When diplomacy's too little, and war's a bit too much, the Princess calls on the loyal ponies of the EIS to quietly sort out the problem.
Officially, the Equestrian Information Service doesn't interfere with foreign governments. Officially, their role is to work at home and abroad to protect Equestria's interests, not to destabilize situations and ignore local laws. Officially, they disavow any knowledge of what Agent Disposition Matrix does on an almost daily basis.
Zanzebrica, by all rights, should be an easy assignment. It's practically a vacation with pay. Only the most dedicated and ambitious agent in the Service could possibly find some way to get herself in trouble, and if there's a mare for that job, it's Agent Matrix.
"Ambitiose Sed Ineptum" ~ the Matrix family motto.
Written as a commission for DoomManta
Sex tag is for off-screen and implied sexual content. Violence and death are to action movie standards, not a splatterhouse video.
A zebra that speaks in haiku? Sure, why not.
I would have liked to upvote this story, but I cannot in good conscience, because it treats waterboarding as a throwaway gag.
Mmkay, this was an Ultra great story. I'm giving it a like and a fave Just 'Cause it was that good. I'm gonna have to wrap up this comment quick since my Power Pack is running out, and I've got an Urgent matter to deal with (I gotta feed the Mongoose of my Brother, Sam, or he'll be Furious with me) but I just wanted to let you now that this story was a huge Success.
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Yeah, I wasn't really comfortable with that either. It's not impossible to make that kind of thing work, but you need to lean hard on the "these are horrible ponies doing horrible things" angle, and this just doesn't go too far enough.
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Actually, in retrospect I think that worse than using it as a joke was implying that it actually works.
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With all due respect, that's exactly why I think that joke is so effective.
This is about real CIA operations that really happened with real people. Just playing up the "They're bad people doing bad things" completely undercuts the message that we really do this to people. Daily. It should make you uncomfortable that the agents who are just trying to do their jobs just did this, and it was treated as routine. That they thought it justified because it worked.
That's the point of the story where you need to realize no matter what they think, or get told, they're the bad guys. They might not kill people directly, but they do a lot of things that get a lot of people killed - they installed a dictatorship over sugar prices, that's a direct reference to the Batista regime in Cuba, which is why Guava is an allusion to Che Guevera. Then they made an alliance with the dictatorship and tried to cut off the rebellion because of how that would look. A secret alliance made with a military dictatorship.
They were horrible ponies doing horrible things, but it was told from a deeply unreliable perspective. Like, how good is Disposition Matrix actually at martial arts?
Matty's boss knows exactly what they're doing.
Of course Equestria has the most adorable secret agents in the world.
Just a hop skip and a jump
There's no way this is going to have been a good night.
That does sound like something that a three-letter agency would want to go mess with.
Sometimes you just have to keep trying until you get the coup result you want.
So, Celestia didn't know how to use the moon right, and there was an odd end result of Equestria ending up with more sugar imports. Something something it was all for the cake.
I'm starting to think that Equestrian Intelligence field agents need better oversight.
Lots and lots of oversight.
I can ship it.
Alicorns work in mysterious ways.
Good for a quick get-away later on.
Shipping success.
Oops.
Dang, so much for the shipping. It was fun while it very briefly lasted.
Wow, this second coup is going really well, too bad they burned their bridges with it immediately after helping it succeed.
Hey, there it is. If we can't have shipping at least we can have airships.
That's an appropriately karmic ending considering the method in which the general was having people exiled.
Something about a thousand years ago made for a really interesting time. I blame Luna, or possibly give her credit.
That's probably a good idea.
Sycamore and Guava, nice. You know, it strikes me that this trio seems to be positioned to be first on the scene when the Crystal Empire returns, and I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
That was a great story.
So...Guava has no hard feelings about the betrayals and failed revolution and coup?
Now that I've actually had time to get around to reading the finished product, I think the wait was well worth it. Matty is adorably inept at times, but that just means she's in good company in the Great Spy Game.
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Rule 1: The CIA are never the good guys, especially when they're the good guys.
The exploding cigars was a reference to an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro. Arming and training rebels refers to (among other things) the Afghan Mujahadeen during the 80s, which later fragmented into both the Taliban and Al Queda. The CIA installed the Shah in Iran at Great Britain's request because the Iranian government was trying to nationalize BP's operations in the country. That little misadventure eventually ended in the Iranian Revolution, where the American Embassy was famously taken by the revolutionaries. MKUltra (CKMuna) was an experimental mind control program in the 50s and 60s.
Espionage is a messy game where bad people do questionable things to other bad people in the name of Good Causes, and bystanders get to deal with the side effects.
Ah, Zanzebrica Land, home of the highly poisonous Zanzebrica hamsters. Wonder if they've tried getting rid of the general that way.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows when keeping the magical land of Equestria safe and secure. Though woe unto the EIS if Princess Twilight ever gets wind of what they're up to. I don't see that ending well at all.
A hilarious misadventure that's best not thought about too deeply if you want to sleep tonight. Thank you for it.