“You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life”.
-Zig Ziglar
“I dated a Diamond Dog once.” Vinyl decided to share a story of her own. Intrepid had told her a few over the course of their little lunch, and she felt that she owed him a tale of her own. Plus, it was a fun story to tell.
“Really? How did that work out?” Intrepid cocked his head quizzically to the side as he pulled out a sum of bits and put them on the table. “I’ve known a few Diamond Dogs, and they weren’t exactly partial to ponies.” Well at least he knew what a Diamond Dog was, most ponies would be asking her.
“Well, I was in Las Pegasus and-” Something caught her eye, just barely out of sight. On the other side of the street, she saw a very confused looking Shining Armor talking to Cadance. “-What are those two doing here?”
“Hmm?” Intrepid followed her gaze. “Oh, it’s Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. They must be out on the town.” Vinyl wished she could just wave a coincidence away like that, but the skeptic in her knew better.
“No, Shining is supposed to be at the castle.” Then she saw it, Cadance’s horn was lit up...and she was looking at them. Vinyl didn’t know much about Cadance’s powers, but she could only assume the ‘Princess of Love’ moniker had something to do with them. It only let Vinyl’s suspicion grow.
“Well I suppose that’s where Royal Guards belong, yes.” There was a pause. “You seem awfully suspicious about all of this. Do you know something I don’t?” What Vinyl knew about those two that Intrepid didn’t could probably fill tomes upon tomes, but she would stick to the basics.
“I know they like to meddle.” It was true, Shining Armor at least had a penchant for meddling, and Vinyl would be none too surprised to find out that it had rubbed off on the alicorn. “It just doesn’t sit right with me…”
“Well, what do you propose we do? Confront them?” Vinyl mulled over the thought in her head. If both Intrepid and herself went out, it might work.
“Or...we could do a little spying.” Vinyl said, a sly grin crossing her face. “I mean, if you’re up for it.” Vinyl could see the gears turning in Intrepid’s head turning. The pegasus had a worried look on his face that slowly turned into a cautious smile. “So that a yes?” A nod came in response. “Sweet, lead the way.”
“Me?” Questioned Intrepid, his hoof raising to his chest. “It was your idea.”
“Yeah, but you’re the super-spy. I don’t know how to do all of the fancy espionage stuff like you.” Vinyl was going to try and build up his ego a little bit. Hopefully it would be enough to push him. “Besides, I figured it would be pretty cool to see you in action.”
“In action…” The stallion murmured. “Yeah, alright.” Jackpot. “Just wait until Cadance turns away from the window, then make your way to the back of the diner, alright?” Vinyl nodded, it was a little intoxicating to see Intrepid go from nervous to happy, and now to a measure of determined professional.
There was a solid minute of silence. Both of them were glancing out of the corners of their eyes to see when or if Cadance would turn. It made Vinyl’s heart race and made her feel more alive than she thought possible.
“Go.” It was quiet and authoritative. Vinyl barely had time to react before Intrepid was somehow out of his seat and halfway to the backdoor of the diner. He was awful fast for a pony missing a leg.
“I’m sorry sir, you can’t go through this door. Employee entrance.” The waiter attempted to block their path. Intrepid lowered his head and gave a half cough-half gurgle.
“S-sorry...I’m just not feeling well...Didn’t want to get sick in your establishment...or in front of it.” The one-winged pegasus gave a convincing fake gag that made the waiter open the door for their exit. They both exited quickly, making sure the door shut behind them.
“Now what?” Vinyl stood behind Intrepid, who had his side up against the diner. He poked his head slightly around the corner and withdrew it at a breakneck pace.
“Now we wait for them to move. Tell me, if you were them and saw us disappear what would you do?” Intrepid turned back to look at Vinyl. There was something in his eyes, a fire of sorts. It made his previously tired looking face look about twenty years younger and made her heart flutter.
“I would think we just left through the front door.” That would be her first inclination, but then she gave it a bit more thought. “If I was Shining Armor I would check it out, though.” She knew Twinkle, almost too well. He would know he was being played and would try to find out how and why.
