//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 
// Story: Moonlight Promenade 
// by Valorousspectre 
//------------------------------//

Months passed, and although the initial slight problem with parkour getting him on the bad side of the guard captain did seem to affect his visitation privileges initially, Septimus found himself spending more and more time in Luna's company. After his initial sleep over, where he slept on the floor in a remarkably comfortable sleeping bag right next to her bed (And woken up when she thwacked his head with a pillow), she seemed to want the more and more. Celestia seemed a bit miffed at him still, but she hadn't done anything other than the warning from before, so he assumed he wasn't really in her bad books so to speak. Although Gild seemed to hate him with a passion, which gave him all the more reason to avoid him.

Over time, more interesting games came out, some boardgames that normally Septimus wouldn't play came out. But with Luna, if it was multiplayer, he'd played them all. HALO 4, COC Night ops. She'd even bought him his own computer so she could play Team Fortress 2 with him, albeit mainly so she could pwn him and show off her rather impressive collection of hats. And boy did she have a collection. She must have shamed even the developer of the game for her hat collection. She even had a hat that made her look like she had an alien on her head. It was kinda cool. Alien Swarm, DOTA, XCOM, Warhammer 40K, he'd played most of them with her. Heck, even old games weren't 'too old' for Luna. But then, considering how old she was, he wasn't really surprised. Since her return almost a year ago, she'd been, according to her, 'neck deep in new stuff'. And she seemed delighted to try them out, and seemed to adore anything video game related. Septimus was only too glad to oblige her little competitions, but he was starting to get a little concerned that his newly discovered competitive streak would get him in serious trouble. He lost nine games out of ten, and nothing he'd ever made Luna do seemed to ruffle her. But then, he'd never asked her to remove her top, only strange and funny actions, whilst she had no qualms about making him take off his shirt and occasionally his pants, though she always gave him a sheet or something similar to drape over his shoulders if she went that far, which was rare.

The sleepovers were much more common as well. And though he did sleep separately to Luna, he often woke up with her wrapped around him, or snuggled up to him, somehow having wormed her way into the sleeping bag she kept for him whilst he slept. He had a feeling that she probably used magic to keep him asleep, but for once, he wasn't really worried about it. She was doing it so she didn't wake him up, and she'd told him before that she liked the company, and the feeling that someone was there to hold her, to watch out for her. Which was quite cute, all things considered.

Well, if not a tiny bit creepy.

And then, suddenly, all communications between Septimus and Luna ceased. Septimus couldn't get in to see her either. Not only would the guard not let her, but he couldn't even send a message to Celestia, because she wasn't there, and they wouldn't tell him where she'd gone.

For a week, at first, there was no proclamations and no messages. Then another week. Then a third. A month. Two months. Septimus felt his good mood from the past month or two waning dramatically over time. His flatmates noticed it too, but as usual, they weren't terribly concerned. His boss had noticed too, and hadn't passed up on the opportunity to really grind on Septimus whenever he was working, whether he was on shift, on his break or otherwise.  He didn't care, it seemed, for the mental health of his employee. On the contrary, he seemed hell bent on making the young stallion as miserable as possible, and he was pretty good at it.

"SEPTIMUS!"

Septimus sighed softly and looked over at his boss, glaring at him from behind him.

"Yes sir?" He said weakly. 

"You did a shithouse job on the sound setup! Get your lazy ass up there and FIX IT! YESTERDAY!"

Sep nodded and stood up from his chair. It had sounded fine to him, up until he'd fallen asleep. So now he had to go back to his little booth, hidden away from most of the ponies in the club, and fiddle with the technical aspects of his job. Unfortunately, he found the problem immediately. Several of the plugs leading to his equipment had been unplugged, leaving several critical systems left without their previous level of refinement.

In other words, he'd been sabotaged.

