Hey friends,
Glad you all like the photos, it is one of a few different outfits I must clean and change into depending on what is going on in each day, and it has grown on me. Sure, I do look kinda dorky, but I figured Smolder would be glad to know I am not the only one that likes to dress up.
Funny you remind me of buckball, they had a bazaar where the academy showed off all the activities and clubs, you could sign up for boxing, archery, athletics, as well as nerdy stuff like maths and geography. I wanted to sign up buckball, but it didn’t work out.
Now I’m in a Rockwall and Mountaineering Club, where I climb walls to prepare for climbing mountains, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it. Who knew living on a mountain for years had some advantages?
Anyways, hopefully, by the time you get this, you might get to see me flying over Ponyville. It is part of an exercise called the long reach where the platoon is travelling over two days high in the sky. It begins on the first day of the next month, so keep your eyes peeled.
Till next time,
Gallus
The writer of the letter breathed a sigh of relief, having finally finished a copy with which he was happy. Although Gallus had considered going into more detail about the ordeal with the buckball tryouts, a part of his mind nagged him to refrain from bumming his friends out. At the very least, he hoped that detailing what he’s actually doing and hyping something to look out for would get their interest.
Fortunately, the gist of the exercise was pre-written on the blackboard for him to include in the letter before classes start. It did mean however, he had to hastily fold and put the letter in an envelope by the time Captain Westland arrived, to begin the pre-briefing of the exercise.
“Alright cadets, next week this will be the most important forty-eight hours of your first term here at the Academy, and that’s because of this,” she declared, before using her wing to point to the words EXERCISE LONG REACH, the three largest words written at the top of the board.
“As pegasus cadets, it is the most intensive and representative exercise of what it takes to be the Pegasus part of the E.U.P. Guard, where the flights are at their longest and excruciating.” As has been the case in previous classes, Captain Westland addressed her cadets in a manner both calm and direct, though no less tense. She studied the room, all cadets had her full attention, although none were as relaxed as she hoped for.
She smiled, figuring a joke should lighten the mood, “Essentially, if you believe all it takes to be a pegasus in the military is wearing brightly coloured flight suits and goggles, doing acrobatics and high-speed stunts, well…” she paused for effect. “I don’t want to judge, but it’s too late to realise you’re not at the Wonderbolt Academy.”
The room was deathly quiet, a few cadets turned their heads, unsure if they were supposed to laugh, others continued looking forward with blank faces.
Recognising that the joke fell flat, the captain cleared her throat and hastily decided to continue the presentation. She returned to the board and hung a large map of Equestria over it. “Now listen carefully, I’m only going to give you these details once,” she instructed, before pointing near the centre of the map near where Canterlot Palace was marked.
“Every cadet will journey between the Royal Guard Academy and a base west of Equestria past the White Tail Woods,” she moved her pointer towards the edge of the map where the woods ended, and open fields marked with a giant tent. “You will be separated into teams, each provided a different route, with checkpoints marked by flags they must obtain.”
As she surveyed the class, she could see some of the cadets in thought, and some writing notes; she imagined them wondering what their teams would be like, or how they would handle the exercise at hoof. She gave them a few minutes to think on things before she made her closing remarks.
“Decide amongst yourselves who you want to pair up with, no teams greater than five. Before the exercise begins, you’ll be assigned positions and roles. However, you still need to pay attention to these classes, the only way you’ll succeed in Long Reach is to be diligent and thorough.”
After a week of classes on navigation and preparing themselves, the first day of the month arrived in time for Exercise Long Reach. When choosing who to be paired up with, Gallus felt Scythe was the easiest first choice, given they were roommates and he was a smart pony to boot.
The next choice was Pound Sterling, the most outdoorsy of the pegasus ponies. Then it was a case of getting two more for good measure, Nicknames wanted to pair up, despite some hesitancy, and the last one was at Pound Sterling’s roommate at her own request, Lightning Dust.
