Hearts & Minds
(♫)
When she’d first seen the dark-armored ponies marching in to seize the Town Hall, Applejack hadn’t put a lot of stock in the idea that they were actually undead Lunar Rebels. It made much more sense, she thought, for them to simply be ordinary ponies in elaborate costumes- at least until she got a proper look at them up close and the big horrible one that said she was the Mare-in-the-Moon showed up. Applejack hadn’t put a lot of stock in that at first, either. It was an Apple family tradition, after all, to keep superstitious folk from meddling with the Cairns and try to stamp out the rumors they tended to spread of ghostly Nightmare soldiers slinking out at night to cut off the heads of disobedient fillies and other nonsense. But now that the evidence had literally stared her in the face, it all made a weird sort of sense. There was, after all, a whole chapter in the Purple Book For Farmers that dealt with spells and potions to preserve things; Applejack used those every harvest on everything from zap-apple jam to next year’s branch cuttings. Who could say there wasn’t a spell of that sort that could be applied to living ponies? A proper medical mare could probably find eight million problems with that thinking, but Applejack wasn’t a physician, and wasn’t ashamed to admit she didn’t know the answers to those questions any more than old Dr. Greymare up at the hospital would be ashamed of not knowing how to rotate crops or call up a swarm of honeybees. The fact of the matter was, the Lunars- or whatever they were- looked to be in Ponyville to stay, and if Nightmare Moon- or whatever she was- meant what she said about the Sun then Sweet Apple Acres was going to need to prepare.
Fluttershy had accompanied her back from town and volunteered to scout out the fields for any immediate trouble. Applejack, in turn, had spent the last half-hour with every almanac, herbal, and ledger her family owned spread out on the kitchen table under the big crystal lamp, but thus far it had gotten her absolutely nowhere. Without the rising and setting of the Sun to pull fresh nutrients up from deep underground, it was only a matter of time before their entire crop stunted and withered in the fields. There were ways around that, of course, but they required time and skilled labor and expensive reagents- all things that Applejack suspected would soon be in very short supply around Ponyville. Sweet Apple Acres had never had an exorbitant profit margin- Granny wouldn’t have it any other way, in fact- but by her reckoning they could now either raise prices until half the town starved, or let the crop fail completely and starve along with everypony. And that wasn’t even considering what the weather teams would now have to deal with…
With Granny Smith still nowhere to be found, Big Macintosh still in town looking for her, and Applebloom sent up to her room for her own safety, it was left to Winona’s barking to alert Applejack that somepony else was moving around the farmhouse. It couldn’t have been Fluttershy- Winona knew Fluttershy, and in any case the last Applejack had seen of her in this weird perpetual night Fluttershy was around back. She was out of her seat and halfway to the front room when whoever it was struck the door with what sounded like metal shoes in three quick, purposeful raps.
(♫)
She peered through the window.
Two Lunar soldiers waited for her on the porch outside. Both were stallions, with the same ashen coats, dark purple manes, and slitted yellow eyes as all of their fellows, but that was where the similarities ended. The one on the left was a stocky little earth pony, oddly well-fed and fresh-faced compared to what seemed to be the standard for their group. He wore very light armor, little more than an open-muzzle helmet and steel sabatons over a belted indigo tunic, and although a crossbow hung from the bandoleer across his chest the majority of it was occupied by what Applejack recognized as old-fashioned alchemists’ phials filled with concoctions unknown. The one on the right was a taller unicorn clad in field plate; from what little could be seen under it he seemed to be made of nothing but bones and wiry, corded muscle with heavily-scarred hide stretched overtop. There was a longsword slung across his back, and his eyes and ears were in constant motion as he scanned the countryside for some perceived threat. Applejack wondered idly if it had hurt to bend his horn backwards like that.
“Apple… Jack?” the earth pony asked. His voice still had a sort of scratchy, coltish quality to it that made it more difficult than usual for the farmer to get a read on him, but he didn’t seem either overly threatening or artificially at ease- rather, he gave every impression of genuine concern. “I am Mage-Ensign Foxglove, a journeymare herbalist, and this is Lancepesade Smoky Mirror.”
They had seen her. Applejack bit back a curse, then went ahead and opened the door. If they wanted to bust in and run her through, at least now Big Mac wouldn’t need to get the lock replaced.
“What’d… what’d y’all need?” she asked, careful to keep her voice level. These two seemed a bit more dangerous than Twilight Sparkle. She could probably take one or the other hoof-to-hoof, or both at the same time if they weren’t armed, but as things currently stood she had to admit that her chances weren’t particularly good.
“Councilpony Smith had told us this was the largest plot of private-held land in Ponyville”, the plant mage continued, “so we were sent on behalf of the Lunar Republic to aid you in preserving it through the changes that will come to pass. May we come inside to speak?”
