“Oh you really are an interesting little colt aren’t you…” Grace muttered to herself as she flipped through the personnel files that she had brought to put together her side of the spy game.

It had only been a few days in planning, and although she had more than enough soldiers skilled in the arts of stealth and deceit, something like this called for a special touch that they didn’t have. For the last few hours the mare had been going through file after file of numerous soldiers she had in her ranks, until she decided finally on two.

“…These individuals work very well together…” she read out-loud excerpts of the file while she flipped though the past exploits of those she was interested in, “…apart from the total lack of personal safety, and disregard of property.”

Sipping from her glass of green tea that she brought up to her lounge that connected to her own room. The mare continued to read through not only the awards that each member had gotten, but also the many mission summaries that were contained in the files.

However, even though they were run of the mill guards, one of them had been sent more around the bush than the other. Having been sent temporarily to several different areas, to help out where he could in subjects that he demonstrated his knowledge in all too well.

Grace’s eyes grew wider and wider with every passing sentence that she read aloud in her head, and to the empty room that she sat in. Scanning over the reports till she was as fascinated with the words as she would be with her favorite novel.

“… applying skills learned in the Colt Scouts of Seren…” she skimmed over, drawing more and more interest in the colt the file belonged to, “… found numerous ways to apply those skills on and off the field.”

The door to her room creaked open, causing the princesses ears to perk up at the sound. Scanning the room, her eyes quickly rested on her scaled companion as he casually entered the room and took a seat across from her in the lounge. “Well hello there Silvertongue,” she greeted him, “what brings you here?”

“Oh not much,” the drake stretched out his legs as he slumped further in to the cushioned chair, “I just happened to hear the most peculiar news though… involving you and a possible, spy game…”

Grace’s brow twitched as she tried to hold her calm composure, though with the simple stare from Silver’s silted eyes, even a princess was quick to fumble, “okay then I guess these walls do have ears… who told you?”

“Well you don’t exactly go about asking for files on several of your best counter operation soldiers without stirring a few nests,” Silver answered, as his claw reached out for a crystal glass serving bowl on the table. Popping one of the many hard candies in his mouth, the dragon’s teeth made quick work of the convection while he dug deeper in to her goal, “though I’m curious… who would you have chosen for such a task?”

Dropping the rest of the file down on the coffee table in front of her, Grace leaned up and set the empty mug right next to it as she waited for him to take the que, as well as the folder. Flipping it open, the trained eyes of an assistant scanned through the forms and documents left and right, while his faced turned from one of confidence to sheer confusion. “You really can’t be considering this?”

“Well…” Grace proposed, “He does have the necessary skills needed for it, plus he’s used to making it up as he goes it would seem.”

“And you want to send an unstable colt… whom you barely know… in to a foreign country that’s just a powder keg waiting to be set off?”

Moving over to the door, she placed her crown on the table next to the door and kicked off her royal slippers making sure they were at least neat underneath. Taking care to keep her friend waiting for as long as possible. “Dangerous situations may not dot his entire record…” she started before setting a hoof on the door, “but he does have something that several of the others that I considered don’t.”

“And what might that be?” Silver wondered. As he watched Grace slowly start to grin at him.

“… a distinct talent for causing, chaos,” she answered while opening the door and stepping out. Leaving her friend to ponder that for a moment while the guard standing there instantly popped to attention, and rendered a salute. “At ease,” she raised a hoof to return him to his post, “I’m not even in my regalia, you don’t have to do that.”

“Understood your majesty,” the colt said while tucking his spear up against his side, “Though might I ask where you will be going, so we may get a detail ready?”

“That won’t be needed,” she replied casually over her shoulder, “If any of your higher-ups asks, I simply went out, if they give you a hard time for it. Give me their name, and I’ll sort it out later.”

With that simple command, the princess trotted along the corridors of her castle, in search of one colt to find another. It was Sunday evening, and if she knew their schedule, then at least one of them had enough sense to stay in for the night to get ready for the coming work day.

Walking though the barracks of the castle, the princess got several heads turning from those that have seldom if ever seen her without the regalia. Though she paid no attention to those that stared, and shooed away those that tried to salute her, her focus was on one colt. Knocking lightly on the door to his quarters, Grace heard the voice of one of the colts she looked for answer her from the other side.

