//------------------------------// // Chapter 33 // Story: A Noble Death // by LSTS Connor //------------------------------// Night had come to the once busy streets of Canterlot. Markets were closed and high-class restaurants were filled with the nobles of Canterlot enjoying their expensive meals. Nightclubs were booming and bars were packed with all kinds of ponies enjoying a finished work week with a nice cold drink. The Gilded Mug was one of those bars as it soon found itself full of stallions and mares looking to wind down and enjoy the start of the weekend. Six meanwhile just tried to tune out the loud sounds the bar's patrons now produced. The alcohol she had been given had begun to do its job. Six didn’t care it took so many bottles she may have set a new world record for alcohol consumption, the buzz she was experiencing right now was worth it. Her enhanced biology and higher-than-average weight did not make it easy for the alcohol to take hold. Damn her augments and extremely athletic build. She looked up from her glass and saw Spear sitting across the table, his drink half gone and his head bobbing ever so slightly to the music as he gazed out towards some corner booth. He still only had the one glass in front of him from when he came over whilst Six was on her…something glass, she hadn’t been counting, she didn't want to. Curiosity took hold over the inebriated mind of the Spartan as she tilted her head and followed Spears' gaze towards the corner. What she found were 3 slightly blurry ponies looking back at her with large eyes. She squinted slightly in an attempt to discern the ponies' faces, her body leaning forward outside the booth. They seemed to be talking or something. Six couldn’t be sure as she turned her gaze back towards Spear, a questioning look upon her face. “Whho-?” Her voice slurred momentarily, confusing the Spartan before she shook her head clear hoping to banish whatever caused her to slur. Spear meanwhile gave what sounded like an amused chuckle as he muttered something Six couldn’t discern before Speaking. “Okay Six, I think you have had enough to drink for today.” He stood up and moved next to the Spartan that towered over him from their seat. “Cmon, let's head back to the castle because, honestly, you getting a worse hangover than you have already condemned yourself to, terrifies me.“ Six giggled uncharacteristically. “Just try to bring me away from my glass!” She reached an armored hoof to grab her glass and lifted it to her lips to gulp the already drunk contents down again. Confused as to why she felt no burn on her tongue she looked down into the glass and frowned. She then unceremoniously pushed the glass into Spears' hooves. “Get me another.” Spear sighed and put the glass back on the table, much to Six’s quite visual annoyance. “No. You have had enough now, come on.” He hooked his hoof around Six’s still outstretched one and pulled ever so slightly. It felt as if he were trying to pull a brick wall apart with his bare hooves as Six didn’t budge and simply looked even more annoyed. The rest of the initiates, obviously sensing the change in the bar's alcohol-layered wind, stood up from their seats and moved to reinforce their friend. Six’s features meanwhile grew ever-more familiar to the Unicorn albeit less forceful than he was used to seeing for now. The furrowed brow, the lightly bared teeth, and those eyes that screamed predatory observing the Unicorn. Spear, however, had grown quite accustomed to that look and did not back down. Any normal guard would have felt themselves shrink under the lethal gaze of the Spartan with their flight or fight response forcing them to back down. But Spear was no ordinary guard anymore, Six had seen to that herself. Even now to her drunk and grief-muddied mind a deep part of her could not help but feel pride at what she had managed to do to this pony in such a short amount of time. His gaze was as cold and hard as hers, veritable tungsten of a stare that seemed more in place on a Spartan than Pony. His stance followed the same principles with its firm and unyielding demeanor meeting the Spartans’ drunken challenge in turn. What could only be described as a silent battle was waged between the Spartan and Unicorn. Six’s expression of annoyance and anger grew evermore pronounced until she was actively scowling at the much smaller Unicorn. Her drunken gaze looked down at the Unicorn as if they were nothing but a covenant Grunt standing in her way between her drunken fantasy and harsh reality. Spear cared not for the scowl upon Six’s flushed face, it was merely nothing more than a drunken mare lashing out at the obstacle between her and their next drink. A starved timberwolf growling at the stallion between it and its next meal. Spear had seen and been subjected to worse during his time in the