Canterlot stood still in the night.  Aside from the faint throbbing of dance music from the assorted nightclubs or the brisk clopping of hooves against pavement from the sparse populous out and about at the late hour, there was nothing out-of-place.  Most ponies were tucked away in their beds, resting from a long day’s work.  The light emanating from the the spherical, three-pronged street lanterns that dotted the streets in the high-end district offered a warm, safe feeling despite the time of day being one that usually brings to mind the word “unsafe.”

The silence was quickly broken by a shriek of terror from a rooftop. Atop a high-rise apartment complex, a pony was dangling over the edge.  The only thing keeping him up there was a black-clad pony with her entire body concealed, including goggles over her eyes concealing her eye color, wrapping her right foreleg around the other pony’s neck as the rest of his body hung there.  She didn’t appear to have a mane, and although nopony on the ground could see it, her tail was the only part of her exposed.  

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” the masked mare said in a creepily flat tone.  “Where is she?”

“OK!  OK!  I’ll talk!  J-just get me away from this ledge!” the dangling pony begged, desperately kicking his back hooves as if it could somehow prevent him from falling.

In one swift motion, the masked mare pulled up and threw the stallion back to the roof with such a force that he slid a ways away from where he landed.

“Do continue,” the masked mare prodded as she approached him.

“She… she’s in the train station loading docks!  The…the yellow crate!  With that old model Fluttershy on it!” he exclaimed, gasping for breath. “But you can’t get in there…” he continued, panting, “It’s locked with a code only my employer knows.”

“And who is your employer?” asked the masked mare.

“Hay if I know!” he retorted. “I only talked to him in letters!  He only signed as ‘Y’.”

“Fortunately for you, I believe you,” the mare replied. “Nightey night.”

The stallion was suddenly met with an intense shock of electricity after the masked mare’s hoof came into contact with his belly.  A loud, staccato clicking sound emanated from the hoof as a small arc of electricity lit up the front of the masked mare’s hoof.  He convulsed spasmodically and fell into the dark realm of unconsciousness. The masked mare removed her hoof from the stallion’s belly and placed her other hoof on the stallion’s neck and waited.  She could feel a faint, slow pulsating from the carotid artery.  Satisfied that her suit’s built-in stun gun was truly a less-lethal method of incapacitation, she stepped back, performed an about-face, and faced the ledge.  

Looking out, she could see that many of the lights in the buildings nearby were now illuminated, whereas just a minute ago, when she was holding the stallion off the edge, they were dark.  Small silhouettes of ponies stared back at her through them.  Below, a crowd of ponies was gathered at street level looking up.  She also noticed a contingency of the local police heading into the building in a tight formation.  Thinking that she probably could have handled extracting information in a more subtle manner, she took a few steps back and pressed a hoof to her shoulder.

“Bright Sky, this is Lowball Eight.  Package for you,” she said nonchalantly.  

A voice in her ear from a wireless earbud responded to her.  “Copy that Lowball Eight, Mailmare incoming,” a male voice replied, “RTB immediately.”

“Right away,” the masked mare confirmed in a whisper.  

Taking her hoof off the button embedded in her suit, she bounded away just as the police ponies managed to make their way to the rooftop where the now unconscious stallion lay.  Before anypony knew it, though, she was gone, disappearing into the night.  

.     .     .

The masked mare ran at full gallop down a back alley.  Aside from an almost-passed-out drunk here and there, nopony paid attention to the fact that there was a black-clad pony with blue goggles running through a narrow, dirty alleyway in the Government District.  Once the alleyway came to an end at a major thoroughfare, she planted her back hooves between her front hooves, keeping her front legs still and stiff, and skidded to a stop just before the alley ended.  

She couldn’t help but feel that her backside was dirty, even though it was covered with her suit.

I wouldn’t mind alleyways as shortcuts so much, she thought, if they weren’t filled to the brim with grime and dirt...

She sat there and let herself pant and catch her breath, head hanging as she felt her windpipe drying out.  

“No wonder all the ponies working the high-class cases are skinny...” she noted to herself, “they’re running across town all the time!”

Or maybe, her thoughts replied, they’re just looking the part, and not because they’re setting off alarms like that.

Oh shut up, the other half of her mind said, it was a good workout and I needed it!

It was true.  The cardio workout, while tiring, put her in a far more positive mindset than she usually had on most given nights.  Taking up this job was looking better and better as this night went on.

Plus, there were the fascinating pieces of technology she could mess around with.  Not the least of which were her goggles with built-in zoom lenses and an uplink to a vast database of information that could give her information for just about anything and everything.  She put her hoof to a small button on the side.  A sound wave graph appeared on her goggle display, showing a flat line.

“Initiate street map mode,” she said.  

The sound wave graph showed a visual representation of the command, and after a couple seconds of analyzing it, a set of words in light blue letters flashed in the middle of her field of vision:  “Command Confirmed.  Set Route Map?”

“Negative,” she replied.  

The message disappeared, and the outlines of the streets were suddenly illuminated to her eyes by the goggles’ software program.  The first thing the mare saw was the name of the street she was looking at.

“Harmony Road...” she read from the display, “...going West.”

As she mentally calculated the route she needed to take, she began undressing herself.  Since she could immediately discern that she would not be able to take alleyways the rest of the way to her destination, there could be no harm in just walking the streets like a regular pony who just so happened to be out late at night.

