What JSPR Did (side story by ScipioSmith)

With cat-like…crawl? Did cats crawl quietly? They certainly crawled around air ducts, and Rainbow Dash knew that because Opalescence had got stuck in the air vents once and she, Rainbow, had had to crawl in there to get her out again. Rarity's thanks had almost made up for how that cat had scratched her.

So they certainly crawled around air ducts, but did they do it quietly? Rainbow shook her head. The point was that she was crawling quietly, as befit a student on the ninja track at Atlas Academy; she was crawling so quietly that nobody would know that she was here.

Mind you, Applejack – just behind Dash – was crawling pretty quietly herself, and she wasn't even on the ninja course. Applejack was more of a straight-up puncher type, not only their leader but their back-up big gun to Maud, but she was creeping through this ventilation shaft pretty silently all the same. It must be the country upbringing, all that creeping around to rassle up critters and stuff.

The thing in this shaft that was making the most noise was Twilight's drone, which was whirring mechanically as it hovered just behind Applejack. Rainbow supposed that there wasn't too much that Twi could do about that, and to be honest…Rainbow kind of liked it. It stopped the shaft from getting too quiet.

"Guys," Twilight whispered over the comm into their earpieces. There probably wasn't any need for her to whisper, but nobody was going to object to her showing willing. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Rainbow stopped, resting her gloved hands on the metal of the shaft. She pulled down her ninja mask so that it didn't muffle her response. "Twi, this was your idea."

"Only because you wouldn't let me go with my first choice of plan," Twilight replied. "If I were to try and hack the-"

"No!" Rainbow and Applejack both said, emphatically and simultaneously. Rainbow glanced over her shoulder to look back at Applejack behind her, and nodded approvingly. Applejack nodded back.

The two of them were not about to break into the Beacon archives for their health, or for the fun of it – although it might have been fun if such serious stuff hadn't been riding on it – and it wasn't just because, assuming that the Beacon authorities had gotten as paranoid as General Ironwood, there was a higher chance of finding paper records than anything on a computer; it was because quite frankly Twilight had already painted enough of a target on her back with the help of Weiss Schnee without drawing even more attention to herself by getting caught trying to hack the Beacon servers. Sure, Twilight was good at all that computer stuff, but it had been made pretty clear to Rainbow and Applejack by the general that there were some scary people hiding in the shadows and the less the name of a certain adorable bookworm came to their attention the better.

Rainbow and Applejack had both already gotten an earful from Pinkie Pie and Rarity about how they had conspicuously failed to manage to get Twilight on their team where they could look after that (delivered while Twilight couldn't hear them, because this was the kind of talk that really annoyed her) and Fluttershy probably would have said the same except letting it show like that wasn't her style. Rainbow didn't want to imagine how they would react to Rainbow and Applejack letting her get herself into danger – especially when they had a route that kept her safe that they could have taken but didn't.

That was why Twilight was safe in the JSPR dorm room, guarded by Flash; that was Maud was on lookout outside the archive door; that was why Rainbow and Applejack were the ones crawling through the ventilation system (plus, the idea of Twilight doing this stuff was kind of hilarious to imagine); that was why the other members of Team FIST had been kept in blissful ignorance about all of this; that was why this was, to all outward appearances, a JSPR mission.

Of course there was the drone, but…they would kind of need the help to figure out what they were looking for, and it was probably fast enough (and small enough) to escape detection if this all went sideways.

"Sugarcube, this is a great idea and it's going to work," Applejack said. "Now, how much further?"

"Five metres ahead, turn right, then another thirty metres straight on; you're almost there."

Rainbow was glad to hear it, as she pulled her mask back up and resumed crawling along, turning when directed to. She would be glad to be out of this confined space.

Twilight's misgivings aside, the plan that they had come up with made perfect sense to Rainbow Dash. Weiss Schnee had started all of this trouble by poking around at Park Place – enlisting Twilight's help to do it. It stood to reason that she hadn't just decided to do that on her own; admittedly Rainbow didn't know any rich heiresses, but Rarity acted as though she was one and 'poking around a restricted area' didn't seem like any self-respecting rich girl's idea of a fun time – not to mention that if Weiss were acting alone she hopefully would have thought twice before throwing Twilight under a bus the way she had. No, she had been put up to it; ordered to snoop around the base by someone else. Not someone from Atlas – because if someone from Atlas had wanted to snoop around Park Place they would have found an Atlesian soldier to do the snooping for them; which meant that the most likely suspect was Beacon Academy: Professor Ozpin wanted to find out what General Ironwood was hiding, so he sent his Atlesian student to spy for him and hoped that the Schnee name would protect her from any consequences. Since it was clear that they were going to get nothing in the way of information from General Ironwood, and since it probably wasn't a good idea to go back to Park Place, then the best option available to them was to try and discover what Weiss had found at the naval base, the information that had gotten somebody all stirred up and which she would, as a good soldier, have reported to her superiors at the academy.

