I looked ridiculous.
There was no other word for somepony of my stature being outfitted with standard issue armor. I looked like a colt trying on his father's best suit. Adding on to that, the anonymity spell placed on the armor that made all guardsponies of standard ranks, or in my case auxiliaries, have matching white coats and blue manes was not flattering to me.
The worst part, however, was the addition to my hoof. A magically linked locator ring was secured tightly around it. If there was any doubt that I was essentially a prisoner in armor, that was going to squash them pretty quickly. The devil-mare herself had secured it, just short of cutting off blood flow, before tasking my escort with seeing me to the armory for outfitting.
The ponies there were... less than thrilled with me. From what I could gather from their mutterings, I was “so scrawny that they'd have to make a new measurement for my sorry flank.” Apparently if you aren't built like a monster, you're too small in their eyes. Hopefully that meant that I could go home by not meeting the standards?
Why do I think thoughts like that?
Since I couldn't fit into the armor as I was, my... friendly escort decided to introduce me to somepony else. If Lt. Cadence was the overmare of Tartarus, this stallion was her eager lap dog, feeding on the misery of everypony around him. Drill Sergeant Booming Skies was about as friendly as a watchdog, glowering at me as my situation was explained to him.
In short, the muscle-bound pegasus was put in charge of me and he gave me a short description of how my life was going to go. I was given a bunk in the barracks and a curfew of sundown. In his words, “If you're caught outside after curfew, then you'll deal with me in the morning and the LT in the evening.”
I'd had enough of that mare for one lifetime, so sundown sounded good.
Letters had been dispatched back home to tell my family and boss that I wasn't coming back anytime soon. Sergeant “Boomer” was given a month to turn me into a “proper stallion.” The way he phrased that to me made me worry for a number of reasons. When I was finally released to enter the barracks, I was tired and worried, but I didn't get to end my day on a neutral note.
Stepping into the cramped quarters, I was met with the steel-eyed stares of several ponies twice my size and four times my muscle weight. Each and every one of them was a creature bred for this, whether they had hooves, horns, or wings. Not a single one of them looked away from me or said a word as I slowly worked my way over to the empty bottom bunk at the far end of the barracks.
I would grow to hate those stone walls with high set windows in time. As it was, I was all too eager to climb into bed as the sun vanished beneath the distant horizon.
**
A sudden cacophony of noise startled me from my sleep. Startled, I instinctively flung myself away from the sound and slammed into the floor, tangled in my sheets. Around me, career guards in training shot to their hooves standing stiffly at attention while the pine green form of Booming Skies entered. His voice definitely lived up to the first part of his name.
“Rise and shine, colts, it's a fine day for a run,” the monster given pony flesh came to a halt before my bunk and looked down at me, “Recruit, get on your hooves! Nopony authorized you a Discord-damned security blanket!” I don't know what they fed these stallions, but the sergeant clipped his teeth to the sheets and gave one firm tug that not only yanked it away but also sent me spinning like a top.
Staggering to my feet, I stumbled a bit and had to cross my front legs while the world was spinning. Remember how I said this sergeant fed on misery? I didn't even get a second to figure myself out before he was yelling at me, “Sweet, merciful Celestia, recruit, where did you learn to stand!?”
I didn't think before answering, “On a planet that wasn't spinning, sir.” Never answer a rhetorical question.
“Well, would you look at that,” he shouted with enough spittle to fill a small river, “we've got a damned comedian here! Well, Chuckles, maybe you'd like to make me laugh!? Go on, tell me another joke! Let's see what you've got!” I wisely kept my mouth shut as he continued to scream at me.
When he finally got tired of verbally abusing me, we were ushered outside to the training field, or as I like to call it, the Field of Agony. Roughly one hundred yards from end to end, the oval shaped arena of doom had a dirt path running its perimeter while the center was dominated by various methods of torture that they liked to call an obstacle course.
The domain of Booming Skies himself.
The crazy pegasus had taken wing at some point, hovering above us with his military cut mane that matched his fur, “Let's go, colts,” I had to look around and make sure there weren't any mares in the group; there were not, “twenty laps! Move those hooves!” So, not only was evil, he was also crazy. No pony could possibly run that many- and the career soldiers were off.
Not wanting to gain further shouting, I hurried after them and onto the track. Holy immortal sisters, I thought I had built up stamina doing my runs as a delivery colt, but these guards-in-training were machines! Five laps into it, my breathing was so ragged that I could feel every fiber of my being burning and they kept going like it was nothing. Lagging behind was not even close to describing what I was doing as the front of this thundering herd lapped me.