.     .     .

Out of the alleyway stepped a light grey pony adorned with a darker grey mane, violet eyes, and a pink treble clef cutie mark.  On her back she bore a set of saddlebags that appeared to be stuffed to full capacity.  The mare took a deep breath and began nonchalantly heading west down Harmony Road.  Octavia didn’t usually take this route, but she knew most of the streets in Canterlot to the point where she could nine times out of ten get to wherever she needed to go from just about anywhere. She crossed the street so her route hugged the more secure fencing of Galloping Park.  The small arches the fence’s black metal rods made at the top of the fence were calming to her.  Plus, the additional lamps that dotted not just the sidewalk, but the very ornate ones atop the cement pillars that interrupted the gate at fixed length intervals, gave Octavia the feeling of security that anypony could ask for at such a late hour, especially when travelling alone.  

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to deter a few ponies coming home from the nightclubs.  A pair of stallions, whose breaths reeked of cider and some other indiscernible hard liquor, approached her.  Octavia attempted to pretend that she didn’t notice them, but it was to no avail.  It didn’t help matters that the street lamps, dating back at least fifty years, cast an almost-orange light that gave the stallions a malicious look.  

“Excuse me,” one of the stallions, a dark blue brute of a pony began, “but ya know it ain’t safe to walk around here after dark by yourself...”

“I appreciate your concern,” Octavia responded, “but I can take care of myself, thank you very much.  

“Aw, look at her,” went the other, a burgundy stallion with a black mane whose breath almost made Octavia vomit at the alcohol content, “Hey, wait... she looks familiar...”

“You’re right!” noted the blue one. “She’s that fancy musician with the giant violin!”

Octavia rolled her eyes.  She thought even lowbrows like these would know what a cello was.  

“I’m flattered you’re such a fan of my work,” she mused, lacing her voice with sarcasm, “but I’m not interested in your bodyguard services tonight, nor am I giving you money for your next bottle of Everclear.  Now if you will kindly step to the side and let me-”

A burgundy hoof interrupted her conclusion as it slammed against the fence, forming a barrier.  Octavia closed her eyes in frustration.

“How polite,” the burgundy one noted, “but there are only two things that will make us go away...”

“Fine!  Fine!” exclaimed Octavia in frustration. “Just... just give me a second, OK?”

Slowly, the burgundy stallion let down his hoof.  Octavia eyed him and moved to rummage through her saddlebags’ contents.  After searching around for a second, she whirled her head around with a strange-looking black device in her mouth.  With a squeeze from her jaw, and before either of the inebriated ponies could react, two prongs connected by a wire flew through the air, hitting the burgundy pony, the closer one to Octavia, in the neck.  Electricity sparked between the prongs as the pony experienced a series of spasms and collapsed to the ground.  

The blue pony took a second to register what happened, but lowered his head and scraped the ground with his hoof, challenging Octavia.  Lacking the time to reload, she spat out the civilian-model taser and returned the gesture.  Rather clumsily, the dark blue pony charged the cellist, yet she remained still.  As the stallion closed the distance, Octavia merely blinked and sidestepped the pony just as physical contact was about to occur.  The stallion began to fly past Octavia, only beginning to try and stop himself as the high-class cellist took a sideways step towards the blundering pony and swung the weight of her body to the side, colliding with the charging stallion.  It wasn’t a whole lot of force, but it was enough to cause the inebriated pony to veer off course and clumsily crash head-on into one of the fence’s cement posts just behind her.  His face remained planted against the cement pillar for a few seconds before he fell to the ground, out cold.  

Octavia exhaled.  “Some ponies,” she said to herself as she rolled her eyes and leisurely continued on her way.  

.     .     .

The rest of the walk went by uneventfully after her encounter with two would-be muggers.  And before she knew it, Octavia found herself looking at Canterlot Castle, home and seat of power of the two Princesses.  She smiled at the castle, her destination, and tapped her hoof on the perimeter gate’s padlock.  

“Octavia, L-Eight,” she said.

The magic padlock opened itself, and the gate swung outward.  Octavia stepped back a few paces to allow the gate to open before she briskly trotted in as the gate quickly closed behind her.  Although it was dark outside, the castle was lit up dimly, but beautifully.  Many of the lights were magical apparitions that illuminated areas in ways that were not feasible for traditional lamps, but a few physical lamps were on the ground, shining upwards to create beams of light along the spires, not to mention casting beautiful shadows along the way.  Octavia was too close to see the full spectacle that all the lights created, but even at her close proximity, she saw that the subtle lighting gave it a serene look of being asleep, or at rest.  It was a nice contrast to the times the castle held large, public events, when it was lit so brightly that every facet of the structure could be seen in vivid clarity even at the late hour of events like the Grand Galloping Gala.

Upon reaching the castle’s main gate, she turned to the right, as the gate was not her destination.  Rather, she headed to a small niche in the wall that appeared to be a public restroom for visiting hours.  While it certainly did perform that function during visiting hours, its primary purpose changed once the visitors left.  Upon opening the door, Octavia stepped inside and remained still as the door closed behind her.  The darkness engulfed her, as there were no lights or windows in this room.  It was so pitch-black that she would not even see her hooves in front of her face, but she remained calm.  The cellist took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and recited what she had practiced for months almost as if it was a piece for a large recital.