It took Applejack a moment to parse his odd, antiquated speech, and as she was doing so his fellow soldier spoke up for the first time. “Mayhap… it would be better… if we met in town, instead?” He had the flat, clipped tone of a constable, but there seemed to be a great deal of anxiety underneath it.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” Foxglove corrected him, before looking back at Applejack, “unless, of course, thou wouldst rather we all went to town?”
Very briefly Applejack actually considered the proposition, before remembering that she had no idea when Fluttershy would be coming back and no way to alert the pegasus of her whereabouts. She figured that if they’d wanted to force their way in with hostile intent the Lunars could have just brought more troops, so she took a deep breath and nodded. “Ah s’pose y’all may as well step inside.”
They did so in lockstep, the lance-corporal still seemingly scanning every nook and cranny for some imagined threat. As the three returned to the kitchen, Foxglove’s eyes widened. “I’d no idea thou werest also a mage! Dost thee by any chance study alchemy?”
Briefly confused, Applejack waited for him to explain how in Tartarus he’d come to that conclusion before realizing he was pawing carefully through the almanacs she’d spread out on the kitchen table.
“You… uhh… do know those’re just ledgers an’ the like, right? Or, well, Ah reckon some of ‘em have spells, but nothing any other farmstead ‘round these parts wouldn’t have.”
“Everypony hath books like these?” Foxglove murmured, reaching for a copy of Astrology as Applied to Plantings and Harvests, “May I?”
“Go on, it’s not like Ah can stop-”
Applejack was cut off abruptly as Smoky Mirror yelled “Above thee!” and twisted around, incredibly quickly, longsword unsheathed and held in his telekinesis with obvious threatening intent.
On the landing at the top of the kitchen stairs, Applebloom made a strangled little “yaa-urk” noise and leaped backwards from where she’d been peering down between two of the banisters.
Immediately, the stallion brought his weapon back to chest level and backed over into the narrow space between the wall and one of the cupboards, head still swiveling back and forth like a spooked dog, ears flat against his skull and slit-pupilled eyes unnaturally wide. It was hard to tell under all that armor, but Applejack thought she could see him shaking.
“Applebloom,” the farmer commanded in what she hoped was a firm but calm tone, “Ah think you should wait for us in your room, okay?” She watched as her younger sister disappeared from view, listening to her hooves against the floorboards and the squeak of her door opening.
“Smoky…” Foxglove was muttering as he stepped carefully forward, “Smoky, calm thyself, ‘tis but a filly.”
“I know,” the unicorn snarled through gritted teeth.
“Smoky, I… think ‘twould be best for everyone if thou waited without.”
After a few seconds the unicorn swallowed, hard, and returned the sword to its scabbard. “Aye… aye, thou art… aye, sir.” He pulled open the back door with exaggerated care and stepped outside. Applejack walked back over to the table and took a seat. She tried not to listen to Mirror’s pacing hoofsteps and occasional labored breathing, but with the back door hanging open it was difficult not to.
After an awkward few seconds, Foxglove cleared his throat. “Thou toldest me that… everypony here hath such a collection?”
“Well, not everypony, but anypony who’s willing to take the time and learn to do her job right’ll have at least a few books and articles for reference.”
The plant mage cocked his head to one side, “What about the ponies who cannot read?”
“You mean, like, blind ponies? Well, ‘bout five hundred years back they came up with this thing called Baylle that’s like an alphabet made a’ little bumps you can learn to ‘read’ by feelin’ ‘em with the frog a’ your hoof….”
He laughed, nervously. “What strange times thou liveth in!”
“Well, it ain’t helped me one bit, so far. Ah found… uhhh… this here thing…” From beneath a pile of price tables Applejack extricated the Apple family’s copy of Cobblestone’s Illustrated History of Agriculture, which she had opened to a full-page reproduction of a much older pamphlet entitled Fortifying Crops Ravaged by the Cruel Dark of the Nightmare Whore. The margins were decorated with woodcut illustrations of a dark-colored alicorn standing rampant atop a pile of skeletal corpses with a wailing foal pinned in her jaws. Applejack experienced an unexpected flicker of embarrassment, but if Foxglove thought anything at all of it he gave no sign, “… but none a' the hoof positions in the ritual make a lick a’ sense!”
The plant mage fell silent for a turn, eyes roving over the print and occasionally muttering to himself.
(♫)
Applejack realized that she could hear Smoky Mirror talking to somepony on the porch outside: “So… dost thou serve here? For Sweet Apple Acres, I mean,” the soldier asked.
“Uhm… a lot of the time, actually, I guess?” To Applejack’s surprise, the other voice was Fluttershy’s. “But there’s always ponies around town who need help with pets and wild creatures. The Apples just have a lot more problems because their farm is so close to the Everfree.”
