"..so we barely make it out but now we're down in the middle of everything and there's all this fighting everywhere like BOOM! POW! FFFZZT! (That one was supposed to be a laser blaster.)" Glimmer paused her story, a charred strand of pink hair falling into her face. Angella opened her mouth, hoping this was finally the moment when she might get a word in edgewise but her daughter simply pushed the bit of hair behind her ear and barreled on. "We almost DIED! It was AWESOME! But the place was crawling with Horde and the bug people and we don't blend in at all so I'm like, 'Let's beat up a miner and steal their uniform!' and Bow was all, 'No, Glimmer, that sounds like too much fun!'"

Angella leaned against the edge of her throne, fingers pressed to her temple, thankful that the mayor of the Hymenopterians had already departed and was not here to hear the heir to the throne of Bright Moon talk about how fun it would be to beat her people up.

"I don't sound like that, Glimmer, and you know it! And it didn't seem right to fight the Hymenopterians when it wasn't their fault, your majesty, even if they were attacking us." That was the boy, Bow, looking just as bedraggled from the battle as her daughter did. He'd seemed like such a sweet little thing when he'd come here before. Angella was still trying to figure out what he was doing here. It was an utter mystery how her daughter had even managed to drag him into this business, let alone find him again when all her own inquires had turned up nothing. "And, besides, there was a whole storage room full of uniforms right there."

"Well, yeah, but it was locked. At least it was until Bow took this strip of metal out of his bag and fiddled around a bit and click, it opened!" Glimmer grabbed Bow's arm, shaking him. Angella couldn't remember ever seeing her daughter so excited. "It was so cool!"

"You picked the lock?" Angella asked, not entirely sure if she was horrified or impressed that a boy that small knew how to do such a thing.

"Well…" Bow looked slightly panicked, playing with the torn edge of his shirt. There was a smear of something across his nose that Angella's maternal instincts were dying to reach over and wipe off but she was trying to maintain something of a commanding presence for the benefit of the guards lining the room. "I-it's just a thing I taught myself, because I like to know how mechanics work. I wouldn't ever use it for bad things like stealing or—"

Glimmer cackled, hanging off his arm. "We were using it for stealing then, you goof!"

"No, we weren't! We were borrowing! We didn't keep the uniforms!" he hissed at her but she waved him off.

"Borrowing without permission sounds like stealing to me!" She laughed as he shook his head at her. Their tiny figures were both so dwarfed by the room all around them but neither looked half as intimidated as most grown adults would in their position. "Anyway, the antenna were my idea. I grabbed some sticks, stuck them in our helmets and TA DA we looked just like the bug people!"

"It was a great idea, but it worked too well. Because we're trying to sneak around the back and a Horde guard starts shouting at us, asking why we weren't fighting with the others."

"And I was ready to just kick him and make a break for it but Bow stepped right up and did this cool thing where he pretended to be really nice and friendly."

Bow looked offended. "You make it sound like I'm not really—"

"It's not a bad thing! It's useful! Grown-ups eat it up." Glimmer waved him off. "So Bow starts going on about how another guard had sent us back down into the mines to get reinforcements. And the guard bought it, can you believe it, let us right past no problem!" She punched his arm affectionately. "You are an amazing liar!"

"Glimmer, that's not..." Bow shook his head, which send debris raining down from his curls, but he looked flattered. "Anyway, you want to talk about amazing? We get all the way over to the machine without being detected but there's a perimeter alarm."

"Yeah! And it starts going nuts like weeoo weeooo and we're like, 'Oh no, run!'"

"And Glimmer just grabs me and—" He paused, leaning over to whisper to his partner in crime. The rapport between them was what was the most bewildering, a testament she supposed to how quickly children could form attachments. But still…. "Wait, should we tell the queen this?"

"I got us out, didn't I?" Glimmer whispered back, even her quiet voice loud enough to carry up to where Angella sat.

"Yeah, but it was a REALLY close call." Bow glanced Angella's way and she tried to look like she wasn't listening in. "If we hadn't dove exactly when we did, those beams would have crushed us!"

"I knew what I was doing!" She smacked his arm. "And you were afraid we'd get hurt."

"Because we almost did! That was crazy!" He bumped her shoulder, looking bashful. "But also really brave."

"You're darn right it was!" Glimmer said, but the princess was glowing under the compliment, her eyes twinkling.

"Glimmer," Angella warned, mindful of the rebellion members still waiting for her in the war room. "The point?"

"Oh! Right! So we can't get anywhere near the machine now and our cover is blown, soldiers everywhere, but we've got to disable the machine to save everyone so I grab a blaster from one of the guys we trapped under the beam and I was going to be all PSEW! BOOM!—" Angella gave her daughter a warning look and the princess had the nerve to bat her eyes innocently. "But, like, super carefully, of course!"

"See, this is why I made you put it down." Bow rubbed his face with his hands, smearing the dirt all over it in the process. There was something comical about hearing a child of his size sigh with such utter exasperation. "It was delicate machinery, you would have wrecked something."

"OK, fine. But my other plan was good, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was very good. We used the gun as a lever, overturned this huge barrel of sap. Total chaos, everyone sticking and sliding."

Glimmer put her hands on her hips proudly. "What can I say? Making a mess is a specialty of mine."