“Code six-six-nine-three.  Lowball-class agent number eight requesting entry.”

Without warning, she was engulfed in a bright green flash of light.  When the flash faded, and the cellist’s eyes adjusted, she found herself in a room covered in immaculate white, where ponies dressed in lab coats hurried from one area to another, working on the latest in espionage technology and magic.  Everywhere Octavia looked, there was a table where unicorns were levitating pieces of some seemingly normal appliance and welding something into it, or a completed prototype of something was being tested.  One pony in a corner was testing what looked to be an impervious suit that was deflecting everything from a dart to a thrown axe.  In a more central section of the room, a pegasus pony was flying in between a circle of sensors and suddenly became invisible for a few seconds as ponies on the ground were furiously jotting down notes.  Closer to the cellist, there was another pony dressed in a black suit similar to the one she wore not too long ago gearing up and preparing for a mission.  

One pony in a lab coat, the supervisor, approached her.  He was a brown Earth pony with a darker brown mane in a small Mohawk-like style, who simply went by “Doc,” whose cutie mark was an hourglass.

“There you are!” he greeted her. “We were getting worried that that guy had gotten the best of you!”

Octavia chuckled.  “What, just because I’m the new mare on the team you think I’m also the worst?” she quipped.

“Oh not at all!” replied Doc. “Just that we placed your odds of success as… not in your favor.”

“I was never much for numbers, anyway,” she replied, glancing at her cutie mark.  

“Gee, I never would’ve guessed, Octavia,” replied Doc sarcastically, “but nevertheless, despite your tardiness, we’re glad you got the job done!  Now, where did he say he was holding the VIP?”

“He gave me a surprisingly specific location,” Octavia replied, removing her suit from her saddlebags and throwing it into a nearby laundry basket. “A specific yellow crate in the cargo train station.  Said it’s locked with a code only his mysterious, unknown employer knows.”

“Well that shouldn’t prove to be much of a problem,” Doc said optimistically.  “Most of those crates are black or varying shades of brown!  And to top it all off, you’ll have that image of a yellow crate fresh in your mind while you’re looking for it!”

Octavia sighed, “I’m not getting a break until she’s here safely, am I?”

“Nope!” Doc replied happily.  “You can sleep when you’re dead, missy!  Now, you’ll be getting a little something before you go on the last leg of your mission...” he continued, motioning with his hoof for one of the other scientist ponies to bring something over, “This, my dear, is our new and improved lock-pick suit!” he explained as the assistant’s unicorn magic floated it over to them. “We’ve enchanted it with a spell one of our top mages developed so it will manipulate a lock until it opens on its own!” he explained as his unicorn assistant demonstrated the ability on a mock-up of a fully-functional bank door, except with a giant keyhole instead of a combination lock.  

“All you have to do is place your left hoof on the lock and let it work its magic!” Doc explained as the demonstration proceeded.   The left hoof of the suit pressed against the keyhole, and with a few clicking sounds, the door opened on its own.  “And as always, stun gun in the right hoof, communicator earpiece, uplink goggles, built-in gas mask, all that good stuff!” he concluded as the unicorn assistant ended the demonstration and floated the suit over to Octavia, laying it across her back.  “Also, we’ll assemble a small task force of a few Royal Guards to come in just in case things go awry.  Now go take a shower before you get going, that guy you interrogated must drench himself in cologne each morning…” he added, “and Celestia knows we don’t want the baddies smelling your presence ten blocks away!”

Octavia took a whiff of the air and noticed that her olfactory senses detected an unusually large quantity of high-end cologne.

“Such a waste of Colt Armani...” she mused to herself as she headed to the showers.

As Octavia showered, she put on her favorite classical music station on the bathroom’s radio.  To her great pleasure, they were playing one of her favorite pieces: Neighvaldi’s “Winter” section of “The Four Seasons.” Aside from scrubbing her foreleg until the smell of the stallion’s fragrance was diminished to where she couldn’t notice it, she mostly stayed still as she took in the sounds of two violins, a cello, and a harpsichord emulating the sounds of winter with an allegretto pace.  It was a contrasting, yet relaxing experience to coincide with the hot, cleansing water in which she immersed herself.  Although she was outside not five minutes ago, she briefly believed that it was snowing outside.  

However, knowing time was of the essence, she was unable to enjoy the full three movements of “Winter” and shut off the radio once the first movement ended, breaking her out of her trance-like state.  As she proceeded to dry off and get dressed, she thought back to her home where her cello sat waiting for her, and where she also decided to take up this new job.

.     .    .

Three months and one week ago, the world-class cellist finished up her latest performance in a Baroque quartet, playing an assortment of works by the period’s lesser-known composers.  But although it was the end of a surprisingly successful string of performances, it ended up the same as every other night; Octavia stood alone in her apartment playing the number-one cello part to a favorite piece of hers, while a full orchestra recording of that piece played on her high-end surround sound system.  As she finished the piece, she paused a few moments, to allow the proper feeling to end the piece.  Waiting a few moments after a more somber piece like the one she just played was something that appeared to be at a loss to audiences these days, as they usually applauded the moment the piece ended, rather than wait a moment or two to allow the emotion in the pieces settle in as the piece ended.  But she never failed to wait at least three beats before she began putting her instrument away.  And then she lay in her bed.  It wasn’t unusual for her to be in bed at this hour, but there was the fact that she didn’t even remember putting anything away or walking to her bed.  She just found herself there.

