Chapter 2

Black Clops charged down the hallway to one of the old escape tunnels. The one he wanted headed straight for the telegraph office. In the office, a dun earth pony sat on a chair and tapped out secret messages in ‘morse code’- a code that had been developed to be unusable by anyone except earth ponies. Due to the fact that earth ponies shared a special connection to the land, it also made their hooves sensitive to the slightest vibration. It would take unicorns or Pegasi YEARS of training to learn how to receive those messages.

Training the NLR kept very much a secret, thank you.

Another thing that was helpful was the solar armada would NEVER employ earth ponies. This ranked as another of celestia’s crimes against ponydom- bigotry.  As an added line of defence the messages themselves were encrypted, using a special substitution code generated fresh each time. This was cutting-edge stuff, this was.

The dun pony had one hoof on a special bar with which he was sending, and another on a plate hooked up to some wires that sent the messages. He was quietly muttering to himself as the messages came in.

“oi, SS! Got a message for ya!” Black hollered.

SS- (or Supper Surprise) remained stone-faced and ignored Black.

Black facehoofed.

“OI! SS! I. HAVE. AN. INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT MESS-“

“I know.” SS replied.

“I had to finish that message. Looks like the Neigh Team has finished their mission and is ready to roll again.”

Black looked relieved. “thank luna. I need you to wire this to….to….” black gulped. “to 00-muffin….” He whispered.

Everyone in the surrounding area froze and looked at black.

SS read the message with awe. He hit a button marked “pause” to reroute all other incoming transmisions to the other telegraph stations while he gave this message full priority.

“ dear luna….. lemme guess. We’re screwed.” Said SS as he wired the message, tapping it out on the little bar. “Do you know her HISTORY, lad?”

black nodded. “who doesn’t? she’s the tops in our agency. I’ve read her mission reports cover to cover and never ceased to be impressed.”

SS finished tapping out the message. “done.” He said, before resuming his tapping and muttering.

Black left the room. He had another message to wire to their number two agents- the neigh team.

Ponyville dojo- ten minutes later…..

“hey, mister training dummy- I BROUGHT YOU A LETTER!”

the pony leaped and snagged the training dummy with a hoof before spinning it straight into a brick wall. The wood-and-steel dummy shattered like glass.

Grunting, the pony spun round, pivoted, and ripped through another dummy behind her like it was made of wet paper.

Thus the pony proceeded to decimate FIFTEEN more dummies in the same brutally strong fashion, before turning and bowing to her sensei and the only spectator in the room.

The spectator clopped her hooves together in delight.  

“WOW! Mommy, that was AMAZING!” squealed none other than dinky doo, the little unicorn pony running over to lean against her mother.

Her mother, agent 00-muffin, was none other than Derpy Hooves.

Derpy smiled and gently hugged her little filly. Brutally destroying training dummies was certainly cathartic, but her family was what made her truly happy.

Derpy bowed to her sensei and then trotted into the changeroom to get out of her karate gi and black belt.

      Derpy and Dinky lived in a small apartment directly above the town smithy with her husband, Flare. Flare was a bright red unicorn pony with an orange-yellow mane and tail. His cutie mark was an I-beam surrounded by a fireball. He wore a thin gold hoop in one ear, which was his wedding band. His forelegs usually had gauze bandages wrapped in places from several accidents around the smithy due to his slightly crossed eyes.

     When derpy came home, flare was still working. The smithy was open to the air and the street. The home resembled a two-storey house with a massive garage.  Flare leaned against his anvil, delicately forging a small trinket with a massive hammer.  Bizzarely, lady rarity was there too, watching flare work with a look in her eye that bordered on amourous.   Flare was too wrapped up in his work to notice, but derpy was noticing alright- and she did not like it one bit.

      Rarity opened her moth as if to start flattering Flare, only to freeze as she felt a strip of cold steel pressed against her neck.

Rarity slowly turned to meet the hardest stare she had seen in her life. Derpy was glaring daggers and though she said nothing, her cross-eyed gaze seemed to say, “just give me a reason.”

