Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

A Streak Of Yellow

"Why is everything you show me dyed yellow?" The two unicorns sat in a somewhat dingy back-room that Gilda suspected was an employees' break-room, but which Rarity the Unicorn insisted on calling her atelier.

"Gold, darling. This is goldenrod. That over there is saffron. This piece is lemon." The white unicorn's accent wavered uncertainly. Half the time she sounded like a less brutish Trots speaker, and the rest of the time, she trilled unpredictably in various half-accents. Gilda could swear she could hear the fashionista shifting her vowels in imitation of Gleaming Shield's flat, clipped tones, especially after she'd found out that the young lieutenant hailed from the beloved capital.

"Whatever, those are all shades of yellow. Yellow, yellow, yellow - whether you call it after a fruit or a flower or the stripe running down Blueblood's back, it's all yellow." Gleaming Shield's eyes lost all their residual good humor as the hated officer's name escaped her pursed lips. Blueblood's presence in the garrison had been an unwelcome surprise to her, and Gilda had heard several such slurs in the weeks since that particular revelation.

"Careful, darling, you don't want ponies hearing you talk about the Prince-major that way." Gilda couldn’t fit in the room itself without crowding the two unicorns and their captive griffquin, who was standing awkwardly in the open space in front of a table overflowing with swatches of cloth and whole bolts of fabric.

"Everypony knows that clown is only courtesy royalty. One mare births one lackwit foal under color of matrimony a thousand years ago and ponies until the end of eternity or Celestia's dotage - whichever comes first - will insist on calling the by-blows 'royalty'. My descent is as royal as his. Hay, your descent is probably bluer blooded than that thin-gored loose-boweled coward. Just on the other side of the blanket."

"Miss Shield, I will not stand here and have my ancestry impugned by anypony! Not even you."

"Why? It isn't an insult in Canterlot. To be descended from royal bastards is the very peak of respectability. A bastard with a bit of Platinum in her is worth a hundred common ponies boasting family trees hung with nothing but eons of impeccable decency. Bastardy is the perfect preparation for a life in politics."

"Whatever happened to you to turn a fresh-faced, beautiful young filly into such a hopeless cynic, Gleaming Shield?"

"Half your family blown to gibblets by griffon terrorists will do the trick. Now, why yellow?"

"Your troopers are blue-feathered, darling. It's simple color coordination." The griffquin currently suffering the slings and needles of Rarity’s art rolled his eyes under the cascade of yellow fabric. While Grant the Griffquin happened to be blue-crested and blue-winged, it wasn’t necessarily true of the entire battalion. Not all of them. Well, yes, a majority of the battalion were blue-feathered, and the corporals in particular Gilda had difficulty telling apart when they weren't yelling at her. But Gilda wasn't the only brown or grey-feathered bird in the Territorials, not by a long shot. She looked around at the other griffquin guards Gleaming Shield had brought with them, kicking their paws in the corridor outside Rarity’s atelier. Gustav and his second, on the other talon, were all classic crab-back blue griffons. Perhaps a mistake on the lieutenant’s part?

"The Princess's Own are all in crimson." It was true. Gilda had just seen a talons' worth the other day, dragging their day's catch out of the stews just as the Fifth Territorial had arrived at the garrison's Porta Gryphonia from the day's crab-back march.

"And ruby, and primrose. It makes them look like a fruit arrangement gone terribly wrong, my dear lieutenant. Our griffons are to be pattern-cards of good taste, not terrifying 'beefeaters'." This, too was true. But if the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers were a fruit arrangement, they were one that had passed through a massacre, blood-splattered and bristling with blades. The 'beefeaters' had been well-carved, carrying at least one of their own, wounded terribly. The rebels didn't give up their own without vicious fights, and every single one of the Princess's Rangers had been scarred and battered from a decade spent at the sharp end of the spear.

"You know that's a myth, cattle are full citizens of the kingdom these days. Nopony would feed them to our griffish soldiery to make them more vicious than they already are."

"Gleaming Shield! Your bat-hen is right behind you, should you be insulting the entire tribe like that in front of her?" Gilda looked up, confused to be suddenly part of the conversation. Why wasn’t Grant the Griffquin the victim of this sudden attention?

"Gilda, what do I think about you griffons?" She stood straighter, determined to hold up her end of the interrogation.

"You believe us to be bloody-beaked cannibals and irredeemable monsters, lieutenant ma'am." True again.

"Quite right! And are you?" What a question!

