Although the call had gone out for a sort of 'general try-out', in truth, Fudged Numbers had been able to furnish Luna with a short-list for surplussed or 'reserve' personnel, most of which hadn't made the cut for Day Guard but had missed 'only by inches'. The advantage, it was explained, was this; with the exception of a few pegasi that drew Luna's carriage (under a nifty transmutation that had adjusted the colours of their coats and given them batty features), the Lunar Guard was substantially or entirely a new force. Its mission statement of investigation, counter-espionage, and acting as Equestria's 'early warning' system against land-shaking events was substantially different from the Solar Guard's duties of protecting the palace, ensuring order in the streets of Canterlot, and looking pretty for Princess Celestia, who had been known to hook up with unattached and interested members of the guard.
Some things, Luna reflected, changed very slowly if at all.
Nevertheless, there would be at least some overlap of skill sets, and most of the reserve and surplussed forces had gone through the full training regimen, at some point or another. Looking into these ponies therefore only made sense; they had, after all, very nearly been appropriate for a similar-but-different position, and all of them had gone through the basic training required to be considered and tested for overall competence. In addition, the numbers for the general call for troops had been less than promising. And, not to be overlooked, most of the 'reserve' candidates had in the interim acquired day jobs, meaning that many had second or even third strings to their figurative bows, not something to be lightly overlooked when one was attempting to establish a military intelligence enterprise.
Not, as it happened, that this was a typical attempt at that. Equestria had a reasonably substantial intelligence community, but one that was generally pointed in the wrong directions. Absent genuine enemies, hostile in intent and fierce in determination for lo these many years, the Equestrian Intelligence Service had been refocused upon the country's traditional allies, for the reasons that most countries, like as not, end up doing the same.(1) Other substantial portions of the EIS were dedicated to counter-intelligence efforts, as it was more or less past question that their friends, neighbours, and allies reciprocated their espionage efforts, and much hay was made politically by governments catching one another with the proverbial fingers in the cookie jar, and then carefully doing nothing about it.
This, gentle readers, is known as 'diplomacy'. If it fails to make sense, you may rest well assured that this is intended.
The problem was that Equestria did have enemies; some foreign, some domestic. The changeling hives viewed the pastel ponies as an emotive all-you-can-eat buffet, the diamond dogs and the dragons viewed Equestrians as competitors for land and resources, and a variety of cultists, scholars of the arcane, and entitled noble dandysprats within Equestria viewed those around them as chumps or victims. Mostly, the Royal Guard or the military were enough to deter these threats to Equestrian sovereignty – recently, solid evidence had been furnished that this was insufficient. The big clue had been the release of Discord.
That it had happened at all was a matter of no small discussion. The official story had been that a group of arguing schoolfillies had freed the draconequus by arguing in front of his stony prison, and in a sense this was true – in the same sense that wars were begun by 'border disputes', rather than years of underlying political and social forces. Certainly, a group of arguing children would not, under ordinary circumstances have been enough to undo the magical bindings placed upon the chaotic spirit.(2) A more careful look at the area where the statue had stood revealed evidence of rituals performed around the statue's base, with sigils that hurt to look at directly, and scrawled runes that seemed to shift and squirm under observation. Someone, or far more likely a group of someones, had been actively weakening the bindings put into place by the Elements of Harmony centuries before.
There was strong evidence of spadework being done to allow for the Changeling invasion as well, although this was generally regarded as less a matter of betrayal from within, and more a matter of changelings being changelings. Luna wasn't entirely convinced that there had been no collusion, but when you had an entire species whose special magical talents were 'perfectly imitating someone else', it was a lot harder to track interactions. The added facet that most of the peoples of modern Equestria had, before the royal wedding, never even heard of changelings made it a lot easier to believe that the insectoid philophages could have gotten away with quite a fair bit without the risk of falling under too much official scrutiny.