guard. He was a stallion like any other and enjoyed a drink after a long day of work. He had also been subjected to the exact same stare many times before when it was time to put the glass away. Albeit it was Pixy scowling at him back then and not his commanding officer, that did not mean he would give in. The rest of his squad arrived moments later, questioning Spear why Six looked like she was about to toss the steadfast Unicorn out the window. “I am telling her that she has had enough to drink tonight and that we should get back to the castle” “I~ ammm… fiiiine!” Slurred the Spartan, quite clearly not fine to the rest of the Squad as they took in her drunken features. Their own facial expressions dropped at the sight. Their normally straight-faced, steel gazed Spartan looked more like a drunken fool they would throw in a holding cell till dawn. Rather than the ‘Angel of Las Pegasus’ as she was known in the papers and to the common guard who has heard of her actions in Equestria. “Six, ma’am, no. You are not.” Responded Spirit with steel she was not known for like a puppy suddenly barking with the voice of a fully grown dog. Sparrow, momentarily taken aback by Spirits proclamation, quickly recomposed himself and agreed with the usually shy earth-pony. “Lieutenant, You have had enough.” “Yeah, c'mon buddy. You drink anymore and I believe you will even have trouble in the morning. So let's get back to the castle before you pass out in the bar.” Six’s gaze flicked between the four ponies that stood before her, scowl deepening. Once again her scowl, the stuff her foes would have nightmares about, had no effect on the ponies as they remained there unmoving, urging the Spartan to come with them back to the castle. She was about to give them a piece of her mind before said mind suddenly flashed with images, no… memories of a time long past. The four stood there unmoving and now somewhat confused. The scowl Six wore suddenly lost its fury and began to sink, the scowl softening and the bared teeth receding. The Timberwolf had just lost its bark before the Spartan initiates. Without a word Six moved to stand up from her seat. With a loud thump her four armored hooves hit the ground, the wood creaking and groaning beneath her wobbly limbs. The Spartan tried to keep her balance but couldn't as she swayed from side to side. Her wings instinctively flared to help keep her balance, their razor-sharp feathers nearly impaling the form of pixy that stood to the Spartans left. Were it not for the Spartans training Pixy would surely be bleeding and screaming profanities by now. The headboard to her right however did not fare so well. The feathers cut through the wood like a burning knife through butter, causing parts of it to splinter and fracture near the initial impact contact point. A small thin line of cut wood and cotton snaked up the rest of the structure surrounding her still embedded feathers. The bar turned eerily silent at the sound of splintering wood and *eeping* Pegasus, turning all eyes towards the still wobbling Spartan. “Woah Woah take it easy.” Began Spear as he moved to support the larger mare, he grunted in exertion slightly when he brought his hooves up to support the extremely heavy Spartan. Seeing their leader's obvious distress Sparrow quickly joined in and helped support Six, keeping the Spartan from swaying any longer. Six, her mind still muddied under her drunken haze didn’t fully realize what was happening around her as her mind blinked in and out of sentience. One second she was standing still, the next she was walking out the door with the feeling of several ponies pushing up against her and finally the feeling of a cool nightly breeze against her folded ears. She blinked rapidly, the nausea-inducing haze that had descended before her vision clearing up allowing her to see where she now found herself. She was walking, well more like stumbling, down a somewhat empty street. The moon was now high in the sky and the lights of the Castle illuminated the sky before her. She could feel something against her sides, taking some weight off of her wobbly hooves. Her wings were still extended but drooping against her sides and over something she couldn’t discern through her armor. Meanwhile, to the outside observer, it was a sight to behold as two, obviously struggling, ponies helped this massive mare of meat and metal stumble their way down the street. Spear and Sparrow's brows were furrowed and damp with sweat from exertion. They had come to the bar to escape their nightly workouts, it seems fate had a cruel sense of irony. The addition of heavy and sharp armored wings being draped across their back and poking into their torso did not help as well. “Celestia, forgive me for uttering this, but I believe we have found the heaviest mare to ever walk Equis” Panted out