"You forget we're also greedy, sadly unharmonic, and prone to pointless squabbling, lieutenant ma'am." Gilda relaxed a little at Gleaming Shield's approving sneer.

"You see, Rarity?"

"Hrm. Well, if you're going to be that way… irrelevant. Yellow! Goldenrod, at least. It's a style imperative."

"Would prefer something not associated with cowardice." Gilda couldn't imagine how badly the others would take it if the crowds' love turned to mockery.

"See? Even the rocks cry out against your yellows, Rarity!"

"Not a roc, lieutenant ma'am. Not that it wouldn't be a good idea to recruit out east. Not sure if they're talky birds, though, lieutenant ma'am."

"We are not travelling into the Undiscovered East so that you could collect a pet monster, Gilda."

"Bet it would wow 'em during parade, lieutenant ma'am."

"She's not wrong, Lieutenant Shield. I happen to know where I can get you roc feathers."

"Cheaply?" Gilda's attention drifted as the conversation left her behind, but kept her ears open, interested as always in the possibility of bits somehow making their way her way.

"Pfft! Of course not. But I've seen your credit check, Lieutenant. You could afford it, easily." True enough. The mare never spent any of it on herself or anything to make her life any easier, though.

"Not when I look at the prices you're offering on gemstone matrixes."

"I'm giving you those broaches at half of the local wholesale price, Lieutenant Shield! And much of that is the cost of the setting. You're getting the stones themselves essentially free. Not that I couldn't find them on a simple amble up the shoreline any time I chose, but it's a matter of opportunity costs, don't you know!"

"Yes, and I'll be doing the uniformity spellwork myself. Simple enough cantrips, I don't know why the other battalions don't do it. Nevertheless, I prefer my bits where they can make friends. The fact that they produce munitions and equipment as a side-effect is merely gravy." The lieutenant didn't allow Gilda anywhere near her ledgers, but they took up an entire locked casket that had trailed her other baggage like the greyest and least joyful of camp-followers from posting to posting.

"You have to spend bits to make bits." Heresy! Gilda fumed at this pony nonsense.

"I have no financial interest in the Fifth Territorial outshining the other Griffish battalions."

"Oh, but you certainly have an egotistical interest, don't you? And, one might say, a career interest."

"You, on the other hand, very much have a financial interest in getting me to waste my ancestors' bits on impossibly expensive fripperies."

"Why else would you come to me, Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, if you weren't bent on impossibly expensive fripperies?" Gilda didn't see how this followed. The white mare didn't operate in one of the half-dozen high-fashion, high-ticket shops that catered to the rich and powerful of Trottingham. They'd passed through half of those before an assistant had passed one of the guards a note directing them to the decidedly middle-class store that Rarity's patron Sweat Shirt operated. They had discovered that Rarity could offer them the same quality as the expensive shops, at a fraction of the price. Gilda hadn't figured that one out just yet.

"Now, mind you, I can only get you one full outfit on such short notice. I am, and I say this with with all due modesty, the fastest and best seamstress you will ever encounter, but I am only a single mare, and I don't do sweatshop labor. Talk to Sweat Shirt about mass production plans."

The mousy little earth pony in the corner (who apparently was the eponymous Sweat Shirt, and could, demonstratively, disappear in plain sight) barely managed to get out an "I think that-" before Rarity interrupted her.

"She's the best I've worked with so far. But we still need to work up a piecework process. We can't get you good uniforms on this proposal, overnight. There are ponies who could do that for you, but they're devils, every one of them. They'd take your bits at twice the markup, and the shoddy woolen yarn will rot off the stitches inside of a month. Put yourselves in our hooves, and we will dress your griffons to the nines. In a month."

The lieutenant frowned, displeased. "I need something this week, I think."

"As I said, I can get you one outfit, done bespoke, and we'll need to adjust the patterns for the mass production anyways. But if you want something splashy and impressive, on overnight demand? I'm definitely thinking jaunty little hats, with big flashy feather fascinators well-stitched and supported so they don't fall off halfway through a march."

"Have you seen the marches? They tend towards the strenuous. That's a lot of stress."

"Darling, please, I'm a professional. These will stay in place come tartarus or high water. My guarantee."

"Fine. Who's this roc feather supplier? And do they have them in anything other than yellow?"

---

The Stinging Needle's feather dealer wasn't in the garment district, or really, anywhere respectable at all. Even Gilda could tell that when the paving-stones ran out, you were in the filthy end of the city. And the muck quickly turned to mire once they left the pavement behind.