It was most of the same team from Exercise Self-Reliance, except donned in full body armour and in the days prior to Long Reach was the assigning of positions. As the team waited for their turn to take off in front of the main building, overlooking the vast field where Captain Westland looked over the other teams, the thought of the positions racked Gallus’ mind.
“Ever wonder why they assigned us the roles they did?” he openly asked the rest of his team.
“Not me, I like the role I’ve got,” answered Lightning Dust, making no effort to hide the smug grin on her face. A cynical expression was all that Gallus could return; he knew full well why she of all ponies would not complain.
“That’s because you’re the lead navigator, you get to be in front,” he called back. “Meanwhile, Scythe and I are at the back.”
Pound Sterling was next to speak up, she turned her head to the rest of the team, “Aren't these supposed ta be randa?” she asked in her thick Trottingham accent.
A random assignment would be the fairest idea, and Gallus showed an initial agreement, but to confirm he turned to Scythe. “Are they?”
Scythe shook his head, “Not really,” he answered with a shrug. Sterling moved her head back to the front before he had time to follow up. albeit in a quiet mutter, “the captain and staff sergeant set positions for a reason.” he mumbled.
Then it was Nicknames, who confidently turned around, “You know what I think the reason is?” he asked, Gallus peered at him anticipating an answer he’d later regret. “Seniority.”
This suggestion seemed to make more sense to the ponies in the team, than to Gallus the griffon. Pound Sterling’s face lit up as if a light ignited above her head and she spoke up, “Oh yeah! Tha makes sense! Bluebird, you eighteen reet?” she directed towards Gallus, who nodded slowly as he continued to peer. “Tha makes you the recklin at the back.” She quickly pointed to Scythe, “Mumbles is nineteen,” then pointed at the others in order. “Same wi’ Nicknames, ah’m twenty ‘un, and…”
“I’m the most experienced flyer of the group,” Lightning Dust interjected, lifting her head so her nose pointed towards the sky, “so of course, I’d be at the front.”
“You are also the eldest in the platoon,” added Nicknames with the smugness of his own, “that is why we call you Dusty.” Before there was time for him or anyone nearby to chuckle, he felt immediate regret for stand behind the turquoise mare. He had only a second to see a single hoof fire directly into his face, the impact left him stumbling with a sore nose.
Moments after the team on the field had taken off, Captain Westland gestured the team to move into positions. Facing West, they stood in an upside-down V formation, awaiting their instructions. Unfortunately, a voice in the distance was trying to distract them.
“Oh, birdie~ Hey! Over here!” Gallus gave a frustrated sigh as he immediately recognised the snooty voice to be Coalstone. Despite his insistence to remain facing forward, he could still hear the white unicorn stallion call out and wave to him at the edge of his field of view.
Although Scythe followed suit of ignoring him, the other ponies turned their heads to find out what’s going on. “It’s wintertime now, you should be flying that way!” he called out, pointing a hoof forwards towards the team. His two friends beside him laugh as if it was a funny joke. Lightning Dust and Pound Sterling returned to faced forwards while deadpanned, seeing it as nothing more than a bad one.
Nicknames, on the other hand, tilted his head. “I don’t get it,” he confessed.
“He was pointing south…” Gallus pointed out in an incensed voice uttered through his teeth.
“Okay?” Nicknames replied, still confused but cautiously so. “So why does he think Bluebird should be flying south in the winter…” He looked around to see frowning faces around him, but when he finally looked behind and saw Gallus’ half-lidded stare that the realization dawned on his face. “Ooooooh….” he drew out, he finally got the joke.
“Bleh, pay no mind to ‘em mardy elite twats.” Even when covered in a thick dialect, the sharp statement drew wide eyes facing the Trottingham mare. “Wot?” she asked with hostility, her forehead creased at the thought of being judged.
“Thee get whateva they want ‘cos their grandads got rich n’ famous, an’ make fun of us for bein’ common, yet we ‘ave to be dawdy to ‘em? They ‘ave it easy…” The other team kept their mouths shut and their eyes forward, all apart from Scythe who kept his head low. It wasn’t like any of them had time to argue as Captain Westland made her approach.
