Twilight Sparkle, Princess-Regent of the Crystal Empire

by Eltirions

Chapter 4: The ball’s in the court

By the time the clock struck one, Twilight had finally finished reading and signing the last document on her desk. ‘’That’s that,’’ she sighed.

‘’Finally,’’ Spike muttered.

Twilight gave him a smile. ‘’You did great, Spike. You too, Flurry.’’

‘’Thanks, auntie!’’ Flurry chirped. And she really had been doing very good, in Twilight’s opinion. She’d kept still but also asked questions when she didn’t understand something, questions Twilight had been happy to answer.

Her heart was warm with pride as she smiled at her niece. ‘’Come on, let’s have lunch and then we can have a snowball fight.’’

‘’Yay!’’ Flurry cheered. ‘’Snowball fight!’’

Spike smiled as well, and in the corner of her eye Twilight caught Note’s lips twitch. Good, the mare could use a little lightening up.

After a quick lunch, the three of them made their way to the gardens. Twilight shivered as the cold wind hit her, but Flurry just squealed, before jumping into the snow. ‘’Come on, auntie, uncle!’’

Spike let out a sigh of pain. Twilight smiled reassuringly at him, before nudging him with her wing. ‘’Let’s not keep Flurry waiting.’’

‘’Urgh,’’ Spike grumbled. ‘’I hate the cold.’’ But he still went out anyways.

Just in time to be hit in the face with a snowball. Twilight looked away from her spluttering assistant to see Flurry and some other foals giggling, snowballs held in their grasp. Twilight noted with some interest that Flurry was using her hooves, instead of her telekinesis.

She dodged the first snowball headed for her by jerking her head to the left, but the snow still caught in her mane. She scooped up some snow with her magic and formed it into a snowball, then threw it at Flurry.

As the snowball fight escalated, Twilight’s mind nonetheless wandered back to her work. The Empire was receiving basically all it's money from Equestrian aid at the moment, as Sombra had all but wrecked the economy of the nation. It would take years to fix that.

Then, she’d moved onto the documents regarding the Empire’s food supply and production. This was actually a part that Sombra had invested in, but his idea of mindless slaves in gigantic plantations was obviously not applicable now, not to mention amoral. But the supply itself was in good shape, luckily, and there were still enough ponies with talents in farming and other ways of food production left that Twilight felt comfortable enough to not have to request any from Equestria.

Finally, she had looked at the request from the mayor of Crystal City. She, along with other mayors and officials from around the nation, had inquired what Twilight was planning to do in regards to the military. The Crystal War had devastated the Empire in many ways, but this was one where Twilight had no idea what to do. In the end, she’d had Spike send a request for an advisor with military capabilities down to Canterlot.

SPLASH!

Twilight yelped as the cold snowball hit her face. As she brushed the snow from her eyes and muzzle, she saw how Flurry was playing with the other children and Spike, not a single one of them caring that she was an alicorn or a princess. A heartwarming sight.

Twilight leapt forward. She had a snowball fight to win.

|-x-X-x-|

Luna was two things she wasn’t usually: awake at noon, and away from Canterlot.

This would be Tartarus on her sleep schedule, but it needed to be done. Twilight Sparkle had requested a military advisor for the Crystal Empire, and Luna was determined to get her one. Any day the Crystal Empire went without a military was a day that Equestria’s northern border was threatened, after all.

Problem one: Equestria’s military was a joke. A thousand years of peace had seen to that.

Problem two: Luna was incredibly disconnected from Equestrian society.

As such, she’d resorted to ambushing her sister’s steward in the hallway. Raven had quickly pointed her to the place she apparently needed to be: the Equestrian Academy for Warfare, located in Dodge City.

Luna had taken the train. Admittedly she’d been in a separate part of the train, closed off for any visitors and guarded viciously by her Lunar Guard, but still. There was something to be said for watching the Equestrian landscape roll by. She wasn’t sure if it was better than an aerial view, though.

But that was no matter. She had a job to do, and that was to get a military advisor for Twilight.

The director of the Academy, Fast Feather, was waiting just outside the doors. He was a stallion in his early fifties, by the looks of it, with a dull green mane and a yellow coat, his cutie mark being two white crossed feathers under a lightning bolt. And a pegasus, of course. They were overrepresented in the military, Luna had discovered while she was reading some documents Raven had sent to her before she left for Dodge City.

‘’Your Highness.’’ The stallion brought his hoof up in a salute.