I was pretty sure that I was dying and I didn't even get the luxury of doing so in peace. Somewhere around the third lap, I had gained a loud, overgrown bird shouting insults at me as I ran. There was no pity in the stallion above me and the only thing that kept me from throwing in the towel and submitting to the punishment of the court was the shark-like smile of Martial Cadence.
To be fair, I did more than I expected, reaching the seventh lap before my legs gave out on me and I slammed into the dirt. No sympathy came from the other recruits. They took my fall in stride and simply hopped over me to continue their runs which made me think that this had happened before. The only one to give me any indication that he'd seen me fall was the sergeant, whom continued to shout “encouragement” at me.
“What in Tartarus are you doing, recruit!? Get back on your hooves unless you want to give me thirty laps!”
I wanted to shout and curse him out for his insanity. I was just a mortal stallion that had never wanted to be here! I just didn't have the energy to argue. Under the loving chorus of hernia-inducing vocal stress, I pushed myself to my feet and shambled my way along the course. Fear is a great motivator and it occurred to me that if I didn't just get up and continue that the LT had been given hours to consider how best to abuse me.
Listening to the sergeant scream increasingly vulgar and demeaning things at me was probably only a one on the scale of things that she would do to me. Not that I had the spare energy to comprehend what he was saying fully. It was all I could do to continue putting one hoof in front of the other. I got a momentary reprieve as I wobbled my way to my ninth lap when he darted to the real recruits and ordered them onto the obstacle course before returning to my side.
I felt a cold dread creeping into me as he stopped yelling. He was just staring at me as he hovered at a sedate pace. I don't know what was going through the head of his, but his voice sent a rush of fear through me, “Recruit... you're not cut out for this. Wash out. The Lieutenant's punishment is going to be easier than this.”
I panicked.
“NO!” I shouted. The word continued to flow from my lips as adrenaline shot into my system. I was running again and everything was blurring together. I could almost hear the subtle hiss of the thestral behind me, an unspoken promise of everything she could think of. It may have just been the rush of wind in my ears as I broke into a full gallop.
I'm not sure how many laps I completed on the shock factor alone, but it didn't matter much. Somewhere in my mad dash, my legs slammed together and I went tumbling sideways. Now, the edges of the Field of Agony were slanted, meaning a fall like this lead toward the center. Toward the obstacle course.
Caught in my own momentum, I couldn't stop myself from suddenly being in the middle of it all. The first section turned out to be a series of evenly placed barrels to make a pony have to dive through them and train up their agility. I tried to skid to a stop, but gravity was making me its toy as I spun and threw up my hooves in terror.
From the outside perspective, I guess it looked like I decided to cartwheel between the barrels. I was so dizzy by the end of it that my hooves slid out from under me and I went flat on the ground. Now, somewhere along the line, somepony decided that it wasn't enough to just have to crawl under barbed wire on solid dirt. To fix that, a pegasus, whom I strongly believed I knew personally, had poured rain water on it and turned it to mud.
This gave me a perfectly slick ground to slide across on my belly. Somehow I managed not to nick myself on the barbs, but I couldn't stop. Thanks to one of the horrible laws of motion, I was still going fast enough that the short ramp to the next part couldn't bleed enough speed as I was thrown into open air. I flailed, nostrils flaring in alarm, before one of my hooves found something to grab onto and I clung to the braided rope in front of me for all I was worth. I couldn't cling hard enough though, and as the rope whip-cracked at the end of the swing, I was pitched forward and sent somersaulting down the downward ramp.
I wasn't sure what I rolled into, but it sent me into the air and over the high wall, floundering about as I passed over the hurdles from the same jump before finally coming to a rolling stop a bit further down.
The silence was deafening as I recovered from my latest fiasco.
The sound of wings flapping came just before hooves hit dirt next to me and I looked up. Sergeant Booming Skies was looking at me like I'd just grown a second head and I couldn't really blame him. Hopefully this was the point that he realized just how clumsy I was and confirmed my story to the lieutenant so I could just go home.
He dashed my hopes entirely as his shocked look faded into a thoughtful one. After a moment, he nodded to himself before turning toward the recruits, whom had paused to watch my disaster in the making. Some of them even were standing there slack-jawed as they stared at me.
The sergeant took a deep breath, “Well, colts!? Are you gonna let the newbie show you up!? MOVE THOSE HOOVES,” the spell broke and they returned to obstacle course with renewed vigor as he looked to me, “and you... if I catch you holding back on me again, I'll have you on latrine duty for a month! Now hit the showers!”
“D...don't I still owe you laps?” I asked, hoping to prove that it was all a fluke.
He simply glowered at me, “If you want to run another twenty laps, you do it tomorrow, glory-hound! Showers, NOW!”
He didn't have to tell me again...