“Exactly. Cadance will want to believe we just left though. Tell me who wins in that argument? Cadance or Shining Armor?” Vinyl could practically hear every wheel in Intrepid’s head turning. It was as if he already had his answer, but was just giving Vinyl the chance to come to the same conclusion.
“Cadance. Every time.” Vinyl was fairly confident in that fact. Shining didn’t like to argue from what she could tell, and with Cadance even less. The guard would most likely sigh and give up his opinion for her own.
“Good call.” Intrepid looked around the corner again. “Looks like they’re going north. Towards your record shop, most likely.” Intrepid was like a pony possessed, calculating every little movement and taking every variable into account. “We’re going to cross the street and get behind them.”
Vinyl looked around the corner as well. It was a typical busy Canterlot street. Throngs of wealthy ponies crowded the sidewalks, they were all going about their days and stopping in front of windows to gawk at a products they wanted. It wouldn’t be too hard to blend in, at least Vinyl knew they would stick out less than a Royal Guard and an Alicorn.
Without a word Intrepid moved across the street as fast as he could. Vinyl followed him, keeping her head lowered to the ground. If there was one thing that would give her away it would be her mane. The flared mess of blues were too noticeable in a crowd and would surely catch Shining’s eye.
“Intrepid.” The stallion glanced back, if just for a second. “The baseball fields are just up the block. If we can beat them to it, maybe we can like listen in on them or something.” Vinyl had been trying to think of a way to get near them to hear what they were saying, and the wooden fence that separated the baseball fields from the street was their best bet.
“Good thinking.” There was a slight pause as he looked to his left, pushing past a couple of rich looking ponies. “We should be able to cut through here, I think.” The pegasus cut into an alley just to their left, so Vinyl followed.
Without warning, Intrepid broke out into a sprint. His three legs carried him faster than Vinyl thought possible. What in the world was going through his mind right now?
----
Intrepid was having a blast! This was the most alive he had felt in years, and now with the added adrenaline of chasing down and spying on a princess? He was practically young again! Vinyl had sparked something in him, a resurgence of vitality and youth. Of positivity and good memories.
On a whim, he jumped over a tipped over trash can in the alley. He landed on his three hooves rather solidly, then he kept running. How long had it been since he had done something this bold and active?
He turned a corner sharper than he had intended and almost tipped over on his bad side, luckily the pearlescent mare that had been following him caught up with him. She propped herself up on his bad side and helped right himself.
“Whoa, careful.” Vinyl was keeping up with him. He would’ve been surprised, but he remembered she had all of her extremities, so she was probably just letting him keep the lead. The last thing he wanted to do was make Vinyl think he was slow or weak because of it.
Ahead was the chain link fence that separated the alley from the first of the baseball fields. It was a bit taller than him, so jumping it was a certain impossibility. Without his other wing, he couldn’t fly over it either, so he had to think of something fast.
His immediate thought was the dumpster in front of the fence. He could jump on top of it and use his momentum to carry himself over the fence. It would require a little finesse, but he was feeling confident.
Intrepid pushed off of his back hooves and sailed onto the dumpster. He didn’t allow his front hoof to touch the dumpster, though. In one fluid movement he put his front hoof on the fence and used that to propel himself over the barrier.
Intrepid landed with a thud, much harder than he would’ve liked. But he was on all three hooves, so that was a positive. The shockwave that the landing sent through his body was not great though. It made his ribs and joints ache with an intensity he hadn’t felt in years.
It was exhilarating.
He turned back to see Vinyl taking it a lot slower than he had. She climbed onto the dumpster, then pulled herself over the fence. The unicorn landed with the same amount of grace that he had, which was little to none.
“Are you alright?” Intrepid took a few steps back and placed his wing on Vinyl. “Didn’t take that landing too hard, right?” He had done this before, he had taken landings like those for years. At this point he could shake off most pain pretty easily, but a Canterlot born and raised pony? That couldn’t be easy.
