Chapter 6 ; Chapter 7 ; Chapter 8 ; Chapter 9 ; Chapter 10
The whole of the valley spread out in the darkness before
her, lights sparkling under the stars along what Rarity guessed
was the river, and she found she could trace the route all the
way back to Ponyville, a glowing cluster that didn't seem that
far away, actually.
If only she weren't about to plunge to her death, she found
herself thinking, the length of wooden walkway that she,
Fluttershy and Ory had ridden down the rapids of Canterlot's
underground river sailing from the waterfall at its end and
arcing delicately through the night sky before starting
horribly, inevitably downward--
If it weren't for that, this would be rather pretty.
In front of her, Fluttershy suddenly leaped from the wooden
planks, her traveling cloak flaring out above her spreading
wings, and Rarity felt a surge of hope. Of course! She so
seldom saw her friend flying, it had completely slipped her mind
that Fluttershy was a pegasus!
Not that she would be able to keep both Rarity and Ory from
falling, of course...
Fluttershy began spinning in place, whirling faster than
any pegasus Rarity had seen other than Rainbow Dash, and before
she could even wonder why, she gaped to see a cloud forming
under Fluttershy, spray from the waterfall gathering into a
substantial mass. "Rarity!" Fluttershy shouted almost as loud
as an actual shout. "Ory! Grab my hoofs!" She sprawled on her
stomach across the cloud, reached her front hoofs toward Rarity,
her back hoofs toward Ory.
Rarity's sprang from the planks falling away beneath her,
saw Ory further down turning, flexing his legs, jumping toward
them both. Her front legs twined around Fluttershy's, her heart
pounding so hard it made her ears twitch, but looking down,
seeing the walkway dropping, seeing Ory stretching, sailing,
slowing, his flailing hoofs not going to meet--
"Ory!" Rarity swung herself along the curve of
Fluttershy's cloud, snapped her tail out, saw Ory's neck
straightening, his mouth opening, his teeth chomping into the
waves of purple hair. Gritting her own teeth, she let herself
swing back, Fluttershy crying out, and it was just enough,
pulling him the last six inches that he needed to catch
Fluttershy's hind legs, and--
Panting, swaying, clamped onto Fluttershy like the most
precious diamond she'd ever found, Rarity realized she wasn't
falling, was hanging from Fluttershy's front legs, Ory hanging
on behind, Fluttershy sweating, her eyes clenched, her body
trembling and draped over a lumpy mess of a cloud, all their
clothes dripping with water.
She wanted to shout "We're alive!" But of course, that
could change at any moment... "Ory!" The stallion shifted his
wide-eyed stare from the darkness below them to her. "Your
magic! It doesn't have anything to do with signaling, by any
chance, does it??"
"I--" His eyes went even wider, and he brightened. Quite
literally: his horn lit up, a bubble of what looked like pure
sunshine expanding around him. "I can make daylight and
darkness!" he cried. "If anypony's looking this way, they'll be
able to--"
"Rarity!" Fluttershy moaned. "The heat! I can't...this
cloud, it's not--" She whimpered and slid an inch downward, the
cloud puffing to steam as the light hit it.
Ory gasped, his horn flickering, the warm glow pulling back
before it could vaporize any more of their life raft. "We'll
have to do something else!" he shouted.
Rarity looked back at the Day Palace shining above and
behind them, drifting further away with each moment, and tried
to think, tried to come up with something that would make them
stop moving or even get them moving in the--
Moving! Of course!
"Hang on!" she yelled and activated her own horn, reached
out with her gem-finding sense, hoped that Princess Celestia
really did keep as large a collection of royal jewels as the
magazines all said she did, and--
And felt it, felt the huge stash of them grabbing hold of
her, pulling her backwards, tugging Fluttershy, cloud, Ory, and
all back toward Canterlot.
A gasp from Ory. "How...how on Equestria are you--??"
"What, this?" Giddiness swept through Rarity, the breeze
cool against her face as they picked up speed. "Just a little
ability of mine. Quite handy now and then, I've found."
The rocky cliffs below the Day Palace swept past in the
light from Ory's horn, Rarity following the tug and lifting the
whole group of them over a parapet to a balcony of some sort, a
scenic viewpoint, she guessed, a flight of stairs leading up
from the far end. The gems were higher still, but she forcibly
cut the power to her horn, dropped the four inches to the
stonework of the balcony floor, said to Fluttershy, "Open your
eyes, darling! We're safe!"
