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Mornings3,412 words
The Trespassers4,059 words

Mornings

After the fourth alarm clock destroyed in a blind, sleep-addled rage, everyone pretty much stopped caring about when Garf woke up.

As it so happened, his sleep cycle had decided to be merciful today. At some point before noon, the taste of morning breath and the sensation of an empty stomach conspired to make sleep the less attractive option.

He slowly pulled himself out of bed. “Furrmurrmns,” he grumbled, trundling over to the windowblinds and fumbling for the drawstring. With a snap, the shades sprang open, giving Garf a face full of pure Celestia-made eleven-A.M. sunlight.

“Gnaaaagh,” he observed, noting the excessive brightness inherent in the Equestrian summer.

First things first: clothing. Nowhere near a requirement in a town where the vast majority of sentient beings went without, but he had neither fur nor inclination to take up streaking as a hobby. A simple, serviceable armored vest and trousers worked for this time of year.

Second on the list was the gear that went with the clothes. Heavy steel-toed stomping boots. A bandolier filled with small, cylindrical shells. The badge that marked him the Border Sheriff, even if some days the getup made him feel more like a gamekeeper.

Last was the centerpiece of the ensemble - the Tool of Sheriffic Authority, and currently the only working firearm in Equestria. It was a standard Tinker-schema scrapgun, break-action, mono barrel, wood stock. Mankind, separated from the Fae Races by exactly one-and-one-half meter of hand-assembled wood and iron. It was a constantly-maintained, well-oiled point of pride.

It had also not been fired in over three weeks, which was starting to make Garf a tad antsy. He enjoyed shooting his gun at things, preferably things that moved and/or were trying to kill him so he didn’t have to bother explaining himself to any other moving things nearby that might take offense to his itchy trigger finger. The last target that fit those parameters was a particularly overzealous gremlin, whose glorious charge of blood and destruction had lasted two seconds and seven feet before his torso had abruptly assumed the consistency of tapioca.

And for the delightful mental image of gremlin torso pudding, you are quite welcome.

Thus outfitted and armed, Garf was ready to assume his duties as Sheriff of the Vorlanian/Equestrian Border. Of course, “Ready” was easy. “Willing and Able” would take some work. Thankfully, the Age of Gunpowder had coincided nicely with the Age of Instant Coffee, both of which were useful things to have in a security force.

Clad in full border-protecting garb, Garf made his groggy way to the house’s pantry, positive that the powder of functional mornings was awaiting him within. It was there, surely. There was no reason for it not to be. The last time he’d checked, it was completely full... which was admittedly well over a month ago. Still, a month of even the heaviest use could never drain a tin that deep. There was at least one or two cups’ worth left. Surely.

Lo and behold, the coffee tin was empty.

“Son of a nag,” he spat, the local turn of phrase marking the most lucid speech he had emitted up to that point.

He was ready to face the Fae horrors that dwelt beyond the territories of the civilized races. With a gun in his hands, he felt like he could take on a catoblepas, or perhaps a orc or two, or possibly even a dragon. A very small, not-impervious-to-shot dragon. He did not, however, feel in any way ready to plumb the depths of the one place where coffee could be found at a time such as this. Sheriff or not, no man awake for less than five minutes could justifiably be asked to brave the myriad pastel horrors that lay within.

But Sugarcube Corner had the coffee.

And when the coffee called, Garf answered.

***

Carrot Cake froze behind the register. He had been penning the Bridlebrooks’ most recent order -- septuple-layer red velvet, great for anniversaries -- when he entered the shop.

Garf. The least Pinkie-like person on the face of the earth. Somehow, the two had hit it off, and more mornings than not, he wound up here for his early shot of carbohydrates. Or, in this case, his eleven o’clock shot of carbohydrates. Still sort of early for him, Carrot supposed.

Oh Celestia, he’d gotten in line. He’d committed to the attack. Behind his impenetrable facade of the jovial confectioner, Mr. Carrot Cake was panicking. He had to once again suppress the innate urge to flee into the streets and beg mercy of whatever deity had cursed him with the burden of servicing the Vorlanian Bottomless Stomach. Garf was now three places from the front of the line. Now two. Now he was next. Carrot Cake fought to keep his composure. He’d done it before. He was not going to flip out now.

Garf was directly in front of the register now. Panic.

“Hello, Sheriff,” Carrot said, only the barest hint of bowel-voiding terror creeping into the edge of his voice. “The usual?” Oh please, dear Celestia, not the usual.

