A few months later. Sweet Apple Acres. Sunset. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were carrying baskets full of apples to the barn. Once they put the baskets they were carrying down, Applejack wiped the sweat on her forehead and took a deep breath.

"Now that's what Ah call an Apple Buckin' Day!" the farmer said. "Thanks for the help, RD. If it wasn't for yer help, we would be waaaaay behind schedule right now!"

"Eeyup." Big Macintosh said while dropping his last basket and leaving the barn.

"Well, you promised me some cider afterwards, how could I refuse?" she said with a smile.

Applejack smiled back and shook her head. "Ya never change, do ya, RD?"

Both mares left the barn and went straight back to the house, where they saw Granny Smith and Apple Bloom sitting on the couch looking at an album.

"What are y'all doin'?" Applejack asked.

"Granny's showin' me pictures from young Ponyville for mah essay!" Apple Bloom answered.

"Darn tootin', young'un!" the elder mare said.

"An' who is that pony, Granny?"

"This here is our very first mayor, Winnin' Streak. Not the most likeable of ponies, but that mare knew how to keep ev'rythin' in order!"

Applejack looked over Granny Smith's and Apple Bloom's shoulders to look at the picture and gasped. She grabbed the album from her grandmother's hooves.

"Hey, we were usin' that!" Apple Bloom protested.

Applejack gave the album to Rainbow Dash and pointed at the picture of her grandmother with a very unamused mare. "Look at her. Does she look like somepony ya know?"

"Hm. Now that you mention it..." she inspected the neatly brushed mane and tail, which were obviously golden-colored even for a yellowed picture, the brownish-orange coat, the clothes that were probably the fanciest of that age and the golden locket around her neck. "She looks a lot like Chief Harshwhinny, doesn't she? Maybe an ancestor?"

"Not an ancestor, Dash." she pointed a the mare's cutie mark: a golden trophy. "This is Chief Harshwhinny!"

"What? No way!"

"Accordin' to one of the books Twi and Ah studied, the odds of two ponies sharin' the same cutie mark is 1 to 180,000! And even if they're kin, the odds of two ponies of the same family havin' the same cutie mark are even smaller. Hay, the Apples are a clear example! All of us work with apples, but none of us have the same cutie mark, do we?"

"Yeah, you have a point there..." Dash rubbed her chin.

"Ah don't think they can be the same pony, fillies." Granny Smith interrupted. "Winnin' Streak was older than my mama, so even if she was alive today, she would probably be dead! Wait, that didn't sound right..."

"Whaddya mean with 'alive today'?" Applejack asked.

"Winnin' Streak died in a carriage accident when Ah was younger than y'all!" she explained. "She was goin' to a meetin' in Canterlot, but her carriage fell down a cliff an' into a river. We never found the body, so we erected a statue in her honor in front of the Town Hall. The name wore down with age, but that statue still represents all the respect we Ponyvillians have for our appointed leaders!"

"The body was never found? Hm, I've been part of the L.R.E. for long enough to know that this sounds a little suspicious!" Rainbow Dash looked at her teammate. "What do you wanna do?"

"Let's go back to the HQ an' tell Twi! This can't be good news."

"But today is our day off! And what about my cider?"

"Rainbow Danger Professionalism Dash!" Applejack called while stomping her hoof on the ground. "Is a cup o' cider more important to the Element of Loyalty than the security of her friends?"

"Alright, alright, I got it. But you owe me now two cups of cider!"

L.R.E. Organization Headquarters. Library. Twilight Sparkle was surrounded by books, levitating and reading two at once. Until she was startled by a hoof touching her shoulder, making her drop both.

"What are you doing, Sparkle?" Trixie asked. "And are you ok? You seem a little jumpy."

"H-Hi, Trixie." she said while levitating the books she dropped. "I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling very well."

"Really?" she pulled a chair and sat beside her. "And why is that?"

"I don't know, I just feel like..." she looked left and right, then whispered. "I'm being watched."

Trixie placed a foreleg on Twilight's forehead. "Are you feeling sick? Need a glass of water? You probably should rest, today is your day off, after all."

