//------------------------------//
// Can Inklings Have Mustaches? 
// Story: An Inkling Of Friendship 
// by Green Akers 
//------------------------------//

"Errrrrgh! Give it up, Rainbow Trash! I can feel you getting weaker!"

"Rraaaaagh! Well, you better get your feels checked, fishface! I'm comin' at you all day!"

Danielle yawned as Brianna and Rainbow Dash trash-talked each other as they engaged in an intense arm/hoof-wrestling match. I woke up early for this? Danielle thought to herself as she checked the time on her phone. "It's been forty-five minutes," she informed the competitors. "Can't we just call it a draw and move on?"

"Are you crazy? I've almost won!" Brianna insisted, even though the pair's limbs hadn't budged in at least fifteen minutes. "Besides, we already called the rock-rolling race a draw."

"And the horseshoe-throwing contest, and the ball-bouncing contest, and the spin-until-you-get-dizzy contest..." Rainbow added.

Danielle sighed and looked back towards Ponyville, perking up a little as she saw Twilight and the others coming towards them. "Look you two, it's Tommy and Cr—oh, crab." She turned back to confirm that Brianna and Rainbow were not paying attention, and then dashed over to the arriving party.

"Good morning!" Twilight greeted Danielle. "How did you—"

"Hang on a sec." Danielle held up her hands to stop the group. "Craig, you're gonna want to keep a low profile and stay close to Twilight today," she told her teammate. "Bree started talking in her sleep last night, and... Yeah. Don't get too close to her."

"That's cool," Craig agreed.

"She's still mad, huh?" Applejack shook her head. "That girl sure knows how to carry a grudge."

Twilight looked past Danielle to watch the competition behind her. "How long have those two been going at it?"

Danielle shrugged. "All I know is that my blanket was commandeered for a tug-of-war match around 5 AM."

"Five? That's actually later than I expected." Twilight's horn lit up, and she levitated an envelope out of her saddlebag and over to Danielle. "Now then, let's get down to business. I wanted to send word to your leaders that we were coming, but Tommy tells me that we have to use a special device to communicate, and that we have to ask your permission to use it. Could you pass along this message to your superiors?"

Danielle gave Twilight a funny look. "You want us to tell the High Council that you're coming?"

"Of course!" Twilight replied. "This is an official diplomatic visit, after all. I'd hate to show up unannounced."

"Uh... Okay. I can do that." Danielle took the letter from Twilight. "The radio's back at the boat though, so—"

"Then that's where we'll go first." Twilight turned to Fluttershy. "Go tell Rainbow she'll have to put her rivalry with Brianna on hold. We need you both to guide our balloon."

"Balloon?" Suddenly, a dark shadow fell over Danielle, and she looked up to see a large hot air balloon blotting out the sun above her. "What the—"

"Hiya!" Pinkie called down as she poked her head up from the balloon basket. "Don't worry, I've packed cookies enough for everypony!"

Danielle looked over at Twilight. "You aren't really going to cross the ocean in that, are you?"

"Actually," Tommy pointed out, "if we can't fix the boat's engine, we'll be crossing the ocean in it too."

Danielle looked back up at the balloon, and then over at Brianna and Rainbow Dash as they argued over who was the better arm-wrestler. "This day isn't going to get any better for me, is it?"



After fifteen minutes of debate, Brianna and Rainbow agreed to take their match to the air via a game of I Spy, and the entire crew piled into the balloon. It was a tight fit with six ponies, four Inklings, and a baby dragon, and while Twilight had made a precise seating chart to make sure everyone would fit, her plans went out the window when Tommy got airsick five minutes into the ride and had to scramble to the basket's edge before he hurled. Toss in Brianna and Rainbow Dash constantly yelling at Pinkie Pie for jumping into their I Spy game, and everyone's nerves were frayed by the time the balloon landed next to the Inklings' boat.

"Finally!" Danielle breathed a sigh of relief as she jumped out of the basket. "Dig out the radio, Craig—we've got a message to send."

Craig hopped aboard the ship and disappeared below deck, emerging a minute later with the now-hand-powered radio. "This is splatoon leader Danielle calling home base," Danielle spoke into the mic. "Sergeant Sardine, do you read me?"

"It's about time, plankton!" the sergeant could be heard shouting through the static. "What's your report on the status of the island? Is it uninhabited?"

"I'm afraid it's very inhabited, sir," Danielle admitted. "Apparently there's an entire nation of four-legged creatures called 'ponies' living here."

"Ponies? What intel do you have on these ponies?" the sergeant asked. "Can you neutralize them?"

"Actually, sir, they kind of neutralized us," Danielle replied. 