“Alright cadets, you’re in position, you’ve got your map, once I give my salute you can prepare for take-off,” she instructed. “Remember to go to each checkpoint, collect each flag before you meet up with Staff Sergeant Razorwing at westward base, understood?”
“Yes ma’am!” instantly replied Lightning Dust, standing tall with a firm nod. As Westland moved to the edge of the field and gave her salute, Lightning Dust acknowledged it and began take-off procedures. “Wings out!” she bellowed, and one by one each cadet opened and stretched their wings outward, facing towards the ground. “Steppin’ Time, left side clear?” she called to Pound Sterling.
“All clear, Dusteh!” Pound Sterling confirmed.
“Nicknames, right side clear?”
“All clear, Dusty!” Nicknames confirmed.
“Bluebird! Mumbles! Rear-end clear?”
“All clear!” the two confirmed.
“All clear," proclaimed Lightning Dust. "In three, two, one, take off!”
All the cadets began to run down the field, the wind catching their wings, then all the cadets started flapping their wings, elevating their bodies higher and higher. They continued to gain altitude as they orbited the mountain of Canterlot, until suddenly they could meet the clouds.
The cadets were tens and thousands of feet above the ground, no pony on the surface could be seen by the naked eye, but the patterns of fields, the splotches of trees, as well as the twist and turns of rivers could easily be made out and matched on the map.
As the team made their way south-south-west from the palace, Gallus could also notice another detail, the buildings, and towns. Upon catching the look of a giant crystal purple tree of Princess Twilight’s former home, he could see the adjacent town of Ponyville in its entirety. Despite the distance, he could make out the carousel-looking town hall, the red barn of Sweet Apple Acres, and against one mountainside, the School of Friendship.
Having sent his last letter a week earlier, he wondered if any of his friends could see them. He hoped it would be through binoculars or a telescope given the distance, yet all he could do was speculate. He chuckled to himself as he pictured Silverstream screaming at the top of her lungs for his attention, no matter how impossible it would be for him to hear.
The imagination was good at keeping his mind of the amount of work it was taking to move and maintain altitude. As part of the exercise, all the cadets wore their full guard armour and carried heavy rucksacks with food and camp equipment inside.
Even though Gallus’s gauntlets and boots were made from leather, the weight of the metal from the body and helmet on top of the rucksacks constantly pulled him down as he flapped his wings in a rhythmic constant motion and move at a pace no faster than if he was running on the ground.
When they found the first red flag and made it to the first checkpoint at the outskirts of a rock farm, it was midday. They had a quick lunch, not minding what food they ate if it gave them energy and subsistence, and soon they were flying again to their next checkpoint next to the river between the Everfree Forest.
As they made their way northeast, all the team members witnessed a large murky cloud wafting and growing. The dark vapours rippled and rumbled as the anger swelled within its thick haze. “Uh, team? There’s a storm cloud ahead of us.” Nicknames nervously called out, hoping for some response, but was met with silence.
“Dusteh, we should nip aroun’ it,” advised Pound Sterling, however, the lead navigator shook her head with a determined grin.
“Negative, we’re going through!” she called, her eyes fixed on the grand raging clump appearing closer and closer.
“You’re kidding, right?” protested Gallus, looking around with wide eyes, hoping someone else would object to such a crazy idea.
“Pegasus Guards are supposed to avoid storms at all costs…” finally protested Scythe, although being airborne it was hard to tell if he couldn’t speak over the strong breeze, or if he was muttering his words like earlier.
“Relax!” Lightning Dust responded with rolling eyes, “I’ve flown through dozens of storms without a scratch, we’ll be fine!”
Her bragging rights did not feel all too reassuring, “Were you wearing huge chunks of metal during any of those times?” he called out, trying to point out the full-body armour that she, as well as all the other ponies, were wearing.
That was when Lightning Dust turned her head around, giving every cadet behind her a stern glare, “If any of you wanna wuss out, the rest of us will wait for you on the other side.” She spent no time speeding up, with hoofs stretched out forward as she went head-on into the storm cloud. Pound Sterling and Nicknames looked at each other for a moment, and they continued moving forwards towards the storm cloud.