Wait... she thought, how did I get here?

Alarmed, she sprang from her bed and trotted to the living room area of her apartment.  Everything was in place.  

“Did I just... do that without thinking?” she wondered aloud, walking towards the area on the shelf where she left her bow.  She surprisingly found the shelf space surrounding it covered with dust, except for the bow itself.  Upon lifting it up for closer inspection, she found that there was a perfect outline of the bow in the dust on the shelf below it.

“Wow,” she said, “I haven’t deviated an iota from something so simple as putting this away, I’ve done it so many times…” she mused, but then stopped.  Her eyes shrank, leaving a large white void in most of the surface area of her eyeballs, and her breathing began to shudder.  

“Oh sweet Celestia...” she gasped, “I’m turning into a robot!”  

It took Octavia quite some time of nervous shaking while hugging her tail to recover from the shocking revelation.  Of all the things she didn’t want to happen to her, the biggest concern was something becoming so repetitive that she could do it without any conscious effort.  It wasn’t just the bow that bothered her, but the fact that it was just the first symptom she noticed of what could only be an even bigger, underlying problem that had clearly been festering for quite some time.

What am I doing?  she thought, I’ve always wanted this life... the big music halls, playing all the classics, the nice paycheck... but something’s missing!

“What could possibly be missing?” she responded aloud, frustrated, “This is only what I’ve been working towards my entire life!  And now I’ve got it!  For the love of Celestia, I even got to play alongside Yo-Yo Mane!” she exclaimed, “Not to mention the ten thousand bit paycheck in the mail!  I’ve got everything just about anypony in the music world could ask for!”

Silence ensued for a few minutes as she crawled over to the nearby couch to hold her face in her hooves.

And yet... her thoughts concluded, it’s still not enough.

Upon removing her hooves from her face, Octavia noticed they had moisture on them.  She was beginning to feel that just-about-to-cry sensation for the past five minutes, she realized.  Figuring there was no use in squelching it, she just let the tears flow.  And flow they did; all that went through her head was how plain and ordinary her life was feeling for the past few years.  Not that she was expecting to be mobbed on the street like the celebrities that are hounded by the paparazzi all the time, but she had at least felt that there would be something interesting happening at regular intervals.  To Octavia, it was more along the lines of, “Play this concert here, play that exact same piece over here six more times, practice, then play the same piece for this event over in this town.”  As much as she loved the music she played, the repetition of the same thing, with the only difference being where she played them, made many of the pieces she once adored become rather stale.  

And then there were the attendees to her concerts.  Octavia had a particular bone to pick with the attendees she kept seeing and meeting; they were shallower than the little foals’ swimming pool.  Everything they did was almost always to secure their place in high society and/or to make sure they don’t fall out of favor with their peers.  They’d probably take up BASE-jumping if they thought it could keep their places among the social elite!  The few that were actually capable of independent thought basically served as the heads of their collective conscience.  If they think it’s fashionable, or they like it, then everyone else likes it, too, even if everyone else was bashing it not two seconds ago.  It was for such a reason Octavia suspected was why so many fashionable ponies came to classical concerts so often, even if they were going to see the same exact performance.  Did they even know or care about the history of classical music?  Did they even know who Neighvaldi was or why he’s famous?  

Probably not, she thought as she continued to sob heavily into her hooves.  In a brief flash of fury, she got off the couch and harshly bucked it.  Considering the natural strength of earth ponies and the fact that Octavia had spent a good portion of her life standing on her hind legs to play the cello, she was surprised that it didn’t break in half from the kick alone.  It did, however, slide to the other end of the room and come crashing into the wall, no doubt waking up her neighbors.  She didn’t dwell on it for longer than a half second, though.  She quickly curled up on the floor, her face in her hooves, and continued quietly sobbing on the floor.

As the entirety of the crying spell subsided after a good fifteen minutes or so, Octavia realized that she felt refreshingly awake, alert, and calm, despite the late hour.  

“Wow, that must’ve built up for a while...” she mused to herself as she sniveled a few times and went for a tissue to tidy up her face, “I should stop bottling all that up...  It’s clearly not healthy,” she added as she wiped her face and hooves clean of everything that tends to accumulate on one’s face during an intense crying spell.  Once she finished, she trotted to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.

“OK, Octavia...” she said to herself, “You need to change something.  What you’re doing here is clearly not working to your psychological benefit.”

But I love playing the cello... it’s been my life’s work to play as good as I can now! her mind protested, I’m not giving it up!

“I’m not saying give it up...” she added, “...but what if I add something?  I mean, what’s messing with me is the monotony, sameness, and shallowness.  I need to clear it all out!”

And just how can you do that by playing the cello?  I mean, recording a charity album would be very noble of you, but...

“Good idea, but not what I was thinking,” she said, “though I just may do that at some point... but that’s beside the point!  What I need to do is… is change… something!”

But what if it wasn’t just one thing you needed to rework?  her conscience suggested, what if it was the world… what if it was Equestria, or on a smaller scale, Canterlot, as you know it?

