An Above-Average First Week
“Okay, let’s see. Ah, Bon-Bon, stand up please.”
Sweetie Drops did as she was told, lifting herself up from the gymnasium floor before making her way past her classmates and up to the PE teacher.
“Seeing how this is your first self defence lesson, I’m gonna take you through this next move slowly,” the teacher said, readying his stance. “Have you done Karate or anything like this before?”
She nodded, vaguely remembering she was about eight when she got her black belt, or maybe she was seven. Regardless, she was a slow learner at the craft.
“Good,” he said with an encouraging smile. “It’s very important to learn this kind of thing. Now, what would you do if someone in the streets did this.”
The teacher went for a little jab at her side with his left fist. Drops, instinctively, grabbed the fist with her right hand, twisting it round to reveal a shoulder. She promptly struck it with her left hand before swinging her fist round to knock him in the jaw, causing him to fall over.
A simple move she’d drilled hundreds of times, used to neutralize an unskilled opponent… oh crap.
‘Oh crap’ had been the thought that really summed up her thinking throughout her first week. Sure, she was still considered a newbie to spying missions, but she has never before failed so badly at simply keeping a low profile.
The knocking down of a teacher in PE, while being the most notorious, was still only an example of the attention she had been gaining, and not even the only one in PE.
It had started off in the changing rooms where she made both the sports team and Derpy, who she was getting changed with, a bit uncomfortable when they noticed her six pack—something that was never considered special back at training—and it really just got worse from there.
During the day one physical examination, she realised too late she should probably underperform in the tests, and not, as she did, win every race, exercise, and endurance test by a huge margin.
It was an unfortunate event that led all the sports captains competing to get her on their teams. One day she even found them all outside her locker, holding gifts and arguing why their team specifically needed her.
Other lessons weren’t much better. In maths she had the clever idea of finishing the lesson’s work in about ten minutes, so she could make notes on what her classmates were doing. Which, at the time, seemed like a great idea because she shared the class with Sunset Shimmer.
That was until her teacher noticed she had stopped writing in her book.
“What do you think you’re doing, missy? This is no time for gazing into space,” her maths teacher snapped, walking over to her.
“Oh, sorry, I was just—”
“Give it here,” he said, snatching the book from her. “Let me see where you’re at. I’m here to help, you know.”
He scanned her work, face growing paler as he did so. “Oh… You’ve already done everything—” he glanced at the clock “—in just fifteen minutes…”
Drops blushed. Not at all liking the fact her whole class—the top maths class—had stopped to stare at her with either shock or awe. Most notably, and most embarrassingly as far as her spy work was concerned, Sunset was also staring at her.
“Would you like some extra work?” The teacher finally asked.
“Yes please,” she replied with an awkward smile.
English wasn’t much better either. They were, unfortunately, doing Shakespeare. Not ‘unfortunately’ in the normal student sense of ‘man, Shakespeare is so boring and none of the words make sense’.
No, Sweetie Drops used to, and still did to an certain extent, love Shakespeare. When she was twelve, the Shakespeare complete collection was the only book she liked in the training school’s library—though, that wasn’t much of a competition.
What made Shakespeare an unfortunate topic came from how they used him when she was fourteen. Because trainee spies had to practice learning their backstories by heart for missions, they all had to play a ‘game’ where anytime a mentor said a line from a play, they’d have to say the next.
And these weren’t ever simple lines. She'd have killed to just once hear the line ‘To be or not to be’, but she never had such luck. At any moment, a mentor could walk past, say ‘Denmark’s a prison’ and she’d have to immediately reply ‘then is the world one’. She had to learn those books inside out.
Which is why, considering the fact Drops had not left training that long ago, she hadn’t quite gotten out of the habit.
It didn’t take long into the lesion for the teacher to say. “Now, I know when doing Hamlet there’s a lot of focus on one particular speech, but my favorite is actually ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I—’”
“Is it not monstrous that this player here,” Drops instantly replied. It was a couple of seconds later that she realised how weird she looked and, additionally, how impressed her teacher was.
So, considering that one of the first rules of being a spy is not being noticed when you don’t want to be, she was a massive failure on that point, having become the most talked about girl in the school within a week.
But, as most spies know, this kind of work isn’t about doing everything perfectly, it’s about making the best out of bad situations and good opportunities. Which she actually had been able to do.
Even with a, let's say, traumatic first week, she’d still been able to collect a lot of much needed data, Sunset Shimmer data.
The first conclusions she made was that the glares she noticed on her first day were universal. Only five people in the whole school seemed to actually like the girl, while the rest tried to be as far away from her as possible.
What’s odd was that these five girls, Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, all seemed to be very popular in the school, with all of them having a lot of other friends and all well liked throughout the school.