"I can't! I just can't! I mean, remember what Flash Sentry said?"

"That there's a 'Big Day' coming, right? You keep reminding me that every time we meet."

"Until I figure out what that means, I won't stop worrying. Besides, it's hard to concentrate when there's someone watching all my moves!" she immediately covered her mouth with both hooves. That's when both of them heard the sound of a book hitting the floor, but it wasn't one of Twilight's books this time.

"Who's there?" Trixie called. "Show yourself, that's an order!"

But no one identified themselves. Trixie's horn flashed as she cast a spell that locked the door and all the windows.

"I guess you weren't just paranoid after all, Sparkle."

The mares split and looked in different areas of the library, not resting until they inspected every suspicious looking nook and cranny. They were about to give up when Twilight heard the sound of flapping coming from above a bookcase. She immediately created a magic bubble around that shelf, trapping whatever was there.

"Did you find something?" Trixie asked.

"There's something up there." Twilight pointed at the bookshelf.

Trixie created a platform under her hooves, which lifted her until she could see the top of the bookcase. "Alright, Sparkle. You can stop now, I got it."

Twilight burst her magic bubble, and Trixie went back down, bringing with her a bat trapped inside her own magic bubble, struggling, trying to free itself.

"A... Bat?" Twilight tilted her head.

"Or is it?" Trixie said. "Follow me!"

Dungeons of the L.R.E. Organization. Trixie and Twilight walked past several cells where many incarcerated creatures were screaming, weeping, squealing, banging or cursing at the two ponies walking past them. Trixie ignored all of them while Twilight tried to. They finally reached their destination: a metal door at the end of the corridor, which led to a room separated in half by a thick reinforced glass wall.

A unicorn guard stood beside the door. He quickly closed the book he was reading and saluted the mares. Trixie levitated the bat in front of him.

"We're interrogating this one." she said.

The guard nodded and cast a teleportation spell that sent the small bat to the other side of the glass wall. Trixie grabbed a microphone that was hung on a panel on the wall and blew on it to make sure it was on. The sound came out on speakers on the prisoner's side of the interrogation room.

"State your name and species." Trixie said, but the bat just kept flying around aimlessly. "Again, state your name and species. Don't make me repeat myself, or there will be consequences!" but the bat still didn't show any signs of being able to understand them.

"Pardon my intrusion, ma'am, but why are we interrogating a bat? I mean, isn't it normal for bats to be flying around at night, specially this time of the year?" the guard asked.

"While that may be true, do you remember how high we are on this mountain?" Trixie explained. "Nomal bats don't fly this high. And I'm losing my patience!" she pressed a button on the panel, making a cloud of some sort of yellow dust come out of two vents on the walls on the bat's side of the reinforced glass.

"What's that?" Twilight asked.

"Garlic powder."

The bat immediately dropped to the floor, twitching and squealing. Its left wing suddenly got bigger, but the right one kept twitching, as if the bat was being forced to transform, but trying the best it could not to. Its feet turned into hooves and its ears got smaller. In just a few moments of excruciating discomfort, the small bat turned into a full grown, greyish blue mare with dark blue mane and bat wings on her back. She was wearing a uniform similar to the one of the Wonderbolts, except that it was black and purple and with a skull on the flank, as well as golden goggles. She got up and started banging on the glass.

"Make it stop!" her voice, coming from speakers on the unicorns' side of the room, said. "Please, I beg you, make it stop!" she clutched her stomach with one foreleg and covered her muzzle with the other, trying not to puke and not breath any more garlic powder.

Trixie pressed another button, making the vents suck all the powder out of the room. The bat mare was still sitting down on the ground, breathing heavily.

"See? That wasn't so hard!" Trixie said. "Now let's try this one more time: state your name and species."

"N-N-Nightshade..." she said. "I-I'm... I'm a vapire." she said.

"Good, good. Now tell me, what were you doing spying on us in the library?"

"I-I don't have permission to--"

"I still have tons of garlic, ready to be released."

"N-No, wait! I-I can't tell b-because if I do, they will... They'll make me... Disappear!"

