• Published 22nd Sep 2019
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The Princess's Bit - Mitch H



Adventure is nothing but other ponies having a terrible time somewhere picturesque. But you take what you can get, when you take the Princess's bit.

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A Diplomatic Cruising For A Bruising

Gilda joined the major at the gang-plank as the Very Important Ponies worked their way up the narrow reinforced ironwood contraption. Properly winged individuals could have just flown up from the jetty that the Bit was moored beside, but apparently diplomats didn't often come in winged varieties out here in the imperial backwaters. The diplomat, whose name had already left her over-taxed short-term memory, was an ochre unicorn mare with a perpetually discontented expression, a resting nag face that said volumes about her attitude towards the world and, presumably, her job.

"Ambassador Flare, let me welcome you to the Princess's Bit," the major said, as warmly as she could manage. "We are so glad to be able to carry you and your entourage the last stages of your journey to the Imperial Court at Roam."

Said entourage looked around the ship as they filed one by one aboard her. Mostly unicorns and earth ponies, but there was at least one gawky green pegasus in the gaggle, just as earthbound as the rest of them. There was a small honor guard of Crystal Guards arranged in a line beside the gangway, carefully chosen to show off the diversity of the new regiment.

Plus Ensign Sunburst. Gilda wasn't sure why the new ensign was here. He’d just said that it would be 'necessary if you don't want any tantrums later on.'

Whatever that meant.

Now that Gilda looked at the diplomat, who was exchanging empty niceties with Gleaming, and their newest ensign, it was sort of obvious. The coat colors, mane styles, and general facial features...

Well, wasn't that awkward.

The diplomat's eyes arrogantly skimmed over the braced line of Guards in full formal uniforms, until her gaze was arrested upon the orange stallion, looking frozen and stolid in his at-attention rigidity.

"Sunburst Fiery Firebough, what in the endless flowing mane of the eternal princess are you doing on this ship!" Ambassador Flare shrieked like a fishwife.

"Major, ma'am, permission to address the ship's guests!" barked the terrified-looking ensign.

Gleaming, looking illuminated and clearly suppressing a lip-curling smirk, said, "Granted, Ensign… Firebough is it?"

"No ma'am! My name is Sunburst!" The stiffly mortified ensign turned towards the ambassador, still not meeting her burning glare. "Good morning, Mother. You look well as always!"

"I look like a mother who has just discovered that her truant son is twelve hundred miles from the last place I left him, and has somehow joined a different regiment, to judge from that clown suit you're wearing. What happened to your father's regiment? What are you doing here? What happened to your tour in the Isles?"

"Mother, ma'am! I volunteered for the new establishment! It was an opportunity I could not resist!"

"You've always been so good at taking opportunities… that you never live up to. What happened? Did you offend your superiors again? How is this different from your previous three false starts, Sunburst?"

"Ahem!" the major interrupted. "Ambassador Flare, would you care to examine the state rooms we've opened up for you and your ponies? We also have put the forward ward room to use. The view from them should be quite spectacular when we get aloft and are moving."

The ambassador looked around, realized that she was airing her family's dirty laundry in front of her entire herd of assistants, several dozen sailors within ear-shot, and the honor-guard, and managed by heroic effort to not blush.

The boarding ceremony broke up at that point, most un-ceremoniously.

Gilda marked it a success. She hadn't been this amused since the engine had blown out.


Lyra was miserable. That stars-benighted doctor had been right, coming off the stuff cold tofurkey had been a rough road. But Doc Eye had agreed with Lyra that it was time, one way or the other, and Lyra refused the lesser draught, with its reduced spacey promise of not-pain in exchange for the curse of muddled thinking.

Not that pain didn't do its own job of muddling thinking. Oh, Celestia, did her horn hurt. Her whole skull, really, like little cracks radiating pain from the misery of that central, throbbing blunt stick she called her Alicornual diverticulum. And it didn't help that her stomach was still dry-heaving from the after-effects of the narcotics.

Lyra laid on her cot, and tried to pretend the agony and the world away.

Buck it, this isn't helping.