There was another, longer pause as Foxglove pulled a grubby scrap of parchment from his tunic and appeared to begin checking it against what was printed on the page.
“Are… you all right? You look… nervous,” Fluttershy asked from the porch.
“’Tis naught,” she heard Smoky say, some of the old military sharpness coming back into his voice.
“Are you sure?” Fluttershy continued.
“Aye… nay. I do not know. I… will be all right… in a while.”
There was a sizable part of Applejack that wanted to keep an eye- or at least an ear- on the lance corporal for Fluttershy’s sake, but it was about then that Foxglove cleared his throat and tapped a section of text with his steel-shod hoof. “Whoever wrote this must hath looted the work of some of our own mages. The ritual calls upon the power of the Moon, through our Sovereign Princess Luna. Thou must take our Oath ‘ere thee casteth it.” He dug into one of the pockets of his tunic and extracted a round plate of some kind of dark stone about half again the size of Applejack’s hoof, the top surface inlaid with a silver crescent and surrounded by a circle of incredibly detailed runes; and then a small phial of black liquid that didn’t seem so much opaque as a place where light itself ceased to function normally. Looking very closely, Applejack could almost convince herself that the material was filled with dozens of tiny stars. “The changes will take a few nights, so if thou art prepared I can administer it now.”
“Whoa, hold up there, you mean…?”
“Thou wouldst become like us, aye. ‘Tis a great change, true, and I shant think any less of thee if thou needest time to decide, but the sooner we can begin the sooner thine business here can resume.” He stepped back and seemed to purposefully avoid eye contact.
Applejack stared at the plate and the potion he’d left on the table. The idea of willingly joining the ranks of a usurper army like the Lunars, if that was indeed what they were, almost made her physically ill, but she’d been in business far too long to trust her gut that blindly and she knew her own limits. She wondered if she was so opposed to the concept simply because she was afraid of change.
On the porch behind her, Smoky Mirror was speaking in a flat, dead voice. He was quieter, now, and Applejack kept missing whole sections of words. “… Morningstar was carrying most of our provisions, and the map … with her gone … Jasper and Orrey sought to … … … from a Solar patrol, but … … that deep in Solar territory, so I split off… … … must have walked for three days, more or less … … … naught but snow and dead trees as far as the eye could see … … found the farmhouse around sunset … much like this one, though I saw they grew oranges… … was trying to force the lock on the storehouse when everything started to go black…”
Foxglove’s voice once again snapped Applejack back to the matter at hoof. “I know how difficult this must be for thee. ‘Twas difficult for me. But I promise you that under the Republic things will be better than they are now. We shall repeal Celestia’s taxes, lift restrictions on the spells and potions available to thee… thou canst hire more laborers, take a seat in the local government…”
Applejack’s eyes narrowed, “You think we’re strugglin’, do you? Mah Granny’s the one who taught me simplicity. She wouldn’t be interested in any a’ that high honors business, and I sure ain’t either.”
Foxglove just nodded. “Of course.”
Outside, the Corporal still went on. “… awoke next to a roaring fire with a bowl of chicken broth next to me. The first thing I saw was Celestia’s Sun on a banner over the chimney … … … family that owned the place came running when they heard … …filly and two colts, neither more than ten years old… … perfectly happy under Celestia, if thou canst believe, but never once were they anything less than friendly … … … … another day or so before they heard the patrols would be about and sent me away … made it to the Republic camp in close to fighting shape at just about the same time Jasper did… Orrey had stayed behind to try to draw off the Solars they had gotten chasing them …”
For the first time since Applejack had begun listening in, Fluttershy spoke up. “I’m… sorry. Do you still miss him?”
“’Twas the damn fool’s own fault. ‘Tis not my trouble.”
The farmer forced herself to pay attention to what Foxglove was saying. “Thou dost notneed to do any such thing,” he admonished, “The Lunar Republic respects thy rights and the cultural autonomy of local communities. If thou dost want the damn cloudhumpers off thine land, nopony is forcing thee to employ them. Thou art well within thine rights to declare thine farm a sovereign tribal holding.”
“Ah’m sorry, what was that last part?” Applejack snapped almost on pure reflex. “You do know who casts the weather ‘round these parts, right?”
Foxglove actually physically backed away a little. Idly, the farmer wondered if he was having second thoughts about sending away his sword-wielding friend. “Well… I mean… if the pegasi doth not offend thee then then thou canst certainly permit them… after all, ‘tis thanks to Luna’s laws that mine brother was able to wed a unicorn…”
Applejack stalked after him, head bent down to his level the whole time. “Tax breaks and political favors for under-the-table deals? And then when I call ya on it, you back down like a nervous schoolfilly? Ah'm sorry, I thought y’all Lunar types were against the Day Court!”
