Goofball · 2:16am Sep 30th, 2023
Do you know what it's like to be raised by a militant perfectionist? To be expected to be a "proper soldier" and an "example to Talon Company" by the time you were six? Stoic, unwavering, and serious? All the time? When deep down, all you ever wanted to be was a goofball?
Gritt had been enduring that his whole life. Today was his tenth birthday, and his mother had already scolded him for smiling about it.
***** ***** *****
"Since you're ten now, I expect ten times the effort at the range. Specialist Jade is waiting for you." That was it? That was all she had to say? To be fair, it was more than she'd say to me on most days, unless she was mad.
"Yes, ma'am." I finished my biscuit, and slipped into my uniform. Even after attempts were made to tailor it, the black fabric still hung loosely from my scrawny body. I'd surely grow into it any day now.
Heading downstairs, through our quarters at the Fun Farm, I found Jade waiting at the ground floor exit. She was tall, and had green eyes like mom, but that's where the similarities ended. Her coat and feathers were a mix of vibrant greens and dark blues, which were juxtaposed against the suit of black combat armor she wore. A 10mm pistol was strapped to her thigh, an anti-machine rifle was slung around her midsection, and I could see a notepad and set of binoculars sticking out of pouch on her side.
She tossed me the case my own rifle was kept in, a standard .308 hunting rifle with the most basic scope imaginable. Even after bracing myself, I nearly fell backwards catching it. I tried to hide my embarrassment as I slung it on.
"Are you ready, cadet?" She smiled at me like she usually did, though it seemed a little warmer today.
"Yes, specialist." I smiled back. She turned and trotted out, and I followed.
*****
I'd lived with the industrial scent of Fillydelphia my whole life. The aroma of ash, chemicals, and blasted steel had been hitting my nostrils ever since I hatched, and I still wasn't used to it. Grimacing, I unfurled my wings and took flight as Jade did. It was early enough in the morning to still be quite dark, but my natural night vision made it easy enough to follow her as she banked... north?
"Aren't we going to the range, specialist?" I was confused, since mom made it pretty clear that was today's itinerary. It had been for almost every day for four years, ever since I was physically capable of operating a rifle. My mom had found the one thing her weak little runt of a son showed talent at, and was hell-bent on making me the best at it.
Jade shook her head. "You've outgrown the one in the metro tunnel. You're ready for sightlines longer than five hundred yards. I've got a new one set up for us."
*****
My trainer took me out into the deserted boneyards of the city, beyond the factories where unfortunate ponies toiled. Something I was thankful to not have many up-close experiences with. After a few minutes of quiet flying, we touched down on a rooftop that had already been set up with rolls and sandbags.
I looked out at the empty husks stretched out ahead of us, once buildings that made up a great city. "Where are the targets?"
The specialist chuckled and laid prone in her spot. I followed suit and started readying my rifle. "You'll have to find them. Targets won't just announce their location in a real battle, and as overwatch, it's your job to take them out before they take your fellow Talons out." She readied her binoculars and notepad. "I will tell you there are ten of them, between ranges of two hundred fifty yards and one thousand yards. I'll also tell you I started the timer twenty seconds ago."
My eyes went wide as I hastily set out out fifteen rounds, opened my bolt, loaded one, closed the bolt, and searched through my eight-times optic. It was difficult in the low light, but I eventually made out a plywood cutout of a raider pony caricature. Seven hundred yards... Account for windage and elevation... Control my breathing... Squeeze the trigger...
Crack!
"Good impact. That's one." In my peripheral vision, I could see Jade smirk as the supersonic round turned the wooden pony's scrunched nose into a gaping hole.
As that target fell backwards from the force of the shot, I scanned for another. Ah, There's-! No, this one was painted to be a griffon, with a white Talon insignia on its chest. Damn, she put up do-not-shoots? Scoffing, I kept looking. Sure enough, I found more targets, both valid and invalid. You can't trick me, specialist. One by one, the remaining nine targets went down.
*****
I felt Jade pat my shoulder. "Final time, forty-seven seconds. And not one wasted round. Fantastic job, cadet." She pouted. "I'll have to step up my game next time. I was really hoping to give you a real challenge."
I smirked smugly and eye-balled the massive gun she had stowed away. "Well..."
Her face hardened. "No, you'll hurt yourself."
I groaned. "But!"
"Cadet Gritt!" Jade didn't take such a serious tone with me unless she was, well, serious.
Unfortunately for us both, I persisted. "It's my birthday! My tenth birthday! I'm big...ger, now. I can handle it!"
The specialist's scowl slowly softened, and she eventually let out a sigh. "You can fire it once. And I am burying it in sandbags first."
I giggled like an idiot as she worked.