That left Gallus and Scythe looking at each other, neither of them showing confidence that this was a good idea. Scythe just shook his head slowly, and Gallus would agree, but he could hear a cranky old voice repeating to him in his head, “Don’t be a wuss!” it would say, “It’s just lightning! You’re telling me you’re a griffon that’s afraid of lightning?” He gave a loud frustrated grunt and proceeded to fly into the cloud, and reluctantly Scythe followed.
The underside of the clouds appeared rather calm at first, making it easy for the team to regroup, that was until the first BANG and crackle hit. There was another, and another, and they started getting closer and closer. They felt harsh gusts of wind blowing them side to side, the cloud trying its darndest to throw them off course. The only thing keeping them in focus was Lightning Dust in front, who seemed to be the least phased by the chaos going on around them.
As the bolts of lightning were drawing nearer, Gallus could only think about how he was getting out. That was when the cranky old voice started calling him again, “Wanna know the trick to flying through a storm, sonny?” it asked rhetorically, “Look for where lightning is gonna strike, when you see the cloud start to glow, that's when you move.”
It was crazy, he knew he was going crazy, but it was a better plan than any. He focused his eyes upwards towards the dark mists, waiting for the bright spots. Then he caught one, exactly right of where he was, “BANK LEFT!” he called out, and as the ponies veered left, the bolt struck on that side. The next one was on the left of the team, “BANK RIGHT!” he yelled, and now the ponies veered right, avoiding another bolt.
Then Gallus spotted another bright spot, it was away from him, but it was just above Scythe and awfully close. Not seeing much time to call out, Gallus did another crazy thing, he turned to fly directly into Scythe. The two met in contact, the force pushed Scythe far off to the side, they dodged a lightning bolt that would have hit Scythe right on his back.
“HOLY TWILIGHT!” Scythe yelled out at the top of his lungs, freaked by the bright white glow of the bolt over his eyes. With wide eyes, he was gasping for air as Gallus pulled him towards the rest of the team to catch up. “Gallus… thanks…” the pegasus called out.
All Gallus could focus on was Lightning Dust, the pony that pressured them inside the storm. “Yeah, no problem…” he replied, as he glared with seething anger towards her.
Finally, they saw light, the rumbling and crackling of the storm were fading away behind them, and in front of them they saw the top of the Everfree Forest and the river that ran through it. There was much relief, as the cadets caught their breaths, lucky not to be singed or burned from the bolts. Still, not all were happy with the situation.
“What the hell was that?” yelled the angered blue griffon towards Lightning Dust, “You said we’d be fine, but we almost got struck a dozen times!”
The turquoise mare brushed the complaint off, “Yet we didn’t, so chill it, Bluebird.” She pulled out the map from her rucksack and proudly pointed towards the checkpoint, marked in the middle of the forest at the side of the channel. "Now that we’re out, we’re closer to our next checkpoint" she bragged, much to Gallus’ chagrin.
“We’ve saved time that would have been spent going around the clouds, you can’t argue with results” she continued to smugly remark, Gallus continued to glare a hole into her with a subtle elongated groan as she reviewed the map.
“Now the next checkpoint should be somewhere next to the river…” she uttered to herself, as the rest of the cadets looked around in hopes of finding a red flag, but as they searched the ground in and around the dark trees, no flag could strangely be found.
“Flag spotted in the river!” Nicknames shouted out suddenly, pointing towards a rock in the middle of the river. As the rest of the team got to the ground near him, they could see the damp red cloth draped over the rock.
Gallus raised an eyebrow, “Why is the flag in the river and not dug in the ground like the last flag?” he questioned.
“No idea,” Lightning Dust responded with a shrug, “but somepony has to get it… Not it!”
“Not it!”
“Not it!”
