Knock knock knock!
"Sir, an urgent message for you."
Knock knock knock!
"Sir, I know you're there. The receptionist told me you came back in the morning and haven't left."
Knock knock knock!
"Come on, sir! If I miss another delivery they'll dock my pay," the knocker turned desperate.
Astray finally opened the hotel room door, greeting the nervous mailpony with bloodshot eyes and downtrodden expression. It was his day to rest up so he would be ready- no, so he could survive another two day and night shifts in the hospital. Sleeping was difficult already with images of sir Cromach's smashed body still going on against all probability, dead ponies on the inner side of his eyelids staring at him with milky white eyes, and the absolute certainty that there were even worse things in his future. A nervous mailpony knocking on his door wasn't helping in the slightest.
Despite his complete exhaustion, Astray conjured up a friendly expression.
"Can I help you?" he asked, groaning.
"An express message from Manehattan, sir. To be delivered to any of these ponies - miss Bubbles, mister Astray, or miss Anvil."
From Manehattan? New orders?
"I'm Astray," the satyr opened the palm of his hand into which a letter was promptly put.
"Sign here, please," the courier presented a notepad and a pen tethered to it. Astray scratched something remotely resembling his name on it and shoved it back, "Thank you, sir."
The letter sealed with official Order seal was surprisingly short.
Dear trio of utter failures,
Since it's blatantly obvious Cromach is in the same situation whether or not you are there, I'm revoking my orders. It's clear I gotta train you till you beg whatever monstrosity nearly got my boss killed for death.
Get your sorry asses back here.
Contradiction
Astray sighed. On one hand, he was happy the hellish patrol schedule was over. On the other, he knew his team leader was slowly getting fed up with everything he did wrong. The satyr was sure that the return order wasn't a relief, but rather a door from one nightmare to another.
But hey, at least he'd get some real sleep again.
***
"What are you doing here?" Anvil asked, standing on guard at the door to sir Cromach's new room, "You were barely walking when you left a while ago. I'm not letting you drink any more Red Buffalo on shift."
Bubbles, resting on a bench next to the door, opened one eye.
"Good news, everypony," Astray waved Contradiction's letter, "or news, at least. We're being recalled back to Manehattan. Contradiction is pissed off."
Anvil snatched the letter from his hand and read it. She facepalmed.
"This can't end well, can it?"
"I doubt it. Well, you two will be fine. You actually can pass her crazy training."
Anvil patted his shoulder.
"I'll help."
Astray blinked. Did he hear her right? Anvil withdrew her hand without saying anything more.
"Yaaay!" Bubbles sat up, "You're not mad anymore."
Anvil looked away.
"I... I still think you are doing more than you can handle, but I realized in the sewers where my weapon was mostly useless that I need to broaden my horizons. There might be something to the overall training you are undertaking. You are going about it the wrong way, your stupid self-destructive way, but for all it is worth, I was wrong... happy?"
Astray's mouth gaped, his eyes following suit. Bubbles' claw poked his leg. He shook his head.
"I'll say something dumb if I think about it too long," he looked at the floor, "So you just be you, and I'll keep being me."
"I thought you said only if you thought about it too long," Anvil grinned. Bubbles growled at her, "I didn't mean that... for once."
Awkward silence descended on the duo.
"Ummm," Astray broke it, "Look, I'm not used to ponies... mares especially being nice to me so I don't know what to say," he laughed nervously, "Let's not get too sunshine and rainbows about things too quickly. I'm sure I'll screw something up soon so you can yell at me. Let me talk to sir Cromach. I need to tell him we're leaving, and ask... some personal things."
Anvil wordlessly nodded, leaving her gatekeeper post and sitting down on the bench next to Bubbles.
"You're a nice lady," the demonette said.
"Being 'nice' doesn't help you up north," Anvil gave her a serious look, "Frostwolves don't care how friendly you are, only how you taste. Blizzards don't care about your personality, they test your strength and endurance. Snow has no mercy. To survive in the snow, you need to become snow."
"I care," Bubbles put her muzzle in Anvil's lap, "and you're not cold."
"I wonder how soon that's gonna kick me in the ass," the minotaur frowned.
***
Astray entered the dark room with its solitary patient. Despite being just over seven o'clock in summertime, the thick curtains were doing their job perfectly, and the only reason why Astray could see anything was the light coming in from the hall. Walking over to the softly breathing griffon, Astray-
"AAH!"
-yelped as talons wrapped around his hand.
"Heheh," Cromach chuckled, "Always make sure everyone underestimates you. Makes things a lot easier in the long run if they're wrong. What's going on? I thought your shift was over for today."
"Miss Contradiction is recalling us back to Manehattan. She apparently wasn't too happy with our failure protecting you and wants us there for 'more training'. We deserve it, I think, for messing this and the sewers up. I'm really sorry."