But, despite this, they were normally only found around each other. It was a peculiar situation, and one that she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about. It didn’t help that Derpy continued to dodge any question about her.
Speaking of Derpy, Drops had seen her walking on her second day, and ever since then they had been going to school together. Just in case Drops needed to stare down those boys again.
They also started eating lunch together regularly. Drops even managed to see Derpy’s quick muffin technique in practice, something she was most impressed with. It also quickly became a mutual expectation to sit next to each other whenever they were in the same class.
On a side note—a very small side note, she doesn’t even know why she noted it down; it’s probably not important, definately not important—she noticed that Lyra seemed quite close with all of Sunset Shimmer's friends. Again, not important.
Drops still hadn’t talked to Lyra yet, and she was intent on it staying that way. She already severed those personal ties years ago. There was no reason to retie them, and that way she wouldn't have to sever them again upon leaving. It was a win-win.
But, to her surprise, at the end of a hard week Drops had been given a reward, something she was very excited about.
Thinking of said reward, she gleefully walked to school with something very close to a skip in her step. So happy she didn’t even mind putting the effort into not being noticed by the netball captain, who was a few feet in front of her.
“Still excited for baking class I see,” Derpy giggled, very much enjoying this Bubbly version of Sweetie Drops.
“You know it,” she exclaimed. “It’s gonna be great! I haven’t done proper baking in years.”
Her superiors never let her have the correct ingredients. It was all health drinks and low carb, high protein food. Though that didn’t stop her from trying to make something more… edible.
“I’m looking forward to it too. I wonder what we’ll be baking.”
“Hoping for some muffin making, am I right in saying?” Drops gave her a playful nudge.
“I’m not that obsessed with muffins,” she stated. “But yes, that is what I’m hoping for.”
“I’ll be happy regardless of what we’re making. I just can’t wait to get the oven mittens on again.”
“Now you’re just getting me excited to see what you make. If you’re as good at baking as any of your other subjects, I’m in for a yummy treat.”
Drops fought back the urge to gulp. “I wouldn’t get too excited. I’ve never really had the time to practice it, so it won’t be anything special to eat.”
“If you say so. I’m sure you’ll do fine though.” She gave her an encouraging tap on the back.
Once in the school, they separated with a wave and a ‘goodbye’, as they headed off to their individual maths lessons.
Maths, now that she’d convinced her teachers against getting her a private tutor, still remained mainly observing Sunset for suspicious activity—which to be perfectly honest there wasn’t much of. People did seem a lot more inclined to ask Drops for help though, bringing more unwanted attention.
But, before she knew it—and without any more useful notes—the class was done, and she could head on over to the food tech room.
Upon making her way to the room, she was happy to see Derpy waiting for her with a wide smile. The room was long with two rows of worktables on either side of the room, which had a gap between them to walk through.
“You ready for some baking?” Derpy asked enthusiastically, displaying the table she’d saved for them.
“I would like to say I was born ready, because I was, but I’ve actually got to set everything up first.” Leaning down, Drops opened the drawers to look for the mats and ingredients.
“Oh, you ready to set up for baking then?”
Drops shot her a confident smile. “You know it.”
She carefully looked through all the pots, pans, and ingredients in the drawers, loving every second of it. The weight of flour in her hands again, especially, filled her with glee. It took a good amount of her willpower not to take a big whiff of it.
“Sorry I’m late.”
That voice
Drops peered over the worktop. She froze. In front of her, looking slightly embarrassed by the teacher now scolding her, stood Lyra Heartstrings.
She moved her head forward, resting it on a drawer, and let out a long sigh. And baking seemed like it was gonna be such a nice time.
Derpy exchanged looks between Drops and Lyra. She leant down slightly, placing her hand on her shoulder. “I guess this means Lyra’s in our baking class.”
“That is a sound deduction,” Drops replied, voice weaker than she’d have liked.
“What you gonna do?”
Drops, for a second, thought through the logistics of hiding from Lyra as she passed and sneaking out to request a class change, but quickly realised the impracticality of it.
“Now, no more time wasting,” the teacher snapped, “get to a workspace quickly. I have to get out my cooking tools.”
Drops sighed. “I’m going to do the only thing I can do, Derpy.” She stood up with her best attempt at confidence. “Face her, and the repercussions.”
With a gulp, she walked past Derpy, placing herself in in the gap between each side’s workstations. Lyra, who was awkwardly hurrying to the back of the class stopped when her path became blocked by—
“Bon-Bon?”
Drops nodded. “Lyra.” She coughed immediately, realising how shaky her voice was. “Hello again.”
Then, to Drops’ disbelief, Lyra’s face of shock was replaced with one of great joy; and, to her complete and utter surprise, she ran in for a hug.
