Do Ponies on Earth have Magic Dreams?

by TikiBat

Chapter 36: An Extra Set of Helping Hooves Really Makes a Difference

Four days had gone by since Silver had gotten in contact with Tweyelight, and much to his joy, the Stallion had made the journey to California and was all set to meet him at the Salvage yard. Scarlet was skeptical of the whole arrangement at first, but after meeting him in a dream, she had warmed up to the thought, especially when it became clear that he was serious about taking up the weekend shifts.

“Feeling comfy?” Scarlet asked with a teasing tone as she batted her eyelashes at Silver, who returned a nervous glance.

“Yep,” he replied, not even letting his voice give her the hint of the response she wanted.

_{Art by: https://twitter.com/FlagStopAgent}

Little challenges here and there had become their new routine, and as silly as it was to say, he enjoyed the new break in their norm. Night pony aggression translated well into challenges it seems, and Scarlet was already a natural at coming up with new ideas. He didn’t know if it was his own pride, or his love for her, or maybe just something else entirely, but he wasn’t going to back out of one of hers, even if it meant looking dumb for a night.

“Good,” she smirked, pulling him out of his entirely internal tangent, “I half expected you to back out of this.”

“You call wearing socks a challenge?” He laughed, “If I knew you’d just go down that route then I would have put waaaaay less effort into mine.”

“Oh, I’m just going easy on you right now. The real fun comes later.”

“Lucky me then I guess,” he said rolling his eyes.

“That’s the spirit,” she laughed, “you’re handling well enough that maybe this’ll have to be a regular part of your ensemble.”

“You think? Well I’ll have you know that it’s my turn to drop a challenge next.”

“And my turn’s right after that. So maybe we’ll see what I can cook up by then, eh?”

“You really wanna go down the one up route?”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Wanna try calling my bluff again?”

“No, I don’t think I do right now,” he grinned. “Just know that I’m totally gonna get you back for whatever you try next.”

“Yeah? What’re you gonna do then?”

“Oh you’ll see, and I’m not gonna tell you when it’s coming either,” he retorted.

“Well you better jump on it soon, the longer you wait, the more embarrassing things I’ll think up for my next challenge.”

As much as Silver wanted to say that he hated this or had some actual plan to embarrass her more, he simply couldn’t. Sure, maybe this particular challenge was uncomfortable and even a little embarrassing, but he could easily put up with it for a single day.

“Guess time will tell.” Was all he could give in reply. “If I wasn’t training the new guy at work you bet I’d be cooking up plenty of ideas tonight.”

“Pity, guess I’ll have plenty of time to figure out my next one.”

“Har har, last I checked you weren’t thrilled to go into work.”

“Thinking of new ways to challenge you keeps my mind off of the dull frustrating things.” She shrugged, “Guess I really owe you a thanks for that.”

Silver broke his confident grin and pulled her in for a tight hug, “I’m glad that you’re keeping your mind off of things there. You don’t deserve to be frustrated and stressed so much.”

“Thanks Silvie,” she held him tight. “I know we’re doing the playful kidding around stuff right now, but I seriously love you and hope you have a good night at work.”

“I love you too Scarlet.” He paused, “It’s your day to pick the dream right?”

“Mhmm,” she replied with a curious look.

“Mind if we just spend some time cuddling up in a nice cozy dream? You could even practice some crafting if you wanted to.”

“I think that sounds wonderful,” she smiled, “it’s been way too long since we’ve just sat down and done nothing in a dream.”

“A week is too long?”

“In the dream realm it is,” she mused.

“In that case, let’s do it more often then.”

“Let’s. Now you have fun at work, and I’ll have fun thinking up plenty of other things to embarrass you with. Sound like a fair deal?”

“Not really, but that just means I’ll have to work harder at getting you back,” he smiled, “You have a nice night too, love.”

Giving a final wave goodbye, Silver trotted off towards the gate and smiled as he took sight of the scruffy looking cream coloured night pony with an orange mane who was waiting there for him.

“Tweyelight? Glad to see you made it!”

The stallion smiled and held out a hoof, “Pleasure’s all mine. Hope you don’t mind that I poked around the office a bit already, I needed a place to leave my bag.”

“It’s no sweat at all. You’re seriously doing me a huge favor with this.” He paused, “So you already got caught up with Duncan then?”

“Yessir, he told me you’d get me up to speed on everything else.”

“For sure,” he waved him forward with a wing, “So how was the trip out here anyhow?”

“Would you believe me if I told you train hopping is as fun as the stories say?” Seeing Silver’s dubious look, he chuckled, “Alright, maybe it wasn’t the best plan, but eh…. It worked. Mostly freights although I hitched a roof on a passenger train for a bit. Best part about having wings was no layovers and easy transfers.”

“So I’m going to take it that the trip went well then?”

“Better than you could imagine.”

“Alrighty, well I guess this is a good place to start then,” he plopped his saddlebag down on the desk, “My first stop of the night is basically here in the office. Duncan is sometimes here when I show up, but usually not for long.”