"Our weapons have proven to be minimally effective against them," Tommy interrupted, "and some of them possess magical powers—yes, I said magical—that far outstrip every piece of military technology we've ever developed! Their civilization is admittedly a bit primitive, and their belief in the 'magic of friendship' is almost cult-like, but in my opinion, ponies are unquestionably the most fascinating and most dangerous creatures Inklingkind has ever encountered! Oh, and some of them can fly, too."

"Bree practically marinated one in ink last night," Danielle added, "and all that did was make it angry."

The radio was silent for a few seconds. "Harrumph," the sergeant finally said. "I think you plankton are being overly dramatic about this whole thing, but if that mouthy friend of yours couldn't splat them, I suppose it's time to send some real soldiers to do the job. If that island's big enough to house an entire nation of these 'ponies,' it's far too valuable to just walk away from without a fight. Disengage and report back to base at once!"

"Nothing would make us happier, sir," Danielle explained, "but I don't think it's possible. The ponies have an indestructible magical map that's pointing them directly to Inkopolis, and they're sending a delegation to meet with the High Council as we speak."

"What!?" the sergeant exclaimed. "You mean they're coming to invade Inkopolis?"

Danielle gulped. "It's worse, sir. They're coming to make us befriend the Octarians. In fact, they gave me a message to pass along to the High Council." Danielle opened the letter that Twilight had given her and began reading it aloud:



Dear Inklings,

My name is Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I bring you greetings from the land of Equestria. I represent a magical race of creatures called ponies, and my friends and I serve as special friendship ambassadors, solving problems and spreading the magic of friendship around the world.

We recently learned of the ongoing conflict between yourselves and the Octarians over the island that you share, and would like to offer our assistance in the matter. My friends and I are exceptionally skilled at solving matters such as these, and we believe that we can bring the dispute to a peaceful, permanent resolution and allow both parties to share the land equally. We understand that you may be reluctant to settle with the Octarians, but we—



"Reluctant!?" Sergeant Sardine interrupted. "RELUCTANT!? This... This is downright insane! They want us to share with those backwards savages?! I've never heard anything so ludicrous in my life!"

"That's what we tried to tell them, sir," Danielle replied, "but they insisted that the Octarians couldn't be that bad."

"Hah!" the sergeant laughed. "And we're supposed to fear creatures that are stupid enough to believe that Octarians can be reasoned with?"

A loud noise caused the Inklings to jump, and they turned to see their boat, which was surrounded by a pink magical aura, rise into the air and began floating towards the ponies' balloon. "Uh... Considering they just lifted a two-thousand-pound boat ten feet into the air without raising a hoof," Tommy said, "I would suggest fearing them, yes."

"Tommy, go ask Twilight what she's doing with the boat," Danielle said with a sigh. "Anyway, this letter goes on for another page or so..."

"Scrap it!" Sergeant Sardine ordered. "If what you're saying is true, then this is a code-red, priority-1A national security crisis, and the High Council must be warned at once! We'll call back as many exploration teams as we can before they arrive, so keep an eye on those ponies and buy as much time for us as you can!"

"We'll try, sir, but—"

"Don't just try, do!" the sergeant shouted. "You're about to go down in history as the plankton who either saved or destroyed Inklingkind. I suggest you act accordingly!"

"Yes, sir," Danielle replied meekly as the sergeant's voice faded into static. She motioned for Craig to stop powering the radio, and then found a nearby rock to sit on and ponder her fate. First Bree, and now Sarge? she thought. We can't stop these ponies anymore than we can stop the wind from blowing! But if we don't stop them, they're going to fight it out with the High Council, lose their patience, and splat us all! Images of Inkopolis in flames flashed through her mind, and she pressed her face into her hands. How am I gonna get us out of this one? she wondered.

"Chill, girl," Craig offered, putting a hand on Danielle's shoulder. "The Squid Spirits won't steer us wrong. Everything'll work out."

"No, it won't." Danielle shoved Craig's hand away and glared at him. "The minute we set foot in the harbor, Sarge'll have every Splattershot in town waiting for us! We won't make it off the boat, let alone to the High Council!"

"Oh dear. I take it they didn't react well to our message?" Danielle jumped and turned to find Twilight standing right behind her. "I guess I underestimated how deep your distrust of Octarians runs," Twilight said.

"Well... Yes!" Danielle dropped to her knees in front of Twilight. "Look, I know you ponies are all about friendship and everything, but you just don't understand who you're dealing with! If you try to make us share with the Octarians, it'll be a disaster! Please, for all our sakes, I beg you to reconsider this trip!"