Rarity gulped.

Derpy slowly lowered the katana from rarity’s neck, only to snag her mane and press the sword against that instead.

“spoken for.” She hissed, before lowering the sword and entering the house.

Derpy hung her katana on its peg in the mudroom. Next to it hung her earpiece, cool glasses, and brown badass Stetson. With her derp eyes it was essential that she wear sunglasses. There were very few ponies with her condition, and coupled with eye colour it could jeopardize her life if the solars found out.

Outside of the pegs in the mudroom, the home was actually fairly normal. Dinky sat at the kitchen table doing her homework. She was just learning how to use her magic, and according to Twilight she had a lot of it. All that magic made it more likely for her to destroy the cup she was practicing on than fail to lift it. While derpy mused, another piece of cheap crockery shot straight into the ceiling and smashed.

Dinky immediately started apologizing, only for derpy to nuzzle her gently, get another cup, and encourage her to keep going.

While dinky practiced, derpy went upstairs to her room. She dumped the mailbag on the floor. Derpy was an incredibly efficient mailpony, and was so good at her job that they let her work her own hours, as long as she met her quota of letters.  She normally surpassed it. Derpy had another reason. She retrieved her telegraph receiver from her secret box in the closet. The receiver was a complicated tangle of wires and metal, but that was irrelevant. All that mattered to derpy was the piece of paper with row upon row of gibberish. She took her codebook from its secret spot in the room, and translated the gibberish into the text of a telegram. Telegraphese was a confusing language for anypony but, added security. The telegram read as follows:

To: Agent D

From: CLASSIFIED

Highly classified STOP

Classification level COLON burn after reading STOP

Do not read unless sector 7 or higher STOP

Agent D COMMA

Requesting  assistance immediately STOP on high alert STOP

threat level code BLACK STOP

report to NLR headquarters ASAP STOP

further orders given there STOP

ignore all other duties STOP

the letter was brief and to the point as all transmissions were.

“DINKY!” hollered derpy.

“yes mum?” called dinky from the kitchen as another cup hit the ceiling.

“tell your father I’ve got a case of ‘pegapox’ and I’ll be bedridden until further notice!” shouted derpy.

Derpy flapped up to a shelf in her room and grabbed a pencil and some paper.

She wrote:

Flare,

        I have an AWFUL case of pegapox and will be bedridden for at least a week. Please take dinky to school and feed her decent meals. If I catch you two eating junk all week ther’ll be hell to pay. And kindly tell my boss I will be sick until further notice. I do have a doctor’s note excusing me; it’ll be on the counter. EAT MY MUFFINS AND I WILL KILL YOU.

Love,

Derpy

P.S. don’t worry about dinky’s ‘practice’- just get her another cup and tell her to keep going, I’ll scrub the ceiling when I’m better.

Derpy rolled up the note and placed it on the counter along with a forged doctor’s note.

“dinky!” she called, “I need your help!”

“coming mom!” dinky ran up the stairs to the bathroom.

In the bathroom, derpy was pouring coloured dyes into the family bathtub. She gave it a good stir with a spatula from the kitchen until it made just the shade of teal she wanted. Meantime dinky had retrieved her paints and a book full of cutie marks that a pony might have.

Derpy jumped in the tub, and closing her eyes, submerged herself in the coloured dyes.

When she stepped out of the tub, she was a bright shade of teal. The dyes had covered her cutie mark, her flank appearing completely blank. Her mane and tail were the same colour as her coat- a rarity in pony society. Derpy pulled the plug on the dyes, allowing the tub to drain. As she rinsed it down, dinky had found a cutie mark that tickled her fancy- a black belt.

Dinky showed it to her mother. With derpy’s approval, flare was summoned, and her husband began the delicate task of painting an identical cutie mark on each flank.  

After flare had finished and returned to his work, derpy had dyed her mane and tail blue, and was currently getting mission-ready.

She put on the sunglasses, screwed in the earpiece, hung the katana off her chest harness, and was ready.

Derpy took off into the setting sun without detection.