With a frustrated sigh, he pushed his frustration and anger away into the deep crevices of his mind, as he always did. He'd done it for years, but he'd never been pushed as far as he had been as of late. Whilst he was visiting Luna, he simply let everything roll off him, but now he couldn't seem to do that at all. After running his hand down his face, and another through his dishevelled hair, he fixed the sabotaged station quickly, but decided against leaving the booth, making sure everything would stay the same. Or, that was the theory. 

Unfortunately, the booth was sound proof. The one way glass that let the technician see the band playing, or the artist playing, was tinted to fit the dark colour of the walls. He still had six hours left on his shift, and he still hadn't had a break, and he didn't think he was going to get one. He only lasted about another fifteen minutes afterwards before he'd fallen asleep again. He hadn't been sleeping well recently, plagued by nightmares and old memories he thought he'd buried after his time with Luna. And without her influence to help him along, it was getting the better of him. But, as usual, he forced it all down. But he could feel it in the back of his mind, tickling his emotions and whispering into his brain.

He never acknowledged it.

His brief sleep was plagued with horrible nightmares, dark dreams he couldn't seem to wake up from. Every time he tried to wake himself up, he found himself dragged deeper into the darkness. He couldn't escape it.

Not on his own.

"SEPTIMUS!"

With a startled oath, Septimus fell out of his chair, hitting his head on the floor. Again, his less than stellar employer was glaring at him. Septimus looked up at the angry stallion, trying not to glare.

"Yes sir?"

"Sleeping on the job!?" He demanded loudly, "And messing up the sound AGAIN!? You're lucky I don't fire you Septimus!"

"Messing up...? What?"

The lanky stallion pointed at the control console, of which several of the switches were not as Septimus remembered them, and more of the cords were loose or disconnected. Septimus felt himself starting to get angry. It wasn't a feeling he was used to. Anger and rage were foreign to him for the most part. He'd been angry before, but this was different....

"You're useless Septimus! you can't even do your job right!"

With a grunt, Septimus stood up slowly, rubbing the back of his head, hoping his rapidly developing headache wouldn't be too horrible.

"It wasn't like that before," He grumbled half heartedly.

"What was that!?" The sadistic owner demanded, "You talking  back to me boy!?"

"What? No," Septimus replied, a little bit of snarl curling through his words. His boss didn't seem to hear it though, or if he did he didn't show it.

"Can't do your job right," His boss snarled, "Can't make it in the music industry, can't get decent flatmates, can't make any friends..."

Septimus felt his eye twitch and he shook his head, "Cut it out... please..."

"And now," The sadistic bastard continued, "Now your precious little Princess has abandoned you too. Can't you do anything r-"

The stallion, whose name Septimus no longer cared about, went silent as Septimus suddenly found himself in front of his aggressor, holding his shirt in his hands as he lifted him up off his feet.

"Shut up!" He growled menacingly, "You shut your fucking mouth you bastard!"

"Septimu-"

"SHUTUP!" He yelled, cutting the fool off, "You've pushed me around since I got here. Yelled at me, belittled me, used me, and generally treated me like I was worthless!"

The rage filled him. The dark places in his mind burst, all of the pent up aggression, frustration and overall darker emotions he'd felt since Luna had seemingly abandoned him flooded his system, manifesting itself as black, black rage. His eyes were dark, angry, and dangerously mad.

"Now let me return the favor!"

With a crash and the sound of breaking glass, Septimus threw the nameless stallion through the one way mirror. He heard him scream, even as he jumped up onto the console and flipped through the glassless window pane, landing with one leg on each side of the bastard's sides, a cry of pain bursting from his employer's lips. With a strangled cry, Septimus didn't wait, and started laying into him, his fists pounding down onto the bag of bones he was using as a punching bag. He didn't hear the screams around him as the customers freaked out, terrified of the normally quiet sound technician turned maniac.