"Safe?" Fluttershy's voice sounded smaller than ever, but
she cracked an eyelid, let out a squeak and fell, the last bits
of her cloud vanishing, Ory touching down with his hind legs,
catching Fluttershy, and setting her to quiver on the floor of
the stone circle, her eyes clenched again, little squeaks of
"We're safe! We're safe! We're safe!" coming up from her.
"That..." Ory's horn was still glowing, but as she looked
over, it sputtered out, darkness falling except around Ory's
eyes, wide and fixed on hers. "That was the most amazing thing
that's ever happened to me."
Trying to find another quip, Rarity found herself instead
gazing into his deep, dark eyes, her heart still pounding, but
with a very different sort of anxiety. She stepped forward as
he did the same, touched her nose to his, heard him draw in a
breath, her lips opening to meet his--
And Rarity's first kiss was exactly as perfect as she'd
always known it would be.
***
"The Night Guard?" Des cleared his throat.
"They're...uhh..."
Rainbow Dash couldn't help glaring at him. "They're what?
Complete and total losers?"
He glared at her, and that made her feel a little more
normal. After the whole weird thing with Princess Luna moving
from the Day Palace to the Night Palace, she'd set out kind of
peeved for the Citadel and her dinner with the guard. All those
ponies in their shining white and gold armor in the Day Palace,
and no one at all in the Night Palace?? She knew Captain
Destrier was in charge of all that, so she'd flown for the
turrets and spires of the Citadel, perched on the inside rim of
the volcano just past the two palaces, with a few sharp
questions to toss at him.
On arriving, though, the captain meeting her at the gate,
giving one of his big whistles, the gate rolling open to reveal
rank after rank of soldiers, the band in the corner striking up
a drill tune she remembered from flight school--
And then she was reviewing the troops with the captain, the
commanders of each battalion stepping forward, snapping out
smart salutes, telling her how much they'd been looking forward
to tonight--
And then into the Citadel itself, the banners and the
shining sabers and the ponies marching in, and while she'd hated
every minute of the bowing and saluting when she'd been at
school, she found she didn't mind it nearly as much when
everypony in the place was saluting and bowing to her...
Dinner was great, the unicorn cadets floating each course
in and out with such precision, Dash made a joke about the cook
having to be an air traffic controller, a joke the ponies at the
head table with her and the captain actually laughed at, all of
them real fliers who knew how to stretch their wings and all of
them wanting to talk about it with the only pony alive to ever
pull a Sonic Rainboom--
"Two Sonic Rainbooms," she reminded them with a wink.
Then after dinner, meeting more lieutenants and commanders
who kept wanting to talk to her and kept wanting her to talk
about herself over a dessert Pinkie would've gone crazy for, and
finally strolling under the stars through the neat gardens
overlooking the rest of the city with the captain--"Call me
Des," he'd said, grinning in a way that had made Dash glad it
was too dark for him to see her blush--
It all almost made her forget how mad she was. Almost.
"The problem with the Night Guard," Des said when she
finally asked, "is that technically, it no longer exists."
"What??" Dash looked from him to the lights of the city
glowing all up and down the walls of the crater and out along
the flatland between. "You mean the sun goes down around here,
and the guard just goes home? What if there's an emergency or a
fire or something?"
Des puffed a breath. "Exactly the point Princess Celestia
and I raised with Princess Luna when she informed us that she
hadn't had soldiers attending her when she'd last done her job
and didn't see why she needed soldiers now. Princess Celestia
pointed out how a city like Canterlot is quite a different place
from their former palace deep in the Everfree Forest, but
Princess Luna was adamant. And a direct command, well, I had no
choice."
Still mad--just not quite sure anymore who she was mad at--
Dash shook her head. "That's crazy! The princess can't just
disband the Night Guard after a thousand years!"
"Well..." He sounded so uncomfortable, Dash turned to look
at him again. "They aren't exactly disbanded, either."
She tapped a hoof against the little stone path. "Unless
they're all, like, ghosts or something--"
"They're not--" Des sighed. "You see, in the past, we had
a rotation, every member of the guard spending one week on night
duty, then three weeks on days so we could spread it out among
the whole cohort." He stopped, seemed to be searching for the
right words. "When Princess Luna declared that she didn't
require the services of the Night Guard, however, against my
advice, Princess Celestia took the troops stationed at the time
in the night barracks and renamed them. They're now the
Canterlot Night Police."
