Guard Flutter

by Impossible Numbers

Guard Flutter, Part V: The Demotion

The pegasus Spitfire was an odd case among the Democratic Republicans of the Council, for the simple reason that she wasn’t one.

Ever since the days of the Pegasus Empire, when promotion usually involved cornering a nation in a dark peninsular and then mugging it, “being military” and “being a pegasus” had largely been treated as synonymous. On one of the walls in her office, the face of General Firefly the First peered down across a millennium. It had filled the blank space, had glowered down at every one of her predecessors, and had unfortunately been bedecked in an outsized bearskin and opera collar that had ceased being the height of serious fashion about a century before Firefly’s birth.

Whenever she came in here, General Spitfire stopped, turned to salute the oil painting, and then strode over to her desk to begin stamping paperwork. Thankfully, her modern uniform was a skin-tight affair with a simple pattern of azure and gold, made of the finest breezie cloth, capable of withstanding arctic bite and desert baking heat, and easy to wear under casual clothes in case of a call at short notice.

Shore leave meant little to her. There were always papers, and the others in the Council often ducked holy-days and vacations just to keep their positions in the race. Every day, General Spitfire sighed and buckled down.

This day, there was a knock on the door. Without looking up, she stamped another sheet and barked, “It’s open.”

Iron Will filled the office. The fact that he was hunched over, twiddling his thumbs and pulling at his tie did little to diminish his sheer volume. Spitfire had to lean back to take him in.

“Well well well,” she said cheerfully. “If it isn’t Iron Lungs himself, here in the flesh.”

“I told you not to call me that,” said Iron Will, who was trying to make his whisper sound less like a yell. “Listen. We got a situation here.”

Spitfire’s smile widened and she put her forelimbs behind her head to get more comfortable. “Don’t we all, Iron Will? You’re talking to the general who just got back from the Cygnus Range. Before that, I was at Medusa Falls trying to keep the Snakeheads under wraps. And I still haven’t lost all the burns from the Great Dragon Purge before that. Please tell me when I don’t have a situation.”

“It’s about one of your officers,” said Iron Will. “We had a… a bit of a misunderstanding.”

This time, the smile vanished. “A misunderstanding?”

“As in I just arrested her for destroying half of the statues in the Square.”

Spitfire buried a hoof in her own face.

She was a quick thinker, but even if she’d had a cognitive speed limit that a snail would’ve laughed at, certain premonitions came ready-made for the occasion. This one was yellow, with soupy eyes and curtains of pink hair and the genial, quiet contentment of a calm spot in the middle of a hurricane.

A pair of sunglasses lay on the desk. Smooth as oiled clockwork, she snapped them open and placed them on her snout. Only then did she look over them to Iron Will’s wet nose.

“Did you,” she said as though discussing shot put techniques, “jump forwards and hoist her up?”

“I immediately jumped forwards and hoisted her up as high as I could!”

“And were you making a speech about the need for tougher –”

“For tougher crackdowns on the criminal elements of the city? You bet your whole treasure hoard on it.”

Spitfire sighed. “So it goes without saying that –”

“I caught a vandal and made sure everybody knew about it to show how big a deal the new deal was.”

They stared at each other. Then Spitfire reached up and folded her sunglasses and carefully put them back on the desk. The lack of smile on her face was now total. Even her red eyes were blazing with something completely unlike good humour.

“At what point did you find out she was one of my officers?”

“When I used my office to fill out the imprisonment forms. I asked her who she was so I could fill it in. Speaking of forms, there’s too much paperwork. Iron Will ain’t no pencil-pusher. Iron Will just hires ‘em. Them pencil-pushing pretty people just take down the law laid down by Iron Will. Heck, Iron Will is the Law! I AM the Law! The LAW!”

Iron Will tried to rise, and bashed his head against the ceiling. Bits of plaster stuck to his upturned horns.

“Sorry,” he rumbled. “Got carried away. Anyway, she’s still there now. As soon as I heard her name, I slipped out to get a glass of water and rushed here to tell you the whole thing.”

“It’s cool.” Spitfire hummed to herself. “That ceiling’s needed a do-over for weeks. As for the officer, if she’s still in your quarters, then I’ll come and talk to her. Leave it to me.”

Iron Will saluted, knocking a hole in the wall with his raised elbow.

“Of course,” continued Spitfire, “she’ll have to be disciplined. But so long as the others don’t find out who she is, then I think we can get out of this without egg on our faces. Just give me a few minutes.”