“Afraid not, Mister Cake,” Garf sighed, rubbing one eye with a glove. “Running late today. Just an espresso. Double, please.”

The pony let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. Garf made no outward reaction.

“Double espresso, coming right up!” Carrot hurried behind the counter to fill the blessedly small order. Garf merely watched, as amused at the thinly-veiled display of exceptional service as he had been at everything else that morning.

“Here you go, sir,” said Carrot, holding out a tall, steaming paper cup. “Two bits.” Garf laid two golden coins on the counter and took the cup, mumbling something before taking a deep swig. He sighed, looking around the shop with eyes open a few extra millimeters.

“Actually, now that I think about it, you wouldn’t happen to have any Swiss rolls, would you?”

There was a blur of motion in Garf’s peripheral vision. “Nope! Nope, we’re all out.”

Garf stared at the baker. It looked like a disbelieving glare, though in reality it was an only slightly caffeine-assisted brain attempting to process more than one datum of information at a time. Eventually said brain threw its metaphorical hands up and said “Forget it, plan B.”

“Phooey,” said Garf. “I’ll try tomorrow, then.” He turned and made for the store’s exit. “See you around, Mr. Cake.”

“So long, Sheriff! Come back soon!” Carrot called, waving a hoof and smiling a great big “please do not come back soon” smile.

Garf closed the door behind him, took his gun from its resting place against the nearby bike rack, and strolled off along the sidewalk, before turning on Main Street and disappearing from sight.

Carrot Cake lifted the box of Swiss rolls from behind the register and laid it back on the countertop.

“Ohhh, that was a close one.”

***

It signified something, in retrospect, that when a rumble and a cloud of smoke emanated from the other side of the Everfree Wall, the only reaction Garf could muster was a long-suffering sigh.

The massive timber bulwark circled the Everfree Forest, engineered to keep anything inside from escaping. The only way over was by ladder, which limited the prospects for guards to humans, pegasi, and Pinkie Pie, for whom physical obstacles were little more than a joke. Garf began scaling the one nearest to the site of the detonation, hoping with no great enthusiasm that the source wasn’t exactly what he assumed it was.

As he surmounted the outer edge and gazed in over one of the parapets, his already low hopes were thoroughly reduced to some small number infinitesimally close to zero. He had precisely ε hopes that his latest and largest creation had not just blown up in a spectacular fashion and he had missed the entire thing.

The Armory, a squat stone building erected just inside the Bulwark, was missing a corner. To be specific, it was missing the corner that pointed south by southwest, which was precisely where something large, metal, and potentially explosive had been kept under a tarp with “DO NOT BUGGER WITH” written on the front.

But someone had. A month of waiting for parts to arrive by fire-mail, wasted. Garf muttered something about a double-fortnight warranty and began descending the ladder on the forestward edge.

He had to stay positive. At least they hadn’t blown up the whole Armory, right?

He mentally slapped himself and resolved to not think anything like that ever again, because fate was a cruel and unforgiving bastard who loved nothing more than the merciless desecration of optimistic thought.

***

The inside of the Armory was filled with a greyish haze and the eye-watering stink of cordite, which slowly filtered out through all the little holes in the thatched roof and the one big hole in the back corner. Three quadrupedal, soot-covered shapes huddled underneath one of the many metal-laden tables ringing the single room of the building.

Garf’s eye twitched. It was the most emotion he’d shown all day.

“Rainbow Dash. Pinkie. Cloud Kicker. Please tell me why there’s a hole in my workshop where an unfinished anti-armor cannon used to be.”

The three ponies tried to make themselves smaller and less noticeable. The sextuple-colored mane of their most ostentatious member, regardless of its soot content at the time, rendered their efforts fruitless.

“I can see you.”

Slowly, guiltily, Rainbow Dash emerged, wearing a fakely innocent smile.

“What did I tell you about touching the Dragon Gun?”

“That it was extremely dangerous and nopony should do it if you weren’t here.”

Garf folded his arms. “Not quite. The precise wording I used was ‘Don’t.’”

As Rainbow wilted, Garf trudged past her to take stock of the wreckage. The barrel was annihilated, which was to be expected when one chambered and test fired a point-seven-hundred caliber cartridge in a weapon that, while meant to fire it, hadn’t been properly calibrated, sealed, or even completely finished yet.

“It’s honestly a miracle that neither of you were killed when this thing went off,” Garf said, bending over to check the firing mechanism.

