Daring and Spike were not happy, instead of overseeing the town they were escorting a perverted idiot that found his way to the town and went unnoticed until recently. Said perverted idiot hadn’t revealed his name, but Daring had found out with one touch without him realizing, which she shared with Spike shortly after. Neither wanted to speak his name out loud, mostly because they didn’t want to make a show of acknowledging his behavior.

Spike was very displeased, as a dragon, he didn’t take it well when uninvited guests entered his territory. The entire town was like his territory, the temple akin to a lair and the residents were under his dominion. It irked him, immeasurably, that somepony had managed to actually get close enough while unseen to one of the residents to physically harass them. Now instead of going about his new territory getting to know the residents and facilities better, he was acting as legal enforcement officer making sure a criminal got to a court without incident.

The pervy perp in question was sitting straight across from Daring, making no effort to hide his lewd gazes at her voluptuous figure, and Spike just wanted to deck him until he was paralyzed. Thankfully, he was in sweatpants and t-shirt, both black with no identifying marks of any kind, and cuffed firmly along with being fitted with a magic nullification ring on his horn and spell canceling collar for the off chance somepony else tried to use magic on him from a distance. So he couldn’t use his unicorn magic, and no external pony spells would work on him either. At Daring’s behest, he was also fitted with a gag over his mouth to keep him from talking, before he was gagged every third word out of his mouth perverted and every second or fourth word was offensive for some other reason. By the time he finished the first paragraph of his rambling, he had managed to insult the entirety of the town and the princesses with his ignorance.

The attire he was in was under the mockery of a Royal Guard outfit was much less offensive. Chances were Shining Armor would not be happy with the mock Royal Guard armor, Cadance would probably get a kick out of it though. The repercussions of the outfit alone were something that was not pleasant for Spike to consider.

As they carried him out, literally like a sack over Spike’s shoulder as if he was a sack of refuse, they were thankful he actually had clothes on. The perverted idiot had a skintight shirt and skintight shorts on; Spike wondered why he didn’t just go with a onesie bodysuit instead. Regardless, both articles of clothing were black.

Probably the most disturbing part of it all was the fact his attire clearly showed itself to be constricting the parts of his body that it covered. Amusingly, showing a reinforcement of Daring’s general clothing choices. Spiked like going casual, but this dipwad made it so that he was required to wear formal attire.

Spike was in a river blue suit, with a desert yellow shirt and violet tie (the tie was thankfully designed to come off and on with minimal effort). Daring was in a forest green maternity dress, with a very disapproving look on her face. It hadn’t even been a full year, and they already had the kind of incident all the protocols she and the princesses worked on were designed to bring to prevent. To make matters worse, the train ride was going to feel longer than it should be.

***********************************

Four hours after boarding the train, it felt more like twelve to Daring and Spike; they were finally pulling into the station at the Crystal Empire. While Spike passed the scumbag off to the guards, Daring gave Shining Armor a hug that was more for show than anything else, the momentary pinkish-blue flash in his eyes was all the proof needed that Daring had discreetly passed on the information she had acquired. Shining was having decidedly not happy look on his face. Daring pulled Cadance in after giving shining his hug and discreetly passed on the info to Cadance, she had a similar reaction to what Shining had. Shining had the perp sent to a much more dedicated holding facility then left to brief the guards selected for the project stationed in the Crystal Empire about the breach. Cadance decided she would get to work on sending Twilight, Celestia, and Luna the message about their little problem. Shining would help Daring with the initial looking over dossiers; the meetings would, unfortunately, have to wait until considerably later.

***************************

It was about a half hour after they arrived, almost twenty minutes longer than Shining liked, when Daring and Spike found themselves sitting down with Cadance and Shining to discuss what happened.

“I don’t like that some pony was able to slip into the community’s grounds without raising the alarm,” said Spike, “Twilight assured me the subtle magical protections she erected would keep unauthorized individuals out.”

“Maybe the spells she intended to put up would do just that,” said Shining, “but you know as well as I do how forgetful she can get about some things, especially when she has her attention focused on other things.”

“Well,” said Daring, “she did put a lot of attention on the logistics of the project, she probably thought the spellwork was a minor concern and let it get away from her. Even so, the lapse in security isn’t excusable. Considering their standing with each other, and involvement with the project, I think is best that Princess Celestia be the one issue the reminder to Twilight about obligations.”

“That seems the best course of action,” said Shining Armor, “now, about our less-than moral perpetrator. Daring’s new abilities proved helpful in providing us some leads, while also allowing us to minimize integration time, but it will take a considerable amount of time to track down all of the less tasteful elements in this. Whoever is behind our perp’s arrival in the town was careful and used an intermediate party that likely has far less interest in the operation than their employer, if the one who did this genuinely cautious and smart about their choices. That said, it’s impressive that the one who caught him in the act was your town’s new tailor. Tell us more about this spell of hers, if you can.”

