Chapter 11
The whole of the valley spread out in the darkness before her, lights sparkling under the stars along what Rarity guessed was the river, and she found she could trace the route all the way back to Ponyville, a glowing cluster that didn't seem that far away, actually.
If only she weren't about to plunge to her death, she found herself thinking, the length of wooden walkway that she, Fluttershy and Ory had ridden down the rapids of Canterlot's underground river sailing from the waterfall at its end and arcing delicately through the night sky before starting horribly, inevitably downward--
If it weren't for that, this would be rather pretty.
In front of her, Fluttershy suddenly leaped from the wooden planks, her traveling cloak flaring out above her spreading wings, and Rarity felt a surge of hope. Of course! She so seldom saw her friend flying, it had completely slipped her mind that Fluttershy was a pegasus!
Not that she would be able to keep both Rarity and Ory from falling, of course...
Fluttershy began spinning in place, whirling faster than any pegasus Rarity had seen other than Rainbow Dash, and before she could even wonder why, she gaped to see a cloud forming under Fluttershy, spray from the waterfall gathering into a substantial mass. "Rarity!" Fluttershy shouted almost as loud as an actual shout. "Ory! Grab my hoofs!" She sprawled on her stomach across the cloud, reached her front hoofs toward Rarity, her back hoofs toward Ory.
Rarity's sprang from the planks falling away beneath her, saw Ory further down turning, flexing his legs, jumping toward them both. Her front legs twined around Fluttershy's, her heart pounding so hard it made her ears twitch, but looking down, seeing the walkway dropping, seeing Ory stretching, sailing, slowing, his flailing hoofs not going to meet--
"Ory!" Rarity swung herself along the curve of Fluttershy's cloud, snapped her tail out, saw Ory's neck straightening, his mouth opening, his teeth chomping into the waves of purple hair. Gritting her own teeth, she let herself swing back, Fluttershy crying out, and it was just enough, pulling him the last six inches that he needed to catch Fluttershy's hind legs, and--
Panting, swaying, clamped onto Fluttershy like the most precious diamond she'd ever found, Rarity realized she wasn't falling, was hanging from Fluttershy's front legs, Ory hanging on behind, Fluttershy sweating, her eyes clenched, her body trembling and draped over a lumpy mess of a cloud, all their clothes dripping with water.
She wanted to shout "We're alive!" But of course, that could change at any moment... "Ory!" The stallion shifted his wide-eyed stare from the darkness below them to her. "Your magic! It doesn't have anything to do with signaling, by any chance, does it??"
"I--" His eyes went even wider, and he brightened. Quite literally: his horn lit up, a bubble of what looked like pure sunshine expanding around him. "I can make daylight and darkness!" he cried. "If anypony's looking this way, they'll be able to--"
"Rarity!" Fluttershy moaned. "The heat! I can't...this cloud, it's not--" She whimpered and slid an inch downward, the cloud puffing to steam as the light hit it.
Ory gasped, his horn flickering, the warm glow pulling back before it could vaporize any more of their life raft. "We'll have to do something else!" he shouted.
Rarity looked back at the Day Palace shining above and behind them, drifting further away with each moment, and tried to think, tried to come up with something that would make them stop moving or even get them moving in the--
Moving! Of course!
"Hang on!" she yelled and activated her own horn, reached out with her gem-finding sense, hoped that Princess Celestia really did keep as large a collection of royal jewels as the magazines all said she did, and--
And felt it, felt the huge stash of them grabbing hold of her, pulling her backwards, tugging Fluttershy, cloud, Ory, and all back toward Canterlot.
A gasp from Ory. "How...how on Equestria are you--??"
"What, this?" Giddiness swept through Rarity, the breeze cool against her face as they picked up speed. "Just a little ability of mine. Quite handy now and then, I've found."
The rocky cliffs below the Day Palace swept past in the light from Ory's horn, Rarity following the tug and lifting the whole group of them over a parapet to a balcony of some sort, a scenic viewpoint, she guessed, a flight of stairs leading up from the far end. The gems were higher still, but she forcibly cut the power to her horn, dropped the four inches to the stonework of the balcony floor, said to Fluttershy, "Open your eyes, darling! We're safe!"
"Safe?" Fluttershy's voice sounded smaller than ever, but she cracked an eyelid, let out a squeak and fell, the last bits of her cloud vanishing, Ory touching down with his hind legs, catching Fluttershy, and setting her to quiver on the floor of the stone circle, her eyes clenched again, little squeaks of "We're safe! We're safe! We're safe!" coming up from her.