This time, the plant mage reeled backwards almost as though he’d been struck on the nose. Then he blinked, lowered his head, and slowly sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “I am… truly, dreadfully sorry I even spoke of it,” he murmured, looking her right in the eye. “Thou art right, of course. Equestria has changed, and… ultimately, we are all but ponies, and we have been asleep for a long time. All… all I ask of thee is that thou keepest an open mind, and answerest our questions when we ask for thine help.” He reached back into his tunic and extracted a small, purple-velvet pouch, carefully slipping the plate and the potion inside before pocketing the collection once more. “I promise thee we shan’t make the same mistakes those Canterlot sloths are making every day, but we have so much catching-up to do. If thou canst aid us in that, it will be that much easier for thine farm -and thine kin and neighbors- going forward. If thou art unwilling to work with me, I can always spare thee the trouble and summon my commanding officer. Steel Shank is a pegasus himself, and so thou needst not fear offending that tribe without knowing.”
Applejack always considered herself to be more than capable of reading ponies, and was surprised to see that the alchemist seemed entirely sincere. For the first time, she thought about the everyday trials of running a business in modern Equestria; the constant pressure to compete with minotaur and Abyssinian imports that Celestia stubbornly refused to limit, and the seemingly daily scandals of misplaced taxes and vanishing subsidies. She’d always considered such things just to be the way the world was, but now that it had been proposed the idea of changing was… strangely liberating. She’d always considered herself a realist, but these were surreal times. She had her farm and her family to look out for, foremost, and any fighting she started would just cause more bloodshed. If working with the Lunars could prevent that…
“We took the whole valley a week after,” Smoky Mirror continued behind her, “I was still on light duty in the rear, but I had heard 'twas tough fighting all the way up. Now that it was safe to walk the main roads again I took some silver coin and slipped out of camp one day to find the farmhouse. Somepony… everything was burned to the ground. I buried what was left of them best I could and never came back… but what keeps me awake is that I… I never did learn who set that fire- the Solars, or our own.”
After that there was a lot of difficult-to-interpret motion. She thought she might have heard Fluttershy say something, or perhaps the Lunar was sobbing quietly to himself, or perhaps it was both.
Applejack remembered the ponies being carted into the hospital tent- some thrashing, some completely limp. She remembered the looks of panic on her neighbors’ faces as the Lunars had marched on the Town Hall. She’d heard the Canterlot mare talking about what those exact same Lunars had done a thousand years ago, and now she was seeing it firsthoof. Nightmare Moon, if that was really what the thing in the town hall was, had said as much to their faces. If they handed over control of the town to the Lunars, eternal night would be the least of Applejack’s problems, and she was lying to herself if she ever believed anything else.
“Thank y’all for comin’ by to chat with me,” she said to Foxglove, her voice perfectly level, “but Ah think it’d be best for everypony if y’all cleared outta here sooner, rather than later.”
The alchemist stood and adjusted his bandoleer, seemingly paying extra attention to keep his hooves away from the crossbow that hung from the center. “As you w-will, then,” he said, real fear creeping into his coltish voice for the first time since he’d arrived, “but I will warn thee… one greenhoof to another… that our Sovereign is not as patient as my commander and I.”
He shuffled out without another word, leaving her alone in the kitchen for a few moments before the sound of steel-shod hooves on the floorboards alerted her to the return of Fluttershy and Smoky Mirror. The Lunar was standing tall and looking straight ahead now, and when he spoke his voice was clipped and military-sharp. “I heard what thou said to Foxglove, and, for what it is worth… ‘twere the bravest thing I have ever seen any pony do.” Then he too stepped out into the unnatural night.
Applejack made her way into the sitting room, Fluttershy close behind. She sat down heavily on the rug and through sheer force of will compelled her hooves to stop shaking.
“Do you… think they’ll come after us?” the pegasus asked.
Idly, Applejack chewed on a strand of mane that had come loose from its tie as she looked out over the darkened countryside. Somepony was setting off bright purple flares somewhere deep in the Everfree- the farmer had no idea what that meant, but she doubted it was good.
“Ah doubt it, least not right away,” she finally said aloud. “Ah think they really do want all the help they can get right about now, and if they reckon they still got a chance to get us on their side they won’t wanna spook us. Sooner or later, though -and prob’ly sooner- they’re gonna figure out we ain’t listenin’, and when they do…” The farmer found herself turning to stare at the bookshelf over Fluttershy’s shoulder. On the very topmost shelf sat the warhammer and armor Granny Smith had once used in the Landsknechts- the elite earth pony specialist forces of the Equestrian Army. Applejack had always wondered if the gear would fit her, and really looking at it for the first time since she’d been a small filly she concluded that it probably could. “Hey, Fluttershy, you got any idea where that purple unicorn who was studyin’ them Lunars mighta’ gotten herself off to?”
