Our Girl Scootaloo

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Scootaloo was sitting disconsolately on the back porch swing Daddy and Papa had specially made for her. It was identical to the wooden porch swing across from it, just with a strong aluminum frame below the wood and a much thicker chain so a pony and as many as two human girls could enjoy it safely at the same time.

Why did friends have to stab you in the back? Why did it have to hurt when they betrayed you?

Scootaloo looked up and saw a familiar figure. The completely black suit, tie and sunglasses, even though the sun was beginning to set, the gleaming badge on her belt…nobody made an entrance like Agent C.A. Tyler.

Agent Tyler sat down stiffly, then, the chains of the other swing being at a length optimal for two men over six feet tall, realized her boot didn't touch the ground. The swing moved gently in the breeze and while Tyler seemed a little puzzled by this, she shrugged almost imperceptibly with an 'I'll allow it' look.

"I saw the protest," the agent explained –or, rather, didn't. She had the disconcerting habit of leaving sentences open for other people to finish. There was a long pause.

"Nothing too particular, I thought it was quite well-done," the agent observed in her neutral voice. "Good organization, a high degree of participation, remarkable timing with the coup de grace, and even the preliminary security measures were excellent. Miss Adams was exactly right to put on an ear camera."

"I was impressed by Miss Adams' ear camera. Too few protesters realize the remarkable defensive value of a well-placed and subtle video recorder." And to Scootaloo's surprise, the agent really did sound impressed…for a moment, before returning to officious efficiency. "Of course, in future I will expect you all to remember that redundant systems are a virtue and include button or hairline cameras as well. Miss Findlay's glasses, in particular, could easily be modified to include a small one, and given her penchant for demagoguery; I can't help but consider it a wise investment for her inevitable future encounters with both police and press."

"Why, couldn't you?" The agent's voice took on a mildly sarcastic tone. "Or have you used up all the precocity, maturity and good sense you had for the week and now need to behave like an ordinary teenage girl for a while?" Tyler actually smiled, though her voice remained as clipped and precise as ever. "Can't blame you if you do. After a confrontation like that, I myself often feel the need to consume a whole package of entirely inappropriate candy for a person of my years and watch more than an hour of nostalgic cartoon programming before I feel entirely myself again."

"When the stress has been sufficient to provoke the need for such coping mechanisms? Yes. I am particularly fond of Pop Rocks and a show called 'Animaniacs,' do you know it?" Scootaloo shook her head. "Must be from before your time. I shall provide you with an appropriate DVD of same, which may help."

"Yes, the job carries a certain dignity with it which is arguably incompatible with Pop Rocks. I find that most people can't picture me experiencing stress at all, let alone coping with it in a healthy fashion. One of my junior officers inadvertently witnessed a particularly remarkable display of self-comfort with childish favorites and came within inches of putting himself in for Section Eight before I informed him that he had, in fact, not hallucinated the experience."

"I was consuming the seventh packet of Pop Rocks and singing along with a particular cartoon cat. It was rather a challenge, mind you, as the voice actress for that character is one of the most prominent Broadway stars of my youth."

Just then, Scootaloo remembered 'Animaniacs,' realized what Agent Tyler eating Pop Rocks and singing along with Rita the cat must have looked like, and nearly choked laughing.

"There, that should feel better," the agent consoled with a rare smile. "Given the adrenaline crash following such a stressful event as the protest, I brought you these." Scootaloo looked up and saw that the serious, solemn and aggressively precise Federal agent, possibly the toughest and most dangerous woman she'd ever known, had brought her Pop Rocks.

"Crying, also, is therapeutic," Tyler confirmed, patting the orange pegasus on the withers near her wings in a friendly way that didn't match her clipped voice at all as Scootaloo sobbed. "I take it you and Miss Findlay have experienced rather a difficult falling-out."

"Yeah," Scootaloo sniffed, feeling tired and sad and actually a little embarrassed, having a full-on mood swing in front of her Federal bodyguard.

"Describing the specifics to a neutral third party is standard post-traumatic procedure."

"She betrayed me. All those reporters thought I was leading the protest! They treated me like the ringleader, and I was just so afraid…"

"To your credit, you managed it perfectly. I have had the honor to protect heads of state who were not so poised under pressure, and certainly not at the disadvantage of age and inexperience."

"…Thanks. I…I guess I did do it well, and I see now why Josie did it…I mean, they wouldn't even have come if not for thinking I was in charge or at least involved…"

"But it must surely hurt, to believe that a friend would exploit a personal attribute one has never liked for the sake of the mission."