"That..." Ory's horn was still glowing, but as she looked over, it sputtered out, darkness falling except around Ory's eyes, wide and fixed on hers. "That was the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me."
Trying to find another quip, Rarity found herself instead gazing into his deep, dark eyes, her heart still pounding, but with a very different sort of anxiety. She stepped forward as he did the same, touched her nose to his, heard him draw in a breath, her lips opening to meet his--
And Rarity's first kiss was exactly as perfect as she'd always known it would be.
***
"The Night Guard?" Des cleared his throat. "They're...uhh..."
Rainbow Dash couldn't help glaring at him. "They're what? Complete and total losers?"
He glared at her, and that made her feel a little more normal. After the whole weird thing with Princess Luna moving from the Day Palace to the Night Palace, she'd set out kind of peeved for the Citadel and her dinner with the guard. All those ponies in their shining white and gold armor in the Day Palace, and no one at all in the Night Palace?? She knew Captain Destrier was in charge of all that, so she'd flown for the turrets and spires of the Citadel, perched on the inside rim of the volcano just past the two palaces, with a few sharp questions to toss at him.
On arriving, though, the captain meeting her at the gate, giving one of his big whistles, the gate rolling open to reveal rank after rank of soldiers, the band in the corner striking up a drill tune she remembered from flight school--
And then she was reviewing the troops with the captain, the commanders of each battalion stepping forward, snapping out smart salutes, telling her how much they'd been looking forward to tonight--
And then into the Citadel itself, the banners and the shining sabers and the ponies marching in, and while she'd hated every minute of the bowing and saluting when she'd been at school, she found she didn't mind it nearly as much when everypony in the place was saluting and bowing to her...
Dinner was great, the unicorn cadets floating each course in and out with such precision, Dash made a joke about the cook having to be an air traffic controller, a joke the ponies at the head table with her and the captain actually laughed at, all of them real fliers who knew how to stretch their wings and all of them wanting to talk about it with the only pony alive to ever pull a Sonic Rainboom--
"Two Sonic Rainbooms," she reminded them with a wink.
Then after dinner, meeting more lieutenants and commanders who kept wanting to talk to her and kept wanting her to talk about herself over a dessert Pinkie would've gone crazy for, and finally strolling under the stars through the neat gardens overlooking the rest of the city with the captain--"Call me Des," he'd said, grinning in a way that had made Dash glad it was too dark for him to see her blush--
It all almost made her forget how mad she was. Almost.
"The problem with the Night Guard," Des said when she finally asked, "is that technically, it no longer exists."
"What??" Dash looked from him to the lights of the city glowing all up and down the walls of the crater and out along the flatland between. "You mean the sun goes down around here, and the guard just goes home? What if there's an emergency or a fire or something?"
Des puffed a breath. "Exactly the point Princess Celestia and I raised with Princess Luna when she informed us that she hadn't had soldiers attending her when she'd last done her job and didn't see why she needed soldiers now. Princess Celestia pointed out how a city like Canterlot is quite a different place from their former palace deep in the Everfree Forest, but Princess Luna was adamant. And a direct command, well, I had no choice."
Still mad--just not quite sure anymore who she was mad at--Dash shook her head. "That's crazy! The princess can't just disband the Night Guard after a thousand years!"
"Well..." He sounded so uncomfortable, Dash turned to look at him again. "They aren't exactly disbanded, either."
She tapped a hoof against the little stone path. "Unless they're all, like, ghosts or something--"
"They're not--" Des sighed. "You see, in the past, we had a rotation, every member of the guard spending one week on night duty, then three weeks on days so we could spread it out among the whole cohort." He stopped, seemed to be searching for the right words. "When Princess Luna declared that she didn't require the services of the Night Guard, however, against my advice, Princess Celestia took the troops stationed at the time in the night barracks and renamed them. They're now the Canterlot Night Police."
"Night Police?" Dash blinked at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means that for the past six months, a whole company of my former soldiers have been sitting over there in the night barracks." He gestured with his muzzle to a low building snuggled up against the back wall of the Night Palace, lights showing through its small square windows. "The ranking officer happened to be Aurelius Blueblood, the most useless waste of horseflesh I've ever come across, so while I've seen a few of the soldiers patrolling the city at night, I think they're just doing it because they're bored." His face hardened. "For all the suggestions I've sent over, Blueblood doesn't seem to care! They've no mission and no mandate, and I've no authority over them anymore!"
"Huh." Dash couldn't stop a grin. "'Cause, y'know, I'm thinking I just might..."