Drops’ face froze, plastered with an almost scared, bright red expression on it. She was close to getting knocked over by the speed of the impact, but she put her foot back to stop herself from falling.
For the next couple of seconds, Drops felt incredibly uncomfortable. Lyra was hugging tightly, while her own arms were extended out, just kind of wobbling about with no idea of what to do. She, eventually, settled for hugging back slightly, hesitantly touching Lyra’s back.
Lyra—after what felt like far too long a time for hugging someone to Drops—loosened up, moving to a face-to-face position. Lyra beamed gleefully at Drops, who returned the same bright red, flustered look from the beginning of the hug.
“Bon-Bon, I can’t believe you’re actually back!” Lyra practically cheered at her. “It’s been forever. I didn't think I’d ever see you again.”
Drops gave an awkward chuckle. “Yeah, small world, huh.”
“I know! Here you are. So much bigger as well. Then again, we are both a lot bigger, so we’ve kind of stayed the same proportionately.” She giggled. “Sorry, I’m being silly. It’s just so crazy that you’re back! I don’t know how to react.”
“You can say that again,” Drops said, doing all she could to seem casual.
“I know.” Lyra snapped her finger. “We’ll have to catch up some time, some time soon. Let’s exchange numbers quickly.”
“Y-yes, good idea.”
They both got out their phones. Sweetie Drops read out her number to Lyra, who noted it down into her contacts and promised to message her later.
With a very energetic wave, Lyra headed to a workstation at the back of the room before the teacher had finished setting up. Drops, of course, returned the wave, but hers was slow, and her face didn’t quite know what expression to make.
Derpy, who had watched the whole thing with a huge grin on her face, nudged up to Drops. “You see, what did I tell ya! Lyra’s incredibly happy to see you again!”
For a couple of seconds, Drops just stared at Lyra, as she frantically took out all her equipment. “Yeah,” she replied quietly, “I guess you were right.”
Sweetie Drops’ first baking lesson in years was frustratingly slow. Not much was said between her and Derpy after it became evident that she was answering every question with either ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘uh-huh’. And so, their lesson fell into a heavy silence.
The teacher showed them how to make a cake in the end. Theirs turned out pretty well all things considered. Drops let Derpy have it. She wasn’t hungry anyway.
Lunch was similar. She didn’t really pay much attention to her surroundings, and pretty much ignored Derpy’s questions of concern. She simply waved them off with ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m just a bit tired’, well aware that Derpy didn’t buy it for a second.
The evening lessons were also a bit of a drag, but she got through them without having to say much at all. She had noticed in her last lesson, Physics—a class with a seating plan that placed Derpy behind her—that the blond haired girl kept glancing at her with a worried expression.
Drops did her best to ignore it, just focusing on getting through the day so she could get back to the apartment.
This was almost pulled off perfectly. They had made it through the final lessons and were walking back together as normal—well, the complete silence wasn’t normal. But, as Drops approached her turning, Derpy moved in front of her, blocking her path.
Drops stopped, backing down slightly to the very serious looking Derpy.
“Bon-Bon,” she said firmly. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting upset ever since you met Lyra again, even though she was super happy to see you. What’s up with that?”
Drops glanced at her turning just a couple meters up ahead. “Derpy, I’m fine, I just need to get ba—”
“Please, Bon-bon,” she persisted. “I’m asking you this because I’m worried about you.” Derpy’s firm stare wavered slightly, revealing a look of genuine concern.
Drops sighed. “Please, Derpy, I don’t want you worrying about this. It’s just me overreacting about something that shouldn’t matter. It’s just, you know, sometimes when you haven’t…” Drops desperately tried to articulate her thoughts for her.
“Listen, you know how in life you always have people where the relationship is different for each party. Fans to celebrity, student to teacher. You can’t help but see each other differently because the numbers are so different.
“And you have to accept that even though you’ll never forget your favorite teacher, you’re only one of hundreds to them, even if that’s a hard fact to swallow.” Drops’ mouth went dry. “And it’s even more difficult to accept that when the uneven relationship is between friends.”
Derpy frowned, her eyes still full of worry. “Bon-Bon, what happened between you and Lyra?”
“Nothing, it wasn’t as big a deal as I’m making it out to be. I’m just acting like a child.” She moved forward, sliding past Derpy and towards her turning. “Sorry, I need to get back. I’m already late.”
Drops practically ran the rest of the way, leaving Derpy in her worried state. She felt terrible about it, but she knew it wasn’t important. Her main concern needed to be regaining a clear head.
Reaching her apartment building, she jogged up the stairs as fast she could and headed straight for her room, without so much a passing nod to the other people living there.
Slamming the door behind her, she took a second to lean on it and sigh.