Dash raised a hoof. “Actually, we were hiding behind a table and watching Pinkie shoot it.”

“Oh.” He stood back up. “Well, nice to see you’re taking reasonable precautions, at the very least.”

“So are we in less trouble?”

“What? No.” He chuckled and lifted the gun’s wreckage from its resting place atop a badly-singed phlogiston drum. “You were only in trouble for breaking the gun. Not turning yourselves into pastry topping in the process just means less paperwork for me.”

The other two ponies extricated themselves from beneath the table. “Touched to see you care so much, Sheriff,” said Cloud Kicker, stretching her wings out. Pinkie simply wandered, seemingly unfazed by her recent brush with fiery, stupid death.

“It’s what I do,” he said, laying the weapon on the long worktable in the center of the room. “So, thanks to you three, I need to requisition another iron 5-footer barrel, a new firing pin, and I think some elastic so I can cement what looks like a crack in the stock.” He looked back at them, shaking his head in disbelief. “How you managed to fracture a forged iron stock like it was balsa wood, I’ll never understand.”

Cloud Kicker shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to go all high-caliber on us, Sheriff.”

“You try to sneak a compensation joke in there, and you’re fired.”

She held her hooves up in faux shock. “Was I saying anything about compensation? You, sir, are projecting, and I don’t take kindly to being projected on.” She paused for a second, thoughtful. “Okay, sometimes. But you have to warn me first.”

Garf thumped her head with a knuckle as he walked past her on the way out. “You were thinking about it and ready to fire it off the second you got an opening, and don’t you dare lie. You’ve been working here for two months now, but I’ve picked up at least that much. Now come on,” he said, picking the scrapgun up from just outside the door. “We still have one gun that works.”

Pinkie giggled, bouncing out as Cloud Kicker rubbed the sore spot on top of her head. “Come on, Cloudy! We’re playing for only two bits buy-in today!”

Rainbow floated to the door, holding it open as Cloud Kicker grumpily trotted through. “You know, I stopped getting the dope thump after my first week.”

“I will not break first, Rainbow. I swear I will get that man to crack a smile. I know he can.”

***

Until more men arrived and Garf had to start keeping up appearances, he was oddly free to do whatever he wished, so long as whatever he wished was within or near the Everfree Wall.

Right now, what he wished was to get Pinkie to deal a card that would give him something better than two pair. Rainbow never smiled like that unless she thought she had a straight or better.

“So, Garf,” said Pinkie, adjusting her dealer’s cap as Cloud Kicker debated what to do with her cards, “have you tried the new Swiss rolls yet?””

“Haven’t had the pleasure,” the Sheriff replied, scowling invisibly at his measly six and seven. “Cake always says he’s out whenever I ask.”

“That’s weird. They’re always right there on the counter whenever I check.”

Garf levelled a stare in the direction he assumed Sugarcube Corner lay. “Are they, now.”

“Yep! And they’re super-delicious, too! You know, we put-”

Rustle.

All four players at the table quickly jerked their heads in the direction of the forest.

“Did you hear...?” asked Rainbow.

“Yeah,” said Garf. “It’s still a few hundred meters inside the boundary. Doesn’t sound too big in any case.” Everyone present turned back to their cards. “So what do you put in them?”

“Eh, I forgot what I was saying. Cloud Kicker, enough’s enough. Are you in or out?”

“Alright, fine,” groaned the mare in question. “I’m out.” She tossed her cards onto the table and stole another unsure glance at the forest.

“Call,” said Garf, shoving another two bits into the center of the table.

Pinkie laid another seven on the table. Garf made a mental backflip of joy, for the pot was now his.

“Raise you five,” said Rainbow, swelling the pot by nearly half again.

“And I raise you five,” said Garf, a little too quickly.

Rainbow narrowed her eyes at him and snorted. She officially had the worst poker face in this realm or any other.

Pinkie put down an eight.

“Raise ten!”

“Call.”

An ace.

“Raise fifteen!”

“Raise twenty.”

Rainbow attempted to mask her surprise at the Sheriff’s sudden boldness. This consisted mostly of hiding her face behind her two cards, which did little more than announce to the world that she knew she’d already lost.

Rustle.

Rustle-rustle-rustle.

The last card was a nine.

“HAH!” she cried, slapping her cards on the table -- a five and a six. “Nine straight!”

“Full house,” said Garf, showing his own hand. “Be right back.”

