There was a commotion in the castle. In the grey hours before the dawn, Gosling made his way to where he was supposed to meet Raven. The castle staff were in a tizzy, but Gosling wasn’t sure why. Decorations were going up. The main hall was being prepared for something. A gala? Something was going on, and Gosling was in the dark.
“You there,” Gosling said to a passing maid who walked with a porter. “What is going on?”
“You don’t know?” the maid replied.
Gosling shook his head.
“Today there is going to be a big press release to announce that Princess Celestia is taking a consort.” The maid smiled and shifted upon her hooves. “So much to do, I’m so nervous!”
Gosling, who appeared to be a white pegasus at the moment, was glad that he wasn’t being noticed. “I thought the press release was yesterday.”
“Oh, that was the small press release with the official castle correspondents.”
There was a spine tingling chill that permeated his body as his blood ran cold. Gosling swallowed as he stared at the unicorn maid. For a moment, he thought about throwing up. He felt nauseous, light headed, and his stomach began to churn. Throwing up seemed like an excellent idea.
“Today is the big press release, open to all members of the press. There’ll be food and everything, and dancing.” The maid’s ears drooped. “You must forgive me, but I really must be going. There is so much to do!”
The maid hurried off, and the porter followed. Gosling came to the slow realisation that he had been duped. Raven had duped him. He was now dressed up in his armor again, and ready for a press release. That mare was entirely too good at her job. There was a lesson to be learned here, but Gosling wasn’t certain what it was. There was the possibility that even with his supposed intelligence, he had himself a bad case of the stupids.
“Private Gosling—”
Recognising the voice, Gosling snapped to attention at once, the straps and brass buckles of his armor jangling.
“At ease, soldier, you’re going to have a hard enough day.”
“Sergeant Circinus, glad to see you, Sir.” Gosling remained at attention. “What brings you here?”
“You,” the sergeant replied.
“Me, Sir?” Gosling tried to go as rigid as possible.
The older sergeant took a step forwards and looked Gosling in the eye. “I always knew that you had that little extra something about you. Your mother raised you right.” Circinus began to chuckle and his wings twitched against his sides. “Private, you have ponies in your corner. The signal corps looks after its own. I’m damn glad that Princess Celestia picked one of us, it makes all of us look good. I wanted to wish you the best of luck.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“I have always believed that you were officer material, which is why I put you in command and communications courses after you graduated from prep camp. It seems the rest of the world is finally seeing what I saw in you way back when.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
The sergeant took a step back and his armor rattled from his movements. He saluted, whipping out his wing, and gave Private Gosling a solemn nod. “Ex Ignis Amicitiae!”
Gosling felt his throat go tight. The sacred motto of the signal corps in the old tongue from an age now long forgotten. From Fire, Friendship. Gosling remembered his lessons, knowing that one of the first forms of long distance communications for the guard was smoke signals and fires lit along strategic locations. “Sir, Ex Ignis Amicitiae, Sir!”
“Son, you’d better hurry. Raven gets downright ill if one of us is late. Go on now, and do your job.” Circinus saluted once more, this time a more relaxed and jaunty salute. “Where there’s smoke, there’s one of us. Good luck, Gosling.”
His barrel swelling with pride, Gosling gave his sergeant a nod and matched his jaunty salute, returning it with a grin.
The sun was rising. Gosling wasn’t sure how or why, but he could feel it now. It was a most peculiar sensation and he had no idea why he was now aware of it. He felt it like some pleasant warmth in his bones. Energised by the festive atmosphere that was building up, Private Gosling strutted as he made his way to Raven. Life was good. Even if today was going to be a double dipped disaster. The big press release and finding out the results of the morning editions? That was going to be bad. But he was going to face disaster while looking good.
A steam heated buffet table was being wheeled into a dining room. Behind it, a cart filled with dishes and tableware was being pulled along by a stout earth pony mare. Gosling waved, being polite. Be polite to ponies that work, his mother had said, and then had poked him with her hoof several times to get the message to sink in. Never be unkind to workers, waitresses, waiters, servers, servants, shoe shiners, or anypony that went home tired, stinky, and worn out. In short, never be unkind to ponies like his mother. It was a lesson he had taken to heart.
Rounding the corner, he heard somepony not being polite. His ears perked. Some distance away, he heard a scuffle. He paused, freezing mid step. He had someplace to be. Somepony else would take care of the trouble. Gosling took a step and froze up again as he tried to remember the times that somepony had come to his rescue in secondary school when he was being bullied. He wondered if his schoolmates just assumed that somepony else would come along and help. That somepony would do something. Gosling had himself an epiphany, he had been having those with an alarming frequency as of late. This is what was wrong with the world. Everypony just assumed that somepony else would take care of something and then they would go about their lives, never stepping in to stop trouble when it happened. Too many ponies just turned away and allowed trouble to happen.
Turning, Gosling went looking for trouble.
“Excuse me.”
Gosling’s voice had just the effect he was hoping for. The unicorn Gosling was looking at ceased what he was doing and turned to face him. One frazzled looking earth pony with a swollen eye began to back away, taking advantage of the distraction.
“There seems to be some sort of problem here,” Gosling said as he took a step forwards. “I don’t like problems on my watch. Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill out if there are problems on my watch? It’s unbelievable.”
“No trouble here,” the unicorn said, giving Gosling a wary stare. “I was just offering a few… professional pointers to my colleague here.”
It was at this point that Gosling decided that he didn’t like the unicorn. Not at all. His eyes narrowed and he drew himself up to his full height. “I have an idea… how about I ask him what was going on, and why his eye is swelling, and we can sort everything out once he’s had his say.”
