//------------------------------// // Hard Memories // Story: An Old Friend's Return // by Thunderblast //------------------------------// "Night Shadow!" ... "Captain, wake up!" ... "Captain Night Shadow!" *** Night jolted awake in a flash, he sat up on his elbows and panted heavily as he did. He glanced around briefly, then catching his eyes onto a silver pegasus guard under Celestia's branch. The pony stared down at him in concern, but let out a sigh of relief when he saw the captain okay. "Captain, sir, are you okay?" "Y-yeah, yeah. I'm fine. What happened?" Night looked back up to the guard. "I was on air patrol, and noticed you down here unconscious on the roof. What happened to you?" Night stopped to think. His mind was in a fog, making it hard to think straight, and he did not want to sound crazy as he spoke. He stood up slowly and brushed the dirt off of his armor. "Flew into this rooftop by accident." The guard nodded once. "What made you do so, captain?" For Luna's Sake... "No idea..." The guard raised an eyebrow, but then shrugged it off. "Your duties are required back at the palace, captain." Night nodded. "Of course. Thank you." "For what, sir?" "For waking me up." *** Night Shadow sighed and rubbed his forehead with a hoof as he sat in a local pub famous to royal guards, known as the Spearhead Tavern. He sat on a stool at the bar as he waited for his cider to arrive. Since his strange ordeal earlier that day, he was having trouble computing what had actually happened. Was he hallucinating, or was his late friend back from the dead? It was something he just could not understand, and it was giving Night a headache. "Evening captain," a voice startled Night out of his train of thought. "I didn't expect to find you here." Night turned his head to the side, moving his hoof down to the table. He didn't smile like he usually did when a friend walked up. "Oh, evening, Thunder." The grey pegasus guard, Thunderblast, seated himself beside Night Shadow, setting his golden helmet on the bar counter beside him. "Make that two ciders," Night said to the bartender, placing some bits on the counter. Thunder smiled softly. "You don't have to buy me a cider, you know." "You look like you need it," Night cracked a faint smile and stared forward. "What makes you say that?" Thunder scrunched his nose and raised an eyebrow. "You look stressed." "You look worse." Night turned to Thunder, his smile immediately fading. "I do?" Thunderblast nodded. "I've never seen you in so much stress, not even when we took on your colony." Night quickly thought of how to respond, which took longer than he hoped. "Busy day reassigning guards. Princess Celestia has called for an increase in security." "So I've heard. What for exactly?" "They think there might be changelings back in the city. You should read the reports." "I will when I get the chance," Thunder stared forward. "That doesn't seem like that's it though." "What?" "There's something else on your mind, isn't there?" Thunder turned to Night, staring him in the eye. Night's ears drooped a little, he looked down towards his hooves on the counter, and then back to Thunder. "What would you do if you found out someone you loved, or someone you loved as a friend who was dead, came back?" Thunder stopped for a moment, then faced forward again. "I don't know. Depending on the circumstances, if they remember me, I'd hug 'em first. Then I'd catch up with them on all that's happened since they...left. Unless, they already knew," he stopped. "If they didn't remember me, I'd leave." Night's ears were still hanging down. "I see..." "Why do you ask?" Thunder looked back at Night. Night gulped quietly. "Just asking." Thunder wanted to question further, but didn't and simply nodded. *** Shortly after his rare trip to the bar, Night sat as his desk in his quarters beside his bed. He was more than stressed, and even his eyes were on the verge of closing without his permission. But, he couldn't sleep yet. While he was out, a large pile of reports had built up on the floor outside his room from his mailbox being too full to fit any more. Each report he went through, he seemed to re-read most of the lines over and over again before finally finishing them, and even that took about twenty minutes to get into his mind. His head was too overloaded with a billion thoughts racing through at too high speeds. Night finally threw down the report he had just finished reading with a frustrated sigh, he moved both hooves to his forehead and rested it on them and yawned. "I need to sleep..." He groaned, his eyes moving to the pile of unread reports on the floor beside his desk. Exhausted, he blew out the candle on his desk and slowly stripped himself of his armor and put it neatly back into the tower dresser on the other side of his bed, then crawled under the sheets. Night let out another yawn, a much bigger one as he settled into his soft bed and nodding off moments after. *** *CRASH* Night jolted awake, his golden eyes opened wide. He quickly looked around the dark room, scanning for what broke. When he saw nothing, he slowly crawled out of his bed and gradually walked around the apartment, into the kitchen where he found nothing again. Finally, he entered the living room and peered around it slowly. His eyes then caught the site of a small pane from the window was broken, and a brick with something tied to it sitting on the floor. He gulped and moved closer to it, picking the brick up in a hoof and removing the rubber band, and then taking the note in his hoof and unfolding it. I'm watching you... On the bottom, it was signed with a gold square. He didn't quite understand, but the note had really caught his attention. It was bad enough that his dead friend isn't dead anymore and is possibly an assassin now, but now he had to worry about being stalked by somepony. Night sighed, walking into the kitchen and grabbing a broom to clean up the glass shards sitting on the carpet of his living room, and finally back to bed.