Skimming just above the ground around the trees of Whitetail Woods wasn't that hard, actually, and it wasn't like Dash was flying at top speed or anything. She could do this sort of slalom stuff in her sleep.
Not that she usually did it in the middle of the night, of course, the half-moon glowing all silvery through the leaves and branches and making it hard to tell what was a shadow ahead of her and what was a rock. And she usually didn't have to keep snapping her gaze away from the onrushing trunks when she did this, either, glancing back and forth to the mail train barreling along the tracks just past the tree line.
Still, Dash kept telling herself, this whole thing was hardly tricky at all, twigs whipping her face where her tight black skinsuit wasn't quite tight enough, her wings sore from the couple or twelve times she'd scraped them cutting the turns just a little too close.
Of course, it didn't help that the bad guys on board the train had doused the lights about ten minutes ago, making the woods even darker and more shadowy. But Dash had managed to do a fly-by before that, had counted a dozen rough-looking ponies also in black skinsuits and one civilian, an earth pony wearing a blue-and-white striped cap and overalls, the poor guy tied up in the engine.
She'd taken the info straight to Beebee, and he'd jumped onto his pumpcar, told her to keep out of sight, keep even with the engine, and keep dodging trees till he showed up. "I shan't keep you waiting long, darling," he'd said in that smooth baritone he used when he wasn't being Prince Blueblood. "I shall board the train from the rear and do my utmost to become the focus of our enemies' attention. You must concentrate on shutting down the engine, for if these fiends reach the dam above town and detonate their explosives, well, Ponyville will have to change its name to Pony Lake, I fear."
A weird twinkling light pulled at her peripheral vision, a slight sparkling along the track behind the train: Beebee must be using that new shadow cloak Princess Luna had shown them at the briefing. He had it aimed forward so he'd be invisible to the ponies on the train, and that meant Dash's quick looks would sometimes let her see around the cloak's flapping edges, Beebee perched at the front of the car, his muscles clenched underneath his own skinsuit, the glow of his magic pumping the car's lever so fast, it was just a blur.
Then he was catching up to the speeding train, was leaping from his cart, was crashing through the caboose's back door, shouts reaching Dash's ears. With a grin she felt all the way down to her bones, Dash flung herself sideways, shot from the edge of the woods, rolled into the engine's cabin, and landed in a crouch, ready for anything.
The boiler roared, its door open, a sulfurous stink pouring out, the big fire inside the only light in the whole place; coal spilled black and lumpy from the tender car behind; the engineer lay bound and gagged in the far corner; and a unicorn mare in a black skinsuit stood sneering beside him. The unicorn's horn flared, and glints of silver flashed toward Dash.
Leaping, whirling, Dash stirred up enough wind to knock whatever the things were off course. They clanged and thunked into metal and wood on either side of her, and Dash glanced over to see a ninja throwing star vibrating slightly in the window frame. Focusing forward and grinning some more, she launched herself at the unicorn.
She felt more than saw the next batch of throwing stars, the same senses sparking up that let her slide out of the way of a storm's lightning bolts. Not even thinking, she flicked her wings, twisted and flowed like she was made of cloud, and smashed her front hoofs right into the unicorn's surprised face with a crash as hard as a thunderclap.
The unicorn's head bounced off the wall behind her, and she slumped to the floor beside the engineer. Dash jumped back to the boiler, then, the fire inside still raging, the train still racing down the tracks toward Ponyville dam.
So, OK. If fire made the thing go, and Dash was supposed to stop it—
Concentrating, she sprang into a hover, felt the texture of the air, the moisture in it just barely enough. She spun herself through the cabin, gathered and shaped and formed the invisible drops into a cloud the size of a baseball, then the size of a basketball, and then big enough that she could've crawled on top of it and taken a nap if the thing hadn't been so cold and wet and mooshy and she hadn't been busy trying to save Ponyville and everything.
She was panting by now, too, the effort of keeping the water bunched together in that hot, dry cabin getting more than a little annoying. So she shoved the cloud toward the open boiler door and gave a nod.
There. Mission accomplished.
Something scuffled behind her, and she did another whirl, ready to smack that unicorn in the head again— But it was Beebee, the shadow cloak shimmering around his shoulders as he clambered over the coal and slid into the engine. Dash grinned, opened her mouth to tell him she had everything under control—
But he was gasping, his horn flaring, magic lashing out to wrap around the engineer and the still-unconscious spy. Then he was slamming Rainbow Dash sideways, pushing her right out of the cabin and into the empty air beside the train.
Instinct spread her wings to their full extension, but with Beebee and two other ponies tumbling out on top of her, she didn't have a hope of staying airborne. She did manage to slow their fall a little, managed to swing them around so Beebee hit the ground first—served him right, and besides, she knew he could take it. Still, she couldn't escape all the flailing legs, and she rolled with the whole group down the embankment beside the tracks, the train rattling and whooshing past and away into the night ahead.
They fetched up with a smack against one of the first trees along the wood line, and Dash pulled herself from the tangle, leaped into a hover, aimed her words at Blueblood: "What was that all about?! I had everything completely under—!"