As Dash rapidly cycled through the five stages of Dash grief (disbelief, crushing sense of failure, anger, incoherence, more anger, acceptance), Garf stood, rescuing his gun from table-leaning idleness as he did so.

“Sheriff,” called Cloud Kicker, “you need any help?”

“Nnnnope,” he said, loading a shell into the breech and snapping the chamber shut with a crisp click. “Pretty sure I don’t.” With that, he began walking in the direction of the ever-intrusive rustling.

The constant din of the quite unstealthy creature within began to include a constant, bass-heavy hissing sound. Garf stopped, then turned around.

“Actually Cloud Kicker if you could back me up here I would really appreciate it thank you.”

“What’s with the change of heart?” she asked, floating over the table and the still-mourning form of Rainbow Dash.

“Only one thing makes that noise, and that’s an ankheg. If I miss, I won’t get a second shot.”

The two walked (and flew) past the treeline, scrapgun firmly pointed forward.

“So, uh... what’s an ankheg?”

“Think of it like a cross between an antlion, a cockroach, and a beetle, only it’s ten feet long and can spit acid. Probably out here looking for a good burrowing spot once autumn rolls around.”

“Sounds nasty,” she noted, peering over the ground-level shrubs and other plant life to try and spot the insect in question.

“It is,” said Garf, peering around a tree trunk. “But that’s only if you’re going after it with a weapon without any reach. Once the spear was invented, they stopped giving us any trouble.”

“So... I shouldn’t try to beat it up.”

“Not right away, no.” He shoved a rather large fern to the side with a boot. “I’m taking point here. If it doesn’t go down right away, just try to crush whatever looks squishiest.”

“You know, normally you’re not the first one to volunteer for going out and fighting dangerous monsters.”

He looked back at her with an even expression.

“It’s been three weeks since the gremlins, Cloud Kicker. I need this.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. You’ve got the gun.”

“That I do.”

And with that, they continued on in silence. After another minute or so of searching, Garf put one hand up in a “full stop” signal. Cloud Kicker hovered uncertainly, trying to spot what he had.

“Here he is.”

The sheriff crept forward, scrapgun at the ready. The hissing still hadn’t died down.

“Peek a boo, ya ugly git,” he called, sweeping the gun’s barrel across a wide swath of clearing. “The neighbors called to complain about the noise. I’m afraid you have to leave.”

Cloud Kicker continued to hover behind him, still glancing about worriedly. “It can’t understand us, can it?”

“No, but I’m having fun. Shut up.”

He let out a loud, shrill whistle, which hushed the hissing and made the rustling quite loud. One of the nearby bushes shook rather violently, just before the ankheg emerged.

It was just as Garf described it: long, ugly, and built like a horrendous mishmash of all the most disturbing denizens of the insect kingdom. Its antennae twitched, sensing the heat of the two living bodies in front of it. Its bladed mandibles, nearly two feet long on their own, widened as it let out a quite loud, quite disturbing screech.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Garf, taking aim with the scrapgun. “Say your piece and let’s get it over with already.”

The monstrous bug crouched low to the ground before springing forward, rushing along the forest floor at a freakishly speedy pace.

Garf pulled the trigger.

There was a noise like a lightning strike.

The bug’s screeching, hissing, rustling, and all other assorted sounds ceased. Its legs gave out from under it, and it slid the final ten feet to the sheriff, who sidestepped it and the yellow, ichorous trail it left behind.

Garf unlatched the gun’s breech and popped the spent shell out. He made an expanding gesture with his free hand.

“Pchhh. I just love that sound.” He snapped the chamber shut again.

“It is nice,” Cloud Kicker agreed.

“Sends shivers down my spine.” He turned back toward the direction of the poker table. “Think Rainbow’s gotten over it yet?”

“I’d give her three more minutes.”

“I’d much prefer to rub it in her face.”

Cloud Kicker rolled her eyes. “You’re the boss.”

“And don’t you forget it.” He grinned, starting off for the wall. “Come on, buy-in’s only a bit this time.”

“I swear,” said the pegasus, floating after him, “I’m going to clean you out one of these days.”

“We’ll see.”

And so passed another perfectly normal morning at the Everfree Wall. One day, there would have to be a much more professional way of going about monster repulsion, but that day was neither soon nor much desired.

And for some reason, the poker table would be there forever.

Author's Note:

WHY HELLO THERE

So, yes. This is my new thing. Updates will be sparse, but know that every word was crafted with nothing but love for the end reader and a time-to-word-count ratio that puts Valve to shame.

Totally not jinxing it.

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