For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Pound Cake and I worked, sorting books and scrolls down in the castle bowels of the Archive. Until, after an arbitrary amount of time, the door at the top of the Archive stairs opened.
"Shift change!" Starlight called down to us. Pound and I finished what we were doing and followed her up to the castle foyer. There, Echo and Sunshine were waiting for us, ready to assume guard duty. Through the stained glass windows we could see the sunlight of day fade and change over to the dark of night. "You two are relieved," Starlight said.
Pound and I headed to our guards' quarters. He hadn't said anything since our confrontation earlier. Not even the odd monosyllabic blurbs to fill in the void of conversation while we worked. We each hung up our uniforms. He sat on his cot and opened a book that he'd borrowed from the archive to read for the evening. I quietly made my way to the exit.
"Just don't come back stinking of booze again," he said without looking up.
Now, dammit, I like drinking. I don't see any harm in it, really. But I hate being labeled as being so one-dimensional. I wanted to say something like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' or even, 'Don't worry, I won't.' Even with the addition of 'I promise.' But in that moment, with him, I felt like any words I said would sound just as hollow to me as they would to him. So I left without saying anything.
Exiting the castle was easy enough. I had actually expected to be accosted by either of the bats, both with a similar demand for sobriety. But strangely, none came. I trotted out into the evening in Ponyville.
Now, even after having been to the Crystal Empire, and Canterlot, I would hardly call myself well-traveled. Even when compared with older residents of Ponyville who have never left the town in their whole lives. But, for what little outside experience I'd had, I could tell one thing for sure. If it was one thing that Ponyville did not have, it was what you would call, a happening night life.
I made haste to Sugarcube Corner, to meet with Pumpkin Cake. I pushed the thoughts of Pound Cake from my mind. In the past couple of months, I had considered him to be the closest thing I had to a friend, aside from anypony back on the farm. If he knew about any of this tonight, it would almost guarantee the end of that.
And what about the Apples? I wondered, as Sugarcube Corner came into view. I could just as easily head straight over there instead. Pumpkin Cake would be disappointed that I never showed up, and that would be that. She'd move on with her life. And I could spend some real, quality time with my... family.
I stopped in front of the bakery. The sign on the door said 'closed'. I'm not one to seek life giving me a sign, but this would certainly qualify as one to just move on and keep walking. Something in my mind that one could call 'wisdom' made me turn to leave.
"Hey," I heard from above me. I looked up. On the slope of the roof, Pumpkin sat. She dropped down from the edge, landing beside me. She had a simple yellow dress and a pink ribbon in her mane. It was kind of like the one that Applebloom used to wear, but smaller. She had a perfume that smelled like vanilla cake frosting. Or it was just from working in a bakery. "You're late."
"Yeah, well, my shift ended at dusk. So, you know, it took me a minute to get over here," I told her.
"Kay, whatever," she said as she rolled her eyes at me. I definitely didn't remember her being like this back when we had last dated. "So, where are we going?" she asked.
"The Bannered Mare?" I suggested. It was a decent enough combination restaurant and inn.
"Ugh! My parents go there," she scoffed.
"The Cider Hall?" I tried.
"That place is a dive!"
"Well you know what, that's where I'm going," I said, having enough of her new attitude. "You can come with me if you want."
"Fine, whatever."
I went to the Cider Hall. Pumpkin decided to 'tag along'. I took a seat at the table near the bar. She sat with me. I flagged down the waitress. I got myself a Haymaker.
"I'll have an Appletini," Pumpkin said. The waitress took our order and trotted off to get our drinks.
"So..." I started off.
"So?"
"So you wanted to interrogate me about Royal Guard Basic Training?" I asked.
"Interrogate?"
"Interrogate, interview, inquire," I said as the waitress brought our drinks over. I took a long drink of my beverage. "Ask? You wanted to ask me about Basic."
"Heh. You're funny," she said.
"I know that," I said, growing increasingly frustrated with the filly. "I don't need you to tell me." I finished the rest of my drink, intent on ditching her and sticking her with the bill. Coming here was a mistake, I realized. "You know, you're nothing like-" I bit my tongue, not saying 'how I remember', "...like what Pound described," I said instead.
"I thought you said he didn't talk about me," she said.
"Maybe he did. Maybe I asked him about you after this morning."
"And?"
"And maybe he was talking about some other pony," I said, standing to leave. She might have been used to manipulating colts in the past. I could likely count myself among them. But I wasn't the same person I was back then. And clearly, neither was she.
"No, wait!" She put her hoof on mine. In a flash, the look in her eyes changed. The flippant, aloof mask that she had been wearing broke. And for the first time since I'd come back to Ponyville, I saw a glimpse of the Pumpkin Cake I knew. "Wait, don't leave," she begged. I sat back down.