"A cold water raincloud," Beebee said, his eyes clenched, a front hoof rubbing at the base of his horn. "Shoved all at once into a red-hot boiler."
Dash felt herself go hot, then cold. "Uh-oh." She stretched her neck to look down the track.
Light flashed, Dash suddenly dragged downward by Beebee grabbing her back hoofs. She hit the ground just as heat smashed over them, the dirt seeming to roll, a roar splitting the air. The golden glow of Beebee's magic sprang up between her and the darkness above, and things started bouncing off it: chunks of wood, jagged pieces of metal, shards of glass scattering into the night. "Aboard a train," Blueblood was saying right into her ear, "that was already a rolling bomb..."
The yellow and orange flicker down the track made Dash's every nerve scream—leap up; sound the alarm; get the weather team out here with all the clouds they could muster—but the forest fire vanished with a silver flash, Discord suddenly prancing on his hind legs beside them. "Yes!" he crowed. "I came up with fifteen different ways you could beat my little scenario, but I never dreamed you'd pick one of the exploding ones!" He clapped his weird front paws. "An 'A-plus,' troops! An 'A-double-plus!'"
Somewhere nearby, Dash heard a throat clear, and part of the night stepped forward to become Princess Luna, her face as sour and serious as it always seemed to be. "If I might make a few observations before grades are assigned?"
Discord gave a huff and folded his arms. "If you must."
The princess nodded to where Beebee was climbing to his hoofs, the two ponies he'd grabbed from the engine drifting into the air and becoming pony-shaped balloons. "Full marks for stopping the threat to Ponyville as well as for rescuing the civilian and capturing one of your adversaries." Princess Luna's horn glowed, pushing the balloons toward Discord.
Grinning, he caught them, undid their stems, and sucked the air out. "Ah, yes," he said, his eyes bulging and his voice as squeaky as Pinkie Pie's after a dozen or so éclairs. "Waste not, want not, I always say."
Dash couldn't help giggling, but Princess Luna's frown put the ice on that pretty quick, Dash folding her wings and dropping to the ground. "Slightly fewer marks," the princess was going on, "for the total destruction of the train, a stretch of track, and a section of Whitetail Woods. Not to mention the other eleven ponies on board."
And as much as Dash wanted to leap back into the air and shout at the princess that it didn't really matter since all of it—the train, the spies, the bomb, everything—had all just been a bunch of stuff Discord had conjured up, she forced herself to do nothing but give a little nod.
"A point of order, Auntie?" Blueblood's snootiest tones rose up behind her. "I believe you'll find that I threw four of those foul miscreants off the train during my little jaunt up to the engine. So there would have been at most seven ponies left aboard, and of such low character, they're hardly worth mentioning."
Again, Dash wanted to move, wanted to turn a smile over her shoulder at her coltfriend, wanted to give a little jump and squeal at the idea that she even had a coltfriend, but no. Not tonight. Not with Princess Luna here to judge whether Dash had picked up enough from Blueblood in the six months since he'd moved to Ponyville just after Hearth's Warming and they'd started dating by day and training by night. 'Cause if the princess said she passed, then Dash would become an actual delta-level operative in Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps. So Dash was gonna stand still, look Princess Luna straight in the eye, and take whatever she said like a mare, not a filly. Like a pony who deserved to be in the Corps.
Princess Luna still wasn't smiling, hadn't shifted so much as an eyebrow, the only sound the slight squeaking of Discord rocking back and forth in the hammock he'd made from the deflated balloons. Finally, though, the princess took a breath. "Your thoughts on these observations, recruit?" she asked.
Dash didn't blink. "I screwed up, ma'am. I should've remembered that trains aren't clouds and that weather wrangling tricks prob'bly won't work the same way on iron and steel." A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, and she went ahead and let it. "Better believe I'll remember it from now on, though."
Another long moment of silence stretched, then Princess Luna nodded. "Excellently answered, Agent Delta 6."
And nothing in the wide, wide world of Equestria could've kept Dash on the ground at that. "You mean I passed?!"
"Ha!" Discord leaped from his hammock and crooked a claw at Princess Luna. "Now you owe me a watermelon as big as Celestia's head!"
The princess blinked. "I— What?"
Discord pressed the back of his paw to his forehead. "It's the least you could do after all the time and effort I've put in on this project!" He flowed sideways like he didn't have a bone in his body, his leering face suddenly right in front of Dash, his words popping around her as soft as soap bubbles. "And, oh, the delightful chaos you'll be causing, my dear. You've quite the knack for it, you know." He straightened, one talon raised. "All in the pursuit of goodness and niceness and that sort of thing, of course. But still." He shivered, pulled a giant red and green checkered kerchief from the air, and dabbed at the corners of his eyes. "You'll do me proud."