One by one the cadets called out “Not it!”, with smug grins on their faces. Both Gallus and Scythe would hastily call out “Not it!” at the same time, but when all the other ponies look at Gallus with smirks, Gallus just sighed and flew over to pick up the drenched flag from the river.
“Okay! Two down, one to go, then we can head to base,” boastfully proclaimed Lightning Dust. “We just have to fly up north till we find some woods, let’s go!” She quickly flapped her wings to get off the ground, but Gallus knew immediately she was missing something.
“Hang on!” he stopped her, grabbing onto her hind hoof. “Aren’t you gonna check to see where we are?”
Lightning Dust glared back, “Uh, I know where we are,” she brought out the map once more, and pointed to the Everfree Forest “we’re right where the second checkpoint is, and we just need to go north.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, furrowing his brow, he pointed out towards the middle of the river that he had flown towards moments earlier. “You said the flag would be next to the river, not in the river, it could have gone downstream. Not to mention we were dealing with heavy wind in that storm cloud…”
“Look Bluebird, I know where we are and where we need to go,” she snapped at Gallus in a huff, kicking the talons gripped around her hind hoof. “Do you want us to waste time verifying our location?”
Gallus then flew up so he was staring directly into her eyes, his beak within inches of her scrunched up nose. “Yes,” he said with the utmost sincerity.
Lightning Dust’s head snapped towards the other three ponies, who remained standing on the ground surface. “Anypony else in favour of Bluebird’s idea?” she called out but was met with silence.
“I am.”
She turned back to Gallus with a smirk, “Then it’s settled, we’re gonna start flying north from where we are.” As Lightning Dust, Nicknames, and Pound Sterling, all started flying upwards, Gallus groaned with his talons pinching his beak, he sensed trouble coming but no pony to listen. At least, except the only pony left, a downcast Scythe, “Sorry…” he quietly musted.
The look on Scythe’s face was enough to cool Gallus down from his frustrations, he could not bring himself to put down somepony who was trying to take his side. “It’s fine, just wouldn’t hurt if you spoke up.” The two then started flying up to meet with the others.
The team travelled their way up north, still flying in their formation in the dusk sky with Lightning Dust at the front, confident in reaching that last checkpoint in record time. Upon finding a large patch of trees, she descended, and the rest of the cadets followed. The only problem was once they landed on the ground and searched, there was no flag.
They went past tree after tree, all young and evenly spaced, with acorns either hanging onto the leafless branches or scattered on the soil below. However, no cadet could find the checkpoint flag.
“That’s odd, the checkpoint should be around here somewhere.” Lightning Dust muttered to herself.
“Maybe we’re in the wrong woods,” bitterly offered Gallus.
Lightning Dust remained adamant, “It has to be here, we might just need to look out a bit further.”
“Uh… guys,” Nicknames called out nervously, pointing out with an outward bent hoof, “somepony is watching us.” All the cadets turned towards the pointed direction, in the distance was a single young earth stallion, no younger than Scythe but no older than Pound Sterling. His coat was a pale yellow with freckles underneath his eyes, which were bright green, matching his curled mane. He was very fancily dressed, sporting an orange cravat and a cowcolt hat too pristine for farm work.
The jaw hanging, wide-eyed young stallion turned his head and glanced to the side, “Ma! Pa!” he called out, “there are some soldiers in the grove!”
Not too long after, two more earth ponies curiously arrived. These two were noticeably older, indicated by the grey streaks in their mane and bags under their eyes. It was also clear from the older stallion’s eyes and the older mare’s coat that the two were the parents of the younger, and their rough and grubby clothes made it clear that they worked on some farm.
“Ah say, can we help you?” the older stallion opened, as he cautiously stepped closer towards the team.
The cadets looked towards each other, they knew something about this area was not right, at least except Lightning Dust, who casually stepped forward to talk. “Yeah actually, you wouldn’t happen to know if a flag has been planted around here?” she politely asked.
The three earth ponies looked to each other, each with raised and furrowed brows. “Ah don’t think so,” the older mare answered calmly. “We don’t have no flags here that we’re aware of.”
