Spike trotted into the royal guards' quarters aboard the Guiding Star, barely pausing to give the off duty troops a wave as he headed for Flash Sentry's office. He kicked open the door. "Hey Flash!" he said. "We're pulling up on Hollow Shades in a few, and Twilight wants to go over-- oh, wow." He was brought up short by the sight before him.

Flash Sentry's "private quarters" were a small chamber not much larger than middling office. Half was filled with his  bunk, a small wash stand and a rack for his armor,  half was filled with a rolltop desk that was festooned with mountains of paperwork, scrolls, files, crumpled bits of parchment and a slumped over pegasus who was running his hooves through his mane like he was trying to knead his brain back into shape. Flash started and looked up. "Oh, uh, hello Sir Spike," he stammered.

Spike cocked an eyebrow. "So I'm a 'Sir,' now?" he asked.

Flash coughed into his hoof. "Um, according to the Princess' latest memo," he said. "You're her seneschal and to be given an honorary knighthood some time in the immediate future, so, uh... yeah."

"Really? Cool, Twi must've been keeping it as a surprise or something. I gotta start reading more of those memos she has me flame-mail." He looked around the cramped office. "Speaking of which..." he waved at the piles of paper. "What's all this?"

Flash tried to shrug it off casually. "Oh, just.. trying to catch up on all the paperwork for the Twilight Guard. Ahem." He leaned against the desk casually, wincing as one of the snowdrifts of paper tumbled to the floor in a slow avalanche.

"Man, Twilight is really overdoing it," Spike said.

Flash groaned. "Yeah. She wants checklists to check the checklists. In triplicate! But---" he seemed to bite the bullet. "She's only responsible for, like, the top layer or two..."

"I doubt that."

"No, it's-- it's true. This stuff is just the backlog," Flash confessed. " And being made Captain of the Guard came with about a ton of this stuff, right out of the box. Schedules, requisitions, reports, tons of crap that needs to be documented and written out in triplicate to be filed away in some government office---"

"Why didn't you do it at the time?" Spike said, leafing through some of the paper.

FLash threw his hooves in the air, nearly faceplanting in the desk as a result. "Because I was too busy getting stuff done! The second watch needed new helmets and spears, like, yesterday; that couldn't wait till I inked out a dozen forms! I talked the supply officer into letting me fill out a stub and take the stuff with a promise to fill out the rest of it later. Then we took in three new recruits right before we left port; that was half a stack of forms for each of them. I was too busy fitting them in with the guard we already had... I caught one guard filching soda from the canteen, I couldn't just discipline him and be done with it, oh no-- a single stolen can of pop is an incident that has to be reported, annotated, filed, indexed and copied for headquarters back in Canterlot..."  He massaged his temples. "you're getting the picture, I think."

Spike grinned and shook his head. "You know, Dude, you're a commanding officer... you can hire an--- whaddyacallem, an Aide de Camp?-- to handle this stuff. Or most of it anyway." He chuckled as Flash blinked, the growing realization spreading across his face.

"That's right," he said. He thunked his noggin with a hoof. "Darn it--"

"Ehh, relax, I'll give you a hand for now," Spike said. "Can't have Twilight's Captain of the Guard drowning in a mountain of paperwork--- ironically appropriate as it would be," he added ruefully. "Let's get this stuff sorted, at least..."

Flash's expression of gratitude was radiant. "Thanks, dude, you're a real bro---"

"Don't mention it," Spike said. "Really. Can't have Twilight finding out that--- uh oh," he said. His eyes widened as a familiar muffled voice came through the thin door. "Oh crud, here comes Twilight!"

"Oh crap, what do we do??" Flash said, doing a frantic hoofy-dance in a circle with a double stack of papers balanced on his wings.

"Quick, drop it on the desk!"  Flash did so. Spike tossed his armload after it. "Now stand back!" The tiny dragon took a deep breath. Flash took a hint and scurried backward. With a whoosh, Spike engulfed the overloaded rolltop desk in green flame. Flash started to yelp and grab for the sand bucket standing in the corner of the room, but the flames parted, revealing a spotless-- if slightly singed-- desk. Not a paper was left.

