//------------------------------//
// 5.1: Keep Calm and Soldier On 
// Story: Rich Soil 
// by Moonbat 
//------------------------------//

	A Great Escape
He didn't need to be awake to know his world was upside down.  Maybe it was years of training.  Perhaps it was simply instinct.  One thing was sure, he was upside down.  He also felt like he was in the wobbly space of consciousness that is not sleeping but not awake.  While he didn't have control over his body, he had the strange sensation of awareness.  His eyes were shut.  Good, he thought.  They won't notice I'm awake yet.  Part of him could feel a floor.  The rest of his body was resting on... not floor.  I can't feel what I'm on, I must be wearing my armor.  The fools!  They haven't stripped me of my armor!
He smiled and then cursed himself silently for smiling. Maybe they haven't noticed me smiling.  I should stop smiling.  Unless they have noticed me smiling, then they'll think I'm awake if I stop.  His face twitched with indecision.  Fool!  Now they know you're awake!  Too late!  With a twist of his body and a mighty roar, he tumbled to his feet.  In the same action he reached for his weapon, unsheathed it, and let fly a mighty slash. There was a small commotion as the blow found its mark.  He sliced something.  It must be a number of somethings, he thought, from the noise they just made.  He opened his eyes.
One eye adjusted to sunlight before it had even finished opening and he found himself at the center of a small, circular, room.  He was looking out a small window toward the sun.  What he could see of the furnishings, however, baffled any attempt to understand where he was and how he got there.  He swung around in an attempt to see more of the room.  As he did, his weapon continued a steady gouge that it had started with his initial cut, and he cut a swath through about a quarter of the wall's circumference before realizing what he was doing.  Oops, oh well.  This room has been cleared of danger.  He sheathed his weapon with another deft motion, feeling confident in his accomplishments.
The rest of the room's contents were no less baffling: an elegant bed, a poster whose corner he had cut off, and various other odds and ends that didn't seem to fit each other.  The circular window letting in the light was in shambles.  He lifted up the corner of the poster he had cut.  Rocks.  Rocks had been affixed to the paper.  He let the corner sag, ignoring the obviously useless paper.
He noticed a trap door without a handle at the center of the room. Perhaps I am in danger after all.  The exit only seems to open from the outside.  Strange accommodations for a cell.  A gilded cage is a cage, nonetheless.  He moved silently to the trap door, but heard a soft motion and then a loud crash.  He stood stock still, silent.  Either his captors weren't awake, or they had left him alone.  Surely any self-respecting prison would guard their prisoners in shifts.  Clearly, these forces are not self-respecting.  He started to attempt to pry open the door when he was stopped by a sudden thought.  Perhaps they are simply that confident in their little “cage.”  I'll show them!
Carefully, he attempted to pry up one edge of the rectangle at a time, pulling from the center of each edge so as to have the best chance of success.  He was completely unprepared when, by the third corner, the door started to give.  Jumping back, he looked around for any signs of assailants, but there were none.  He returned to his work, and, to his shock, the door lifted up, exposing a set of stairs that lead downward to another room.
He looked at the door suspiciously.  What if they want me to try and escape?  That would give them justification for... well, for doing anything with me.  What are you?  A lion or a mouse?  Gathering his courage, he marched up to the door and down the steps.  A limb rested on his weapon, prepared to give any combatant the fresh taste of cold steel.
If upstairs had been baffling, downstairs was an enigma.  Gay colors decorated the walls.  He jumped back, drew his weapon, and almost thrust violently at his own figure.  He quickly recognized his own form, and was amazed to be staring at two or three copies of himself in a number of mirrors.  The dimly lit interior only added to the terrifying effect.
A sanitarium.  They must be expecting to drive me insane.  And it's working!  No!  Get a hold of yourself!  You've faced countless other tricks and interrogations!  Be strong.  He had almost calmed himself down when there was a strange drumming.  He flew into an anxious furor searching for the source.  He had circled one third of the room when the drumming came again, spurring his search.  	Then he saw it.  A door, and the drumming seemed to be emanating from it.  An individual was trying to come in.  The tension was too much. He flew over to the door and in one fell swoop unlatched it, backed up, and leveled his trusty steel on whatever dared challenge him on the other side of its threshold.
His steel gleamed in the morning sun and found itself nose to nose with a tiny pony.  He thought there was a name for tiny pony offspring, but he couldn't remember it.  He glared at the pony, who looked up the blade of the weapon, to its shaft, and then to its owner.  The pony screamed.  Screamed would have been a strong word, though.  The sound the pony was making wasn't screaming, it was more of a high pitched, squeaky cry.  The pony ran away down a grass path that was hedged with bushes.
