"Trust me," Diane said as Chives watched her fling robes, hats, wigs, and beards out of a trunk she'd dragged from a closet. "This disguise is totally impenetrabobble!"
Her voice kept changing, he noticed, high and squeaky when she'd helped him climb out of the shipping container and asked him how his trip had been, then dropping again, quieter and sharper but huskier, to tell him the bathroom was across the hall if he needed it while she gave him the key to the room she'd rented for him at the Livery House, a hotel down by the railway station. Her mane moved, too, bulging like a living, breathing thing, its cotton-candy snarls puffing between her ears and along her neck when her voice went up, relaxing again when her voice came back down.
"Here!" she crowed, and Chives blinked to see her wearing a full white chef's outfit and a large black moustache. "With this moustache to cover your face and the apron to cover your cutie mark, you'll be my cousin Burl come to visit!" She cocked her head. "You do know how to cook, don't you?"
And as always happened when he met an unstable pony, a thrilling combination of trepidation and contentment shivered through Chives, the sign that his cutie mark was doing what he thought of as its secret work. Most ponies, after all, seeing the delicate white cup and saucer on his brownish-orange flanks, assumed it signified his suitability to serve as a valet. But that was merely because they never looked closely enough to see the fine pattern of gray cracks spiderwebbing across his mark. So while he'd trained himself to be the perfect gentlecolt's gentlecolt, he considered his true gift to be mending the broken and returning them to good use, something he'd of course failed at with both Blueblood and Green Briar—
But he shook that thought away, focused on the here and now, and answered Diane with nod. "One of the few things His Highness never seemed to complain about was my cooking."
"Perfect!" Her voice and mane fell, those blue eyes taking on a depth that made Chives want to both step forward and step back. "As long as you understand that nopony's s'pposed to get hurt when we do this, right? Blueblood hasta go 'cause he's no good for Dashie, but 'go' just means 'go.' I don't want him run over by a cart or turned into a statue or struck by lightning or anything like that. I just want him to leave Ponyville and not come back. OK?"
Chives considered. "And once he leaves?"
Those eyes hardened. "No hurting. At all."
Taking a breath, he shrugged. "If you insist."
"Yay!" And she was suddenly hugging him, her front legs soft but surprisingly strong around his neck, her chest quivering against his like she was plugged into an electrical outlet, a gorgeous scent of freshly baked bread filling the air. "You're the best! I knew you wouldn't let me down!"
Her embrace scrambled his thoughts—when had anypony last touched him?—and when she then kissed him, the intensity of the contact made his tail shoot out like he was plugged into an electrical outlet. All too quickly, though, her warm lips were pulling away, Chives trying to catch his breath and blinking at her grin, her apron gone, the false moustache not clinging to her upper lip anymore. "Take a look!" she said, gesturing to the mirror above the dresser.
He stepped forward into the pink light of the ceiling lamp and had to grin as well. Patients at the Canterlot Central Treatment Facility didn't have access to mirrors, and in the nine months he'd been a resident there, he'd apparently lost some weight, the apron's drawstrings cinching snugly around his waist. The pony blinking back at him from the glass seemed jauntier somehow, ruddier, more streamlined, the black moustache setting off cheekbones he didn't remember having before. "So." He nodded to himself. "Cousin Burl, am I?"
"Yep-a-rooty!" Diane leaped into place beside him, her eyes curled into crescents, her mane a blackberry bramble. "My favorite imaginary cousin!"
"Ah. Yes." He swallowed. "You should know, Diane, that I've never been good at lying."
"It's not lying." Her mane slid down her neck like the branches of a weeping willow. "Maybe Chives is your real name, but Cousin Burl is gonna be your nickname. Like my nickname's Pinkie."
A more perfect nickname for her, Chives could not imagine. "Would you rather I call you Pinkie, then?"
"No, actually." Her words became whisper-soft, and she tapped a hoof to her chest. "See, no matter how hard I try, I can't stop being Diane, but I'm not very good at it since I'm usually Pinkie these days. So maybe..." She gave him as heartbreaking a look as Chives had ever seen from anypony. "Maybe you can keep calling me Diane? So I can get more practice?"
Wanting to hug her but not sure it would be proper, Chives nodded instead. "I shall be delighted to, Cousin Diane."
Her mane and smile bounced up once more. "I even packed for you!" She spun back to the closet and pulled out a scuffed but sturdy-looking suitcase. "So when you get to your room at the Livery House, you'll have stuff to put in the dresser! Then you can get a good night's sleep before you show up here tomorrow morning a couple hours before dawn to meet Mr. and Mrs. Cake and help with the baking!"
And as much as he hated spoiling the moment, the low boiling in his middle forced him to ask, "And Prince Blueblood?"
By this time, the deflation of her mane barely caused him to blink. "We're gonna take it slow with that. I dunno why, but Dashie really likes him, so if he really likes her, too—"
"Not possible." The words came out as hard and sharp as butcher knives, and even the shock that flooded her face couldn't make Chives soften them. "In all the years that I served His Highness, he never really liked anything or anypony."
Diane's eyes narrowed. "Dashie's special." Her mane perked up, and she grinned. "But you'll see that at the party tomorrow night."
He stared, certain he'd misheard. "Party?"
"Of course!" She threw her front hoofs into the air, and Chives could only stare at the confetti that burst from them. "To welcome my favorite cousin Burl to Ponyville! Good night, now, and I'll see you tomorrow bright and early!"
"But—" was all he managed to say before she was pushing him and the suitcase across the polished wooden floor and straight out the window. Scrabbling for purchase, he slid down the slope of the roof, shot over the eaves into empty air, collided with a fir tree planted between the sidewalk and the street, and tumbled to the ground, the last bit of his fall cushioned by the case. He looked up, saw her bushy silhouette in the window's pink light, and when she blew him a kiss, he was sure he felt something stroke his cheek.
Then the light snapped off, and Chives found himself sitting alone on top of a suitcase under a tree beside a street just off Ponyville's town square, ponies in pairs and groups laughing and chatting in the early summer evening. The false moustache bristling, the apron scratchy against his flanks, he stood, slung the suitcase over his back, and started through the crowds toward the train station; he knew the way from his last trip here at the unfortunate conclusion to his dealings with Green Briar and Prince Blueblood.
