BaronEngel
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According to plan
🕑 Added 2018-05-23 23:24:59 +0000 UTC Celestia's great orb had just risen in the east when Purple Marten trotted down to the neighborhood coffee house in my Equestria dreamscape. She often had breakfast or at least a second cup coffee before officially starting her day. Her house staff was quite capable of making an excellent cup of coffee or tea, but the changeling found the coffee house was an excellent place judge the mood, pulse, vibe of the ponies in the capitol.
As the she approached the coffee house she could hear high-pitched voice the News Foal standing on the corner hawking the Canterlot Courier over the morning traffic.
"Read the latest news! Learn all about it! Royal Sister seize control of Manehattan City Government! Associations stranglehold on the city government is destroyed! Hundreds of ponies arrested!"
Purple Marten trotted up to the filly. "Morning Double Scoop." This was also a regular morning ritual. She passed the unicorn filly the appropriate coinage and received a paper. "Shouldn't you be off to school yet?"
"Nah! Not yet!" Beamed the filly. "My Dad will be down in just a couple minutes to take over, so long as I leave before the bank clock chimes 7am I can make it in time for school."
Purple smiled at the filly. She had to commend Double Scoop's spirit. Her dad worked two jobs to take care of her. One was a morning job hawking the papers the other was a night job at the rail station. The filly would get up early make them breakfast and come down and sell papers so her dad could get an extra hour of sleep. She even had her school panniers on her and her lunch box strapped to her back ready to leave as soon as he showed up.
The filly gots spirit. But her spirit is going to be in vain because she's going to be on the losing side soon. Thought the changeling as she sauntered into coffee house. The usual crowd of regulars along with a smattering of new faces filled the establishment. Before she even reached the counter to place her order Coarse Ground the shop owner called out to her.
"Your usual Purple? Double espresso and black currant scone?"
The mare smirked. "Double espresso, but I'll take a couple buttered crumpets with lemon curd instead."
The shop owner smiled and got to work on her order. Purple Marten had tab with the establishment which her butler took care of every week. Settling down in a booth she opened the paper and started reading.
Details were very shaky and you could tell that the evening staff had very little time to change the morning edition of the paper, but it was clear from the front page that the Royal Sisters had been planning this operation for some time. Undoubtedly the evening edition would have further details as news filtered back.
Around the coffee house the morning headlines was main topic of discussion as ponies attempted to parse what the ramifications would be from the events that had occurred last night. Speculation ranged from the sensible to the fantastic and everything in between.
"Here's your order!" Coarse Ground as he set her order on the table. He glanced at the paper. "What a mess that is! It's going to take months to sort that out!"
The mare nodded her head. "Yeah it's going to take months."
The owner noticed he was needed at the front counter and excused himself.
The mare watched him go and levitated her drink up to her lips.
It's going to take months to sort this out. That's exactly what I want. Be confused my little ponies. Be very confused! She grinned as she took a sip of the dark, bitter drink.
Everything was going according to plan.
To be continued.
Comments
Baron Engel
The future will tell whether you’re correct or not .
McClaw
Strategy. This is both a diversion ("Look at Manehattan, not Canterlot") and opportunity ("Create a power vacuum so you can fill it") that I'm sure the changelings are planning to exploit.
Baron Engel
Purple Marten will be a very important player in the Royal Wedding and you are correct she's very competent.
Dorian Inman
I REALLY do not like her. She too bloody competent. And she’s been in place much longer, you can’t get into a first name routine in a couple of months. Unless she’s been spending a lot of energy beguiling the locals. That would draw attention sooner or later, holding that many in a collective “you know me, you trust me” charm. And even if Changling magic operated differently than unicorn magic there should be an underlying hum of dissonance that somepony would pick up. Unless Canterlot is pulsing with all kinds of enchantments, then it’s probably that it’d be missed. Unless you were looking for something “off,” and isn’t that what the Scale Bearers are for? This is getting more intriguing.
Baron Engel
Yeah. The Changelings will still make some mistakes, but they run a much larger and tighter op in my dreamscape.
ColdSilverD
Oh, that is damn clever. Have their attention in a different city while they work.