"Okay. What?" I asked.
"Could you tell me-" she trailed off. Her practiced poise fell. Her demeanor shifted back into the unsure filly I knew from before. "How is Pound?" she asked.
"He's a good pony," I said. "He's a good guard. He, uh, he cares a lot about you." I said. After all, given his reaction earlier, it seemed pretty obvious to be the case. After I told her, her eyes kind of looked off into nowhere. She smiled, but she did a good job of hiding it. It was subtle. Her mouth didn't move, but it was there, at the corners of her eyes. Her eyes smiled, like she was thinking of a good memory of somepony who was dead. It might not have looked strange, but for my certainty of him not being dead. "So why did he join the guard?" I asked, shaking her from her thoughts. "I mean, from what he'd told me, it sounded like he had a pretty good life at the bakery."
"Why did you join?" she asked me.
"To defend Equestria from all her enemies, both foreign and domestic. You're deflecting."
"So are you."
"..."
"..."
"Alright," I said, "I was in a bit of trouble, and I was given a choice between this or something worse."
"I figured."
"Oh really?" I asked.
"Yeah," She said, pointing at my empty glass. "You're pretty regular. There's only two ponies I know who could drink like that and neither would have anything good to say about their lives."
"And Pound?" I asked.
"What about him?"
"Why did he join?" I asked her again. She slumped into her seat and looked away.
"He was in a bit of trouble, and he was given a choice between that... or something worse." she said, echoing my words.
"Like what? What kind of trouble?" I asked.
"Why don't you ask my brother?" she suggested.
"I'm asking you," I said, echoing her from earlier that day. She drank the rest of her Appletini.
"I don't want to talk about him anymore," she said, with the kind of finality that might as well have read, 'I'm not going to talk about him anymore, and there's nothing you can do to change it'.
"So, what now then? You wanna dance or do a karaoke duet?" I asked. She sat back and genuinely smiled, laughing out loud with a full-belly laugh.
"Come back tomorrow," she said, getting up from the table.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I said so. That's why." She strutted out of the bar. I could have gone after her. Hell, I knew where she lived. But I couldn't very well justify banging on the bakery door after hours if she didn't want to be seen. The waitress came by with the check.
"Dammit!" I cursed to myself. She stuck me with the bill. "I invented that move!"
~~~
I paid the bill and left. I even gave the waitress a decent tip. I had been taking what I could of life without giving anything back so far. It didn't seem to be working out so well. I wasn't a big believer in karma. But at this point, I was willing to try anything. I certainly couldn't get much lower.
"Hey mister, spare a Bit?" a pony sitting against a building asked.
"Sure, why not?" I said. Another chance to gain a bit of the vaunted 'karma'. I reached into my bag. My luck had to change some time, right?
I never even saw the second pony behind me that clubbed me upside the head.
Water splashed on my face. I coughed and sputtered awake. I was wet and cold. Those were the first two things that registered. I was in a dark room, except for the one light pointed at my face. It wasn't terribly bright. But in the dark room, pointed right at my eyes, with a concussion, it was plenty bright enough. The next thing I realized was that I was hoof-cuffed to a chair. I squinted into the darkness. I could see the movement of the shiny, metal water pail.
I could hear his hooves clicking against the hard cement floor. I could smell the smoke of tobacco in the dank air. His face lit up a dull orange, briefly, from the hot cherry as he took a drag on his cigarette. It wasn't enough for me to get a good look at him. He flicked the hot butt as me. It bounced off of my wet chest and landed on the floor.
"Who are you working for?" he asked, quietly. I didn't recognize the voice. But I remembered my code of conduct as a prisoner of war.
"My name is Storm Cloud. I'm a Private of the Equestrian Royal Guard. My service number is- OOHF!" My answer was met with a swift punch to the stomach.
"We know damn well that you're not, Spy!" he said. "Now tell us who you're working for!"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" I said.
He kicked me in a place that a stallion would not appreciate. On reflex, I shape-shifted just barely enough to sever the nerves to said location. A little trick I learned from my failures in the dating scene.
"Who are you working for!?" he asked again, significantly less politely. I said nothing. He turned around and pulled something from his pocket, throwing it at my face. A pink ribbon landed across my snout. It smelled like cake frosting.
"At least she was a bit more cooperative before the end," he said with a dark tone. The ribbon fell from my nose and landed in a small crumpled heap on the floor at my hooves.
"Heh, heh hehehehe!" I cackled. It was a strange feeling. I was angry, but it wasn't just about them killing Pumpkin. It was about the barn burning, and about never knowing my real parents. It was a generalized anger that I had been repressing my whole life that this guy definitely did not want to tap into. I honestly didn't know why it came out as laughter right then. Perhaps this was what it was like to go insane.
