Ponyville Police Department

by Omega6047


16. The Master

--Chapter 16--
The Master

“So, you’re saying that this pony is one of greatest swordsponies in recent history?”

“Yup, If I remember correctly it’s sort of a family thing, her father even used to be Royal Guard’s Capitan before he died.”

“And you’re sure she will agree to teach me?”

“Without a doubt, but I’m not sure how long will you last…”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I know you’re not some sort of weakling, but even I didn’t last longer than one weak; maybe one and a half, I’m not sure. And that’s saying something. This mare doesn’t buck around, so if you really want to do this you better get ready for some serious training.”

“Well, it’s not like I have much choice anyway. And either way, I really like to push myself to my limits and past them, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Alright, just don’t say I didn’t warn you…”


Revan slowly approached a small hill a bit outside of Ponyville. There was only one building there and it was among the strangest houses he has ever seen. It was split in two parts, first one was made mainly of light wood, with the roof covered in hay. What appeared to be chimney was stylized to look like organ. By contrast, the second half of the house was build with stone bricks, the hay on the roof was of a darker shade than on the other half. Even the door were made out of two different shades of wood. And to top it all, the large bush stylized as a note grew in front of the house.

The house looked more as if two conflicted musicians lived there, not a sword master.

Still, he didn’t let the appearance deceive him and approached the door. Now that he was closer he could hear music coming from the inside. It seemed like someone was in the middle of making some Dubstep song; quite professionally in fact. Knowing that whoever was in there was most likely wearing headphones, Revan knocked as loudly as he could.

This seemed to get the job done as the music stopped. Revan knocked again to make sure the pony inside heard him. It was unnecessary however, as the moment his fist touched the door again, they were opened. The pony that opened the door was quickly recognized by him.

He didn’t know her name, but he remembered her from Sugarcube Corner. The only differences in her appearance were the sunglasses on her eyes and headphones around her neck. For the moment she looked at him surprised before taking off her glasses. Her eyes widened as if she saw a ghost. “Hello, I’m looking for a pony called Octavia, is that you?” She slowly shook her head. “Maybe you know where to find her?”

For a second she kept looking at him before she slowly looked back inside her house and lit up her horn. She levitated a small notebook with a pencil and wrote something, before showing the notebook to Revan. “Sorry I got scared, you surprised me. My sister will be back here shortly, you can wait inside if you want to.” Reven read the note.

He looked at her surprised. “You… can’t talk?”

Her face saddened slightly as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, can’t imagine this being easy for you.” Revan said.

She begun to write another answer. “Don’t be, I was born like this and it doesn’t bother me much. ” Revan knew that was a lie, the look she gave him when he asked about this gave everything away. “You’re coming in or not?” She passed him another note.

“Sure, you don’t mind dogs do you?” He said as he pointed. Because if you do, than you better put those headphones back on your head.

Luckily for her, she shook her head in ‘no’ and walked inside, followed by Revan and Mischief. On the inside, the house was just as divided –if not more- than on the outside. The left side of the living room was filled with variety of string instruments, reaching from violin to cello. The right side, was filled with mixing equipment and on the walls hanged collection of vinyl records.

The mare motioned him to the couch (of course split in two halves) and as he sat there, went back to her mixing board (or whatever you call it) and returned to her work, now additionally trying to give a good impression since she had an audience. “Hey, what’s your name? We never introduced each other.” He said after a moment of listening.

I’m Vinyl Scratch. Like you can guess I’m a DJ and music producer.” She wrote.

“Revan.” He extended his hand to shake her hoof. “Ex Police officer and to-be Guard. Joining the Guard Force being the reason why I’m here.”

Care to explain?

Revan cleared his throat. “Before I’m allowed to join the Guard, I have to pass few tests, including sword fighting. And since I-“ Vinyl stopped him, rising her hoof up. Then she picked up her notebook again and wrote her answer.

Let me guess: You have no idea how to use a sword and you want Tavi to teach you.

“Pretty much. Celestia probably thought that since Police in my world is basically the same thing as Guard Force is here, we’re using same stuff as they do. Which we don’t, the only things that is somewhat similar to a swords are nightsticks, but they’re not really the same.” He responded after reading her message.

Vinyl smiled genuinely.“You have no idea how happy she will be when she hears this. She may not show this (and she likely won’t) but on the inside she will be jumping in happiness. It’s been a while since somepony asked her for this.” She gave the note to Revan and immediately begun writing another one. “I just hope you won’t quit because of her methods, she can be quite ‘extreme’ at times.

“I heard as much from Rainbow, she claimed I’ll last 3 days top.”