She got up, and opened her aching eyes to look around the room. Still the same boring, dull, vapory chamber of dullness and pocket distilleries.

As if I could keep down a cocktail right now. Yech.

Lyra stumbled out of her chamber of despond, and wandered into the main ward of the infirmary. Where the good doctor was nowhere in evidence, but there were multiple ponies laying about the ward, tucked into bunks here and there.

Wonder why they didn't bring them back to stew in the still-stink like they did with me and the jolly pink nightmare?

Lyra looked closer at a blue shape under a linen sheet closer to her side of the room, and realized from the fall of off-white mane and the horn that it was Trixie. Lyra walked around the sleeping or insensate blue mare, and peered at her sleeping face.

That doesn't sound like a healthy mare. The artillery-pony was breathing with a rattling, congested wheeze, and looked rather poorly, her mane all stringy and sweat-stained, and what Lyra could see of her coat was slightly lathered.

"It presents like an ague or yellow jack, but it isn't," said a sharp feminine voice from right behind Lyra, and she damn near stepped on her own tail, jumping at the fright.

"Hawk Eye! Don't sneak up on a recovering mare, you're going to give me palpitations!" Lyra whined.

"If you keep having ponies shoot swivel-guns at your own head, you won't live to die of a heart attack, Heartstrings," the doctor sniffed. "Never mind you, you're recovering. Maybe I can get back my still-room now? But yeah, I'm not sure what's up with Lulamoon here. Or the others."

"You said it was malaria, didn't you? This is flyder country, I could see it."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? She had her battery and lots of other ponies besides out on the gunnery range the other day, and you'd think with all those shallow pools of standing water, it would be prime mosquito breeding territory. But she was the only one of that batch who came down with this, and it came on too quickly for malaria, or yellow jack. Whatever the abyssal depths it is, it can't be either of those."

"She is - rest of the batch? What do the other ponies have?"

"Pretty much the same thing, Heartstrings."

"Well, then, that's your huckleberry. Malaria, or some magic quick-set version of it, and they all caught it." Lyra got distracted imagining thaumically poisoned flyders who could infect you instantaneously with a wasting disease, and felt her headache worsen.

"Only problem is that Dried Durian over there was nowhere near the shooting party and their pools of mosquito-breeding still waters. And Nightfang hasn't been off the ship at all, to judge from the reports I've seen. Also, the tell-tale enchantments for malaria and yellow jack are coming up negatory for all three. So are sleeping sickness, the feather flu, the pony pox, and leprosy."

"Leprosy!" Lyra jumped back from the other ailing unicorn, and then regretted the sudden movement greatly.

"Relax, Stampede Sue, like I said, negative. And honestly, I was just cycling through the tests at that point. I'm starting to suspect it's psychosomatic."

"A fever and night-sweats is psychosomatic?"

"Did you take a course of general medicine while you were conked out in my back room keeping me from working on my mash, Magus Heartstrings?"

"No, but I know a bit about states of mind from my research… I guess it's possible for a disease of the mind to mimic some symptoms, maybe any symptoms. Huh. Would you mind if I brought my apparati back here and took a look at her brain?"

"Her brain? With what, the EKG machine you keep in your bags?"

"Well, sorta. It isn't medical-grade, but I've got a pile of thaumic sensors you wouldn't believe. Comes in handy for diagnosing curses and mental magics."

"Why is this the first I'm hearing about research-hospital-grade medical equipment on this ship that's not in my infirmary?"

"First of all, it isn't yours, it's my stuff. Mine. I can let you borrow my stuff, if you promise to be gentle and don't break any of it. Can you even use my stuff? The interfaces are optimized for unicorn magic, I never bothered to enchant it for general pony use. Also, again, not medical-grade. They're tools for my research."

"I'd still like to see what you've got, yeah, go get it."

Lyra, still aching and miserable and sick to her stomach, wasn't feeling charitable, so she waited, patiently, through the pain.

"What?"

Lyra glared at the hippogriff through pain-narrowed eyes.

