Swift Strike had a headache. Rubbing his head, he ran his eyes over the report again, at a loss for words. Miss Pie had, somehow, violated the rules of physics, and accidentally traumatized one of her guards. Again.
"How in the world did she manage to..." He trailed off. The words of the townsponies, repeated like a comforting mantra, echoed in his head. 'It's Pinkie Pie. Don't question it'. He wasn't stupid enough to argue the point. He only had to look at Corporal Duty Sense to see why that was a bad idea. Corporal Sense had tried to get a good look at one of Miss Pie's...'incidents', claiming it couldn't be 'all that bad'. The poor stallion still refused to go anywhere near a mailbox.
Not for the first time, he wondered if a such a pony truly needed a guard. With her 'abilities', it would surely be foal's play to escape from any undesirable situation. However, when he had asked Princess Twilight about this, she had only shook her head.
"I don't know why," she had said, "But for some reason that doesn't seem to be how it works. Pinkie's been in plenty of dangerous situations, but I've never seen her abilities play a major role in her surviving them. I would say it was something that had to simply flow, that couldn't be forced, but she clearly does have control over it...And after what happened last time, I'm in no hurry to investigate the phenomena."
So, to put it shortly, Princess Twilight had no idea. Frustrated, he had then questioned Miss Pie herself...and that had just given him another headache.
"Oh, I don't take shortcuts when things are all super-serious because I think that's kind of cheating, don't you?" she had said. In one breath.
"...Cheating?"
"Yeah! You wouldn't want all the problems to be solved in like ten seconds, do you? That's no fun for anybody who watches!"
"...What do you mean, 'watches'?" he had asked, curious.
Miss Pie had shrugged, and said "Me and the girls tend to get a looot of attention every now and again."
Unsure of what she meant, he had gone for a slightly paranoid reaction. With Probe still unaccounted for, of course, this was easily justifiable. "Miss Pie? Are you suggesting you may be under surveillance?"
"Oooh, like a spy story? That'd be cool, but I don't think so. I mean like-" Here, she had paused, as if remembering something. "Err...Umm...Oh yeah! You know, like last week. We get caught up in stuff like that aaallll the time, and everybody wants to watch!" He knew that she was hiding something there. He had never, ever seen Miss Pie hesitate before. At all. But she didn't seem worried, so he decided to drop it. It was probably another one of Ponyville's quirks. Like the local flower sellers, who panicked over damaged flowers, but didn't worry at all during last week's incident when Timberwolves breached the Forest perimeter. Was he the only one who noticed how weird that was?
He had shook his head out of the tangent it had drifted onto, and then said "So, we Guards can expect some casual watchers during our stay here?"
"Well, kinda...I mean, they are technically looking, but right now it's not really 'watching'..." Miss Pie trailed off, and his sense of self preservation had told him that this was a good time to leave the conversation. Judging from the flow of the conversation, Miss Pie looked like she was teetering on saying something damaging to his mental health. At least it did not seem relevant to the Probe situation, judging by the fact she wasn't acting particularly scared or worried. She had seemed more nervous, like somepony who had verbally dug themselves into an awkward hole.
Not wanting to test the theory, he had hastily made excuses and extracted himself from the conversation.
Swift sighed and looked around for something to distract him. He was on a break at the moment, and was sitting on a simple wooden bench beside a small local lake. This 'lake' was probably technically a large duck pond, but as it was large enough to be charitably called a small lake he decided to stick with his initial description. A little way away, on the other side of the lake, he spotted a pair of mares on a similar bench, one a cream earth pony with a pink and blue mane, and the other a mint green unicorn. The Unicorn was sitting strangely, for some reason adopting a posture more natural to bipedal races. As he watched, the two leant in close, and he hurriedly looked away, not wanting to stare and potentially interrupt the couple's moment.
He looked up, wondering if he could do a spot of cloud-gazing. No such luck- there was only one visible cloud, and even that was in the process of being sped away, propelled by a pink and purple blob. Of course, this was a pegasus, though he wouldn't be able to name them if he tried. He wondered how many would, in this small town. Miss Pie could, for certain, but how many others? Well, there was a strong sense of community here, so perhaps most, if not all, of the town's inhabitants. He wouldn't be surprised.
Swift looked down again- the couple on the bench were snuggling now- and looked around his surroundings again. Suddenly, something colourful caught his eye, and he turned to look.
There was something strange near the water's edge, he realised. A small, multi-coloured blob, floating in the lake. It was hard to see from the bench, so he stood up, curious, and walked closer. As he drew nearer, the blob resolved itself into...a small patchwork turtle, bobbing up and down slightly as a nearby swimming duck created ripples on the surface. He frowned. What was this thing doing here? Was it a lost toy or something? Maybe there was a tag on it. In that case, he would be able to return it to its owner. He leaned in to get a closer look. At the same time, the nearby duck dove underwater in search of food. A particularly large ripple generated by this action shifted the turtle closer to land, driving it up the shallow slope of the lake bed. This, in turn, revealed that an orange pipe was connected to the turtle.
SPLOOSH!
Swift had no time to react to the pipe, however, as the seemingly innocent turtle then proceeded to blast his face with a torrent of water. The elite soldier reeled back, having been caught off-guard. As he sat down with a bump, he heard a vaguely familiar voice call out in joy.
"YES! Finally! Woohoo!!"