“Mhmm, I figured. He dashed out of here like he had somewhere else to be.”

“Right, that’s the usual for him. I don’t know how much you’ve chatted with him, but he’s honestly pretty relaxed about stuff around here, just as long as we do our job and keep everything in order.”

“So what is our job exactly? We just guard the place? Keep the critters out?”

Silver pointed towards the desk in the corner and a whiteboard on the wall, “Pretty much. Duncan writes out some of the stuff he wants us to pay attention to, so I check those first. Cameras for the yard and the whiteboard for any information or things I need to keep an eye out for.”

“So what’s our plan for tonight then?” Tweyelight asked, staring at the mostly empty whiteboard.

“Training,” Silver replied. “Duncan usually doesn’t leave a whole lot up there, but if you look over in the corner you’ll see that he circled a part of the map, that’s what we’ll look at first.”

“Got some trouble brewing in the yard?”

“A little,” Silver nodded, “probably just a weak spot on the fence that we’ll have to patch up tonight. A couple of coyotes have been poking around over there lately, but there’s sometimes a scrapper or two that’ll stop by and try to make off with stuff, or a vandal… you know, people that shouldn’t be here.”

“Right. You run into that often here?”

Silver pushed open the door and trotted out onto the catwalk, “Enough that I know what to look out for,” he pointed over towards the section he had previously stopped at a few nights before and continued, “I’ve got little alarms set up around here, and what I’ll show you how to figure out what’s going on from the way they sound.”

Tweyelight followed behind as Silver trotted along, their hooves making an annoying cacophony of sound that fully announced their presence to whoever might be within earshot. Normally Silver would try and keep quiet and out of sight, but tonight he didn’t care as much. Training his new coworker was more important than playing the part of the junkyard dog.

“Duncan said something about nightly patrols,” the stallion started, “is this a part of those?”

Silver nodded, “Yep. Normally I’m not this loud, but I’ll show you how I try and keep quiet. Right now I just want to show you the ropes and get you up to speed, then we’ll run a little exercise.”

The stallion glanced over towards a few threads leading to the glass bottles and cans that Silver had rigged up, “These the ropes?” He joked.

Silver let out a laugh, “I guess you could say so. They’re basically my alarm system,” he jostled the loose part of the fence, a quiet clattering quickly echoing out.

“Smart,” Tweyelight observed, “So let me guess, you can differentiate between whether it’s the wind, some hooligans, or just whatever else?”

“Yep!” Silver smirked, “It’s not a perfect system but it at least gives you an idea of if something’s happening. I’ve got a few of these strung up around the yard, and I’ll show you some more later.”

“But right now we’re investigating whatever it was that Duncan was trying to point out?”

“You got it. So it just seems like the quick fix we made the other day came loose, so let’s just get that out of the way first.”

Silver trotted over to the fence and pushed up the piece of sheet metal that he and Duncan had used to cover a hole that had been cut in the fence. Beckoning the other stallion over with a wing, Silver gestured towards a box of tools that were stowed away in one of his little hidey holes.

“You’re pretty crafty, eh?” Tweyelight asked as he inspected the box.

“Yeah,” Silver replied, “I got tired of dragging the box over here every night and having to spend an hour fumbling around with stuff, so I just hid where nopony would probably look.”

“Makes enough sense. So what’s the plan then?”

“There should be a box of zip ties in there and a little tool I put together to help tie them. Just slip that over your hoof and fish out a tie, we’re just making a quick fix to this for now until Duncan can get a proper patch made up.”

The night pony did as instructed, fiddling around with the rudimentary tool until he had managed to lay one of the ties into the little clamp strapped to his foreleg.

“Now what?”

“See that little spring lock thingy? Just lay it down over the tie so it doesn’t fall out and then come over here.”

“Can do,” the stallion replied, trotting over towards Silver.

“Alright, just feed it around and try to get the tie back into the locking part, once you’ve got that down just hit the little release and pull the tie tight with your mouth, I’ll go grab the other corner.”

With a careful precision, and a few missteps along the way, the two had managed to patch up the broken portion of the fence, at least for now. In their focus, they failed to notice a trio of humans who were casing the place from only a short distance away, having taken advantage of the noise to move closer and inspect the two ponies. However, before either could notice, they had ducked away into the shadows and vanished into the night, leaving no trace of their presence.

“So how about we get to the fun stuff,” Silver spoke up with a grin, “I showed you the boring repair work, but now I can show you how I scare away any would be hooligans.”

“You’ve got my attention. Go on.”

“Right,” Silver spread his wings and leaped into the air, “The name of the game is learning how to hear when somepony is sneaking over to an area where they shouldn’t be. In our case, that’s everywhere.”

“And the key to that is listening for those bottles you rigged up,” he finished for Silver.

“Bingo!”