He didn't remember much after that. In his rage, he blacked out. But when he woke up, he wasn't in the building anymore. It was dark, and his head hurt, and so did his neck. His hands felt like they'd been pummeled by a meat tenderizer. He couldn't see anything. Then it occurred to him that his eyes were closed and, slowly, he opened them. Nothing but gray stone bricks.

"That's a heck of a temper you have there Septimus. If I were you, I'd keep it in check."

Septimus looked sharply over towards the source of the voice to see a familiar, if unwelcome face looking at the far wall of his cell from the bars.

"Gild?" He asked with a pained groan as he sat up, "What happened..?"

Gild gave Septimus a moment to rub his head before huffing.

"You went feral, to be completely honest," He said, offhand, "You attacked your employer and left him in a blithering mess on the floor."

He leveled a stern gaze at Septimus.

"A bloody, blithering mess on the floor."

Septimus rubbed his palm against his head slowly, trying to ease his aching cranium.

"What? No..." He said, shaking his head slowly, "That's not funny man... Jeez, what happened to my head?"

Gild, for a moment, actually looked amused. But it didn't last long before it vanished, replaced with his customary flat glare.

"The officer who arrested you," He said, a trace of his amusement registering just barely in his voice, "Had to hit you on the head with his boot before you'd go down. You gave him quite the black eye."

"His boot?"

"His boot, yes."

The pair of stallions looked at each other, silent. Gild looked very serious, hands behind his back, his cold glare looking daggers at his prisoner. On the other side of the coin, Septimus was seated on the thin bed (For some reason, it had floral sheets) with his head partially covered with one hand, looked positively dreadful and utterly disheveled. His hair was a mess.

"... You're not joking are you?" Septimus sighed softly. Gild shook his head stiffly, and Septimus groaned and ran a hand through his hair, ".... How bad was it?"

"He needed quite a few stitches, and he appears to have lost a few teeth. However, my guards were able to intervene before you could do too much damage," Gild replied, "That being said, he wants to sue you for assault and attempted murder."

Septimus felt his heart stop for a second, and looked at the floor, a familiar depression he had felt before. Dark, despair and inferiority, now met with a sense of guilt, regret and acceptance for what he knew he would be a horrible punishment.

"... When's the trial?" Septimus asked softly. Gild was silent for a moment, then the strangest sound echoed through the dungeon. It took Septimus a moment to place it, since he hadn't heard it before. Gild was laughing.

"The event was caught on camera boy," Gild replied with a sadistic smile, "There is no trial. His establishment was watched by his own CCTV cameras for years, all equipped with microphones."

Septimus blinked and looked up sharply at the smiling Gild, but the guard captain wasn't finished yet.

"I told him that he could charge if he liked," Gild continued, "But all evidence to the case would be gathered and submitted, in which case your sentence would be drastically reduced, and he would be accused, charged and sentenced for abuse of his employees, intentional sabotage for the sake of being able to have an excuse to abuse employees, being cruel to the general populace, starting with his employees, and.... oh I'm not sure, I could probably get him for littering too."

Septimus' eyes narrowed as he looked closely at Gild who, for once, didn't look at him with contempt, hate or cold detest. Instead, he was relatively neutral, with a little admiration, if Septimus wasn't mistaken.

"Why are you looking out for me Gild?" He asked suspiciously, "You've never liked me, not since the incident when we first met."

Gild shrugged, rotating the shoulder where his tightly bandaged, mangled wing rested against his body, the same side as the scar on his face. With a glance at the guard on the left side of the cell, then to the right, he gestured and the pair nodded to him and left. Once they'd left earshot, Gild cleared his throat.

"Boy, I may not have liked you then," He began coldly, "And I may still not like you now. You come across as one of those good for nothing street kids who think they can get by on welfare until they get their rap career going, or they get a chance to skate professionally, or until their athletics is good enough to compete. Worse still, those who live off unemployment schemes until their stupid music career that'll never kick off gets started," Septimus felt that like a kick in the gut, but he said nothing.