A knock came at the door. Spike whipped out a kerchief and wiped frantically at the sooty spots on the desk. "Captain Flash, it's me, Twilight..."

"Come in?" Flash said.

The door popped open and Twilight came trotting in, a smile on her face. "Captain, we're coming up on Westward Slope in about a half hour, I thought we might take a minute to go over the plan for Hollow Shades and--" she paused, sniffed. "Spike, I smell something burning; have you been using your flame...?"

"Uh, not really," Spike stammered, continuing to wipe and giving her a phony toothy grin. "Just burned up some wastebasket paper and stuff for Flash a second ago."

"I'm sure that the Captain appreciates the gesture, Spike," Twilight chided, "but we are on an airship; you do need to be careful where you use your fire breath."

Spike took the opportunity to look annoyed. "This thing is fireproofed seven ways from Sunday," he said. "You saw to that. We don't even use flammable gas-- they use a pegasus windbag(1) for the gasbag."

"Never you mind that," Twilight said, threatening to slide into Parental Lecture mode. "It's still better safe than sorry." Spike grumped, but didn't say anything more. She turned to Flash. "Like I was saying, we're coming up on Westward Slope, where we'll be disembarking---"

"I thought we were going to Hollow Shades?" Flash said.

Twilight sighed. He hadn't read the memo... "Yes, but the ponies in Hollow Shades are rather... reclusive. Having a Princess bomb in on them will make it much harder to deal with them. So we'll be stopping at Westward Slope, where they're having a little, um..." she pulled a notepad out of her pannier and looked at it. "Something called a Mountain Dew Festival. Hmm...." She put the notepad away. " I'll be doing a few quick hoofshake meetings, make some speeches, kiss some foals, that sort of thing--- then we'll be slipping away during the festivities for Hollow Shades."

Something in her tone caught his attention. "We?"

"You, me, and Spike," Twilight said, as if it she were discussing a trip to the market.

Flash felt a twitch of apprehension. "That's all?" he said. "I'd think you'd want... at least a few more guards or staff." He'd heard rumors about Hollow Shades; some of them were the sort of thing that could keep a pony up at night, nursing a lit candle.

Twilight shook her head. "They'd draw too much attention," she said. "Besides, we're taking my personal balloon. Not enough room for more than a handful of ponies anyway."

"Hey, don't sweat it, dude," Spike said. "Between the three of us we got..." he pointed at Flash. "A pegasus Royal Guard--" he pointed at Princess Twilight. "an Alicorn of Magic--" He jerked a thumb towards his chest smugly. "And a DRAGON. I think we can handle anything some podunk little village throws at us."

Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder and smiled. "I know your record, Flash. You're one of the finest guards in the Royal armed forces. I trust you to keep me safe."

Flash's heart gave a little hiccup at her smile. "I'll... do my best, your Highness," he said, smiling just a little.

The moment was broken when Twilight dropped her hoof and consulted her notepad again. "As I was saying, we'll be going incognito... we'll be posing as a graduate students doing intern work on local folklore-- Hollow Shades does have such fascinating myths and folk tales, I have to say; I'd love to do some real research into it some time-- and Spike will pose as our assistant...

"That's me," Spike said, amused. "Typecast forever." He shrugged. "Eh, at least I'm not posing as your DOG or anything. I have my dignity."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you'll obviously not be able to wear your armor," she said to Flash. "Just, um, try and dress like..."

"Casual?" Flash suggested.

"Um, yeah. Just... whatever you wear when you're on vacation, or leave, or whatever they call it," she said, waving a wing dismissively. "Though really you don't have to wear anything at all, you look good enough without--" she froze in mid sentence, face flaming, as she realized how that sounded. "I mean--- just-- just-- that is-- you would pass as---"

He took pity on her and threw her a line. "Casual. Right." He gave her a lopsided grin.