"You're too harsh on yourself, Astray. The sewers were more my fault than yours. I thought it would be just a little fun, just something to distract me from paperwork... I thought I was with B- some of my old friends. I thought you were my old team."
"I'm sorry we aren't, sir."
Cromach's talons grasped Astray's hand tighter.
"You can't be, and I should have known. You had no experience and very little training. Considering that, you did pretty well. As for Black Shield, that was the name of the undead pony Connie fought in my room, you couldn't have stopped her. Be very happy it was Connie who fought her and not any of you three. She would have likely killed you all if you tried to stop her. The worst part is that Connie probably isn't in the right frame of mind to realize you couldn't have known she was inside the room unless you randomly looked. She was silent, quick, and extremely good at what she was doing. From what I asked some doctors, nopony found her after the incident. That means somepony got her away, because she sure as hay couldn't have left on her own, not after Connie put her through a grinder. Probably the mage who was with Black Shield at the ceremony."
"How do you deal with it, sir?"
"Huh, with what?"
"How can you take this as normal? You nearly get killed... twice, and you just go into a detective mode thinking only about what connections and clues you might have missed. I can't sleep even now. Every time I close my eyes I see the dead ponies from the sewers staring at me. I see acid burning Bubbles and Anvil over and over and over and over. Every time I wake up in cold sweat, knowing that if anything went more wrong I would now be a part of that pile of corpses."
"Nah," Cromach waved his foreleg.
"What do you mean?" Astray blinked at Cromach's unbothered response.
"I think she would have made you into a new flesh golem. You're too unique to be in the pile."
"SIR! I'm serious. I'm not cut out to be a hero, I don't have it in me. I get the shakes whenever I realize there might be something much worse we'll eventually have to deal with. I can't do it."
"And yet you're still here. Your team leader considers you a waste of oxygen, your teammate thinks you're an idiot and refuses to help you, hoping you'll leave and she'll have somepony better around, you get beaten up every day by the best martial artist in the whole world. Nopony is forcing you to stay here. You aren't under any contract or obligation. And yet... you are still here. I should be asking YOU - why?"
Astray thought long and hard, and realized he didn't have a clear answer. The closest he could get to it was:
"You, mister Cross, and Bubbles, sir," he scratched his chin nervously, "You are such good ponies, well, you know what I mean. I can't put a finger on it, but mister Cross doesn't have a single evil or selfish bone in him. Grandmaster Antares is different. You, sir, you inspire ponies around to push themselves beyond their limits. I feel like if we weren't here you would have gone to do all the fighting against darkness alone. I just can't have that, I feel like I need to help in any way I can because I have more worth as a sacrifice for one of you than as an alive coward. And Bubbles, she would fight some ancient evil if it threatened a pony who once offered her a dog biscuit and a scratch behind the ear. In short, I'd be much happier if Anvil and Bubbles, even miss Contradiction despite hating me, were protected by some experienced knight of princess Celestia who can fight, do magic, and more amazing things, but there is none... there is just me."
"So," Cromach gave him a mischievous smile, "No ogling Anvil in the shower?"
"I still have both my eyes and miscellaneous male-only equipment," Astray chuckled, "So no, no ogling Anvil in the shower. Besides, she walks around naked anyway."
Cromach sat up, hissing in pain.
"Damn, healing fast but still not there," he muttered, "Well, Astray... the truth is I've never really thought about it. I'm more the action type than the planning one, that was Blaze. All that saving the world, being one of the few able, and that's a big overexaggeration, to save the world happened on its own. All I wanted was to live with my coltfriend and be happy. As it turned out, he had a lot of baggage in his past we had to deal with. When I look back on it now, it was worth every scar, every moment I thought I would crap myself, every nightmare keeping me awake for nights. Heh, I thought running away through a desert without any supplies or equipment while Griffon Imperial Legion hunted me down would be the worst thing to happen to me. Boy was I wrong," the griffon laughed openly.
"What was the worst?" Astray sat down on a free bed next to Cromach's.
"When I let Blaze cook."
"Sir!"
"Oh come on, lighten up a little," Cromach faked being hurt, "I never thought about the world being in danger. Blaze said it right - we weren't heroes, we were just in the right place at the right time. All I thought about at each point was this - when we get back to Canterlot, I'm pounding that plot till he screams my name."
Astray blushed, and Cromach continued.
"You see, we are naturally selfish. Fighting for greater good all the time will leave you unsatisfied and bitter, because most of the time nopony knows about what you're doing. They will never know that the fact that they woke up today is because of you. Eventually, that will wear down everypony. Find something that makes you happy, no matter how strange or small it might seem, and tell yourself all the fighting is for that one little thing. For me, it was love. For you, at least now, it is just the feeling that you can't leave us alone in all this mess. Eventually, maybe it'll be for a healthy dose of minotaur cleavage, who knows?"