It was with this in mind that Luna and her secretary, Paper Weight were sorting through resumes and dossiers, with the assistance of Shining Armour. Although no longer Captain of the Guard, Shining had been visiting Canterlot to liaise diplomatically and assist in the cleanup following the Tirak crisis, on behalf of the Crystal Empire, and Luna had brought him on board on the strength of his experiences as a former Captain. It was not such a grand leap of logic for her to conclude that he might have particularly valuable insight into the potentials for her new Guard, and if his experience was with a differently oriented organization, surely the brother of Twilight Sparkle would be clever enough to adapt.
Luna was not a happy pony when Shining Armour started snickering, going through the dossiers.
“Oh, wow...” Shining wiped tears from his eyes, one hoof to his ribs, sore from what was in Luna's opinion, unbecoming levels of laughter from a prince consort who was supposed to be helping. “Where did you find these things? It's like someone handed you a file-folder of all of the candidates least appropriate to be guardsponies, but still technically capable.”
Upon consideration, Luna realized that this may have been exactly what had happened. She had, in her time in Canterlot, run into the odd soldier or guardspony that had been... eccentric, inoffensively inept, or unduly crass, but which had managed to maintain their position in relatively good standing. They didn't tend to be on duty in the palace, but soldiers were soldiers. She had asked Numbers to send along the names of ponies that could do the job, which meant that the candidates had to be at least mostly proficient, which in turn meant that most of the candidates in the folio were probably going to be... a mixed bag. Of nuts.
“Surely, some of these candidates aren't all that bad?” Luna offered weakly, flipping through the dossiers like a drowning pony grasping for a life line. There had been one... “Here! This one. Almond Butter. Strong scores in most categories, passed the physical regimen, a fine example of Equestrian patriotism!” The princess of the moon gave a hopeful smile, weak around the corners of her mouth, all too aware that there were troubling second and third pages of the document, which she had not yet turned to.
Shining shook his head. “He flunked out on the psychiatric evaluation. Page three goes into more detail.” He shuddered a little bit. “Troubling obsessions. Just because a pony's name is Almond Butter does not guarantee that he goes well with pony-sized tubs of jelly.” He turned to his copy of the dossier. “Ah, here we go. 'I cannot guarantee that my uniform will remain clean due to my need to immerse myself partially or fully in jelly or jam on an hourly basis. I am the jam, and the jam is me.'” Shining's brows creased. “This being his way of asking for an exemption from the uniform code. I think he moved to Ponyville after he didn't make it as a guard.”
Paper Weight was staring at the attached photo. Luna shook her head, tearing her eyes away from the image of the jelly-coated pony, and pushing away the plate of cream and jam donuts that they had picked up for sustenance. “Okay, so one example, randomly chosen from a pile of papers, turns out to have been a bad one. There are a hundred and twenty 'not quite up to snuff' ponies in this stack, you two. We aren't leaving until we find at least a handful that we can turn into an effective force.”
* * *
Three hours later, the coffee was gone, the donuts were gone, most of the stack of dossiers were gone, and Luna's optimism was beginning to flag. The 'definitely not' pile was high, the 'perhaps' pile was low, and the 'yes' pile had five entries, albeit mostly dubious ones.
The first, a pegasus by the name of 'Sticky Wings', had worried Luna and Paper that Almond Butter wasn't the only jam enthusiast to have returned a better than mediocre result in training. Shining had remembered Sticky, and had reassured the mares that those particular fears were unfounded. Sticky Wings was less a jelly fetishist, and more... one of the finest pickpockets to have ever volunteered for national service. It was, evidently, by way of a compulsion; fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Sticky Wings didn't even notice that she had taken things until some time afterwards. Shining had liked her, pointed out that she had achieved test results far in excess of the mien average for successful applicants, noted that she was currently in jail in Manehattan for petty theft, and had asked that if they chose her, could they please get his watch back?