Gilda could tell this, because Rarity filled the air around her with a never-ending stream of complaints and regrets about having to dirty her hooves in this depraved district. Well, the mud itself was kind of a clue, but mud had been a part of Gilda's life long before she'd been captured into the Territorials. The lieutenant had complained once that Gilda could find a patch of mud in the princess's throne room.

The Territorial guard-griffons were on their paws, looking around alertly as the stone buildings of the inner city transitioned into more traditional Griffish wattle-and-daub shacks and hovels. Every other block, the residential row-houses were separated by modest warehouses with large sky-docks. A few along the way were burnt and ruined, sign of a rebel nest burnt out by the strike-forces.

This was not the safe part of the city.

"Lieutenant ma'am," Gilda muttered to her superior, trying not to eye the back of the other unicorn picking her dainty way around a puddle in the middle of the road. "Are we absolutely positive about this mare? This smells like we're being the stupid sort of dangerous."

"Pfft. I could only be that lucky, Gilda. You realize your idiot friends' attempt to attack Skye was the only real combat the Fifth has seen in a year?" The other griffons moved in a practiced formation, the corporal and an old salt on point, the other two trailing as a rear guard.

"Glad to be of service, lieutenant ma'am. I regret to inform you they won't be obliging again, on account of being dead. Or me."

"Lady Rarity! My bat-hen thinks you're leading us into a rebel ambush. Could I be so fortunate?"

"Oh, heavens, no, no. The bumpkins are far too dull, I couldn't possibly work with griffons who think that everything must be in a shade of stone or wattle. If one must be a brute, you should be a brute with panache, I say!" And as she said, they came into sight of yet another undistinguished stone-walled warehouse, larger than the average, towering over the squats and sad little rowhouses that made up the quiet griffish neighborhood Rarity had led the Territorials into.

Inside the warehouse was a deep darkness, barely relieved by a few inadequate firefly-lamps scattered far overhead, including a cluster around the surprisingly large skydock in the center of the building. A skydock which was closed and well-barred, against what, Gilda had no idea.

"Lady George! I have visitors for you, your eminence!" Rarity could project when she wanted to, in Gilda's startled opinion. The warehouse was emptier than she'd expected, only containing the occasional rolled-up carpet, piles of bales lining the back walls, and some enormous item beside the entrance they'd come through, covered in heavy cloth like somegriff was trying to hide a hovel inside the warehouse itself.

"Miss Rarity," said somegriff far overhead, in a deep, heavy, feminine voice that fell like rocks. Gilda looked upwards, trying to spot the speaker.

"Darling! Could you come down? We may have a customer for your feather supply."

"I thought you said it wasn't safe to sell into the local market."

"Darling, I said it wasn't worth it to sell into this market. They'd just break them up in the sweatshops and make a tenfold profit on the fashion atrocity thereby. I have a practical use for your great feathers, one which will result in everygriff cheering at your… your product's magnificence!"

Gilda heard a heavy tread, like an elephant moving. Griff saw something in the darkness shifting, and then looked up, astonished, as she realized that the shrouded 'hovel' was moving beside them. It bent down into the feeble glow of the nearest firefly lamp, and Gilda nearly lost control of her bowels as she saw a beaked head as big as the lieutenant appear out of the darkness.

A crown small only by the scale of the head wearing it glinted in the firefly light, and the eyes stared at the delegation which had entered its lair.

"You have my attention," the crowned monstrosity rumbled, in still somehow feminine tones.

"Uniform headgear, Lady George! I want to use your feathers to bring out the joy of these good griffons' performances. It will be marvellous, I can see it now!"

"Interesting. I was beginning to think that my time in this uncomfortable place had been wasted. All of my other meetings have been sad disappointments. You wouldn't disappoint me yet again, would you, Miss Rarity?"

"Perish the thought, Lady George! Oh, my stars, I have forgotten all my manners. Lieutenant Gleaming Shield, may I present the Lady George, merchant, adventurer and explorer of the heretofore undiscovered East! She's brought with her the most marvellous Abyssinian carpets, jadestone, and, most importantly, these glorious roc feathers!"

"Of course she brought roc feathers, you silly bitch," squawked Gilda. "You've brought us into a roc's lair! You've killed us all!"

Author's Note:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help to Shrink Laureate, Oliver, and the general Company.

Comments

[fractalman]

"Gold, darling. This is goldenrod. That over there is saffron. This piece is lemon."

Yellow, got it.

"Of course she brought roc feathers, you silly bitch," squawked Gilda. "You've brought us into a roc's lair! You've killed us all!"

