The Night Guard - Night Mares
Testing Patience
Lieutenant Chalk was a light shade of dull white, which matched his personality perfectly. The cadets who attended his history courses had nicknamed him Dusty Chalk, which bothered him not one whit. Nothing bothered Chalk, not annoying cadets asking the same ignorant questions about material that had been repeatedly covered in class, or the endless feeble excuses for missing work or incorrect answers. “No” was the answer for nearly every occasion.
Row after row of Royal Guard Cadets sat in identical seats working on identical exams under his direct observation. Before graduation, the cadets maintained their original coat colors, making an unruly mess of hues and tints that came as close to ‘bothering’ Chalk as anything, but as long as the four colorful mares in the class behaved the same as the rest of the colorful cadets, he was perfectly content to treat them with exactly the same cold disdain.
The problem was distraction. The pink pegasus mare could not possibly know how irritating she was. Every constant ear-flick or twitch in her coat attracted curious eyes, and Chalk kept having to remind himself about his perfectly boring wife and two perfectly ordinary colts at home. In fact, Chalk found it quite difficult to even notice the other female cadets bent over their own papers and scratching away.
He did notice a sound. Somewhere in the building, there was a faint high-pitched wail, sometimes loud enough to be heard, sometimes fading to just fractionally below the threshold of audibility. Every time the wail crested, the pink cadet accelerated her twitching or wing flicking or something equally as annoying, bending over her paper with renewed intensity. Every time the wail faded, she would flick a glance at the door and shift uncomfortably in her chair, which triggered an almost identical shift in several rows of cadets behind her. Eventually the distant wail rose into a rising crescendo of tiny tapping noises, much like the galloping of miniature hooves, with a counterpart of slower clattering hooves behind. The noise grew louder and louder until the double doors to the exam room gave a loud ‘thump’ of impact, and the small blue nose of an infant colt shoved itself into the resulting gap.
“Mamma!” bleated the colt, bringing a startled halt to every single cadet in the room, many of which dropped their pencils and stared.
The rapid clatter of little hooves on tile echoed through the room as the little colt used the opening to wedge the rest of his tiny body through, being followed from out in the hallway by a frantic feminine voice who called, “No, no, no! Standing Water, you come back here right now! Mamma’s taking a test! Oh, no!”
“Mamma!” squalled the little colt, vaulting into the air with the blur of rapidly beating wings that managed to make it over one startled cadet before rebounding off the next one and skidding under a desk. “Mamma! Mamma!” he continued to squall, thumping his head against the bottom of the desk as he tried to stand up.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” wailed Cadet Thermal, trying to look at Chalk and her foal at the same time. “I didn’t get pumped enough yesterday for him and he doesn’t react well to formula because he won’t drink it at all and my mother-in-law tried to keep him downstairs so I could nurse when we had a break but we haven’t had a break and—”
Chalk raised one hoof, hesitated at the look of pure panic and terror radiating from the startling pink pegasus as well as the unanimous look of disapproval aimed at him from every other cadet, and then dropped his hoof onto the pause button of the timer.
“Cadets,” he announced in a parade-ground bellow to make himself heard over the squalling of the hungry little colt. “Pencils down. Turn your tests over.” He waited until the rustle and clatter of curious cadets had died down and the little colt had been silenced by the expedient use of weapons-grade nuzzling.
“Cadets, one of the hallmarks of the Royal Guard is their ability to react to unexpected conditions in the field. With that in mind, I am assigning a fifteen point exercise, at the end of which, I will restart the timer and you will all resume your examination with an additional five minutes added to compensate for the disruption this exercise will cause.”
He nodded to Cadet Thermal and the little colt, who had started rooting around for his meal. “Using only materials available in this room, your task is to construct a privacy curtain for a nursing mother and her colt. Half of your score will be on the aesthetic and practical qualities of the shelter, and the other half awarded for timeliness. You may begin, now.”
Chalk stood up from his chair and watched the room full of young stallions snap into action with a concealed smile and a slight shake of his head for the older pegasus mare who had taken the opportunity to peek in through the double doors. He trotted over and whispered to her in a very low voice, “Madam, no outside individuals are admitted during the exam.”
