The Copper Cannon was not what Midnight Dasher had been expecting. All the bars and clubs back in the Shades were dark and dreary, done up in cool colored lights and old stonework, and were very close-quarters and intimate. The Cannon was bathed in a welcoming orange light, reminiscent of the late-afternoon sun, with plenty of open space to move freely. The light wood paneling and floor felt like a lounge in a northern lodge. The entire building felt like it was meant to feel like a home to the patrons.
While she waited for her eyes to adjust from the twilight outside to the bright light inside, Midnight took note of the patrons. As she had expected, most of them were soldiers, some still in their uniforms or armor. She recognized a few Marines at a corner table, talking raucously amongst themselves. Even some of her brethren from the Canterlot Lunar Guard were present, sharing drinks and stories among their tables, some surprisingly intermingling with other soldiers too. It settled her nerves about coming to this place knowing she wouldn't be unwelcome.
Once her vision had settled, Midnight walked slowly across the floor, her hooves clopping softly against the wood, though the sound was lost in the sea of other noises filling the bar. Framed pictures hung all around the walls, and large tapestries depicting the different branches of the Royal Guard hung proudly overhead from the high ceiling. Midnight was surprised to see the banner of the Lunar Guard in amongst the others. From what she had gathered, the Nightwatch wasn’t exactly looked upon favorably in Canterlot. They were the renegades and rogues, not to be trusted with the all-important security detail of the capital.
Making her way across the floor, the mare took the nearest open seat at the bar to herself. She had heard a number of the guards talking about it, and even the Marines had recommended she check it out while in town. But the rave reviews of the service and the alcohol weren’t what ultimately tempted her to the tavern, nor was it to spend time with her fellow soldiers. It was what she had overheard Corporal Fire Wave mention in passing.
“Everypony in the Guard loves The Cannon, even the officers.”
Fleethoof had apparently been dropped from teaching the training program. Midnight hadn’t seen him around the barracks in days, and nopony else knew what had happened to him either. Shining Armor had blatantly ignored her when she questioned him on his absence, simply telling her that Stratagem would be taking over all of his lessons.
In all honesty, she didn’t need to know where the officer had disappeared to. She had all the plans and exercises laid out for the Marines, and could handle them well enough on her own. But the way he had left the middle of a training exercise with such urgency was enough to cause alarm—especially when he never returned again.
She had even gone by his room twice now, hoping to find him holed up doing something secret, but he wasn’t there either. Everything in his room had been locked away out of sight, as if he had just vanished and never existed at all.
The bat pony’s train of troubling thoughts was abruptly derailed when the bartender took notice of her presence.
“What can I getcha, missy?” he asked, voice rough and drawn out.
“Hard cider with a twist of peach nectar,” ordered the distracted Midnight, casting her gaze through the sea of faces.
“You lookin’ fer somepony?” the grizzled stallion asked as he mixed her drink with practiced hooves. “Expectin’ a hot date tonight?”
Midnight gave a soft laugh, realizing just how pathetic her love life must have just seemed at that moment. “No, I’m just looking for a friend… You haven’t seen Fleethoof around lately, have you?”
The old stallion’s brow wrinkled and his dark eyes fogged with confusion as he passed the mare her beverage. Midnight sighed and rolled her amber eyes.
“Captain Fleethoof. Red pegasus, about yea high, blonde mane, blue eyes, sword for a cutie mark?”
“Oooh, the Cap’n! Yeah, naw, I haven’t seen him ‘round here in… gosh, gotta be goin’ on a month now.”
Midnight could feel her hopeful mood deflate in an instant, pouting as she took hold of her drink. “Thanks…”
“Yeah, he’s a tricky one, that Fleethoof…” the barkeep muttered, wiping down the countertop after a pair of stallions left.
“Yeah?” Midnight pursed her lips, mulling a thought about in her head momentarily. “Do you know what he does?”
The pony shrugged and began wiping down the empty glasses behind the bar. “Naw, that pony doesn’t talk about work when he’s here. Hell, he barely talks at all about that side o’ his life! You get all sorts o’ ponyfolk through here, soldiers and the like—they all brag about stories o’ theirs, like it'll earn 'em a few free drinks or the affections o' the fillies. But not the Cap’n, no ma’am.”
“Really? I wonder why not?” The mare took a deep swallow of the bittersweet liquid in her glass, feeling the burn of the alcohol soothe her insides.
“Well, I reckon he’s tryin’ to forget about what he’s done…” Those words caught Midnight’s interest in a heartbeat.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, he went through a lot back durin’ the war. I mean, everypony did, really, but the Cap’n especially. Lost a lot o’ good friends over there in the Kingdom, he did. I reckon he did stuff he doesn’t wanna talk about too. Nopony’s that secretive without a good reason, ya know.”
“Do you know what Fleethoof did during the war?” asked the curious pony, unconsciously leaning closer across the bar to catch every word of the story.
Another shrug from the bartender. “Hell, as far as I know, he was just a regular soldier, same as ev’ry pony that went. I know he must’ve done somethin’ great though, cuz he came back a full-fledged officer. Never talks about it though, like I said. Most o’ the time he just sits and drinks, sometimes talks to a few o’ the soldiers in here, or starin’ at that board.”
The pony motioned with a nod of his head toward something past Midnight. She turned around, spotting the large corkboard hung on the wall. A sign above the board designated it as a tribute to the ponies that had fallen in the line of duty. The board was wallpapered with photographs, badges, medals, and dog tags of the dearly departed, mementos left behind by their loved ones and fellow service members.
Midnight’s hunch about coming to The Cannon was proving to be successful. If there was one place always guaranteed to be a goldmine of gossip and rumor, it was a bar.
“Do you know who he lost?” she asked.
