A Matter of Interest

by PhycoKrusk

02 - The Princesses' Will

Late Night
The town of Tawlee, Fouta province
Twenty Second of Sun's Ascent, Anno Concordia 2067

Night had long descended by the time everything was in place, and everypony in position. More significantly, silence had settled into a comfortable reign by the time everypony was in place. The ponies of Tawlee were asleep, the streets were empty, and windows everywhere were dark. Even if they had not been, not a soul would have suspected that the cloud which drifted across the moon, dimming its light, was anything other than natural. And why would they? They would not have seen moonlight glinting off the metal which would ordinarily have no business being in a cloud.

The house belonging to the mayor of Tawlee was larger than the others in the town, but not gigantic. A simple, two-story affair with eight rooms and a cellar. Like the rest of Tawlee's residences, its windows were dark. Like the rest of Tawlee's residents, the mayor and her family were asleep. Unlike any other structure in Tawlee, the walk immediately in front of it was not empty; thirteen dark shapes waited silently. On a pocket watch, being earnestly observed elsewhere, the arms moved to signal that it was one o'clock.

Across the street from the mayor's house, a pair of window shutters soundlessly opened.

The walk in front of the mayor's house was in that instant illuminated by a dozen unicorn horns, the light revealing to the world a baker's dozen of white-furred ponies wearing brigandines and Cabassets, light armor and helms designed and enchanted to be quiet. Each set bore the insignia of Equestria's Royal Guard. In the instant after the walk was illuminated, eleven unicorns and one earth pony glanced at their commander for direction. In the instant after they looked, Lieutenant Trench Broom broke the silence that had settled over Tawlee with a single, calmly-spoken word:

"Breach."

The earth pony in front of the door leading in, a massive stallion, planted his front hooves and rocked forward, coiling like a spring. His back hooves rocketed against the front door, ruining its lock and forcing it to swing open. Before the sound from the door colliding with the wall had faded, Trench Broom was rounding her way through the doorway, sweeping her horn across the living room and to the left. The instant she moved inside, two more guardsponies were right behind her, sweeping to the right and covering straight ahead in the empty room.

"Clear left!"

"Clear right!"

"All clear!"

So far, so good. "Royal Guard!" sounded Trench Broom's voice, loud enough to be heard by the neighbors: "Everypony on the floor, now!"

The rest of the unicorns filed in, two from the line joining each of the three ponies already inside and the rest forming their own team. Broom led her team left, into the dining room. The second team moved right, into the parlor. The third advanced forward into the kitchen. The fourth team remained to cover the stairs and the second floor landing, with the earth pony remaining outside. The sweep of the first floor was quick and efficient, Broom declaring the dining room, "All clear!" just as shouting issued from the living room.

"Royal Guard! On the floor!"

Not wasting a moment, all three ponies in the dining room turned and advanced back the way they came. The other two teams were returning at the same time, the fourth remained where they had been left, horns ablaze with light, and on the second floor landing was the mayor; an azure pegasus who was frightened and half-asleep, but still had enough sense about her to comply with the command she had been given, dropping to her belly and covering her head with her hooves.

"Upstairs, go!"

At Broom's command, the other two entry teams advanced up to the second floor to finish securing the house. The team on overwatch remained so. And she led her own team back outside. "Hull Breach, with me." The earth pony, a full head taller than the next tallest pony under Broom's command and built like a brick privy, fell into step behind the rest of the team as they circled the house, moving down the embankment on the side towards the cellar door at the back.

The cellar door itself sat flush with the stone foundation, making entry easy. Better still, with no windows and no access into the house, there was no escape for anyone — or anything — that might be inside.

Forming a half-circle around the door, horns ignited again, and Broom nodded sharply. The unicorn to the left of the door cast his spell, making the wood of the door groan and creak as it grew brittle. The unicorn in front of the door, next to Hull Breach, stepped up and plunged his horn into and through the wood before releasing his own spell. The blinding burst of light that filled the cellar was bright enough to be clearly visible through the gaps in the door's planks, despite how tightly they were held together. Wrenching his horn free and moving aside, Hull Breach rocked and bucked the door just as he did before, throwing it opened. Finally, Trench Broom charged in and swept the left, while her companions followed and swept right and center.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

But not all clear. Shelves, barrels and support beams obscured some of their vision, and the lack of moon and starlight wasn't helping either.

"Foxfire, give us some light," Broom said lowly. The unicorn that swept right focused his mind and tossed a shimmering orb of magic further in, which burst forth with light as bright as day. Suddenly, everything was visible, and what was visible was almost nothing they had not already seen. Shelves, barrels, and support beams, plus some sacks which were far too small to hide anything other than a foal.

There was little else, save for a red balloon floating near the back wall where a red balloon had no business being.