"That said," Gild continued, "What you did to that bastard you once called employer..." Gild smiled, rolling his shoulder again, "That boy, reminded me of me in my younger days, when I was still in the military's Standing Army. You took what was wrong, and beat it into submission."

Septimus sighed and let his head hang, massaging the back of his neck with a hand, "That doesn't mean what I did was right."

"Of course not," Gild replied, "What you did is against the law, however due to extenuating circumstances, and a voice from much higher than myself, You're not going to be kept here."

Septimus looked up slowly, confused, "What do you mean I'll not be kept here? I assaulted someone, beat him badly. I should be kept here. It's the law."

"The law," Gild said slowly, "Is open to interpretation. In your case, due to extenuating circumstance, being his abuse, and the word of, as I mentioned before, someone above me."

Septimus watched as Gild took a key out from behind his back and slipped it into the lock and twisted it, letting the door swing open as the pair of guards from before walked over.

"Now are you going to sit there, or shall I allow my guards to escort you to your new destination?"

Only a few minutes later, Septimus was being walked through the halls of the Castle of Canterlot. Those that once were familiar, but he felt quite rusty with now, so he wasn't positive on where he was being led. The halls weren't as welcoming anymore. The stone seemed to glare at him as he passed, and he was sure he felt glares as he walked past other ponies. But when he looked back at them, they hadn't so much as looked at him.

"So uh... where are we going guys?" Septimus asked hesitantly. The guards didn't answer him, although to be honest he hadn't expected them to. They were trained specially not to show emotion, and not to answer questions. No, they only took orders from their superiors, and they didn't answer to anyone else. He was walking for some time behind these two, until they arrived at a very familiar set of doors, guarded by a pair of purple armored guards, one of which held his hand up, standing firm.

"We will take it from here soldiers," He said formally. The pair of golden covered guards nodded and left, leaving Septimus to stare helplessly at the big doors that he'd been through so many times. Decorated with the Crescent moon and stars, there was only one pony that lived there, and he hadn't seen her in months.

"Princess Luna has demanded your presence," The guard who had spoken before intoned sternly, "You will await her return in her room, and you will not leave. If you attempt to leave, we are authorised to cuff you to anything available to ensure you wait. Is this understood?"

Septimus nodded slowly and the guard, apparently satisfied with his answer, pushed the door open. The moment Septimus entered, the door slammed shut behind him, and he was left alone with his thoughts.

What have I gotten myself into?

Hours passed. Septimus had never been so afraid in his life. The Princess he thought he'd befriended all those months ago was, apparently, now ready to speak to him again, or back from wherever she'd gone, and he'd gone and beaten his boss, or his former boss now he supposed, to  bloody pulp. He looked down at his hands, noting idly the bruises on his knuckles, no doubt from hitting the harder parts of the now disabled stallion's face, or missing and hitting the floor. It wasn't like he'd always been treated horribly, but he wasn't exactly lucky, so...

Dammit Septimus, you've fucked up bad this time.

His thoughts turned to Luna, and he felt the ache he'd felt for ages now return, hard, fast and painful. He rubbed his chest idly, an automatic response to the pain in his chest. He hadn't really been able to get the Moon Princess out of his head since she'd left him high and dry, without a letter, rhyme nor reason. She hadn't sent him anything to explain her absence, so he'd taken it personally, as it was his fault she'd left. That still hadn't changed. He still blamed himself, but no matter now hard he tried, he also couldn't bear to consider her reaction to his transgressions against the laws she and her sister had laid down centuries ago. It's not a thought he relished. Gild may not have thought he deserved his place in the slammer, but he wondered about Luna. She had shown him that she did have a bit of a sadistic side to her, sometimes borderline cruelty. Nothing she hadn't curbed of course, but sometimes, mostly when she was frustrated or angry, she became a little sadistic and a tiny bit cruel. 