“Well, I defer to your original question, then, how the hay do I do that with my current profession?”

I’m working on it, her conscience concluded, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly legal, honest means of doing so.  I’ll think of something.

It took her a week to come to a solid decision, but ultimately, she decided to join the Equestrian Spy Service, or ESS, a section of Princess Luna’s Royal Service.  Octavia was accepted into their ranks after an intense background check and a three-month training course, and was immediately put under the command of the ESS’ Office of High Society Affairs.  She was immediately seen as an asset due to her being able to get into high society events that the ESS found difficult to infiltrate, and that she frequently got in close proximity to high society individuals who always had a way of eluding the ESS.  

.     .     .

Upon donning the black suit and blue goggles, Octavia, code-named “Lowball Eight,” climbed into the back of a cargo carriage sitting in the Canterlot Castle loading dock.  As soon as she gave the signal by stomping her hoof on the floor, the unmarked carriage was off.  The ride was uneventful except for what she saw outside the carriages’ one-way window.  She first saw a scene of a few ponies gathered around the unconscious bodies of the thugs she had fended off earlier, and later on, passing the high-rise apartment complex, the crowds had begun to dissipate as some of the Royal Guards seemed to be assuring everypony that the crime scene was cleaned up and there was nothing left to see.  She smiled to herself at her hoofwork and switched her attention to the train station that was fast approaching.  She was already realizing that the life of a spy was far less classy than what movies and novels tended to portray, but she knew she couldn’t stop now.  She went through too much training and too much effort to quit so soon.  Besides, she was doing something she had always wanted to do; make a difference.  

The pony of interest for this mission was a prominent DJ known as Vinyl Scratch, who had been kidnapped two days prior.  While not exactly the kind of high society pony Octavia had expected to deal with, (Octavia guessed this mission was more a test of her reliability and skill should a mission turn south) the DJ still carried immense social influence and was a public icon of the indie music scene.  The sudden and unexplained kidnapping of Vinyl Scratch was all over the newspapers from the moment word got out.  Ponies everywhere were frightened over the fate of their beloved DJ and worried over who could be next.  But now that Octavia was here, she would put those fears to rest.  Nopony would ever know she did it, but she would accomplish something.  A silent achievement where she could take solace in knowing that she had turned the tables for the better.  She already found out where the DJ was from the pony who was by now probably waking up in an interrogation chamber somewhere in Canterlot’s dungeons.  Now, Octavia was off to rescue her.

Before she knew it, the carriage had stopped, and a tap on the roof from the driver indicated it was time to go.  Quietly, she adjusted the door lever and pushed it open, revealing a very unremarkable warehouse.  It was dark, dimly lit, a single story tall, and severely unkempt from years of neglecting to clean the exterior.  Although the doors remained open in case of a last-minute late-night delivery, the particular yellow crate she was seeking was not immediately visible.  However, knowing what it looked like, she didn’t think it would take too long to find it.  As silently as her padded horseshoes would allow, she crept in the shadows towards one of the smaller, less obvious side doors her goggles pointed out.

Once she crept through the suspiciously ajar doorway into the warehouse’s overseer office, which was thankfully empty, she took the time to scan the area through her uplink goggles.

“Detect life signs,” she whispered.

The view through the goggles became darker, but in exchange, it outlined every life form larger than a mouse within a hundred yards in bright yellow.  The first thing she noticed was that there were far more security guards patrolling the warehouse than there really needed to be after hours.  There were at least forty in the vicinity, whereas normal protocol, according to her uplink goggles, stipulated that there should be about twenty after dark.

The one out-of-place thing she noticed was that, in the distance, she found a pony lying down, apparently in the sleeping posture.  Considering what everyone else was doing, it could have only been the VIP Octavia was looking for.

“Set waypoint,” the agent said, “and detect armaments,” she added.

In red, the goggles set a blinking dot at the point where the sleeping pony was situated, having tracked her eyes and determined that they were focused on the sleeping pony, and at the same time outlined the various weapons the guards were carrying, and it became very clear to Octavia that they were definitely not standard dock security.  Armed not only with flashlights and batons, but also very deadly weapons, such as knives, stun batons, and even a few firearms.  Not to mention the presence of a few unicorns, who could be trained to execute Celestia-knows how many offensive and defensive spells ranging from relatively harmless to completely lethal.  According to the warehouse’s schedule she began to access through her goggle uplink, there wasn’t supposed to be anything especially valuable going through here for another three weeks, so she knew that being prepared for deadly force was excessive, and therefore not the security guards on this dock’s payroll.  Carefully, she tread outside of the office into the main storage space.  Her padded hooves muffled the otherwise audible hoof clops as she took one step at a time towards the waypoint, searching around to avoid guards along the way.

Wherever the crate was, it was clearly well hidden.  These guards seemed to be much more intelligent than your run-of-the-mill guard ponies, as they didn’t form an unnecessary protective barrier around the crate itself, but rather kept a normal patrol of the entire warehouse, but with greater numbers than was necessary.  It effectively obscured the exact location, or even the general area of the crate.  Octavia, having studied up on typical approaches to security during basic training, admired the out-of-the-box method these guards were employing.  If anyone else tried to rescue the DJ without knowing what the specific crate looked like, they would be completely lost, and would never find her.  Besides, what average Joe pony would suspect someone of hiding a high-value hostage in a crate that stood out as much as a yellow one situated amongst brown and grey crates?  Fortunately, Octavia’s high-tech goggles and acquired information did away with the arduous process of searching every aisle and corridor for the appropriate crate.