“I know a longtime friend o’ his from boot camp. The Cap’n put his picture up almost as soon as that board went up. Must’ve been somepony real close to him to get that sorta recognition from a pony as hard as him.”
Midnight glanced back at the memorial again, nodding her head once.
“And there was his CO too.”
“What?” Midnight Dasher’s head snapped back forward.
“Oh yeah, poor colt lost his officer ‘bout halfway through the war. Really looked up to him, from what I hear…” The stallion shook his head sympathetically. “I didn’t hear any o’ this from him, but the ponies he served with talked about it a while back. Apparently, a sniper in one o’ the cities picked off their leader. Bam! Just gone… Fleethoof had to pick up the pieces on the spot. Imagine that… a colt suddenly holdin’ the lives o’ his friends in his hooves… He led those ponies through the rest o’ the war, through hell and back again. He was still just a year outta basic then too! Green as they come! Got ‘em all out and back home safely, and then went back with a small army to finish the fight!”
“Wow…” No other words came to Midnight’s mind. “No wonder he got promoted so young.”
“Yup, him and Cap’n Armor both. It was all in the news at the time. They served together, from what I hear. They come in together from time to time, knock back a few rounds… Thick as thieves, those stallions…”
Midnight saw another perfect opportunity to solve yet another mystery.
“He and Captain Armor are really that close, huh?”
The stallion behind the bar gave a hearty laugh that could’ve shaken the rafters. “Oh, you better believe it, missy! Inseparable, those two! Why, I swear, you’d have to kill ‘em both to ever keep ‘em apart, cuz Celestia knows, ya can’t do somethin’ to one without the other coverin’ his back!”
“Uh-huh. And you know all this… how?” She had to verify the value of this information.
“Oh, I talk to the Cap’n o’ the Guard sometimes when he comes in alone. He and Fleethoof served in the same unit durin’ the war. You see ‘em together, and you’d swear they could be brothers!”
The bartender turned around and grabbed two pictures hung on the wall behind the bar with a burst of magic. He levitated the two frames down and gently settled them on the bar in front of Midnight. The mare looked over the contents. One was a newspaper article, a headline precisely, stating the Equestrian Army had taken Asgard. A familiar white unicorn was in the depicted photograph, lowering the flag over the citadel. The other was a photograph of Shining Armor and Fleethoof, both stallions dressed in formal uniforms inside Canterlot Castle, medals and badges adoring their chests.
“Those ponies spent the worst times imaginable together, and they trust each other with their life. Those stallions, they’re like two sides o’ the same coin… like light and dark, fire and ice… They served together, fought together, and damn near died together, I'm sure o' it. One couldn’t exist without the other.”
Midnight pondered that little metaphor for a while. “And nopony knows anything about Fleethoof besides him?”
“Nope, I reckon not… But with a friend like the Cap’n o’ the Guard, a pony could get away with anything”—the bartender gave her an enigmatic grin—“even murder.”
The pony laughed again at his own humor, and turned his attention to a group of soldiers at the other end of the bar, leaving the bat pony to her thoughts. Midnight took a long drink of her cider, golden irises focusing on the old photograph of the two officers. Both stallions looked so youthful… It was hard to imagine them at war, fighting for their lives. It was even harder to picture what they had to have done to end up standing where they were when that photo was taken.
Midnight Dasher exhaled slowly, her breath soft. She finished what was left of her drink, scanning the crowd one last fruitless time for that mysterious pegasus pony, and then settled her gaze back on his photographed image. Some of the mystique surrounding his past had been clarified, but the mystery around his present remained intact.
Dropping a few bits on the bar, she gently whispered to herself, “Who are you, Fleethoof?”
Canterlot was falling into the winter season when Fleethoof had returned to the capital. A light snowfall had begun, gently blanketing the city in a soft, delicate veil of white. He had watched it from the train when Skyfall and Union returned home after their op. It was nostalgic, and watching the world turn white felt like a rebirth—a change.
Change was definitely in order.
Yet, even as he stared down at the blank sheet of paper in front of his eyes, Fleethoof wasn’t sure what that change would bring. The princesses expected a full report on the operation—and on Union’s performance—when he returned. Now, all he could think of was how he held the fate of three ponies in his hooves.
It was a feeling the officer couldn’t say he particularly liked.
In the quiet of Skyfall Headquarters, Fleethoof chewed on his bottom lip, mulling it over while rapping his hooves rhythmically against the table. If he was to be honest, he wanted Union gone. There was no personal vendetta against the ponies, but he had seen how they were run, how they worked, and how their dynamic had shifted with the loss of their leader. He did not approve of any of it.
Union had performed adequately in the field, but, as he anticipated, they were still very rough around the edges. If Skyfall hadn’t been involved, there was no question in his mind that Union would have all been killed in Los Pegasus. They had potential, but a less-than-sufficient program was squandering that potential, and they were going nowhere good.
Even still, Fleethoof felt guilty condemning these ponies that were obviously trying back to the ranks of the rabble, so to speak. They had been given a taste of the spec ops life, and kicking them to the curb felt like an indignant slap in their faces. But it was a slap that would keep them alive. And above all else, that was what mattered to the him. He just hoped they would see it that way…
Taking a quill in his teeth, he dipped the nib into the inkwell and began to scrawl across the paper’s surface. He chose his words carefully, deliberately making sure not to damn anypony involved or mar any careers. But he did what he had always intended to do.
It is under these circumstances and these conclusions that I recommend Operation Union be immediately ceased, and Fireteam Union disbanded.
Finishing his report, Fleethoof signed his name at the bottom and sealed the file. He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the stress leave his body with it. He would deliver this tomorrow before the princesses, and that would be the end of that. He could rest easy again.
Tomorrow, this would all be over.