"Hmmm..." Twilight scratched her chin as she pondered the matter. "You know, you're probably right. Having a bunch of preachy ponies show up on your doorstep and tell you to make friends with your mortal enemies wouldn't go over well at all."

A hopeful smile appeared on Danielle's face. "S-So you won't come home with us?"

"Oh no, we're definitely coming with you. We just have to be smarter about our presentation, that's all." Twilight gave Danielle a wink, and turned and pointed back at the balloon. "But first, come and see what we've done with your ship!"

"What do you mean, what you've done with our ship?" Danielle followed Twilight over to the balloon, which was now attached to a large mass of white bubbles instead of its basket. "Are we riding home in a cloud now?" she asked.

"Actually, that's our ship!" Tommy explained. "Since the basket was too small for everyone to travel comfortably, Twilight decided to create an airship with our boat instead!"

"And the reason our boat looks like a cloud is..?"

"Actually, those are soap bubbles," Tommy said. "Rarity said she wouldn't ride across the street in something that dirty, so she's giving it a thorough scrubbing before we lift off."

Danielle stared quizzically at the tiny balloon attached to the heavy boat. "Are you sure this thing will even get off the ground?"

"Oh, there's no question that this will never work!" Tommy replied. "But it's magic, so I'm just going to assume that it will."

"Hey, D!" Brianna came rushing over to Danielle. "Did you get a message back to Sarge?" she whispered, taking care to keep Twilight from overhearing her.

"Oh yeah, and he's just thrilled that we're bringing ponies home," Danielle replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, well, at least now they can set a trap for them or something." Brianna turned back to the boat. "How long is this going to take?" she asked Twilight. "I mean sure, it was dirty, but not that dirty!"

Twilight shrugged. "With Rarity, everything is that dirty. It could be a while."

Danielle rolled her eyes. I guess we're following Sarge's orders after all, she thought.



It took almost two hours before Rarity was satisfied, and just as Tommy predicted, the balloon defied all logic and lifted the boat into the air with relative ease. While most of the ponies stayed on deck to enjoy the view and help steer the ship, Twilight and Spike secluded themselves below deck for several hours. For her part, Danielle spent the beginning of the flight rationing out food, water, and motion sickness medication to whoever needed it, and made sure to enforce a ten-foot buffer zone between Brianna and Craig at all times.

When Twilight finally emerged, she asked Danielle for a private meeting in the Inkling's quarters. "I think I've come up with a way to satisfy your superiors and still get our message across," Twilight explained, "but I'll need your help to make it work."

"What do you mean?" Danielle asked.

"First, I need to use you for a spell I've written," Twilight said. "It won't—well, it shouldn't—affect you in any way. If everything works out, it will be me that's affected, not you."

"Uh... Okay," Danielle agreed, although her tone was a little unsure.

"Great! Come with me." Twilight led Danielle down to the Inkling's room, where Spike was waiting with a long scroll covered in indecipherable scribblings. "Hold that up so I can read it," Twilight instructed Spike. "Danielle, you can take a seat on the bed. This shouldn't take more than a few minutes..."

Danielle gulped as she saw Twilight's horn light up, and she closed her eyes as she lay on the bed. "Okay... Yes... So far, so good..." she heard Twilight say. "By the way, Danielle, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"Well... It depends on the question," Danielle replied.

"I was just curious: How old are you?"

What does that have to do with anything? Danielle wondered. "Um, I'm seventeen. Why?"

"Seventeen?!" Twilight gasped. "That's... That's incredible! You're the leader of a military scouting expedition, you're entrusted with the lives of three other Inklings, and you're just seventeen? Why, my brother was still mopping barracks at that age!" The room was silent for a few seconds. "You must be a talented leader to be chosen for this mission."

"Are you kidding?" Danielle shook her head. "I'm a terrible leader! I'm indecisive, I'm insecure, I command absolutely no respect from my peers, I—"

"That's not true," Twilight interrupted. "You certainly have the respect of your team, especially Brianna."

"Bree puts up with me because we've known each other forever," Danielle countered. "Look at Craig—the minute he decides the 'Squid Spirits' want him do something, I might as well be invisible."

"What about Tommy?" Twilight inquired. "Based on our conversation last night, he seems to think very highly of you."

"Mostly because you haven't let Brianna 'splat' him yet," Spike added.

Danielle sighed. "Tommy doesn't know any better. He's a science squid, not a soldier! To be honest, I don't know why he even signed up for this job in the first place."

"So," Twilight continued, "if you're such a terrible leader, how come your superiors made you the leader and not, say, Brianna?"

"Bree should be the leader," Danielle declared. "She's smarter, she's faster, she's stronger, she works well under pressure, and squids actually listen to her! They just made me the leader because... well, just because."

