The Investigative Joint Task Force of the Fragrant Harbor city!

by Alsvid

What Are We Watching For?

Princess Flurry Heart and the Justice Secretary of Hong Kong continued to snipe at each other, each growing more heated in their exchange.

"You...you and your freaks!" spluttered the Justice Secretary.

Flurry Heart's doctor, the thin dark-haired, fair-skinned Unicorn lady in a white labcoat, looked almost comically dismayed at these words. She began to open and shut the steel claw she possessed in place of a right hand.

"Ohhhh...Princess Flurry, did you hear what he called me? He called me a freak!"

Princess Flurry Heart sneered. "Never mind, Dr. Mercury. Fine words from someone who can barely fit through a door! How many second breakfasts did you have today, Justice Secretary?"

"At least I can eat, unlike you metal monsters! Why the Chief Executive ever agreed to let you awful automatons enter our fair country, I'll never know!" squealed the fat, elderly Justice Secretary, mopping sweat from his brow with a napkin.

"Be silent!"

Professor Deborah's voice snapped like a whip.

She slapped her stainless steel presentation pointer against her thigh.

"If the two of you were my students, I'd tan your rumpcheeks with my pointer until you begged for mercy!"

The Justice Secretary flopped back into his chair, so aghast he could only mumble incoherently.

Princess Flurry Heart leapt forward to confront the Professor, seething with sudden anger. "I am the Princess, do you hear me?! I am the Princess! No one spanks me!"

Her facade of cool, detached calm fell away utterly; she was screaming at the Professor, spit flying from her mouth, her eyes staring madly.

"Oh, be quiet," the Professor snapped.

She folded her arms under her prodigious breasts and glared levelly at Princess Flurry Heart, who was nearly nose-to-nose with her.

The young princess was breathing heavily, her cheeks a bright red, her mouth twisted with fury.

Professor Deborah continued in a leisurely manner, as if she were lecturing her students.

"Let me remind you, Princess Flurry Heart, that any monarch who must say "I am the Princess" is no monarch at all. Just a fool - or a foal, if you will - with a fancier hat than usual.

Dr. Mercury gasped in shock.

Princess Celestia smiled gently.

Princess Flurry Heart turned away and slunk back to her seat, wilting visibly under the Professor's verbal thrust.

Chief Executive Anna Sung laughed, a soft, bell-like sound.

"Very good, Professor. In one stroke, you resolve my administrative difficulties and halt a war between Flurry's Principality and my poor little nation! I begin to see how you managed to forge the Equestrian-Asian Treaty Alliance."

"I fervently hope I have, in fact, averted such a catastrophe," Professor Deborah said. "To return to my original point for a moment, if I may..."

With a sharp glare at Princess Flurry and the indignant Justice Secretary, Professor Deborah continued her briefing.

"We have conducted surveillance operations on the refugee shelter."

In the well-reinforced inner sanctum of the refugee shelter, amongst a jumble of electronic devices all connected to the elaborate surveillance system observing the shelter and its surroundings, not to mention the comm systems linking them to their respective command posts, Rainbow Dash and two other specialists from the Wonderbolt Security Solutions PMC (Private Military Company) sat at a table with two members of the German GSG-9 Counter-Terrorist Agency, playing cards.

Rainbow Dash placed her hand of cards on the table, face-down so that the others could not perceive what she was holding, and stared levelly at the two German counter-terrorist operators across the table from her.

"It's time you two went on your rounds, yeah? You guys hop to it."

Captain Genoveva Steiner, an Earthling female of the GSG-9 detachment, laughed silkily.

"Who'd want to attack a garbage dump like this, I wonder? You Equestrian women are far too nervous and paranoid. I see no value in attacking refugees."

Rainbow Dash, a tall, rangy-looking, muscular Pegasus woman with defined biceps, wind-burned, lightly tanned white skin, small, perky breasts, broad thighs, and rainbow colored hair (of course), planted her hands on her hips, glaring angrily at the German woman.

"You'd be surprised. First off, with the American Empire and their North Atlantic Treaty Alliance - that's NATO - at odds with the Equestria-Asian Treaty Alliance - that's EATA (Rainbow Dash approximately pronounced this abbreviation as "Eater") - a lot of proxy wars between small developing nations, terrorist groups, militias, gangs, and other troublemakers have begun to crop up."

Spitfire, a flame-haired Pegasus woman at Dash's right, snorted.

"I'll wager the American CIA is behind half these people you're talking about, Dash."

Captain Steiner ripped the top off a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, fished one out, and lit it, blowing thick clouds of smoke.

"That's dangerous talk, Kamerad. Let me remind you, as part of the NATO Alliance, that we're not at odds with your Equestrian nation, or those nations under your policy's Aegis. Our respective heads of state have yet to formally approach each other with the necessary delegation to establish proper diplomatic ties."

Captain Steiner leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. A tall, middle-aged woman with a rich figure, huge, round breasts, pale, chalk-white skin, wide hips, a slender waist, sharp icy-blue eyes, and hair so violently blonde it seemed to shine in its cascade down her upper back, with an authoritarian attitude, she gazed at Rainbow Dash through half-lidded eyes, in a luxuriant, almost seductive manner.

"Besides, my country has offered assistance with your counter-terrorism operations, foreign and domestic. I fail to see how we are 'at odds' with each other, as you say. Gott in Himmel! It's like the Cold War all over again. If the Russian Republic joins forces with you, that will complete the resemblance."

"The Russians are too busy licking their wounds after the Collapse of the USSR, they don't want to talk to anyone right now," Rainbow Dash muttered. She folded her arms over her chest and strode over to the window behind their table, gazing out at the city street.

A jumble of brightly lit neon signs, of all shapes and colors, partly in English, partly in the inscrutable pictograms of the local language, shone back at her through the window. Under the signs streamed a river of humans, cars, scooters, motorbikes and bicycles.

"Besides, if I'm not mistaken, Princess Celestia, Flurry Heart, and the Imperator of the American Empire will be attending the EATA-NATO Summit in Geneva next year, yes?" Dash asked.

Captain Steiner frowned. "Don't remind me. We'll probably be deployed there too. It'll be just as tedious as this operation."

Spitfire nudged Soarin', who was sitting next to her. "You're awfully quiet."