Pocketful of Posies

by GJT_Productions

Pocketful of Posies

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the night shift Guard Upper Class barrack block. Quiet and dark as per military code, the off-duty guards either slept or engaged in quiet reading while laying on precision-arranged bunk beds, pegasi on top, unicorns and earth ponies on the bottom.

On the bottom bunk of one of these beds Guard Upper Class Buck Withers. In the weeks since the incident at the award dinner, he had slowly been able to shed the mysterious shroud of rumor around him and become fully accepted amongst his fellow shift members. He was gently smiling in his sleep, feeling like for the first time in a long time he belonged here, that the Guard was his home.

The tranquility was disrupted by the slamming open door and streaming in sunlight at the head of the barrack room, disrupting the light sleepers and drawing attention of those reading. Most of them recognized the "intruder" - an afternoon-shift Lieutenant doubtless sent by the Captain of the Guard to summon a particular pony for a particular reason. Usually not a good one, either.

Without missing a hoofstep, the unicorn Lieutenant marches over toward the bunk Buck Withers was occupying and applies what was nicknamed "The Tumbledown Maneuver" - a hard and quick telekinetic yank of the underlying sheets designed to dump the pony on top of them to the floor in a quick manner, guaranteed to wake even the heaviest sleepers amongst the ranks.

Not surprisingly then, Buck finds himself on the floor facing upwards with his legs sprawled out, moaning as only a stallion rudely awakened could do. It takes a few seconds for him to respond to the Lieutenant's loud orders, which brings even more attention on the scene: "The Captain wants you at Canterlot Hospital ASAP. He'll meet you there - come in dress uniform."

As Buck tries to get himself up and comply with the orders, a quiet buzz breaks out among the others in the barracks: if Buck was being punished, why was he being summoned to a hospital instead of the Captain's office? Most of them chalked it up to the whims of the officers by the time the buzz died down and quiet returned to the barracks...

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Buck spent the next half-hour or so in a haze, desperately trying to remember how to do his uniform correctly and sipping on the legendarily-strong "Canterlot Guard's Coffee Brew" to get himself awake. He traveled alone from the barracks to the hospital, squinting at Celestia's sun and wondering what in Equestria the Captain could want him for over there at that particular moment.

The daze was snapped when Buck saw a small gaggle of reporters clustered around the emergency room entrance, kept back by a few of his on-duty comrades. One of them spotted him and gestured to Buck.

"What's going...?" Buck asked his fellow guard, his mind still foggy.

"Head inside as quickly as you can. The Captain's waiting in there. He'll explain everything." the other guard answered, alternating between looking at Buck and the insistent gossip rag journalists. A gap just large enough for Buck to squeeze through opens in the ranks, and Buck slips through as fast as he can, using the narrowness of the gap and the emergency room doors to keep anypony else from following. Buck spots Captain Gibraltar waiting at the far end of the waiting lobby and proceeds over there, stopping in front of him with a salute.

"Glad you could make it despite the hour. These visitation windows are so short, you understand." Captain Gibraltar states cleanly.

"I still don't understand what you need me here for, sir." Buck replies with honest confusion in his voice.

"Earlier this afternoon, Lieutenant Steelwing's patrol squad spotted two earth pony mares dumped on the mountainside." Gibraltar begins to explain. "One mare was already dead by the time they were discovered, the other was unconscious and rushed to this hospital. The dead mare we have not yet been able to identify aside from being yellow-coated - between the shaved-off mane and tail as well as scorched flanks completely covering up her cutie mark, great lengths have been taken to conceal her identity for currently unknown reasons. The unconscious mare we identified as the Most Honorable Lilly Withers."

"My mother! I haven't seen or heard from her in years! What is she doing involved in all this?!" Buck exclaims as shock washes over his face.

"That, Buck, is the question of the hour. She's been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since she got here - not surprising considering the kind of abuse she's suffered. The doctors say her entire body is shutting down, so there might only be one chance to get any information out of her."

