//------------------------------//
// Ch. 4: Force of Habit 
// Story: The Ambassadors 
// by TheJinxedJailer 
//------------------------------//

Neo began frantically slipping through his history books in attempt to find evidence of a certain border scuffle as Nuke practiced his targeting. I, on the other unfortunate hoof, was stuck at a drawing table on the castle courtyard. Not only that, but the system I used for drawing is very hard when there's wind blowing every three seconds from your fellow pegasi flapping their wings in attempt to better their own sanity under pressure. Oh, sorry; did that sound bitter?

But still, though the view was beautiful and I had plenty of ammo to work with, my gears just wouldn't click right. Every day I was given a different animal to base a weapon or combo-weapon off of, and at the end of the it all, I had to log out the team progress in our training book.

Today's animal was the March Hare, and I had a pretty good idea of what to do with it: kick-out boots for earth ponies or unicorns. The allowed you to jump higher, that was granted; but they gave you super charges for extra speed that load up sporadically so the enemy won't know what's coming… then again, we don't know who the enemy is exactly.

Neither Great Gray or Silver Luck would spill anything, as they were the ones in conference with Celestia most of the time. And Princess Luna had yet to be seen for more than thirty seconds, so needless to say my team wondered what she was doing. All we had heard about was a titan called the Grimmlock, whatever that was. And the letter Gray had sent to me had ruffled my feathers enough by telling us that there was literally one manuscript about it (Which the Princess had never let us see, by the by.)

Suddenly, I was overshadowed in my frustrations, the sun being blocked from burning against my back and sending shade across my paper. "How… new! I love it!"

I looked back and smiled at the silvery tower standing over me. He ushered me aside a small bit to look  at the paper and the charcoal pencil I was using to draw with. Gray's blue eyes looked fluidly up and down the page, and he tapped his hoof to his chin in contemplation. Then he gave me a teacher's glance as he asked, "Any room for suggestions?"

I clipped off to the side and stretched all my limbs to rid them of the sleepy feeling that settled there. "Be my guest."

Gray took my pencil and a ruler with his horn, and the soft white glow pressed them down and changed a directory, and recalculated to center the balance of whatever pony wore them; something I had neglected because I didn't know how to do myself.

The gears in my head began turning again, prompted. "So you lean forward when charging to make the charge itself faster?"

Gray nodded, and set the pencil and ruler down onto my work table. "Exactly; less stress on the metal and spring system."

He then looked up and cantered over to center-yard so everyone could hear. "Alright, lunch break! Food-trolleys will be here in about two minutes, so get near the doors and wait."

I continued stretching as I clipped behind him, and moseyed over to the stack of books and parchment that eclipsed my pegasus friend. Gray walked on past toward Nuke who was trying to configure some sort of gun.  I peeked around the edge of the stack, and saw his wings flapping fervently, stirring scrolls and the like.

"Lunch time. C'mon; otherwise I'll eat everything myself."

"This heat is killing me." Neo said bitterly, shading his head with a wing and looking for another paragraph on the subject he researched.

"Then get a drink, come on. I'll try to drown you like I did your unicorn-buddy over there." I bit at one of his secondary feathers, earning a swipe over my head.

"Come oooonnn!"

And I trotted impatiently off with wings held up slightly and my mane shielding my eyes from the sun. I saw Nuke already under the marble doors, grooming himself lazily with a hoof. I browsed over, and didn't see Glacie yet; I started to poke my nose where it didn't belong immediately.

When I was shaded from the sunlight's glare, I weaseled my way up past Nuke and tapped Great Gray on his shoulder… or rather, as far up on his leg as I could reach.

He looked down. "Hmm?"

"Where's Glacie? And uh… how's that training coming?"

Gray looked away, slightly annoyed. He glanced back down, and his ears twitched breifly before he mumbled, "It's… no worse."

I tilted my head to the side, and fluttered up to breifly look him in the eye. "How does this work again? She's a pegasus like me. How is any of this ever going to work with us being so unbalanced?"

Gray looked disconcertedly away. "I can't say, Ginger. Celestia's orders."

I tried to keep suspicions down, I really did. But it's a bad habit of mine; if I have reason to be suspicious of anything that you do, I will be. So with all these secrets being kept, I was jumpier than spider on a stovetop.

There was no talking to him about matters like this, I supposed. So I begrudgingly landed with a clipping sound against the warm marble balcony, and looked up to see if Glacie was coming down from wherever she was being coached. The sun glared against my eyes, and obscured my vision; but even then it appeared that my life-friend wouldn't be joining us for lunch that day.

The doors opened, and glittering silver trays were pushed on carts made of brass. The waiters looked contented, as they always did whenever they appeared in public. They were all earth ponies pushing the food out, except for the little mare unicorn who was bringing out tea and lemonade with a table of glasses on her back.