Blinking at him another second, Dash turned to Princess Luna, saw her smiling for maybe the third time since last fall when she'd accepted Dash's application to the Corps. "Be all that as it may," the princess said, "congratulations, Rainbow Dash. Your solution to this scenario was not entirely optimal—loss of life is always a serious matter, no matter whose life has been lost, nephew—but you accomplished the primary mission objective, something that counts for a great deal in the world we Clandestine Corps agents inhabit."
"Yap, yap, yap." Discord had his front paws and claws squeezed together, the moonlight shadow of them on the ground looking like Princess Luna's head, her mouth opening and closing. "Can we wrap this up, please? Some of us need our beauty sleep." Curlers sprouted from his antlers.
Dash almost swooped over to wrap her front legs around his weird gray neck—mostly because she knew how much it would annoy him—but another smile from the princess kept her hovering in place. "Take a few days off, Delta 6, then we'll start the next level of your training." She waved a hoof as Discord. "Like my colleague here, I see great potential in you." Her gaze shifted, and Dash followed it to where Beebee was standing, quieter than she thought she'd ever seen him. "And may I say, Double-O-Zeta, that I've been just as pleasantly surprised by your performance these last six months?"
Beebee's eyes closed partway, and Dash could almost see his Prince Blueblood mask slipping into place. "I seldom have complaints about my performance, Auntie."
Discord snorted a laugh, slid up beside Beebee, threw an arm around his neck, and pinched his cheek. "Isn't he just the cutest little thing?" he cooed.
The snort Beebee gave didn't have any laughter in it, but by then Discord was spinning away and tromping into the woods. "Come along now, Luna. Let's leave the lovebirds to their nesting. I have a few more tricks I want to throw into Gamma 5's test before we run him through it tomorrow morning."
The princess nodded. "Congratulations again, Delta 6."
She turned and sailed after Discord, Dash hearing his voice drifting from the trees: "And when am I going to get a code name? A single letter, I think, would do nicely, 'R' or 'S' or something. Or— Ooo, yes! I could change it regularly, and there'd be a lovely complicated formula ponies would need to calculate each hour or so so they'd know what to properly call me..."
As he faded into the distance, Dash turned, flapping in place, stared at Beebee, and wondered why she wasn't grabbing him and kissing him. She was absolutely bubbling, after all, wanting to zoom into the night sky and spin up some kind of electrical display to celebrate. But he still had on his Prince Blueblood face, and even after dating him all winter and spring, Dash found that haughty expression hard to read. So she settled to the ground and said casually, "Looks like I'm in, then."
Sniffing, he tossed his head. "As if there were any serious doubts. I trained you, after all."
"Uh-huh." She stepped forward and poked a hoof into his chest. "Trained me to tell when you're full of cow pat. So spill, Beebee. We both got what we wanted here, but you don't seem too happy about it."
For a moment, his eyes narrowing and his nostrils flaring, she thought she might have to get tough with him, crack that shell of his with a few well-placed kicks, both verbal and otherwise. But then he took a breath and blew it out, his broad shoulders relaxing and his face clearing like the moon rising out of the clouds: bright, yeah, but still a little bit shadowy and a little bit scary. "Next week," he said quietly. "That will mark nine months since you changed my life, Rainbow Dash. And considering the nature of the work we do in the Corps, I...I find that I'm not at all prepared to risk losing you."
Dash's heart did a little flip, and before she even knew she was doing it, she was whooshing forward, wrapping her front legs around his neck, touching her nose and her lips to his. "No worrying, you hear me?" she told him then. "'Cause I'm not going anywhere. Not anywhere at all."
He gave a deep chuckle. "Ah. Threats, now, is it?"
"You better believe it, buster," she whispered, and when his hoofs closed around the base of her wings and pulled her in even tighter, she didn't try to keep herself from gasping at how just plain good it felt. "You better believe it."
***
Moonlight drifting through her window, Pinkie Pie sat in the big spinny chair in front of her peppermint-striped dresser, stared at herself in the mirror, and wasn't sure she liked what she saw.
Not that it was anything bad, of course, wasn't her evil twin glaring out at her or anything. No, it was just her: blue eyes, pink on pink hide and hair, balloons floating along her flanks. She'd been dreaming about balloons, actually, the way she liked to most every night, when she'd heard all the balloons in the world pop, all of them, all at once, an explosion so big, she'd come awake all sudden and unexpected, had sat up in bed in the dark. And her mane— Her mane had— It had...
It had flowed down her shoulders like cold maple syrup on a colder winter morning. Or actually looser and shiftier than that, more like when she would plunge both her front hoofs into the flour or sugar tubs downstairs in the bakery's kitchen and let the stuff trickle and whoosh along her legs.
That was a fun thing to do, so why couldn't it be fun when her mane did the same sort of thing? It did look kind of pretty, she thought, gazing into the mirror at the long, straight spread of it, and she knew Rarity would give that happy little squeal of hers if she ever saw it, would want to make it all fancy and chic and stylish with maybe a big black-and-white hat and a scarf. So there wasn't any reason, any reason at all, that her mane being droopy like this should make her feel like she'd swallowed a crabapple or five.