(♫)
Pinkie Pie had been the one to notice that Rarity’s horn was starting to give out, albeit a little too late to stop her from dropping a stack of linens into the fountain in the village square. In truth, Pinkie herself wasn’t far behind- keeping everypony out of catatonia, blind panic, and other entirely unhelpful states was a challenge and she was rapidly running out of fresh material. After Rarity had littrally thrown in the towel -or more accurately dropped the towel, which sounded much more appropriately pathetic anyway- they’d retired to Carousel Boutique for drinks. Pinkie supposed that was really the only reasonable response to having your town taken over by ancient mutant zombie bat terrorists working for Princess Celestia’s creepy estranged sister who lived on the Moon, anyway.
Of course, when she’d heard that said ancient mutant zombie bat terrorists were going door-to-door- selling undeath insurance, maybe?- Rarity had even dimmed the building’s lights as a courtesy. Pinkie, for her part, wasn’t sure why anypony would want more of the things to come around, but come they did, like moths who were so rebellious they headed directly away from any flames and subsequently froze to death. Grumpy, grim moths- ‘Goths’, perhaps? No, that sounded ridiculous.
It was a pair of them that knocked on the glass front door. They always seemed to travel in pairs or more, or at least the not-completely-skeletal ones did, presumably so they wouldn’t get either mobbed or quietly knocked off by their newly-‘liberated’ subjects. Or maybe they found long walks through occupied territory to be unbearably romantic; or maybe, secretly, they were all in fact mortally afraid of the dark. Pinkie couldn’t pretend to know what, if anything, went through those ponies’ heads.
“Just stay here, I’ll talk to them,” Pinkie said, leaving the white unicorn to her drink in Carousel Boutique’s annoyingly orderly kitchen.
“Well, if you’re sure, dear…”
There were two mares waiting for her at the door, a unicorn and a pegasus. The pegasus looked young, thirteen or fourteen maybe, and too small and stringy for even her light flyer’s armor, shifting back and forth on her hooves like a filly at a doctor’s appointment. Pinkie wondered just when she’d last had a proper meal- not in a thousand years, of course, unless somepony had thought to build a snack bar into those crypts, but in this particular case it showed. The unicorn, on the other hoof, had obviously once been quite striking- powerfully but gracefully built, with the same lean, almost predatory features as the title character in those trashy Sapphire: Equestrian Commando comics Rainbow Dash was always reading. The lines starting to form around her muzzle and the streaks of gray decorating her indigo mane shouldn’t have changed that, but nonetheless she looked faded and simply worn down in a way that Pinkie couldn’t exactly describe- although the long, livid, bright-pink scar tracking from the tip of her muzzle, just past her left eye socket, and up under the metal of her helmet might have had something to do with it.
“Hail,” the unicorn greeted, in a voice that was right on the border between husky and outright abrasive, “I am Sergeant Catseye, and this is Private Rain Chaser. May we enter?”
“Oh! Lemme ask Rarity, it’s her shop!”
The tailor must’ve been listening through the open kitchen door, as her voice echoed back a moment later, “Oh, by all… means, dears!”
Pinkie supposed it wasn’t like either of them had much say in the matter.
She stepped back and watched as the Lunars advanced into the shop floor like they were scouting an enemy fortification, blades drawn as they prodded this or opened that. She saw Rarity step out from the kitchen to watch, looking a good bit more composed than when she and Pinkie had entered, and wondered what on the material plane the soldiers were even expecting to find in her clothing shop- a squad of Royal Guards hiding under fabric bolts or posing as mannequins, maybe?
The older one pulled Rarity’s dueling harness from its place of honor in the center of the display floor and began fiddling with it, and Pinkie saw the tailor grit her teeth and wince, but then the soldier nodded, returned it, and seemed about to head back for the door.
(♫)
Then the scrawny pegasus, Rain Chaser, ducked back behind the curtain leading to Rarity’s workshop, and came scampering out a moment later. “Moon and stars! Catseye, thou wilst wish to see this!”
Oh.
Right.
Catseye drew a rather deadly-looking broadsword, waving it in her telekinesis in a generally Pinkie-and-Rarity-ward direction. “Both of thee. Come with me. Slowly, now.” As the baker drew closer, Catseye gave both her and her friend a few none-too-gentle pokes with the hilt of the blade to get them into a line with herself at the back and Rain Chaser at the front, then started herding them back into the workshop.