I'd never seen a cuter little filly in all of my life; I have a soft spot for the chubby ones, I guess. She had a rosy pink coat and violet hair with nary a Cutie Mark in sight. She had that look in her eye of someone who had never been outside of where she lived, and viewing strangers was a rare spectacle.

As they all bowed and left the carts, the little filly walked around and offered her two pitchers and the glasses she had on her back. Nuke chose the tea; anyone from Thicia would choose tea over lemonade.

As the rosy unicorn walked up with a twinkle in her eye, she said in a squeaky little voice, "Tea or lemonade?"

"Tea, if you please."

She summoned her glass, and poured it near to the brim. I thanked her, and took the edge in my teeth; I'm terrible at balancing things on my hooves. As she walked away with the tea pitcher mostly drained, I put my tea on a cart before it could drop.

As I looked around, Gray had disappeared into the castle somewhere, and Neo and Nuke were leaning against the banister munching away on whatever sandwich the royal cooks were serving today.

I lifted the lid of my tray to find the exact same thing: a wilted clover sandwich on toasted bread with what looked like cheese-powder on the inside. I pushed my cart closer to where my two team-mates were chatting it up with bits of clover flying everywhere. Lifting my tea glass to the edge of the banister, I returned and took a chomp out of my sandwich.

"What're you guys talkin' about?"

Nuke wiped his mouth and sucked a bit of clover out of his teeth. "I uh… I hit a bird. It fell on some aristocrat's head."

Is smiled and bit into my sandwich again. "Nice."

Neo polished his off, and then swigged up the rest of his tea. "I'm trying to figure out the best strategy when we don't know what enemy we're workin' with. It's getting annoying."

"We've been here for roughly three days."

"And there's a whole library of books to look through." he retorted, wings clenched tightly to his sides.

That reminded me of something. "Speaking of which, I want to visit before this break is over. There's a couple of books I want."

Nuke and Neo shrugged. "Go ahead." the gray one responded. "But you better hurry. We're going back in at around… 1 o'clock, I think it is."

I crunched through the wilted-clover sandwich, and pushed over the rest of my tea. "Drink it if you want. I've gotta scoot."

I looked up into the sky, trying to navigate the quickest way to the library. There were many staircases and too many ways to get there from my team-mate's little corridor. I finally decided to merely fly into the air and circle for a doorway on the floor below the courtyard.

Lifting gently into the air, I swooped under the banister. My coat cooled as I slid and skimmed over the large pools of water, and I ran a hoof along the surface to distil it. I sped my wings in choppy circles to rise further up, and landed firmly on the banister to the doorway underneath the castle courtyard.

Opening the door, I began to clip inside and once again be daunted by massive paintings and lovely vases to fancy to even be looked at by the likes of me. Crimson Castle, my place of employment, was fancy in its own way as well, I suppose.

It was a giant fortress connected to a rather small castle in comparison, its fences and walls made of pure ruby and walls lined with garnets and all of it glazed over in synthetic sapphire (Clear in its purest form, so the castle still remained red). Lined with countless amounts of rebar and the structure it stood on delving miles into the earth, it was nearly unbreakable from the outside. Inside were more intricate weavings of crystal than there were extravagant paintings, holding up lamps and the upper floors.

Whereas Canterlot was very rounded and open, Crimson Castle was more rigid and focused on cardinal directions. The hallways were angular and straight instead of curved and gentle, aligned with flags and weapons. We are a nation used to war with the more angry beasts, some of them too intelligent for our good and others joining us for our dinners on platters… metaphorically, of course.

All of these thoughts ran rampant through my head as I felt my way to the library, bowing to every servant I happened upon and keeping my wings tucked up into my sides. The book room's corridor had a marble plaque with an inscription of a set of encyclopedias, signaling my time to turn had come.

Pushing against the door, I was flushed into a deep purple room with tall windows and high bookshelves that craned into the ceiling like giants. A few tables stood in the middle, a pure white stallion and a small yellow mare working on thesis papers taking seats at them with quills scratching angrily away.

It stirred within me my own want to write. Not notes or contraption ideas, put to continue the novel I had been predisposed to leave at the castle when the summons was erected. The summons.

I briefly looked over signs, and went into the reference section. Though I knew I would find nothing, I skimmed my hoof over the leather bindings of the books constricted to the letter 'g'. Gala, gnats, grim reapers… no sign of a 'Grimmlock', whatever that was. I groaned inwardly, and then decided to read farther down just for the sake of it.

At the end of a second shelf and two books back, a mahogany red paperback seemed to protrude toward me with a few little gold clamps catching my poor eyesight. A tattered old tassel hung limply from the top of it, and it swayed as I pulled it out.

The cover, old but still relatively intact, read 'Thician Royalty'. I was wondering if they kept things like this about other nations here. I knew my history already, and saw no reason to take the book with me once I left, so I hastily flipped through to find a picture of Gray to see how recent it was. As it turns out, the book was only five years old, and my Alicorn leader was the second to last entry in the book with only a page about him and the author's note behind.

