Life,Death,and Rebirth

by Shadow-Dancer

Chapter 9: Recruitment

Author's Note:

Sorry for the longer then believable update time but I have a bad habit of procrastination and that with life is not the best to do writing with thanks for waiting enjoy the chapter and give me ideas for future chapters, they just may be included.

Chapter 9: Recruitment

Our conversation was cut short when a guard entered, “Princess Celestia, The Zebra Ambassador is here to see you.”

Celestia put on a clearly faked smile, “Tell the Ambassador that I will speak with him shortly.”

The guard bowed, “Yes ma’am.” With that the guard left to fulfill Celestia request.

Celestia sighed, “I wish we had more time but it seems I must attend to my duties.”

“Of course, well I better let you go do all your duties as a ruler of an entire country.”

With that I left to look for some type of training yard hoping to find a little familiarity in this strange world, and learning how best to use this hopefully temporary body in a fight. Magic was great and all, but it could fail me at any point, and I could use something to keep me busy.

After asking a passing guard where the training yard was I soon arrived, It was a decent size about half an acre of land. I estimated there were about fifty or so guards training drills,practicing combat on targets, or sparing. I saw a group of ponies gathered around two fighters upon a closer look one was a white unicorn stallion with a blue mane and tail with a light blue stripe in the middle. I could not see his mark during the fray but he was fighting some brown earth pony stallion with a dirty blond mane and tail.

From the looks of it the white stallion was winning while the brown stallion was tired presumably from the heavy swings and all the hits he was taking, White was fighting with quick jabs with his hooves and retreating to engage again. It reminded me of my own martial arts training I earned my green belt and planned to eventually try and get my black belt at some point. I was decent in hand to hand and the like not the best but I could hold my own quite well and had to prove that at times.

I shook my head of the memories and continued to watch and saw that the white pony was getting ready to make his final move. He let the brown pony punch, feigning a right jab, when his rival fell for it he immediately punched Brown’s leg sending Brown off balance and causing him to fall, with that White used his front hooves to lock his opponent in a grip, the tired pony under him could not get up and submitted.

The two ponies got up and bumped hooves and said some things to each other before the brown pony left. I walked up to the unicorn with a confident smile and said, “Looking for another sparring match?”

The white stallion smiled back his smile spoke about a slight ego boost from that fight, but it was not at all arrogant, “Yes i’m up for another fight, but who are you? I’m afraid we have never met.”

I paused for a minute to stop from answering with my actual name, “Shadow Dancer, and you are?”

“Shining Armor, captain of the royal guard.”

“Well nice to meet you, anyway I came here to brush up on weaponless combat.” I entered what was apparently the fighting ring “So with that said, lets dance.”

He nodded entering the arena, “Lets dance.”

Contrary to popular belief, just because you survived training and are a Marine it does not make you some type of badass in any type of combat even if you were to become a black belt in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. You are still susceptible to bullets, stab wounds and many other types of nasty little things that can cause death, it just happens that you are slightly less likely to die while searching a building with hostiles holding knives and other such weapons. If anyone tells you differently smack them.

Back to the story, I’d like to say I suddenly due to being in the quadruped body for four or five days that I easily applied learned techniques to my current form, but I would be lying. the honest answer is I was getting my ass handed to me in the first half only scoring some decent hits, and just as I was getting used to fighting with four legs it was too late he was able to kick my ass the rest of the way to submission. The spar lasted about five minutes but felt like twenty, but I did come out with the ability to better use this form in hand to hand or hoof to hoof as I was later told.

With Shining Armor the victor we got out of the ring, “Congrats Captain Armor, you kicked my ass there.”

“Anytime Shadow Dancer, anytime.”

I smirked, at his jab. “Well I need something to eat, and find some job later as well.”

“The guard is recruiting currently if you want a job, decent pay, good benefits, and not too busy, usually fighting the occasional band of brigands is the biggest thing that you’ll be doing. So what do you say? “

I thought about it for a bit and realized that this might be something great I can do to get Earth among other things off my mind for a while. Not to mention it was something that I was overall quite used to, given that I was a Marine back home. So with those thoughts, at the time I figured it was a great idea so of course I accepted.

Shining Armor told me that the screening for recruitment started three days from then and explained the process, to my surprise it was similar to what I did when I enlisted back on earth, the forms, tests, and the biggest differences were in the physical test in which were different for each pony type.

With this information I walked back to the castle and to my room to start on the paperwork. It was simple and quite standard, I was just glad Twilight taught me some magic, and I would have to go to her to help me learn more than just a less than basic healing spell, and levitation. But that would occur later after paperwork was done and I turned it in. With those thoughts filed in the back of my head I went back to my current task, and did not stop until finished.

When I finished the forms I looked at the sun and saw it was about an hour past noon. I decided to find something to eat hating that I did not have the ability to get things like food on my own, but smiled knowing that would soon change. Walking down the halls to the kitchen I requested tomato soup and ate, thinking on what to do with the rest of my day.