Reaching out a hoof, Pinkie touched the mirror, and the sad, serious little pony in the glass reached out her hoof, too, all cold and hard against Pinkie's. It was just that Pinkie's mane only seemed to do this when she had something she was thinking about. And thinking didn't usually turn out too well for her, she'd found in the past.
Like the time she'd thought all her friends didn't want to be her friends anymore. Or the time she'd thought the Mirror Pool would help her be a better friend to all her friends. And now, trying so hard not to think about how much life had changed for her friends these past nine months—
Because Twilight! A princess! With the wings and the horn and the nearly uncontrollable urge in Pinkie's knees to bow every time she came into the bakery to pick up scones and doughnuts!
Though thinking about that actually made Pinkie's mane poof up a little. 'Cause if the best thing that had ever happened to her was seeing Dashie's first Sonic Rainboom all those years ago, probably the second best thing was getting to know the princesses: meeting Princess Celestia a bunch of times now; helping Princess Luna when she came back to Equestria; fighting the changelings so Princess Cadance could get married. So it just didn't make sense that having another princess in the world—and not just another princess, but a princess who was already one of Pinkie's bestest friends—could ever be a bad thing. No, it was a good thing. A very good thing.
She focused on her mane in the mirror some more, tried to make it inflate all the way, but as she watched, it sank back down, flat as it had been right after she'd woken up. Because Twilight wasn't the only friend of hers who'd changed this year. No, there was also Fluttershy and—
Discord! The way he was always hanging around her place now! Talking and laughing with her whenever Pinkie wanted to talk and laugh with her!
And, sure, he was fun. Great, as a matter of fact, keeping up with her like nopony Pinkie had ever met before—probably because he mostly wasn't a pony. There'd even been four mornings in the months since he'd started being nice-weird instead of mean-weird that Pinkie would wake up to find him standing in the air outside her window with that lopsided grin of his sort of fluttering around his snout like a moth around a cabbage. She would ask Mr. and Mrs. Cake if she could take a mental health day, and when they said yes, she and Discord would be off and running.
It was never planned, of course, and so far it had never been the same things twice—not from minute to minute or from hour to hour—the two of them careening through Ponyville and the woods and hills all around, stopping on top of a pine tree or at the bottom of the lake for a quick bag of peanuts or a sandwich whenever the mood struck them. They didn't even need to talk mostly, her Pinkie sense telling her when he'd been about to stop on the roof of town hall in his lederhosen so she could have her accordion ready to accompany his yodeling, and when she'd felt the need to put together a mural honoring great moments in the history of pancakes, there he was with exactly the right boxes of sidewalk chalk for the job.
Even better than all that, though, ever since Discord had started hanging around, Fluttershy had gotten a lot bubblier, laughing more often then she had before and not hiding under her bed nearly so much. And that was just such a wonderful thing to think about, Pinkie could see her mane sort of pulsing up and down like the beat of a conga drum.
Not a bad thing, then, having Discord being their friend now. Not a bad thing at all.
But—
And just that one crunchy little word echoing around in her head was enough to sink her mane like a soufflé gone wrong. Because, yes, Applejack and Rarity were still pretty much the same ponies that Pinkie had known since she'd come skipping into Ponyville her first day of school way, way, way, way back so long ago, Pinkie's memories of it were sometimes in black-and-white, but Dashie—
Dashie had a coltfriend. And thinking about this change didn't make Pinkie shout inside because this one, this one was just too different and too real and too...too—
Too grown-up. Dashie had even said that herself, had said it like it was a good thing: "We're not foals anymore, Pinkie," she'd said not more than a week ago as they'd walked back to Sugarcube Corner after the first picnic the six of them had had for just each other in a long, long time, one of the few times recently that Pinkie had seen Dashie without Blueblood smirking along beside her. "Ev'rypony grows up, right? And I've got to say I'm liking it just fine!"
But it all made Pinkie's eyes feel too tight, made the shadowy face she saw in the mirror look all squinty and scowly underneath that long, straight mane. What was so great about getting all kissy-face with some big stuck-up jerk anyway? And sure, Blueblood wasn't like that so much anymore, Pinkie had to admit: in the bunches of times she'd talked with him since he'd moved to Ponyville, he'd mostly acted like everypony else did when she talked, smiling and nodding and maybe inching toward the door a little. And the house he'd built across the street from Filthy Rich's place down the road from Rarity's shop had this neat tower on it like houses did in Canterlot which made it just about perfect for banister sliding.
But—
And there it was, that sound again, that little choking cough in her head that meant she couldn't do it, couldn't smooth this change over and make it feel right. 'Cause Dashie and Blueblood might right this very minute be sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g, for crying out loud!
She needed him to go away, Pinkie found herself thinking, those hard blue eyes in the mirror staring back into hers. Princess Twilight, Discord and Fluttershy, Pound and Pumpkin starting to say words, and everything else? She could probably live with all that stuff if Blueblood would just go back to Canterlot and stop making Dashie be so...so—
So different.