He tried to stop those thoughts, but every step brought back the horrible events of nine months ago, events that Chives simply could no longer deny being partially responsible for. Prince Blueblood and Green Briar had been too similar, he'd come to realize during his therapy sessions in the Facility, too stuck in their ways, and too resistant to the sort of helpful change Chives had brought to the lives of so many ponies by means of a few kind words or a little positive attention. His mistake, he saw now, was recognizing the parallels between the two but not plotting to kill them both.
Well, at least Green Briar was off his list: questioning his therapists had finally gained Chives the information that his former accomplice had never returned to consciousness after the disruption of the Octopony spell that had briefly turned him into some sort of alicorn bent on destroying the world. Now to find a similar solution to the problem of Prince Blueblood, and Chives could get on with his life.
The Livery House's porch light glowed warmly, and the older stallion who answered Chives's knock had a kindly, well-fed look. Chives stammered out a few words about his cousin Diane reserving a room for him, but it wasn't until he offered the innkeeper the key that a grin burst over the unicorn's face. "Oh! You mean Pinkie Pie! Sure, yeah, c'mon in! Any cousin of hers is more than welcome here!"
Chives approved of the lobby's orderly condition, and the room was just as pleasant. The innkeeper, Dust Ruffle by name, told Chives that supper was being served in the hotel's café, but after sitting motionless in that crate the entire day, Chives found he wasn't hungry. So he declined with thanks, asked if he could have a wake-up call for 4AM, and stretched himself out luxuriously over the bed, truly on his own for the first time in quite a number of years.
Of course, by the time the night clerk tapped on his door the next morning, he was already prepared, his apron and moustache in place, but he still made his way through the pre-dawn darkness of Ponyville with more than a little stutter in his steps. By now, his escape from the Facility would surely have made the news, and with Prince Blueblood in town, this would even more surely be the first place the authorities would come looking. Staying here, Chives readily acknowledged, would not only endanger himself but Diane as well. And yet—
How could he leave? He had to resolve the matter of Prince Blueblood, or he would never know another moment's peace. And sweet, disturbed Diane: Chives knew he could help her, knew it all the way down to the mended cracks of his cutie mark.
He entered the town square and stopped, the lights of the bakery a beacon across the way. Checking the hang of his apron and the grip of his moustache, he trotted across and around to the back door.
"Cousin Burl!" Diane's hug took him by surprise again, nearly knocked him over backwards into the building's rear courtyard. Mr. and Mrs. Cake nodded, distracted by the morning rush, but they took more and more notice as he slid himself easily into the operation. And, oh, how wonderful to have something other than laundry to do for the first time in long, long months!
Their questions gave him a bit of trouble, but he was proud to find that he was able to answer them without telling any outright lies: he had just left a position he'd held for some years because of mutual dissatisfaction on the part of himself and his former employer; he'd been at somewhat loose ends before Cousin Diane had appeared and offered him this little vacation; he'd called her Diane for as long as he'd known her; he would love to help out around the bakery if they didn't mind him imposing.
Diane filled in the rest of the details about the two of them with an energy not at all diminished by the way her various stories contradicted each other. The Cakes seemed to take it in stride, and they assured Chives at the end of the day that he and the amazing pastries he'd put together would be welcome in their kitchen for as long as he wished to stay.
For his part, Chives found Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie, known to all but him as Pinkie, more and more fascinating as the day went on. The way she appeared right where and when she could do the most good, whether it was charming a surly customer, helping deflect a question from Mr. Cake about Chives's supposed family, or setting the bottle of vanilla extract beside the mixing bowl exactly when he was about to need it, he couldn't help wondering if those balloons on her flanks were perhaps as misleading as his own cup and saucer, if her special talent was perhaps as metaphorical as his own.
The party that night gave him his answer. By sheer force of will, it seemed—her mane never wavering, her smile never paling, her energy and good spirits filling Sugarcube Corner like the aroma of the baked goods she set out for her friends—Diane swirled the other guests away from Chives while still making sure he met them all. She even managed to introduce him to Rainbow Dash and Prince Blueblood—"Dashie? Bluey? This is my cousin Burl! You'll prob'bly see him around town for a while!"—exactly at the moment when His Highness had turned away to refill his and Ms. Dash's cups.
In truth, the other guests would have sent Chives fleeing into the night had Diane not been there employing her skills to keep everything flowing as smoothly as a balloon in flight. Equestria's newest princess, Twilight Sparkle, laughing and dancing gawkily beside the phonograph on the other side of the room! Discord, shrunk to the size of a mockingbird and racing about the tables on a two-wheeled contraption made entirely of cheese! The bearers of the Elements of Harmony, whose number, he soon realized, included the very pony who had broken him out of prison and brought him here!
But his confusion on these points quickly evaporated, his every thought and feeling overwhelmed with uncertainty as he observed Prince Blueblood. Because His Highness was acting solicitous! Engaging! Even the expression on his snout seemed less his usual smirk and more an actual smile!
And yes, Chives did notice a few instances of the narrow eyes and flared nostrils that he knew so well from his years in His Highness's service. Each time it happened, however—and Chives almost cried aloud the first time he saw it—Prince Blueblood would glance at Rainbow Dash, take a breath and give a blink, and would control himself, something Chives had long ago decided His Highness was incapable of doing!
"It makes no sense!" he vented at Diane as the two of them cleaned up afterwards, the guests having gone their ways with many a smile all around. "His Highness— It couldn't— He must be a changeling in disguise!"
"Oooo!" Diane's hair had returned to its usual smooth looseness after spending the entire evening all bunched and tangled. "I hadn't thought of that! Maybe he's just using Dashie to slip in and start another invasion!"
"An undeniable possibility." Chives washed the last dish and set it in the rack for Diane to dry and put away. "We must observe him in more situations." He turned to her. "Can you get us into his house without him knowing?"
"Sure." She slid a pitcher into one of the kitchen's cupboards. "You wanna go right now?"
Chives thought a moment. "No. You were right about taking this slow. Something...something's happening here, and we need to be very careful with it." He set the pot scrubber down. "We'll watch him for a week, then proceed to the breaking and entering step."
Diane's mane puffed up a bit. "I'm so glad you're here, Chives." She rushed forward and embraced him, a little catch in her voice. "There's nopony else I could even talk to about all this!"
