The Great Tabloid Disater: Deleted Scene (From Chapter 2) · 9:22pm Sep 16th, 2023
This was originally going to be in chapter 2, and I’d written it to completion, but my proofreader, the ever-talented Setokaiva, told me it was unnecessary when combined with the other scenes, and I saw his point. So, I took it out and edited bits and pieces of it into the remaining scenes.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to delete the thing fully from my notes, so, as a way to make up a bit for the delays with this story, I’d like to share this deleted scene with you.
Original title: Guard
Broadsword walked into the dentist’s waiting room, a sandwich tucked under one wing. He settled himself into one of the plush chairs. Sweet Celestia, this was a boring assignment.
All he had to do was escort Sunset Shimmer to and from her appointments and follow her to and from school. It was a glorified foalsitting job, not exactly what he’d signed up for when he entered the royal guard.
The one thing he didn’t understand, though, was why this job had such a high turnaround. From what he’d gathered, all the other guards that had gotten this post had requested reassignment not too long into it. He’d tried to ask why, but nopony wanted to talk. All they did was mutter something about “dangerous.”
It didn’t make any sense to him. He’d been at this a week, and so far, it had to be one of the most uneventful details in the entire service. Even this current outing was a perfect illustration. According to regulations, he was not allowed to leave his post, that being the waiting room. He certainly wasn’t supposed to go get a sandwich from the shop across the street.
But for crying out loud, he was taking a little filly to a dentist’s office! If anything came up, the doctor could probably handle it herself. Sure, Celestia had been very stern when she’d outlined his duties to him, but that was hardly surprising. She was putting him in charge of a seven year-old. Who wouldn’t be that way?
Sunset might have been the princess’s student, but that wasn’t the same as some noble or dignitary’s kid. She wasn’t in danger of attack. It wasn’t like she was some kind of troublemaker, either. She seemed like a sweet kid. Curious, energetic, a bit impulsive, but sweet.
No, this wasn’t a job for the royal guard. It was a job for an actual sitter, or maybe a full-time nanny. Somepony who’d make sure Sunset didn’t wander off, didn’t get lost, didn’t get harassed by adults, didn’t eat stuff they shouldn’t, the usual things. There were probably countless child-care agencies that would jump at the chance, if the princess asked.
Maybe he’d misheard those guards. Or maybe they’d all had some kind of bad luck?
Broadsword shook his head, opening up the sandwich to apply a layer of ketchup and mustard to his sandwich. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. Some of the veterans he’d spoken to during training said he should be grateful not to be on the front lines.
Yeah, he probably shouldn’t complain, he decided, closing up his now perfect sandwich. After all, it might have been boring, but at least it was safe.
He was just about to take a bite of his sandwich, when a thunderous BOOM resounded from inside the office. Broadsword jumped, falling from his seat into a heap on the floor, his sandwich pressed messily against his face.
Leaping to his hooves, he wiped the condiments from his eyes. His sandwich was left abandoned, staining the carpet with ketchup and mustard. He rushed to the door that separated the waiting room from the main office. He threw it open, only to jump back as something large was hurled through the doorway, crashing into one of the other waiting room chairs before slumping to the floor.
Broadsword examined the projectile with amazement. It was a small white unicorn stallion with a red mane and a cutie mark of a piece of paper with a red line across the top. He was also, as Broadsword noted, heavily unconscious.
Sunset Shimmer came trotting out after the pony-turned projectile, her horn aglow. “Mister Guard!” cried the seven-year-old. “Arrest these ponies! They hurt Doctor Whites!”
Broadsword turned to regard her, utterly gobsmacked. Had she…had she just tossed a full grown stallion? No, that was impossible. That…that would be insane. He had to have made a mistake. The stallion must have just tripped and crashed.
He blinked as the meaning of Sunset’s words hit him. “Ponies?”
“Yeah,” answered the filly. Looking behind her, her horn glowed brighter, and she began to tug, as if dragging something down the hallway. Sunset made a show of effort and gave another tug, and the something came into view.
Broadsword’s eyes nearly fell from their sockets as he watched Sunset, a seven-year-old filly, telekinetically drag an even bigger stallion with some kind of dog-shaped mark along the floor. His knees began to buckle as Sunset then lifted the stallion off the ground a few inches, and tossed him into the waiting room, landing with a splat onto the remains of Broadsword’s sandwich.
Suddenly feeling more than a little light-headed, Broadsword could only stand there, his jaw hanging practically to the floor. Sunset merely beamed, a look of supreme satisfaction on her tiny, deceptively angelic face. Suddenly, he understood what his fellow guards had meant.
“Mr. Guard?” asked the filly-shaped monstrosity he was in charge of, looking up at him with those big, curious eyes. “Aren’t you going to arrest them?” She tilted her head. “And why’s your face all dirty?”
In that moment, Broadsword made two very important decisions.
First, as soon as he could, he was going to get reassigned. Frontier border patrol sounded about right. Maybe something really on the edge, like an outpost on the Badlands or the Forbidden Jungle.
Second, he was never, ever, ever, going to underestimate this kid again.
I can see why your editor thought it would be unnecessary, but at the same time, Iʼm glad you decided to share it with us.
I tend to save every deleted work, every scrapped idea, every reworked story in my Google Docs. Never delete ʼem.
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Me, too. Even the stuff I just write because I’m bored and I KNOW the idea isn’t strong enough to stand on its own, but I just want to play with it.
I mean, I think I might delete earlier versions of scenes sometimes...can’t remember. But other times I even keep the tiny, barely constructed scraps of scenes I write for a project just to test out ideas. My notes are a mess...and so are the story scraps, to be honest.