Which meant breaking into the records to try and find a paper copy somewhere. And after that…after that they would follow where the trail led, and worry about what would happen at the end of the trail later. Twilight's sister-in-law had narrowly lost the election for a Council seat last year, but she was still the JAG and plenty well connected; if they found something and brought it to her…hopefully she'd know what to do after that.

"You know, I'm a little worried about Weiss," Twilight whispered.

"I'm not," Rainbow muttered.

"She seems…different," Twilight said. "She's not taking care of her appearance the way that she used to."

"So?" Applejack said. "People change, sugarcube."

"But never for no reason," Twilight said. "Plus the way that her team-mates wouldn't let me talk to her-"

"They're probably worried that she'll spill confidential information to you," Rainbow said. She didn't add like you spilled to her because she didn't want to be mean about this.

"I think there's more to it than that," Twilight insisted. "If Rarity suddenly started letting herself go you wouldn't just brush that off."

"No, I wouldn't, but this Weiss isn't Rarity," Rainbow hissed. "Rarity didn't use you to get military secrets; Rarity didn't paint a target on your back. Honestly Twi, Weiss doesn't deserve your consideration; she deserves a piece of my mind or even better a punch on the nose and if we weren't trying to be subtle that's just what I'd give her. Let it go, Twilight; she doesn't care about you there's no cause for you to care about her."

"That's kind of cold, don't you think?" Twilight asked.

"Yeah, it is," Applejack said. "But in this line of work we ain't always got the option to be as nice as we'd like to be."

They followed the directions – who had pulled up the schematics and was using them to guide the infiltration team from the safety of the dorm room – that Twilight gave them, until they came to a grated vent looking down upon the archives, a room full of mobile shelves all packed tightly together waiting for somebody to wheel them apart.

Rainbow pulled down her mask. "We're here. Overlooking the objective now."

"Do you guys want to explain to me exactly why we're breaking into the Beacon records?" the voice of Flash 'Phalanx' Sentry, putting the S in JSPR, intruded over the line.

"Don't worry your head about it, Phalanx," Applejack said. "Just keep an eye on Magic until the mission is complete."

"You know that I'd never turn down a chance to spend more time with Magic," Flash said, making Rainbow's eyes roll so far back in her head that it was possible they might never recover. Flash was a good guy all things considered – even if the fact that he'd been allowed into Atlas a year early was only explicable by the amount of pull his family had – but the amount of blindness that allowed him to ignore the fact that Twilight was not into him at all was astonishing.

She hoped it was just blindness, the alternative was a little creepy even if he wasn't doing much – or anything – to act on his crush.

"I'm just wondering what this is all in aid of," Flash went on. "Since this is a team operation shouldn't the whole team know the objective?"

"You remember second semester of last year, Phalanx?" Applejack asked.

"Yeah?"

"We're trying to find out what's up with that."

"At Beacon?"

"It'll all make sense when we're done," Applejack assured him. "Geode, are we all clear?"

"Nobody is approaching the room," replied Maud 'Geode' Pie, the fourth and final member of Team JSPR. "You are all clear."

"And nobody's taken any notice of you standin' lookout?"

"I appear to be composing more of my rock poetry," Maud said. "Perfectly normal."

"Uh huh," Applejack said. "Boomer, optic check."

This was the last check: to make sure that there hadn't been anybody in the room since before Maud went on lookout – and she'd been there for a good hour, so if there was someone there then they were pulling a marathon session down here – who was still there now. Dash pulled out her scroll, and plugged in an optical cable to the socket on the side. A little red light flashed on the eye of the cable to show that it was turned on, just as a picture of the ventilation shaft appeared on Rainbow's scroll.

Gingerly, Rainbow lowered the optic nerve through the grate, bringing up an image of the archives on her scroll. She began to turn the nerve three-hundred and sixty degrees, stopping when she caught sight of Professor Goodwitch, the Beacon Combat Instructor, sitting at a folding desk with a stack of paperwork piled up in front of her.

"Abort!" Rainbow hissed. "Abort the mission, the room is occupied!"

Everyone knew what would happen next: Twilight would go back to the FIST dorm room and act like nothing had happened; Maud would go back to the JSPR dorm room and likewise act as though nothing had happened; Flash would stay right where he was; and Rainbow and Applejack would carefully back out the way they had come.

Except that Professor Goodwitch had chosen that precise moment to look up, and she had seen the optic nerve disappearing up the grate.

Talk about bad luck.

Rainbow felt herself seized by an invisible hand and yanked forwards and downwards, smashing through the grate they had intended to use as their entry point and slamming into the floor of the archives.

Applejack, still in the duct, was being very still and very quiet.

Professor Goodwitch, her riding crop pointed straight at Rainbow Dash, got up and prowled like a leopard around the side of her desk. "Tell me your name," she said icily. "Tell me your team – I think I can guess your academy – and tell me exactly what you think you're doing here?"

Rainbow Dash leapt to her feet, coming to attention. "Cadet Rainbow Dash, Team Jasper, reporting ma'am."

Professor Goodwitch's eyes narrowed behind her half-moon spectacles. "You didn't tell me why you're here."

"No ma'am, I didn't," Rainbow said. And she never would.