The second, a unicorn by the name of Icewine, more commonly known as Icepick – not due to any inherent viciousness, so much as because his parents had begun his name with 'ice', he came to a point, and children could be so cruel – was an elementalist, specializing in spells relating to the cold. The spellcaster had been a student at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns at the same time as Shining's sister, Twilight Sparkle, albeit at the bottom of the class. He had been flunked out from the Guard, Shining said, for two reasons; firstly, he was small in stature, smaller in fact than most adult mares, and the Solar Guard uniforms wouldn't have fit. Perhaps more the problem had been one of temperament; Ice Wine had a short fuse, particularly in relation to cracks about his height. It was not hard to track Icepick down – he was a graduate student teacher for Equestrian philosophy at the University of Canterlot, conveniently at hand.
The third candidate, also a unicorn, was intended to make up the second half of the enforcement portion of the squad. An elementalist as well, Hot Streak hadn't had the familial acclaim to warrant a docket at Celestia's school, and her skills were consequently less... practised. Where Icepick specialized in all things cold and frosty, Hot Streak came from a line of fire-specialists, but her control was abysmal. Luna's eyes shot up at the notation from a Guard drill sergeant that suggested that the safest place to stand when Hot Streak had been practising her craft might have been directly behind her, 'but' he had added, 'only if you couldn't make it to the moon.' Both Shining Armour and Paper Weight had argued against the pyromaniacal unicorn's inclusion, but Luna insisted. Besides the added weight that her magic could bring to the squad if it could be properly trained, she had argued, Hot Streak had an admirable knowledge of medicine. That most of it was hard-earned from treating accidental burns could, for now at least, be ignored.
Luna had actually done a double-take at the fourth pony on the list. “I think there must be some sort of mistake.” she began. “This one seems a bit... too good to be true. Skilled armed and unarmed combatant, holds the rank of Sergeant in the UEP Defensive Force, decorated soldier. I don't think that they're going to allow us to poach this Sharp Salute, and frankly, I'm not sure he's not more valuable where he is right now.” She looked down, bewildered by the document in front of her.
Shining admitted that he had never heard of the stallion, but it was Paper Weight that spotted the pertinent detail. The yellow mare pushed her green mane out of her eyes, and her glasses further up her nose. “Ah. It would appear that he's seventy-six.”
Luna blinked. “Seventy-six what?”
“Seventy-six years old.” Paper Weight indicated the 'year of birth' entry in the dossier. “He was retired sixteen years ago, but the age limitations on the Equestrian Reserve Forces are a minimum age only. If you'll pardon the expression, some of the attached paperwork suggests that he might be chomping at the bit to get back into something resembling action.” She chewed on her lower lip, a habit that had become all-too-frequent since she had become Luna's secretary. “Assuming that he remembers to put in his teeth.”
Luna scowled. “I think that if anything, I'm proof that someone can stay active and productive well past the government-mandated retirement age.”
Shining Armour, a married stallion that knew a sore subject when he saw one coming, blanched a little at that. He had heard of Luna's failed efforts to learn more about the societal shifts in pony culture by getting a part-time job around Heart's Warming Eve. After Cadence had stopped giggling, she had forbidden him to laugh. “I think the fact that he is not, in fact, an immortal alicorn princess, but rather, an earth pony in his later years may be a relevant factor here.”
Luna's scowl turned into a pout. “We need someone with some kind of experience in this team, if it's going to be anything more than a group of misfits. I know you've volunteered to help out when you can, Shining, but the Crystal Empire and your wife both need you.” Paper Weight and Shining Armour hemmed and hawed in the face of her logic, so she carried on. “Plus, it's not as if we're expecting heavy combat missions. This isn't going to be the Guard, it's going to be the 'warn the alicorns that something sneaky or ill-advised is being perpetrated' squad.”
Paper Weight sighed. “I suppose it doesn't hurt to have some experience on duty. It might even balance out the young blood we have for the rest of the team.”
The fifth candidate was the most promising of the lot, an immigrant by the name of Zorada, who had been disqualified not, it was carefully explained, because she was a zebra, but because national service was open only to those that had been born within the country. There had been some talk of amending the laws over the years, as xenophobia had waned (at least in the more cosmopolitan communities), but the simple fact of the matter was that no one cared strongly enough to push for change, and thus the subject had simply stagnated. There were only so many hours in a day, after all, and so many days in a year; a year before Luna's return, it had taken a parliamentary subcommittee seven months of intensive debate, consultation, and bonus cheques to determine that the Equestrian flag could safely retain its traditional colours and design. Luna had railed against the foundering of governance, to say nothing of the graft that she had discovered upon her return, and never one to outright ignore their princess, the governing ponies of the House of Lords had immediately convened a Committee to Investigate Allegations of Corruption.