Touching a front hoof to her warm neck, Chives closed his eyes. "I'm happy to be of service."
***
Repositioning his lounge chair slightly on the front lawn, Blueblood wondered if the tiny umbrella jutting from the slice of pineapple in his drink was perhaps a bit much.
But no. It and the red satin smoking jacket he wore were absolutely appropriate for the image of indolence he was trying to project. Even though, he had to admit, it had become more than a little unclear to him as the week had progressed at whom exactly he was projecting this image.
He didn't need to do such things for Rainbow Dash's benefit, he knew: in fact, she tended to roll her eyes and sigh loudly whenever she noticed him playing these little games. And he certainly wasn't doing it for Spitfire—
Though spending so much time in the company of a former fillyfriend was a new and somewhat unsettling experience. Yes, everything between them was very cordial, very professional, very much up to the standards expected from operatives in the Clandestine Corps. But every night when Spitfire stopped by to run Dash through her various training exercises either in the gymnasium downstairs or out around the grounds he'd purchased at the edge of the Everfree Forest, Blueblood found himself getting itchier and itchier, thoughts flashing through his head of what a churl he'd been, not just to Spitfire, but to everypony he'd met during most of his life.
Worse still, he could tell that Spitfire was enjoying his discomfort, and the self-satisfied cant to her eyelids whenever she spoke to him, he was sure, would have started him shouting some days ago if not for Dash's presence. And as much as a part of him kept wanting to smirk at Spitfire about how some ponies seemed to bring out the best in him while other ponies mostly decidedly didn't, he'd quickly come to the conclusion that a reaction of that sort undermined itself rather badly.
But with a bit of effort, he'd managed to keep things professional and cordial from his end as well. So he couldn't be lounging about on his back lawn in the evening's twilight with a tropical fruit drink floating lazily in the glow of his horn to impress upon Spitfire how much better his life had become since meeting Rainbow Dash and moving to Ponyville!
He must be doing it to impress Bosky Dell, then.
Not that he had any desire to deal with that foul curmudgeon any more than necessary. Blueblood had followed the Wonderbolts since he was a colt, of course, and knew all too well the almost reverent reaction the mere mention of the name Bosky Dell could trigger in some ponies. But now that he'd actually met the fellow—
A downdraft washed over him, two pegasus mares and an off-white stallion is a dark blue cap and windbreaker descending. The stallion appeared to be in mid-rant: "You've gotta concentrate! I mean, it's like ev'rything I tell you goes in one ear and out the other!"
Dash didn't respond with so much as a snort, and the salty scent of her exhaustion slapped Blueblood's nose; springing up, he pushed the lounge chair to a spot beneath her dangling hoofs. "What have you been doing, darling?" he called, trying to keep the concern from his voice. "Fighting manticores?"
"Ha!" It came out of Dash more like a pant than a laugh, but she flashed him a grin that made her look slightly closer to normal. "That woulda been easy!" She settled into the chair with a grunt. "Thanks, Beebee."
And as much as he wanted to offer Bosky Dell a few choice and crackling words concerning Dash's condition, he instead took a breath and turned slowly to where the two other pegasi were landing. "And how is Ms. Dash progressing?"
Spitfire had a stormy look about her eyebrows that Blueblood knew all too well, but for a change, that look wasn't focused on him. "Not bad, you ask me," she said.
Bosky Dell's snout wrinkled, and he made a popping noise with his lips. "Which shows why you ain't a scout, Spits." He jerked his head at Dash. "I been here a week, and I still ain't sure there's anything there worth training."
Another grunt from the lounge chair, Dash wincing where she lay; Blueblood moved immediately behind her. "On your stomach, darling."
She flopped over with a groan, and he slid his hoofs across her back, the muscles there bunched tight against her skin. Her next groan was a much prettier one, and Blueblood gently set to work doing what he could. He still fondly remembered how Chives had always—
He snapped that thought off and concentrated instead on easing Dash's pain, though Dell giving one more of those infernal pops almost made him break off to take a swing at the older pegasus. "We'll try it again tomorrow, Dash, if you think you can pay attention. See you, too, Spits."
A flapping of wings told him Dell was leaving, but he waited a bit, Dash almost purring now under his hoofs, before glancing at Spitfire. "I always understood that calling you 'Spits' was enough to summon a fiery whirlwind of pain and destruction."
"That rule had one exception." Spitfire's glare was aimed in the direction Bosky Dell had taken. "An exception I'm almost tempted to rethink. But—" She blew out a breath, and the look that came over her was much softer than Blueblood would've expected under the circumstances. "He's married to Paisley."
Hearing that name made Blueblood's hoofs jitter and freeze, and that got a grunt from Rainbow Dash. "Hey!" Her wings slapped his legs. "You don't hafta stop, y'know, while you tell me who this Paisley is."
Spitfire grimaced, but Blueblood jumped in before she could open her mouth. "Perhaps, darling," he said, keeping his tone light and choosing his words carefully, "you recall when Discord first broke free from his stony prison last year?"
Dash tensed, but Blueblood was prepared, starting the massage more forcefully than before. "Oh, yeah," Dash more groaned than said. "I'm not gonna forget that day any time soon."
"It was a memorable day all across Equestria." Blueblood swallowed, recalling the near panic that had filled Canterlot, the sun and moon sliding around the sky like amateur ice skaters. "And even after you and your cohorts had returned Discord to quiescence, some of his effects remained."
"What?" Dash's ears folded. "But our harmony blast! Didn't that fix ev'rything?"
"Six unicorns." Again, Blueblood couldn't stop a shiver. "All of them top researchers at Princess Celestia's Academy. As near as the doctors can tell, Discord's chaos energy drove them out of their minds, and while we managed to subdue them before they could cause any real damage, they remain under constant supervision in the Canterlot Central Treatment Facility. Paisley is one of them—she's quite the accomplished artificer—but I had no idea she was married to Bosky Dell."
"Artificer?" Dash asked.
"Magic items." Blueblood shook away the white and fiery memories of the objects Paisley had unleashed on them before he and several other Corps agents had incapacitated her. "She was one of the foremost experts in their manufacture."
"Huh." Dash stretched under Blueblood's hoofs, a sensation so lovely that he almost forgot what they were talking about. "Well, let's get Discord on it, then! I mean, if he whacked 'em, he oughtta be able to unwhack 'em!"
