Sweetie Belle smiled as she crept along through the corridors of Cantalot Castle. It had been surprisingly easy with the help of her fellow blank flanks to get from the public area of the castle to Princess Celestia's private quarters, despite the two Unicorn guards on watch. One of the guards had left for a short time, perhaps to go to the toilet or to get something to eat, and then Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had come up supposedly in a panic to the guard with a wild tale of a missing friend. Adult ponies would most likely have been either disbelieved out of hand or passed on to somebody else, but as it was a pair of terrified blank flanks the guard felt that he had to personally help them find their friend and left his post. Allowing Sweetie Belle to sneak past the velvet rope and the "No Entry to the Public" sign and sneak into the Princess's royal suite. Her heart was thumping like one of the Ponyville trains as she walked along past portraits of famous ponies of the past.

Calm down, Sweetie, she does not know you're here. Nobody knows you're here, and even if you do bump into a guard he'll most likely believe your tale of getting horribly lost. It was then that she heard the sweet voice of the Princess Celestia speaking.

"Twilight, how long will it be until the Border Field is ready? I fear the Griffin Kingdom most of all at the moment. If they were to invade Equestria, we would lose a lot of good ponies repelling them. Much as it saddens me to have to erect a force field between our two lands, as it shows distrust and interferes with trade, it is the safest thing to do. After all, it can be lowered later when tensions fall."

"Two days, your Majesty, and that's working flat out."

Sweetie Belle used her horn to pull out a pen and paper from under her belly and write a letter to her Griffin paymasters. "The Princess is planning to block off your border with a force shield. Agent Star." That information will be worth enough bits to keep me in sweets and toys and pretty much whatever a blank flank can legally buy, and I will still have enough left over to keep me with enough bits to live on for a good part of the rest of our lives if I are careful with it. But how to get out of here safely? I can't teleport anything in or out of here without it being blocked, noticed or both. A door opened and she threw herself behind a red velvet curtain as Twilight Sparkle walked out and started walking in the direction Sweetie Belle had come. And it was then that Sweetie Belle got an idea and hid the pen and paper under her belly. Follow her just behind her and bluff it out when the door opens.

It worked. The guard, seeing her walk out boldly just behind Twilight Sparkle, thought that she must have been allowed in there for some reason and she was able to meet her friends. They think that I'm only doing this to try and earn a cutie mark, they have no idea that I'm really a spy. Nopony does, or ever will. Once they were out of there Apple Bloom and Scootaloo asked her all manner of questions and she answered them leaving out the bit about her spying. As soon as she got a moment alone that night she teleported the letter to the capital of the Griffin Kingdom, and not long afterwards, two sacks teleported into her bedroom. Sacks full of golden bits, and a letter. [b "Dear Agent Star, here is the payment for your information, two hundred thousand golden bits. Please destroy this letter after you have read it, and be careful not to spend the bits too quickly. Griffin H.Q.."]

Two hundred thousand bits! I get five bits a week pocket money so...that's a lot. Using her horn, she levitated one hundred and fifty thousand bits into various places...into her money box, into draws, into the pockets of her formal dress, under her bed, and under the floorboards, into a spare pillowcase and into her toy box. I must be the richest blank flank in Equestria, I'm as rich as my mother. As for the rest...time to get revenge on a certain pony that has been pissing me off for a long while...Diamond Tiara. She sneaked to her house, buried the money in the ground along with the note, and then wrote a little note of her own to the Ponyville Police. "The spy is Diamond Tiara, the proof is buried in the garden. A friend of Equestria." She grinned as she imagined the trouble Diamond Tiara would be in when the police found the bag full of bits buried in her garden, far more then even a year of Diamond's pocket money. She would be disgraced, hauled up before Celestia and no doubt heavily punished and her family would to a lesser extent share in the disgrace and see her as a traitor.

***
Silver Ball stared in amazement at the flight of griffins that soared overhead and over the border. Griffin border patrols were not uncommon although it was a rare pony who made a border crossing legally or otherwise. However, as one of only three police ponies in the whole village he thought that he ought to object. "Hey, you can't fly through here, not without showing your passports!" Half of them peeled off and dived down, but it clearly was not to present their passports, as they had talons raised and beaks agape. Being a unicorn, he levitated his baton and smacked the first griffin hard on the head, sending it tumbling to the ground. Another griffin grabbed the baton and snapped it like a twig in it's talons, before a third swooped in, tore Silver's back right open and ripped a hole in his neck. As he lay there dying he saw far up in the sky two luckless pegasui as the griffins tore the feathers with beak and talon from their wings until they could fly no more and plummeted to the ground, their bones cracking on impact. Then his sight greyed out and faded to black.

A handful of ponies...the two remaining police ponies, a border guard or two, an earth pony defending her foals, put up a fight, but most ponies fled for their lives into their homes. Until Swift Beak showed up. Griffins rarely wore anything, but he wore the epaulettes of a Griffin General. Whilst each griffin squadron knew it's non-comms and officers by sight once fully trained, senior officers they rarely saw so such officers needed command insignia to mark them out as griffins to be obeyed. "I am General Swift Beak. You will come out of your houses now, or we will set them on fire and burn them down around your ears. We want you as hostages, not as carcasses or as sex toys.If you behave you might see your homes again. Nopony who comes out now will be killed, mutilated or raped." One by one the stallions mares and foals came out and were formed into a herd and herded over the border into the Griffin Kingdom not knowing why they had been captured like this or when they would ever see their homes again, leaving a score of shredded pony bodies behind. Only three griffins had died and the griffins took their bodies so that they could be decently buried.
***
Field Marshal Golden One galloped straight into the Princess's royal suite of rooms without knocking, as he had the right to do in an emergency. "Your Majesty, the village of Downdale was attacked by griffins, it's ponies killed or dragged over the border as hostages. And a spy was found who we think must have passed on infomation to the griffins to make them act in such a way. Diamond Tiara was found to have fifty thousand gold bits buried in her garden! I know her family are rich, but there is no way she could have saved up or earned that amount of money. The griffins must have paid her for the secret of the planned shield, although we have no idea how she got that top secret infomation in the first place." Celestia stared at him for a few seconds, then said "Bring her to my royal courtroom. If I find she did what I thought she did I'll...send her to the moon for her treachery!"