Tales of the Sentinels of Harmony

by ChronicleStone

Chapter 1: Trucker and Boulder

Southern outskirts of Appleloosa
September 2, 3:26 PM

A cascade of boulders rolled off the mound they had been resting on and came to rest on the flat dusty plain. An auburn-maned, grey-bodied stallion stood where the stones had once been, wiping his brow and assessing the rubble below. “How’s it look down there?” he called.

A blue stallion with charcoal mane and tail hefted one of the rocks into the air with a single hoof, giving it a scrutinizing glare, as though trying to gauge if it was even worth the effort. “We’re getting there, Truck,” he called back as he sent the rock rolling along the ground like a bowling ball.

Trucker nimbly ambled his way down the stony pile, pausing to look up at it once he reached the ground. It was still a solid fifteen to twenty feet tall. It certainly looked smaller than it had been when they had started, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. “That must have been quite a rockslide to have caused this,” he muttered. “Almost looks like those buffalo were having an all-herd jumping jack competition.”

Boulder chuckled as he dusted himself off. “That’d be something to see. But we already know that’s not what happened here.”

Trucker sighed. Chief Thunderhooves, leader of the buffalo herd, had met with Trucker and Boulder shortly after they arrived in town. Apparently, the buffalo herd had been moving along a ridge—one that they now knew was precarious and unsafe—when some rocks came loose. That spooked some of the herd, and they started stampeding. That just shook things up even more, knocking more of the boulders loose, until they had a full-fledged rockslide on their hooves. No injuries had been reported, but the rockslide had come to a rest on top of the train tracks leading out of town.

And that was a problem.

“Lucky that nopony was hurt. And no buffalo,” Boulder added.

“That’s true,” Trucker agreed, “though I’m just grateful that this didn’t start another feud between the ponies and the buffalo. It could have been a lot worse, in a lot of ways.”

Boulder rolled his eyes and smashed a large rock with his hoof, causing it to crumble into gravel. “That’s only about the third or fourth time you’ve mentioned that.”

“It’s important to me,” Trucker said. “I mean, we’re called the ‘Sentinels of Harmony,’ big guy. Our biggest goals are to uphold the law and preserve the peace. And I’m the one the Council appointed to lead us. Any threat to that peace is kind of a big deal to me.”

Boulder sat and contemplated for a moment. “You sound a bit like Celestia when you say that.”

Trucker was silent for a moment. “Do I, now? I think I can live with that.”

“Wow, ya’ll!” a voice called to them from the north. “That’s some progress ya’ made there!”

They looked up to see two ponies approaching. The first was Sherriff Silverstar, who had been their contact upon arriving in Appleloosa. The second was a pony who had introduced himself as Braeburn, an exuberant stallion who apparently made it his goal in life to make everypony as excited about his hometown as he was.

Trucker cast another look up at the stack of enormous rocks. As the two approaching ponies drew near, he replied, “Maybe, but I’d like to have gotten it done by now. Tougher than it looks.”

Sherriff Silverstar’s jaw hung open in shock, while Braeburn began to laugh uncontrollably. “‘Done by now’?!?” he guffawed. “It’d have taken the whole town together to do what ya’ll have done by yourselves! Why, ya’ll are incredible! Just the ponies for the job, I’d say!”

Neither Trucker nor Boulder dared try and argue. It was true: their strength and endurance were many times over that of even the strongest of regular ponies. Celestia’s gift of magic to each of them had granted them tremendous power: Boulder’s titanic might, and Trucker’s endless fervor. Truth was, they were the perfect ponies for the job.

“Aw, well, you’re welcome,” Boulder said, making a goofy smile, though Trucker couldn’t get upset with him: it was actually the only smile he had.

“We were actually wonderin’ if ya’ll would like to take a break. Ya’ll been out here all day, and you should probably come out from the sun for a bit, if ya’ catch my drift,” Sherriff said, apparently having recovered from his earlier stupor.

“No thanks,” Trucker answered without hesitation. “We were sent here to do a job, and the sooner we get it done, the better.”