"So with everyone distracted, we climb up onto the roof to get away and we can see the machine but we still can't reach it." Bow was getting excited, getting into the story as much as Glimmer was.

"So then Bow takes out this switch thing that he MADE himSELF because he's randomly a secret tech genius person."

"I am not." The boy shuffled awkwardly, but his face was beaming.

"Whatever you are, shush. I watched you rewire the thing to go off on impact using just random stuff from your bag, it awesome!" Glimmer shoved him gently and Bow blushed. "But the machine is down there and we're up here so we're like, 'How are we going to get it down there?' and Bow yanks down one of the Horde flags, tears the flag part off, takes the pole and ties his little kill switch to the end of it. And he just does this a couple of times, like testing the weight of it." She motioned like she was throwing a spear. "And then pewwwwww." She drew a slow arc in the sky and then made an explosion sound. "Twang! FZZT! Perfect shot!"

"Not really a perfect shot. I was actually aiming a little higher. I'm just glad it worked."

"And did it ever work! Suddenly all the bug people stop fighting and they are blinking around like whhhhaaaaat? And then the Horde spots us and they start yelling like, 'Get those kids!' and we're like, "Uh, oh!" but the bug people turned on the Horde and then it was like boom! Pow! Thwap!" Glimmer jumped and whooped, loud enough that several of the guards around the chamber startled.

"Alright, settle down." Angella pinched the bridge of her nose. Because here lay the difficulty at hand. As displeased as she was with her daughter right now, the children had actually saved everyone today. Not only freed the entire village from Horde control but rescued the rebellion from a tight spot as well. Even Commander Svellsvad, who was no fan of the princess, had admitted the situation would have been very dire had the children not disabled the machine when they did.

That the boy had figured out how to disable the machine all on his own, that Glimmer was foolhardy enough to even take on an entire village worth of enemies where Bright Moon's own trained soldiers had failed... It would seem utterly unbelievable if their story did not match perfectly with the ones she'd already heard from the rebellion leaders and mayor. Without their intervention, the situation would have been quite dire.

Which meant, as much as she was loathe to admit it, these two tiny troublemakers were heroes.

Even so…

Angella took a deep breath and looked at the disheveled duo in front of her, Bow looking increasingly nervous while Glimmer had her hands on her hips, ready for a fight. She fought the urge to smile. "Glimmer, what do you want me to do here? You deliberately disobeyed my orders to stay out of the woods, entered an active combat situation, interfered with a rebellion mission—"

"Interfered? If it wasn't for us, everyone would have died, mom!"

Bow's head whipped around. "Did you just..." He blinked at Glimmer in disbelief. "Glimmer, the queen is your mom?"

"Yes? Who did you think she was?" Glimmer's face turned pink while Bow blinked at her stupidly.

"Alright." Angella sighed. This was taking too long. The rebellion was waiting and she needed time to consider the matter. "The both of you, out into the garden. Sort yourselves out while I figure out what to do with you."

Queen Angella took stock of the wounded, got a formal debrief from the generals and sent a formal missive back to the Hymenopterian mayor offering whatever aide the village needed to recover from their years under Horde control. She was just about to fly down to the rebellion camp and see about sending a small regiment out to the village to make sure the Horde didn't attempt to recapture it while the people were recovering when she noticed Glimmer and Bow sitting on the edge of the steps just below the window. The were speaking low but their squeaky voices traveled across the clear afternoon.

"So you're really a princess?" Bow asked softly, not meeting Glimmer's eyes.

"Yup."

"Oh." Bow paused, running his fingers through the grass. "You know, I'm not actually a pirate."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

There was a moment of silence between them and then they both burst out laughing. Angella watched as they ran off, chasing each other around the garden, filling the air with happy giggles. She couldn't remember hearing Glimmer laugh like that since Micah died.

Where did that boy come from? It wasn't the first time the queen had wondered and it would likely not be the last. She did not like the idea of her daughter, of the princess of Bright Moon, being so tightly bonded to a child she knew nothing about. Not that she hadn't tried but the boy had avoided all questions about his home life with the air of someone hiding something and how could she force a child to tell secrets they were afraid to tell?

He was kind and polite. Good manners too as well as an understanding of the local cultures as if whoever raised him had certainly not slacked on his studies. Plus he was smart. The technologies expert from the rebellion had examined the device he'd used on the machine, said it rivaled anything her team could come up with. A few years, time to train, and he could be a tremendous asset to the rebellion.

Her daughter didn't have many friends. Didn't have any friends if Angella was being honest with herself. At least none that looked at her like she'd hung the moonstone herself, who seemed to take her temper and wild spirit in stride.

Not to mention that the boy did have a way of balancing her daughter's more chaotic urges. If today's escapades were any indication, they made a good team. And considering how the universe seemed determined to keep throwing them together, even if she did try to keep them apart, would she even be able to?

"Glimmer, it's getting late. I need to leave soon!"

"No, Bow, please! I finally just got you back, you can't leave again!"

"This time I'm coming back! I promise. Every day if your mom will let me!"

She would. She'd already decided she would. Whoever he was, he could have the run of the castle if he wanted, so long as her daughter could finally have a proper friend.

"But how?"

"You'll see. I have a plan!"