Spitfire shrugged. "That's the plan, but, well, the princesses want to know he's really reformed first." She sighed. "Dell hasn't been the same since Paisley went crazy, and I thought maybe giving him a real project like training you might snap him out of it." She was looking in the direction that he'd disappeared into again. "Now I'm not so sure."
Blueblood ground his teeth, started to work on another knot in Dash's muscles. "Then we can gently tell the unpleasant Mr. Dell that his services are no longer required?"
"Nope." Dash's voice flowed out of her like a liquid. "Perfect cover story for us all to be here. 'Specially now that Chives is loose."
Hearing that name aloud made Blueblood's hoofs jitter some more, Dash sucking in a breath. "Sorry," he said, pulling back before he could do any actual damage. "Can you walk, darling? Time to go inside."
"Don't wanna." She hugged the lounge chair's cushion. "'Sides, who's gonna hear us talk out here?"
Spitfire cleared her throat. "Do we need to go over security protocols again?"
Dash gave another groan and turned those big, violet eyes toward Blueblood. "Carry me?"
A snort came from Spitfire's general direction, but Blueblood decided to ignore it; crouching down, he activated his horn, concentrated, and lifted Dash as carefully as he could to drape across his back. "Like so?" he asked.
"Mmmmm..." She snuggled against him, and Blueblood's heart did a few flips. "So warm..."
Smiling over his shoulder at her, he rose, turned for the front door of the house, and stopped to see Spitfire staring at him, a look of absolute shock on her face. "All right," she said. "Who are you, and what have you done with Prince Blueblood?"
Not bothering to do more than roll his eyes, Blueblood crossed the lawn, used his magic to push the door open, and moved down the front hall to his study, the quiet chuff-chuff-chuff of Spitfire's hoofs telling him she was following. "So," he said once he heard her step inside. "An update on the Chives situation, perhaps, if you wouldn't mind, Double-O-Lambda?"
A chuckle. "That's closer," Spitfire said. "Though I'm pretty sure the Double-O-Zeta I knew would've just barked the word 'update' at me."
Busy settling Dash onto one of the divans, kneeling beside her, and restarting her massage, Blueblood again limited his response to an eye roll. But Dash, spreading herself like so much jelly over the cushions, gave a chuckle of her own. "I wasn't gonna ask this 'cause, y'know, awkward, so go ahead and tell me it's nunna my business, but—" She raised her head, her face smiling but still somehow serious. "How long did you guys date, anyway?"
A chill ran through Blueblood so deeply and so thoroughly, he couldn't've answered even if he'd wanted to, and he wrenched his hoofs away once more before they could pinch or jab her. That a similarly frozen silence echoed from the other side of the room made him hope for half a second that Spitfire would also be too surprised to—
"Huh," Spitfire said. "Well, let's see now. It wasn't quite a year, was it, your Highness?"
Worst-case scenarios burst across Blueblood's brain: Spitfire detailing with relish every last knock-down, drag-out fight they'd inflicted on each other; Dash recoiling in horror from Spitfire's reports—and from him; his own baser nature finally breaking loose at the onslaught and giving voice to all the festering awfulness he'd kept bottled up the past nine months. Shivering, swallowing, he turned to Spitfire and managed to squeeze out two words: "Must we?"
For another half-second, her blank expression made him think she didn't understand—or worse yet, that she did understand and was going to launch into her tales anyhow just to spite him. He could feel the vitriol building, bubbling at the bottom of his throat, ready to explode outward in a veritable fountain of—
But she was cocking her head, the same odd little smile he'd seen earlier back in place. "That was a long time ago, wasn't it? And I'm thinking we've both grown up a little since then." She gave a crisp nod. "Besides, we've got actual things to talk about."
It took Blueblood several breaths before he could say, "Yes, I— Thank you, Double-O-Lambda. We...we'd best be discussing the latest news from Canterlot."
Dash gave a little huff, but by then Spitfire was all business. "There's still no sign of Chives, but in the week since somepony broke him out of the Central Treatment Facility, rumors have kept cropping up all over Equestria about something big and harmful in the works. The stories run all the way from another crazy unicorn sorcerer to another changeling invasion, but every report shares one detail: whatever's on its way, it's coming to Ponyville."
Blueblood couldn't help scowling. "Chives, I suppose, looking to finish me off."
Spitfire shrugged. "That's one school of thought."
Sighing, Blueblood rose to his hoofs. "I'll leave tonight, then, draw him away from town, and—"
"No!" both pegasi answered at the same time, Dash's much more emphatic than Spitfire's. "Are you nuts?!" Dash then went on, pushing herself up from the surface of the divan and glaring at him. "I've got way too much to do right now to go charging off who knows where!"
And as much as the sentiment made him smile— "You wouldn't be going with me, darling. After all, if I'm leaving to prevent anypony else from getting injured in the blowback of Chives's vendetta against me, I would hardly ask you to come along, would I?"
"What?!" Dash's eyes went wide.
"Actually, Double-O-Zeta," Spitfire cut in, "Boss Mare wants you right here."
This time, it was Blueblood turn to sputter: "What?!"
Another shrug from Spitfire. "If you're the target, we'll make you nice and visible. And if you're not, Mare says you, me, and Delta 6 need to be ready to jump in and take care of whatever's really happening."
"Ha!" Dash folded her front legs across her chest.
"Till then—" Spitfire arched over Blueblood's back to land beside Dash. "You and me are in the gym, Delta 6. I know Dell put you through a heavier-duty workout than he probably should've today, but we've still got your Corps training."
Dash's groan this time, Blueblood could tell, was largely phony, and she slid from the divan to the carpet on firm hoofs; moving past him, she even trailed one wing teasingly along his flank. "Maybe you wanna come down, too, Beebee? Get a little sweaty with us?"
Doing his utmost to remain debonair—and to hide his shudder at the use of the word 'sweaty'—he said, "As charming as that sounds, I believe I'll decline."
With a laugh, Dash pushed the study door open, shook her head, and stepped out into the hall. "Just as well, I s'ppose." She gave a look over her shoulder that in other circumstances would've had Blueblood instantly at her side, but she sprang into the air before he could so much as move a hoof. "Neither of us needs that sorta distraction right now, do we?" And with a whoosh, she was gone.