Sparrow eliciting a laugh from the rest of his entourage save the extremely inebriated Six. Were she fully aware of what was happening around her, Sparrow would surely be kissing dirt now. But luckily Sparrows poking of the, not really fully there, wolf did not elicit such a reaction. The group turned into an ally-way as a shortcut when suddenly Six brought her hoof to press against her mouth as she stopped in her tracks. Then as quick as a minx Six ran towards a nearby dumpster and unceremoniously evacuated the contents of her stomach. The weak metal of the bin bent under her weight as pixy hovered above the alcohol poisoned Spartan, her hoof gently rubbing the Spartans back. Pixy didn’t know if it actually helped but it usually did with her. Several minutes later the Spartan now sat on the ground, her back against the dumpster. She felt like she belonged there amongst the many items the ponies of Canterlot threw away, as the failure of a Spartan she was. The stench of her stomach's evacuated contents permeated the alleyway, its foul smell meshing with that of half-eaten food rotting in their bags. First, she couldn’t die right, now she couldn’t even control her own mind. Six pulled her pair of dog tags out from their hiding place under her armor and brought them before her eyes. Thanks to her enhancements the alcohol that muddied her mind dissipated to the point that conscious thought returned to the Spartan as she stared at the tags before her. She could see the panting forms of Sparrow and Spear catching their breath across from her as she felt the wind of regular wingbeats against her scalp. She was about to glance up when Spirit suddenly appeared in her field of vision and began to look the Spartan over, making sure nothing was visually wrong with the mare before speaking softly.  “How are you feeling?” “Like trash.” Responded the Spartan as she switched her gaze from her dog-tags to the pair standing across from her, their furs caked in sweat like they had just run one of Six’s now-famous marathons. “I-I’m sorry.” Apologized the still somewhat inebriated Spartan, to everyone around her. “Don’t… be” Panted out Spear as he fought to catch his breath against the stone wall of the building he leaned against. “Yeah, it's… our pleasure… to help you… instead.” Added Sparrow as wiped his muscled hoof across his brow. “Yeah buddy, no need to worry, this isn’t our first rodeo” Added Pixy from above as the lookout of the group. “No… This should never have happened.” She focused her gaze back onto the dog tags before her. “ I don’t deserve to wear this armor. I’m a damned failure of a Spartan. Hell, I can't even die right…” “Six. No. Don’t think like that. This is just the alcohol talking. ” Interjected Spirit forcefully but Six didn’t react as her eyes were still focused on the pair of dog tags she held in her hood. “No… Do you know how it feels to know that your homeland is fighting a war for their very right to exist and you have no way to return or even know if what you did had any meaning? To watch your friends die right in front of you one by one until you're the last one left?” The rest of the ponies around her watched and listened in silence as Six continued. “To be denied the death you deserved.” Six suddenly slammed her free armored hoof against the metal of the dumpster she sat against causing the initiates around her to jump. The metal of the dumpster squealed and groaned as it was forcefully reshaped by the force from the Spartans hoof. A Large indent that was on the verge of ripping apart at the seams was now a part of the metal dirtied surface. “Goddamned Magic. Couldn’t let me die right. It just had to keep the saying alive. Spartans. Never. Die…” The alley stood silent at the Spartans' confessions. Nobody knew what to say to *that*. To the pony that had watched friends die, and then herself. But that last part must have been false, just alcohol-addled memories being recalled wrong. Necromantic magic was outlawed so long ago the exact date is impossible to remember to all but the ageless alicorns. And Six looked like no Lich of undeath to them. But like a broken mare, no… Soldier. A soldier that needed help but would accept none, The silence continued to reign over the alleyway, the soft wingbeats of the hovering Pixy and the distant bustle of ponies were all that could be heard over the Spartans, now labored, breathing. Spear fell to his haunches. “Five years ago, I was leading a patrol on the southern border of Equestria with 10 other guardsponies. It was meant to be a simple mission along the border, to look for any wild beasts that like to make its caves their home. During that patrol, we came across a nest of Badland devil-snakes. Huge, terrifying beasts as big as a carriage, known for their tenacity and unpredictability.” Curious, Six looked up