As soon as Iron Will had manoeuvred his way past the door frame and the lock clicked into place, Spitfire’s autopilot sputtered and died. With a groan, she kneaded her forehead and tried to smother her flaming mane.

Of all the times in all the places that Fluttershy could’ve picked, she’d picked this one! Right when the peacekeepers had just come back to a hero’s welcome! Right after weeks and weeks of trying to figure out where the arimaspi base had been hidden! Right when Fluttershy had already dropped down a rank for that idiocy with the chimaera!

A part of her softened, and it tried to rub the red mist from her vision. It wasn’t really fair to take it out on this one pegasus. The Council were the ones who’d blow up a lone incident and ignore an amazing victory. A few years ago, she could’ve just rapped Fluttershy around the hocks without issue and then let bygones be bygones. In the end, they were both peacekeepers, both leading the citizens and facing the Council.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good career move. She’d given up telling the Council that they weren’t being fair. Not these days. When she said something was “fair”, it looked to them like it meant “soft and lazy and probably sentimental”. When they used it, it looked to her like it meant “brutal and savage and misleadingly called the 'realistic choice'”.

She’d demoted pegasi for accidents, and that was if no one was hurt. As General of the Pegasi on the Council, she had to run a tight ship, or run aground. There were no middle positions. Not when she could so easily be replaced by pegasi less resistant to the Council's “hang someone” mentality.

Most got the message soon enough; the rest were on their way out. The Council? They’d sent a starving mare to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That was almost a decade ago; the pegasus was still there, awaiting a trial she’d never had. Where was the “fairness” in that?

It occurred to General Spitfire that she hadn’t seen her mother for almost a year. Perhaps it was time to write a letter? She frowned and shook the thought out of her head. Time for personal matters later.

Breathing to steady herself, she pocketed the sunglasses and strode across the office to follow Iron Will. Right now she needed a friendly face, even if it had a tendency to shout a lot.

---

Not for the first time in her life, Fluttershy wondered what had come over her. She didn’t even really like being in the peacekeepers. There was far too much excitement, and far too many ways to get a bruising.

She was staring down at her hooves on the hard oak chair, but simply because they were the only things in the room that didn’t bother her. Iron Will’s caravan – his "office" – was a museum in and of itself. Maces and axes and armour plates hung from brackets along the walls, and the centre of the room was a raised square with four corner posts where ropes had once been suspended from. Dimly, she remembered that Iron Will had once been a champion fighter. A few trophies and bronze laurel wreaths glinted from a display case behind his desk.

The only light in the room, though, was the firefly jar next to the paperwork. After a few minutes, she gingerly reached across and unscrewed the lid. Little lights flitted hither and thither, and for a blissful time she watched the tiny stars dance around and above her. Then, being unimaginative insects, they returned to the jar, and Fluttershy shrank back into her own world.

The form lay unfinished on the desk. She resisted the urge to look at it; it was going to be rough enough as it was, and there was something furtive about the act that made her shy away from it, whimpering. They’d probably give her extra years if they caught her trying to read other people’s documents.

With a start, she heard the door snap open and then slam. A clatter of hooves moved to the space behind the desk. She looked up.

Oh my, she thought. Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my…

General Spitfire didn’t speak for a long while. The staring contest began to burn Fluttershy’s eyes, and her gaze retreated to her hooves for medical attention. Spitfire didn’t so much as twitch.

“What are we going to do with you, Newbie?” she said at last. “I suppose it would help if I had some idea of what you did, exactly.”

Fluttershy could feel the words crouching in her head. They knew what they were doing. Just tell the truth, they were saying. We’ll get it over with. Give us a signal, jump into the deep, anything. But even they didn’t really believe it.

What was she going to say? She’d jumped into a statue because she was the sort who’d jump if a mouse squeaked at the wrong moment. There was no way to make that look good on a form, and she blushed at the thought of trying.

“If that’s the way we’re going to play…” Spitfire slipped on her sunglasses and pulled the sheet towards her. “Let me guess: it was a total accident because something or someone gave you a fright?”

Fluttershy forced herself to nod a couple of times. They said Spitfire could corkscrew entire mountains and deliver messages from one side of the world to the other. A pegasus who could do that probably wasn’t happy to sit in an office for hours on end, shuffling reports.

“Let’s see,” said Spitfire. “You’re not a regular in towns and cities, are you? I think I remember you came from some quiet cottage in the Square of the Pegasus, am I right?”

And she probably had a whole city of pegasi to take care of. That wasn’t something you could just drop for one pegasus’s sake.