Blueblood moved that hoof anyway—maybe a little time in the gym would be just the thing—but Spitfire landing in the doorway made him stop. She touched a front hoof between her glaring eyes, then swiveled the hoof to point at him.
"Ah." Blueblood nodded. "Watching me. Yes. But...thank you, Spitfire. You've been fairer than I could've asked."
"And don't you forget it," she said, then she was turning, her wings spreading to flap her toward the basement stairs.
Taking a breath and blowing it out, Blueblood considered Spitfire's report. Yes, he had orders to remain stationary in Ponyville, but that certainly didn't mean he shouldn't do his job. Some quick steps brought him to the hidden closet he'd had installed beside his desk, his magic popping the door open and hauling out the shadow cloak Princess Luna had given him before Dash's Delta test two weeks ago. Draping it over his shoulders, he activated it and nodded to see his reflection in the glass door of the display cabinet along the wall flicker and vanish. Time to see where the compass rose of his cutie mark would lead him.
***
So much bubbled in Pinkie's brain that she couldn't understand why her head hadn't swelled up like a balloon and carried her off into the night.
Was her hair weighing her down? Everything seemed so much heavier when her mane hung long and straight like this: the air, the clouds, the sky, even the sun and the moon. Not that being heavier made any of these things better or worse, she'd noticed this week. It just made them different. Like this week had been different, this whole weird, awful, wonderful week, the longest time she'd spent not being Pinkie Pie in more years than she had hoofs to count them.
Maybe Chives would let her borrow his hoofs for a minute so she could add everything up.
Glancing over to where he walked beside her in his Cousin Burl disguise, though, she could see that his brain was being bubbly, too. And since bubbles were way more fun when they were shared, and since they were now a couple blocks away from Prince Blueblood's house and the scene they'd just watched while squeezed tight beside each other in the air vent, Pinkie let some of her brain bubbles turn into words and puffed them out through her mouth. "See what I mean? About how Dashie's special enough for Prince Blueblood to really like her?"
Chives began shaking his head slowly, the tips of his big moustache swaying back and forth. "Not possible," he said the same way he'd been saying it the entire week. Or not the same way, she realized, listening to his brain bubbles popping. This time, instead of trying his very hardest to make her believe it, he seemed to be trying to convince himself. "His Highness isn't— He doesn't— He wouldn't—"
With a little growl, he stomped a hoof. "Ever since we were both colts, I've been trying to reach him and get him to behave properly! But my techniques, techniques that I've refined into success after success over the years, they all failed on him! Even the more direct approach I was finally forced to attempt with Green Briar collapsed in the end!" The look on his face made Pinkie think that his mane would've been all loose and flat if it hadn't been cut so short. "And in nine months, this Rainbow Dash of yours has him acting almost respectably! How can this be, Diane?! How?!"
Pinkie shook her head, her mane waving around her neck like laundry on a summer clothesline. "She's special," she said the same way she'd been saying the entire week. She almost wanted to start right from the very beginning, tell Chives about the Sonic Rainboom that had changed her life and about the other amazing things Dashie had done since then, but, well, she'd already told him all that three times the past few days.
Still, she just about launched into it again in the hope that it might push out the other thought she was thinking, the one that was keeping her mane so droopy. Because after going around town with Chives, working with him and laughing with him and having dinner with him while they pretended that they weren't spying on Dashie and Blueblood, she'd started thinking that maybe...maybe... "Maybe," she heard herself saying out loud, "I was wrong about Blueblood not being good for Dashie. Maybe we shouldn't—"
"No." Chives looked way more like Chives right then than he did like Cousin Burl. Which was too bad, Pinkie thought: she'd noticed that Chives seemed a lot happier when he was being Cousin Burl. "It's a trick. It has to be! His Highness exists as a spider wrapped within a web of deceit, and it's our duty—our duty!—to untangle it and expose him!"
"But all that secret agent stuff him, Dashie, and Spitfire were talking about!" The memory made Pinkie's mane fluff up. "I mean, Dashie'd make the best secret agent in the whole wide world!" Her mane fell. "Or...d'you mean that that's the trick?" She could hear her voice getting tighter and tighter, a ball of fire in her chest getting hotter and hotter. "If they're fooling her into thinking they're training her to be a secret agent, that would be...would be—!"
"No, no." Chives gave her a little smile from under his moustache. "His Highness and Ms. Spitfire are indeed agents in Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps. In fact, the way Ms. Spitfire called Ms. Dash 'Delta 6,' she must have already passed her first test and become a first level Corps operative."
Everything inside Pinkie leaped for joy. This called for a Congratulations on Becoming a Secret Agent party!
Except, well, that wouldn't be very secret, would it?
Well, she'd just have to throw a secret party, then, a party where nopony there would know what the party was for! Could she do that? She'd never even imagined such a thing! Would the invitations be in invisible ink? Or maybe—!
Something pressed hard against the top of her head, and Pinkie looked up to see that she'd walked straight into the side wall of Sugercube Corner. "Diane?" Chives was asking from a little ways behind her. "Are you all right?"
She spun and grabbed him around the neck, pressed her snout to his ear, and whispered as shoutily as she could, "A party! A secret party! Tomorrow! It's the only possible way to find out if they really, really, really, really like each other!"
He didn't pull away from her like ponies usually did when she grabbed them; he just swiveled his head around, his eyes big and dark in the starlight just starting to flicker in the night above them. "I don't understand," he said. "Unless...you mean we should use a party atmosphere to put His Highness at ease, then...then subject him to a variety of indignities, each more embarrassing than the last?"
Pinkie blinked at him. "Ummm...."
"Yes!" His eyes took on a glow, his front hoofs coming up to rest on either side of her neck. "If we make him lose his temper, make him show his inherent awfulness in a way that Ms. Dash can't ignore, she won't want to be with him anymore! She'll see the truth about him, will come to her senses, and will leave him on the spot!"
The way he was quivering made Pinkie start quivering, too. "You think so?"
"I know so!" He started doing a little dance right there in the street, Pinkie squealing, her mane bounding up as she swung into step with him. "Prince Blueblood hasn't changed! He can't have! So if we scratch him deeply enough, his true nature will boil pustulantly to the surface, and every right-thinking pony who observes him will properly recoil at his grotesquerie! Diane, it's perfect!" His front legs flexed around her, and Pinkie found herself being pulled into a kiss so deep and thorough, it crackled through her bones, hide, and hair all the way out to the very tippiest tip of her tail.