***
Flying around the barracks, Dash saw three doorways: a big one at the far end of the building and two smaller ones on the long side that faced away from the Palace. Picking the door nearest the back, she landed and bucked it in with a move she knew Applejack would've been proud of, the frame shattering, the panels crashing to the floor; she spun, zipped inside, and shouted, "Ten-hut!" at the top of her voice.
The lights in the barracks were fairly low, but Dash couldn't see anyone flying at her, ready to fight. Some of the beds along the far wall seemed to be occupied, though, and a big white unicorn stallion, lounging on a sofa beside the fireplace to her right, his uniform jacket wrinkled and unbuttoned, looked up from the comic book he was reading. "I beg your pardon?" he asked in a voice so snooty, Dash was surprised it didn't come out of his nose.
Movement now on her left, fifteen or twenty ponies, their uniforms in various stages of disrepair, flying or galloping the whole length of the barracks to snap into respectable ranks for a surprise inspection. The clatter of their hoofs got a few heads popping up in the beds now, too, but the big guy, still lying on his couch blinking, well, Dash was pretty sure she'd found Des's waste of horseflesh.
"One more time!" she shouted, remembering Sergeant Sprinkles, the one pony at flight school that she and Gilda had never even considered pranking. "For the foals in the slow class, I said, 'Ten-hut!'"
There were maybe forty ponies now in the ranks, their faces a mix of fear and confusion, and the big guy lumbered to his immaculate hoofs, the white of his coat so combed and polished, Dash felt like squinting. "Now see here!" he said. "If you seriously expect that I'll--"
She swooped past him so fast that when she landed on the other side of his couch, he was still staring at the door she'd kicked in. Dash gave a little whistle, then, grinned when he spun, and waited till his widening eyes told her he'd noticed his captain's bars now clenched between her teeth.
As delicately as she could, she tucked the metal clasp into the big side pocket Rarity had stitched into her jacket. "You were saying something, commander?"
"I am Captain Blueblood!" Sparks shot from the tip of his horn. "How dare you come into my--!"
This time, she spun rainbows around him three times, his mane when he staggered to a stop sticking out in all directions. She waited for him to recover again, waited for the shock on his face to become horror when he saw that she had his commander's bars this time. "Lieutenant Blueblood, y'mean?" she asked, tucking the insignia into her pocket.
"Sir!" someone hissed behind her. "That's Rainbow Dash! She's one of the--!"
"Silence in ranks!" Dash whirled, glared at the ponies, but she couldn't tell which of the stone-frozen faces had spoken. "Maybe it's just me," she said, "but anypony who wants to be a captain in Canterlot prob'bly oughtta know who's who and what's what already." She swung her head around to look at Blueblood. "I'm not gonna ask if you agree, lieutenant. I'm just gonna remind you--for what I really hope is the last time--that I said 'ten-hut.'"
The former captain scrambled into the ranks, and Dash gave him a point of smarts. "Now!" She tapped the wooden floor. "I'll need the company commanders front and center."
A pudgy pegasus, her uniform a little tight, her cutie mark a shapeless yellow splotch on her slightly paler coat, stamped smartly, sprang forward, and settled in front of Dash.
No one else moved, and that struck Dash as odd. "It's been a while since I was in ranks," she said, "but shouldn't a company this size have two commanders?"
The commander licked her lips. "Commander Rigel has patrol duty tonight, ma'am," she said, her voice maybe the one Dash had heard calling to Blueblood earlier.
"And you are?"
"Cream Custard, ma'am!"
"Well, then." Dash plucked the captain's bars from her pocket and clipped them onto the other pegasus's uniform. "It's your lucky night, Captain Custard."
Custard's eyes were so wide, Dash thought they might just fall out, but Dash couldn't stop now. "I'll need you to pick a lieutenant, captain."
Without hesitation, Custard said, "Lieutenant Foxfire!"
A sparkle among the ranks, and a thin blue unicorn stallion appeared beside Custard. Dash pulled out the commander's pin she'd taken from Blueblood and chomped it into place on the unicorn's jacket. "Congratulations, Commander Foxfire."
The new captain was still quivering. "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"
"Not just yet, captain." Dash waved a hoof at the ranks. "Actually, fall back in, if you wouldn't mind."
Custard and Foxfire both stamped, spun, and moved into place at the end of the front line. "'Cause maybe you're about to say," Dash went on, pacing up and down along the ranks, "that you're not the best choice to be captain. Maybe you're gonna say I should pick this Commander Rigel, or maybe you're gonna say that I really shouldn't've kicked Lieutenant Blueblood off his cloud like I just did." She stopped in front of Custard. "That sound like the sorta things you're likely to say, captain?"
"Yes, ma'am," Custard said, a bit of a waver behind her words.
