//------------------------------// // Prologue: In Which Momentous Events Conclude, and Budgets are Discussed // Story: Night Watch // by Crossed Quills //------------------------------// “There's no helping it.” Fudged Numbers scowled at the spreadsheets laid out before her, as if her disgust at their contents would make any great inroads into changing them. “Tirak may not have succeeded at... actually, all things considered, I'm not entirely clear just what he was trying to do, but I'm pretty sure he failed. Point is, even though he failed, he succeeded in blowing the disaster relief budget.” A groan arose from the table, around which, as one, a plethora of pastel ponies whose special talents ran the gamut from embezzlement (although never convicted) to accountancy (likewise) rubbed tired eyes, sipped bad coffee that had grown no better by virtue of settling to room temperature, and in one case, face-planting horn first into the cherry wood boardroom table. The meeting had gone late into the evening, and only by express order of Her Royal Highness, Princess of The Moon, Magic, Wine, Sex, Pure Math, and since she had discovered their existence, Caffeinated Beverages (who had explained that, yes, she was allowed to just take titles if they weren't already claimed), Luna Implaccibilis had the kitchens remained open. This had been a mixed bag of news for the gathered accountant-ponies; on the one hand, it had made their extended skull session possible. On the other, it wasn't as if all of those numbers were going anywhere, and couldn't they wait until morning? Chairpony Fudged Numbers looked over at Luna, the princess nocturnal by nature, and watched with bemused detachment as the self-styled princess of Pure Math had taken aside a pair of master balance sheets and an abacus, and begun carefully running the numbers again. Celestia had classically shot from the hip when it came to matters of budget; Luna was painstakingly fastidious. Of the two, Numbers preferred Luna's practices, but found it singularly unlikely that she was going to turn up the thirty million bits still required for the rebuilding of half of the Equestrian countryside. They had barely scrounged the bits for medical relief, for pegasi who had found themselves suddenly flightless in Tirak's swath of arcane consumption; rebuilding Ponyville (or those portions of Ponyville which hadn't just had a giant-ass crystal palace spring up in the middle of them) was going to be a task for next year. Charitably next year; and that, hoping that there were no unpredictable disasters or budget shortfalls in the season to come. Frankly, it didn't help that in a little over a year, Equestria had faced seven or eight significant threats, ranging in property damage from Nightmare Moon (which had been a net gain for the coffers, as it had furnished the royal Day Court with a nightly counterpart, allowing for twice the efficiency for much less than twice the price, once the up-front costs were settled upon and Princess Luna had settled into the role), to the Changeling invasion which had cost a little over two hundred and fifty million bits, a princessly sum that had caused the Minister of Disaster Relief to resign, and the former chairpony of the board of finance to suffer a nervous condition. Added in the number of tax reliefs that had been instituted to allow ponies who had suffered from these attacks to redeem themselves fiscally, and next year's budget wasn't looking overly clever either. Tirak, it looked like, had surpassed even the Changeling Queen in terms of raw damage. Hospital bills notwithstanding, the magic-eating immortal had thrown around blasts of power with either callous disregard or active disdain for what was in his way, and those few buildings that had survived the savagery when it had been levelled against them had not gone unmarked by it. Obviously, ponies being basically good, a certain percentage of the costs had been sublimated by charitable donations and volunteer labour, but Celestia and Luna had both made clear that they certainly did not expect their little ponies to ruin themselves in the reconstruction efforts. And that was... fair. Excruciatingly so. That even the royals only had so much money to throw around was a consideration, but Fudged Numbers could hardly find fault with the sentiment. Nevertheless, sums were sums, facts were facts, and Numbers was getting the distinct impression that she was mere minutes away from updating her resume, tendering her resignation, and getting a job at her cousin's quill and sofa emporium. He ran a bizarrely successful business – he could probably use a good accountant, with an enviable understanding of Equestrian tax law... “We can do it!” The sentence didn't quite parse, coming from Princess Luna, who had only recently abandoned the Royal We. Tired heads turned to the Princess of Caffeinated Beverages, a hopeful look on a face or two. Numbers was a bit more cautious in her optimism. “What do you