And for all the times that Pinkie had kissed ponies and been kissed back, this kiss rang bells in her head that she hadn't even known she had, sent a whole fire truck full of bells racing in circles around the inside of her skull.
But he was already pulling away. "Oh! Diane! I...I didn't mean to...to take advantage! I was just so...so—!"
"Shhhh." She could feel her mane draping down along her back like a cape, but suddenly nothing about her felt heavy at all. Grinning, she reached up, pulled his moustache from where it had lodged itself above her upper lip, and pressed it gently back into place above his. "Our secret party'll be tomorrow afternoon at Fluttershy's house—she doesn't mind when I hafta do something all of a sudden like this. That means Discord'll be there, and if we invite ev'rypony and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, too, that'll give us a lot to work with! We'll run Blueblood through the wringer, see if he's still a jerk, and then..." She smoothed his moustache with her hoofs. "Then we'll see about some other things, too."
His quivering had started up again, and more little bells started tingling inside Pinkie when he kept holding the sides of her head. "I...I think I should go, Cousin Diane," Chives said after a moment. But he didn't move at all.
Leaning forward, she brushed the tip of his nose with hers. "I'll see you bright and early for baking, Cousin Burl."
Eyes wide, he finally half-stumbled, half-slid backwards, and even though it was pretty dark and he was sort of brownish-orange to begin with, she could tell he was blushing. "Yes, I...yes," he said with a little bow. "Good night." But he didn't run the way she'd almost expected; instead, he did a little skipping shuffle down the street like maybe he was still dancing more than he was walking.
Pinkie turned, opened the side door, drifted up the back stairs and into her apartment, her whole body humming like a bottle of Applejack's sparkling cider about to pop its cork. Except she wasn't about to pop or leap or scream or shout or anything like that: the bubbles in her brain were more hot-air balloons now, big and floaty and relaxed. She glided over the carpeting to Gummy's swimming pool, scooped the alligator up, and settled with him in the big chair in front of her dresser.
And in the mirror, the sad little pony with the long, straight mane who usually looked back at Pinkie when she sat here alone with Gummy and her thoughts, that little pony was smiling, her happiness filling the room like the scent of chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven and making Pinkie even floatier, floatier than she'd ever been before.
***
"Whaddaya mean you're taking a break?!" Bosky Dell glared at Dash like she'd asked him to tear off one of his own wings.
Which, Dash couldn't deny, was the best idea she'd heard all week. "I didn't say I was taking a break!" She forced herself to hover steadily in front of him. "I said I was taking off! Remember? I told you earlier I had someplace to be this afternoon!"
"She did, Dell." Spitfire had flapped up from her observer post closer to the treetops and had that weird half-angry, half-sad look on her face that she'd been wearing for days now.
Dell started sputtering, and Dash started smirking. She'd just about kissed Pinkie Pie when her and her eggbeater flying machine had come clattering along this morning just as Dash was heading over to Beebee's place for breakfast. The three party invitations Pinkie had given her were absolute life-savers as far as Dash was concerned, especially the way Dell had been kicking her all over the sky today.
Because yes, he was the greatest coach the Wonderbolts had ever had: Dash could recite statistics for hours to prove that. But the stunts he'd been running her through, it was like the time Dash had watched Rarity try to explain high fashion to Applejack. Something basic just wasn't connecting: not only couldn't Dash picture what he wanted, but he didn't seem able to explain it, either.
"So you're quitting?!" As usual, Dell's sputters had turned to yells. "You're saying you don't wanna be a 'Bolt?!"
"Did you hear me say that?!" A little bit of the shouting Dash had been holding in burst out. "Maybe your hat's too tight, the way you're not hearing anything so good!"
His lips pulled back. "You wanna know what I'm hearing, missy? Do you?"
But Spitfire cut him off, her ears folded nearly flat against her head. "Dell, what's the matter? You've been off your game all week! Are you sick or something?"
Dell whirled on the Wonderbolt captain. "I'll tell you what I'm sick of, Spits! Wanna-be prima donnas wasting what's left of my life!"
Which was about as much of that as Dash was willing to take. "If I'm no good, how 'bout you just tell me?!"
"I'll tell you this!" Dell smacked his front hoofs together. "Only reason I'm still here is you maybe could be good if you got the right training!"
"What?!" Spitfire whooshed over to jab a hoof into Dell's windbreaker. "I've been biting my tongue since you got here, Dell, watching you do whatever you call this! Because it's no kinda training I've ever been through!"
The old stallion's eyes narrowed. "'Cause this is the way I train real champion flyers, Spits! That's why you never been through it!"
Spitfire's jaw dropped, her body flinching like she'd been bucked in the stomach, and Dash found herself gaping, too. Dell spun to face her. "So you get your head in the game, missy! You've got one more chance with me! One! That'll be tomorrow morning, or it won't be at all!" He sprang away like he'd been launched from a catapult, arched over town, and dwindled away to a spot in the sky.
Dash could only stare after him for a minute; a blush heating her face, she turned to Spitfire. "I—," she started to say, but she couldn't think of anything after that.
Silence swirled on the afternoon breeze around them, Spitfire hanging from her slowly flapping wings the way moss might hang from a tree branch. "Huh," the older pegasus said after a moment, and the glance she gave Dash seemed as jagged as broken glass. "Blueblood meets you, and he turns into a completely different pony. Dell meets you, and he turns into a completely different pony." Her voice choked off, but she cleared her throat. "I'm thinking I should get outta here before I turn into a quivering puddle of goo or something."
"But—" Knowing it sounded stupid, Dash somehow couldn't stop herself from asking, "What about the party?"
Spitfire gave a coughing sort of laugh and shook her head. "Right now, I'm pretty sure I'd end up stomping somepony into the ground. Still, I'll see you tonight, Dash." And she rocketed off into the spotless blue sky over the Everfree Forest. In the opposite direction from Dell, Dash noticed.
Hovering there another moment, Dash shook her head, let herself fall into a dive, and swooped back toward Beebee's place. At least with Spitfire calling Dell out like that, Dash knew she wasn't the one messing up—not entirely, anyway. And yeah, maybe Dell was worried about his wife like Beebee had been saying earlier, but that didn't excuse him from being such a jerk...