“I just wanted to get my grandfoal out of your mane,” she whispered back.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered back. “He’ll be back as a cadet in a few years. Half the cadets in this room don’t have that kind of initiative. Just think of this as early admission.”
After reassuring the mare, Chalk returned to his desk and settled down to watch the young cadets work. He really did not expect them to get done in the allotted fifteen minutes.
They were done in eight.
~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~
“Sur, the preliminary grades are in.” Lieutenant Kudzu trotted into the captain’s office with a set of folders trailing behind in his magical field. He barely dropped them onto the desk before Peaks yanked them open and began to read.
“What is this!” Peaks glared at the tall white glass that his office assistant placed on the table next.
“Almond milk, sur. I was given to unduhstand yur stomach has been bothering youh lately, and we thought it best to assist.”
Peaks glowered, but he did take a drink, and then after reading a little further down the page, another. “It’s not bad,” he grumbled. “Where are the mare’s grades? I don’t see them at the bottom.”
“Look up, sur,” responded Kudzu, topping off his boss’s glass.
There was an exceedingly long pause, followed by a spray of almond milk across the desk. It took a few moments for Peaks to recover, but eventually he spluttered, “That’s preposterous! Check their scores again!”
“The graders checked three times already, sur.” Kudzu produced a thin folder and floated it over for his boss to read. “Technically, Miss Grace was correct in responding to Question Seventeen in the way she did. She wrote an impeccable defense in the margin of the exam. It seems the reference to Section 47, Subsection 12, Paragraph 7 had been outdated since the update to the Regulations of the Royal Guard seven years ago that split an earlier paragraph into two parts. The graders awarded her an extra credit point, even without which makes her the first cadet since Shining Armor to join the Hundred Club, sur. One hundred point six percent is quite nearly an Academy record.”
“Well, at least…” started Peaks as his hoof began to trace down the page, stopping at the next entry. “Banehammer? You can’t tell me Grandma scored this high. Is there another cadet with that name?”
“No, sur. I believe she missed the question on Twisted Logic. Most everypony does. And like most of the cadets, the graders credited her for the correct answer on Question Seventeen, which technically was wrong, but since Miss Grace pointed out their minor error, they’ve been ‘letting this one slide,’ I believe is the phrase, sur.”
This time Peaks took a deep drink of milk and swallowed before returning to the grade listing. “At least Thermal isn’t… No, there she is. And Miss Rose. All far above the personal protection unit cutoff.”
“Yes, sur. The entire class scored nearly five points higher than average this year. Princess Luna will be pleased.”
“Princess Luna can bite my—” Commander Snowy Peaks considered his next word with great care, taking into account his assistant’s placid look of disinterest. “She’s not outside the door, is she?”
“No, sur. However, there is a cadet who has a special request outside your door. I told her you would send for her when you were ready.”
“Her?” Peaks glowered. “What does Grace want?”
“Just a private moment of your time, as per the open door policy you announced when you became the Academy commandant.”
It took a few moments of grinding his teeth before Peaks responded. “Send her in and get the notes together for our meeting with Supply in an hour. It’s not like she’s going to screw up my life any more than it already is. After the closing exercises tomorrow, she becomes Night Commander Buttercup’s problem. I never want to see another mare in uniform as long as I live.”
“Except for the new cadets, sur.” Kudzu floated two more folders over to his superior’s desk. “Just came in an hour ago. Somewhat older than regular cadets, but one is a quarry worker and the other—”
“Just send her in,” growled Peaks.
It made Commander Peaks feel slightly better and worse to note the nearly concealed signs of stress that peeked out from under Miss Grace’s scuffed armor in the form of an errant string of frazzled mane and one undone clasp on her sidesaddle. Still, the mare drew herself up to a perfect salute in front of his desk and snapped out, “Sir, this cadet has a request.”
“Spill it, Grace,” he growled back. “I’m up to my flank in paperwork today with graduation and the new class starting soon.”
“Exactly, sir.” A folder levitated out of her sidesaddle and was placed perfectly down in front of him. With a growing sense of dread, he read the title printed in neat block letters.
“Internship? Oh, no. You can’t be thinking…”
“Although after assignment we will be on detached duty with the Royal Guard, Night Division, I’ve researched the precedents about temporary placement at the Academy, and believe—”
“Me? What did I ever do to you?” muttered Peaks as he flipped several pages of the request, trying not to notice as another few feathers drifted to the floor behind him.