mean, Highness?” “It will strain us fairly significantly, but we can make it to the end of the fiscal year, and cover most of the more... pressing financial constraints put on us by Tirak's attack.” Luna tugged off her green visor, and rubbed her brow just below her midnight blue horn. “All we have to do is institute a one-time levy on the land-owning nobles. It will mean that they'll have to tighten their belts a little bit, but I am convinced that they can be persuaded.” Chairpony Numbers squinted at the Princess of the Night, briefly envisioning what kind of 'persuasion' Luna had in mind – with fanciful thoughts ranging from a grand speech accompanying a royal edict, to Nightmare Moon holding some of the more odious of Equestria's nobility by the hind legs and shaking them until money came loose. In fairness, of the two, the latter had a much higher likelihood of success, and having met with any number of those ponies, reluctant to pay their regular taxes at the best of times, it was entirely possible that both might be necessary. And satisfying. She elected to say as much. “Princess Luna, with all due respect, the nobility and their money are not easily parted. Realizing that this is more your department than mine,” although in a very real sense, mostly mine, as I have to try to sell this 'one time' levy to ponies that pinch bits until they scream she did not add, showing more political acumen than she had when first she had accepted her current position, “it may be possible that we may need to sweeten the deal somewhat if we want them to accept it.” For all that Luna was somewhat socially awkward – an artifact of a millennium away from ever-changing language and idiom as much as anything else – the Princess of the Moon was politically extremely sharp, and Numbers saw comprehension and thought in Luna's eyes as she nodded. “'twas ever thus, my little accountant. 'For the good of Equestria' only ever carried so much weight, and recent times have been much easier than they were during my previous reign, this year notwithstanding. It is always easy to draw ponies together in the spirit of co-operation during times of strife, but there have been so few in the last few decades that I fear Equestrians have fallen out of practice. How might we, as you say, 'sweeten the deal?'” It helped that the gathered number-crunching ponies were more frustrated than mentally exhausted – the opportunity to brace a new problem, however impossible, put a bit of spunk back into the fiscal think-tank. Discussion began. Charts were drawn up, amended, dismissed, discarded, and redrawn. The simple truth of the matter was that outright bribing the nobility had the best chance of success – while the upper crusts of Equestrian society was not without its patriots, there was more venality and self-interest than most liked to admit in the crusts of the uppers – but while few of the fiscal experts gathered were above trotting out old horses of cliches like 'taking money to make money', the simple fact was that there was little that the Crown had that the more privileged desired. Promised tax cuts were inimical to having a budget next year. Promissory notes simply turned this year's problem into next year's. And of course, even if there were no risk of precedent being set and there was the slightest chance of ever repealing such a change, expanding upon existing privileges only really worked if parliament could be brought to an agreement on it. Numbers, who occasionally made book on parliamentary decisions, would not wager a single bit on that happening. The likelihood of outright rebellion was slender (for some reason, few ponies fancied their chances in the overthrow of diarchs that could A: stand toe-to-toe with creatures like Discord, B: currently had the support of the self-same demigod of Chaos, and C: had the telekinetic might to move celestial bodies with a whim), but there were lines that even Luna and Celestia refused to cross, for fear of being named tyrants. Divine tyrants, marked by the Ancestors with immortality and the unquestioned right to rule, but tyrants nevertheless. Celestia had spent centuries attempting to guide her subjects down the path of harmony and understanding, and it was fairly clear this would be somewhat undermined by going to the well of 'because I said so' too often, however necessary or well-deserved. Plus, Numbers admitted in the privacy of her own head, as funny as it would have been to see Nightmare Moon shaking down the nobility for their figurative lunch money, they hadn't reached that point. Yet. It was Small Pebble, a green stallion with a pile of pebbles for a cutie mark, that struck upon the notion. “Perhaps what we need to do is to find some way to convince them that this will be a one-time-only levy. Show some sign that we're going to do something to keep things from getting this bad again.” Eyebrows were raised. Discussion shifted to a more fevered and excited pitch, and organizational charts too recently crumpled