"Right." Cheeks bright as cherries, she pulled her pannier off and began digging through it, not looking at him. "Oh, I found a book of the folk tales from around Hollow Shades, as well as a travelogue--- you might want to skim them, get some familiarity..." She handed him a slim volume bound in black. "Now if you'll excuse me I have to go prepare a few things, get my own... er, disguise..." she flicked a wing. "And so forth..."

She trotted out, closing the door behind her. The two males let out sighs of relief that they hadn't been aware they were holding. "Close shave with the papers," Flash muttered. His face suddenly flooded with dismay as the realization hit him fully. "Oh man, all that paperwork destroyed-- I'm going to have to start all over and--!"

Spike tapped his clawtips together and cringed. "Uhh, they weren't exactly destroyed..."

Countless miles away, Celestia sighed wearily to herself as she sat and listened to a pair of Canterlot bureaucrats--- Vertical File and Short Form, was it?--- as they went on for yet another ten minutes, slinging files and arguing back and forth over some proposal and how to implement it. She checked her cheat sheet, one of twenty: oh yes, the Petition for Comprehensive Paperwork Reduction. Short Form was for, Vertical File was against.

And quite verbose about it. "...And furthermore the rearrangement of the filing system alone will be prohibitive," he said. "And the records lost in the transitional period alone will reach the upper percentages...."

"As you have said thrice already," Short Form said, disgruntled.

"And it bears repeating! As I have always said, all in triplicate," Vertical File said pompously. "A world without proper triplicated paperwork is chaos. CHAOS I tell you..." He proceeded to meander off into what was obviously a personal favorite sermon on the virtues of extensive documentation. Celestia ground her teeth quietly and shifted in her cushion, trying to ease her aching bladder. She had reached her own decision on the matter ages ago, and would happily render it if Vertical File ever yielded the floor...

There was a faint and familiar glingle-ingle-ingle sound. Celestia's mood brightened immediately. A letter from Twilight! That would be a welcome break from the monotony; perhaps she could even plead a few minutes to read it in private--- in the little princess' room, naturally...

She looked up eagerly; here came the little purple cloud. Odd, it was looking a bit bloated and sluggish for some reason...

The puff of magical dragonsmoke almost made it to the throne. Just as it was passing above Vertical File, it ruptured, spilling what had to be fifty pounds of scrolls and papers on the luckless official's unsuspecting head. With a squawk he disappeared in a pile of snowy paper and ink.

There was a brief stunned silence.(2) Celestia saw her opportunity and took it. "Ah, that must be Twilight's latest report," she said. "And it seems she delivered it directly to you, Vertical File. How kind of her. I'm sure you won't mind replicating all her work and sending it off to the appropriate offices, bureaus, et cetera...? Oh, in triplicate of course."

Slowly, like a groundhog reluctant to deliver its annual verdict(3), Vertical File's head poked out of the drifts of paper. "...Perhaps we could stand to trim down the redundancy in our record keeping just a hair..." he mumbled.

1)A pegasus windbag doesn't refer here to a Cloudsdale politician (though it ought to.) It refers to a bag lined with pegasus made silk that infuses the air inside with Quintessence of Air, making it lighter. Even earth ponies know how to infuse a lungful of air with Primal Essence (which is why Pinkie Pie doesn't need a gas tank for her party balloons), but pegasi were naturals at it. They perfected the art of spinning and weaving cloth into bags that continually suffused the air inside with Quintessance of Air, for a multiplicity of results including strong winds and lifting power.

2)One might argue that it persisted out of sheer surprise that Vertical File actually stopped talking.

3)In Equestria, the hairy little bugger's forecast about the length of winter actually has the weight of bureaucratic authority behind it. Their resultant unpopularity with both the Weather Bureau Pegasi (who resent the extra rush if spring comes early) AND the Earth Pony farmers (who get disgruntled if spring comes late) has made them a little gun shy about sticking their nose out of their burrows around any member of the pony tribes NOT possessing a horn.

Next Chapter: Chapter 33 Estimated time remaining: 53 Minutes