Dash nodded. "Lesson number one, then: not only is life not fair, a lotta the time, it's downright stupid. Sometimes, you take the blame for stuff that's not your fault, and sometimes, you get a promotion you don't deserve." She moved to the center of the group, tried to sound more confident than she felt. "Take tonight, f'rinstance, when none of you showed up for the changing of the guard between the Day Palace and the Night Palace."
"But--!" Blueblood started, but he pulled his snout closed quickly, earning another point from Dash.
"Yeah, I know." Dash shrugged. "Princess Luna herself said you shouldn't show up, so you'd think that'd make it OK. The problem is, y'see..." For the second time that day, Dash wished she had Twilight's brain for just a few minutes. "You took an oath, right? Not just to Princess Celestia--or even to Princess Luna, 'cause, I mean, who even knew about her till last year?" She caught herself grinning, stopped, cleared her throat, tried to get her thoughts back on track.
"The oath you took was to Equestria is the thing, an oath to serve all ponies wherever they need it and however they need it." That was in the oath she remembered from flight school, at least. "And guess what? It turns out Princess Luna really has needed you all this time. She just didn't know it, and your former captain, well, he didn't do anything that woulda made her see it. So here we all are."
Dash looked at them, pegasi and unicorns with a few earth ponies mixed in, and hoped she was right about this next part. "Now all you guys who didn't quit when Princess Luna disbanded the Night Guard, well, I gotta think there's a reason you didn't quit. Yeah, maybe you're just in it for the money or there's pressure from your family or you didn't wanna resign your commission or whatever. But more than any of that, it's...it's 'cause you wanna do this. You wanna be this. You feel it right here." She thumped her chest. "You're soldiers, all of you. Soldiers of the Guard."
A shuffling of hoofs, the ranks straightening a little. Dash raised her voice. "So, yeah, for the last six months, they've called you the Night Police or whatever, and it's great, Captain Custard, that you and Commander Rigel have made up some patrols, have started trying to figure out what that maybe means. But, well, since I'm Princess Luna's Minister of Loyalty--" She touched her necklace, its jewels in the shape of her cutie mark, the thing she'd looked at every night before going to bed for the past year. "I'm telling you right now. You're the Night Guard again. And now I'm gonna tell you how that's gonna work."
***
A couple hours later, tired but feeling pretty good, Rainbow Dash sailed through the Night Palace's archway and down the hall, Pinkie's torches now lined up along the walls. Landing just outside the throne rooms doors, she strolled in, strutting a bit: wait till she told the others about--
"--sailing out into empty air!" Rarity was saying, she and Fluttershy wrapped in towels and lying on cushions beside the big pit with the bonfire Pinkie had started when they'd all first come in at the start of the night--however many hours ago that had been. "I've never been so frightened before in my entire life!"
Everypony else was sitting on cushions, too, their eyes wide and their expressions running from Twilight's absolute shock to Pinkie's quivering excitement to Applejack's pinch-mouthed concern to Princess Luna's simmering anger. "Fortunately," Rarity went on, "Fluttershy put together a cloud for us, and I--"
"What??" Dash couldn't stop it from bursting out. "A cloud?? Fluttershy??"
All heads swung toward her, and Fluttershy leaped into the air. "Oh, Rainbow Dash!" Quicker than Dash had ever seen her friend move, Fluttershy zipped across the throne room and wrapped her in a huge hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
The force of the greeting almost knocked Dash over. "What the--??"
"Your cloud!" Fluttershy let go, landed, started hopping up and down like Pinkie, her eyes curled into crescents. "The one you made in Princess Luna's library earlier! It got me thinking about how I could never do clouds back in school, and then when Rarity and Ory and me went falling off the cliff, there was all this water from the waterfall! And I just--"
"Cliff?? Waterfall??" Dash looked back and forth between Fluttershy and the rest of her friends. "Whatta you guys been doing tonight anyway??"
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Fluttershy to the rescue!
Element of Loyalty strikes again!
Sergeant Sprinkles? Yeah I wouldn't mess with that guy either.
4407122
And yet:
To this day, I've never gotten around to actually reading that story...
Mike
4407310
Neither have I. Probably the wisest course, yes?
Rainbow makes an excellent drill sergeant!
4407310 Wait, Sergeant Sprinkles is from an actual story? Could you please provide the link?
7950424
Sergeant Sprinkles:
Wrote the infamous Pinkie-Pie-is-a-psychotic-murderer story "Cupcakes" way back in the early days of the show--here's an interview the Pony Fiction Vault did with the author in 2013. It's got a link to the story if you're interested in reading it, something I still haven't done even though I wrote a story inspired by it...
Mike