Silverstar again looked stunned, while Braeburn just stared and blinked. “You—you mean to tell me that yer’ tryin’ to clean up all that today?!”

It was Boulder’s turn to look surprised. “Well, sure. Why not?” he asked, as though it was perfectly reasonable to expect such a thing.

“We’re rather specialized for this type of work,” Trucker quickly interjected, hoping to prevent the locals’ minds from exploding. “Don’t worry about us. We’ve got this. Hopefully within another couple of hours, this’ll be clear. Just leave this to us. We’ll have the tracks cleared by sundown.”

They watched the two return to the village, though Trucker couldn’t help but notice that they kept looking over their shoulders at he and Boulder, as though they couldn’t fully get over the way they had spoken of their own abilities. “I guess not all of Equestria knows about us and our magic, huh, big guy?” Trucker muttered.

“Nope,” Boulder answered, crushing a rock between his hooves and tossing the fragments aside. “I like it that way. Not like Canterlot, where it’s like you’re some kind of celebrity.”

“Or a freak,” Trucker muttered under his breath. Poor Blitz and Nighthawk had it the worst. Ever since their heroics during the Battle of Canterlot, their fame (or notoriety) had skyrocketed. They had virtually no privacy, with “fans” and reporters and journalists from every nook and cranny of the empire hounding them everywhere they went. He wondered if that had anything to do with their assignment to the other division of the Sentinels: the “Wayfarers.” While he and Boulder were part of the “Vigilant,” the nine ponies assigned to work within the boundaries of Equestria, the Wayfarers were the first of their kind: a distinct organization whose purpose was to seek to promote the ways and ideals of harmony beyond the borders of their homeland. Maybe, in her wisdom and understanding, Celestia understood their need to get away. To be able to work in places where they would not be recognized, but simply to serve as they always had. It’s what they all wanted.

He lifted a medium-sized rock and tossed it to his partner. “Hey, uh, are you feeling any better?”

It was an ambiguous question, but Trucker was sure Boulder understood what he meant. As far as he knew, he was the only one Boulder had told about his concerns and personal struggles.

The large blue pony caught the rock, then promptly threw it against the ground, angrily stamping it into the dust until it sat flush with the rest of the dirt.

“So, that’s a no?”

Boulder looked him full in the face, and his eyes betrayed his frustration. “Truck, how long did we let him manipulate us without seeing the truth? I was on his team: I spent more time with him than probably any other pony. And I never realized the truth. He made me fight against Blitz when I should have been fighting beside him! The Alicorn Guard was supposed to protect Equestria. But we couldn’t even protect it from one of our own. And if anypony should have seen the truth, it was me. But I didn’t. I failed.”

Trucker hesitated for a few seconds before responding. “And?”

“And this is how I make up for that,” Boulder answered, lifting two stones and smashing them together into fine powder. “I work and serve to try and make up for my failure.”

Trucker watched the stone powder fall to the ground. He understood Boulder’s anger: it was true that he had spent more time with Ghost than any other pony. He had essentially been Ghost’s bodyguard—never far away. But to take all of the blame for not recognizing Ghost’s true colors wasn’t fair. Any of the ponies of the Alicorn Guard could have accepted the blame for missing the signs, but the truth was that Ghost had been a masterful strategist, waiting and biding his time, never showing all his cards until he was sure he had a winning hoof.

What was more, Trucker was now the new leader of the Alicorn Guard’s newest incarnation: the Sentinels of Harmony. The other ponies in the Guard must have trusted his instincts, vision, and abilities to have elected him to such a role.

But in spite of that, he had also failed to see Ghost’s true nature. And that caused him to question his own ability to lead.

“Listen, big guy,” Trucker began. “I understand. We all felt betrayed by Ghost…I know that I still do. And I know for a fact that we all could wallow in self-pity over our failure to recognize Ghost for who he really was. But as I recall, we took a new oath to leave our regrets and guilt behind in the old HQ. The past is just that: it’s in the past.”

“I’m not ‘wallowing,’ Truck,” Boulder argued. “All I want is to make up for that. I want to make tomorrow better because of what happened before.”