"Oh, fine. Please, Magus Heartstrings, can you retrieve your equipment, and examine my perplexing patients which all my medical magic have failed to diagnose?"

"Yeah, much better. Be right back."

It took a great deal longer than Lyra had expected. Apparently a lot had happened while she was in hospital. And everypony wanted to catch her up on events. Like the ship blowing out its engine, stopping in some diamond dog city she missed entirely, and leaving that city again, all while Lyra had been wasting away in the bipedal-ape-be-damned hospital.

But somehow, nopony thought to warn Lyra about her new roommate, so when she stomped into her state room in a foul mood over having missed her chance to see Barkalona, and unexpectedly found a short-ish black Perroencian dog going through her stuff, she might have over-reacted.

A bit.


The steaming heat of the afternoon was fading into evening as the guests and officers filed into the Captain's Mess. Although it had been retained from the original ship's design when they'd rebuilt it into the Bit, it had been left mothballed due to the Bit's technical lack of a 'Captain' and an apparent lack of interest by the Major in the more performative aspects of being a commanding officer. Fish Eye had overheard a while back some table-talk in the mess from the former Territorial griffons about their young commanding officer's time in that Corps, and the wasteful, drunken 'officers' messes' she had endured. And with all the work and endless distractions of spinning up the squadron, the tradition of organized, regimented meals had not yet had time to find itself way into the traditions of the… regiment.

But anyways, with the advent of VIPs on board the ship, the master sergeant had felt obliged to order the gallery staff to open up the mothballed Captain’s Mess, so as to have somewhere to offer hospitality to their guests.

Ponies didn't actually use mothballs, of course. Fish Eye supposed that the hypothetical smell from mothballs would have put everypony off their feed. As it was, it barely smelled like preservational magic at all, and the opened portholes helped air out whatever stuffiness might have remained.

Aside from the stifling heat, of course.

Anyways, the mess was open, and they needed somepony to play servant for the they'd-like-to-think-they-were-aristocratic diplomats, and their officer-hosts. The ponies and other people designated to likewise play servants to the play-nobles at the table, were of course, the officers' servants.

That is, Fish and her fellow bat-mares and officers' gentlemares and valets and whatever it was that Bob was calling himself tonight. The other week, he'd been trying to get the others to call him 'the Major's shinobi', whatever the abyssal depths that meant.

Fish Eye had discovered that most of the other servants had no idea how to do this - be servants, that is. At the table. It wasn't really that sort of regiment, not yet at least. But the lack in their training was clearly a glaring lacuna, one that she'd have to close. How did you get this far without working out that being 'servants' meant that they'd eventually have to serve at table?

Luckily, living at a boarding school had provided plenty of education in the abuse of juniors, the arrogance of the seniors, and the behavior expected of hoofmares and serving wenches before the gimlet eye of their betters.

Fish Eye had played servant and grand lady alike in her time. She'd had this one house matron who had insisted that every well-rounded lady of quality should be equally capable of serving at the humblest of tables, and ruling over a noble house teeming with servants and courtiers.

But the timeframe hadn't given Fish enough time to drill her fellow lance corporals thoroughly in the necessary etiquette, so she'd just told them to follow her lead, try to not pour anything hot in anypony's laps, and watch out for spillage.

At least they weren't under way, yet. The porthole hatches in the mess had been opened to allow a desperately needed breeze through the otherwise-stifling mess deck. They'd managed to get the place settings out without too many accidents, and as much drink and food pre-positioned as to avoid the undertrained servantry having to pass spillables over their guests. More than absolutely necessary, anyways.

After a good deal of clumsy bumbling about, Fish and the other batmares and valets got out of the way of their principals and their guests, and the officers and VIPs were seated at their tables, waiting for the Major and the Ambassador to exchange speeches and toasts.

The Major delivered her remarks with a stiff, solemn rictus that Fish suspected was the unicorn's notion of what dignity and gravitas looked like. It mostly came across like the young mare needed to go find the head. The other unicorn, a middle-aged mare gone slightly stout and cross in that ill-tempered mis-employed way that bad diplomats wore like badges of shame, delivered her own remarks with competence but no joy.