“Am…” she finally whispered. “Am I… going to… I mean, do I… have to pay for another statue?”

“Hm?” Spitfire looked up. “You say something?”

At this point, Fluttershy sighed and felt her insides collapse. If she was quick and got it over with, Spitfire could get back to work. A part of her brain screamed and panicked, shouting about food and drink and giving up buying a good book for a few years, but it was rapidly outvoted.

“I’ll… pay for the new statue,” she said in a defeated voice.

To her surprise – and sudden hope – she heard Spitfire give a chuckle.

“The statue?” said Spitfire. “You can’t tell me you’re worrying about one simple statue at a time like this?”

The sudden hope ducked back behind the stage curtain, flushing with embarrassment. “But… I could’ve hurt someone…”

“True, though from what Iron Will told me, only yourself. It’s not about getting the money for a new statue. We could probably go without one old, cracking, mistreated statue anyway. Which reminds me: I’ll have to find out which of the Council is in charge of that. Right now, our real issue is the reputation of the peacekeepers.”

Alarm bells went off in Fluttershy’s head, but whether through lack of use or some kind of mental problem, she couldn’t tell why. She looked up, and finally noticed that Spitfire had removed her sunglasses.

Oh dear… she thought.

“You see, Newbie,” said Spitfire, “we’ve just come back from saving the world from a terrible enemy. We’re being hailed as heroes out there. But a few weeks ago, and up to a few days ago, everyone was complaining about what a bunch of thugs we were, and how we should have pulled out first chance we got. What do you think will happen if they learn one of our returning heroes was caught vandalizing statues?”

An answer popped into Fluttershy’s head. She was itching to say it. However, Spitfire was giving her a look that said, “I know what your answer is, and I’m going to dock you a lot of points if you say it.” Fluttershy’s head swam, knowing it had seconds to scrounge up an answer, but having no clue as to what it looked like.

“They’ll… be… mad at me?” she tried.

“Think politics.” Spitfire leaned back in her chair, hooves behind her head. “Today, they’ll be saying ‘I always knew they were thugs in the peacekeepers.’ Tomorrow, they’ll say, ‘And I bet the arimaspi job was their fault too.’”

“But isn’t this just my fault?” Fluttershy blushed, and pressed on. “I don’t understand. The other peacekeepers didn’t do it.”

“Wrong, Newbie! Wrong!”

Fluttershy fell out of her chair and hit the edge of the arena; Spitfire was hunched over the desk, giving her a stare that a cockatrice would’ve backed away from.

Groaning, Spitfire came round and heaved her back onto the chair. Fluttershy shook the whole time as more words bowled her over.

“When you knock over a statue, the peacekeepers did it! When the town crier shouts your name, the crowd hears the peacekeepers! When you so much as sneeze, it’s the peacekeepers who blow your nose with a hanky!”

Fluttershy raised a shaking hoof. She was aware of hundreds if not thousands of different groups of animals, including the ones most people couldn’t see without special lenses. She’d never forgotten the first time someone had shown her two identical warblers in a cage, and she’d pointed out their species, subspecies, and regional variety right before freeing them. Which was why it pained her whenever she was confronted with a political animal and had no idea how to react.

“Yes?” Spitfire retreated behind the desk and waited for Fluttershy to stop making the chair shake.

“When you say the… the peacekeepers all do what I do…” she said, chewing her lip for a moment. “Is that just me, or is that everybody?”

“In a word, yes.”

Fluttershy coughed. “Doesn’t that seem a bit… well…”

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s not nice, and it’s not fun, believe me. Iron Will’s an old… ally of ours. He’ll understand, eventually. Once you get a word in edgeways. But there are a lot of people in the Council who don’t like us, and they’ll look for any excuse to make our lives harder, and the worst part is that a lot of them have the brawn to make up for the brains they don’t have.”

“That sounds terrible!” said Fluttershy, and then she remembered where she fit in all this and wished she’d just evaporate there and then.

“You see how it works now?” said Spitfire, and she straightened up. “So here’s what we’re going to do. A lot of people know that someone knocked over a statue in the Square. They don’t know it was you, and memory isn’t the public’s strong point. So officially, it was done by a civilian, probably a changeling in disguise. Iron Will got ‘em bang to rights. But just in case anyone does have a decent memory, you’ll have to keep out of the way for a bit. Style your hair different, wear a different uniform, hang out with another crowd.”

“But –” Fluttershy began.