"Why are you laughing!?" He demanded. I was never a good pony. I was a bad pony. In fact, I had been downright awful for most of my life. But I never killed anypony. Oh well. I guess there's a first time for everything. "Why are you laughing!?" He demanded, kicking me again. I shape-shifted the bones in my wrist, pulling it free from the cuff.
"Because," I laughed, "Because, I'm going to tell everypony that you died, tickling my balls!" In a flash of movement, I was on my hooves, grabbing the chair and smashing it over his head. I jumped on top of him with one of the wooden legs, broken into a sharp stake. I brought it to his throat, pausing just before plunging it through his neck, "Tell me something, you ever dance with a nightmare in the pale moonlight?"
"Help!" he screamed. The door to the room burst open. Before I could even see who it was, I was slammed with a kinetic spell, throwing me off of him. My vision focused. It was Princess Luna, with Echo and Sunshine behind her. My interrogator scurried away from me toward them.
"What the hell is going on!?" Luna yelled.
"I should ask you the same thing!" I said. "What have you done to Pumpkin!?" Luna looked to Echo. Echo just shook her head in disappointment.
"Pumpkin Cake is fine," Luna said. "She has no knowledge of any of this. She's safe at home." I picked up the ribbon from the floor.
"And this!?"
"It's a ribbon, Storm," Echo said. "A scented ribbon. Nothing more."
"But he said-"
"He said exactly what he needed to, to get to you," Echo said.
"This test was to teach you one thing, Storm. Everypony has a line. A weak point," Luna said. "We needed to know where yours was. And you needed to, as well."
"He didn't break me! I never said a word about L.A.U.G.H." I said.
"You were about to kill him," Luna said solemnly.
"He kicked me in the junk!" I said. Her expression didn't change.
"That is not the point," Luna said "What good would it have gained? You missed an opportunity to gain information from an enemy. At the very least, to aid your escape. Have you any idea where you are? You need to act with your brain. Not your heart."
"This is why you can't let yourself get close to the ponies you care about. They cloud your judgement, and they're always the ones that end up getting hurt as a result," Sunshine said.
Luna turned to the other stallion. "And as for you! How did you let this happen?"
"He was cuffed to the chair!" the interrogator said.
"How did you manage to get free like that!?" Echo asked me, astonished.
"I- I studied escape art," I told her. They both looked at Luna. She just smirked knowingly, turning to leave.
"Didn't I tell you?" she said on her way out, "Didn't I tell you to not underestimate him?"
"Come on," Echo said, "Let's get you back to the castle. You should get some sleep. We're leaving in the morning."
"Leaving?" I asked.
"Yes. Our replacements will be arriving. And we'll be reporting back to Canterlot," Sunshine explained.
"But there were things that I wanted to do before we left," I said.
"Well that's too bad," Echo said. "Our mission in Ponyville is complete. The princess has our report on Dawn. The rest of the month could have been a vacation for us all, but between you going AWOL, and getting involved with the locals, that will not be the case. You have nopony to blame but yourself for thisss!"
"As usual," I muttered.
We left the old Ponyville municipal storehouse where my 'interrogation' had been. Princess Luna was already nowhere to be seen. A brief walk across town brought us back to Twilight's castle. Sunshine walked up to the door and let out a shrill squeak, in a frequency just at the edge of my range of hearing. The kind of noise that you didn't so much hear as much you felt in your teeth fillings.
Meadowlark had been keeping an eye on the castle while Sunshine and Echo dealt with my 'lesson'. He opened the door and let us in. In the lobby, Echo motioned for me to head up to the guard quarters.
"Hey," she said after me before I left, "I didn't know you were an escape artist."
"Yeah well," I smirked as I trailed off, "what you don't know about me, I could just about squeeze into Ghastly Gorge."
"You'll have to show me some moves some time," Echo said, in a way that, I could swear, was vaguely flirtatious. I was curious. Meadowlark had already left. And I couldn't see Sunshine anywhere around us. But I was certain he was listening from the shadows, so I didn't try to pry for her intent in the words. I went upstairs without another word.
I slipped into the guard quarters silently. The light of the moon through the window guided my way through the small space. As I walked past Pound Cake's bed, I noticed something for the first time.
Normally, when I would come back late at night, I was hardly in a state to notice details, let alone care about them. And I was never the first one awake in the morning. I never really slept very well. I hear that ponies with a clear conscious sleep better at night. I expected Pound to be sleeping soundly. But as I walked past him, I could see that his bed sheets were just as torn up as mine get from restless tossing and turning all night. His face was scrunched up in a worried frown in his sleep.