"I am reminded of a much less traumatic but similar situation, when a colleague of mine took advantage of a certain personal attribute I have, myself, never liked in order to improve the odds of a mission's success. The details of the situation remain highly classified, and I cannot be entirely specific, but suffice it to say, I confronted said colleague in a manner not entirely consistent with departmental regulations afterward."

"I broke his jaw, yes." The agent's cheekbones below her dark glasses did redden for a split second, but only very slightly. "And amid the rather excruciating pain of the injury, my colleague pointed out that I had just employed the very same attribute I had always considered objectionable to inflict said injury. His failure to inform me of what he had been planning was no less of a betrayal, but I did realize that he had a point, and that for me to let my personal feelings about that attribute prevent me from employing it in whatever way would advance the mission was also a betrayal of the very ideals we were fighting to defend."

"You are famous, Scootaloo. You have been since you were very small and while you could, theoretically, stop being famous, it is highly unlikely and would mean that something much more radical had happened. Miss Findlay exploited your fame, that's all. It's something you've never liked and it feels like a betrayal for her to bring it into play again, even though the situation was desperate."

"Indeed. It is a personal characteristic I had always despised about myself until that day. I had taken great personal pains to conceal the fact, taught myself to write with my right hand and even, at one point, strung my guitar the other way to try and prevent anyone from knowing."

"Nobody cares anymore is closer to the truth. I attended a school in a somewhat less enlightened area where the faculty did not approve of left-handedness, and was bullied for the fact. So when I found myself at a different school, I became determined to hide it. Nearly inflicted a vicious case of carpal tunnel on myself in high school, and by college…well, suffice it to say, it was not an attribute I liked, nor one I wished to use."

"It did," the agent replied smoothly, then pausing as if to savor a memory. "And my colleague, who was on the same duration of medical leave for his broken jaw as I had administrative leave for breaking it, well…" There was another almost salacious pause. "During that time he managed to impress on me that while I might not like my hands, I could use them very effectively. It borders on true ambidextrousness now, I'm told. We trained together for hours and hours, and I have to admit that I'm actually somewhat proud of my left-handedness currently."

"I don't think I can ever be proud of being famous, not for something I didn't even do," Scootaloo sighed.

"There's pride in what one is, and pride in what one does, yes, and you're wiser than you know to be aware of that already. Using your fame for good is like my using the ability to Tase a would-be suicide bomber with my left hand while I distract him with the blank-cartridge in my right. Make the thing you hate about yourself into a tool, and you can learn…maybe not to love it, as I did, but at least to accept it and live in peace with yourself as you really are."

"So I suppose I should make up with Josie so she can teach me to use my fame for good, just like you did with your colleague?"

"Not entirely what I meant. Anyway. Look, there's a second swing on this porch. Splendid design, a porch with two swings," the agent blustered, speaking faster than Scootaloo had ever heard and still blushing furiously.

"Agent Tyler!" Scootaloo perked right up. "Did you have an affair with your colleague after he forced you to use your hand?"

"That is preposterous. The connotation of the slang term 'affair' implies that one or both parties is married or engaged to a separate third party. We were neither."

"And after you hit him, too! Come on, if I can tell you about a fight I had with my friends, surely you can tell me about one you had with an ex-boyfriend."

That made Agent Tyler stand, straighten, and, for the very first time Scootaloo had ever seen her do it, she lowered the sunglasses over a wicked grin. Her eyes were gray, a little bloodshot and very mischievous.

Then the glasses went back up, the grin melted back down into a neutral smile and the tall woman became Agent C.A. Tyler, Resident Badass and Federal Bodyguard again. Scootaloo realized that she had probably just seen Cassandra Tyler for the first and possibly only time.

"Yes. Miss Findlay is almost certainly heterosexual, and even if you were both of compatible orientation, I think you would make a simply appalling couple."

"Cartoon ponies shouldn't date people with whom they have absolutely no chemistry and who are distinctly different from the physical type and personality they find attractive. Conner's turning out to be a gentleman who prefers gentlemen is quite literally the only problem you two would ever have as a couple, apart from his lamentable luck in parents."

"Not by choice, I assure you. The respect I feel for your fathers in sparing that child from that miserable excuse for a sperm donor he had at home is considerable. The mother may be redeemable, but I do think less of any woman with such a deplorable deficiency when it comes to spine." Scootaloo giggled and Agent Tyler, seemingly reasoning that she was among friends and able to speak her mind, continued. "I've met drag queens with more metaphorical ovaries than that wet jerk-sock excuse for a female."