True to her word, everything but the barrel, optic, and grip was reinforced with heavy, lumpy cushions before I was allowed to set up behind the anti-machine rifle. Admittedly, I felt intimidated by the heavy weapon. I'd seen them fire plenty of times. They were scary.
I also felt brave. Stupidly, stupidly brave.
Finding the scope was already lined up with a steel barrel, all I had to do was brace, steady myself, and squeeze the trigger...
CRACK!!!
"Auugh!" I couldn't even register if I hit the target or not as pain ripped through my shoulder and upper side. Rolling onto my back, I immediately felt Jade hovering over me, a mix of anger, worry, and panic in her eyes.
"Try not to move!" She fetched a flare gun from her pack and she examined me. "Dammit, Gritt, I told you!" She studied my shoulder first, gently as she could. "Definitely dislocated..." Her claws lowered to my chest, and I let out another pathetic squawk. "Shit. Definitely broken. I can't risk moving you. A medic team needs to come with a stretcher." She opened the flare gun to load it.
"No! No, no, mom can't know!" I pleaded with her. "Just... Fly to the clinic and tell them in person. I'll be fine up here."
She shook her head. "I can't leave you by yourself. And there's no way the Captain won't find out about this."
"Yes there is!" I countered. "One of those super restoration potions! It'll be like nothing happened. She won't find out."
"I can't stop reports from being filed." Jade sighed. "I get that your mother can be scary, but you're worrying too much. She isn't going to hurt you for getting hurt."
My body was trembling. "I know that. I'm worried about you. She'll... She'll make you work in the Crater. Or break your wings and make you fight in the Pit, or..." I started to cry. "Because of me."
I felt her gently wipe my eyes. "Hey... Hey... That won't happen." Jade scoffed. "Who's been filling your head with that crap, anyway? The Captain isn't that bad." The specialist rubbed my cheek. "And don't start thinking this was your fault. I made a bad call. This is on me." She sighed and sat up, stowing the flare gun. "Now, I'm going to get help in person like you suggested. Don't move, okay?" I nodded, and she took off.
*****
Pain flared again as I was carefully moved onto a stretcher, but it subsided as the light dose of Med-X I was given took effect. It wasn't long before we reached the school campus turned Talon clinic. Damn. I think the last time I was here, I was an egg.
There were two griffon hens hovering over me soon enough, one yellow and the other pink. The pink one called out for a 'Dr. Longtalons' as she checked me in. A speckled gray griffon soon arrived and began examining me. With the bags under his eyes, I wondered if he felt as bad as me. He asked questions about the nature of my injury, and Jade began to answer.
I patted the doctors arm, and he turned to face me. "I flew into a wall. Like... say I flew into a wall or something. In the report. I don't want anyone getting in trouble with the captain except me."
He turned to Jade, tiredness vanishing from his expression at the mere mention of Stern. "Um..."
The specialist frowned at me, but conceded. "Yes, that's what happened. Birthday boy flew straight into a wall."
"Ooookay then." Dr. Longtalons gave me nervous smile before he got to work. "Uh, happy birthday."
*****
The exhausted griffon at least knew what he was doing. I was fit to fly in a matter of hours. All the pain had been expelled and replaced with dread.
The flight home was far shorter than I would have liked. Or maybe a long flight would have felt worse. Who knows. Either way, Jade and I were outside Stern's office before I realized it. The specialist told me to wait, and went in.
Mom already knew I'd gotten hurt. The clinic reported my arrival as soon as I got there. Thankfully, Jade and I were the only ones who knew how I really got hurt. Unless she was fessing up.
I couldn't make out their conversation, and mom didn't raise her voice too much, so I figured Jade stuck to the lie. My trainer soon came out, gave me a comforting smile, and left. Time to face the music.
Entering, I found the large, black-feathered griffon waiting in the center of her pristine office. Without a word, she pointed at the ground directly in front of her. After closing the door, I dragged myself the the target she had marked.
"Look at me." I hesitantly obeyed her command.
Slap.
It wasn't hard enough to knock me over. It was barely hard enough to hurt. It was just hard enough to tell me I'd done something wrong and to not do it again. I stopped myself from crying. She'd yell if I cried.
Then I felt her arms wrap around me and pull me to her chest. I instinctively pressed into my mother's rare embrace. "Happy birthday, goofball."
Oh boy, I feel bad for Gritt if Stern is his mother, but things worked out.
Overall a nice short story and I enjoyed the reference to Longtalons. It's brief but Kaz came off perfectly. I'm sure he knew the injury was from something else, but he doesn't rock boats. Plus he was an idiot who flew into stuff himself so he could hardly point talons if it was a true story.
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Kaz, later that day, realizing whose kid that was.
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Stern, the first time Gritt beat her training course scores:
Good job, son, but also, f*** you.