Luna nodded back. ‘’At ease, Director Feather.’’

Feather brought his hoof down. ‘’It’s an honour, your Highness. If you’d given us more time, I could have arranged a proper welcome.’’

That was fair. Luna hadn’t given him any notice until the train had pulled into Dodge City Station, as a way to keep the press off her back. She had no intention of dealing with those vultures.

‘’The fault is not yours, director,’’ she demurred. ‘’We chose to keep our journey hidden until arrival.’’

‘’Understandable,’’ Feather replied. ‘’Shall I show you the premises, your Highness? The Academy is the finest in Equestria, after all.’’

Finest in Equestria. Luna had seen the pictures, and the reports. They painted a very unflattering picture. When she got back to Canterlot, Luna had some choice words for her sister about allowing this to occur.

‘’That sounds delightful,’’ she said. ‘’Please, lead the way.’’

If the two guards following in her step had any inclination to comment, they didn’t show it. Luna liked her guards silent in public but open in private. She had a simple deal with all of them: they wouldn’t try to undermine her authority in public, and she would listen to anything they had to say or comment on her in private.

Quite the arrangement, but it worked.

She turned her attention to the tour, because the state of the Academy wasn’t Fast Feather’s fault and from everything she’d read he seemed like a genuinely good pony that just wanted to help Equestria in his own way. He didn’t deserve to have to run his school with so little support from the government.

‘’The building itself was originally intended as the city hall of Dodge City,’’ Feather explained as they crossed the large, stone and marble central room. ‘’However, it was determined it was better to have a city hall closer to the centre of town, which is further down the valley. And so they gave this building to the Royal Guard.’’

‘’Why?’’ Luna asked.

‘’At the time, there were many conflicts with buffalo tribes, all sorts of wild creatures, and occasionally other settlers,’’ Feather replied. ‘’The Guard needed a place to coordinate their efforts here in the south from, and this was the prime location for it. They had the building expanded and added the barracks and other such things. The Guard stopped using this place after the colonization of Hoofington was complete, and reformed it into a new officer academy. Later, this was turned into the most important academy, as the one in Canterlot switched to exclusively training the Guard’s soldiers and the one in Fillydelphia was retired due to budget concerns.’’

There were a few other military schools in Equestria, Luna knew, but they all focused on specializations, like the Royal Pegasi Academy in Cloudsdale or the Naval Colleges in Manehattan, Baltimare and Vanhoover.

‘’I see,’’ she said neutrally, to hide the disappointment growing for Celestia. Choice words, indeed.

‘’Shall I take you to the classes now?’’ Feather offered.

‘’Of course,’’ she agreed, before asking, ‘’How many students are here, currently?’’

Feather rubbed his chin. ‘’Well, there’s a little over fifteen hundred cadets at any given time, more or less. Last year we had a graduation of nearly two hundred and fifty students, which is the highest it’s ever been since 960. And recruitment in general has been steadily rising ever since Stalliongrad broke away.’’

Another thing Celestia had dropped the ball on, in Luna’s opinion. Ponies revolt after the Guard violently suppressed them, and what does Celestia do? Fire a few decision-makers and let an entire region secede without any consequences. At the very least, she should have talked with the leaders of the revolt.

Luna had so far avoided topics like these with Celestia, but perhaps it was time to finally address them.

She cleared her throat. ‘’Pardon us, director, but we are here on a mission. Perhaps we can recline to your office, and continue the tour after our mission has been addressed?’’

Feather looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded. ‘’Of course, your Highness. Please, follow me.’’

Feather’s office was a large but simple thing. A wooden desk dominated the room with comfortable yet simple chairs on both sides, and bookshelves lined one side of the wall. The other held a shelf with glass cases, as well as a few pictures and maps of Equestria, Dodge City and the Academy. His military heritage was clear to Luna, and most likely to anyone else that visited the room.

Luna’s two guards took position behind the chair she sat down in, opposite Feather’s.

‘’We shall be frank, director,’’ Luna began. ‘’We are here because we have received a message from Princess Twilight Sparkle, requesting an advisor in military matters for the Crystal Empire.’’

‘’Well, you’ve come to the right place,’’ Feather declared after a moment of silence. ‘’As I said, we had two hundred and fifty graduates last year, most of whom have left for the Army or the Guard. But there are still a couple of excellent officers here in Dodge City.’’

Perfect. Luna leaned forward. ‘’Tell us more.’’