“How about you just get out of here and go and do your job someplace else, buckethead?” The unicorn’s lip curled back into a sneer.
Refusing to be baited, Gosling did not react. He stood there, resolute, his jaw clenching as he bit back an angry retort. Gosling did have to agree with the little pegasus in the back of his mind that was spoiling for a fight that the unicorn would indeed look pretty funny trying to eat corn on the cob with no teeth. Gosling smiled.
“How about I have you ejected from the castle, and you can do your job someplace else?” Gosling inhaled, filling his barrel, and then let out a long streaming whistle, a whistle that every guard spends hours practicing.
It only took moments to hear the sounds of approaching armor.
“You dense motherplucker, do you know who I am?” the unicorn demanded.
Still refusing to be baited, Gosling swallowed his rage, letting the quip about his mother slide. He could feel the metal along his neck and back grow warmer as his fury heated his blood. “I don’t think you know who I am.” Gosling banged on the gemstone mounted on the front of his armor with his hoof. There was a flash and the uniformity spell vanished. “Care to take a guess?”
The unicorn scowled and started to say something, but stayed silent as several guards poured into the area. He glared at Gosling with outright hatred visible in his eyes. The tension in the air grew.
“I want this pony arrested at once on the following charges; assault and causing a disturbance.” Gosling allowed a little smug satisfaction to show in his smile. “I would also like to have him permanently barred from the castle—”
“You can’t do that!” the unicorn snapped, “that’ll destroy my career!”
“He is to be permanently barred from the castle, never to return. I will not have journalists bringing harm to one another. Time to send a message that we are to remain civilised ponies.”
The guards surrounded the unicorn, who offered no resistance. One of the guards said, “Come along quietly,” and while the unicorn was cooperating, he was not in the mood to be quiet.
“You’ll regret this… I know who you are… I can make your life miserable, just you wait! I don’t think you understand who you’re messing with, you little—OOAAUGHOOF!”
A guard rammed an armored hoof into soft flesh just behind the unicorn’s ribs, silencing the unicorn and dropping him to the floor. The pony lay in a heap, gasping, struggling to get air into his lungs after having the wind knocked out of him.
“You were told to come along quietly,” the heavy hitting guard said with a chuckle.
“Threatening Princess Celestia’s future consort has now brought additional charges,” another guard said. “You’re in big trouble, bub. Prepare your cornhole.”
As the now gasping unicorn was being dragged away, Gosling went over to the earth pony to check on him. He stepped over the spilled notebooks and gave the trembling stallion a warm, gracious smile to put him at ease.
“Are you okay?” Gosling asked when he was but a step away. His ears perked at the sounds of somepony trying to suck in wind as they were being dragged over the floor. “Do you have a name? What happened?”
“My name is Seville Orange,” the earth pony replied as he watched his tormentor being dragged away. “I think I’ll be okay. Thank you.”
Seville was thin, slight of build, a skinny, gangly earth pony with a yellow-orange pelt and his mane was the colour of well dried hay. He was all legs and had bright, cheerful green eyes.
“Don’t mention it,” Gosling replied. “What just happened, if you don’t mind me asking.”
Seville began to try and scoop up his things from off of the floor and Gosling moved to help him. Notebooks, some papers, a few pens, and… one broken camera. Gosling lifted it in his wings, eyeing it, and he felt bad that he had not arrived sooner. Perhaps the black eye and the broken camera might have been avoided.
“I arrived early so I could get myself set up,” Seville said as he saw his broken camera. He let out a dismayed sigh and shook his head as his ears drooped down to the sides of his face. “I’m an earth pony. It’s almost impossible to be a good reporter as an earth pony. We can’t fly, so we can’t get pictures or scoops from the air, and we don’t have magic, which allows unicorns to see through walls or teleport a camera into a room, or do all those things that a unicorn can do.”
“Sounds rough.” Gosling nodded his head as Seville stuffed a notebook into his saddlebags. “Sounds like you have to work twice as hard”—Gosling paused to correct himself—“three times as hard as everypony else just to get noticed.”
“You have no idea,” Seville replied and then let heave a sigh. “I only got the job as a joke I think. Everypony laughs at me. I was counting on today… I was hoping that I would have something… I should have never left the orange farm.”
“Don’t give up just yet,” Gosling said as he held the broken camera beneath his wing. “Just who was that festering, pestilent genital wart, anyway?”
Seville let out a nervous, halfhearted chuckle, and then eyed Gosling, not quite sure what to think. “That was Palatino Palomino, and he made it his personal mission to see that I fail. I don’t think he likes earth ponies. He says that we have no place in journalism and we have nothing to offer. He kept telling me to go back to the farm, where I belong.”
“Mister Orange, if you would please come with me,” Gosling said, not liking what he was hearing. He had an idea. Gosling had a wonderful idea.
Nervous, Seville began to tremble.
“Oh, try not to worry, I want to help you.” Gosling smiled. “Let’s get the rest of this cleaned up and then I’ll see what I can do to make sure you have a productive day.”
“Thank you… I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”
“Gosling.” Lifting a pen with his primaries, he held it out to Seville. “My name is Private Gosling, at your service.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Gosling.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Gosling replied, bowing his head and remembering that he now represented Princess Celestia with everything he did. “Mister Orange… I do believe that your life is about to get a whole lot better. I have need of you, Mister Orange.”
“What?” Seville looked worried and confused.
“I’ll explain as we walk together.”
“Okay.”