“Yeah…” Vinyl stated, clearly out of breath. “How in the world did you do that?” Intrepid felt heat rising in his face. “That was amazing!” Vinyl laughed and bounced on her hooves. It was obvious that the adrenaline had gotten to her as well. “Like, you just straight flew over that fence!”
“Yeah...practice, I guess.” Intrepid wasn’t sure how to quantify his experience. He just did it, like second nature. Traversing cities was something he had done for a long time, and just plain traversing difficult landscapes was his life for so long.
“I sent the letter when I got out of her office. Now I just have to figure out who I can get to cover the orphanage for Glory for the whole day.” Shining’s voice came through the fence, making Intrepid put his wing to his mouth. The pegasus motioned towards the fence.
----
“I can probably work on something for you.” Cadance let her wing brush up against Shining Armor and gave him a smile. Shining Armor returned it uneasily, his mind was still occupied on what he stumbled upon.
“Thanks, Cadance.” Shining looked over to the fence on his right. He stopped in his tracks, making Cadance stop as well. The pink alicorn was being awfully evasive about what she was doing in front of the diner. The fact that Intrepid and Vinyl were there left a pit in Shining’s stomach.
“Are you okay?” There was genuine concern in Cadance’s voice. He wasn’t going to doubt her sincerity, but he was going to doubt her intentions back there. It was just bugging him to a very intense degree.
“Can you just tell me what you were doing back there?” Earlier she said that she had just stumbled upon the couple and was observing them, but that did not sit right with him. His guard instincts kicked in and told him she was meddling, perhaps more than she ethically should.
“I…” There was a hesitation on the Princess’ part. “You have to promise not to be mad.” That didn’t bode well, it meant that it was most certainly going to upset him, and the last thing he wanted was to be upset at Cadance. His day had gone bad enough as is.
“Okay…” Shining said, against his better judgment. “I won’t be mad.” Now he was hoping that he wouldn’t regret that.
“I may have been helping them along with my magic. You know, maybe making them a bit more into each other.” Cadance let each word slip out more sheepishly than the last. She knew what she did was going to get under Shining’s skin, and now he had to try and not overreact.
“How much?” Shining needed to know the extent of this. He needed to figure out if he needed to mitigate this, or if he could let just this slide. Celestia forbid if Vinyl figured out, she would flip out. Rightfully so, he was afraid, this was above a breach of trust or even personal space. Cadance’s magic, if used too much, was a breach of free will.
“Well, at first it was a little…” Each and every time the words felt like they were dancing on eggshells more and more. The pit in Shining’s stomach grew with every utterance. “Then I realized that I needed to help a little more…”
“Cadance…”
“I did it at the orchestra too.” There it was, the bombshell. This was as deep as it could go, and that meant he was now going to have to contain this. Maybe he could somehow explain away Vinyl’s feigning interest in the stallion, heck he had to explain it away now. Without Cadance working her magic, the sparks wouldn’t be there. “I’m sorry, I just thought that if I could help you with Vinyl it would help us get a little closer as a couple.”
Did that even make sense? Shining was trying to put the pieces together in his head. If Cadance was going to keep this whole thing a secret, how would this make them closer? Was it the virtue of helping Vinyl get a date? Or was it…?
“Are you jealous of Vinyl?” It was the only explanation. The only reason that Cadance would manipulate Vinyl like that would be to get her out of Shining’s mane faster. “Did you do this just because you’re jealous that I’m spending time with her?” He was trying to keep his voice as level and calm as possible, but he was slowly failing. The anger was starting to boil and he was having a hard time keeping it in check. Even the flinch that Cadance gave was enough of a confession of guilt to raise his ire slightly higher.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Shining turned his head to see a pair of ponies exiting the gate to the baseball fields a few feet away. The last ponies he wanted to see right now, the last ponies who needed to be here or hear what was being said. “Twinkle, please tell me this is all one big misunderstanding.”