“Alright, you head back to the office then, and I’ll try to sneak in.” He looked over towards the office’s door, and more specifically the old bell that was mounted to the wall next to it. “If I get in and ring that bell then I win, if you stop me then you win.”

“And what stops you from flying over and giving it a kick?”

“Hmm, good point,” Silver replied. Glancing around the yard, an idea struck him as his eyes landed on a set of cargo straps that had been left out, “Tell you what, I’ll bind my wings so there’s no cheating. Sound fair?”

“It’s as fair as fair can get all things considered.”

“Great, why don’t you give me a hoof and we can get this show on the road.”

Normally this kind of thing would be difficult, especially considering that they were tying up the two limbs that Silver usually used for this, but having another pony to help made the process quick and painless. In no time at all Silver was all ready to go, and had trotted through the yard’s gate and into the dimly lit street.

Tweyelight, taking to the skies for a moment, gave him a wave and Silver returned a nod. The game was on, and now it was up to him to figure out the best way to sneak in and avoid suspicion.

Not wanting to waste any time, Silver began to slowly trot along the perimeter of the fence as the ideas started to form in his head. The key to success here would be keeping to the shadows as much as he could and trying his best to keep quiet. A lot of this was easier said than done given that both him and his pursuer could see and hear each other better than any human could, but that just made this game even more fun. The thought of having him wear sunglasses and something to muffle his hearing briefly came up, but that would have been overkill for something as simple as this.

This wasn’t meant to be a perfect simulation, and in all honesty, it was meant more as a time killer that also doubled as a creative way to train the new guy than anything else. After all, if he had to train another pony to do their job, he was going to at least have fun with it.

As he snuck along his way, he briefly paused and considered pushing open the patchwork fence, but knew that Tweyelight would almost immediately catch him there. No, he needed to give the night pony a challenge, even if it meant that he’d have to get creative.

Silver wasn’t out of shape, but he also wasn’t as nimble as a human was when it came to climbing up a fence— at least not without his wings. Climbing was obviously out, but Silver knew this yard like the back of his hoof, and he knew that there was a small narrow section that was bent out of shape in the far corner of the yard. He had never been as concerned with patching it up before given that only a pony would be able to slip through without difficulty, and he was going to use that to his advantage.

The stallion’s ears twitched a few times as the telltale clip clop of hooves on metal echoed out from afar, signaling that Tweyelight was just perfectly out of sight should Silver try and sneak on by. And that’s exactly what he did.

He stole a few glances over to make sure that he was still in the clear, and briskly passed across the narrow pathway he was able to navigate. He paused and took a deep breath before trotting over to the corner of the yard. The path around this section was a little less narrow, and here he only had to worry about an adjacent building making any would-be escape an issue.

He couldn’t help but let out a laugh, the lack of an easy escape for a would-be thief was a very good problem to have, which is probably why this corner of the yard was never as problematic as the other.

The clip clopping on metal suddenly died off, being replaced with the faint sounds of leathery wings flapping in the air. That energizing feeling of anticipation built up inside of Silver as the sounds grew more distant.

It was now or never, and Silver began to carefully nudge the bent part of the fence. A small rattle threatened to betray his location, but he quickly found that if he worked slowly then the fence wouldn’t make as much noise. As he pushed his way through the hole, he couldn’t help but stifle a laugh at the luck he was having. Clearly Tweyelight hadn’t caught sight of him or heard him, which meant that Silver’s infiltration had so far gone off without a hitch.

As he slowly began to meander forward a sound stopped him in his tracks. Adjusting his ears, he only heard the same metallic clip clopping, but he could have sworn that he had heard the flapping of wings in the air.

Shrugging it off, he cautiously pressed forward only to be greeted with another quick whoosh.

He whipped around to glance behind him, only to see nothing at all.

Okay Silver. You’re overthinking this. Just need to get to the bell and I’m done, he thought to himself. Shaking his head, he turned around and jumped back in surprise as he was greeted by the grinning face of the new hire.

“I win,” Tweyelight proudly said.

“I… wow. How long were you trailing me?”

“Since you passed by the broken spot in the fence,” he shrugged.

Silver paused for a moment and let out an involuntary laugh, “Guess that’s on me for thinking I could beat an old detective at something like this. You’re totally a natural.”

“Best two out of three?” the night pony asked with a hint of pride in his voice.

A small smile formed on Silver’s face, and he nodded, “Sure, but how about you try to sneak in this time, really get a feel for the yard and all that.”

“I’d say that sounds like a great idea to me. Game’s on, Eclipse, can’t wait to see you at the finish line.”

Comments

[The Marvel Horse]

"Ah! Sock scene at last!
I half expected him to actually like it more than he would admit but eh... Still a good scene
I do wonder what would have happened if his bud didn't show Silver doesn't seem like the overconfident type say that.
Maybe it woulld have been more interesting if he was late? Like he ran into an accident and we see how Silver copes.
The tinkering & stealth scenes were neat. Its hard to have those with ponies, well, the tinkering scene at least.
Still, I would like to know more about this guy