He sheathed his weapon and started to rub his temples.  Things were becoming clear, sort of.  Now, instead of armed guards that he could easily overtake, he would have to deal with a screaming, and probably crying, child.  It made him shiver.
The screaming, however, died away and then stopped.  Turning his head and opening his eyes, he saw the tiny pony slow as the cry died away.  It stopped, looked back, and then pranced in place.  As it pranced, it turned to face him.  He didn't move for what seemed like a long time, but was really only a few moments.  The pony continued to prance and look about.  After a few more uncomfortable moments of intense, internal decision-making, the pony nervously pranced back to the door.  When it got close, it looked up at him curiously.
“Hey,” it squeaked.  “You're not my sister.”
“No.”
“You're not even a pony.”
“Yes.”
“Well gee, you're talkative,” the pony rolled its eyes.
“I don't have time to deal with sarcastic pony brood, I need to find out where I am.”  He went to close the door.
“Hey!”  it squeaked again and he cringed.  “I'm not a brood!  I'm a filly!  And I have a name, you know.  Besides, this is my sister's house, you can't just lock me out!”  He shut the door.  He couldn't tell what was more enjoyable, how long the stunned filly took to react, or the familiar, if not angrier, screaming that eventually came.  Oh, that's right, fillies and colts, he thought.  He rubbed one of this temples, thought better of it, and opened the door again.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah, and she's gonna be mad when she finds out what you did!”
“Oh, and who's she?”
“Oooohh!  You make me so mad!  Are all griffons this mean?”
“Only when dealing with stuck up little...,” perhaps he should try a different approach.  “Look, I'm sorry.  I woke up a few minutes ago and I didn't know where I was.  I was ready for kidnappers, mercenaries, or some mad doctor.  I didn't mean to frighten you, I just didn't know what to expect.”  The filly softened.
“Oh.  You don't know how you got here?”  He shook his head.  “Well then, in the spirit of generosity, I'll forgive you.”  He bit back the desire to object to the blame being attached to him.  “Anyway, I'm Sweetie Belle, and this is my sister's house.  Her name's Rarity.  If you're lost, you must be hungry.”  He was starved, but he wouldn't admit it.  “Well, whatever. Follow me!”  She did a sort of joyous, skipping motion into the house.  It seemed as if it were some sort of two-legged stutter-step.  He followed after her.  “I'll go make us some breakfast.”

Field Rations
The door to the house opened.  Four graceful, recently hooficured hooves trotted inside.  A collection of shopping bags were levitated to a corner in the display floor.  The owner of the fancy hooves caressed the air with her elegant voice, “Sweetie Belle, is that you?”
“In here!”
“Oh darling, I'm sorry I wasn't home by the time you got in.  I absolutely had to reach the market first thing today, otherwise they would have run out of the silk I needed, and you know all the work this morning meant I just had to get my hooves treated.  Lotus Blossom and Aloe always do such wonderful work.  I don't think I'd trust my hooves to anypony...” the speaker trailed off, sniffing the air.   “You're not cooking, are you?”
“Uh-huh!  And my new friend gave me a lot of tips, so it came out great this time.”
“New friend?  Is there a new student in your class?”
“Nope, I met him when I knocked on the door.  He let me in cause you weren't home.”
“Wa, waaaa?”  A white and purple blur shot through the display floor and into the kitchen.
“Hey Rarity, you're just in time, the juice is finished cooking!  Aaah-”  Sweetie Belle cried out as an aura of light blue appeared around her and she started to levitate away from her skillet.  Rarity had looked in the kitchen and acted right away.
“Sweetie Belle, you get away!”
The filly galloped as she was floating, trying to get traction in mid air.  The griffon sat at the dinner table.  He casually crunched charcoal mounds that had once had been biscuits.  Eh, I've had worse, he admitted to himself.  The pony levitating the filly was a unicorn.  Her brilliant, white coat gleamed even without direct sunlight.  Her perfectly styled purple mane had been ever so slightly disheveled in her rush to get her sister to safety.  An aura of light blue surrounded her horn like it did her sister.  “Who are you, what do you want?”  she demanded.  The griffon shrugged.
“I have no idea,” he replied.
“Is it the jewels?  Perhaps you've come to steal my fall fashion line.  Did Photo Finish hire you?”
“I couldn't tell you.”
“So your employer wishes to remain anonymous, do they?  Well.  They won't get any information out of me!”
“Okay.”