Fortunately for the rookie Lowball-class agent, the warehouse’s layout afforded her many hiding places to conceal herself from the roaming eyes of the guard ponies.  Plus, her all-black suit allowed her to curl up into a ball in an obscure, dark corner that allowed her to blend in with the shadows, especially the ones cast by both flashlights and magically illuminated unicorn horns.  Plenty of corners situated behind a pony’s field of vision as he went about his route allowed for plenty of places to hide if she couldn’t find a way to avoid a particular pony altogether.  She took some of these breaks in sneaking to observe the patrol patterns of each of the guards, especially the ones near the sleeping hostage.  It turned out that while the general layout of the guards was clever, their patrol routes were very regular and deviated little.  Most of them consisted of circles, while others consisted of walking half the length of a corridor, making a ninety-degree turn, walking half the length of an aisle, and then about-facing to do the same in reverse.  After wandering in the general direction of the VIP for about ten minutes, and hiding from at least six guard ponies along the way, she had the patrols of the guard ponies situated on the route she intended to take memorized, and set her mind on the course.

The seven additional guards on the route to Vinyl Scratch’s holding crate for the most part were easily avoided.  All she had to do was hide in a corner positioned behind their field of vision, and they never thought to check behind them.  Once they patrolled a safe distance away, Octavia could just sneak out of the corner and tiptoe towards where the guard just came from.  The only problem she encountered was the last guard, who had a simple back-and-forth patrol in front of Vinyl Scratch’s yellow-painted crate, which she could just barely get a glimpse of from her sidelong view from the end of the aisle.   This was something she could not avoid; she had to take the guard out to successfully liberate the VIP without being detected.

The light brown earth pony got comfortable in her hiding spot, took a deep breath, and planned out her course of action.

OK, she thought. Unicorn pony.  Not especially strong, but very dangerous all the same.  He could set off an alarm or alert others with a simple thought.  This needs to be fast.  First, I’ll approach from behind and cover the mouth.  This will shock and prolong reaction time as well as sufficiently muffle a cry for help.  Second, hoof to cranium.  That should daze, confuse, and with luck, knock out.  Failing that, I’ll employ… Octavia paused in her thoughts and contemplated for a second.  Stun gun?  No, too loud.  Looks like the only choice is the sleeper hold.  For a unicorn, this shouldn’t be too difficult…

The thoughts swirled in her mind as she took another deep breath as the unicorn guard approached her position.  She curled up as he walked a few meters past her position, stopped, and then turned around to return.  Octavia shifted her position so she wouldn’t get caught in the light coming from a different direction.

Unfortunately, her nerves got the better of her, and she made just enough noise from her movement to cause the guard to pause and gingerly approach the darkened corner.

Ponyfeathers, she thought to herself.

Just as the light from the unicorn guard’s horn revealed the form of the black-clad earth pony, Octavia leapt up to stand on all fours, her backside facing the guard as she reared up her hind legs and bucked the guard in the nose.  Fortunately, he only let out a muffled and surprised gasp as he stumbled backwards and fell on his back, affording the secret agent to turn around and leap on top of the disoriented guard and put a hoof over his mouth as he started to struggle and let out muffled cries for help.  Lacking the time to try anything else, she used all her strength to hold the guard’s head down with her right hoof, and applied pressure to a spot on the head just below the horn on the forehead.  It stimulated the unicorn’s small, unprotected nerve clusters just beneath the horn just enough to quickly shock him into unconsciousness.

Octavia quickly thanked her parents for putting her through all of the cello training that afforded her a strong right foreleg and a left foreleg attuned to a great degree of finesse, allowing this move to work out as flawlessly as the last time she practiced it during training.  She quickly hoisted the body on her back as she lightly trotted to the same corner where she was hiding not one minute ago, and stored the body there. Still worried that she may have caused noise, she scanned the area with her goggles, still on “detect life” mode.  The nearest guard was stopped in a spot in the middle of his patrol route, not at the usual point where he should stop during a normal patrol.  Octavia’s heart began pounding.  She looked behind her, and noticed that the guard in the aisle behind her was doing the same thing.  Not even daring to think, she quickly shuffled towards the crate, where her goggles still had a waypoint set, and set her left hoof to the easily visible combination lock.  As she got to the appropriate crate, the waypoint disappeared and she noticed that the crate she was looking at was indeed yellow and depicted the short-lived supermodel, Fluttershy, on the top-right corner.

The dial turned in alternating directions, even under the excessive pressure her hoof was placing on it, until it stopped suddenly, and the lever below it angled downwards and made a scarily loud -CLACK-, causing Octavia to panic as she hastily opened the door and peered inside.  There, curled up in a ball, was a white-coated pony with an electric blue mane, sporting a cutie mark depicting a backwards-facing pair of sixteenth notes.  Groggily, she lifted her head.