“As you specified previously, sir, your current peak workload exceeds the capacity of your existing staff. Since I’m only assigned to this detail until an ongoing investigation is completed, I believe the best use of my limited time is to assist you with this temporary workload surge.”
“What,” growled Peaks, “if we put you out in public, are you afraid you’re going to stab somepony else?” He trailed off to a halt, scowling at the obstinate words on the page in front of him.
That was cruel, vicious, and totally uncalled for. Just because you hate what she stands for, doesn’t mean you need to hate her. What would Princess Luna say? Buck that, what would Princess Celestia say?
“Permission to be dismissed, sir!” Peaks looked up abruptly. Grace’s voice was normally cool, but this voice would have frozen a Windigo solid. She still held herself in parade ‘rest,’ if that rigid pose could be considered resting in the slightest, but a faint tremor caused the little bits of her short-cropped mane that peeked out from under her helmet to nearly vibrate with suppressed tension.
“Denied,” he snapped back, gesturing at the cushions reserved for very important visitors into his office. “Sit down before you break something.” He scrounged through his desk until he found the folders he should have read several days ago, and opened up the thickest one. Grace hesitated at the edge of the white and indigo cushions, obviously unwilling to rest her rump where royal rumps rarely rested.
“Sit down, Miss Grace. That’s an order.” He flipped back a few pages to get through the traditional boilerplate at the beginning of a folder and added, “Would you like some milk while you wait?”
“Sir?” Grace’s attempt at self-suspension over the pristine white cushion failed abruptly, and she landed with a thud on Princess Celestia’s rump-rest.
“Almond milk,” he clarified, double-checking the carton. “Although if Kudzu found some lactating mare named Almond, I’m going to run him up the camp flagpole by his unmentionables.”
This time his ice-breaking attempt was rewarded with a definite humorous snort, which he was very careful not to respond to in any fashion, burying himself in the technical details of the personnel folder with more attention paid to what was not written than what was. And everything that was there, was absolutely perfect. Spelled perfect, punctuated perfect, evaluations with perfect scores, even down to the perfect hole in the middle of the report that he was expecting.
“Although you are on administrative leave from the police force due to an incident under investigation, the exact details of your ongoing investigation seem to be missing from your folder, Miss Grace. Care to enlighten your present commanding officer? A short summary, of course,” he added while turning a page. “After all, I’m quite busy.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start, sir.”
He took a moment to glance up and look at the perfect shell that had dropped over Grace’s features, so much like another mare whom he had thought he had known quite well. There was no use in trying to identify whatever emotions churned behind that impassive mask. Princess Celestia had sat in that exact same spot with that same expression several times during his career, the last time a mere week before her sister Luna had been freed from the moon and unleashed on his chain of command, both up and down the chain. Anypony under that much pressure was in danger of exploding, as he had been at one time, and some hidden urge caused him to pass the lesson along.
“Princess Celestia would have you start at the beginning, with tea, and before you realized it, you would be telling her about your grandfather, and how he was just a young pup when his patrol in the northern mountains was ambushed by a rogue griffon, out to prove his claws. How grandfather used to bounce you on his knee and give you rides around the city before your wings could bear your own weight. How he always used to tense up around griffons afterwards, even the merchants in the caverassi, and rub the scar that ran down his shoulder. He never told you what happened to his wingpony that day, but Celestia knew. She knows everypony, alive and dead, even down to the lowest patrolling guard on the frontier. And when grandfather died of old age, even though she never attends funerals, she knew.”
Snowy Peaks tapped a hoof against his breastplate. “His armor still fits. Someday I plan on passing it on to my grandcolt, so that he can take my place protecting Their Highnesses like thousands of stallions before him. Do you understand, Miss Grace?”
“To a degree, yes.”
Peaks turned another page before continuing. “Good. Because I can understand why you would want to serve. There’s a special spark inside both of us that sees danger threatening the ones we love and makes us gallop to protect them. Just not here, Miss Grace. Princess Celestia defends us from cosmic-level threats that could wipe out every pony in Equestria, while all we are known for is standing around and acting shiny. We guard the Princesses. That’s all we got. Take that away, and what does a stallion have that’s worth dying for?”