Pinkie, for her part, was not especially fond of being poked- at least not by other mares, anyway- and began to wonder if they even needed to put up with that sort of treatment. She knew Rarity’s telekinesis had always been unusually strong for a unicorn without any formal training in the subject, and Pinkie herself could do some damage with her hooves- and, if all else failed, she could always just sit on one of the Lunars. But there weren’t just two of the rebels, there were… well… multiple, at the very least, and Rarity would never forgive Pinkie if she got the Boutique trashed needlessly. After all, red was very much last season. That, and long experience working the front counter at Sugarcube Corner had taught her that there was a certain class of ponies for whom the best possible course of action was just to smile and nod, like that one lunatic who kept barging in and insisting that there was some kind of horrible torture-dungeon concealed under the shop despite all evidence to the contrary. If Pinkie was in the business of torturing ponies at random with the same boring methods over and over again -which she wasn’t- why in Tartarus would she be doing it under a bakery owned by somepony else? Health violations were serious business, after all!
Once they had made their way into the workshop proper, Rain Chaser motioned Pinkie over into the far corner and flicked out a wingblade maybe a foot away from the earth pony’s chest. Pinkie could see quite clearly that her wing was shaking, although it was difficult to tell whether that was from anxiety or anger given the weird, beaked helmet she was wearing. Pinkie was sure there was some kind of system determining which bat-pegasi got those versus the open design, but was equally sure it was some boring nonsense about valor, heroism, and other really-hard-to-understand things.
Rarity, on the other hoof, was roughly prodded over into the center of the room, where Catseye barked “Where didst thee find our armor?”
“I… I bought it from the Rich family collection…” the dressmaker stammered, her legs shaking as she stared at the blade in front of her. Pinkie tried to keep up a reassuring face for her; it wasn’t like the baker could do much else at the moment.
“Fie!” the soldier barked, edging her blade a little closer to Rarity’s neck, “’Tis in too fine a condition to have come from anywhere but the Cairns.”
“W-well, yes, the Collection is from the Cairn at Sweet Apple Acres, but-”
“Aye, so, she doth confess!” the pegasus soldier cut in. “I say we end her here and now, and bring the body to the Square to explain what she hath done!” Rarity’s eyes, understandably, got a little wider at that pronouncement, but she didn’t give any other obvious sign of distress.
“Nay, Private. She will be taken before Our Sovereign Empress Luna, the charge of murder will be presented, a plea entered, a jury convened, and this will all be done properly.” Catseye’s sandpaper voice then dropped a few grit numbers. “And then we will have her head.”
So much for a fair trial under the great Lunar Republic… Pinkie thought to herself. And what kind of ‘republic’ has an ‘empress’ anyway?
“No, it’s- it’s not like that at all”, Rarity continued, “the Cairn was already open before my parents were born!”
“Aye, verily it was!” Catseye suddenly flipped her blade off to the side and headbutted Rarity, sending the slimmer mare stumbling back onto her haunches.
Pinkie decided she’d had more than enough. “Excuse me!” she yelled, “that armor’s in waaay worse condition than it’d be if she’d just dug it up.”
“Thou would best be quiet,” Catseye snapped, and swung the blade around towards Pinkie’s own neck, which the baker supposed was at least a little better than waving it at Rarity.
“No, no, look, the plates are still rusty, and all the original leather’s gone! It’s been outside for a hundred years!”
There was a long, painful stretch of time where nothing at all happened.
Then, abruptly, Catseye lowered her sword and bowed her head, Rain Chaser also pulling her bladed wing away at the unspoken command. The unicorn soldier just stood there for a minute, looking like she was trying to cough up a live frog or possibly swallow one back down again. “In that case… I apologize,” she finally said. “’Twas wrong of me to presume.”
“Wait, if… she did not open one of the Cairns, then who-”
“A local landowner named Idle Rich,” Rarity volunteered, “That was maybe… a hundred and twenty years ago?”
Catseye’s ears dropped downward. “So… there is no chance…”
“No, he’s… been dead for quite a while,” the tailor finished.
“So there really is nothing to be done, then.” Rain Chaser kicked the tile floor with surprising vehemence, digging out a small chunk with the edge of her steel sabaton. Pinkie knew Rarity would be too gracious to bill her for it. “The fool is out of even Our Sovereign’s reach.”
A sort of tired melancholia descended over the entire room, and Pinkie Pie very quickly began to find it intolerable. “Well...” she suggested, “If both of you really want to I could show you over to the graveyard and Rarity can lend you her shovel and we can all kick Idle’s skull around like a hoofball until you feel better?”
The leaden atmosphere vanished abruptly, replaced nearly as quickly with a weird, twisty-tangly sort of silence between herself and Catseye that nopony in the room- least of all the two mares themselves- seemed at all able to make any sense of. Then the soldier shook her head, her careworn features creasing into the first genuine smile Pinkie had seen from any of the invaders since they had arrived -she was surprised they even had the right muscles for it- and laughed out loud. “Nay, at least not now. Although I shall remember thine offer, once all of this is done!”