Steeling herself, Trench Broom cautiously advanced with her subordinates close behind. As she drew closer, nothing untoward happened. Nothing leapt out at her, or fell on her, or popped out from the shadows to throw something on her. As she drew closer still, she noticed that the balloon, floating serenely and stationary thanks to a small weight tied to it with white string, had a note or letter attached to the same string. And when she drew close enough to really afford looking at the balloon itself, she realized that drawn on it with black marker was a pony's face.

---

"A balloon with a face drawn on it, and a note attached?" the Corporal asked, momentarily forgetting the discipline that a Guardspony was to conduct himself with. Second Glance only responded with a nod and a vague sound of affirmation, giving the Corporal just enough time to straighten himself up again. "May I ask what the note said?"

"According to the Lieutenant, all it said was, 'So close,' and the face was making some rude gesture or another. So the Lieutenant tells me." A silver-grey shimmer surrounded the card table that Trench Broom had earlier been using to read her maps, lifting it into the air and folding it neatly. Levitating it to his side, Second Glance moved from his spot and advanced towards one of the wagons the Guard cohort had with it, the Corporal following as if he were being debriefed by a superior. "Obviously, I wasn't there when this was taking place, since Princess Twilight hadn't yet attached me to the cohort."

"You must have been in Ponyton, then?" the Corporal suggested, "Investigating what you could there?"

For a few moments, Second Glance stopped walking and regarded the Corporal carefully. Just before the silence threatened to become awkward, the Investigator broke it.

"That's very insightful of you, Corporal," he said before resuming his walk to the wagon. Once more, the Corporal followed alongside him. "I naturally assume that you overhead that somewhere, but if you wouldn't mind telling, how did you come to that particular conclusion?"

“Well, it was the conclusion that best fit the evidence, I suppose is what you would say." The Corporal sounded somewhere in-between proud and embarrassed, if such a state could exist. "You weren't attached to the cohort when this happened, but joined a couple days before my squad arrived, so you must have been in the area. There's only a few villages within a short distance from where we met the cohort on the road, including Tawlee and Ponyton, so you must have been in one of them, but since you weren't with the cohort when the raid happened, it couldn't have been Tawlee." Briefly, they stopped again while Second Glance turned the card table over to the quartermaster. "And, if you were in the area, then being a Crown Investigator, the Princess must have sent you to investigate something. Besides Tawlee, the only place worth investigating at the time would have been Ponyton. Therefore, you must have been investigating in Ponyton, probably to gather more information about the Prince."

"Quod erat demonstrandum," Second Glance concluded. "Excellent deduction, Corporal. Given that your mark appears to be a truth table, would I be correct to assume your special talent relates in some way to logic or reasoning?"

"Problem solving, more generally. If a question can be reduced to its components, I just see the connections, I guess. How everything fits together. Sometimes." The Corporal's gaze drifted downward towards the ground and towards melancholy. "Usually I just feel like I'm stumbling through everything and happen to reach the right answer by chance. A talent for logic that relies on faith, how's that for a contradiction?"

Second Glance regarded his companion for a moment, and then determined the best course of action was to find common ground. "To return to our prior discussion, I was investigating the Prince, for all the good it did me. Plenty about the things he did, how he managed to fill the mayorship in Ponyton, everything I could want except for something to determine his motives or where he's going. You're not the only pony that feels like he's stumbling through things right now, Corporal."

The small smile that appeared on the earth pony's face showed successful bonding, but it quickly vanished and was replaced with consideration. "There's still one piece of this puzzle I don't understand, Investigator. The house was being watched from the air and ground. How did the Prince escape?"

"That particular part of the story is a point of some embarrassment for those that were there, but to summarize, the clearing was so organized, and they were so focused on finding the Prince, that nopony noticed when the number of guardsponies on the premises briefly rose to fourteen."

The Corporal lost what smile he had as he considered this. Truthfully, there weren't many explanations. "So then, the Prince is a changeling with a penchant for stage magic?" he ventured. His smile returned when Second Glance responded with a nod and a smile of his own.

"That he's a changeling is likely, although aside from testimony delivered by one Lord Switchgrass, who has admitted to a rivalry and casual hate of the Prince, testimony delivered by Switchgrass' bodyguards, and the event in Tawlee, we don't have much in the way of evidence." Briefly, Second Glance looked across the encampment, now broken and packed back into the wagons used to carry everything. "More evidence, if there is any, shall be forthcoming as we discover it, I would think. I believe your Sergeant is looking for you."

Immediately, the Corporal lost his smile and looked around hurriedly. "Ah, yes, I believe he is," he replied, trying and failing to re-adopt the calm facade of a guardspony. "I very much enjoyed our conversation Investigator, and hope to speak with you again later. Good day." Second Glance tipped his hat, and then the Corporal was gone.