When he mentioned Rainbow’s name, Vinyl almost choked and then begun to laugh in her own silent way. Eventually she managed to write an answer. “Sorry, it’s just that I remember why Rainbow quitted and it was not because of how hard training with Tavi is. Rainbow quitted because she couldn’t stand mental exercises (meditation and stuff) and demanded that Tavi trains her in something cool. And so she did, she had her do the exercises somepony of her level would do and Rainbow couldn’t stand constantly failing so she quitted. What she told you was just a lie she tells so she can keep her pride.

Now it was Revan’s turn to start laughing, but in contrast he could be heard.

Suddenly there someone called out from the door. “Vinyl? Who’s there with you?” The door were slowly opened. The Earth Pony that entered was a light-grey coated mare who wore a bow-tie, her mane was black and her eyes light-purple. “If Bulk brought his friends again I swear I’ll-“ She cut off the moment she saw him.

She stared at Revan for a moment before turning to Vinyl. “Vinyl, could you explain what this human Princess had told us about, is doing in our house.”

Revan expected Vinyl would start writing an answer in her note book, but instead her horn begun to shine in short rapid sequences. He quickly noticed that some were a bit longer than others and from there figured out that she was using Morse alphabet. Good thing was that he knew it. Bad thing was that Vinyl was using it with such speed that he couldn’t understand almost anything. Still, the pony’s –whom he figured was Octavia- reaction was enough for him to determine what she ‘said’.

“He wants to what!?” Octavia screamed. “But… But I thought that nopony-“ And that was all she managed to say before landing face first on the floor.

Revan looked at Vinyl. “I am NOT carrying her to her bed.”


Unlike Twilight, Octavia woke up rather fast and after a short conversation with her sister, she came downstairs where Revan was waiting for her. “So,” She started. “you really want me to train you, huh?”

“If that won’t be a problem ma’am.” She didn’t answer, she just begun circling around him, judging his build and observing the way he looked and how his body moved.

“You’re quite muscular as far as ponies go, and your arms give you much more reach and maneuverability… alright, I will teach you but I have one condition.” She paused for a bit. “I’ve tried to teach many ponies before and none has ever completed the training. I have made a promise to my father that I will pass on our family’s legacy and train an apprentice, but not many are willing and those who were always failed

So if you really want me to teach you anything you’re in for a full package or nothing, because quite honestly I thought I will never fulfill that promise and now that I have a chance to do this, I want to be sure before taking another apprentice.”

Revan looked her in the eyes, full of confidence. “If you know me for at least a week, you would know that I’m as far from a quitter as one can get.”

“That’s what Rainbow Dash said. And she quitted faster than anypony else.”

“Rainbow is addicted to action and was bound to fail with anything that didn’t involve physical training –or sleeping on clouds. While I’m not limited to just that and have no problems with meditation or anything like that.” He replied.

Again she was silent for a moment. “Come to the basement in a few minutes.” And with that said, she walked down to the basement. Shortly after that, Vinyl walked into the room.

Told you she will agree.” This time, instead of giving him a note, she used Morse alphabet – or whatever horsepun they use to call it; Revan commented in his mind- only much slower to let Revan understand her as he simply doesn’t have as much experience with it as Octavia does.

“I never questioned it, but I don’t really understand why she passed out when you explained that to her. And what did she mean when she said: ‘I thought that nopony-‘ ?“

Remember that thing about the promise?” He nodded. “She never actually wanted to be a swordspony -she always dreamed about being a musician- but she still trained with father simply because of how much she looked up to him. I was never suited to train anything physical since lack of voice isn’t my only defect, and Tavi was always meant to be the one he passes our family’s legacy to.

And then it turned out that me and Tavi share one little flaw. We’re both infertile.

Revan’s eyes went wide as he stood up and he looked at her surprised. “Say what?”

Yes, neither of us can have kids. You have to understand that our family has a long tradition of swordsmanship and our father was extremely dedicated to our tradition and took it quite hard. Before he died he had Tavi promise that she won’t let all those generations of developing fighting techniques go to waste and pass all she knows to somepony else.

She took it as a point of honor and since then was trying to find somepony that would manage to complete the training. Unfortunately nopony succeeded, and as every single pony she trained quitted she was beginning to doubt she will ever manage to keep that promise. And when Rainbow gave up, something snapped and she gave up everything. The fact that Rainbow’s cover story begun quite a few rumors about Tavi didn’t help either.

So let me make this clear, if you’re going to just quit like all those losers, I’m going to turn your life into a living Tartarus, got it?” Her expression became more serious while saying the last sentence.

