Dancing to the side, to avoid a fireball flashing past close enough to let me smell the superheated air.
Flinging my chakram and a dozen illusionary copies on different trajectories back at Sunset, I teleported a couple of meters to the left, avoiding a spear of fire cutting a shallow trench in the dirt of the training ground.
The moment I appeared, I ran in two directions at once, my illusion going left as I ran around her to the right.
For a second Sunset were busy blocking the chakram and the illusions.
She learned quickly that unless you are a hundred percent sure which is real, you block them all. Or better yet, not be there.
Sunset collapsed all illusions in the area in a large burst of magic, same like Twilight did. Triggering another teleport before she could follow up on the dispel, I folded a invisibility spell over myself as two copies of myself cast different spells towards her.
Force and Ice. Blocking one would make blocking the other difficult. To block both, you needed a powerful spell that blocked both physical and energy spells.
Snagging the chakram from the ground with my magic, I flung it towards her, so it would arrive the second her shield dropped.
But she wasn’t there, she teleported across the field as far away from as she were standing the second the shield dropped, scanning the training ground.
Which was the exact reason to why I had been running there.
The moment she appeared I jumped, tackling her out of invisibility.
Going rolling across the ground, we kicked up dust of cloud and snow as she tried to kick me, her horn lighting up in a shockwave spell to throw me away.
Twisting around, I rolled off her, avoiding the energy blast before I jumped her again, pushing her down against the dirt covered training ground, “Give?”
Sunset panted and collapsed back against the frozen ground, nodding as she tried to regain her breath, “T-that was cheating.”
“S-so wasn’t,” I countered and relaxed against her trying to get my breath back, “Didn’t say any rules.”
“We were using magic!” she complained and raised her head to look up at me, “So there is no way earth pony strength was fair!”
“Oh? I could have just as easily have blasted you,” I said with a grin down at her, “Go to stop being predictable, Sunny. I knew where you would end up before you threw that shield up.”
She glared up at me, “Nobody else would! We have been practicing together for years.”
“True enough,” I admitted stretched my wings, moving to lay next to her instead, “But we’ll need more than to get to Sunshine.”
“You’re not dragging me into that!” Sunny complained, “You’re going to get your tail kicked!” as she rolled over onto her stomach and leaned against my side as she tried to brush the worst of the dust of herself, “Let’s face it, she has experience.”
“Pretty much all the Experience, which is why I want you by my side for this,” I agreed as I brushed some dust of her back with my wing, “Going to need you for this one, Sunny.”
Sunset groaned and shifted to lean against my side, “…That’s so not fair.”
“To bad,” I told her, giving her a hug with my wing with a grin, “As best friend, you automatically get ‘Volunteered’.”
She sighed and shook her head before she groaned and relaxed again, “Just so you know, you’ll owe me all the spa visits. All of them.”
Frowning slightly, I eyed her, “…Don’t I already do that? I keep getting bills from spa facilities, but I don’t think I ever been to one.”
“Well, there is that,” she admitted with a smile, “Okay, fine. I’ll help you. But I’m not getting involved in that entire bet thing.”
“Oh yeah, that,” I grumbled and sighed, “I really don’t want to lose this one, I’m kind of afraid where that one will end up, especially after what I told her.”
Sunset turned to look at me with a frown, “What?”
“…I may have accidentally threatened that if she loses she is going to be my maid for a day. Uniform and all.”
Sunset made a small choking out before she laughed and rolled onto her back, “You are so bucked!”
“…Don’t need to enjoy it that much,” I grumbled and glared down at her a bit before I poked at the ground with my hoof, “So yeah. Kinda don’t want to lose this one.”
She stuck her tongue out at me, “You know that to even have a chance, we are going to need to cheat hard.”
“Oh yeah,” I agreed, “We’re going to need to be the cheatiest cheaters that ever cheated to even get close. But I planned on that no matter what. Going up the Solar Guard in a straight up fight would be stupid, that’s where they are the best.”
Sunset nodded and rolled onto her hooves, floating her scarf over to wrap around herself against the cold. The wind were picking up a bit, “When’s the meeting?”
“This afternoon I scheduled a meeting with Commander Bright Glow,” I said and got up, stretching, “I’ll announce it to the Legion then and then we’ll start preparations. I want you there for that if you can.”
She nodded, “Awesome, I’ll have time to get warm and clean again,” she said and picked up her bag with a smile, “Hey, guess what?”
“I’m about to get another bill from a spa?” I suggested with a smile, “Have fun.”
“Will do!” she agreed happily before she paused and glanced back at me, “…Why don’t you come along?”
“I’m not sure it’s my kind of thing.”
“What? Relaxing in a hot bath after a massage and having heated up in a sauna after coming in from the cold isn’t your kind of thing?” she teased, “It’s not all girly mudbaths and hoof-filings you know.”
That… that actually did sound rather nice right now.
“…Okay. I suppose I should have a look at what I have been paying for,” I said and picked my satchel up.
Might have as good or better resistance to cold as a Pegasus but going somewhere warm right now sounded really, really nice.
“Prepare to have your mind blown, wing-boy. Celestia know you need to learn to relax sometime.”
Yay! New chapter!
Best friend... right... just like these two are best friends.
i.ytimg.com/vi/jLYNP0A5yqU/maxresdefault.jpg
... really?
mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-2683188-1-150011.png
wow, that's just sad...