The older stallion narrowed his eyes, inspecting the armour the cadets were wearing from the distance the two groups were apart. “Is there somethin’ goin’ on? We don’t get no guards or soldiers from Canterlot comin’ to these parts.”
Lightning Dust felt compelled to laugh nervously, as she leant back on her hind hooves and crossed her forehooves. “Oh, we’re not in the guard… yet” she coolly admitted.
“We’re cadets from the Royal Guard Academy, we’re on an exercise where we have to travel to various checkpoints marked by flags as part of our training,” she waved around her map, so they could see it, even if it were too far away for them to view it properly. “We should have found the last one by now.”
The older stallion looked up and rubbed his chin, Lightning Dust’s explanation of how they were there made sense to the farmer, but not the why. “Well, ah’m sure if anypony from that their Academy wanted to use part of the grove for some training exercise, us ponies from the orchard would have been made aware of it,” he explained.
Suddenly, words began to click in Gallus’ mind. They were surrounded by acorns, in a grove, on an orchard, owned by farm ponies. They were not in woods by any exact definition, he moved to Lightning Dust’s side and snatched the map from her wing, much to her shock. He scanned the map left to right, looking for any farmland that sounded like the words in his mind. Finally, he found an area with the tiniest print that he was looking for.
“Hey, is this area Sweet Acorn Orchard?”
Upon seeing the griffon, all three of the earth ponies were stunned, their eyes grew wide and were fixed upon Gallus in soldier attire, as if he was some unidentifiable creature. “Uh… yes. Yes, it is,” the older mare managed to steadily confirm with a nod, despite remaining dumbfounded at the sight.
Gallus then turned to Lightning Dust, his brows drew together. “We ARE in the wrong ‘woods’,” he spoke out loud so the rest of the team could hear, “the last checkpoint is thirty miles west of here.”
A harmony of groans ushered through the grove, as all team gave an exasperated sigh in response to the time that was lost. Lightning Dust blanked, her eyes shrunk as she realized how she screwed up, and the fact of them trespassing on farmland had sunken in. “Uh, r-really sorry ma’am, s-sir,” she stammered, impulsively rubbing the back of her head with the widest grin she could make. “We’ll head off and not bother you any further!”
Without any time to give a response, the earth ponies saw Lightning Dust dash upwards into the sky, not even giving a second to look back. They looked upwards as the rest of the team followed behind her. Although there was much relief, with it being a misunderstanding of no fault of their own, the bizarreness of the encountered lingered as they continued to look upwards.
“Now Oak Nut, were mah eyes deceiving me, or was one of them cadets a griffon?” the older mare asked her husband.
“Ah do think you’re right, Butternut,” Oak Nut answered, “must be somethin’ nopony sees every day.”
It was visibly dark when they had finally retrieved the last flag, and aggravatingly. It was a short flight pass White Tail Woods to the base where they could retire for both the night and the first half of the exercise.
Yet, despite their relief and urge to get set up for camp and go to sleep, they had one more obstacle to deal with. The team were met with Staff Sergeant Razorwing, who was scowling with arms folded tightly, made visible by the glow of a candle lamp held in one of his wings.
“You lot are late, worryingly late.” He opened with a growl, looking across the line of five cadets who groggily stood in front of him. “Let’s review what went wrong, shall we? Who oversaw navigation?” Slowly, all the cadets looked towards Lightning Dust on the far end of the line, who was somehow stoic at the moment.
Razorwing marched over and stood in front of Lightning Dust, “Show us your map”, he ordered. The mare retrieved the map from her rucksack and handed it over to Razorwing.
He paused for relief that she had kept the map on her, it ruled out the first rookie mistake he had dealt with in past exercises. “If you followed these checkpoints correctly, you would have arrived here an hour ago,” he remarked as he scanned the location and order of the marked points on the map, “did you lead the group to the correct checkpoints?”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” she answered.
Razorwing frowned and leant in closer to her. “You sure you didn’t go on any detours?”