“Whadda you want…?” she began to say, slowly opening her eyes, but her eyes shot open upon seeing the masked pony staring back at her, instead of whoever her captor was.  Her red irises were dark, but still visible even in the relative darkness of the current setting.  “Wha… who are you?” she whispered.

“No time,” Octavia replied. “Just stay quiet and hop on my back.  I’m getting you out of here!”

“On your back…?  I’m not a damsel in distress, lady, I can take care of myself quite well thank you very much!” the DJ retorted.

“Vinyl Scratch!  Shut up or you’re going to get us both killed!” Octavia replied in a terse whisper. “I have padding in my shoes to go silently!  You don’t!  If you don’t get on my back you could blow this whole rescue operation sky high!”

“Uh…” began the white mare, but was cut off suddenly by a deep male voice behind Octavia.

“It appears you already have…” it said slowly.  

Octavia whirled around, and before she could even to see who it was or what her surroundings were, she landed a blow to the chest with her right hoof, engaging the stun gun.  With a spastic shudder, the pony slumped to the ground, unconscious and with a burn mark by his left shoulder joint.  The horns of the four unicorn guards behind him immediately began glowing as their eyes narrowed, focusing on the intruder.

“This way!  Follow me!” shouted Octavia as she turned and ran past Scratch.  

Vinyl Scratch followed without hesitation, and followed Octavia’s lead by running in a zigzag pattern to foil the guard’s aiming with their spells.  Spells crashed and destroyed crates and sections of the cement floor around them as they raced down the corridors of crates.  Vinyl was keeping up well considering her relatively groggy and weakened state, although Octavia did have to stop a few times to wait for her to catch up.  It did result in a few close calls, with Vinyl’s blue mane getting singed more times than either mare would have liked given the situation, but by and large, they kept a good pace ahead of their pursuers.

Octavia began to retrace her path through the warehouse, finding it to be the easiest path out as opposed to finding an entirely new route.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” Vinyl asked as she ran fast enough to run alongside the agent.

“I got in here, didn’t I?” Octavia responded.

“Yeah, but nopony noticed you coming in!” she replied. “Now that everypony in five miles-“

Suddenly, out of a perpendicular corridor, another security pony appeared to catch up with them, and leapt at them to tackle the two mares to the ground.  Without even thinking, and allowing her training to take over, she eyed a spot on the ground she was fast approaching.  In one swift movement, she planted her left hoof on the spot and drastically shifted her weight to the right.  The momentum of her running was redirected to the right, causing the rear end of her body to rotate out to the right.  As this happened, she extended her rear hooves out straight behind her and pressed them together.  The hooves quickly came into contact with the guard pony’s face, knocking him to the side, still in midair, causing him to go spinning out of control as he crashed into the crate just behind the fleeing mares.  As Octavia's body completed a 180-degree rotation, she switched the pivot point from her left hoof to her right hoof and allowed the momentum to continue to rotate counterclockwise.  Upon completing a full 360-degree rotation, she put her remaining three hooves down and continued running at full gallop as soon as she landed.  

Vinyl Scratch almost stopped at the martial arts spectacle the masked mare had just performed.  She was about to say something, but she dared not throw off her steady breathing pace to speak her amazement.  

Octavia didn’t pay her much attention as she continued to run.  Out in the approaching open air, she saw the transport carriage back into view from the left side of the doorway.  The back doors of the transport opened.  

“Miss Scratch!” she shouted. “Head for the carriage!  Get into the back!”

The blue and white pony didn’t hesitate as she used the last of her energy to bolt towards the carriage, Octavia running close by.  A few bolts of electricity magic exploded against the side of the carriage, spraying electric bolts every which way on the generic siding, but leaving the carriage itself intact.  With another three spells narrowly missing their intended targets, the two mares leapt into the back.

Octavia slammed her hoof to the floor of the metal interior of the carriage as Vinyl Scratch used her magic to close the doors as quickly, and as loudly as possible.  The ponies pulling the carriage galloped off as the sounds of ponies chasing them continued behind them.

The sounds of the magic projectiles hitting the exterior resonated throughout the interior space, but the two mares on the inside were too out-of-breath from running to pay them much mind.  Vinyl Scratch was more so than Octavia, but she clearly had enough energy to look up to the masked mare even though she continued to clutch her stomach.  

"Ah.. hey..." she began, "Thanks.  ... For saving me," she panted, "I really thought... I was a goner there."

Octavia smiled in response, but realizing the other mare couldn't see it through her mask, she simply nodded.

"My pleasure," she responded, "all in a day's work..." she added.

A silence ensued.  The two remained panting, but once it wore off, the two lay down on the benches on either side of the carriage's interior and looked at each other.  

"So," Octavia began, "I need to ask you, do you know why you were taken hostage?"

"Why is that your business?"

"Hey!" the agent shouted, "I just saved your flank back there!  Now do you want to me to figure out who did this and bring him to justice or not?"

The DJ quickly became silent and taken aback.  Clearly she wasn't used to others talking back to her.  

"Uh..." she began, this time in a more modest tone, "I think it had something to do with one of my tracks..."

"Wait, wait..." Octavia interrupted, "you're telling me that someone kidnapped you because they didn't like one of your music tracks?"

"Have you heard it?" Vinyl asked.

"No," she responded, "I'm a classical music pony, thank you very much."

