The door to Twilight's quarters softly slid open, allowing her into the dark confines. The overheads automatically illuminated when the door closed, causing light to stream across the slumbering Spike and waking him. Stretching his back casually, he clicked his sharp claws on the foot of the bed and opened his mouth wide in a jaw-cracking yawn. Waking routine finished, he clambered down from the mattress and moved to twine himself around his mistress' legs. Twilight absentmindedly scratched behind the dragon's ears for a few moments before stepping over him and moving over to her closet.

Her hands moved quickly, removing her robe and deftly picking out a new outfit. There was no hesitation in her movements, no moment of indecision or inability to find exactly what she wanted. Her collection of clothing was perfectly arranged, just like the rest of her small apartment. A place for everything and everything in its place.

That being the case, she did not simply leave the robe where it had fallen, but instead picked it up and put it in with the rest of the dirty laundry to be washed by the palace attendants later. The fact that she had only put it on shortly before she had gone to see the Queen and could not have possibly gotten it dirty in any way did not deter her in the slightest.

While her new outfit was not as pleasingly ascetic, it was more functional for the traveling that would have to be done. Light but sturdy boots, rugged cargo pants, lightly armored jacket, and a gear harness strapped around her waist, filled with many small tools that she might not need but would be sore to be without if they were. A quick check in the full length mirror next to the closet showed her that everything was adequately squared away.

And, though it didn't truly matter, she had to admit it looked good on her as well. The predominant color of her clothing matched that of the darker purple stripe that ran through her hair, and it had a vaguely military cut to it that appealed to her orderly sensibilities. All that she needed to finish it off was the pair of gloves that she pulled out of her bedside nightstand and slipped onto her hands.

As she began packing a small bag with various necessities for the road, Spike watched her every move and lightly clicked his teeth together from time to time. Finally unable to contain himself any longer, he broke the silence between them.

"Hey, we going somewhere?"

Twilight's head snapped up, and the somewhat irritated look she'd had on her face since she'd entered the room became even further clouded. "You know we are, Spike," she said, then went back to her furious packing.

"Well, yeah," he admitted as he rubbed the back of his neck. "They dropped off the info cube while you were out. I went ahead and ate it, and . . . "

"And?"

" . . . aaaaaand I think it's a good idea?"

The snort that tore its way out of Twilight's nostrils was immediate, loud, and obviously heartfelt in the extreme. Spike fell silent for a few moments while he gathered up the courage to speak again.

"I mean, you really are stuck in here or the lab most of the time," he said. "It'll be good for you to get out and, y'know, get to know some other people."

"This isn't a social visit, Spike. It's not a play date. It is an important mission assigned to me by the Queen herself." She sealed the bag and slung it over her shoulder. "We've got a job to do, and we're going to do it, with or without whatever soldiers Celestia may have assigned to me. Preferably without."

"Er . . . " Spike tapped two of his metallic talons together nervously.

Twilight narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What?" she asked, her voice suddenly hard as stone.

"Well, see, it's just . . . they aren't soldiers," Spike told her, shrugging his shoulders. "They're kind of . . . being paid to do this."

As Spike's voice trailed off, Twilight's ire turned to something more akin to grim annoyance. "Mercenaries."

"Right."

"We don't need that scum."

"Yes," Spike unconvincingly conceded, then quickly amended, "but! And I shouldn't actually be telling you this, but Celestia's orders on the cube were pretty explicit that I'm supposed to try and steer you toward meeting up with them anyway. Not actually taking them on for the job!" He held up his hands placatingly before Twilight could interrupt. "Just . . . meet up with them is all. Feel them out. See what you think.

"And y'know," he said, "they might not be so bad! I hear they're doing a lot of great things in the mercenary field these days. Soldiers for hire are supposed to be real professionals now!"

Twilight crossed her arms and fumed. "Right," she finally said, "fine. We'll meet with them. We have to stop in Perinville anyway, I guess, so it's not like it's going to be out of our way to tell them to find a job elsewhere."

"That's the spirit!" Spike cheered. "So, we going or what?"

She gave him a light pat on the head as she led him out through the door, which sealed and locked behind them. Various functionaries, servants, and members of the military filtered around them as they walked the spacious hallways of the castle. A few tried to make brief eye contact with the favored student of the queen, but none of them attempted to actually stop her and strike up a conversation. With the way she moved and the way she was dressed, they had to know that she was on her way somewhere important. Those who would have approached her anyway still didn't thanks to the added force of her reputation.

The trip down to the closest vehicle bay took almost no time at all. Gravcars, airships, and even a few scattered ground vehicles were parked around the massive room that was only one of many lining the edges of the castle. There were always visitors in and out and errands for those who lived within the building to run outside its walls. It was a necessity to have several fully operational docks running night and day, and they were always a hotbed of activity, the thrum of engines only barely louder than the constant hum of conversation.