[Kencolt]

Well, at least one question has been answered.

Rocs are talky birds.

[Oliver]

9238804

Oh, you have no idea!

[Neece]

"Half your family blown to gibblets by griffon terrorists will do the trick. Now, why yellow?"

Wait, half?

Cue serious amounts of berating and shenanigans

[Mitch H]

9238951
Gleaming Shield has been known to indulge in hyperbole occasionally.

[Neece]

9238961
Makes sense. Girl knows no chill though, she should take het bat-hen (what the heck is a bat-hen?) and get some... stress relief (you can try and pry this ship from my cold, dead hands!! It not being nearly a romantic situation that would make for a horrible relationship notwithstanding )

[FanOfMostEverything]

Huh. And here I was expecting the supplier to be Fluttershy. This next bit should be very interesting indeed.

[Mitch H]

9238980

The griffon equivalent of a batman. Known in civilian life as a valet. Despite the apparent similarity to the superhero, it derives from a completely different 'bat', etymologically speaking.

(Good Soldier Svejk was himself a batman. Batmen were for a time informally known in the American army as 'dog-robbers' in tribute to Svejk's civilian occupation before the war.)

And huh. Gilda is overdue for promotion.

[Bahamuttone]

outside Rarity’s atlier.

atelier

[Vaguely Demented]

Selling ones feathers is about as mercenary as I could imagine. Unless they regrow at a magical rate in which case they have found someone down on their luck enough to be doing the equivalent of selling blood and plasma.

[Cerulean Blue]

One more bird type to add to the menagerie

[Scyphi]

The lieutenant had complained once that Gilda could find a patch of mud in the princess's throne room.

Somehow, I can believe this, and I can totally see Gilda doing so just out of spite.

I liked this chapter. It has focus to it that the story up to now has been a bit lacking as it worked to set the scene, and it also gives the promise of this continuing for awhile, which I hope it does.

Since I saw others asking about various lingo and other slang used in the story, I might as well join in--I feel like I should already know this, or be able to figure it out, but what is meant from the term "crab-back?" Given the context, I've assumed it either has to do with a griffon's coloration, uniform, or military role or position, but can't decide on which one and the story, unless I missed it, hasn't seen fit to elaborate for me yet.

[Mitch H]

9239450

The Isles griffons, like the Scottish, have a very distinct phenotype. Instead of pale redheads, they tend towards variations on a blue-feathered color scheme. Likewise, the waters around the inner Isles teem with the Equestrian version of Atlantic blue crabs, which make a distinctive national food, both in the Isles in general, and in Trottingham in particular.

As for calling their troopers 'crab-backs', it's just a griffish variant on the not-so-old tradition of calling British redcoats 'lobsterbacks'.

We perhaps will get some of this at some point in the text, as we've yet to touch upon the famed Trottingham culinary revolution that our non-alternate-universe Rarity talked so enthusiatically about in "Simple Ways". I'm pretty sure the daring dishes that made up the 'revolution' included a simply scandalous amount of crabmeat, at least when it comes to food intended for ponies.

[Scyphi]

9239496
Now see, I figured it was going to be something like that, but probably because I know next to nothing about crabs, I wasn't able to put two with two.

[Kencolt]

9238990
One notes that, in a sense, Alfred Pennyworth is the near-absolute epitome of the trope. More than once he's been referred to as "the Batman's batman".

[Stellar_]

Loving this so far

[Dorath]

Okay, we have Rarity to go with Twilight Gleaming, the question is, will the rest of the Mane 6 make an appearance?

[Love able chaos]

Well I guess they'll die.

[Razzy]

Oh, hey, a, talking marshmallow.

[Seraphem]

Interesting story so far. Going for a more...cynical take on the world then I usually prefer for pony fics but, it makes it work well. It's a good AU,similar enough to the core to be uniquely tied to the setting and recognizable, but different enough to stand on it's own and not trigger bits of uncanny valley. Focusing on Gilda and the griffons likely helping with both of those.

Not really sure what more to say about thing beyond being interested and eager to see where this all goes. Only major question so far for me is was 'Gleaming Shield' always called that, or did she change her name in honor of her brother?

[Mitch H]

10825204

was 'Gleaming Shield' always called that, or did she change her name in honor of her brother?

The latter, more or less. Also, in the tradition of ponies renaming when they get their cutie marks, vz. Chiffon Swirl becoming Cup Cake. And the pony once known as Twilight Sparkle got a shield-and-sword/w-stars mark instead of the canon starburst-and-stars. You can see it on the cover art of the story.