The apartment room was rented out by herself with part of the mission budget. It was messy, unkempt, and still had many of her belongings unpacked. But for her purposes, it worked as a base of operations.
She stared at her desk, knowing that the week-in report needed to be written up and sent off to the mission managers soon, and that she should probably get started on it.
But instead, she just stayed leaning on her door. All she did was slide down so she was sitting, legs scrunched up in a ball like position. She knew she was being stupid, childish; unprofessional, but she couldn’t help it.
She stayed like that until her phone buzzed. Taking it out, she saw it was a message from an unknown number.
Hi, it’s me, Lyra. Sorry I didn’t text you my number during lunch, it completely slipped my mind. Still can’t believe I actually have your number in my phone.
Anyway, give me some dates on when we can have that catch up. I know the cutest little cafe that we should do it in. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Send me some times you’re free :D
Drops stared at the message. Her hand was shaking. Her breathing had stopped. She sat in complete silence.
Without meaning to, a flash of anger rippled over her and she threw the phone at her sofa.
This left her hands free to push into her head in frustration. Frustration at herself. Why was she acting like this? She hadn’t let her emotions control her this badly before. Not since she started training.
Drops felt herself getting angier. This couldn’t do, this was pathetic. She forced herself up—still slightly wobbly, but she was stable enough to walk—before making her way to her desk.
With gritted teeth, she pulled out her chair and sat down. She managed to pull off some breathing exercises, calming herself down enough to make a start on her report.
Luckily, the report managed to take her mind off Lyra. Sorting through all her notes and writing them out in a useful manner wasn’t particularly challenging, but it required enough concentration to keep her focused.
This was, that is, until she revisited her notes on Lyra’s closer than average relationship with all of Sunset Shimmer’s friends.
For a moment, she considered not including those notes, but decided that was silly. She shouldn't leave out relevant information just because of her personal feelings, even if they weren’t that important.
She also, if not a little reluctantly, included her mistakes when it came to keeping a low profile, but insisted that they had in no way jeopardized the mission.
Within a couple of hours, Drops had finished laying out all she knew about the potential people of interest, giving Sunset the most detail in the report.
She was happy with it. It contained as much information as one would expect from the first week’s report, maybe even a little bit more. And so she emailed it off to her higher-ups via the secure system.
It didn’t take too long for them to reply; the teams that oversee all the missions normally work on overdrive when it’s Friday.
She read it over quickly. It was mainly just confirmations that she was doing the correct thing, a handful of questions about details of the school, and a comment next to her retelling of the football incident that simply read ‘Classic Sweetie Drops’.
But after reading through all that, under the subtitle recommendations, she found something that made her feel a little ill.
I would recommend, if she is indeed close to all of them, using Lyra to find out much needed information about the ‘people of interest’ and, potentially, use her friendship to get close to them.
Drops just stared at her screen with a look of hopelessness. This was going to be a difficult mission.
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Ouch, that last bit has got to hurt. I'm very, very intrigued though!
Guess Sweetie missed the lecture on subtlety and low profile. Though seeing Lyra again probably distracted her too. If Lyra had hated her, that probably would have been easier to deal with. Wonder how her speed record compares to Rainbow Dash, and her test scores to whoever is the smartest in school (Sunset?).
s6.postimg.io/5ul2jmext/continue_Monkey.jpg
Nice chapter, good work.
7511854 7503757 7510738 Thankyou, I'll hopefully not disappoint with later chapters
Sweetie Drops, the best spy ever
I wonder; has Sunset's fully-human counterpart been located by the government yet?
Unless she was also an illegal immigrant ('also' because cross-dimensional travel has got to be against the law; no background checks required with that method), human!Sunset would have to have a birth certificate, a residential address, registered family members and potentially a passport and/or driver's license, all of which would be stored in some governmental database somewhere.
It would throw up some pretty massive red flags if "Sunset Shimmer" happened to live in a completely different state, yet she also appears here - like there's two of her somehow.
The narration seems oddly... selective, I guess would be the word. I mean, it follows Bon Bon's perspective and is very internal and introspective in style - so far you've mostly focused on what she is thinking and feeling, rather than on external events going on around her. And yet the narration is kinda vague about Bon Bon's actual motivations and in particular seems to actively avoid bringing up any details regarding the reason for her anxiety towards Lyra, despite that clearly being her main concern.
I mean, I get why you'd write it that way and I'm not even saying it's wrong. You can get away with that sort of thing to some extent. I just think it's very noticeable in this case.
The main thing I'd associate "black belt at age eight" with is shitty karate schools, rather than the intended implication that she's super good at it.
I do like how this story kinda leans into the canon that Bon Bon is a terrible spy lmao