I found myself muttering under my breath, as I always do when I read something intently or need to do it fast.

"Great Gray, formerly known as Berg Gray, is the current ruler of Thicia and patriarch of Crimson Castle. Under him are appointed sub-captains, hereby referred to as Vice Princes and Princesses, known as Vice Prince Helmroot, and Vice Princess Aria. Above them is the good Queen Eleinor, mother of Great Gray's two children."

I stopped dead in my train of thought's tracks. Two children? Silver Luck was the only one I knew of. Perplexed, I flung the tassel in to mark its place.

I trotted over to one of the lavish window seats, similar to the one I had fallen asleep in before, and opened up the book again.

"Silver Luck is the firstborn child designated to take the central throne if either of her parents should pass away. She is currently a unicorn, and is being trained in the art of swift combat. Gray's second child is a chestnut stallion by the name of C. B. Beer. He is assigned leadership over the Nama Desert when he has reached proper age."

I chewed this over, but thought of nothing new as I reread the sentence over and over again. C. B. Beer? And a stallion, no less? Gray must have some pretty good string pullers to get that one knocked out of limelight, especially when someone is… Well… a descendant of royalty. If it mentioned Silver Luck as heir to the throne, then the stallion would by default be younger, and we would have gotten wind of him.

Munching away at my thoughts, I slipped the book back into place in its shelf. Searching the walls of the room for a clock, I was startled to find I had only ten minutes before the lunch break ended. I hurried myself over to the horror section to retrieve the book I had lost over my nap a few days ago.

Withdrawing it and another short story book by the same author, I gripped a disposable book satchel in my teeth as I hastily made my way to the courtyard. Taking the way I had arrived by, the sun sent warmth cascading over my thick plumage and already sending me into a spiral of 'Good Gray, it's hot' moods.

Circling back, I saw everypony had returned to their spots on the giant marble deck. Landing with a hollow and loud knocking noise, I tucked the books I had checked out under my worktable and searched for my graphite. Letting out a large huff of breath, I took my seat and began to recalibrate the idiotic boots I had begun construction on earlier.

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A cold hoof found its way to my shoulder, gently shaking me so that I opened my eyes drowsily. The frosty blue of my friend's coat helped me recognize her as my glasses tipped away from my nose.

"Glacie!" I exclaim with the grace of a drunken bartender. Rubbing my eyes, I adjusted my glasses and turned to her.

Her attention was posted at my mane. "You're frizzy again."

I butted her away with my head. "Yeah, yeah."

I stretched my hooves and the ruffled feathers on my wings, and I readjusted my glasses. Glacie's eyes were red, and dark circles framed the icepick blue of her irises. A small bandage was plastered to her neck, and her mane was flat and listless, a sure sign of stress.

"What happened to you?" Not the kindest greeting, I'm aware, but I felt so taken aback by her haggard appearance.

Glacie looked away, eyes flitting like a nervous bird across the pictures and wallpaper in my room. "The training is a bit rough… just a bit though."

I looked at her, unconvinced. "Are you allowed to tell me?"

She held her tongue, still sitting silent in the darkness of the room. Glancing behind her, I saw that the door was cracked, betraying a single ray of light that refracted from the metal framing of my window.

A little ruffled by the restriction, I attempted to sweep it under the rug. "Oh, well, that's okay. I'm sure the princesses have their reasons."

"They do… although they haven’t told me a thing. I don't think Gray is allowed to tell me either." she looked a little hurt, and I saw her wings quivering.

"Why are you shaking, Glacie?"

She didn't answer, but her eyes were big and frightened. She looked so small again, like she was when we first met. I felt a bit dumb for asking why she was shaking; she was obviously scared, maybe lonely as well.

Gently, I swept a wing over my upturned blankets. "Do you want to sleep in here?"

The pegasus nodded emphatically, and swiftly jumped onto the bed with a quick pump of her wings. It dipped and I scooted over to avoid rolling with it. Glacie wormed her way beneath the top sheet, the comforter having been untucked completely. One of her feathers floated down to the floor, and something in my brain demanded that I pick it up. Tilting my head, I gently took it in my teeth.

"What did you do that for?"

I placed it between my hooves, staring at the slick blue-gray and pondering the very same thing myself. I took one final inventory of my room, and my eyes rested on one of my many rolls of parchment; I took it between my teeth again, now thinking I was perhaps on to something. It was perhaps a normal feather to anybody else, but to a writer, it was a quill. I sprang down as quickly as Glacie had gotten up, and placed it in the open inkwell.

"I'm writing a letter to one of the Princesses."

"What?" Her reply rang sharply in my ears, and they twitched back in response.

"You heard me. I'm writing to Princess Luna."

Glacie shuffled uncomfortably in the covers. " I don't really think it's a good idea…"

I had already begun rigging up my writer's collar: a device that holds the quill and uses my wing to direct it, since they're a bit more dextrous than hooves. I raised the feather, testing it, then dipped it back into the inkwell and begun scribbling.