Twilight ignored all of the sleek machines sitting in the many parking aisles of the dock as she walked along. Instead, she made her way unerringly to an open hatch and looked out at the city of Cantela beyond. The capital of Ectheria was a sprawling metropolis, filled with tall spires between which flew the bustling citizenry as they went on living their lives. She wanted to make sure that they could continue living those lives in as much peace as could possibly be procured under the circumstances, and that meant she needed to be on her way.

Before she even gave the order, Spike was already stretching himself out fully along the ground. His purple and green scales pulled away from each other as they flipped and slid along the now-exposed rails underneath, pulling around into a new formation that rapidly began to resemble a seat. His talons retracted into his hands, and his arms and legs fused together just before sprouting three sets of grav plating. Subtle mechanical noises came from every part of him, indications that his internal parts were also on the move, realigning themselves to the positions required for his new function.

With the final shift completed, what was moments before Spike the mecha-dragon had become Spike the gravbike. Twilight easily swung her leg up and over, settled into place, and put her hands on the handlebars. A systems check was unnecessary, she knew, but she performed one anyway. To his credit, Spike said nothing and simply waited patiently for her to come to the same conclusion his own diagnostic circuits had come to long before.

City air enveloped them as Twilight hit the lifters and pulled out of the dock like a bullet. Mid-morning light slid in at an angle, but she was prepared for it. Fishing out a pair of goggles from her bag, she slipped them on and polarized them against the sun's effects, allowing her to see with ease.

The exit to merge with regular traffic came up just as she passed over the castle gates, but she kept straight and true. The special flight permissions that Spike was broadcasting would ensure that she wouldn't be hassled by the local guard, and she knew her way through the city well enough that she felt confident driving at top speed outside of the normal skylanes. Only once the she had finally left the cityscape of Cantela behind and was traveling over the farmland beyond did she relinquish control to Spike and opened the computer link on his control panel.

"Okay, let's see what you have for me . . . " she mumbled to herself as she called up the data stored on the cube he had eaten earlier.

An hour and a half later, Spike cleared his throat to get her attention. It was merely an affectation given that he had no real throat to clear, but it served its purpose well enough. She looked up to see a small village in the distance but rapidly coming closer. Shutting down the infolink, she took back manual control and angled in to get a closer look at her destination. A quick scan did not reveal anything even resembling an official landing area, which immediately irked her. There wasn't even much evidence of an unofficial landing area, which further irritated her and started her wondering exactly what kind of little podunk town the queen had sent her to.

She found herself having to admit, however, that in a way it made sense. Given the MO she had gleaned from the so-called Nightmare's file, it seemed the perfect place to start trying to sway people away from the queen's rule. Perinville wasn't exactly an outlying backwater, but it was still in something of an isolated area within Ectheria's borders. It was bordered by working but mostly unpopulated ranches and farmland on most sides and an untamed forest on the other. By all accounts, the people had little contact with any of the nearby cities and much preferred it that way. It would almost be child's play to find enough people there who wouldn't exactly have the strongest ties with the monarchy.

With a sudden feeling of disquiet, Twilight picked out a reasonably clear looking area a quarter mile outside the village and brought Spike to a halt on a bald hill right near the main road. Once she had cleared the saddle, Spike shifted back into his dragon form and swiped his tail back and forth thoughtfully.

"Doesn't look like a bad little place," he said approvingly.

"We're not here on a sight-seeing tour," she reminded him, then set out to follow the road up to the village gates. He quickly fell in next to her, slinking along on all four feet and looking almost more like a snake than a dragon.

"I know, I know," he said. "But it's not like we can't appreciate the scenery as we go, right? We can walk and look at the same time. And who knows? You might actually like it."

If Twilight was paying any attention to his words at all, she didn't show it. With a sigh, he gave up and they continued the short march in silence.

The gates of Perinville were open and, to Twilight's surprise, unguarded. She frowned as she and Spike passed through, wondering if there was even any point in having the protective walls at all under the circumstances. With a mental snort of derision, she figured she probably could have flown directly into the village square without anyone so much as batting an eyelash and completely unimpeded by a flight shield. Her estimation of Nightmare's possible plan went up another notch. The people of Perinville were obviously not prepared for an invasion of any kind, subtle or overt.

The village was, in and of itself, very unimpressive in Twilight's eyes. Very quaint in its architecture, which she really didn't mind, but built in a very open and haphazard fashion, which she did. It seemed almost as if the people who had planned out the village had simply thrown darts at a map and zoned it accordingly. A little voice in the back of her head tried to tell her that it wasn't actually all that disorganized, but the more forceful and orderly part of her brain saw nothing more than chaos running rampant. It was an affront to her sensibilities, and she was almost thankful that she and Spike had finally reached their ultimate destination in the little town.