Another hour would pass before the door was finally opened, and Septimus fretted the whole time, worrying incessantly about what was going to happen when she arrived, but when she walked in, it was the last thing he expected. He looked up from the bed he had seated himself on when she entered, and his jaw dropped. Silvery shoes clad her feet, matching gloves going halfway up to her elbows. Her hips were clad in silver armor leading into a long skirt, slit all the way to the silver on the left side. Her midriff was bare, and her upper body was covered by what was a very flattering top, lined in silver and skin tight, it only covered part of her upper body, leaving her cleavage and everything above open, wrapping around her body. Her neck was covered in a silvery choker with a  perfectly round blue sphere of gemstone, leading on either side into slender pauldrons on each shoulder. Her hair shimmered like the night sky, lighter than the dark fabric of her clothing. 

"Ugh, I thought they'd NEVER stop!" She complained as she entered the room, until she caught Septimus staring at her and frowned at him, "And you!"

Septimus didn't even remember moving, but next thing he remembered, Luna had yelped and he had her hands, and her, pressed against the wall, her hands held by him above her head. Of all the things he'd expected himself to do, this was the last thing. But hey, in for a penny, in for a pound right?

"Where were you?" He growled darkly, his eyes dark pits of fire. Luna's eyes narrowed and she growled back.

"Back off Septimus," She snarled, "And unhand me."

"Talk to me, Your Highness," He growled in reply, "And I just might."

The cold calm that had made up Luna's facade till then was replaced by a fire Septimus had seen before, though not directed at him and she spoke angrily.

"I am a Princess of Equestria!" She snapped, her voice rising, "And a sovereign of the country! You will unhand your princess at once!"

"My princess?" He growled, but he did bring himself to pull away from her, letting her hands fall. She brought them up to look at them quickly, taking note of the tingling as bloodflow returned to the suffocated hands, "My Princess? Not even close!"

Ire raised and tempers hot, Luna flung out her hand at Septimus, sending him crashing backwards over the bed, flipping as his legs hit the mattress and landing in a jumble on the other side of the room. She felt a stab of guilt as she saw him groan and start to move, but she shoved it aside. Now was not the time to feel guilty.

"Yes, Commoner," She said darkly, "Your Princess. Remember your place."

"My place..." Septimus spat an oath as he staggered to his feet. Luna felt another stab of guilt at the wound on his forehead, and the bruises on the other side, "My place huh? I know my place."

He lurched forward towards her, and Luna lifted her hand again, the tell tale glow of magic glittering at her fingers menacingly. But Septimus didn't stop, stepping forward, even as Luna curled her fingers and rolled back her arm, prepared to strike him if need be. But he didn't attack her. No...

He did something far worse.

"My place is in the slums," He spat angrily, "My place is a house without a roof, floors or a fuckin' wall to keep away the wind."

He flung his arm out to point in the direction of the glass windows that made up the outer wall leading out onto a viewing platform, a place she often used to look at her sky, and over Canterlot.

"Out there, I'm nobody! A depressed freak with a girly coat and unfulfilled dreams, a failure!"

He turned away, stalking across the room and throwing the glass doors open, stepping into the open air. After a moment, Luna followed him. Her eyes widened as she found him, standing on the railing overlooking Canterlot city.

"Septimus..." She said cautiously, "What are you doing?"

He turned his head to look at her, and the fire, the black rage that was in his eyes... was gone. Instead, they looked like ice. Shards of cold, sharp ice that wouldn't accept compromise.

"Find yourself a new plaything, Princess," He said coldly, "To call whenever you feel like being a child."

And he jumped. With a strangled cry, Luna's hand lit up as she made a swipe to grab him, but the magic swished past him, missing him by inches as he fell. She ran to the handrails, leaning over to look after his descent, dread filling her heart. A rush of relief filled her as she watched him drag himself from a large fountain in the courtyard beneath them.

And run he did, with the calls of guards in his ears, and his broken arm held tightly and painfully to his chest.