“What are you two doing here?” Cadance beat him to that particular punch. He was glad, that meant the response was not going to be aimed at him. “I thought you two left for the record store.”
“No. We saw you two and thought it was suspicious.” Intrepid was advancing on them quite slowly, each step carrying more weight and meaning than it had any right to. “Turns out we were right.” Shining couldn’t blame either of them for being mad, even he was upset. “This was all fake then, all of it? From the moment we hit it off at the concert?” now the stallion’s eyes were beginning to water at the edges and his voice was shaking.
“Intrepid…” Cadance took a step back.
“It was all a lie. Everything I felt.” Was this anger or sadness? Shining couldn’t tell any more. At this point it was an incomprehensible mess of both, and it was forming a storm behind Intrepid’s eyes. “The best I’ve felt in years, and it’s all because some Princess was jealous?”
Vinyl was locked up at this point. The unicorn simply stared at the royal couple with unblinking, unfeeling eyes. If Shining were to guess, she was shut down and it was probably for the best. He had seen Vinyl furious, and it would not be good to see it again.
“I thought for once that somepony in this city actually cared for me.” Intrepid’s words cut Cadance deep. Shining saw the alicorn flinch back and tears start to form. “But no, now I realize that at least out there in the wild if something hurts you, they mean it.” The stallion stopped his advance and hung his head. “I can’t believe this…I didn’t think I could be more disappointed. I was wrong.” With that, the one-winged stallion turned and started to walk away. Who would stop him? Who would even want to?
“Vinyl...I just, I thought that if I could make you happy-” Cadance began to plead with the unicorn, but she was cut off by a single hoof that Vinyl raised. Shining was eager to hear what Vinyl had to say. Would she at least try to understand Cadance’s point of view, or would she go full Scratch?
“I’m late for work…” Monotone, deadpan. Even Shining couldn’t read that.Vinyl turned and walked away from the two, leaving them all alone together.
“Shining…?” Cadance was crying now. She was looking for some support from him, some reassuring words. He just didn’t know what he could say, so instead he let his gut talk for him.
“I can’t believe you did that, Cadance.” Shining guessed he was going to pile it on, too. “There’s a line you don’t cross when it comes to ponies’ emotions, and you crossed it. You didn’t just hurt their feelings, you made it so their feelings didn’t matter. I don’t know about Intrepid, but for Vinyl? I think she was actually starting to value her own feelings again.” Shining looked away, trying desperately not to shake his head and march off.
“Shiny, I’m sorry.” Now she was using his pet name, wonderful. “My powers, sometimes I just use them when I’m not supposed to. I-I just see that it’s the easy way and I just do it, I’m sorry.” Wait, what? This wasn’t the first occasion? There were others? He had to get to the bottom of this before he could walk away from the conversation.
“Cadance…” The question buzzed around his head a few dozen times before he let it out. It was something that was either going to make or break not just this conversation, but possibly their relationship as a whole. “You never...you never used your magic on me, right?”
Silence.
“Cadance?”
“I-I’m sorry Shiny.”
His heart sank and broke at the same time. It was as if his entire chest had hit the ground, and it was not going to stop descending any time soon. This was a betrayal of the highest caliber, the betrayal of love.
“How many times?” Now he was doing his best to hold back the flood of emotions that wanted out.He was not going to break down in public, no sir. He was stronger than that, he was a royal guard for Celestia’s sake!
“A-a couple...during some of our bigger arguments. I just-I just thought that if I could remind you how much you love me that you would forgive me.” Cadance had to see his eyes get wide, because she tried to reach out to him. “Shining, I never meant anything by it.”
It all made sense now, every big argument where he caved. Every moment when his frustration was overcome with love or desire. It wasn’t just because Cadance was his true love, it was because he had been manipulated.
“I-I think it’s best if we take some time apart.” The words hit them both like a wrecking ball. Even he wasn’t expecting them to fall out of his mouth. The even more shocking thing was that he meant them with every fiber of his being.