“I’m decent, come on in!”

Doing just as the colt said, Grace strolls in to the room and closes the door behind her. Taking Free by some sort of surprise as he covers himself as best he can with a towel. “Your majesty,” he shutters, “I didn’t know it was…”

“Oh you’re fine Free, it’s just us,” she assured him.

Finishing drying himself off, Free hangs the towel up on the hook outside his head, “To any other colt this would either be a fantasy come true or…” he paused for a moment to think of what he was going to say next, “… actually no, this would just be a fantasy.”

“Well you aren’t dreaming now, Though I was actually looking for another, so don’t flatter yourself,” she chuckled at him, “I know you and Iron work the same schedule, so I was hoping to find him here, or at the very least you could tell me where he was…”

“Well good to see you too,” he laughed a bit while giving her a playful grin, “Though if it’s Sunday night, he probably would be at a local bar, Elixirs and Edibles. We used to frequent it on our nights out when he resided here.”

Making a mental note of the name, Grace nodded to him in thanks, “One of many places I would imagine, hmm?” slowly back stepping towards the door, the mare put a single hoof on the handle as Freefall perked up once more.

“Though, what could you possibly need from him at this time?”

Grace simply smiled back at him, as she hid all her cards, “Oh… just a little side project that probably will catch his interest.” With that, the princess slid out in to the hallway, hell bent on tracking down this colt.

Iron remained seated at the bar counter, already having downed half his weight in liquor, with little to no food left in his stomach. He has work tomorrow, and as of now, it’s his time to enjoy himself and relax. Even if it’s six in the evening, as long as he can get back to the castle and pass out in his work area, he’ll be good to go.

“Probably still hammered, surrounded by tools and parts… what’s the worst that could happen,” he muttered to himself over top the glass of hard cider.

Able gladly took his glass from him and topped it off, “now I remember why I didn’t miss you so much,” she teased, “you would almost always drink me out of house and home…”

“Yeah that may be true,” Iron reached in to his satchel and pulled out his bag of bits, before leaving a good hoof full on the counter, “but then again I’ve always tipped pretty well.”

Able couldn’t really argue with that, he was right after all. Taking the bits and putting them under the counter, the mare went about tending to the other costumers as she left Iron to hold his own against the glass. However, neither of them, or the other patrons for that matter, noticed the mare walking in to join them all.

“A little birdy told me I might find you here…” Iron looked over to the seat next to him, only to find Grace sitting there poised with her hooves holding her head up.

“I’m assuming this bird has a name that makes it sound like he’s the type to crash and burn?” he put together in his mind, though the reference didn’t sit to well with the princess, she just sat there and raised a brow like he was an idiot.

“If you mean Freefall… then yes,” she turned her stool to him, “actually I was hoping to find you here, saved me from having to search across the entire city.”

“Oh you wouldn’t do that for me, you’d just wait till I either got back to the castle, or send Free to do it,” Iron grinned back at her, “you know you would… you don’t like me that much.”

“If I liked you at all…” she rolled her eyes at him, before turning her head away, “though you do change the pace of things a bit.” Grace muttered as Iron continued to pound back a glass.

“Alright sweetheart you have my complete, undivided attention,” Iron said as he looked to the stool next to him.

“Mister Knight…”

“Yea?”

“Wrong stool…”

Doing a one eighty, Iron found his eyes meeting the princesses once more, “There we are, much better,” he settled himself, “though I must ask, how goes the search for your little team?”

Grace paused for a moment, it was somewhat the subject she wanted to discuss with him. ‘though taking a load off couldn’t hurt either,’ she decided as she waved the bartender over. Able about tripped when she saw who was sitting at her counter, though with a quick brush off from Grace, she recomposed herself. “I’d like a glass of Saddleoff vodka, squeezed lime, on the rocks, stirred, with…” the princess paused for a moment to think, “three olives.”

With a smile and a brief nod, Able set out making the princesses drink. As Iron just stared down the princess, “A mare that knows her poison…” Iron lightly smiled at her before turning his attention back to his own, “I like it.”

“Oh please, there are many things you don’t know about me…” she scoffed, “Though as for the little game, I think I know who I’ll be sending.”