I have it in my head that a lot of Stern's issues stem from her being extremely insecure, so one could imagine how she'd take her scrawny puke of a child being better than her.
Also, other veteran Talon sharpshooters watching an eight-year-old completely outclass them:
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I'm sure that would be very humiliating and irritating to a lot of Talons, so he's lucky he was related to Stern since e otherwise probably would have been the butt of a lot of their ire.
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Stern handling Gritt's bullies, or rather, teaching him to handle it himself.
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I had considered a different end to this short where Stern rushed to the clinic as soon as she heard that Gritt was checked in to it.
Ultimately, I decided that Stern wouldn't want her Talons seeing that "mama bird" side of her. Which is a shame, because I have to wonder if Kaz's opinion of her would change if he saw there was at least one person she genuinely cared about other than herself.
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I can definitely imagine she'd have done a lot to avoid presenting a soft side in any fashion to anyone, but if she did...
...well, it probably would at least give Kaz the context that she's not a total sociopath. He'd probably hate her a tiny bit less by seeing her care for her own flesh and blood, if he knew who Gritt was at that point. Can't remember if that was public knowledge among the Talons.
It would be a pretty small glimmer though. In truth, Kaz probably didn't hate Stern with burning passion or anything, at least until the battle of Fillydelphia. He didn't interact with her much personally, other than the time she chewed him out for falling asleep at his post, so she was more of a distant authority figure he didn't like but was forced to respect. Heidi got a lot more of his direct disdain since she was all of that but much more present in his life, though he ended up coming to a grudging mutual respect and understanding with her and by extension the upper echelons of Talon Company. To him, they were a force that he had to obey regardless of his personal feelings, and likewise it was clinical and detached.
The difference though would be with the Pit and the way Stern hosted the battles there. It was pretty clear that Stern either enjoyed watching the slaves mutilate and kill each other, or at the very least didn't care or feel any negative emotions from it. If she showed a glimmer of care for Gritt that would be better than nothing, but to Kaz it could never make up for that. He hated Stern on a more visceral level, of pure revulsion as an example of a real monster that wouldn't have existed in old, prewar Equestria. Or at least would have been forced into the dark, unseen parts of the world he'd never deal with.
If Kaz had the opportunity to shoot her in the back and was certain he'd never be caught, he'd have been very tempted. I don't know that he'd have done it, but he'd have been very tempted. He could hope that Freija, the next in line, would have been a bit less horrible.
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The Pit is something Stern forbid Gritt from seeing. Whether even she understood that exposing a child to that was wrong, or she didn't want her son to know how much of a monster she really was, or if she just thought there would be too much risk of a slave trying something and Gritt getting hurt... Gritt is very thankful that was one part of life in Fillydelphia he didn't have to deal with. He really had very little exposure to how the slaves were treated.
His relation to Stern would have been known by the other officers, at the very least. I'm sure if Kaz was aware, simply knowing that he'd be turning Gritt, a completely innocent child, into an orphan would stay his hand. An orphan runt living in a city full of people who'd be quick to torment him without Stern protecting him anymore.
The most nuanced opinion of Stern that Kaz could possibly hear would come from Crimson, of course. Even when they were kids, the red flags were there, but he and Gawdyna kept her in check. Crim was far more patient with her than Gawd was, but for a time, the three of them managed to be friends. Then... Red Eye. A wedge that first split Gawdyna off from the group, who was unwilling to sell her soul. Crimson stayed with Stern because he had hopeless delusions that he could steer her away from her worst tendencies, but he was no match for Red Eye's ability to play Stern like a fiddle and turn her into her worst possible self.
Crimson considers Stern's descent and eventual death a personal failure to save his best friend. Someone he had vowed to protect ever since he found her, nearly feral, digging through a dumpster behind his family's shack. When she was gone, he focused on Gritt, and made sure he didn't turn out like she did in the wake of his life falling apart.
He blames the Wasteland for turning Stern into a sociopath, he blames Red Eye for intentionally making her worse, and he blames himself for giving up on her.
Looking back on the Battle of Fillydelphia, he knows he could have gotten her out alive. Had he gotten to her before Xenith and Xephyr, he could have subdued her and forced her to relinquish command to him. After Red Eye’s death, he wasn't a slave anymore, and had just as much seniority within Talon as she did. He'd have ordered Talon's dissolvement like Heidi did, and taken Stern and Gritt far away after handing the city to Gawdyna.
I'm not sure if seeing Stern battered, shackled, and muzzled would be more or less cathartic for Kaz than seeing her dead. Someone might try to kill her then and there anyway, but they'd immediately have an enraged Crimson to deal with.
It really does suck for Gritt, Crimson, and, to an extent, Gawdyna to be the only people in the world who ever cared about Stern, remember when she wasn't a monster, and know how different things could have been.