So, OK. She would need to find somepony who knew about Blueblood, somepony who had known him before he'd met Dashie last fall during that big, big rainstorm, somepony who—
A little smile curled the lips of the pony in the mirror. She knew who she could get. She knew exactly who.
***
Settled on his divan, Blueblood looked across his desk at the dun-colored pony with the hourglass cutie mark and cleared his throat. "I'm afraid it's not working out, Turner," he finally said after sifting through all the things he wanted to say but didn't dare to as long as Rainbow Dash lay watching him through narrow eyes from the puddle of morning sun shining across the window seat on the other side of the room.
At least Turner didn't burst into tears at the news the way several of his predecessors in the job had during the dozen or so exit interviews Blueblood had conducted over the last half a year. In fact, the earth pony was nodding, his unruly brown thatch of a mane sloshing back and forth like a wheat field in a windstorm. "I'd rather thought so, your Highness, but as I'd never been a butler before, I wasn't certain whether I was—"
"'Valet,'" Blueblood forced out between clenched teeth. "Not 'butler.'"
Turner blinked, then flashed that chuckle-headed grin of his. "Well, if I didn't even know the name of the job, I guess it's a good thing you're firing me."
"Not 'firing,'" Dash said from her perch, forcing Blueblood to swallow the hearty agreement he'd been about to give. "Tell him, your Whoness."
The use of that particular nickname told him Dash was feeling prickly, and rather than start jousting with her in front of a pony who was technically no longer in his service, Blueblood cleared his throat some more. "Perhaps the phrase 'letting you go' might prove more salubrious." He flared his horn, slid the desk drawer open, and wafted an envelope across to settle in front of Turner. "Here are your entire wages for the month, and thank you for making the attempt."
Another nod, and Turner picked the envelope up in his teeth. He said something around it that might have been, "You're welcome, your Highness," then he nodded to Rainbow Dash and trotted out of the room. The pitter-pat of his hoofs in the front hall carpeting was followed by the click of the door opening and closing, and then by silence.
Into that silence, Dash spoke: "So. What did he do wrong?"
"It's more what he didn't do right," Blueblood said, but he caught himself before he could start listing Turner's many faults. Instead, he forced a smile and turned it toward her. "He was the best of them so far, however." Which was true, sadly. "It's simply not the easiest position to fill, especially after—" He stopped that train of thought, wishing he could blow it up as thoroughly as Dash had that make-believe locomotive last week. He wasn't going to think about Chives any more. He simply wasn't going to.
Fortunately, Dash chose that moment to puff a breath through her nostrils and drift up from the window seat with the slightest brush of those magnificent wings through the air, Blueblood's chest tingling at the sight. "Well, I'm running out of ponies I can think of who might be interested in working here." She gave a sideways grin as she drifted to the floor. "Unless you wanna try Derpy again."
Heaving a sigh and pouting then were the easiest things Blueblood had done in months. "Must you always threaten me?"
A laugh and a hop, and Dash was settling onto her stomach atop his desk, one front hoof reaching out to cup his chin. "You know you love it."
"Well..." He touched her rainbow mane. "I love you, certainly." He leaned forward just enough to graze his lips over hers. "To which you then reply..."
"Ooo, a little more of that." She slid from the desk into his embrace, and Blueblood lost himself in the warm, wiry pulse of her, slim and strong and more alive than any four other ponies he knew. And most wondrous and miraculous of all, she was here, hadn't deserted him when things were so dicey last autumn, had actually stuck with him while he'd tried to piece himself back together after discovering that much more of his life was a lie than even he'd thought. And while he still wasn't quite certain what it meant now to be Prince Blueblood, one of the few things of which he was entirely certain was the pony now pulling her lips away from his, smiling a breathtaking smile at him, and asking, "I'm sorry; what were you saying?"
About to give a flip answer indicating that he could no longer recall any details of their previous conversation, Blueblood stopped when a clearing of throat sounded from the doorway. Dash's ears folded, and she turned, moving herself out of the way so that Blueblood could see the fire-orange and yellow pegasus leaning against the jamb. "Front door was open," she said. "By which I mean it was so easy to pick the lock, a foal could've done it."
Dash made the cutest little squealing noise and rose vibrating into the air. "Spitfire! Oh my gosh, ma'am! What're you doing here?!"
"Save the 'ma'am' for school hours, Delta 6." If there was one thing Blueblood had always admired about Spitfire—and there were several things, he had to admit, forcing his eyes away from her flanks and his memories away from the hours they'd spent—
But he wasn't thinking about that, was he? He was thinking about how much he admired Spitfire's ability to step into any situation and completely take control of it.
"You—" Dash seemed to be vibrating even faster. "You know my code name?" She clutched her front hoofs to her chest, her eyes about as big as the average pomegranate. "'Cause you're a Corps agent, too, aren't you?"
Blueblood pushed himself to his hoofs. "Well, as nominal host here, I suppose it falls to me to make the introductions." He gestured as elegantly and insolently toward Spitfire as he could. "Darling, I believe you've met Double-O-Lambda under less clandestine circumstances?"