“N-no, Staff Sergeant” she hesitated, Razorwing leant in closer and stared her down. After an uncomfortable silence, Lighting Dust turned her head. “We may have gone too far out from our last checkpoint.”
“I see, did you check which direction you were supposed to fly from your current position?” he questioned her.
Lightning Dust looked down towards Razorwing’s hind-hooves. “No, Staff Sergeant.”
Understanding where the lead navigator went wrong, his next target where the rest of the cadets, “And I assume none of you objected to this decision,” he asked openly, calling them out on being complicit. None of them would look him in the eye, “all of you are supposed to work together and use your initiative to complete the exercise.”
“I objected, Staff Sergeant,” interjected Gallus, as his head turned quickly to look towards the Staff Sergeant.
As sincere as he sounded, Razorwing was quick with his doubts. “Don’t bother trying to excuse yourself, Griffon.” He could see Gallus return a half-lidded stare in return, the nerve of trying to make faces was enough to consider ordering wing-ups on the spot.
“But he did, Staff Sergeant.”
Razorwing paused, his ears flicked upwards at a voice he had seldom heard. He had been with these cadets long enough to recognise their voices from a distance, and yet, the only candidate who could have spoken at that moment was the quiet pegasus who stood next to Gallus. He moved to stand in front of Scythe, waiting to confirm that he was the one who spoke so clearly to correct him.
Sure enough, his sudden suspicions were correct. “Gallus wanted us to check our location at the second checkpoint,” stated Scythe, “Lightning Dust said she didn’t need to.” Razorwing was almost impressed, he continued to stare down at Scythe, expecting him to look away, and yet he kept his eyes forward.
The Staff Sergeant had accounted for three of the cadets, so moved to stand in front of the last two, Nicknames and Pound Sterling. “You two went along with Dust’s idea?” he sharply asked, but no verbal answer was needed. Both kept their eyes towards the ground, he knew with clarity that the answer was a shameful yes.
“I think it’s clear now that some of you are trying to get through this the quick and easy way," the staff sergeant continued as he scanned the line, "if you were thorough and made an effort, you lot wouldn’t have gotten lost on purpose.”
“We wouldn’t have gotten lost at all if that flag didn’t fall in the river…”
Despite the crickets and cicadas buzzes and tunes being the only things that filled the ambience of the night, all but the one cadet who uttered under her bated breath could have sworn they heard the loud clap of thunder.
Razorwing fumed, his face contorted, and he marched furiously back towards Lightning Dust and leant right into her face. “No flag is going to excuse you from not checking where you are on the map!” he yelled. “Even if it did, all this could have been avoided if you didn’t lead your team into that storm cloud!”
Lightning Dust’s eyes shot wide open, as she felt her chest tighten as if her heart had stopped. For the first time in her life, she felt the panic of being caught, and she didn’t know-how.
“If you haven’t realised it yet,” Razorwing explained, raising his head to address the team, “every team is monitored by staff and active guards during the exercise to evaluate your performance.” He briefly set his eyes back a frozen Lightning Dust, “thanks to your little stunt we had a medical team called out in case one of you got hurt”.
He glanced to the side towards the other end of the line and turned his head to look over at Gallus and Scythe. “Since you two have been honest with me so far, did you object to this idea as well?” he asked out of curiosity. Scythe responded by turning his head over to Gallus, who said nothing and gave a single affirmative nod.
“Let me put your “performance” into the real world, Dust. If you lead soldiers under your command into dangerous weather conditions, they’ll get hurt or die, and that’s on you,” Razorwing stated bluntly, his face close to Lightning Dust as he prodded her chest with his hoof.
“If you lead soldiers in the wrong direction, you might lead them into enemy territory. If they don’t get killed then and there, they might get captured, in which you’ll put more guards in harm’s way in order to rescue the sorry lot, and that’s on you.”
All five of the cadets felt chills down their spines, despite their weeks at the academy, it felt difficult to sink in the reality that Razorwing was pushing in. Unlike them, Razorwing knew what it is like to be fighting for real, trusted to command soldiers, he would not be so tough had he not have the experience to learn from it. The facts were a massive eye-opener, but probably none more so than for Lightning Dust, even if her eyelids were lowered on the graveness of her appearance.