“It’s an admirable goal to want to make this world a better one,” Trucker agreed, “but to do it solely on account of the past is to be doing it for the wrong reason. There’s no changing the past. What happened, happened, for good or for bad. And no amount of effort is ever going to change that.”

Boulder mumbled something under his breath and hoisted a spherical stone into the air, where he stared at it, though Trucker could tell that it was little more than a gesture meant only to keep his eyes from meeting Trucker’s. He narrowed his eyes and hardened his voice. “Listen. I know how you feel. None of us ever questioned Ghost’s true motives or intentions. Maybe we should have. But if you think you have the right to question yourself because of that, just consider some of the rest of us: Nighthawk was literally Ghost’s pawn. He nearly killed not one, but two ponies while he was under Ghost’s spell, and now he’s supposed to lead the entire division of the Wayfarers! Just think about that for a second.”

Boulder continued to stare at his stone in silence. “And what about me? Hm?” Trucker continued, an earnest anger seeping into his voice. “I never once questioned Ghost’s commands. I was a good little soldier, doing what I was told. But then Blitz learns the truth, and everything I thought I had done well was thrown into the garbage. And now, I’m supposed to lead the Sentinels! What do you think that does for my confidence in my abilities?”

His emotions were bubbling now. “And I haven’t even mentioned anypony else! Like Scope and Tread, who pride themselves on not missing anything! And Cubic, who seems to know everything, but couldn’t even find the truth among her own teammates! And you can see how angry Ace still feels every time you see him! What about them, Boulder!?”

The stone dropped to the ground, and in an instant, Trucker’s tirade ended. His attention snapped back to the present, where he and Boulder stood before a large pile of debris in the open plains outside Appleloosa. For a moment, he was tempted to feel guilty about his rant, but it had been necessary. Sometimes, the truth was a very painful thing to confront.

“Sorry, Truck,” Boulder said simply. He was either staring at the ground, or the stone that had fallen from his hoof. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Trucker walked over beside his friend and placed a hoof on his shoulder. “And we shouldn’t,” Trucker admonished. “We don’t live for the past anymore, and each of us are trying each day to live for the future in spite of those feelings that would drag us back into the past. It’s like this pile of rocks here,” he continued, gesturing at the large mound. “Why are we trying to clear it?”

Boulder looked at him askew. “Uh…so that the train can come through again?” he answered, clearly caught off-guard by the question.

“Exactly,” Trucker answered with a smile. “It’s not because something we want to fix the past, because we can’t. We’re cleaning up the past because we’re making the future better. We can’t change the fact that there was a rockslide, but we can clean it up so that we don’t have to worry about it in the future. Understand?”

“I think so,” Boulder said, rubbing his neck. “But it’s not easy to think of it that way.”

Trucker nodded and tossed a pair of rocks aside. “You’re right; it’s not easy. But it keeps our motives pure when we focus on benefitting the future. Ghost’s fault was that he was too caught up in the past. It’s our job to make sure we don’t fall into that trap.”

“Got it,” Boulder said, heaving another massive stone back towards the cliff face. “I’ll work on that.”

“Good stallion,” Trucker replied. “Now, Celestia’s not going to keep that sun in the sky forever, so how about we get back to the task at hoof?”

The two of them went back to work, gradually shrinking the pile of rocks as the sun descended to the horizon. And as the small hill became little more than a small mound, and then vanished entirely, Trucker found himself smiling. This whole thing is one huge task. I never would have thought that I would lead the Alicorn Guard—or its next incarnation. But I’ve got a team of amazing ponies working with me. Maybe there’s hope for us, after all.

He wiped his brow and looked to where the sun was finally setting, then cast a second glance behind himself, where the moon had just begun to peek out above the horizon.

Princesses, we’ll do you proud.

Author's Note:

So, for starter's, let's take a peek at the Sentinels' illustrious leader, Trucker, and and his partner Boulder!

It's one thing to say you've left your guilt behind. It's another thing entirely to actually do it. Few ponies have more to think about than Trucker and Boulder. Their journey of redemption begins here.