"Pastor? There's a laugh. I consider him one of the more appalling excuses for a religious or moral leader I've ever seen, and I've done covert operations in countries headed by the kind of person who calls himself General-For-Life and wears more decorations than your average Girl Scout troop."

"You know, I kind of had the feeling at points that he wasn't a total bastard, but then at the protest…"

"Oh, that's the worst thing about him. He isn't a complete git. He's a shallow, narrow-minded little man who is trying his best to do what he thinks is right despite a pathetic inability to consider that someone besides him might know what right is or that he might, just possibly, be wrong. The difference between a mediocre leader who nonetheless manages and one who is a danger to himself and others and must be removed, by main force if necessary, is whether said leader is self-aware. Gray was not. Gray will be removed. And there shall be much rejoicing."

"Not quite. An evil person is a person who sets out to ruin lives on purpose. I could actually respect an evil person more, because at least they are honest and straightforward. A person who thinks they are doing good, refuses to see reason or consider a different point of view and succeeds in ruining people's lives, that's way worse than just evil-on-purpose. Such a person had the trust and even the admiration of others, and if they had just set aside their ego, opened their mind, or even just listened to someone from a different…call it alignment, maybe, and they could have been wonderful . But instead they were less than mediocre. It's twice the tragedy, really."

"Not often, but sometimes. You just…sounded a little like Josie, talking about alignments and good versus evil the way you did."

"I would be surprised if I didn't sound like Miss Findlay quite a lot. She reminds me more decidedly of myself at her age than anyone else I have ever met."

Scootaloo looked, and it was only then that she really realized just how awful Agent Tyler looked. Her skin was several shades paler than usual, her eyes had been bloodshot and red-rimmed behind the glasses, with circles so dark beneath them that they could even be perceived through the almost-opaque lenses. The agent had lost some weight, just enough that the shirt under her suit didn't look entirely right on her, the normally-steady hands had a shake in them and her left hand (which, Scootaloo realized for the first time, had always sported a very plain ring made of gray metal,) had still-fresh abrasions on the knuckles as if she had beaten someone or something wildly.

"I have done… things, things of which I can never speak, nor would I even if I were permitted to do so, because such things are beyond the capacity of speech to convey."

She stared at Scootaloo, her voice frighteningly calm as she continued. “ Do you know how to say 'Mommy?' in Korean? It's pronounced 'Eomma'.”

"And yet, I have done them, because it is my duty to do them and I cannot leave them to someone else, someone who might not have the capacity to live with them afterward. There are things beyond description as 'good' or 'evil' as a sane person knows those ideas, and all I will ever be able to tell you is that I did the closest to good anyone could do about things that were worse than evil."

"Because I must," Agent Tyler said it with no inflection whatsoever, and the coldness in her voice made Scootaloo shiver. "That determination to do the right thing, to consider carefully every option, every point of view, and then to go and do the best one can under the circumstances, no matter what the cost…you saw that in Josie Findlay this afternoon. She has the capacity, even now, even at sixteen and a half years old, to become someone like me, to do the kinds of things I do."

"She could be a spy, an assassin, a facilitator of unspeakable missions, a defender of people whose lives are important to governments and scientists and a person of very, very specific skills. But that's the thing, Scootaloo. I happen to work for the United States government, and most of the time, that means I'm on the side of what, more or less, adds up to something you might consider good. Sometimes it does not.

"I have an opposite number on every side you can imagine, and there have been people like me since the beginning of history. There were people like me who protected people who meant, to certain sciences at certain times, almost exactly what you mean now, though certainly not to the same extent. The problem was only that sometimes it's a kind, friendly cartoon pony who does medical research volunteering, and sometimes it's a Nazi scientist who kills little children and old people horribly. People like me protect either one, depending on when and where and for whom we work.

"When I meet someone like me who works for a different side, sometimes we actually just stop and talk. If our governments haven't sent us to actually kill each other, there's occasionally time for coffee and passing the time of day. We can't be too detailed in shop-talk, national security being what it is, but every chance we get, we talk about something. You can't seem to stop agents talking to other agents. It's because there are so very few people like us, we have to talk with any other ones we find no matter what side they're on. I've had more in common with people who…it's unspeakable…but they were still more like me than anyone on my side."