The ambassador reminded Fish of her own mother. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. She didn't envy poor Ensign Sunburst, whose predicament had struck like gossip lightning through the squadron and crew.

Not long after the dinner got started, Fish felt the goddess leaving her, with a voiceless sentiment that parsed rather like bored disgust. Something to the effect that the goddess had suffered through enough political dinners for a seapony's lifetime, let alone an immortal's.

Fish rather wished she could check out, too. At the ripe elderly age of eighteen, she'd already had a lifetime of empty platitudes and diplomatic bombast beside her mother in Canterlot's crowded diplomatic scene. To get through this particular event, she resolved to concentrate on keeping an eye on her fellow lance corporals as they all hovered over the shoulders of their dining principals, and made sure that Fruits Basket and her dining partner's mugs were kept full, and the courses were swapped out on time, and with grace.

"My word, and you say you're not just somepony from the ranks that some prankster thought they'd try to pass off as an officer? An actual, for real, Guards officer?"

Not that there was much in the way of grace being displayed at this particular table. Nor would that resolution last much longer at the rate that guy was getting on her last nerve.

"I did not think to bring my commission with me to the dinner-table, so I cannot show you documented evidence to that fact, but please, take it upon my thestral word of honor, sir, I am a properly commissioned ensign. There was a ceremony."

"Yep!" Fish chimed in as she leaned over Fruits Basket's dinner-partner's shoulder, and refilling his already-emptied wine mug. "It was this whole big thing. New regiment, new officers!" She managed to not pour it all over his head instead.

"Ah, mustangs. That explains matters. So it's that sort of Guards regiment, then."

"And what does that-"

Fish deliberately made a clatter with Basket's own very-much-not-emptied wine glass, and splashed enough around that the hippogriff was forced to dab up the mess with her handy linen towel.

And poke Fruits Basket unobtrusively in the face with one of her primaries, to keep the flushed thestral from finishing that probably-inflammatory reply before she got both of them in trouble.

"Oh, hey, is that a Farrow tie-pin?" Fish asked, trying to distract the diplomat.

"Oh, yes, of course it is. Class of '85. Pip pip, hurrah! And all that rot."

"Tolu, tolay, hip-hip, hurray!" Fish responded with the proper refrain.

"I say! Where did a ranker like you hear that one?" the already-tipsy unicorn asked. "Listening in at other officers' messes, I wager!"

"Oh, no, no. They never let me play at the games - something about being half again as big as the other mares - but I was always allowed to cheer!"

"You. You went to Farrow."

"Yep! Class of Two-Double-Ought. Just graduated last fall."

"And you ended up here. In a jack-leg 'Guards' regiment from-"

"Oh, it's a real Guards regiment," Fish said, obliviously. "They have the princess's warrant framed up in the squadron offices. Signed by the Princess Herself."

"First Blush! Are you drinking alcohol?" demanded a voice from behind Fish's flank. She turned around to find an older unicorn stallion up and on his hooves, having left his place further up the table with the senior diplomats.

Or other senior diplomat, it wasn't that big of a delegation.

"You know that your employment waiver prevents you from indulging! I can't keep covering for- look, you, whoever you are-"

"Fish Eye!" Fish Eye chirped, helpfully.

"Don't give this pony alcohol, he can't handle it. Can you handle that?"

"No booze for my fellow Farrow alumni, got it!"

"What? No, don't tell me, I don't care." The other unicorn's horn flared suddenly, and a halo briefly formed around the already-inebriated First Blush. He suddenly turned green - well, greener - and his cheeks bulged like he was trying to - oh, right.

Fish led the nauseated diplomat towards the nearest head, to purge his system the old-fashioned Farrow way, like all the fillies did with their first fifths of whiskey smuggled into the dorms.

In all the sticky, disgusting fuss, Fish Eye missed the moment when they left port.

Author's Note:

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

Also, thanks to Mix-up for some additional prodding and probing questioning which helped me get past some blockage w/ this and the next two chapters. And hopefully, the rest going forward.

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