Another Sappy HiE Fic

by exsnaggerwes

Date Ruined

The lunar guard takes great pride in not only servicing, protecting, and escorting their princess, but also stealth. On a marble floor, it would be impossible to make haste and be silent, much less wearing shoes. The steady clip-clopping around the castles and stone streets was quite obvious, but nopony seemed to turn their head just for clattering hoofsteps. They may opt to swivel an ear or two to detect potential foes, but other than that, they were tuned out. It was one thing that ponies couldn't avoid unless they wore padded shoes, which brought to mind whether or not most ponies were shoed, or even how they wore their shoes. There was a small space under the tip of ponies' hooves with which they could grip things in their own way. That was a skill I was yet to master, but saw demonstrated plenty of times already by both Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Something Rainbow Dash also demonstrated was a way to silence her movement for the most part.

Pegasi were uniquely capable of flight and the benefits that came with it. Unfortunately, even though hovering eliminated the clip-clops of hoofsteps, it added its own recoil. Birds' wingbeats are relatively silent compared to pegasi's. Anypony could hear me if I were to attempt to lighten both my wingbeats and my hoofsteps, and even though Rainbow Dash was far superior at her method of doing the same thing, she fell short the same way.

When the the thestral-like guard approached, something was missing that made my blood run cold. Not a single wingbeat was heard, and the atmosphere was completely undisturbed. If even Rainbow Dash couldn't sneak up on me, how in Equestria could this creature? At his speed, judging from the echo in his voice as he called out to me, there was no physical way he could have not even caused a draft. I was always an easy person to scare in my life, and the inky darkness above Ponyville didn't do my courage or bravado any favors. It was nice to not be alone in my shock, since Rainbow Dash didn't seem to hear him at all. Her leap was nearly as high as mine. With a hoof to my chest to calm my racing heart, I recomposed myself. I wasn't prepared for so much excitement in only one day.

"Holy shnikes, Umbra, you scared the Hell out of me."

Mere centimeters away from my muzzle, the batpony's smirk twisted to a look of confusion. "That's the third time I've heard you say that word, what does it even mean?"

"Snikes?"

"No, Hell. Although I would like to know what shnikes means as well."

"I think he means Tartarus," the prismatic mare interjected, "Who are you?"

"Oh my, your mane is unmistakably familiar. Are you Rainbow Dash?"

The pegasus mare blinked, her boast at the ready, "You got that right! Equestria's best young flier and Wonderbolt recruit! Where'd you hear of me?"

"Are you kidding?" Umbra exclaimed, pushing me out of the way and throwing off my balance a little, "Where haven't I heard of you? My sister talks about you all the time, like she's obsessed with you. I bet she even has a shrine in your honor lying around somewhere."

My ears perked up, "Is your sister by any chance an orange pegasus filly?"

"No, actually. She's terrestrial, why do you ask?"

"No reason, I just had a hunch. I guess I was wrong," I stammered nervously, bringing a hoof to scrach a spot on my muzzle that didn't actually itch. I could have sworn he was about to tell us his sister was Scootaloo.

"Her name is Stellar Drift, and she loves everything about the sky, including its occupants. Especially you, Rainbow Dash. I'm sorry to be so forward, but would you ever be so kind as to meet her some day?”

“Sure, but-”

“My name is Umbra. My humblest apologies for not introducing myself Miss Dash,” he let out with a hoof to his barrel in an improvised aireal bow. He was beginning to lose his charm with me. Anypony who spoke like that was either thousands of years old or a huge kissass. Then again, I could always see my self addressing Rarity the same way. Maybe it was because of the celebrity aura surrounding her. After all, it wasn't like she didn't already have a fan club before becoming a wonderbolt recruit. But how could he have heard of her without living in Ponyville or Cloudsdale?

“Umbra, what are you doing here? Don't you work at night?”

“Usually I do, but Princess Luna is sleeping in this evening and I have the late shift anyway. We usually sucker one of the newbies into waking her anyway. I came to make good on our arrangement. We were going to go out for drinks, remember?” Umbra asked, gliding closer to evelop me in a full-body hug. At first I worried that I had sent the wrong messages in our first meeting, but I figured that it was probably whatever human part of me that remained questioning the customs ponies had. When I thought about it, Pinkie was the only one who matched how clingy this stallion was beginning to be. I glanced to his cutie mark to confirm that they weren't balloons, a heart, or anything involving the violation of personal space. Instead, emblazoned upon his rump were two matching marks of the moon and a conal shadow following behind with a red dot at the very point of the cone. I tried not to rationalize the dot for as long as I could stand and instead focused on what he just offered.

I awkwardly glanced between him and Rainbow Dash as I considered my choices. I could have easily just asked if one could accompany the other with me to either place. On one hoof, there was Cloudsdale, a floating city made of clouds where pegasi roamed and the weather was perfect no matter what the season. On the other, there was Canterlot, the city of royalty and nobles, with streets of cobblestone and marble. Both places probably had their own form of entertainment, but more importantly, they probably both had bars, clubs, or wherever it was ponies went to enjoy a drink.

“Wait, how did you know where to find me? Not that I'm hiding or anything, but I didn't exactly tell anypony where I was going.”

“Let me tell you, Wes, you're not an easy pony to find. I stopped by the castle, hoping you were there, but Princess Twilight said she hadn't seen you all day. I asked around town and anypony who had seen you didn't know where you disappeared to. I was just about to head to the farm where a small dragon said you would be when I saw Rainbow Dash and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to say 'hello' from her biggest fan. Then I noticed you here too. Talk about win-win, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I really was excited to see Umbra, but after everything with Dash, I was hoping to make the night a just-the-two-of-us kind of thing. I didn't harbor any ill will towards Umbra, I just didn't see a “date” as a three-pony activity. Either way, it seemed that Dash was already on top of things.

“That's awesome! I love my fans, and I love cider. If you're paying, you can tag along with us to a bar I know in Cloudsdale,” Rainbow Dash said, winking at the guard.

“Sure, that sounds great! You don't mind me tagging along, do you Wes?”

Hesitantly, I threw on a fake smile and answered, “Not at all! Now I get to spend time with both of you!”

Author's Note:

Sorry for a short update after such a long wait, but as many of you can probably see, I've been working on other stories for a while and this one kind of wandered to the back burner. So this is the not-so official update.
For those of you looking forward to seeing this story through, I do not plan to disappoint you. I will finish this, and I won't post an ending I don't like. (That doesn't mean it's close to the end now.) Hopefully, the rest of this story can be better. I'll post chapters as I come up with them (This one was supposed to be much longer, but I've been growing impatient with my inactivity on this site and the other projects I'm working on are taking quite a bit of effort not to post. This was sort of a test to see if the docx uploader was live too. It's not. )
Anyhow, if you're interested in reading some of my other stories, I recommend Dragon's Destiny. It's my favorite of all of my work not that that means much, and I think it's the highest rated. Sorry for the shameless self-plug, but this story isn't going to be updated as quickly as before.

All that said, what I'm working on now is going to be at least ten times better than this story, and I'm working ten times harder just to make that happen. With any luck, you'll see them on my page within a day or so.
Thank you all for reading, and you guys are awesome for that.