from her tags, what she saw was not the same pony that had met her scowl from before and more. He looked… broken, like herself. “I made a mistake in the fighting. My mind was still so rigid and full of Combat and strategy textbooks that I planned and struck with, what those textbooks said were the perfect moves… I was the only one who made it out alive… barely.” Spear lifted front hooves and twisted them to inspect their forms. Six focused on the limb, its light-blue fur popping out in the darkness. She traced its form as she saw the scars. They were almost imperceivable against the white fur but there they were. One long cut that went from hoof to shoulder, snaking around the elbow like a snake strangling its prey. “You know what a Devil-snake venom does to the body? It's… almost alive in a way as it targets the limb's nervous system, causing every pain receptor affected to scream out at once in unending agony. The Venom then proceeds to liquefy any muscle tissue it touches. It made me want to just end it all right there so that the pain would stop before it spread throughout my body.” Even Six, the Spartan that had felt plasma fuse and melt titanium onto her skin, cringed at that description. “Because I made a mistake everypony under my command didn’t come home, because those damned snakes learned our tactics and countered them with some of their own. Captain Shining Armor at the time told me it wasn't my fault. Son of a diamond dog even gave me a medal because I got bitten while trying to pull a snake off my battle-buddy and fell unconscious shielding the already long dead pony.” “I should have died with them… but a nearby garrison saw my flare and found me unconscious and managed to save not only my hoof but also my life from the snakes' Venom. After I recovered I personally led the attack that exterminated that nest off the face of Equis.” Spear looked Six dead in the eye “ I know what it feels like Six. I also sat in an ally like this, wanting to forget and drown everything in cheap beer. To deem myself unworthy of the armor I wore. But you can’t give that thought the time of day.”  Spear sighed before looking up at the hovering Pegasus above them. “You ever wonder why I deal with Pixy? She annoys me and everyone around her to no end with her antics-“ “Hey!” “Yet I still stick by her and defend her. Do you know why? It's because she found me in that alley and helped drag my sorry ass back to the barracks and just listened to what was eating me up. She, believe it or not, made me remember why I joined the guard in the first place. And now we’re going to do the same with you. Because no matter how hard you kick and scream or call yourself lower than the garbage around us. You helped turn us from some bumbling guards in Las Pegasus to the Spartans you call us now. So let us return the favor.” Spear sat back up and held his scarred hoof out towards the Spartan, a smile blossoming on the Unicorn's face. “So what do you say, Lieutenant? Let's get back to the castle and fix these scars we have together.” Six started at the outstretched hoof, her eyes flickering between it and the tags she held in her armored hoof. She looked to her hip, where her helmet hang. Its visor reflected the moonlight that shone down upon them as Six’s now only slightly dazed mind worked on what Spear had said. The taste and burn of regurgitated stomach acid remained on the back of her tongue, its presence acting as if a sweet contact by the devil she only needed to sign with more booze for the pain to go away again. Then there was the hoof before her, its contract offering an overwhelming force of pain, loss, and grief with only the chance that it may all be worth it in the end. Six remembered Reach… and her mind was made up. The Spartan rose from her place on the ground shakily and took the offered hoof with one of her own. After all, When have overwhelming odds ever stopped a Spartan in the past? “Good, now do you need any support? Are you good to walk on your own back to the castle?” Asked Spear with a growing smile as Six turned to the side and began walking. “I’ll be fi-“ Six couldn't finish what she was saying before she promptly lost her balance and tumbled to the ground again. Her armor left small cracks in the cobblestone as the titanium-like alloy smashed into the ground. Six glanced to the side where Spear stood. She sighed. “Give me your hoof.” As she held out her own. Spear gave a single chuckle before heaving as he helped the Thousand pound Spartan back to her hooves. Sparrow quickly joined in on the other side to lighten the heavy load on his friend. By the end of their, now with less drunken stumbling, journey the Spartan was lying on the screaming in unheard pain couch inside barracks, sleeping soundly unknowing of the punishment her body would bestow upon her in the morning.