"Lowball Eight!" shouted a voice over Octavia's earpiece, "Shut your trap right now!  Do you want to compromise your identity?"

Octavia pressed her hoof to the communication button on her shoulder.  "Sorry," she said.

Vinyl Scratch didn't seem to notice, and continued talking.

"See, I asked a few of my vocalist buddies to record themselves screaming," she continued, "I was going for a darker feel to my latest album, and the climax of the whole thing was going to be this big, epic track simulating an apocalyptic scenario.  You know, the end of days and all that?  It's entirely instrumental, so nopony’s singing about how it’s the end, but the feel is definitely there.  The screaming of the vocalists was to add to the feeling, and a few of my critics felt that ponies screaming in fear in the name of music crossed a few lines."

"And how does that have to do with your kidnapping?" Octavia asked.

"I got, like, three really angry notes," Vinyl replied, "but one of them in particular stood out, now that I think of it... one of them told me to not be surprised if somepony decides to 'whip me into shape,' so my music becomes 'more pure,'" she explained, gesturing with her hooves to indicate quotation marks when she quoted the letter.

"I sure hope you didn't throw that letter away," Octavia mused.

Vinyl blushed and pretended to scratch the back of her head.  "Eh... it might... still be in the trash can in my room..." she stammered.  

Octavia rolled her eyes.  "Well, wherever it is, keep it as evidence when we bring the guy in.  I'm sure the Royal Guards are going to arrest him in a few minutes."

"Few minutes?" Vinyl exclaimed, "we were out in the middle of freaking nowhere in the middle of the night!  Who-?"

"...There was a contingency of them standing in wait a ways away waiting for this carriage to speed past them," Octavia explained, "I suspect by now they've fought their way through the henchponies and are chasing after the ringleader.  I'm willing to bet that he'll be caught in time for the morning paper headlines," she concluded matter-of-factly.  

Vinyl's eyes widened at how certain her rescuer was of her captor being caught.  It wasn't the same sort of certainty that some ponies had when some of her fans would come up to her and say they want to be a DJ just like her some day, and yet never hear from them again, or the threats other musicians would make, boasting that they would overtake her in terms of popularity that turned out to be so empty that they crashed and burned after their next album because of their big heads.  No, this pony knew what she was talking about.  Both confidence and actual skill in one’s craft didn’t always go hoof-in-hoof.  Especially in matters like this, where ponies were usually more pessimistic about their expectations.  To see a pony this confident that the forces of good were on the up and up, especially after saving her the way she just was, got the wheels in her head turning, much like they were when she thought up a new album.

.     .     .

Upon arriving at the base without another word, Scratch and Octavia stepped off, and Scratch was whisked away by a group of ponies in coat-and-tie attire to where Octavia guessed was the hostage recovery room: a makeshift hospital area where hostages would attempt to re-adjust to normal life.  Octavia didn't think that Vinyl would need that, or at least not for long due to how she was behaving in the carriage on the way over.  

The classical musician-turned-spy was met with considerably less fanfare, but she really didn't mind.  She wasn't looking to be made a hero or anything, just wanted to make a difference.  And doing so while remaining anonymous was something she was quite willing to accept.  All she wanted to do now was go home, play her cello, and get some sleep.  

.     .     .

Arriving home, Octavia found herself weary, sore, and wanting nothing more than to go crash straight on the bed.  She already was aware that since she began working with the ESS, she's had less nights where she had been able to play even a brief piece on her cello before going to bed.  It had often served as a sort of lullaby for her, but sheer exhaustion was slowly replacing the means by which the musician would get to sleep.  

"No," she said to herself, "not tonight."

She was determined to celebrate her victory this night.  She splashed her face with some cold water from the faucet in her kitchen and marched to her waiting cello case, already open, waiting for its player.  With a determination she hadn't felt in quite some time, she stood up the instrument, stood on her back hooves, balanced herself against the large instrument, picked up the bow from a nearby shelf, and began to tune.  

The A and D strings were a bit too sharp, but a brief tweaking with the tuning pegs fixed those.  The cellist raised her bow to the strings, closed her eyes, counted off the beat in her head, and began playing with an intensity she hadn't felt since the last time she and an orchestra played Bethoofen's 9th Symphony.  And that was exactly what she played; or at least, an adapted version where a cellist plays the recognizable melody in a solo version of the last movement.  She didn't exactly feel like turning on her stereo system so she could play accompaniment, now.  It wasn't like she needed to, anyway.  She knew this symphony so well that the accompanying parts played in her head automatically whenever she felt like playing this.  But this time, she wanted to go solo.  She did this last mission on her own, and she wanted to celebrate her triumph over the odds.  What better way, she thought, than to play Ode to Joy?  Accompaniment be damned, this was her time to shine.

As she reached the end of the piece, she repeated it.  And then she repeated it again.  And again.  She lost count of how many times she repeated the iconic, forte finale of Bethoofen's 9th, but by the time she completed it for the last time, she opened her eyes to find tears of joy had moistened her cheeks.  She was also sniveling a little bit, but it clearly hadn't disrupted her playing.  She was absolutely certain she didn't miss a single note the entire time.  She gingerly set down her cello in the case and placed the bow back where she found it before she walked to her bed and flopped down, falling into deep REM sleep in minutes.