And speaking of that— She smiled to see Beebee stretched out white and gold in the afternoon sun on the lawn chair in the backyard again. That he still hadn't gone all "His Whoness" on Dell yet made Dash wonder if she should suggest it, but no. He'd been trying so hard not to be a jerk since he moved to Ponyville, she probably shouldn't tempt him. No matter how much fun it'd be to see in this one case.
She went into a glide, hoping that maybe he hadn't heard her yet so she could drop down on him and get a little tickling in, but he was already sitting up, cupping a hoof to his ear, and saying, "Hark! Dare I hope that to be the flapping of the Lesser Equestrian Spotted Turkey Buzzard? Ah, the sweet warbling melody of its call!"
Steepening the angle of her descent, she picked up enough speed to comb a new part in his mane as she whooshed past, then pulled into a tight loop and brought herself smack down onto his chest with what should have been enough force to knock the wind out of him. "How's that for a warble?"
Beebee barely grunted. "Perhaps I was mistaken." His hoofs closed around her. "It might in fact be wise for me to study this particular avian specimen a bit more closely."
And, oh, how she wanted to let him. But for all that she was a couple years younger, she knew that she was usually the adult around here. How in the wide, wide world of Equestria that had happened, she had no idea. But so far, she was loving every minute of it. "We got a party to get to," she told him, settling her stomach against his and folding her front hoofs over his chest.
"I see." He didn't make a move, either. "Are you going to carry me there? Or—" He rose all at once, sliding under her like one of those otters that sometimes played in the stream down the hill from Fluttershy's place, a tingle passing over her that meant he was using his magic. And in less than half a heartbeat, he was standing in the grass, Dash lying across his back. "Am I carrying you?" he finished.
With a laugh, Dash flipped herself onto the ground. "So you're saying we should get even more wild stories flying around about us?"
"Ha!" He started down the little path that led past the house to the road out front. "The thin cabbage soup that passes for gossip here in Ponyville pales and quails in comparison to the richly-seasoned lentil stew that one finds freely offered on every street corner in Canterlot."
Dash trotted beside him with a grin. She knew this game. "And yet?" she asked.
"And yet,—" He bent his neck to nuzzle between her ears. "The day I left that place behind to be here with you will likely loom large among the happiest days of my life for quite some time to come." He chuckled. "Still, I do have an unusual bit of gossip about your friend Pinkie Pie. If you might be at all interested."
"Pinkie?" Dash nodded eagerly.
They reached the road, then, the Rich family's sprawling estate right across the road. Dash could never look at it without remembering Beebee telling her how he'd directed his architect to make his place exactly one square foot smaller than the Rich house: "just to be neighborly," he'd said with a grin.
"This cousin of hers," Beebee was saying now, starting down the road toward town. "Do you know him well?"
"Cousin?" Dash blinked. She vaguely recalled Pinkie introducing her to somepony at the party early this week, but after slamming through Dell's maneuvers, Dash was surprised she still knew how to walk.
"Thin fellow?" Beebee arched an eyebrow. "Wears his apron everywhere? Sports a moustache large enough to experience its own weather patterns?"
"Oh, yeah." The moustache did it. "Burl, right? I've seen them when we've gone out this week. What about him?"
"Well..." Beebee leaned closer. "Last night, I took the shadow cloak for a spin around town to see if I could find anything that might relate to Spitfire's report."
That, Dash hadn't forgotten. "You think Pinkie's cousin's involved in whatever's s'pposed to happen?"
"What?!" He drew back. "No, no! Nothing like that!"
Dash had to blink. "Then what—?"
"The term 'kissing cousins.' I've heard it before, but I had no idea you rustic gentry took it so literally."
Rolling her eyes, Dash blew a breath loudly through her lips. "Pinkie kisses everypony!"
"Not like this." His voice had gotten quiet again, the road bringing them past Carousal Boutique and into the town square. "There seemed something very serious about them as I passed by."
She gave that another eye roll. "I've seen Pinkie Pie serious maybe three times in my whole life, and one of those was when Discord turned us all inside-out."
"Nonetheless." With a sniff, something very close to 'his Whoness' look slipped over him. "I can only report what I observed. And while I'm certainly not one to judge—"
"Ha!" Unfurling her left wing, she smacked him in the side. "You'd better not be, buddy!"
That got enough of a grin to push his sour face away. "Besides," she went on, "if you wanna judge somepony, lemme tell you what Dell had me doing today!"
Complaining about her trainer took them the rest of the way through town and out to Fluttershy's, but the sight of the normally-quiet little house stopped her with a whistle. "Wow! And Pinkie just put this together overnight?"
Nearly everypony in town seemed to be chatting and laughing on the grass around Fluttershy's place, what had to be Cheerilee's whole class running and squealing between the tables set up all over the yard. Sprigs of balloons blossomed from every gable and eaves trough, a red and blue bunch waving in the breeze from the top of the chimney, and the mutter of conversation made Dash's wings rustle; there'd been a few little parties this week, but nothing she would've called epic. This one, though, definitely looked like it might—
"Welcome!" a baritone voice called, and the air twisted in front of them, Discord pouring out like water from a wrung washcloth. "So lovely to see you, Rainbow Dash! And your coltfriend, of course: what was the name again? Barnblatt or something?" He tapped his chin, and two eyes appeared along his forearm to give a wink.
Dash grinned, and so did Beebee, she was glad to see. "Yes, that's it exactly!" Beebee bowed. "And how pleased and honored I am to finally meet the Great and Powerful Trixie."
Discord blinked, then burst out laughing. "Come in, come in!" he said, slapping Beebee on the back. "As long as you're here, at least, we're sure not to run out of cheese!"
Inside the house, the scene was a little more placid. Granny Smith and some of her canasta cronies sat cackling in rocking chairs on one side of the living room while Pinkie and a couple ponies wearing aprons—Dash caught sight of Burl's moustache just disappearing into the kitchen—were setting out a truly massive spread of fruit, sandwiches, and desserts on some tables on the other side of the room.
"Dashie!" Pinkie leaped over the tables and spun her into a hug. "And Bluey!" Suddenly, Beebee was squeezed against her, the whole room spinning. "It's so super colossal that you guys could make it!"