“Well then, tell me about yourself,” Iron said, completely ignoring her comment, or just avoiding it all together. Either way she couldn’t tell, “yes I heard what you said, though I don’t expect you to down your glass like I’ve been doing to mine… so we have some time.”

‘Okay, so he does actually know what he’s doing… from time to time,’ she summarized, giving the colt props for that much at least, “Well let’s see, you probably know most of my life from what you saw when I was growing up and learning to be a princess.”

“You took power only a few years ago, right?” he asked, getting a nod in return, “I know, I got that news while out in Degus. Word doesn’t really travel fast there.”

“When did you leave the service anyway?” Grace asked curiously, as her drink was set before her, “I could have sworn that I saw you’re name several times while growing up.”

“Oh please, I aint that old,” Iron snickered at her as he sipped his glass to savor the moment, “I got out about a decade ago, finished out my teaching requirements, and put on a new job title as Mr. Knight.”

Grace let a giggle slip out as she sipped her glass, “Well it does suit you rather well,” she complemented, “Besides, from what I heard after talking to your principal, your students love you to no end.”

“Oh I know… hell they are the reason I’m here after all,” he narrowed his eyes down at the mare sitting idly beside him.

“Oh come now, do you really think that you would have been able to live with yourself had you stayed there?” Grace let that thought sink in for a few moments before she continued, “no matter though, classroom or not, you’ve done well here too… with the record that I saw, I’m surprised you didn’t stay in, though why a teacher?” she asked curiously.

Iron shrugged his shoulders. It was a question that he got from many of those that knew him, and one that he already knew the answer to, “I always had a knack for figuring stuff out, thinking how things were put together, and then knowing how to explain it to them…” Iron answered as he took another sip from his drink, “I was doing that the whole time I was in, but being at a school cuts most of the bullshit out… yeah some is still there, but that bit I can deal with.”

“There will always be some level of bullshit in life,” Grace said, sucking an olive up and out of her glass, “after all, it’s life… though while at your lovely little home…”

“You can cut the crap, Gracie…” he grinned back at her as he watched the mare twiddle with one of her locks, if only to take her eyes from his glare, “yea I know I have somewhat of a mess going on there.”

“No, no… I didn’t mean it like that,” she waved off with a hoof, as Grace still maintained perfect balance of her glass, and answered from the heart, “you have a mess yeah, but you know where everything is. So that makes it very functional.” She paused for a moment to take another sip of her glass, while giving her a moment to think, “I was curious though while there about what you’re trying to make, those journals you had out were filled with something after all.”

“My research?” he questioned. It had been a while sense any pony asked about what he would be doing for hours if not days (during the summer) in his shop, or even at the shop in school. Most just brushed it off as ‘Iron being Iron’. The few that had asked, usually lost interest with in the first thirty seconds of him explaining it.

‘Buck it… let’s see how much her brain can wrap around this,’ he cracked his hooves across the counter, “Okay… well long story short, like I said I always liked to figure out how stuff worked, I also like to figure out how to make it better. Take a suit of armor for example,” he broke out a pencil and grabbed a napkin from the opposite side of him.

“The sheets usually used to make a suit mostly start out as larger chunks of metal, heating the chunk up and hammering it out, then heating it up again can build the strength of the metal and make it in to a suitable piece of armor,” Iron paused for a moment to see if she was still following. Only to see the curious eyes of a pony like he sees often in his class, “Well, this doesn’t change the weight of the armor, it just makes it stronger. So what I’ve been trying to do it figure out how to make it stronger, while at the same time making it weigh less.”

“Something that many metallurgists had been trying to do for years,” Grace pointed out, not to burst his bubble, just to make a point. “So what are you doing different?”

“Well for one many of them weren’t unicorns, it was always an earth pony kind of trade,” Iron stated, “and on top of that, those that were unicorns for some reason just used spells… they never thought of mixing both hard labor and spells to try and get a product…”

For all the centuries that this sort of thing has been going on, Grace simply couldn’t understand how they hadn’t put that together in the past, “How do you know they hadn’t tried?”

“In the library and such… good, old fashioned, research,” he remarked proudly. “So I took what I learned and played with it for years, got several scars from burning metal hitting my skin or spells back firing… though all in all it’s worked.”