Even then, Razorwing wasn’t finished. “Westland and I placed you in the lead because we figured with your past record, you had learned to take responsibility and be considerate of others to set an example for the rest of your team. Since Griffon over there is better at that than you, that was clearly a mistake on our part. If you’re not going to learn from your mistakes while you’re here, you better not being here at all! Do I make myself clear, Dust?”
After a long response, Lightning Dust replied with a low, quiet, and gravelly tone. “Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
With that, Razorwing was finished with the team, “Now all of you get your camp set up, you need all the rest you can get if you want to finish the exercise on time.”
None of the cadets uttered a word or made a single sound as they set up their tents. Granted, the tents of other cadets were in proximity, it would have been rude to wake them up. However, the mere thought of what Razorwing had said made it impossible to think of anything else. As soon as Gallus and Scythe had their tent set up, the only thing they did for what felt like hours was lie down and listen to the chirping and creaking of the night’s ambience.
“Hey Scythe,” Gallus whispered, “thanks for backing me up earlier.”
Scythe smiled and gently tapped on Gallus’ leg, “You’re welcome”. His content was short-lived, as he thought about how Lightning Dust sounded after Razorwing’s discipline, “shame about Lightning Dust through”.
Gallus, on the other hand, couldn’t find much sympathy for her, knowing how she acted throughout the day. “If she didn’t want to get told off like that, she should have been careful with what she said, I learned that on day one the hard way.” He then closed his eyes and tried his best to clear his mind, hoping for some rest.
A few moments later, he was interrupted by the sound of loud pats on the side of their tent. This was followed by a nose poking into the entrance. “Oi! Fellas!” Pound Sterling whispered loudly into the tent, “Jono where Dusteh went?”
An even groggier Gallus lifted his head up, “Why would we know?” he moaned, “Doesn’t she sleep with you?”
“She sed she gon’ do ‘er business, she ain’t bin back in ages.”
Scythe sat up, haunted as one scenario entered his mind, “Think we should look for her?” he hastily suggested, prodding Gallus for an answer.
After another moan, Gallus rolled his half-shut eyes and sat up. “Fine, let’s make it quick.”
Albeit rather sleepy, the team was back up and out again, even dragging Nicknames along to help. There were no signs to suggest she went in or around the other tents, so the next option was further afield. According to camping expert Pound Sterling, “Business means Bushes”, so the cadets quietly looked around any bush and tree they could find to see if she were present.
Fortunately, Gallus’ ears flicked upwards, he caught an unusual sound for the outdoors. He gestured the others his way, as he crept towards a large tree at the far side of the base. From what he could make out, there was soft sniffling, short breaths, quiet moans. As he carefully moved around the tree, he recognised the figure of a pony with a bright orange mane tightly huddled beside it.
The others had gotten closer to Gallus, but one pony made the mistake of not watching where they were stepping. A lone orphaned tree branch snapped under the weight of a single hoof, the figure shot upwards and turned around. Before Gallus could realise, he was pinned against the tree by Lightning Dust, her contorted face and welled up eyes staring down at him.
She quickly tried to recover herself when other ponies caught the corner of her eyes, she rubbed her eyes with a single wipe from her upper arm and turned to face the group. “What are you lot doing out here?” she asked with a judgemental aura.
After a worrying silence, Pound Sterling slowly stepped forward. “Ah was waitin’ for yer an… were yer cryin-?”
“No, I’m fine.” Lightning Dust interrupted, quickly looking down to hide her eyes.
Having briefly been pinned to a tree, he slowly shifted his way around her to move closer to her friends, but after seeing as much as he did, he finally began to show concern. “Are you sure-?”
“I SAID, I’M FINE!” she snapped at Gallus, compelling him to snap his beak shut. “Come on," she ordered, "you know what sarge said, we need all the rest we can get.” She then walked through the group towards the tents, the others were left to wonder, how bad was she really feeling?