“Rarity,” a weightless Sweetie Belle chimed in, “meet my new friend, and put me down!  I think I'm getting sick.”
“Sweetie Belle, if you hadn't noticed, there's a griffon in our kitchen and he looks dangerous.”  The griffon picked up a glass containing a black sludge.  Huh, didn't think you could burn juice, he mused.  That he put back down.
“That's what I've been trying to tell you.  He's my friend, I found him.  He can't remember his name, so I'm calling him Griffy.”
“I found you, and I told you my name's not Griffy.”
“I warn you, you'd better not correct my sister.  How did you get in here, anyway?”
“Don't know.”
“You expect me to believe you.”
“Don't care.”
“Well,” Rarity huffed, “of all the rude, low class ruffians!”  She continued doing her best to sound distressed and offended.  The griffon rubbed at his brow and temple, They must be siblings.  Perhaps the ability to be shrill is a defense tactic their family passes down to its spawn.  He cut in.
“I say I don't know because I don't know.  I woke up in here having no idea who I was or what was going on.  What you choose to believe is your decision.”  The griffon smiled as the new pony stared at him in bewildered silence.
“And you interrupted me t-”
“Yes.  Corn muffin?”  He held out a muffin tin that contained muffin-sized slag mounds.  Rarity looked at her sister, who did her best to corroborate the story by smiling and nodding furiously, all the while floating up-side down and slowly rotating.  Rarity looked at the rest of the kitchen.  On the counter near the stove there were three plates.  Two of the plates had two eggs on them.  Each plate had a sprig of parsley perfectly positioned; somepony had even taken the time to arrange the garnish on the plate with no eggs.  Rarity lowered her sister to solid ground.  Sweetie Belle stumbled to the left as she got used to her hooves again.
“Sweetie Belle, did you do that?”  The filly proudly performed her strange stutter-step over to the plates.
“Yep.  Griffy helped me.  Is there a cutie mark for parsley arranging?  He said it was super easy and showed me how.”
“How did you show her how to do that?” Rarity inquired.  The griffon shrugged.
“I already told you, he showed me,” Sweetie Belle pointed a hoof at the griffon.  She then bounded over, puffed out her chest, doing her best to look five feet tall and menacing.  “The garrison commander always eats first, always eats best, and always loves it when everything is arranged right.”  The filly lowered her voice as best she could in a ridiculous attempt at imitation.  “Hey, Rarity, what's a garrison commander?”
“I think I am.”
“What?” Sweetie Belle squeaked, confused. 
“You lost your memory?”  The griffon nodded.  “You can't remember anything?”  He shook his head.  The tin of “corn muffins” were wrapped in a light blue and started levitating toward the sink.
“No need for these poor things.  Alright, let's get started on a proper breakfast.”
The rest of the morning was spent cleaning up from the first round of “cooking” and preparing a meal.  Rarity was shocked to find how good the griffon was at cleaning.  Anything that needed to be moved, sorted, or thrown out, had been taken care of within seconds of her mention.
By the time the food would be ready, it would be brunch, if not lunch, so the menu wasn't strictly breakfast.  Each place setting had a strawberry, spinach, and walnut salad with a light vinegar dressing.  Rarity had found extra eggs, so all three were able to have eggs, as well.  New biscuits were baked (not torched), as well.
When all was said and done, the griffon admired the look of the meal, but changed things around to his taste.  He halved and buttered the biscuits.  He then put salt and pepper on the eggs and laid them inside the biscuits.  Sweetie Belle was fascinated.
“Hey, where'd you learn that?”
“I don't know.  I just felt like it.”
“Why'd you feel like it?”  The griffon shrugged in response.
“Well,” Rarity's voice wove its thread into the conversation.  “I don't know about long term, but I'd be happy to let you stay if you could help me around the shop.  There are just so many things to do.”
“But Rarity, I thought I was going to help you.”
“You are Sweetie Belle, but think of how much faster things would go if we had another set of hooves?  Well, talons, anyway.  Just be careful with the fabric.  On second thought, don't touch or worry about the fabric.  If nothing else, staying with us will help you get acquainted with Ponyville.  Who knows?  You may even get part of your memory back.”
“Ponyville?”
“Yes, that's our little village.  It's not large, but it has a certain, je ne sais quoi, about it.  I think you'll find it very charming.”
“Thank you Rarity.  That's very generous.”  Rarity smiled and beamed.  She looked over her shoulder, however, when there was a knock at the door.
“Who could that be?  Could you two start to clean up while I go see who it is?”
“Sure,” Sweetie Belle squeaked.  The griffon nodded.