Dash hung in the air somehow even though only the very tips of her wings were now moving. "Double-O? Then you— You're one of the...the top— One of the ponies who...who—"
"Ten more seconds, Delta 6," Spitfire said, her gaze focused on the bottom of her upraised right front hoof. "Then I'm going to need you and your brain right here." She pointed to the carpet in front of her.
A blue flash, and Dash was standing on the indicated spot at not quite perfect attention due to her prancing in place. "This is so cool! I mean, I know it's been a week since I passed the test, but I just thought maybe Beebee was gonna do my training again!"
"Beebee?" Spitfire's eyebrows arched so thoroughly, Blueblood was surprised they didn't pop right off her face.
It was a shame Dash didn't blush more often, Blueblood had often thought; she turned such a lovely violet color. "I mean Double-O-Zeta!" she blurted.
"No, no." A smile curled slowly over Spitfire's lovely lips, lips which Blueblood was not thinking about in any way, shape, or form, he reminded himself sternly. "Beebee's fine. In fact, I like Beebee very much." Her smile vanished, and the look she gave Rainbow Dash made Blueblood want to stand at attention as well. "Still, we have business to get to, business that can't wait."
Folding her wings, Dash nodded. "Where do we start?"
"With our cover story." Spitfire sauntered the rest of the way into the room, gave the slightest flutter, and settled onto the divan on the other side of the desk, Blueblood smiling at the way Dash followed the Wonderbolt's every move as if she were trying to memorize them. "You can keep up the whole 'dating Blueblood' thing if you want to, but—"
"What?!" Dash leaped straight into the air, her wings positively buzzing this time. "Of course I'm gonna keep dating Beebee! How could you even—?!"
Spitfire rolled her eyes, and Blueblood spoke up quickly: "Perhaps you remember, darling, how we discussed the possibility that missions might come along where we not only must pretend we're not dating, but we must pretend we don't even know each other?"
"Right, right, right." Dash's mouth went sideways. "From now on, there's my real life, and then the story that covers my real life." She stopped and took a breath, her hoofs touching the carpet once more. "So me and Beebee are still me and Beebee to the outside world. Got it."
The nod that Spitfire gave was so slight, Blueblood wouldn't have noticed it, he was sure, if he hadn't been looking for it. "To cover me being here, I'm scouting you for the Wonderbolts because of your impressive performance at the Academy and your sterling personal qualities and blah et cetera blah, blah, blah." She waved a hoof. "Of course, I'm not really a trainer in my cover identity, so in a couple days, Bosky Dell will be arriving to—"
"Bosky Dell?!" Dash left the floor again. "The Bosky Dell?! The greatest coach the Wonderbolts ever had?!"
"That's the one." Spitfire's smile was gentler than Blueblood had thought her capable of. "I was the last pony he brought into the 'Bolts before he retired, so when I told him I had this terrific new prospect who needed her rough edges polished a bit, he said he'd be willing to come out here, give you a look, maybe offer a few pointers."
The expression on Dash's face almost made a jealous spark strike up inside Blueblood. "That...you— Oh, wow! Bosky Dell! Coming to train me!"
"But!" The word burst from Spitfire like a spell from a unicorn's horn, Dash dropping to the carpet, her eyes going wide. "Dell doesn't know a thing about any of us being agents: the way he's so focused on sports, I'll bet he's never even heard of Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps. So he'll be giving you his work-out, then I'll be giving you mine when he's knocked off for the day." She blinked once. "Think you can keep up?"
Resolve absolutely shone from Rainbow Dash. "I'll be asking you that question in a week, ma'am."
That got an actual laugh out of Spitfire, and Blueblood let himself relax a bit: to his way of thinking, she and Dash were too similar in temperament to be anything other than the best of friends or the worst of enemies. "Call me Spitfire," she said, "and keep in mind this endgame: if Dell says you're good enough, you'll get a slot on the 'Bolts. I'm guaranteeing that."
Once more, Dash sprang aloft with a squeal, but Spitfire's hoof came up as well, the older pegasus going on: "Boss Mare thinks having two qualified and competent agents on the team will expand the Corps' reach and effectiveness—even if it's just you and me walking into a situation and drawing all eyes to us so the actual operatives can get the job done without anypony noticing." She cocked her head. "Any questions?"
Dash was still hovering. "Boss Mare. That's the princess?"
Blueblood laughed this time. "Only when she's not around, darling."
"Ooo, yeah." Spitfire nodded. "Important safety tip, there."
"Got it." Dash's eyes danced. "So when do we start?"
Spitfire gestured to the door. "Warm up. I'll be out in a minute."
The air swirled like a mini-cyclone, and Dash was gone as thoroughly as if she'd never been there, a thought that made Blueblood shiver. Her absences didn't fill him with as much existential dread these days as they had nine months ago when he'd latched onto her and the Corps as the only constants left in his life, but still—
"Cold, Beebee?" Spitfire asked, neither her smile nor her voice anywhere near as nasty as they could've been.