Revan lowered himself to her eye level. “I wasn’t planning on quitting before. And now that you explained this to me, I can promise you that there’s no way I’ll give up on this on my own. At least as long as I’ll have all my limbs intact.”

That brought a small smile to her face. “I appreciate it. I’m not sure how would she take another failure.” She moved back to her music equipment, which was at the time being inspected by Mischief. When the Unicorn closed in, Mischief came back to Revan’s side. “So how did that date went?

“What date?”

She facehooved. “ The one with that new mare, Twilight Spankle or something. From what I saw you two were having fun together.

“Oh, right. I’m not sure could it be called a date, but yeah, I enjoyed it.”

Well, I can’t say I agree with your taste in mares, but then again, I’m not judging.” She put her headphones back on and went back to music making.

Her words slightly surprised him, but he shrug it off as it was probably some cultural thing he didn’t know of. And it’s not like he could have asked Vinyl about it since she seemed to have a serious moment of inspiration, completely ignoring Mischief who was ‘getting to know her better’ from behind.

“Why did you tell me all of this?” She looked at him and took off her headphones. Now without the music taking her attention she became aware of the dog sniffing her out. Immediately she pushed him away and Mischief run back to Revan’s side.

What did you say?

“Why have you told me about all this? About your ‘defects’, that you and your sister can’t have children, your sister’s dreams, that doesn’t seem like something you would tell a complete stranger.”

Let’s say it was a sign of trust.” She smiled. “Also I would prefer to tell you this myself, rather than risking you finding out about it through Ponyville’s gossip network. Sometimes this can really buck up pony’s reputation.

“You mean like with Fluttershy?”

She immediately snapped into full attention. “What did those motherbuckers told you!?” He could almost hear her screaming in rage. “Was it this asshole Filthy Shit? Or maybe his slut of a wife, or that little fart they call daughter. Oh I know, it must have been Thunderlame, that cock-sucker just can’t keep his bucking mouth closed. Oh wait, now I know. It was…” The rest he couldn’t understand as along with amount of curses, the speed with which her horn shone was rising.

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down!” He stopped her the moment her horn became a blur. “I don’t know who most of them are, Fluttershy explained me the situation, that’s why I know.”

She stopped her rant before it even begun for good. Sorry, I don’t really mean all that –well, maybe except Filthy Shit- but it just makes me furious whenever I hear everypony in town talking all that shit about her. It’s as if she didn’t suffer enough already…

“She haven’t explained me much about what happened, was it really that bad?”

“It’s not often for Royal Guard to be involved in chase after somepony, as long as they didn’t broke into the palace or something. I remember the day I found out about everything, father left the case’s files on his desk and I in my foolishness decided to read them… I didn’t even managed to read one page and I already gave up, after that I had nightmares for weeks. Than father found me with that file in hooves and I got grounded for a month.

She let out a small chuckle. ”First time I was actually glad to be grounded. Just knowing that this creep was running free would have kept me hiding in my house until he was captured.”

Damn it, just what the hell did this guy did? Revan sat down, and Vinyl continued to work on her music.

He waited on the couch few more moments, before deciding to walk down to the basement. The door were even smaller than an average pony doors and it was hard for him to fit in. Walking down the stairs was even more of a challenge for him as he had to walk sideways while crouching. Mischief of course had no such problems and kept pushing him from behind to make him go faster, which wasn’t helping at all.

Once he finally reached the basement he had to fit through another small door. Behind them was a small hall with 3 luckily bigger doors in it; one of which was open. The hall’s ceiling was placed slightly higher than before and he didn’t have to crouch to walk around, but he still had to keep his head low. Revan walked over to the opened door and walked to the room behind them.

The room itself was rather small, but it was filled with many items like the house’s main room upstairs. The only difference was that while the room upstairs was full of music instruments, this one was filled with swords.

A lot of them.

All walls were covered in blades of many shapes and sizes, though they were much smaller than any sword he had seen before in museums. Most of them were about the size of his forearm, which made sense as ponies were much lower than him and couldn’t really handle anything big with one hoof or their mouth. Handles (or maybe hoofles?) were also different than what he has seen.

Most of the swords were equipped in a gauntlet-like handle that was intended to put a hoof in it, others had a long, curved handle along with wrist strap on the end. There were also swords intended to me held in mouth.

Octavia stood in the left corner of the opposite side of the room. She wore a thin training armor made out of the same leather-like material from the castle in Everfree. As Twilight had explained him during their supposed ‘date’ –though he himself was beginning to think it really was a date- it was actually made out of saliva of an insect called Sikiratka. Said insects use it to create lairs for themselves and after some modifications it can be used to produce this relatively strong material.

