First contact has been made, successfully, and the strange equine creature known as Twilight Sparkle had assured us that we would be welcome to cement relations with Earth with an embassy in Canterlot.
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Mayhap, but making the ambassador's job more difficult by creating an unfavorable impression is hardly in the country's best interests. The locals are watching more than just the ambassador, this bit of street theatre involves everyone.
From the chest, huh? Unexpected, but interesting.
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It's also not her job to ensure there are "no casualties." It's her job to ensure Claire can do her job without getting killed. Emphasis on both parts of that line, not just the 'not get killed' part. By making herself appear to be the person in charge and intimidating the locals, she's failing the 'ensure Claire can do her job' bit rather spectacularly.
This is, I would wager, why the Secret Service is in charge of protecting VIP's rather than the military back on her homefront. It's rather amazing that two kids managed to advance Claire's objectives infinitely further than Major Richards did by actually breaking the rules.
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Yes, being in charge of a protection detail is a surprisingly subtle task. Honestly, I think she's been somewhat miss-assigned, likely owing to a severe lack of qualified officers that are at or over fifty without being too high a rank. I think she'd make a fantastic garrison commander, once the embassy gets up and running putting someone like her in charge of the troops would be essential for keeping discipline up to code.
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Even then I'd question whether she is the right person for the job. She is acting like a soldier in a hostile territory, and one that has not a single lick of interest in winning hearts and minds at that. That might be a necessary and valuable attitude in a warzone, but it's a terrible attitude to have in friendly territory.
9911679 Bingo! You actually got to the crux of the matter. She's been a field commander for far too long to take a more relaxed job like this, but she was thrust into it to give her a shot at getting her star.
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I think it's down to two things. firstly, they're likely working with an exceedingly narrow field of candidates, 50 years old likely being the absolute minimum. Once you get past fifty you need someone with practical field experience, and a rank high enough to underscore the seriousness of the post but not so high that it causes political ripples. Then you need someone with an absolutely flawless record, because they're going into a unthinkably vital diplomatic situation and it will not be the military's fault if this goes sideways.
I doubt there was all that much of a choice available.
The other thought is that Colonel Richards is likely of the sort to keep every part of her life in perfect order, and this situation is likely incredibly stressful for her. The downside of these 50+ year old soldiers is that they've a lot of deeply ingrained "rules" to go along with their experience, and "how to pony" contradicts a fair few of those habitual expectations.
I think we'll see an improvement in relations once the Colonel has had a chance to get all of her paradigms sorted, settled, and squared away.
Fortunately, these kids were not even half as good as the CMCs at shenanigan. Otherwise, there would be a talk about collateral damage already.
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Hmm, I think it'll take one or two clashes before the idea that she's no longer in Kansas settles in. The good Colonel seems to be acting like she is part of a peacekeeping force on campaign and believes she has the authority she would normally have in such a situation. But the ponies, and by extension the Princesses, are not going to be happy about weapons being pointed at Equestrians because they 'acted suspiciously.' Which they will do a lot, even Richard's paranoia aside, due to the alien nature of Equestria and its culture, nevermind ponies literally not being human. Imagine gate guarding for example. Easy enough on the surface, but then you realize pegasi can fly and a wall and a gate doesn't mean anything to a pegasus flying over it because the embassy just so happened to lie under the path between the pegasus and her actual goal. Entering the embassy wouldn't have crossed her mind, but to a human who spots her, what she's doing can easily be perceived as trespassing and reacted to as such.
Security as far as I know is always supposed to be discrete and provide surveillance and protection. We do have to remember that they didn't get typical security, they got military. That comes with the assumption that its hostile territory. Wonder what implications that has in the future. Question for any of them. "What would you do if you couldn't change back to human, would you still return home?" Or "Do you think you'd miss this literal fantasy land when you return home?"
one other thing to note about equine is that they are vary fertile.
i would put money on Clair being pregnant before to long.
Who said anything about playing nice? I was talking about the Ambassador herself. If you go out of your way to offend her it makes you less trustworthy.
I have to say, Clair and Phillp should really be looking into birth control. That, or descreetly ask someone they can trust about pony reproduction so they can avoid unwanted pregnancy from fooling around while shapeshifted.
Hah! Just found this and caught up to the current chapter. This is fun! I like stories that deal with the minutiae of "but wait, how would that work?" and this story delivers. The PoV characters are good fun and charmingly flawed too.
I think it says something about me that I see the hard limitation on communication-via-portal as a fun challenge to solve. Batteries recharged on the Equestrian side, and sent over to the Earth side to even out the discrepancy in charge times? Anyway. It's a fun subplot to imagine =P
Well, not that I'm a fan of Richards, but technically she isn't on a regular diplomatic mission, but something more akin to a Stargate mission. And they can't even secure the portal since its run by pones anyway
Can put ones on edge
I'm not generally a big fan of "300-3000 year old Granny Smiths and all the implications that brings to the show" type of stories where it comes to the officially Ancient-timers like Celestia and Co. But in this case, the age-factor does come off as surprisingly well-thought out.
Finding Marines trained for Diplomatic Service in the needed age-bracket, as opposed to strictly combat Marines might make things a little dicey--but it might be what Damaged is primarily looking for--although, it's important to remember that ALL Marines are the "combat-first, other-duties-as-assigned-second" sorts of people. That said, I do feel that there would still be plenty of seasoned older Marines with embassy duties in their careers that it shouldn't be hard for the Government to locate several of them and voluntell them to report to the WH for a special diplomatic assignment--most of them should not have drank themselves into oblivion from all those stressful embassy duties when they get to near-retirement age....
Where does Saf pull Scoots name from? Apple Bloom he has probably met and Riley has certainly talked about her. But he doesn't meet Scootaloo till next chapter, and doesn't show any connection beyond her Wonderbolt outfit. The closest he comes so far in the story is talking to Rainbow Dash in an earlier chapter where she casually mentions helping another filly fly before him, but no names were mentioned then.
11352438 Exactly that. He's spent time talking with Apple Bloom, who practically never talks about her two friends and all the shenanigans they got up to when they were Saf's age.
I was half expecting them to get caught, and considering they look like foals…
*snort*
On another note, it's nice to see a family being as thick as thieves.