Parts of Blueblood bristled anyway, but he managed to swallow them down, managed to give her a flirty little look instead of the scowl that wanted to come to his face. "Why, Double-O-Lambda! One could almost believe you cared!"
She shrugged. "A year ago, I wouldn't've."
He took a breath and let it out. "A year ago, you would've signed up with Green Briar and Chives to blast me into confetti."
"Well, if that had been all they were planning to do." A stillness came over her. "You hurt me badly, you know."
It was a sentiment he'd heard often since last fall, but it made his insides twist every single time. "I did. And I apologize." He wanted to go on, wanted to tell her how much she'd hurt him, how what had happened between them hadn't been entirely his fault, but for all that parts of him indeed felt that way, Blueblood knew it wasn't true. He and Spitfire had exploded into horrible, bloody shreds because his natural talents had found her fuse, and he had then set out carefully and systematically to light it. He'd done the very same thing to everypony until Chives had done it to him, and that was an explosion Blueblood was still recovering from.
"Huh." Spitfire blinked. "Boss Mare said you'd changed, but I have to admit I didn't believe her." She nodded toward the door Dash had just vanished through. "A positive influence, is she?"
Blueblood throat tightened, but he forced the words out: "Be tough on her, Lammy. Because she's got to be tough on me."
Spitfire's smile was slow but genuine. "Don't call me Lammy." And she leaped into the air, the whole house shaking as she burst out of the room.
***
The Question came up inevitably during his sessions, Chives had found, but no matter how much he tried to steel himself, it always took him by surprise. Whether arriving first thing out of a therapist's mouth, lurking about till the end of the hour, or sandwiched somewhere in between, The Question would pop and strike him right between the eyes as hard and fast as an arrow from a bow:
"You didn't really want to hurt Prince Blueblood, did you, Chives?"
Last fall, immediately after his capture, trial, and incarceration within the Canterlot Central Treatment Facility, The Question would cause him to explode into rantings as thick and full as his mane had been before he'd gone to work for His Highness, and he would enumerate every excruciating detail of the living nightmare he'd endured during his three years as Prince Blueblood's valet. But he'd quickly learned that it didn't do any good.
"Then why didn't you quit?" they would ask next. "If you truly disliked your job, why didn't you find another one?"
Again, at first, he would try to explain to them, would try to tell them about growing up in the shadow of the palace, about his parents, both gardeners dedicated to maintaining the grounds, and about Prince Blueblood, a spoiled, horrible brat of a colt very nearly his own age, who seemed to take pleasure in making everypony's life as miserable as he could, seemed to zero in on ways to exploit the weaknesses of those around him as easily as Chives himself could zero in on the proper ways to accomplish any task and solve any problem he set his mind to.
"And the more I saw of him," Chives told his interviewers calmly on those occasions when he could force himself not to shout about it, "the more I came to realize that His Highness was my true task, the one problem that I truly needed to solve. And when he refused over and over again to be solved, well, then I had no choice but to destroy him, did I?"
The other questions they would ask then varied to a large degree, but all of them showed that his therapists didn't understand the problem at all. So now, whenever The Question would spring into his face like a bloated and poisonous toad, Chives would simply laugh as loudly as he could and say, "Live in Prince Blueblood's house for a week, doctor, and you'll want to hurt him, too."
Still, loading dirty laundry into the first of the big steam-powered washing machines in the Facility's basement on the evening of what he realized was the beginning of his ninth month separated from His Highness's service, Chives briefly considered another course of action. Perhaps he should begin lying to the therapists when they asked him The Question. He could practice donning a sorrowful expression, learn to shake his head sadly, and force himself to say something like, "Oh, I can't believe I ever attempted to do such a thing!"
The mere thought of it made him laugh, slamming the washing machine's big door and pushing his cart of damp towels and rumpled pillowcases toward Washer #2. The only pony he'd ever been able to lie to, in fact, was His Highness, mostly because His Highness was less a pony than a festering mound of insect-ridden—
"Chives." A quiet, rustling voice settled over his ears, made them fold, his legs freezing. He was alone here in the basement, he knew, since he was always alone here in the basement on laundry day. The few other ponies being treated in the Facility didn't seem willing or able to help out around the place, but his therapists understood him at least well enough to realize that he enjoyed keeping busy. So every weekend, they allowed him to do the laundry, and oh, how he looked forward to the peaceful routine of it.
Hearing small hissing voices, however, was neither peaceful nor routine.
"Chives?" The voice asked it this time, the whisper ending on a rising note. "I know you can hear me," it more sang than said.
Perhaps bolting for the stairs would be best, and Chives was just getting ready to step away from the cart when—
"I can give him to you, Chives, can put his Princeyness right into your hoofs. All you hafta do is agree to take him away with you. Can you do that, Chives? Do you want to do that?"
The chemical-lilac smell of the laundry soap filled his nostrils, his lungs the only parts of himself that Chives seemed able to move. "Take him away?" he managed to mutter. "Oh, yes. I believe that to be exactly the course of action required for His Highness." Feeling began seeping back into the rest of his body, pins and needles prickling his skin like he was coming awake after sleeping all night in an odd position. "I am, however, rather constrained in my movements at the present time. Or will you be bringing Prince Blueblood here to me?"