"Shutting down?" Buck asks, still trying to wrap his mind around what he was hearing.

"Dehydration, starvation, repeated beatings and abuse... even with an IV and an earth pony hardiness, it's hard to come back from that. Go up and visit her, Buck. It may be the last time you see her alive."

Buck's face turned very pale, but he nodded in response. He wanted to at least say goodbye to his mother, if nothing else...

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The briefing could not have prepared Buck for what was waiting for him in the hospital room, though. Lilly, attractively slender in her prime, was now a textbook case of severe emaciation, her coat matted and dirty, her hopelessly-tangled mane and tail cut short by the hospital staff. As she lay in the bed, heart monitor beeping at a slow pace, it seemed the only thing keeping her alive was the IV fluid steadily dripping into the veins in her forelegs. She stared straight up at the ceiling, formerly sparkling eyes now glazed over and sunken with the apathy of those awaiting death.

Buck had to suppress a gasp of horror when he saw what his mother had been reduced to, speculations of fault dancing in his mind. He looked back down the hospital hallway at the Captain, waiting with an expression of sage patience on his face - a foreleg from him motioned Buck forward, and Buck turned his attention back to the hospital room. He inhaled a deep breath before taking the metaphorical plunge...

"Mother?... Mom? It's me, it's Buck. I came, just like the nurses said I would..." Buck says quietly toward the figure laying on the bed, hoping she could hear him.

The head moves slowly, weakly turning to face Buck. One slow blink happens before a smile dares to flicker across the mother's face.

"Son... son... over here." Lilly's voice responds, a weak, hoarse whisper barely understandable by Buck.

Buck dares one more look back at the Captain before entering the hospital room. A thousand questions are in mind, and to his frustration he must keep most of them caged - most, if not all, of them would probably never get satisfactory answers. He knows the starched Guard dress uniform and two bars of the Guard Upper Class must be making an impression on his mom, but what kind of impression?

"Mom, I'm... I'm... I don't really know what to say." Buck answers as he stops next to the bed, eyes misting as he speaks. He sits on haunches and gently raises a forehoof to lay on her mother's shrunken own, and another smile flickers across Lilly's face.

"Mom, where have you been?!? What happened to you?! Where's Dad?" Buck asks in quick succession, unable to let the most basic of his many questions come spilling from his mouth.

The mother's response is in the slow, hoarse whisper from before: "Son... I'm... proud... proud of you... I... I love you... and... I'm sorry..."

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" is the natural plea Buck gives.

"Sorry... I... couldn't... stop... them." was the answer in the same hoarse whisper from before.

"Them? Them who?"

"Your... father... was... one..."

Buck's shock is redoubled as he immediately leaps to the right conclusion: "An Agent? An Agent of Chaos?"

Tears begin slowly trickling down the mother Lilly's face as she pushes to continue speaking: "Yes, son... they... destroyed... everything..."

"What about Dad? Where is he?!" Buck now exclaims out, his expression clearly showing his worried impatience.

Lilly manages to shift her expression into teary grief and lets out one word between a few sobs: "Dead."

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This additional shock causes Buck to reflexively jerk away from the bed. The enemy within called "the Agents of Chaos" had already destroyed the life Buck had enjoyed as a colt - now it had taken his own father from him without as much as a goodbye, and was likely the reason his mother was fighting for her life in this hospital bed! The despair and grief reared high over him, and he almost let it swallow him, but it was stopped by the fact that Buck saw his mother was yearning to tell him more.

Buck half-crawls back to the edge of the hospital bed, his face entirely pleading despair as he spoke again: "Mom, please, what can I do?! How can I help?!"

Lilly manages a slow, somber shake of her head as she replies in the slow, hoarse whisper: "You've... saved... yourself... too... late... for me..."

"Don't say that! You can't say that! The doctors have an IV going, you'll get through this! Mom, please, don't leave me!" Buck is pleading again.