"The only cleavage would be with Anvil's axe, sir," Astray's imagination got the better of him for a moment. Then harsh reality returned, "You still didn't answer me. What was the worst?"
"Hmm," Cromach tapped his beak thoughtfully, "To be honest, it kinda graduated from bad to worse. At all times I thought it couldn't get worse, and yet I kept being wrong. You see, the first time Blaze and I met was after I ran away from the Empire to Equestria. I thought he was a pickpocket, but he was really cute so I tailed him in order to catch him in the act and blackmail him into some sexy times. That doesn't sound too heroic, does it now? Well, he definitely wasn't trying to steal from anypony, he was trying to kill himself," Cromach looked at Astray with a very serious expression, "Do you understand? We aren't heroes, and we never were."
Astray's breathing grew ragged, all his own lonely thoughts from before he joined the Order returning, but now from a different perspective. He nodded, and Cromach continued once again.
"Blaze had a soul of a powerful dark mage locked inside his head at the time. He tried to hide it from me and his few friends, but we found out despite him trying to deal with it all alone. He succeeded, but at the cost of his life."
"I thought he died recently, sir."
"Well yes, he died several times, but was always resurrected by higher power wanting to use him for its own goals. That time he was raised as a flesh golem, a soul trapped inside a durable undead body," Cromach recalled something, "I still don't know if that makes me technically a necrophile. What do you think?"
"I think you are handling being in constant danger much better than I would."
"Pfff, it gets easier after the first two or three ancient evils set on plunging the world into eternal darkness. Speaking of the end of times, the second time I thought Blaze died for real was when a god named Nightmare possessed a unicorn and forcibly ascended him into an alicorn. Blaze, whom everypony thought dead, planned out a minotaur invasion into Equestria, united the clans, and founded the northern capital city of the minotaur clans now called Rift. That was only several years ago. Everypony including me thought him insane and danger to all ponies. Everypony but his friend and the pony responsible for the rebuilding of our Silver Sun - Heavy Hoof," Cromach shook his head, "Blaze lured the possessed alicorn into a situation which killed both of them."
The griffon took a sip of water from a glass on his bedside table.
"As I said, he died multiple times, never knowing if what he did was enough. After this death, he was ascended into alicornhood by a god named Harmony who wanted to manipulate him into being his avatar of perfection. An overly paranoid pony like Blaze didn't eat all the sweettalking whatsoever, and when we finally met again we worked through me betraying him, considering him evil and insane, and so on. In the end, we faced Harmony himself together, with Shadowstep, Cross, and their squad, with our old Order team under Connie. That time, Blaze was killed by a force capable of preventing his return," when Cromach raised his head again, Astray could see his reddening, wet eyes, "And you know what? All I got out of it was that I could say that I was there until the end. I did everything I could. It wasn't enough, and I cursed myself for months until Connie snapped me out of it, but I had to realize I did all I could before moving on. What I'm trying to say and is taking me forever because I want you... no, I need you to understand because you are so similar to him, is that I loved every moment with him and I don't regret any horrors I had to go through to be with him. He found somepony like me, somepony who would go to Tartarus and back for him, and that means so can you. There IS light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not an approaching train."
"I still don't know, sir. It feels so unreal that somepony this revered by everypony around him would-"
"Do you know what his favourite question was?"
"What, sir?"
"Why are you sleeping here with me, Cro, when you could find ten better ponies around every dumpster in Canterlot? It wasn't a joke, Astray, not even in the end. He actually believed it no matter what I did or said. That... that one single thing hurt more than any wound I sustained in any fight. The fact that I was powerless to change that one crippling thing about him. It was something he needed to change himself, nopony else could force it, we could only nudge him in the right direction."
"I..." Astray's head was spinning. The world inside his head was being turned upside down, "I think I'll just take it day after day, be the free scratchies dispenser for Bubbles and the butt of Anvil's jokes, and work on myself. I can't do most of the things you or the others want me to do, but I can at least try."
"Glad to hear that. When you start truly living those words, you'll make peace with yourself."
"Thank you for the pep talk, sir," Astray stood up, "but I should go. The others are waiting for me, and miss Contradiction will surely have some snappy remarks no matter how on time we return."
"Yeah, don't be too harsh on her either. She's been through a lot just like any of us."
Nodding, Astray left. Only out in the hallway he realized something that might or might not have been important. What Comach had said wasn't only meant for him, those were words the griffon cursed himself for not having found while his lover was still alive.
He looked at Anvil and Bubbles. The minotaur was idly stroking Bubbles' mane while the half-demon mare snoozed in her lap.
"Let's go, guys."