"Night Police?" Dash blinked at him. "What does that
mean?"
"It means that for the past six months, a whole company of
my former soldiers have been sitting over there in the night
barracks." He gestured with his muzzle to a low building
snuggled up against the back wall of the Night Palace, lights
showing through its small square windows. "The ranking officer
happened to be Aurelius Blueblood, the most useless waste of
horseflesh I've ever come across, so while I've seen a few of
the soldiers patrolling the city at night, I think they're just
doing it because they're bored." His face hardened. "For all
the suggestions I've sent over, Blueblood doesn't seem to care!
They've no mission and no mandate, and I've no authority over
them anymore!"
"Huh." Dash couldn't stop a grin. "'Cause, y'know, I'm
thinking I just might..."
***
Flying around the barracks, Dash saw three doorways: a big
one at the far end of the building and two smaller ones on the
long side that faced away from the Palace. Picking the door
nearest the back, she landed and bucked it in with a move she
knew Applejack would've been proud of, the frame shattering, the
panels crashing to the floor; she spun, zipped inside, and
shouted, "Ten-hut!" at the top of her voice.
The lights in the barracks were fairly low, but Dash
couldn't see anyone flying at her, ready to fight. Some of the
beds along the far wall seemed to be occupied, though, and a big
white unicorn stallion, lounging on a sofa beside the fireplace
to her right, his uniform jacket wrinkled and unbuttoned, looked
up from the comic book he was reading. "I beg your pardon?" he
asked in a voice so snooty, Dash was surprised it didn't come
out of his nose.
Movement now on her left, fifteen or twenty ponies, their
uniforms in various stages of disrepair, flying or galloping the
whole length of the barracks to snap into respectable ranks for
a surprise inspection. The clatter of their hoofs got a few
heads popping up in the beds now, too, but the big guy, still
lying on his couch blinking, well, Dash was pretty sure she'd
found Des's waste of horseflesh.
"One more time!" she shouted, remembering Sergeant
Sprinkles, the one pony at flight school that she and Gilda had
never even considered pranking. "For the foals in the slow
class, I said, 'Ten-hut!'"
There were maybe forty ponies now in the ranks, their faces
a mix of fear and confusion, and the big guy lumbered to his
immaculate hoofs, the white of his coat so combed and polished,
Dash felt like squinting. "Now see here!" he said. "If you
seriously expect that I'll--"
She swooped past him so fast that when she landed on the
other side of his couch, he was still staring at the door she'd
kicked in. Dash gave a little whistle, then, grinned when he
spun, and waited till his widening eyes told her he'd noticed
his captain's bars now clenched between her teeth.
As delicately as she could, she tucked the metal clasp into
the big side pocket Rarity had stitched into her jacket. "You
were saying something, commander?"
"I am Captain Blueblood!" Sparks shot from the tip of his
horn. "How dare you come into my--!"
This time, she spun rainbows around him three times, his
mane when he staggered to a stop sticking out in all directions.
She waited for him to recover again, waited for the shock on his
face to become horror when he saw that she had his commander's
bars this time. "Lieutenant Blueblood, y'mean?" she asked,
tucking the insignia into her pocket.
"Sir!" someone hissed behind her. "That's Rainbow Dash!
She's one of the--!"
"Silence in ranks!" Dash whirled, glared at the ponies,
but she couldn't tell which of the stone-frozen faces had
spoken. "Maybe it's just me," she said, "but anypony who wants
to be a captain in Canterlot prob'bly oughtta know who's who and
what's what already." She swung her head around to look at
Blueblood. "I'm not gonna ask if you agree, lieutenant. I'm
just gonna remind you--for what I really hope is the last time--
that I said 'ten-hut.'"
The former captain scrambled into the ranks, and Dash gave
him a point of smarts. "Now!" She tapped the wooden floor.
"I'll need the company commanders front and center."
A pudgy pegasus, her uniform a little tight, her cutie mark
a shapeless yellow splotch on her slightly paler coat, stamped
smartly, sprang forward, and settled in front of Dash.
No one else moved, and that struck Dash as odd. "It's been
a while since I was in ranks," she said, "but shouldn't a
company this size have two commanders?"