The voice gave an itchy little giggle. "All you hafta do is your job...with one slight alteration. Instead of you putting the laundry into the washer, the laundry hasta put you in."
Chives stared at the open door of Washer #2. It was certainly big enough for him to climb through and into the drum, but— "And then?"
"Then take a deep breath, and get ready for the ride of your life."
Staring some more at the door, Chives couldn't help wondering if this was what madness felt like. It wasn't a bad sensation, the bounce in his chest at the thought of getting one last chance at Prince Blueblood. One last chance to take care of things correctly.
"This machine here?" he asked, nodding to Washer #2.
"Right-a-rooty!" the voice somehow whispered and crowed at the same time.
Without giving his brain a chance to object, Chives grabbed the edge of the washer's opening and scrambled inside. Immediately, the door slammed shut behind him, cloudy light filtering in through its little glass window; he'd barely had a chance to suck in the recommended breath when, with a splash and a roar, warm water flooded over and around him.
The drum didn't start spinning, though, the way Chives had expected. Instead, it cracked along the back, a jagged black chasm yawning open in the murk, and Chives felt himself swept through with the cascading flow into the darkness.
Cloth mesh tangled around him, caught him and held him, the water rushing past just in time for him to gulp in another quick breath. Then he was falling, tumbling, thumping along a smooth metal surface—inside a pipe, perhaps?—the cloth wrapping him and providing a bit of padding as he careened downward. Rolling and spinning, Chives felt glad he hadn't had supper yet, the way his stomach knocked up, down and sideways against his ribs.
One last bounce, and the pitch-blackness slid away, Chives blinking to see himself dropping now into a dim sort of twilight, the roof of a cave receding above him, a round hole among the stalactites getting smaller and smaller. Unable to turn to see what lay below him, he barely had time to think how glad he was that he hadn't imagined the voice when he thudded into something as soft and thick as the towels when he was folding them at the end of each week's laundry process. The softness enveloped him—swallowed him, in fact, it felt like—this darkness squeezing him and slowing him and finally bringing him to rest, immobilized and strangely comfortable.
A crunchy tearing noise came to him then, and the soft material pulled away, shredding like so much dryer lint; Chives found himself looking upward at four wooden walls forming a square of dim light directly above. A cover slid across it, blocking out the light, and Chives's ears folded at the rapid rat-a-tat-tat of a hammer against nails.
"There," came that same voice, not whispering now but muffled by the walls of the crate Chives realized he'd just been sealed into. "There's lotsa pillows and blankets in there, and I packed some sandwiches and fruit punch and cookies, too. You'll be taking the mail train outta Canterlot, so it'll take you maybe eighteen or twenty hours to get where you're going. I'll already be there, and I'll sign for you and unpack you when you get delivered." The voice got more whispery. "There's also a jar with a good, tight lid in case you need to, y'know, go potty. Sorry I couldn't do any better'n that."
Clearing his throat, Chives managed to get his tongue working. "Who are you?" he asked.
Another little giggle from outside. "I'll tell you tomorrow. Hang on, now." His whole world shifted and began to move.
And yet it wasn't the worst way he'd traveled, Chives reflected over the course of the next however many hours, the clickety-clack, clickety-clack of a railway car rattling to a halt every once in a while before starting up again. He got a fair amount of sleep, something that had rarely happened whenever Prince Blueblood had dragged him off to visit some crony or relative or the like, and the crate seemed cozier than many of the rooms he's found himself staying in on those little jaunts. The food was quite good, and he did avail himself of the jar provided for his comfort, using the light that filtered in through the crate's seams to make sure beforehand that the lid was indeed as good and tight as his rescuer had said.
That light was getting dim again when the constant clatter of the train slowed to a stop once more, but this time, his crate was shifted and lifted though his ears were ringing too much for him to pick up much in the way of outside noises. He was rolled and slid and thunked around, however, and by the time his hearing had settled down enough for him to recognize the long, slow squeak of nails being pried out of wood, the lid of the crate was already coming off, the darkness it revealed not much lighter than the darkness he'd known all day. Swallowing then and shifting, Chives stood on his hind legs, reached his front hoofs up, and peered over the edge of the crate.
The color scheme of the bedroom in which his crate now sat, he could tell even in the dimness, leamed heavily toward the pink. Even the room's only light source, a ceiling lamp above a red-and-white striped dresser directly ahead of him, shed a pale pinkish glow over the whole scene...and the plush red swivel chair just in front of the dresser. A young pink mare sat in this chair, her mane cascading a darker pink down around her shoulders, her deep blue eyes about as intense as any Chives had ever seen, her left front hoof resting across the back of a small wall-eyed alligator perched in her lap.
"So," the mare said, her voice all smoky smoothness. "To answer your question from yesterday, you can call me Diane." She gave a tiny smile, her hoof stroking the alligator. "You know, like the huntress."