9087291
with the best friends one, he did not have it in italics so he was just saying best friends
now for the solar guards, the changelings were SHAPESHIFTERS meaning they had the element of surprise even when all of canterlot knows they are there cause they don't use magic to hide themselves thus they were anyone and everyone rendering the guards useless and then there are the numbers like what 4x the number of the guards
This is an incomplete sentence.
Apart from that, I rather liked this chapter!
The interactions between Sunny and Page are so shippy, I love it.
As we keep seeing, their affections for one another are growing. Softly, slowly. This pleases me greatly. (It reminds me of how I got with my best friend.)
Continue as you please. I look forward to more.
9087291
Best Friends.
I love it.
9087336
Me too.
I can't wait for the inevitable conversation where Page finally accepts the fact he likes Sunset and Luna and Twilight give them their blessing... as long as they're in on it.
9087324
Oh yes, breaking down a city wide shield by repeatedly ramming it, falling down like green blazing meteors and then swarm everything while firing green lasers everywhere. The very definition of a stealth attack!
I really want Celestia to win and then have Page and Sunset go on a date. She seems like a shipper to me.
This chapter felt way to frickin short :)
What are you doing man? What are you doing to me?!
It’s wishfullfillment to have him and Luna be a thing, but you made it work.
Now you got these two “best friending” it up cuter than bunny ears on a crusader.
Your playing with my heart!
9087782
Doesn't every chapter feel that way?
9087291
No, definitely not. Even if the writers probably aren't aware of it, they actually locked in the role and training of the guard as well as Equestria's security doctrine as a whole in a very coherent way, and direct combat definitely isn't the guard's job.
Long story short, they are actually a police force trained and equipped to support a cooperative public with training focused on deescalation and negotiation over combat whenever possible. That works well to minimize the cases of them hurting ponies they shouldn't, and the fact that the public is generally peaceful and cooperative means they don't face too much risk from doing this. The flip side of this is that they are terrible in a fight because their conditioning is focused on avoiding hurting others whenever possible which is exactly opposite to how you train a military (Incidentally, the reverse is also true, and using a real military as a police force tends to result in a lot of dead civilians because their training is focused on killing the enemy so they'll generally react with lethal force a lot more quickly than police will).
Actual large scale war is largely avoided by diplomacy and strategic deterrence thanks to Celestia so there isn't a real need for a standing army, and the remaining threats are dealt with by small elite teams like the Wonderbolts (who we saw get called to deal with Spike's greed growth) or the Elements (the season 2 premier is a perfect example) who are well suited to dealing with individuals or small groups, but don't have the numbers to provide large-scale security.
9088045
Yeah but this one felt shorter
I would have preferred that Page's guard be called the 'Battle Maids'. Still I would like to see how he looks in a maid's dress uniform.
9088211
I know they won't do it but she also has the Mares from A.U.N.T.I.E. her secret agency which are like her X-files division dealing with the other stuff, like bugbears.
9088994
Yeah, they would be another example of a small specialist force to deal with specific problems, and it is almost certain that there are others we know nothing about.
How did his terminator story go?
9089530
I've always seen them as a federal police force, though the show never makes a distinction. Like Manehatten or any of the other large cities would have their own police forces as would the smaller settlements would also have self organized police, the guard would serve as a national police force able to do the larger scale enforcement and investigations as well as looking sexy in that armor for their majesties.
9090222
It's hard to say anything about the larger organization and division of responsibilities, especially since they tend to be insanely convoluted in the real world, but that is definitely a plausible organizational framework.
I personally go with all the law enforcement units being part of the same overarching organization with centralized training and personnel management supporting forces assigned to specific duty stations like cities, towns, or sections of the countryside. Equestria generally doesn't need the additional layers of enforcement countries like the US use because they don't seem to have the kind of heavy duty, large-scale crime those organizations are used for, so they just use the cluster of other organizations for the occasional high end problem. This also means they don't need to deal with jurisdictions like we do so guards can operate across borders if they need to, although I wouldn't expect it to happen often. The one big exception I see to this doctrine is disaster response where guards would be deployed away from their normal areas to help deal with the situation since disaster response requires a lot of bodies to be effective, although this would be rare since they can control the weather and thus prevent all the weather-related disasters we have to deal with.
Nothing to say she cant have the throne as the trap, and a lovely both win, just for amusement and showing off an intellect.
Believe me, Sunset: Celestia does know.
I may also be the odd one out because I can absolutely see Sunset and Page really being “just” best buds without feeling an urgent need to ship them up to this point. Now Page and Celestia, on the other hoof...that strikes me as pretty much inevitable at some point in the future. They’re both quasi-immortal and already pretty close to both each other and Luna on a personal level, Page and Luna have already discussed some of the implications of immortality for one’s love-life, and I would fully expect eventually getting at least a bit curious about one’s similarly long-lived peers in that respect to be among the latter. The only question, to me, is whether we’ll actually see their relationship reach that point within these stories; Clear Skies was something of a complication I didn’t expect, and if she’s on the level and everything, the Pagelestia ship may have to legitimately drop anchors for a while.
https://youtu.be/T7rrQjyLaQM?t=555
This is going to be one heck of a Canterlot wide military mock fight 👏
I think it’s more the other way around
They ways to cheat with his abilities? The guard will not sleep until Page is occupied otherwise.
That why any military campaign against Equestria will end in desaster !
11642410
The whole "as close to atomic devastation as you can get" thing was not reason enough?
This will not end well, for one or the other. Unless they draw?