Eight months later, after heated and intense discussion and no small debate, the committee had changed its name to 'The Committee to Investigate Suspicion of Corruption'. 'Allegations', it was put forward, was a loaded word, which might bias the investigation. If there was one thing that Luna truly wished for, it was the return of the Elements of Harmony, the better to turn disharmonious self-important bureaucrats to stone, if not outright banish them to the sun.
In addition to holding a doctoral degree in theoretical ritual magic, Zorada was a trained alchemist – both areas relevant to the tasks that the team was likely to face, if they ended up ever being used as anything more than nominal proof that the Princesses were making an effort to forestall future problems. She was also employed in Canterlot, as a consultant for some of the make-up firms that were attempting to use alchemical techniques to improve the quality of their products.(3) No real objections were raised to the zebra's inclusion in the team, and as this was technically a part of Luna's personal guard, there was neither law nor precedent forbidding the choice.
“It's... a small group.” Luna managed with dwindling cheer. “But there's always the chance that we can make up some of the numbers with new applicants.” If there was a chance, it was a slender one; the notice had been up for a week, and the number of serious, potentially qualified applicants was measurable only because in some ancient age, some camel philosopher had invented the concept of 'zero'. It was possible that when the university turned out a new crop of graduates, the pressure to pay off student debts might generate applicants who, if not wildly enthusiastic, might at least be capable and job-loyal.
Until that point however, between the admirable but inconvenient employment initiatives that Celestia had in motion, as well as the disaster relief efforts, employment was at an all-time high; good for Equestria, bad for Luna trying to recruit a force. Although neither Shining Armour nor Paper Weight had said it out loud, there was also the matter of Luna's reputation working against her; even though the majority of Celestia's faithful subjects had more-or-less accepted her assertion that Luna had been redeemed, there was still an undercurrent of fear and hostility toward the traditional view of Luna as the boogeymare Nightmare Moon.
A handful of ponies had applied, and had turned out to be, in order, a changeling, a second changeling that had apparently not known that the first applicant had been a changeling, a twelve-year-old filly who had been hoping to lie about her age, a pegasus who had gotten the address confused with another poster and had been wondering why free piano lessons were being offered at the royal palace, a Nightmare Moon cultist (Luna hated those), Discord, and yet another changeling. For a species so naturally specialized in infiltration and espionage, the Swarm really didn't communicate all that well. In the recovery after the attack on the royal wedding, three copies of the same high-ranking ministry official had been discovered, knocked out and secreted away in various parts of her residence, as well as the official herself.
Still, universally competent or not, they were a predatory species that fed upon ponies. Luna wasn't about to allow them to join her personal guard, and Shining Armour had taken an almost uncalled for delight in booting them out of the application hallway, followed by the city.
Almost.
There was the chance that she might get lucky, and find a few more ponies to round out the numbers, but this would be enough for now. For now, these five ponies, be they ever so... eccentric, would be enough to convince the nobility to fund the levy. And if they didn't last three months, it would be enough for now. This, at least, was something that Luna could work with.
1: A combination of curiosity, amiable suspicion, and the sort of snoopiness that being a government lets you get away with. It is not, as many have noted, at all difficult to hazard a guess as to what your enemies think of you.
2: Some of the scholars from the university had been curious, and Celestia had been able to confirm this almost instantly upon being asked. If a simple argument had been enough to free the spirit of disharmony and chaos, she had added, the statue would have been buried in a mountain somewhere, possibly under some especially serene monks, not in the same city as parliament.
3: One would imagine that not using something called 'Poison Joke' in face cream would be universally intuitive, with 'poison' right there in the name. One would be wrong.