"I'm sorry, son... I'm sorry..." Lilly wheezes out with the last of her energy, and her eyes close as she slips out of consciousness, only the steady beep of the heart monitor giving evidence that she was still alive...

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In the hospital hallway, Captain Gibraltar shakes his head as he hears Buck's pleas for his mother to wake up echoing out of the room. He hadn't heard the finality of the heart monitor's flatline, but as far as he was concerned she might as well be dead - it was not likely anypony would get any more information out of her.

He had not shown fear of the Agents of Chaos before, but he did so now for the first time. It seemed their underground rampage was unabated despite the best efforts of him and his subordinates to root out the enemy in their midst. This enemy was a far more overarching menace than he had considered possible, and now he was truly afraid - not for Luna or the other alicorn Princesses, not for his subordinates, but for the innocent population of Equestria. He saw no good end, nothing except chaos and the end of harmony...

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MEANWHILE, IN THE EVERFREE FOREST...

"Who goes there?!" a grey-coated pegasus stallion shouts at a cloaked figure below, crossbow weapon trained on the intruder from the watchpost of "Fort Chaos".

"Agent 21 of the Agents of Chaos. I bring a message from Agent Snake." the cloaked figure shouts back up, undeterred by the threat from above.

"You must prove your membership. State the first twenty digits of tau in backwards order." the grey pegasus exclaims back - this was the standard challenge of proof if an Agent of Chaos wanted to identify himself to other Agents, albeit usually silently whispered into ears instead of exclaimed in the depths of the Everfree Forest.

The cloaked figure complied, pausing slightly between each number to be sure it was heard correctly: "9... 6... 7... 4... 6... 8... 5... 9... 7... 1... 7... 0... 3... 5... 8... 1... 3... 8... 2... 6."

The grey-coated pegasus, sufficiently satisfied with the sequence of numbers, lowers his weapon before replying: "I am Agent P2. My comrade P1 is inside, I will disable the alarm system to let you in."

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Once Agent 21 was inside, he was introduced to Agent P1, who seemed quite eager to have a third set of hooves around: "A fellow Agent is always welcome at Fort Chaos. What news do you bring from Agent Snake?"

Agent 21, who the other Agents could see was an earth pony even under the cloak, extracts a scroll from inside the cloak and gives it over to P1, who opens it using his "wing-fingers" to undo the snake-pattern seal and unroll the scroll. The message itself is ciphered, doubtless to prevent its contents from being compromised should it fall into the wrong hooves, so P1 has to decode it mentally before he can read it out loud.

"'Message from Agent 1'...'Commendations to Agents P1 and P2 for Operation Smoky Mountain'..." P1 begins reading out.

"Agent Snake was very impressed with that." Agent 21 cuts in. "Luring that red dragon near Ponyville to cause a panic with the sleeping smoke was a stroke of genius!"

"Well, considering it was done with flying our tails off ahead of the dragon's flame breath with some of its treasure, it wasn't without its risks. But considering it almost worked, it was effort well worth it." P1 affirms, P2 adding in an eager nod as P1 is speaking.

"Hmph, that's all well and good, but surely I was sent here to do more than just give you two a pat-on-the-back message." Agent 21 continues.

"That's right, there's more to the message... uh, let's see..." P1 answers, carefully scanning the unrolled scroll for the point he stopped reading.

"Another assignment?" P2 offers as a guess to the rest of the message.

"Yeah, let's see...'Cooperate with Agent 21 on hit on Ponyville jewelry shop, then cover 21's escape back to Canterlot. Avoid confrontation with Element Bearers if at all possible.'" P1 reads out.

"That's an interesting set of instructions. I hope you have a plan, 21." P2 comments.

"Oh don't worry you two, I do indeed have a plan. All I need is your weaponry to carry it out." Agent 21 reassures the two pegasi Agents.

"Done. When do we strike?" P1 asks as he lets the scroll roll itself back up.

"Tomorrow night." Agent 21 answers, starting an evil chuckle that spreads to the other two Agents. In Fort Chaos, more trouble for Ponyville was brewing...