Then everything fell back into balance, Pinkie hopping up and down in front of them, Beebee's eyes still swirling beside her. "Wouldn'ta missed it, Pinks," Dash said, sliding over to press herself to Beebee and help steady him. "What're we celebrating, anyway?"
"Shhhh!" Pinkie jumped forward again, jammed her head between Dash and Beebee. "It's a secret! Nopony's s'pposed to know!" With a pop like a cork, she wrenched her head away, her mane wiggling around her ears like strawberry pudding. "But have fun anyway! Gotta go!" And she whooshed away.
Glancing over, Dash saw a familiar crackling hardness around the edges of Blueblood's face. "The word 'exuberant' doesn't quite do Ms. Pie justice, does it?" he asked, his eyes now calm and fixed steadily on the food tables, the other ponies in aprons still setting stuff out.
A little crackle came over Dash's stomach, too, and she figured she better douse this fire quicker than quick. "You gonna need a time out, your Whoness?"
"I don't believe so." He turned, began examining the knickknacks on Fluttershy's shelves, and while his gaze didn't soften, his voice did. "Did you ever meet Chives, Delta 6?"
She felt like she'd just flown across a pressure ridge, her skin prickling. "He's here?" she asked just as softly.
The nod he gave toward the tables was so slight, Dash doubted she would've seen it if she hadn't been looking; the hindquarters of Pinkie's cousin were again slipping through into the kitchen. "There's something about that fellow Burl," Blueblood was saying, the words barely reaching Dash over the music and hubbub of the party. "Last night, my cutie mark drew me to the scene of him and Pinkie Pie's rendezvous, and today, seeing him in the full light of day..."
When he stopped, Dash looked back at him, the air as raw as if a lightning bolt had gone crashing through. "How?" she somehow managed not to yell. "Did he trick Pinkie? Is he really her cousin? Why's he—?"
"We need to get into that kitchen." Blueblood's glance moved from side to side. "Quietly, though, so as not to alarm him or break up the party." His glance settled on Dash. "Can you arrange that, darling?"
Her mind sprang to life like she was half a mile up with a squall forming around her, and letting her gaze roam... "Follow my lead," she murmured, then she started across the room to the back door. On the grass just outside, a group surrounded Applejack, all the ponies laughing at whatever funny story the farm pony was telling. Fluttershy sat smiling at the edge of the group, and Dash sidled up to her. "Hey, Shy! Great party! It's been, like, never since you've had one, right?"
Fluttershy scarcely even flinched, her smile not wavering at all. "Oh, thank you, Rainbow, but it's much more Pinkie's party than mine. I only found out about it this morning when she asked if she could have it here, actually." Her eyes did go wide, then, and she jumped to her hoofs. "Oh! Your Highness! I'm sorry!" She bowed, Dash unable to stop a sigh: Shy was the only pony in town who still did that.
"Tut, tut, now, Fluttershy," Blueblood said with a laugh that almost sounded real to Dash's ear. "This is a less than formal occasion, so perhaps we can do away with a few of the usual fripperies." He gave Dash a look that had at least three layers to it: his smiling face laid over the top of his serious spy face with his Prince Blueblood and Beebee faces sort of bubbling somewhere underneath. "Now, what was it you were going to ask Fluttershy, darling?"
Dash swallowed, covering it by tapping the ground like she'd just remembered something. "Oh, yeah! See, Shy, I was telling Beebee about that time in flight school when the whole group of us did that trip out to San Pinto for fog training, and I got to wondering if you still had that whale statue you picked up in the gift shop down by the harbor."
Because of course Fluttershy still had the thing: Dash knew her friend well enough to be one hundred per cent sure of that. Dash was even fairly sure it was stashed away in one of Fluttershy's kitchen cupboards, though that was the iffiest part of her plan.
"My narwhal?" Fluttershy's ears perked. "Oh, yes, I most certainly do still have it!"
"Wonderful!" Beebee sounded more like Pinkie Pie than Dash would've thought possible. "Perhaps you didn't know, Fluttershy, but statuary is one of my passions! Might I prevail upon you to have a look at the artwork?"
Fortunately, Fluttershy's attention was glued on Beebee because Dash was finding it pretty hard to keep a straight face. "I'd be honored, your Highness!" Fluttershy practically danced through the back door into the house. "I had it displayed on my shelves for the longest time, but, well, Angel started giving it the most terrible looks! So I moved it into one of the kitchen cupboards just to keep things peaceful."
Following Fluttershy inside, Dash felt a little nudge along her side and looked over to see Beebee nod, one eyebrow quirking at her. Fluttershy was padding around behind the tables, so Dash sprinted forward to push the kitchen door open. "That was pretty much the best trip we ever took at school, wasn't it, Shy?"
"It was." Fluttershy sighed. "I'll never forget how big the ocean was, but oh, so very quiet."
The kitchen, on the other hoof, wasn't quiet at all, Pinkie and her four assistants—at least, Dash was pretty sure there were just five ponies—rushing around chopping and stirring and slathering what smelled like mustard over slices of bread. "Don't mind us, folks," Dash called out cheerily, flying up to what she knew was the wrong cupboard. "Just getting something outta storage. In here, Shy?"
"Oh, no, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy was saying as Dash wrenched the cupboard doors open. "That's where I keep my afternoon tea set. I keep the statue—"
But where she kept the statue, Dash never did find out. Because what squatted inside Fluttershy's cupboard wasn't the teapot or the cups or the saucers Dash had seen so often when she would stop by here for a pre-dinner snack after practicing all day. No, inside the cupboard now sat a thing of cardboard cylinders bound together with baling wire. A little part of it on the front fell off as Dash watched, and lights began flashing here and there over the whole device.
Time seemed to slow down then. It wasn't that she'd seen this exact object before, but the general shape and distribution of parts made her thoughts spring back to this past winter and her training with Beebee. He'd spent quite a while on the most common sorts of bombs he'd come across while in Their Highnesses' Clandestine Corps, and this thing that Dash was now staring at, it...it...
The part that had fallen off, for instance, that would've been the trigger, and the cupboard door would've been holding it in place. And now that she'd opened the door, she had three, maybe four second till—
"Bomb!" she screamed, whirling away as time snapped back to its regular tick tick tick. "Shields, Beebee! Maximum—!"
But that's as far as she got before everything went all white and fiery.