The Agent sighed with a rueful smile and continued in a nearly-cheerful voice, as if telling a 'not so bad, though,' story:

"You know, I once stopped and talked with someone I had to kill to keep other people safe? Completely understood why I was there to do it, didn't even really mind. We had a good long talk about home and our families, and I was able to fulfill three very important last requests. It was actually a privilege to end the life of a fellow…whatever it is we are, and when the target meets you and says 'I know why you're here, and I'm glad,' because they can't take it anymore either and want to die…it's a very strange feeling. By the end of it, I was pleading with her to consider defecting, to come to my side, but she just couldn't live with the memories anymore. She was much older than me, you understand, and had seen and done so much more…but all the same, I can understand where she was coming from."

"It is, in the oldest sense of the word. Very literally, filled with awe. I have the privilege now of permanent assignment to you, so it's very likely I will live out the rest of my career without picking up the kinds of memories where the most merciful end to that career is a bullet to the brain from a colleague on a different side. Likely…but never certain."

"I don't want you to have to kill people for me!" Scootaloo cried, hugging the poor agent. "I won't let you!"

"My dear Miss Scott, if you could change the parameters of my duty, not just the job, mind, but the duty I carry from an authority well beyond my boss, I would be very impressed indeed, but not all that surprised. It is very much a privilege to work with you," the agent smiled, hugging the pony back. "The point, however, that I was trying to express, is that I have become this creature of skills, determination, duty and not much else, because that was what I had to work with.

"I did not have friends who cared enough to forgive me when I exploited attributes they hated. I did not have people who shared other interests and different potential futures with me, to the point where I could have grown and improved into something very different. I might have been a remarkable barista. It's silly, I know, but I would have been very good at it and very happy doing that, but duty called, I answered, and after a while, there wasn't much left. If I hadn't met my husband…and he's not quite the same kind of person I am, you know, he's the rare sort of agent who has a life beyond the job and somehow he's helped me rebuild one myself…well, I could very easily have met my opposite number and said 'I know why you're here and I'm glad' in about twenty more years.

"As it is, I have my husband, I have a nicer assignment than most agents ever get, and I actually have some people I consider friends. Took me long enough, though, eh?"

"The only thing stopping Josie from growing up to be someone like you is friends?" Scootaloo asked.

"I'm not a hundred percent sure, and there were certainly many other contributing factors, but I know that if I'd had someone like you for a friend back then, I wouldn't be someone like me right now. I might still be an agent and I might still be called upon to do some things we never can speak about, but I wouldn't be like me. I'd be …better. Stronger. Healthier. It may or may not be too late for me, but Miss Findlay…she's luckier to have you than you realize, and you might not be too badly off for a friend like her. I mean, you can see about the worst it can get, and you still manage to have a decent conversation with the end result. That's a big part of why I am so very much enjoying being your personal bodyguard and government liaison."

Scootaloo understood, then. She had always kind of figured there was something very dark about Agent Tyler's job, given the way the stern, serious woman was able to sweep in and make things right and safe and good since she was a tiny pony. What she hadn't counted on, but which really made a lot of sense, was the kind of strain that kind of work, being that kind of person, could put on somebody, and the fact that Agent Tyler was still trying to be better…well…it gave her some hope, and it put the fight after the protest into very real perspective. It was very hard to be angry with a friend about what was, essentially, a high-school thing when a woman who'd killed people to keep you and your country safe was there and in awful pain next to your porch swings.

"And that means more than you'd probably be prepared to believe…Scoot." For a second, Agent Tyler hesitated.

"Yeah. You can call me Scoot. We're friends and that is what my friends call me."

There was a long moment of complete understanding between the two women, one very young and strangely wise, one not all that much older and strangely broken but getting better, both of them very strong and among the last of their kind.

"Yeah! In fact, I can totally give you a lift over. I have the really nice black van with the espresso maker in the dash."

"Well, yeah. I'm allowed to take out any vehicle in that section of the fleet. None of the aircraft, though."

"No, I'm not, which would be why I'm not allowed to take out any of the aircraft."

"We really do, though it's mostly helicopters we use state-side. And you know, not a single one of them is done up in black? Totally uncool and a complete waste of a perfectly good conspiracy theory, plus the white is hideous with dead bugs and stuff on it."

"I'm going to tell Pop and Daddy where we're going. Can I tell you about flying on the way?"

Plus, after Josie and Scoot made up, there was coffee and strawberry Pop Rocks for everyone. Just not in the same cup. That would be gross.

Our girl Scootaloo 1 of 3

by Cozy Mark IV

Ch 17: Among the Last of Their Kind