“Stellar Weave was able to meet all our requirements and put some of the less voiced concerns to rest during her interview,” started Spike, “she also has expressed her inspiration being Rarity herself.”

Daring nodded and continued, “Stellar Weave stated the spell she used for finding our violator was a spell designed for locating and finding hard to see objects around the home and shop. Given the variety of small and easily losable objects, those in her profession regularly work with it’s an understandable precaution.”

“One which Rarity, in all her time, has never been able to acquire,” said Spike, “this spell of Ms. Weave’s is likely an extension of her magical talent that she’s turned towards her choice of profession. That said, due to the way the spell works it also allows the caster to make entities with abilities that hide them from standard sight to be seen by the one casting the spell. I suppose, if she can teach the spell, she could teach it unicorns in the Royal Guard.”

“A spell like that could prove useful to the Guard,” said Shining, “I’ll make a formal request for Ms. Weave and Twilight to come on up for research purposes. I also want to chew Twilight out her forgetfulness on something so important. If we can study how the spell works in more detail, which Twilight is best suited for, we can figure out how to replicate the results we want to turn the spell into a standard lesson for the Royal Guard.”

“Pity such spells haven’t been the case until now,” said Cadance, “if Stellar Weave had been interested in the Guard, her spell would have caught the eye of several high ranking members in the guard. I suppose if that had happened we would have heard the word of her ability by now; I think we might have gotten to know each other better.”

“You do realize she basically is the same age as your daughter,” said Spike, “right?”

“That’s a minor detail,” said Cadance with a nonchalant tone.

“I think we’re getting a little off topic here,” said Daring, “what are we going to do with our perpetrator?”

“For now,” said Shining, “we will be holding mister Hidden Mark. It’s clear he lacks discipline, but also his talents are known by the wrong sort of ponies and have been kept from the government until now.”

“Thankfully he’s still young, if a bit foolish,” said Cadance, “We’re going to offer him a choice, one that will have far-reaching consequences.”

“A few years of military service or spend the rest of his sentence for violation of some of the more severe legal statutes on the books,” said Spike. “I agree that an eye needs to be given to watching him, given the magical talent we’ve seen him use, but do you think it would be wise to actually give him formal guard training?”

“Well, seeing as he was caught in a mockup of Royal Guard armor,” said Daring, earning a scowl from Shining and giggle from Cadance, “it’s a pretty good guess he has some infatuation with the Guard. Seeing as the ones who sent him on the mission told him he was free to wear whatever attire he wished to avoid attention.”

“So he chose to wear a mockery of Royal Guard armor,” said Shining, “he could just as easily have contempt for the Guard.”

“Or maybe it was the one who supplied his outfit that holds the Guard in contempt,” said Spike, “from what we’ve managed to gather he wasn’t pleased about the outfit his supplier sent him when he said the criteria for what he would be wearing for his mission.”

“Which is the only reason I’m willing to entertain the option Cadance, and I came up with, to begin with,” said Shining, “if he had been the one to choose the outfit personally, we wouldn’t be having this line of conversation.”

“He’s around the same age you were when you started your training,” said Cadance.

“He’s actually a few years older from the profile we managed to acquire,” said Shining, “but still within the minimum age range for training programs. We’ll see if he has what it takes to make the cut, assuming he takes the offer for joining the military.”

“What did his profile say about his home life,” inquired Daring, “I only chose to have the information gathered be very recent and give his genuine name.”

“A good choice, all things considered,” said Shining, “that knowledge ability you’ve gotten is still new to us, despite a number of pony spells having similar properties. What we’ve found about his home life is that it’s not idyllic but still acceptable in modern Equestria. His mother, a unicorn mare named Rouge Charm, lives in a moderately sized town near Fillydelphia and is the owner of a small cosmetics shop, the cosmetics she sells are all made by her. We haven’t been able to find anything on his father, his mother didn’t say anything about who that might be, all we were able to find was she found out she was pregnant a few months after a one-night stand back when she was just starting her business and was a bit less responsible with her choices.”

“We’re going to bring her up for a visit in the next few days to discuss her son’s life choices with her,” said Cadance, “but concerning who his father might be, we suspect it might be one of the less responsible Canterlot elite. We’ll be working with Auntie Celestia in running genetic comparison to see how accurate that assessment is.”

“You’ll notify his father once you find out, I take it,” said Spike.

“Depends on who it comes out to be,” said Shining, “we don’t want to have socially distasteful traits passed on if we can help it, the incident with Daring’s former publishers showed us that much in a bit more of a blatant way than we were anticipating.”

Author's Notes:

And thus we have reason to suspect Twilight dropped the ball, mostly due to her other focuses. But we still won’t know for sure, it’s mostly speculation on the part of the cast here. Also, we finally have a name for the idiot. Although, you’ll notice I still haven’t given him a look, PM me with ideas for what his coat and mane are like; putting all in the comments, even with the spoilers, will just make it seem like speculations on the part of the readers.