Crossed Lines

by Bronyxy

1 Spike the Messenger

“Twilight! Twilight!” shouted Spike as he ran to find his mistress, claws skidding around the bends in the corridors. He approached two guards standing outside the throne room. One of them turned to confront the speeding dragon and began to point his polearm, but his more experienced colleague pulled him by his shoulder, causing him to turn and see the look in his senior’s eyes which radiated a clear message, “NO!”

In the moment of indecision experienced by the rookie guard, Spike had slalomed around him and was already blazing a trail down the corridor. Well, probably not ‘blazing’ as Rainbow Dash would use the word, but still pretty fast for a baby dragon.

While the Castle of Friendship didn’t usually have much of a presence of guards, protocol dictated that during the forthcoming Royal visit of Princess Ember, additional precautions would have to be taken. Twilight had raised the issue with Celestia saying that the whole ethos of her role as Princess of Friendship was based upon trust and that Ember wouldn’t do anything to betray that trust. However, Celestia explained that the extra security didn’t show mistrust but was instead a method of ensuring that if anything unrelated did happen during the visit, it would be easy to exonerate the guests rather than cause unnecessary friction, so she had reluctantly agreed. As a consequence, new guards had arrived and been posted to protect the most sensitive locations in the castle.

Rounding another corner, Spike slowed down as he approached Twilight’s private chambers, partly because there were more guards, but mostly because he was exhausted. He hadn’t run that fast since … well, since forever, actually.

“Hello Spike” greeted one of the guards cordially as the other looked on and smiled, “The Princess is changing clothes at the moment in readiness for the arrival of Princess Ember. I’ll knock if you like …”
“No time” puffed the wheezing dragon, thrusting the door wide and charging in.
Twilight Sparkle turned in mid-change looking utterly startled, eyes wide, jaw dropped and momentarily unable to speak.
“Twi!” he panted, “You’ve got to come see!”
“Um, Spike” said Twilight, finally finding her voice, “I can’t really move at the moment. This dress is half on and kinda round my hindlegs. It's a priceless Royal heirloom, but it was clearly designed for somepony smaller than me and look - it doesn't even have holes for my wings! I don’t think I’d better try and move anywhere just for a moment …”

“No time!” spluttered Spike “Can’t you teleport?”
“What? Where?” she asked, looking puzzled, “And why?”
“Bats, Twi” he got out, “Twilight, we’ve got bats …”
“Yes Spike, that happens in castles” she giggled.
“Not in the sealed room where we store the Crystal Mirror!”
Twilight looked surprised for a fraction of a second before the gears in her head could be seen starting to move and within a few seconds were spinning at high velocity.
“The portal to Canterlot High School?”
“That’s the one” confirmed Spike.
“Bats?”
“Come on and let me show you!” he urged.
“But we’ve got Princess Ember arriving within the hour …”
“It’s a sealed room, Twi, with guards” he reasoned, picking up on her innate curiosity, “Let’s just look see if the system you rigged with Princess Celestia’s book is still working as it should. I sure wouldn’t like to see anything coming through that could damage the machine.”

Twilight wrestled with what she had been told, but a nagging doubt persisted, pointing to the possibility of an undefined error buried somewhere deep within her calculations. Surely, she had she used the sum of the squares of the separation between the points along three spatial dimensions, or had she perhaps instead summed the differences? She couldn’t be sure in hindsight. The setup would have looked broadly the same and it could possibly still have worked, but …

Mind racing, she kicked off the priceless museum piece of a dress in a manner that would have made Rarity swoon onto her fainting couch and placed Spike on her back, flying out of the doors to her chambers and off down the corridors. Flying in the corridors was something that Luna had taught her back at Canterlot Castle, and something of a bone of contention between the Royal Sisters, as Celestia being the larger had not been able to accomplish the feat since she was a filly. Once when discussing it, Luna had memorably described her sister as ‘portly’ by accident, but the event would not be forgotten by those who had been there, neither would Celestia’s furious reaction. Late on some evenings when Luna and Twilight had been together at formal functions, the midnight Princess would invent some lame reason to be called away and excuse both herself and Twilight to fly through the corridors for the sheer joy it brought them. This had also become a tradition within the Castle of Friendship and had helped cement an already close bond between the two.

Now Twilight was running tight on time. All she needed was for Ember to arrive early and she would be completely caught off her guard, but she trusted Spike totally, and if he was worried, she knew she should be too. Spike in his turn had come to trust Twilight’s flying, having improved dramatically since her first faltering if not downright disastrous attempts following her coronation a few years ago. He hung on tightly as she turned corners by rolling over onto one wingtip that barely brushed the floor while the other pointed vertically up to the ceiling. It was just as well that Spike trusted her so completely with his safety.

The lilac Princess and her passenger were racing towards the two guards protecting the sealed room. They both stared with eyes wide as the Princess appeared to fly straight at them with a very focused look on her face, throwing them into a quandary as to how they should react. Fortunately that decision was taken away from them when the Princess came to an abrupt halt in mid-air and backwinged as she extended her legs gracefully to take her weight once more.
“Good morning, Sirs” she said nonchalantly as they were still regaining their composure, “I should like a quick look around inside please.”

One of the guards rattled the single key that looked lost on his oversized key ring and slid it into the lock, opening it for his Princess with due deference. She thanked them as she always did every guard for executing their duties, before walking in and lighting her horn dimly. Everything seemed quiet, then Spike stretched forward onto her neck and pointed.
“Over there, Twi” he whispered, “See them, roosting on the ceiling?”
“Yes Spike” she replied, ”Yes I do.”
She turned the light of her horn up a little more and studied the scene before her. There were most definitely bats, but her prime interest was for that of the portal. It all looked just as she had designed and built it. A quick check confirmed she had based its design on the correct assumptions and she shed a sigh of relief.

“I think we could use Fluttershy’s help here, Spike.”
Spike scratched his head and looked vaguely perplexed.
“So she can talk to them and find out how they got here, of course.”
“Of course” repeated Spike.
“Tell me” she asked, “They were here when you came in this morning, right?”
“Er, no. I saw them come through. Well, actually, I heard them first; us dragons have hearing that’s much more sensitive than yours. Then I saw them fly in.”
“So they came through from CHS in the daytime? But, they’re nocturnal …”
“Shall we go take a look?” suggested Spike hopefully, “Maybe our friends will be there and can help us?”
“No. No time, but I still think Fluttershy can help us out here. You and I are needed to welcome Princess Ember.”
Sadly, the two friends cast a reluctant eye over the room and its contents. The prospect of rushing around trying to catch the bats and getting covered in bat guano just before the Royal visit wasn’t appealing to either of them, so they left. Animals are Fluttershy’s thing recalled Twilight following some painful memories from her first Winter Wrap Up.

As she closed the door behind her, Twilight stopped and explained to the guards that they could expect a visitor later on, so that her shy friend wouldn’t be intimidated with a lot of questions from the imposing looking guards that might just be enough to send her running back home again. Then she turned to her number one assistant with a glint in her eye, “Want me to drop you off somewhere, Spike? That is of course if you’re up for another ride …”
The baby dragon smiled and nodded, happily allowing himself to be levitated into position onto her back once more and holding on tight before they took off again.