almost wrong by contrast, as was her voice, which wasn’t a “harsh whinny” at all. She was an orange earth pony with a blond mane and tail and blue eyes. She was wearing a purple jacket and pink polo neck over a white undershirt, and she had amber-rimmed pink earrings. The shirt was tight enough to reveal that no object was concealed there.
She was also very hard to read, a pony who had lied so often in her life that she could make herself feel whatever she needed to feel in a particular moment to sell the current falsehood.
“Well, it’s good to meet you, Ms. Harshwhinny,” Peel said. “I’ll be open to any suggestions you might make for my improvement.”
“Good!” exclaimed Ms. Harshwhinny. “Because I’m sure there will be some.”
“So, I can stay?”
“Oh course. Now that you are here, you must certainly stay.”
Gertrude stepped between them, armed with a rather large key. “With that settled, are you ready to see your room?”
“Certainly.”
~ ~ ~
Gertrude, the bartender/bellhop, led Mrs. Peel up a narrow staircase to the bar’s second floor: an equally narrow hallway with doors on the right side every three strides. Gertrude carried a candlestick in one claw, illuminating the way. She motioned to a series of sconces along the wall. “Normally the way would be lit for you, but as you came in the last train of the day…”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Peel said. “Just so long as I can see my way to my bed.”
“That’s the spirit!” Gertrude exclaimed. She walked past the first room, which by the light underneath must be occupied by Pierce Boil and went past a couple of other rooms. “In need of repair,” she lied.
Peel supposed the real reason was to make it less likely that she could hear anything unusual that might occur in Boil’s room.
Three doors down a door was opened. “Now, we weren’t prepared for your coming,” Gertrude warned. “But I promise it will be cleaned first thing tomorrow morning.” She unlocked the door and lit a candle that was inside.
“Very well,” said Mrs. Peel. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight. And don’t let the bedbugs bite! …That was a joke. I’ll…I’ll be going now.” The abashed Gertrude made her way downstairs. The emotion was, once again, not only genuine but something completely foreign to griffons in Lemon Peel’s experience.
Gertrude returned to the first floor. “So,” she asked Ms. Harshwhinny, “who shall receive the blessed conversion first?”
Harshwhinny looked down at the ground, deep in concentration. “Mr. Boil,” she said at last. “Not only does he desperately need it, I suspect I will need to be sending some sort of proof of Miss Garden’s arrival to the EEA to divert suspicion.
“It’s a funny thing,” she added. “She’s one of the Apple Clan members, but I don’t remember ever seeing her before.”
“Is it unusual that an Apple would be a teacher?” asked Miss Mason. “Or that she never took the train during one of your trips?”
Harshwhinny shook her head. “No, neither of those are unusual. Ah, it’s probably me being paranoid as usual. Gertrude, you’ll know what to do if she decides to snoop after hours.”
"Yes, Ma’am,” Gertrude said sadly, picking up a bamboo tube from under the counter.
After waiting a few moments to be sure that there was no more activity to be heard upstairs, Ms. Harshwhinny went over to the door to the cellar and performed a distinctive knock. “Alright Staid,” she said to the door. “Time for another ‘badger hunt’.”
The sound of a padlock being removed from the other side of the door could be heard.
Gertrude was certainly right when she had said that Lemon Peel’s room hadn’t been cleaned lately. The cabinets were coated thickly with dust as well as the artificial plant, the tap took several seconds to deliver any water, and a fly strip hanging from the ceiling had several dozen complaining flies sitting on it.
(Author’s Note: Ponies of course don’t set lethal traps for any creature, even insects. Therefore, their fly strips are coated with a compound guaranteed to trap flies without hurting them, while providing enough liquid nutrition to last for months.)
Mrs. Peel went over to the window overlooking the backyard and was able to open it only with some difficulty. It admitted air, but did not allow escape, as it was boarded up from the outside. In the darkness she heard some commotion, and felt a sense of blind panic from below…
Pierce Boil was just settling down for bed when he heard a panel sliding in the wall of his room. He used his magic to light the candle, and gasped at the half-pony, half-monster thing that was creeping towards him. He made the flame of the candle flare even as he covered his eyes, then rushed past his blinded captor before breaking through the door and down the stairs. None of the ponies there made any move to stop him as he went out the front door, the thing in close pursuit.
Ms. Harshwhinny casually followed.
A few seconds later Lemon Peel rushed down as well, dressed in her “dangerous mission outfit”, which should have made her nearly impossible to see in dim light. It was a shame that the lights downstairs were all on.
As she approached the front door, Miss Mason moved to block her way. She removed the glass vial that was hanging around her neck, deliberately placed it just outside the door, then turned to face her with a nasty smile, closing the door with a hoof.
“Alright, you’ve got me,” Lemon said with a disarming smile. She turned around in preparation for being led back to her room, then when Miss Mason approached suddenly kicked out, sending her opponent back against the door. She then turned and attacked, striking her back with a karate chop.
Mason groaned but did not yield. Instead, she twisted around and put a forearm around Peel’s neck, whipping her around.
Peel went with the pull, twisting them both around until Mason slammed into the door again, and bounced off. They both slid to the ground some distance away.
Peel got up first and stepped towards the door.
She was stopped by Mason, who had her front hooves around Peel’s back boots. Peel attempted to kick, but Mason held on. So, she pulled her hooves out of the boots, and bucked Mason all the way across the room and into a wall.
Mason collapsed, her shoulder dislocated.
Peel opened the front door…and then reached up to touch the dart that Gertrude had just blown into her neck from her bamboo tube. A second later she fell unconscious.
"Oh dear,” said Gertrude. “I hope I did the right thing.” She went over to inspect Miss Mason. “The Boss will have to take her to the hospital for sure,” she told herself. She collected the vial and put it back in place.
She then looked at the form of the unconscious meddler. Gertrude felt a surge of regret, but then she sighed. “All for the greater good,” she told herself.