“How well?” Grace asked quickly, having forgotten about the half full glass she still had in hoof.

“As of now, it weighs a little more than my original suit, but that’s counting additions, on the bright side it’s about two or three times stronger. Yet I’m never done with it, every time I figure out how to improve it, I do so… so like wine, It’s just getting better and better with age.” Iron leaned on to the counter, “After all, the fundamental of science and progress is to never settle for what you already know… it’s to question what else is possible.”

Grace couldn’t help but grin at the colt, “well you certainly picked the right profession with that sort of view on things…” with that, in one gulp. The mare downed what little she had left in her glass and set it off to the side. Before she could do it herself, a bit landed on the counter next to the empty glass.

“I may be an asshole, but I’m a polite one,” Iron winked at her, “Or it’s just the booze talking… either way, that ones on me.”

“Oh you’re so kind,” she nodded sincerely to him, “all things said though, I did come here for a reason…”

“It wasn’t just to share a drink with me?”

“No… although that may have been a little bonus,” she admitted to him with a sheepish smile across her lips, though before he could question it she picked right back up, “I selected who I would like to go on that little… mission, in this game of mine.”

“Oh…” Iron politely smiled back at her, “and who might that be?” he asked.

Seconds passed, and when he didn’t get an answer, Iron turned his attention back to the mare. Only to find Grace staring at him with a slowly growing smirk across her face, “Wait… you want me to do this?” he asked the obvious.

“I read your files, Mister Knight…” she paused for a moment to get her thoughts in order, “You’ve worked with gryphons before, and in special cases, you have been known to think outside the box when need be to get the job done,” Grace started to go off exactly what she read in his file, “granted you have little to no regard for your own life, or the property of others… then again it has been noted you can be subtle when need be… and also if need be, you will level a building to finish a job.”

“That was only one time… beside,” he brushed off, “I’ve never seen true war, a few skirmishes here and there. Though not full hoof on claw fighting.” Iron pointed out to her with a tip of his glass.

“Regardless, in those situations you proved yourself… You’re adaptable, and given the fact that the gryphons have been shrouded in secrecy sense our little falling out,” Grace leaned in closer to the colt, mostly to keep prying ears off of what she was saying, but also to drive her point home, “there may be some things that they have up their claws that we wouldn’t be expecting…” returning to her seat, Grace watched as his mind went over what she said, “after all, they are a crafty sort… but then again, so are you.”

“Flattery can only get you so far…” he smiled back at her.

Grace caught herself for a moment, and cut off any more blood to shooting to her cheeks, “This isn’t flattery,” she pressed on, “it’s the simple truth. They have dug in to our affairs, now it’s our turn to return the favor.”

Iron looked over the mare once more, all trace of his intoxication wiped off his face as he watched with clear and narrow eyes. If she was lying to him, or telling him what he wanted to hear to sway him in any way, she certainly didn’t show it. “Have you ever considered being a poker player?”

“No…” she questioned in the back of her head why he would ask that, “then again I have always preferred more strategy games with actual boards…” without even a word, Grace plucked his own glass up and took a sip, savoring and examining the concoction before letting it slide down her throat, “not bad… although it could be a bit stronger.”

“I like to finish my night on a sweet note,” he remarked.

“Well… then I shall do the same,” she rose up from her seat, “I leave it up to you of course if you would like to go on this little mission. After all, I did only ask you to come here to work on metal.” Grace spilled for a moment, “then again, I can give you access to whatever you may need in the event that you do take it on, anything… and if you’d really like, Freefall can be going with you as well…” she watched as his ears perked up from the sound of his friend, “You two always did work well when it came to things of this sort.”

With that, Grace made her leave. Walking gracefully towards the door, she was about to push it open and leave him to his own thoughts, until she heard a cough that grabbed her attention. “Grace…” Iron called out to her with a smirk, as he waited for her to turn around, “when you say ‘whatever I may need’… does that also count what I may simply ‘want’ as well?” he asked as the smirk started to stretch itself across his face.

While at the same time, Grace’s own smirk died at the realization that she just gave a colt with a questionable sanity level free run of the castle’s own armory. “Oh damn it…”