"Just because? I'm sure it's more than that, Now, let me see if I got this right..."

Twilight was silent for another minute. Suddenly, a light began glowing in the room, growing so bright that even Danielle could see it from behind her eyelids. The Inkling sat up and opened her eyes, but by then the light was too bright to stare at. "What's going on?" she asked, shielding her eyes from the glare.

The light lasted for a few more seconds before exploding in a bright white flash and disappearing. As Danielle rubbed her eyes, she could hear Spike shouting, "Wow! Twilight, you did it!"

"Did what?" Danielle stood up and turned towards Twilight, and the sight made her jaw drop: Twilight had vanished, and in her place stood a near-exact copy of Danielle herself, right down to her pink polo. The only difference was that the copy's head tentacles were purple, with a pair of pink and dark-purple streaks running down one of them. "What the... Twilight?"

"Neat, huh?" the purple Inkling said with Twilight's voice. "I took a spell that transforms ponies into Breezies, modified it to match any target creature, used you as the target, and voilà!"

"That's... Pretty cool, actually," Danielle admitted. "But why?"

"That's the second thing I need your help with," Twilight said. "If the reaction to hosting a group of ponies is as bad as it sounded, then we certainly can't show up as a group of ponies! So instead, I decided to apply the 'When in Canterlot...' theory, and approach them as fellow Inklings. We're still working on the story behind our appearance, though."

"Right now it's 'we live in Equestria under the ponies' tirran... Terran...'" Spike tried to explain.

"Tyrannical," Twilight said. "We live under the ponies' tyrannical rule, but we rose up and attacked just as you were leaving, defeated the 'evil' Princess Twilight, and decided to travel back to Inkopolis with you to meet with our Inkling brethren. Like I said, it needs work, but it should be enough to get us in the door, and hopefully through to the High Council, where we can have a constructive discussion about the Octarians. Of course, you and your team know the truth, so—"

"So basically," Danielle interrupted, "you want me to lie to my superiors, let you infiltrate Inkopolis, and help you get direct access to the High Council."

"Yes," Twilight confirmed. "I know it's a lot to ask, but it's the only way to take fear out of the equation and discuss the problem as equals. Will you help us?"

Danielle gave Twilight a funny look. For a pony that could walk into Inkopolis and do whatever she darn well pleased, the Inkling thought, she's really insistent on doing things formally. Well, if she wants my help keeping her secret so badly, maybe I can drive a hard bargain...

"All right," Danielle declared. "I'll do it, but only on one condition: If the High Council doesn't want to make friends with the Octarians, you don't get mad, you don't get pushy, and you don't get violent. You just take it like a squid—er, like a pony—well, okay, like a dragon in Spike's case—and you leave, and you don't ever come back. Deal?"

Twilight stared at Danielle for a few moments. "You really don't trust us, do you?" The pony smiled. "Very well. I accept your terms. If we aren't able to come to an agreement after a reasonable discussion, we'll leave you in peace."

Twilight and Danielle shook hands to seal the deal. "I'm glad we could come to an understanding," Twilight said as she turned to leave. "By the way, did you see what you did there?"

"What I did?" Danielle gave Twilight a bewildered look. "You mean when I said I wouldn't go along with your plan unless you accepted my demands?"

"Exactly. You refused to compromise without an assurance that we wouldn't cause trouble for your fellow Inklings," Twilight pointed out. "That's called being a good leader. Like I said, there's more behind your being chosen for this job than 'just because.'" She turned back to Spike. "I guess we'd better see how the others feel about becoming Inklings for a while."

"Hey, I'm for anything that makes me taller," Spike said as he and Twilight left the room. "Wait, can Inklings have mustaches? What about beards? I'll have to ask Tommy..."

Danielle sighed and sat back down on her bed, unsure of what she had actually just accomplished. Sure, Twilight had agreed to walk away if things didn't work, but there was still nothing the Inklings could do if she decided to force the issue anyway. There was also the matter of explaining the deal to the rest of her team, some of which—okay, maybe just Brianna—would accuse her of selling out Inklingkind for a bogus deal that wasn't worth the imaginary paper it was printed on. While Danielle was confident she could convince Bree that this was the best that she could do given the circumstances, she was also confident that it wouldn't stop Bree from complaining loudly about it. A lot.

Danielle shuddered at the thought of facing Brianna's wrath, and she reached under her mattress and pulled out a plastic bag containing what once was a batch of lemon kelp cookies. There were only a few crumbs left now, but Danielle pulled them out and ate them anyway. It wasn't much, but right now, she needed all the help she could get.