Now that they weren’t actively trying to kill each other, Pinkie was able to notice the Lunars’ oddly inquisitive gazes at the armor and weapons on display- which, she noticed, had been restored to a somewhat better condition than what the soldiers were actually wearing. It was a look she very much recognized from prospective customers. “So… I’m guessing you Lunars don’t get a lot of time to sit around and… uhh, polish your stuff or whatever the super-proper military word for it is?”
Catseye and Rain Chaser both shook their heads, and when she was sure they weren’t looking Pinkie gave Rarity a tiny nod.
“Well, if you’ve time I could fix a strap here, refit a plate there, perhaps change out a few of the worse-off sections,” the tailor said, “assuming that’s… well, allowed?”
(♫)
Catseye seemed to consider it for a good long few seconds as Rain Chaser shifted her helmeted head back and forth. Pinkie noticed the muffled squeak of metal on metal every time she moved too far to one side, accompanied by a slight pause that seemed to be caused by some measure of resistance. It got very obnoxious, very quickly, and she wasn’t surprised when Chaser kept looking expectantly at Catseye.
Finally, the unicorn officer nodded. “Mayhap the Captain would not approve, but I see no harm in it. The soldiers in that Cairn would want for their equipment to find some use… ‘tis how I came to own mine, in fact."
“You guys were really that short on equipment?” Pinkie asked, genuinely curious and also hoping to keep the Lunars talking as Rarity collected her tools and began fiddling with their gear.
“Aye, though ‘tis better than how the Army was before. The nobles could commission their own equipment, and fine it was, but the rest of us…” Catseye trailed off.
“Only the damn Day Guard were outfitting their troops with Royal funds after a month, perhaps,” Rain Chaser continued, “And the rutters could afford to forge it all new, wasteful fools that they were.”
It was not lost on Pinkie that the rebels' obsession with thrift didn’t seem to be confined to their equipment -’Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate’?- but now that the Lunars were finally talking and not waving sharp metal things around she decided to keep the observation to herself.
Rarity went about her work with quiet efficiency, fiddling with this or that in as unobtrusive a manner as possible, and after a few more minutes Rain Chaser spoke up again, more quietly this time. “Starflower… was in one of the easternmost Cairns, was he not?”
“Aye,” Catseye nodded, “Though it matters little which one. I saw him cut down by one of the Tyrant’s damnable Day Guard as we pulled back to the Castle.”
“Oh. I am sorry.” Rain Chaser’s beaked helmet tipped downwards against her neck, the pony underneath avoiding eye contact like a scolded filly, and once again Pinkie realized just how young she was.
“’Tis nothing to mourn, girl. Had it not been for the Rebellion he and I would never have met, much less been permitted to wed…”
Feeling more and more like an intruder, Pinkie very much considered leaving the room entirely, before spotting the bottle of expensive Pferdlich brandy she and Rarity had been sharing. She grabbed the bottle and a few glasses- the means by which she was physically able to do so as a quadruped, as usual, never receiving more than a moment’s conscious consideration- and poured a generous sampling for the Lunars. “Here, you look like you could use this more than I could. Rarity?”
The tailor nodded her assent. Catseye lifted the glass in her telekinesis, swishing the liquid inside around for a few seconds and sniffing at it suspiciously. Then she floated it out towards Pinkie, called out “To absent friends!” and downed it in a single gulp.
After that, she went straight for the bottle, and Pinkie was entirely expecting her to swallow the entire contents of that as well, but instead the unicorn seemed to become fascinated by the staff-and-pinecone distiller’s mark on the label. “Is this… Thyrsus brandy? I remember liberating a brewery by that name from the Empire!”
Rain Chaser tentatively sipped at her own glass, held awkwardly in the hook of a leathery wing. Pinkie saw her wince slightly under her helmet, and briefly wondered if anypony would come after her for providing alcoholic spirits to a filly when all of this was over. Alternatively, perhaps she should see about getting Sugarcube Corner a liquor license. “Was not the keeper of the place a close friend of Our Sovereign?”
Catseye shook her head and poured the two of them another round. “Nay, ‘twas the stallion we appointed after beheading the Sun-loving rutter who owned that land.”
Lovely ponies ‘round these parts this time of year, Pinkie thought to herself.
If anything, Rain Chaser seemed to take that admission as something to admire in the older unicorn, and leaned forward eagerly. “I had… no idea thou marched with the force that took The Downs!”
“’Twas in all the broadsheets.”
“Oh.” Rain Chaser ducked her head again. “I… well… I never did have much chance to learn my letters.”