Sucking in a deep breath, the unicorn cast his gaze about the assembling cohort and, on identifying Trench Broom, made his way over. "Hail, Lieutenant," he began, "I was hoping to have a word with you before we moved."

Broom, for her part, eyed Second Glance with a calm displeasure before speaking. "If you must, although it looked as though you just finished having several words and even sentences with my Corporal." When the other unicorn failed to stumble over his words or explain himself, it did catch her somewhat off-guard.

"Ah, yes, about the Corporal." Unexpectedly, at least for Broom, the Investigator doffed his hat, holding it close to his barrel as if doing otherwise might somehow offend her. "Lieutenant, I'm wondering if I might borrow the Corporal for a time, at least until we've finished up in the next village. I have a, shall we say, a premonition that I may require his direct assistance."

For several seconds, Broom regarded Second Glance silently and sternly, and then finally spoke. "He told you about his talent, and how he feels like he has no direction no matter what orders he has, didn't he?" she asked. "The Corporal is a sub-par guardspony. He performs every task assigned to him, but is not terribly good at anything that doesn't require him to think. He barely passes as a soldier and doesn't have the qualifications to be anything else. He's in the Guard because it seems to be the only thing he's not terrible at. He's miserable no matter how much he tries to hide it, and he's wasting everypony's time and resources, his own most of all. You found something he'll be good at? Are you sure?"

The Investigator nodded, if a bit hesitantly. "Sure enough that I'm willing to risk my reputation for noticing things others miss."

As soon as he spoke, Trench Broom did something he had never known her to do in the time he'd known her: She looked pleased.

"I'll get his reassessment papers ready. He's yours for as long as you think is necessary."

To his credit, it did not take Second Glance more than a single blink of his eyes to overcome his surprise. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he replied, replacing his hat on his head. He didn't wait for anything before he continued speaking. "I also have a premonition that you're wondering about my apparent shock, and I suppose I was expecting more resistance regarding an issue that might well, er..." What was the phrasing? "Detrimentally affect the cohort's integrity."

Once again, Trench Broom's expression slipped away from pleased, although it was not cross either. "The Royal Guard is an extension of the Princesses' will, Investigator. I am an extension of their will. And it is their will that their little ponies be both safe and happy. The Corporal is as safe as he can be, given his current occupation. If I have the opportunity to also make him happy, then as an extension of the Princesses' will, it is my duty to affect such an outcome. The cohort will survive being one pony short. It won’t survive a pony that's incapable of putting everything he has into it."

After another moment, Second Glance offered a half-shrug to preface his response. "I shall, here, defer to your judgement, and then ask how long we might be on the road."

Finally, Broom's expression slipped back to the calm, stoney face that most ponies expected to see on the guard's visage. "Until nightfall, if we're lucky. Far more likely that we should arrive tomorrow, and that is all. We have a schedule to keep. If you have more words you wish to have with me, they'll have to wait."

Between the two unicorns, there were silent nods of acknowledgement before they parted company. Trench Broom moved to the head of the column and gave the order to march, while Second Glance moved down it to deliver the good news to the Corporal.

It was time to stop stumbling.

Author's Note:

What a month. I like to think I'd have had this up sooner, although I can't guarantee that, but a sudden eviction, plus suddenly moving, plus an automotive accident? It turns out, that can really screw things up for a guy.

First off, to everyone who insisted that I needed to have a paragraph break anytime someone new starting talking, including but not limited to Autocharth, Zephyrus Scary, and Jphyper (actually, that might be everyone), you were right, I was wrong, and it's much better this way.

Second, originally, A Matter of Interest was going to be a stand-alone story, with everything resuming again in The Prince of Ponyton, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to simply continue with what I already had. So for anyone who was confused about it being Complete and then Incomplete, there you go.

I don't have a planned update schedule, largely because my current apartment is only a vacation rental and I'm still technically moving, but I will try really hard to take less than a month before adding another chapter. Does anyone else out there ever struggle with what to write here?

Comments

[Zephyrus Scary]

So this "The Prince of Ponyton" story was going to be separate? That explains that... Glad to see a continuation on this, one way or another! Quick question: When, in relation to the events of the show, does this happen? -or are you going to answer this in a future chapter?

[PhycoKrusk]

2569637
That's mentioned in the description, but it might be touched on later, too. All I have so far is a rough outline of the story's overall direction.

[Burnasius]

Okay, so they are chasing a Changeling, a special changeling and an investigator arrives with his own detachment of Royal Guard and they have noticed a sudden increase of Guard ponies while they discuss this among themselves. Call me crazy but either the 'Prince' has escaped or is one of them, I'd say Second Glance but then that's moving the story too fast.