The exterior of the bar and grill identified as Tessercube Corner on the sign above the door was clean but tacky, and as they stepped through the door, Twilight and Spike found that the interior did not disappoint in matching. Twilight herself did not normally attend theme restaurants of her own volition, and if the info cube hadn't instructed her that Tessercube would be the meeting place for the mercenaries, she would have turned right around and walked back out without a second thought.

As it was, she resigned herself to her fate, slumped her shoulders, and stepped further inside.

"Oh wow!" Spike said, directing his sensors almost everywhere at once to take in all the strange memorabilia lining the walls. "This place is great! Why don't we go to places like this more often, Twilight?"

"Because I have a semblance of good taste," she grumbled under her breath. She waved off the waitress that approached them with a too-bright smile and stalked off toward the booth in the far corner. To her complete lack of amusement, the wall overhead was adorned with an old-fashioned sled, two hammers nailed together in an X shape, four digipads blinking advertisements from nearly three decades ago, and the stuffed head of a pony. "Kill me now."

The seats, at least, were comfortable, covered in plenty of plush material sealed under a layer of cloth and polymers. She slipped in as Spike slid under to wrap himself around the table's center pole. Almost immediately there was a young woman standing by the table, leaning over and looking at her expectantly.

"Water," she told the strangely intense woman before any unneeded pleasantries could be exchanged, "and nothing else. I won't be here long."

To her great startlement, the woman let out a high pitched giggle that seemed to drill straight out of her mouth and into Twilight's brain. "I'm not the waitress, silly!" she said once she'd calmed herself down. "I'm Pinkie! And you must beeeeee . . . Twilight! I know because I know everyone in Perinville and I don't know you so you have to be Twilght! Am I right or am I right or am I right?"

"Wha-?!" Twilight started, then stopped herself as she suddenly recognized the name and a sudden sinking feeling hit her stomach. "You're one of the mercenaries, aren't you," she stated rather than asked.

"Yup yup yup!" Pinkie's grin was a million watt bulb being powered directly by the sun. Trying to look away from all those insane teeth didn't help, however, as Twilight found her eyes then inexorably drawn up to the equally insane mass of curly pink hair that seemed to have no particular direction in mind. "I saw you come in and just had to come over and get you, 'cause we all decided not to meet out here after all, 'cause the Mr. and Mrs. Sekac have a backroom that they said we could use, 'cause it'll be a little more private, 'cause privacy is super important when you're talking about the stuff we've got to talk about!"

An image of hands wrapping around the aptly named Pinkie's throat suddenly filled Twilight's mind, and it took sheer force of will to keep reality from matching fantasy. Gritting her teeth and giving in to what was obviously the inevitable, she growled, "Yes. That sounds very reasonable."

She stood up and gestured for Pinkie to lead the way, which she thankfully did without any further one-sided conversation. The strange woman did skip along, however, which given her ample endowments and skin-tight pink and white outfit was just as distracting in its own way. In her head, Twilight began calculating just how long she could resist telling all of the mercenaries as a whole to go stuff themselves if Pinkie was at all representative of the group.

"Holy crap, finally!" a raspy voice called out from the other side of the backroom the moment they stepped through the door. "Let's get the hell outta here and start doing some damage already!"

"Hold your horses there, li'l missy," a gruffer but still female voice called out from nearby. "We ain't on the job just yet."

Twilight looked back and forth between the two speakers and started reconsidering her earlier appraisal. At the very least they didn't immediately seem to be like Pinkie, but she still wasn't sure at first glance what they were all going to be like, as they all seemed to be completely different from each other in several ways.

In all, four others occupied the room aside from Twilight and Pinkie, and pretty much the only thing they seemed to have in common was that all of them were women. The one with the accent went around, introducing each of them. "Now this here's Rarity, Flutter, Dash, you already met Pinkie o'course, and I'm AJ. Info cube said you're Twilight, right? Nice ta meet ya."

The tall woman stepped forward and took Twilight's hand in hers. Twilight was about to give a greeting of her own, but it became lodged in her throat as sudden pain rushed through her hand and up her arm into her shoulder. Apparently recognizing the wince of pain in Twilight's expression, AJ let go and held her hands up.

"Hey, sorry 'bout that," she said. "Still ain't quite used to shakin' hands with anyone that ain't an earther."

"Perfectly alright," Twilight returned graciously as she gingerly tested her fingers to make sure none of them were broken. "Though I think I'll skip any further physical shows of comradery, if the rest of you don't mind."

