It’s said that Green Highfire Lines (Green to anybeing he introduced himself to) was excellent at anything, all the way to screwing the thing up. This was half the truth. His cutie mark was vague and his best talent thus far had been improvisation, or the art of the confidence trick.
The Neighponese Battle Drill comes to mind; developed by a heir to a throne of which both have been lost to all but the Diarchs’ memory, it involved one overcoming guard patrols of one’s objective by imitating a superior and browbeating the guard patrols on their readiness.
Of course in practice, this has some issues, notably of which is when you run up against the limits of lying one’s flank off, or the drillees becoming wise. In the heir’s case, that one eventually made the guards into shining exemplars, which was very odd as they were previously known to be somewhat slovenly.
As it turned out, a superior officer noticed them on watch and asked what caused their sudden improvement. They replied another superior officer had been checking in on them at night.
Curious, the officer accompanied them, and discovered the heir. Depending on telling, the heir was sent home in good grace, or the subject of that one’s affections was indeed the officer.
===
Sighing, the young stallion made his way out of the station shelter. While in the larger cities and most towns they’d have pegasi patrolling and keeping the weather clear, Velkaville had a Skyguard Squadron whose main job was to keep the clouds from killing anypony.
Generations of Velkaville’s finest had blasted, pied, lambasted, vaporized and in one case, pleaded with, the feral weather systems to cease and desist, with the end result being little except for the town library rapidly filling with weather-control literature of excellent quality.
Green was, in a word, out of roads to run up. He’d talked and… Stretched the truth into every job, from farrier to medic to even a gunsmith’s forge. With every job fewer had offered a job with the resulting catastrophe.
I’m pretty good at ducking now, at least, the gently greened stallion thought. About the one thing he had to be proud of was his well honed reflexes; after dodging various pastries, assorted hoof-weaponsfire, and the occasional anger propelled flowerpot, he’d gotten pretty good at it!
Well, one of two.
The other was a decent coat; it had his father’s gray with just a dash of green. The rude might say his fur looked like it was washed out but he thought it paired well with his mane, which he kept at a military crop for… Well, reasons.
Mostly to prevent whistles and solicitations.
…if this keeps up I might just consider a brothel. I mean, c’mon Green, you’re a strapping young stallion with a face that folks’d kill for!
He considered his reflection in a puddle a little while further, then snorted. He’d inherited quite a lot from his mother, including an easy to keep mane, her fairly tough composure, but unfortunately, also the looks of a mare. Apparently, it was to the point where the doctor had to hastily scribble out an s when signing his paperwork.
Sighing, he went to sit down for the train, working one wing and then the other. Can’t let those exercises slip Green, you gotta beat Azure when you see her again!
“Pfft. Maybe.” He sighed again, frowned, and resolved to stop doing that. It was a bad habit that he’d almost kicked, damnit!
After about a minute, the pegasus opted for the age-old respite of anyone with nothing else to do: Rubberneck.
So, he cast his eyes about the station. It was old, but holding up strong; Code Maker’s handiwork.
A smile pulled across his face at the thought of the stubborn old stallion, who’d done a year in the Guard, and come back with an architecture degree of all things.
Velkaville was like that. Village full of madfolk, griffish and pony alike. Small, sure, but it had the sort of people that knocked the socks off travelers… Once literally.
He shuddered. The Custard Maker 7500 had lead to its product being classified as a weapon in village limits for good reason…
Distracted as he was by the haunting battles for pastry supremacy and the screams of the unfortunate tourists that’d been in town, his eyes roamed further.
“Huh. Who left this here?” He blinked, and leaned over. He could’ve sworn the seat was empty when he’d sat down, but here was a saddlebag with an umbrella and…
“A glamour?”
Green considered. He’d gotten decent grades in Basic Magic and Advanced Spellcraft, but by necessity he’d been kept out of all but Runic Fundamentals and later nearly flunking out of Runeforging I. Still, even to his eyes this wasn’t anything to be trifled with.
Then again, poking magic usually results in expensive naps and waking up to a nice nurse. The pegasus made a few false starts, as curiosity and common sense had a four round boxing match somewhere north of his brain stem. Eventually, curiosity got the knockout like it always did, though by an increasingly slim margin.
“Someone with an awful lotta skills and bits made you, huh?” Carefully extending a hoof, he made contact…
Nothing.
“…huh. Just a bag.”
With some searching, he found a seal, faded but still standing boldly against the sturdy canvas. “R-E-M-S?”
The insignia helped jog his memory; then again it did have an envelope sitting on it. “Royal Equestrian Mail Service?”
All told, it was a very good bag…
…and somepony might well pay good money for me giving it back! Green grinned.
“Buck me sideways, we’ve got a START! Haha!” The young stallion cheered, and then glanced around to make sure he was alone…
Before breaking into a silly little dance that he’d swear up, down, on the sun and moon that he’d never done except for once in his life when he was a little colt and really excited for Hearth’s Warming day-
===
The train arrived, and as per usual there were only ones coming off. Green checked his ticket carefully.
“Appleloosa, here I come…!” he said under his breath, quickly heading into Car No 3.
In the meanwhile, a little red light appeared on a very big board, unnoticed for the moment.