“And frankly, in case it acts as sufficient deterrent for you to get your act together, you’re being demoted as of this moment in time.”

Spitfire leaned forwards and squinted at her with keen interest.

In the grand scheme of things – Fluttershy herself had to admit it – she was a pegasus with very little brain, and whatever they said about pegasi being warmongering thugs, she was aware that pegasi good enough to stay at the top for so long were pegasi with brains leaking out of their ears. In theory, there were also nice pegasi at the top, though the top never struck her as a place she ever wanted to visit, much less move to.

Nevertheless, her brow creased with effort. Pegasi got demoted all the time, true, but…

“Demoted?” she breathed.

“That’s right. Demoted.”

Fluttershy groped for a word in the sudden blank fog enveloping her mind. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Again?” she managed.

“Again.” Spitfire gave her a curt nod.

“Already?” was Fluttershy’s next desperate gambit at conversation.

“Private Fluttershy,” said Spitfire in a leaden voice. “When you go up in rank, we invest a lot of faith and trust in you. You squandered a lot of it. And then you squandered some more.”

“By accident?”

“By accident, yes, but it’s squandered all the same. We can't have incompetency rewarded when the citizens of the capital look to us for their protection. You wouldn't want to trust your life to someone with butter-hooves. Look, you've got guts, I grant you that. You've done great work for us. But that doesn't excuse clumsiness and recklessness. That business with the chimaera was totally against protocol, it wasn't authorized, you did it in direct violation of our orders to secure the Cygnus base, and if it wasn't for Private Gilda's intervention, it would have been a suicide mission. You know this. Having a big heart doesn't excuse you from lacking the brains to match. That costs you trust. So now you’ll have to earn some more trust from us.”

“I-I’m b-b-being… d-d-demoted tw-twice?” Fluttershy’s lip trembled to the point of incomprehension, leaving only a few squeaks. There was bad, yes, she could stomach bog-standard badness on her record, but this? This was historical. Two demotions on the same day!?

“Until you can convince me your promotions were not mistakes. I admit we might have been too hasty in helping you rise high, but considering the feats you've pulled off… Look, let's make this simple. There’s already a demotion form filled out for you after that chimaera incident.” Here, Spitfire did not entirely meet her eye. “But a captain dropped to a lieutenant and still causing chaos is too awkward to bandy about. Meanwhile, anyone asking questions is going to wonder just how badly we need our heads examined. We can hardly fiddle with the paperwork, even if no one else is going to read it. Now, a lieutenant to a private –”

“B-B-But, but…” said Fluttershy, having gotten control of her gaping mouth at last.

“– is less of a problem; the lieutenant rank is always the first proving ground for a rising officer. I just have to write that on the report, just in case inquiring minds want to see it. A lot of people will just assume one demotion rather than two demotions in a row. It’s basic psychology.”

“Basic… what?”

“There might be someone obsessive enough to ask for everything about you, but this isn't the first time we've disciplined a lieutenant, and frankly who’s going to care about yet another? The message is that thugs don’t get very far under my command.”

“I’m not a thug… Please, I’m not –”

“And Newbie,” added Spitfire in a colder tone. “Fluttershy. It’s about time you really listened to your friend Rainbow Dash, don’t you think?”

The embers of defiance, never hot to begin with, faded and died in the hearth of Fluttershy. She hung her head, wishing there was a noose attached.

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” she whispered.

Spitfire tapped the desk for emphasis. “Fair's fair, I’ve been far too lenient towards you, Private. I had hopes for you. I'm going to take my medicine from the rest of the Council over this, and that's fine. You’ve got potential, I’ll give you that much. But the fact is this isn’t a game. It wouldn't be an easy one to play, in any case. I can’t keep covering up for you. Now, once shore leave is over, you’ll report to the Leucippus under Captain Rainbow Dash’s command. I suggest you learn something from her example. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Fluttershy to her hooves. “S-Sorry, ma’am.”

Even as she said the s-word, that other part of her – the one that had been nodding along with Spitfire’s speech – gave her a figurative clip round the ear. Surely, she’d only said that to pluck at the general’s heartstrings. Trying to soften her superior up and get out of trouble: that was what she was doing. As if she wasn’t already getting less rope than she deserved.

Feeling sick, Fluttershy slunk out of her chair and tiptoed to the door, wishing she hadn’t caused everyone this total waste of time.

---

Comments

[Arkonfleight]

“I immediately jumped forwards and hoisted her up as high as I could!”

It's no problem, then, she'd immediately implode out of embarassment.