I suppose everypony has their demons.
I slipped into my own bed and silently hoped that I wasn't the cause for his worry. But then again, part of me hoped that I was. I couldn't imagine what else in his life could bring him more grief that I already had. The very thought made me shudder.
"Storm, wake up," Pound said. The sunlight was just starting to come in. "It's time to go."
"Eh?" I blinked awake at him. He was dressed, standing beside my bed. His bag was packed by the doorway.
"Our relief is here," he said.
"Oh, crap. I need to pack!" I said, lurching awake.
"I took care of it," he said, pointing at my bag, packed, beside my bed. My uniform was laid out as well. "Just get dressed."
"You didn't have to do that," I said.
"I know," he said flatly.
"Thank you."
"Getting back to Canterlot without incident will be thanks enough from you," he said, turning to leave. I got dressed quickly, grabbed my bag. and headed downstairs. Starlight Glimmer was already greeting our replacements.
"Ah, Private Pound, Cloud, this is Sergeant Battlebourne and Master Sergeant Greymane," she introduced.
"Sir," Pound greeted with a hoofshake. I didn't even slow down as I walked past them.
"Hope you like books." Walking down the dirt road outside, I could hear the hurried trot behind me.
"Storm, Storm! That was not prudent," Pound shouted after me.
"Prudent?" I asked. "I suppose that was less cordial than they were used to," I said with a shrug. "But it was the same greeting I got here."
"Crap rolls downhill, Storm. You know that!"
"Pound, I'm already probably going to be court-marshaled for being the key reason we're returning from our assignment more than three weeks early. You really think I give a damn if our replacements like me!?"
"Without. Incident. Storm! That was all I asked of you! Back to Canterlot without incident!"
"Starting now," I amended. True to my word, we went straight to the train station and boarded. I stood there beside him at our post outside of the door to the Royal Caboose with perfect obedience and boredom. He didn't seem particularly thrilled. But then I suppose I shouldn't expect a trophy for doing what I was supposed to be in the first place.
Back in Canterlot, the others in the barracks were surprised to see us back so soon. Our barracks sergeant heard us coming in and poked out of his office as I changed out of my uniform.
"Private Storm!" he hollered.
"Proceeding sir!" I replied, "Just unpacking first,"
"Don't bother."
Shit.
I marched into his office with my bag and closed the door before he even asked me to. I knew what was coming. But in that moment, it wasn't fear, or even dread that gripped me. It was a sort of certain calm. Like somepony walking to the gallows. They already know they are going to die. Being afraid won't change their fate.
I stood there. He stared at me. I stared at him. He was waiting for me to go to attention. What a waste of time. We both knew how this was going to end. But he still wanted the whole dog and pony show. I rolled my eyes as hard as I could while still being in my skull and snapped to attention and rendered a salute.
"Sir, Private Storm Cloud reports as ordered," I recited.
"Almost made it a whole week in Ponyville." He sighed and pulled a large envelope out of his desk, with a single sheet of paper stapled to it. "Department of Defense form two one four, Private Storm Cloud, you are here-by-"
"I'm going to need four or five days to out-process, sir," I cut him off, knowing perfectly well what a discharge form was.
"That won't be necessary. The other senior enlisted and I already did all of that for you." He waved the envelope at me. "All your paperwork is done." He smiled. "Private Cirrus!" He shouted.
"Proceeding sir!" Cirrus responded from outside of the office. The door opened and Cirrus snapped to attention beside me in front of the sergeant's desk and saluted. "Private Cirrus reports as ordered!" The sergeant stood from his seat and shoved the envelope at me.
"Cirrus, please escort Private- oh, excuse me, Mister Storm Cloud to the main gate."
"Aye aye!" He reached out to grab my shoulder.
"Touch me, and that hoof will never touch anything again!" I spat, turning to leave. As I walked out of the office, everypony was looking at me. The barracks were not a large place. And when anypony got called into the office, a hush would fall elsewhere. I knew that everypony had heard everything that had just transpired. All eyes were on me. All, except Pound. He just sat there on his rack, slumped over and facing away, unable to bear to look at me. I walked out of the barracks without another word. Out on the street in Canterlot, the main gate closed behind me. And just like that, I was out of the Guard.
I sat on the curb with nothing but the fur on my back and the envelope in hoof. I opened it. It was what I expected. My dishonorable-discharge paperwork, with a laundry list of my offenses both in Canterlot and Ponyville. But also something else. A smaller envelope. I opened it. It was a card.
"Blood grows the grass,
is our battle shout.
Don't let the door hit your ass
on your way out."
Signed by several of the senior enlisted.
"Cute." A small slip fell out. It was a five Bit gift certificate to The Belfry. On the back it simply read:
- E