Seashell

by Winston

Excerpt II

Seashell
II

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From the journal of Sunburst, February 1, 1329 YS:

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Royal guard duty is an assignment I didn't expect to get directly from coming off the Seawall. It came as a shock to find out, to be perfectly honest.

Then again, it was hard to know what to expect at all after an assignment like this, since I couldn't get my new orders until after I was back in civilization. They did say it would be something fairly easy, but being stationed in Canterlot itself? I didn't see that coming. Not that I wasn't happy!

I got two weeks of leave on top before I had to report for duty, too. Since I was already in Canterlot reporting back from the wall, I decided to just stick around and use the time to get a little bit of a feel for the city. I felt like I owed it to myself to relax for a while, so I spent a fair amount of time hanging around being lazy and watching the aristocrats with more money than they know what to do with walk around in funny hats and other such items. Clothes and fashion aren't big interests of mine, but it's entertaining to be a fly on the wall and ponywatch. Some have good taste, some are just comical in their pretense. One way or another it never really fails to be interesting, sitting by myself at an outdoor table at a corner cafe with a cold drink and watching it all drift by.

I'm guarding Princess Twilight Sparkle. That's a good job to have, as it turns out. I'd always pictured the royal guard as being a formal and ceremonial job at least as much as a functional one. It seemed like a lot of work maintaining an uncomfortable suit of plate armor in picture perfect polish just to stand there and look pretty in it all day. As a scout trained to fly light and move fast, that wouldn't seem an ideal task for me. It seems like it should be mostly pegasi from the heavy combat fliers and unicorns from the Dawn's Hammer paladins, maybe. Those are closer to the kinds of big muscular armored ponies I always see guarding Celestia and Luna.

Princess Twilight seems to think different of her approach to her protectors, however. There aren't that many of us, and we're not a showy presence standing in rows wearing polished steel and magically color-shifted to have uniformly white or grey coats. We're allowed to keep our natural coat colors, and we only wear chainmail armor that doesn't restrict our movement. We mostly patrol instead of standing around in place, except for a few door guards who have to be stationary. The intention is that we should be a mostly invisible but fast-responding minimally intrusive presence rather than a big show of force.

It's the opposite of Celestia and Luna's guard, and perfectly suited to me. I wouldn't have thought of this had I been given a choice of where to go next, but I'm lucky to have this assignment.

The Captain of the Guard for Princess Twilight is a pegasus named Rainbow Dash. Apparently she came here to Canterlot with the princess expressly for the purpose of serving as the head of her security. They came from some small town, Ponyville, where the princess used to live and work. Why a princess was in such a place, I'm not sure. It seems ... odd. There must be an interesting story behind it. Maybe in due time I'll find out.

Anyway, clearly the two know each other. Princess Twilight personally commissioned Captain Dash as an officer, and a personal commission straight from a princess is rare these days. It seems Captain Dash was too good to pass up, however. At one point she was almost a Wonderbolt, and then she was an Advanced Combat Flier with front line time during the Northern Griffin War. If anything proved who the best soldiers of our generation are, that was it. I suppose that if I was able to personally pick and choose whoever I wanted to permanently run the team guarding me, I'd also grab a pony exactly like Captain Dash and make sure she stayed around.

In keeping with the general idea of how this guard is supposed to work, most of the other ponies on the guard team are a bit like me - trained to be quick and mobile, I mean. There's some pegasi scouts, a few Cloudsdale lancers, and some unicorn fast skirmishers. They're not on the bulky side, but they're quick with their horns' magic. There are a few pretty big stallions and mares, but even they emphasize speed and maneuvering over being tanks and taking bruises. There's even a couple Advanced Combat Fliers, like Captain Dash used to be. They're the whole package of incredibly fast and brutally tough. I've heard about the training program they go through. Scout training was hard enough for me. I don't think I'd last a week in their horseshoes. Well, alright, maybe not even a day. I'm kind of a wuss. I can admit that to a journal. Just don't tell anypony else, right? Right.

So, in short, it's a good group.

The work schedule is kind of strange, but not bad at all. Shifts are only six hours long, meaning there's four shifts a day - midnight, morning, afternoon, and evening. We're split up into five sections. Which shift a section has rotates once a week, then once a section's gone through all four shifts there's a fifth week set aside just for training. Those training days are pretty exciting. We spend an hour or so working out, a couple hours at the range for weapons practice, and then a couple hours in either classroom instruction or tactical teamwork exercises. After that we have the rest of the day off to hang around Canterlot and enjoy the city.

As I said, I end up spending a lot of time watching ponies in funny hats walk around with their snouts in the air.

This is kind of awesome.

Well, enough for today.

Comments

[Wolffress]

nice!!

[Winston]

4223966 Thanks!

[Benprodemo]

It actually feels like I'm reading a journal.
I'm really starting to like this story.

[PaulAsaran]

Now I face a crises of observation. So four months have passed. Does that mean it's been four months since Sunburst last made a journal entry, or are we skipping a bunch of them and jumping straight to the interesting entries? Sunburst's writing from the first chapter strongly suggests that he (she? again) writes frequently, so I'd be tempted to believe there are many other entries, but the information conveyed suggests that this is only the second entry in the journal. The inconsistency is bugging the heck out of me.

But not enough to halt my enjoyment of the story.

I had a theory in the first chapter that Morning Mist was actually Twilight, taking an opportunity to be alone for a while. She fits the bill fairly well, from her supposed duties to her isolated nature. Given Sunburst doesn't recognize Twilight, I could be wrong... or Twilight simply used a disguise of some sort, which I'm sure would be easy for a princess. Plus: Twilight - Morning, Sparkle - Mist. Yeah, that seems a bit too... right.

I find it mildly frustrating that, once again, I'm reading a story where nopony knows who the Element Bearers are despite the fact that they're national heroes. I would think they'd be household names. Still, people have pointed out that even the show makes them look like noponies; hell, the Manehattanites were rude to Twilight despite the fact that she was very obviously an alicorn and, thus, a princess. So, this in mind, I'll try not to let it bother me.

[Hexy]

5285137 Well, it does say excerpt, implying that it was a chosen article. If it were written after the first chapter's entry with none in between, it wouldn't say excerpt, it would say "second entry". But that's just my take on it.

[Krickis]

Interesting. Now we start to get into the events leading up to the description. I have to say that it's strange to me to see Twilight go to Canterlot and leave all her Ponyville friends aside from Rainbow, but I get that this is an early fandom story and you didn't have the answers of what would happen after her crowning.

Another interesting chapter. Looking forward to seeing what happens!