up into a mess of tree-toppling trash were carefully smoothed out and reconsidered. Small Pebble, perhaps a trifle too timid or modest for his own good, waited patiently for someone to realize that there was probably more to his plan than the bare bones of it. Given the room's average level of exhaustion, it took a couple of 'Royal Canterlot Ahem's from Luna before the gathered experts could be brought to anything resembling attention. This was a situation calling for a cue. “So, Pebble, ah... what did you have in mind?” Numbers hadn't been chosen for her skills at a public speaker, but she could deliver a straight line when one was required. “Well... It really seems like all of the major crises that have hit Equestria over the last year or so haven't been a result of lack of power, so much as intelligence failures. The Highnesses have dealt with Discord and the Changelings and even Tirak before.” Luna nodded, looking as if she was about to add something, but then seemed to reconsider as the small accountant continued. “The problem is, recently it's been the case that by the time anyone found out that anything was wrong, it had already gotten so big that it took artefact-deployment and weapons-grade friendship to deal with. So maybe we need to build up the EUD?” It said a lot of the professionalism of the gathered number-crunchers that they did not immediately shout down Pebble, but took a calm moment of contemplation first... and then all began shouting at once. Choice selections from the 'rooba rooba' of fifteen ponies all attempting to talk at the same time included the phrase 'can't be done', and 'committed to cutting defence spending', but slowly but surely, the gathered accountants were quieted, and the problem was coherently explained. It transpired that a great deal of the repair budget had been lifted from the defence budget; not so much as to prove impolitic (a major trading partner for Equestria having just had its sovereign ruler marrying the Captain of the Guard for Canterlot's standing forces), but enough that expansion was unlikely at best. Indeed, there had been dark mutterings about severe downsizing for the Defence Forces; the battles that such forces had been raised to fight having not occurred in recent history. It had been quietly decided that if Twilight Sparkle and company were willing to continue Loving and Tolerating Equestria's enemies into submission, the Equestrian Defence Forces could be quietly downsized over the next few years. What would happen if negotiations with neighbouring Gryphodonia broke down were, such advocates claimed, merely a scare-conjecture, conjured from supposition, in an effort to maintain the Equestrian military complex. Besides, there was always the easy fallback of Celestia, and the pleasantly pointed stick that the question 'would you ever like to see sunlight again?' offered to any hoof willing to take it. Most of the gathered ponies in the conference room were surprisingly apolitical in their viewpoints. They were none of them elected officials – they didn't decide what was important, they merely tried to figure out how to fund those things that were considered important by ponies in charge. Still, they understood the challenges inherent in trying to sell a disgruntled population on an unpopular budget, and they could recognize an unwinnable fight when they saw one. A significant increase in funding for ponypower, training, or equipment, was... unlikely at best, at least on a significant scale. And it was taken to be a truism, at least among the pencil-pushers and coin-counters assembled in the room, that without bits, nothing significant happened. Celestia moved the sun, and Luna moved the moon, but Ancestors knew, money moved everything else. Princess Luna, ever one to wear her emotions on her figurative sleeve, continued to look thoughtful however. Holding up a hoof for a silence that she swiftly received, the princess of the night-time (et al), seemed to choose her words carefully. “Minister Numbers, national defence budget notwithstanding, Royal discretionary funds have not been significantly diminished, have they?” The Royal discretionary funds, which provided the Royal Sisters with what amounted to an allowance for a personal guard, luxuries, patronages and so forth was nothing like the amount needed to cover the reconstruction efforts, but apart from some modern appliances for her traditional rooms, Luna had barely touched hers for the year. They had also not been considered fair game for budget shortfalls. Mostly it's a lot of work, but sometimes it's good to be the Princess. Numbers considered this, and shook her head. “No, highness – your fund has barely been touched, apart from some personal expenditures and personnel costs.” Luna clapped her hooves together, delightedly. “Excellent! Then I propose a solution to our problem.” The next day, signs imploring those with the courage, brains, and chutzpah to join the Night Guard went up all across Canterlot.