The woman AJ had introduced as Rarity laughed brightly and waved off any concern. "Don't you worry at all, my dear," she said. "The rest of us aren't quite so uncouth as-"

"So you're from the queen, huh?" the raspy voiced woman interrupted, fists on her hips as she stared down at Twilight from where she was standing upside-down on the ceiling. "Well I see your horns, but where's your wings?" Almost accusingly, she spread her own translucent blue wings wide and waited for an explanation.

"Dash, you dingus!" AJ said before Twilight could answer. "It's obvious she's just a reg'lar ol' demon like Rarity, ain't it? She ain't got no angel wings, and she ain't earther tough. Only Queen Celestia's got all three!"

Dash rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Yeah yeah, whatever," she sneered. "So are we gonna get this show on the road or what?"

Taking the chance to pounce on the conversation and get it under some semblance of control, Twilight stepped into the middle of the room and said, "Yes, exactly right. We all came here for a reason. Mine was to meet with all of you and make a decision regarding your employment. And I have made that decision." She took in a deep breath. "And that decision is that your services are not required, thank you all for coming, it's been lovely chatting, but I must be going now, thank you."

"Now whoa whoa whoa," AJ said, putting her gloved hand on Twilight's upper arm like a vice before she could get away. "Hold on there, darlin'. I don't mean to be rude or nothin', but I don't think this conversation's quite done at all. Now, I actually live near here, so it ain't no real skin of my nose, but most a'these here girls done come a long way outta their way for this job. Dash and Flutter came all the way down from Cloud City One, and Rarity's one a'them big city folk from Manetta. I think maybe we owe it to 'em to talk this out a bit before you go runnin' off, don't you?"

Silence settled on the room like a tense and waiting predator. A spell tripped its way across Twilight's tongue as she glared at the woman pinning her arm, but she managed to keep it from flying past her teeth and erupting what had suddenly become a very volatile situation. Swallowing the sharp knot that had formed in her throat, she gently picked AJ's fingers away from her jacket sleeve.

"Fine," she said, then turned back to face the others. "What you are about to hear is strictly confidential. We have received reports that a being calling itself Nightmare-"

Pinkie burst out into sudden and prolonged laughter. Even though the others managed to keep themselves under better control, the sudden shift in mood from tense to amused was obvious.

"What, that old husband's tale?" Dash asked, incredulous. "Okay, I'm up for just about anything. Fight a war, smash a dictator, find a hidden city of milk and honey, bug hunt, you name it. But there ain't no way I'm gonna go chasing some kiddie ghost story."

"You'd be paid even if we don't succeed," Twilight told her.

"I'm in," Dash recanted her previous stance without even the slightest hesitation. "When do we start hunting this bitch?"

"We have received reports that a being calling itself Nightmare has begun operating in this area," Twilight continued as if she had never been interrupted. "Attempts have been made to individually recruit the people of Perinville into opposing Queen Celestia. Though we have heard from those who have turned away these advances, it is currently unknown how many may already be a part of Nightmare's forces. Anyone that lives in this area is currently under suspicion."

Her eyes flicked momentarily to AJ, who clearly didn't miss the implication but didn't say anything.

"The first part of my mission is to determine if these rumors have any validity to them," Twilight continued. "If they do, I am then to find and eliminate Nightmare's influence on the people of this town, or at least enable such an elimination."

"I like the sound of that last part!" Dash said, a wide grin lighting up her face as she pounded her fist into her other hand.

"And I'm not unfond of the first," Rarity added. "I could do with a bit of socializing after being trapped in that cramped gravrail compartment. Such dreadful accommodations, I tell you!"

Pinkie positively bounced up and down in place. "Ooh! Ooh! Talking to people is fun! Pick me! Pick me!"

The frail looking angel that AJ had introduced as Flutter sat in the corner and continued to not say anything, as she had been doing since Twilight had entered the room, but AJ herself laughed and slapped Twilight painfully on the back of her shoulder.

"Welp, sounds pretty good to me too!" the rough earther proclaimed boisterously. "But hey, I can see you still ain't too sold on the idea of us gettin' in your way. So I tell ya what! How bout the five of us just help you out just a li'l ol' bit, huh? I mean hey, we're all here already, right? Might as well put ourselves to good use and ask around a little bit, see what we can find out. And, heck, I won't even charge ya for it myself! Whatcha say, girls?"

A chorus of agreements came from the rest of the room, though Dash suffixed hers with an irritated "Whatever, let's just do something already!"

Twilight looked around at the strange group of women and pressed her teeth together tightly. Almost every fiber of her being screamed at her that she was making the wrong decision, but she could still feel a ghost of the power of AJ's grip on her arm. As strange as they sounded and acted, there did seem the slight possibility that some of them might be useful in some small way.

With a sigh of resignation, she nodded her head ruefully and said, "Congratulations. You're all hired."

Next Chapter: 3 - On the Job Estimated time remaining: 14 Minutes