She stood in front of an open chest, with one hoof inside. She pulled out a sheath with a sword in it. He could see that the handle was one of the curved ones. From what he could deduce by looking at the sheath the blade was about 50cm long which was 1,5 of the length of his forearm (he checked it once). It also appeared to be rather thin, but he couldn’t be sure of it.

Octavia attached the sheath to a small hook on her side. “You can come in, I’ve heard you coming downstairs, more precisely I’ve heard you saying something about… ‘jabana arhytektra jabanyh kocov?’ I think that’s how you said it..”

“Jebana architektura jebanych kuców. And I’m not translating that for you. And you would be swearing too if you were in my place.” (don’t try using Google, it lies)

“Doubt it, but let’s not waste time on that.” She closed the chest and turned to him. “Sorry but I don’t have any training clothes for you for obvious reasons. Now tell me, do you have any experience with any kind of swords?”

“Umm… knifes count?”

“No…”

“And does that time when my friend and I were playing knights as kids counts?”

“…Alright, that won’t take us anywhere. Maybe you know any other kinds of combat or anything that would help me determine what kind of fighter you are?”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about. You could’ve just said so. I’ve been training hand-to-hand martial arts for 9 years, I don’t have any specialization in any martial art I’ve studied since I was training more than one, I doubt it would matter if I named them, I talked with Rainbow about it and she never heard about any of them.

Now, as for what kind of fighter I am. Most of the time I prefer to stone wall every attack until my opponent gets tired or makes a mistake and then throw at them all I have. Works pretty well until I don’t meet someone physically stronger than me. If that is the case I attempt to put my knowledge about pressure points to use. Which is almost zero when it comes to ponies.”

“Hmm, so you’re more defensive fighter than?” He nodded. “Well, can’t say I expected that.”

“And what did you expect?”

“No offence, but you look like a minotaur, and when it comes to their way of fighting, they are brutes focused on nothing else than overpowering their opponents with nothing more than their strength. And I have no appreciation for such a thing.” She adjusted her armor around her chest. “Now, I didn’t wanted you here to show off my training armor, I want you to choose one of swords stored in here.” She slowly waved her hoof from one side of the room to other.

Revan looked around the room again, this time paying more attention to each weapon. He ignored all of pony-average size swords and it was clear he couldn’t use them effectively. Swords with a gauntlet like hilt were also immediately disqualified because he couldn’t use them at all. That left him without much choice. “Why do you even have so many swords?” He asked.

“They aren’t exactly mine. I just inherited them after my father, who got them from his father, and so on until we get to Victoria Fatehgarh, the founder of our clan.”

“Clan?”

“Are you here to learn how to fight or to ask questions? If you want to know go ask your marefriend, she will explain. Now hurry up we don’t have a whole day.” He rolled his eyes and turned back to sword filled wall.

He eventually spotted one sword that was build different than the rest. The hilt was straight, without any sort of way to help a pony to grab it. The only difference from hilts in human swords, was its length. It was barely long enough for him to hold it with one hand. The second noticeable difference was the blade’s length, it was over twice the size of standard pony sword.

It wasn’t exactly the best chose for a human, but it was the best one available at the moment.

Revan reached out his hand to grab the hilt and took the sword off of the wall where it hanged. “Hmm, that was to be expected. I guess it would be hard for somepony of your size to use any of smaller swords.”

“Not necessarily hard, just less effective.” He said as he slowly moved the sword around, getting used to its mass; which was lesser than he expected. “How can pony use that thing anyway?”

“That sword was not made for pony.” That got his attention. “This is Griffon Longsword, and it was forged for a griffon adopted by my great grandfather –at least that’s what my father said. I don’t know much details, whenever my father spoke about it he was rather vague.” She walked over to the entrance. “Let’s go outside, I want to see what I’ll be working with.”

He followed her and after another round of struggling with the stairs, they were both back upstairs. “Shame my camera is broken ‘cause I sure would love to have a picture of you trying to fit through that door.” Vinyl commented the moment he left the doorstep, smiling like an idiot.

“And I’d love to see you trying to fit into my dead dog’s shack. ” He replied.

Octavia ignored that and kept walking towards the house’s backdoor. Revan followed her into the top of the small hill on which her house was build, right on the edge of the spruce forest. “Now then…” Octavia turned to face him. With a quick move she unsheathed her sword and let it hang onto her hoof with the wrist strap as she spun it few times over her head. She then grabbed the hilt with one hoof, letting the curved hilt to rotate around it until the blade rested on her armored back, she held the handle in reversed grip. “…let’s begin.”

*GULP*