"You are under our custody." Trixie explained. "Nothing can harm you now, so you can tell us everything."

"You don't understand!" she banged on the glass again. "It's the Son of the Dragon! He knows things! He can do things! And if we do things he don't want us to do..." she sat back on the floor, hugging herself and shivering.

"Twilight, go see if you can find any information related to this 'Son of the Dragon'!" Trixie whispered while covering the mic with a hoof. Twilight nodded and stormed out of the interrogation room.

Nightshade suddenly stopped moving, then grinned. A grin that made Trixie raise an eyebrow and the guard uncomfortable.

"Well, looks like I just got granted permission to speak." she said with a chuckle. She shrugged and crosseed her forelegs. "As k me anything you want, miss L.R.E.!"

Trixie was suspicious of this change of behavior, but kept talking anyway:

"What are you doing here?"

"Spying on you, of course. After all, that's my job as a Shadowbolt!"

"Shadowbolt? What is that?"

"We're a special task force of the Ventrue clan, specialized in spying, scouting and kidnapping."

"What's a Ventrue?" the guard asked.

"One of the seven main vampire clans!" Trixie explained. "They are the Ventrue, the Brujah, the Gangrel, the Malkavian, the Nosferatu, the Toreador and the Tremere. While the other six are perfectly fine with living in the shadows, the Ventrue like to control! Most of the vampires living among us are Ventrue, and they're most likely disguised as leaders: CEOs of big companies, mayors of big cities, evil rulers of Crystal Empires..."

Nightshade clapped her hooves. "You really are a smart one, aren't you? Everything you said was indeed correct."

"I'm just gonna guess that your clan had something to do with the Flash Sentry incident from a while ago."

"Well, I'll admit, Flash Sentry was indeed a Ventrue, but he acted on his own accord. We got tired of his shenanigans, so we sent a Giant Radscorpion for him to fake his death and leave Canterlot, and what did the bastard do? Killed the thing only to be showered in praise! His desire to be a Captain was even bigger than we had predicted. In name of the Ventrue clan, I thank your organization for getting rid of him for us."

"There's one thing I don't understand, though." Trixie rubbed her chin. "The only vampires that could shapeshift were from the extinct Tzimisce clan, and yet I've seen you shapeshift into a bat and Flash Sentry into a cloud of red mist. Why?"

Nightshade giggled. "Well, we have a very powerful ally. One that no living creature would expect!"

"Who is that?"

"The Son of the Dragon, of course! Don't worry, though. You'll meet him soon enough; after all, today is the Big Day!"

"And what is this Big Day?"

They heard a loud explosion and the whole headquarters of the L.R.E. Organization shook.

"What was that?!" Trixie nearly yelled.

"They're heeeeere~!" Nightshade said with a singsong tone.

"You keep an eye on her, don't leave her alone for one second." Trixie said before throwing the microphone to the guard, then ran out of the room, past the jail cells of the dungeons and back to the main corridor of the L.R.E. HQ. The two guards that were supposed to be standing beside the door that led to the underground path she just came from were missing. She ran to the main entrance of the building and opened the doors.

"What the hay is--" Trixie looked up. She fell on her flank, with an expression of terror on her face.

Several dozens of vampires were flying in circles around the L.R.E. Organization building, entering through a wall that had been blown up just a few moments ago. She heard screams coming from there.

Nightshade was laughing like a maniac in the interrogation room. The guard had no idea what to do and just watched her, very concerned about what was going on up there. She looked at him, with the biggest evil grin on her face, her golden eyes now glowing red.

"Tonight, you all die!"

Author's Notes:

Sorry if it took a wwhile to write this, but I'm working on a new project and there were just so many ideas for it that my brain completely stopped producing stuff related to L.R.E.!
My most sincere apologies!
And the new fanfic is looking cool in my head, can't wait to start writing it and release for the public! Hope you'll enjoy.
Also, I'm sorry if the "vampires come from several different clans" talk made things complicated, but worry not, this was just a pointless moment. It's just that a friend of mine bought me "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines" as a birthday gift last week, so I had to make a reference somewhere!