“We’re not taking that away,” growled Grace, obviously upset for a change. “We’re adding to it by contributing our strengths to yours. Only an idiot would try to make an entire army from pegasi or earth ponies. Would you demote a unicorn if he couldn’t fly, or a pegasus who can’t cast spells?” Grace’s voice dropped an octave before she paused, breathing in and out several times before continuing in a quiet controlled tone that raised a shiver up his neck. “We work together in order to make civilization possible. United, we can be strong enough to protect those we care about. Taking away is what criminals do. They steal and cheat, gnawing away at the trust that society requires in order to exist. Sometimes they even kill, which is the worst sort of theft. They steal a life, just because it pleases them, and there can be no more terrible crime.”
Grace’s voice was scarcely louder than the crackling noise of turning a page, and he tried to ignore it while reading until she added in that same quiet controlled tone, “He was a murderer many times over. We had been investigating the disappearance of little colts around Canterlot, but he covered his tracks perfectly. Four little colts vanished in the middle of the day over four months without a single usable clue other than a vague description. It was the fifth month, and I thought I knew where he was going to strike next.”
A low green glow formed around Grace’s chipped horn, and a market scene appeared in front of her in miniature. It jolted with her movement, filled with young ponies out buying treats while older ponies tried to keep them under control. A middle-aged earth pony seemed to hold center in the illusionary scene, growing larger as Grace slipped through the crowd in her memory until he looked away and grabbed a nearby colt, holding a slim blade across his throat while shouting something. The image blurred with movement, the stallion growing larger in the illusion as she galloped at full tilt across the intervening space—
Until she lowered her horn and slammed into his side in a splash of blood.
“He was blind to me, turned just enough to see my partner and hold a knife to that little colt’s neck, and…”
Grace trailed off, and it was all that Peaks could do to look back down at the folder and pretend to read. Finally, he closed the folder and tossed it onto the disorganized heap covering his desk. “Request approved. Once we’re done with tomorrow’s graduation exercise, I’ll expect to see you here at seventeen hundred hours, showered and ready to get to work on Mount Paperwork, the only mountain bigger than Mount Canter. Is that acceptable, Miss Grace?”
That infuriating transparent shield dropped over her features as Miss Grace nodded at him, seeming just as cold as the northern mountains. “Yes, sir. May I ask what the dress code for proper paperwork perusal is? I understand the incoming class will have need of the tin suit, as there are so few of them in the armory. At present.”
Peaks held his composure as he nodded back. “Once the graduation exercise is over, you may return the clamshell, Miss Grace. Your duty uniform is acceptable within the office. Anyway, Kudzu and I normally break at twenty-three hundred hours, but every year is different, and this one promises to be a nutcracker. We’re processing out the graduated cadets as fast as possible because there’s something going on up north that has the Griffons all feathered up. Princess Celestia has requested extra patrols to be out looking for ‘Him,’ whoever that is. ‘You’ll know it when you see it’ is not a proper intelligence briefing, but that’s all we’ve been given.”
“Ours is not to reason why,” said Miss Grace, her lips forming into a razor-straight line. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Nearly. Since our facility will be paying reluctant host to a number of the fair sex in the near future, I’ve been ‘volunteered’ to create a task force to rewrite the Regulations of the Royal Guard to accommodate their fragile dispositions. Since you have such a deep understanding of the document, there is no greater torture that I could think of to drive you out of the Royal Guard faster than to pass the chairpony position to you.”
“Thank you, sir. I accept. Shall I be responsible for moving any heavenly bodies in addition to my assigned duties?”
Snowy Peaks gathered up a few folders, pushing his box of tissues closer to her and turning for the door with a shake of his head. “No, I don’t think so at present. Kudzu and I have an appointment that I can’t be late for, so if you could tidy up a little before you leave, it would be appreciated.”
He paused at the doorway without looking back. “Miss Grace. If you were to find yourself in the same situation again, would you be capable of…”
Her voice remained perfectly level as she responded, “Four little colts, sir.”
“Good.” Peaks gave a brief look back at the impassive unicorn mare sitting where Princess Celestia normally sat. “You know I’m still going to try to get you ladies to quit and go home, right?”
“You can try, sir.”