Catseye seemed to get offended by that, and for the life of her Pinkie couldn’t figure out why. Visiting the market district with a bloodthirsty thousand-year-old filly was entirely reasonable, but visiting with a bloodthirsty thousand-year-old illiterate filly was ridiculous? What kind of logic was that?
“But were not both thine sire and dam officers?” the older unicorn asked.
“I know ‘twas wrong to squander the Republic’s schooling, but I… suppose I had more important things to do…”
Beginning to fill in some of the blanks, Pinkie wondered exactly where free schooling for the children of soldiers would have left all the ponies in the Lunar Republic who were either unable or unwilling to fight… although, at this point, she was beginning to understand that nothing her own little brain could come up with would be as bizarre as whatever the transformed rebels might say next. The whole thing was just so utterly… surreal.
She let them keep talking.
“My dam never had much trouble with it,” Rain Chaser continued, “she said the schools were naught but a waste of bits better spent on arming our bravest. Oh, how she grumbled when Our Luna banned the selling of commissions…” Abruptly the mutant pegasus’s voice dropped in volume, “She was in Sixth Company, and my sire in the Eighth. Has there… been any news?”
Catseye nodded, and divided the remaining contents of the bottle between their two cups. “Aye, last I heard there were a score or more distress flares in the forest we’d yet to locate… perhaps fivescore troops, although I cannot know if their souls remain or not. Either way, we will need them soon enough.”
That seemed to mollify Rain Chaser, at least a little, and Rarity stepped back a moment later. The pegasus gave her helmet another experimental twist, and this time the cowling below it followed smoothly and silently.
“Impressive work,” Catseye conceded as she lead the way back to the shop’s glass front doors. “If thou art interested in finer things than armor, I am sure thou wouldst make a welcome addition to Her Majesty’s court!” Then she pushed the door open and stepped out into the night.
“Thank you, both, I’d be honored!” the tailor called.
“And thou!” Catseye turned around briefly and waved in Pinkie Pie’s direction. “A light heart is a rare and valuable thing in these times! For sharing it, I commend thee!”
Pinkie waited until both of the Lunars were well and truly gone before turning around to face Rarity head-on. “You’re… not seriously thinking about taking them up on that, are you?”
“Oh, goodness no!” She paused, then retreated back deeper into the shop. “Were you… able to find out anything interesting from that officer? All I was able to do was get some idea of how the armor itself could be put on… nothing much I didn’t already know from working with it before.”
“Nah, that’s fine. Not every mare has the pony skills to work a counter! I did hear they had more troops coming in from the Everfree, and they’re planning something big I don’t think a lot of the ponies here are gonna be too happy about.”
“Dear, do you think… we might have to stop them?”
“Well we’re not doing much sitting here gossiping!” Pinkie searched over Rarity’s accumulated collection of Lunar weapons, flipped up a rapier with one hoof, and snatched it out of the air in her jaws. It didn’t seem too difficult to wave around, despite Rarity’s concerned expression, although if she had a chance she’d definitely be adding some kind of flavoring to the handle- bubblegum, maybe, or possibly lemon. “We should go see if that Twinkle Sprinkle or whatever from out of town might need our help.”
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All I can say is great job on this latest chapter. The exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up are well done in all the right places. Yeah, I loved seeing Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie explaining certain things to the Lunar Guards (mostly about how things have changed in 1000 years). And, yeah, Applejack's got a pretty good point about how the Lunar Guards, at least right now, are still in the mode of not trying to spook those they are trying to get the cooperation of, but how it would probably be advisable to prepare for things to get a lot rougher sooner rather than later and I DID like that one Lunar Guard's "Actually Kind Of Funny" reaction to Pinkie's "suggestion" about digging up Idle Rich's corpse and taking their frustrations out on it..
VERY certainly looking forward to more of this.
Your Pinkie-writing is quite excellent!
The Lunars are quite interesting, and a lot more, well, human than you'd expect from an army of reanimated zealots.
All the little details that fill in backstory and allow for worldbuilding have worked well.
It was good to see that Foxglove's reference point was anchored very well from a point of reference 1000 years ago. The little things were good to - using 'greenhoof' to refer to a fellow earth pony etc.
Ah, yes, Cupcakes :)
The three Rs are important.
Overall, it seems alot of the complaints that Luna and the Lunars have around the way society is being run have been addressed. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when that ball drops.
So many little things have made this rather great.
Huh. Was not expecting the new undead army to try the olive branch approach (after the military occupation, of course). It's both interesting and kinda tragic that they truly think they are helping the common pony by overthrowing the tyrant sun. Methinks Nightmare Moon should have pulled them aside and given them a crash course on the modern world.
Time to see if this will lead to anything. Moving on!
Even under all that necromancy and zeal, the Lunars are still people/ponies with feelings.
Loved seeing how each mare let their Element shine while interacting with the enemy.
Also, Cupcakes