The commander licked her lips. "Commander Rigel has patrol
duty tonight, ma'am," she said, her voice maybe the one Dash had
heard calling to Blueblood earlier.
"And you are?"
"Cream Custard, ma'am!"
"Well, then." Dash plucked the captain's bars from her
pocket and clipped them onto the other pegasus's uniform. "It's
your lucky night, Captain Custard."
Custard's eyes were so wide, Dash thought they might just
fall out, but Dash couldn't stop now. "I'll need you to pick a
lieutenant, captain."
Without hesitation, Custard said, "Lieutenant Foxfire!"
A sparkle among the ranks, and a thin blue unicorn stallion
appeared beside Custard. Dash pulled out the commander's pin
she'd taken from Blueblood and chomped it into place on the
unicorn's jacket. "Congratulations, Commander Foxfire."
The new captain was still quivering. "Permission to speak
freely, ma'am?"
"Not just yet, captain." Dash waved a hoof at the ranks.
"Actually, fall back in, if you wouldn't mind."
Custard and Foxfire both stamped, spun, and moved into
place at the end of the front line. "'Cause maybe you're about
to say," Dash went on, pacing up and down along the ranks, "that
you're not the best choice to be captain. Maybe you're gonna
say I should pick this Commander Rigel, or maybe you're gonna
say that I really shouldn't've kicked Lieutenant Blueblood off
his cloud like I just did." She stopped in front of Custard.
"That sound like the sorta things you're likely to say,
captain?"
"Yes, ma'am," Custard said, a bit of a waver behind her
words.
Dash nodded. "Lesson number one, then: not only is life
not fair, a lotta the time, it's downright stupid. Sometimes,
you take the blame for stuff that's not your fault, and
sometimes, you get a promotion you don't deserve." She moved to
the center of the group, tried to sound more confident than she
felt. "Take tonight, f'rinstance, when none of you showed up
for the changing of the guard between the Day Palace and the
Night Palace."
"But--!" Blueblood started, but he pulled his snout closed
quickly, earning another point from Dash.
"Yeah, I know." Dash shrugged. "Princess Luna herself
said you shouldn't show up, so you'd think that'd make it OK.
The problem is, y'see..." For the second time that day, Dash
wished she had Twilight's brain for just a few minutes. "You
took an oath, right? Not just to Princess Celestia--or even to
Princess Luna, 'cause, I mean, who even knew about her till last
year?" She caught herself grinning, stopped, cleared her
throat, tried to get her thoughts back on track.
"The oath you took was to Equestria is the thing, an oath
to serve all ponies wherever they need it and however they need
it." That was in the oath she remembered from flight school, at
least. "And guess what? It turns out Princess Luna really has
needed you all this time. She just didn't know it, and your
former captain, well, he didn't do anything that woulda made her
see it. So here we all are."
Dash looked at them, pegasi and unicorns with a few earth
ponies mixed in, and hoped she was right about this next part.
"Now all you guys who didn't quit when Princess Luna disbanded
the Night Guard, well, I gotta think there's a reason you didn't
quit. Yeah, maybe you're just in it for the money or there's
pressure from your family or you didn't wanna resign your
commission or whatever. But more than any of that, it's...it's
'cause you wanna do this. You wanna be this. You feel it right
here." She thumped her chest. "You're soldiers, all of you.
Soldiers of the Guard."
A shuffling of hoofs, the ranks straightening a little.
Dash raised her voice. "So, yeah, for the last six months,
they've called you the Night Police or whatever, and it's great,
Captain Custard, that you and Commander Rigel have made up some
patrols, have started trying to figure out what that maybe
means. But, well, since I'm Princess Luna's Minister of
Loyalty--" She touched her necklace, its jewels in the shape of
her cutie mark, the thing she'd looked at every night before
going to bed for the past year. "I'm telling you right now.
You're the Night Guard again. And now I'm gonna tell you how
that's gonna work."
***
A couple hours later, tired but feeling pretty good,
Rainbow Dash sailed through the Night Palace's archway and down
the hall, Pinkie's torches now lined up along the walls.
Landing just outside the throne rooms doors, she strolled in,
strutting a bit: wait till she told the others about--
"--sailing out into empty air!" Rarity was saying, she and
Fluttershy wrapped in towels and lying on cushions beside the
big pit with the bonfire Pinkie had started when they'd all
first come in at the start of the night--however many hours ago
that had been. "I've never been so frightened before in my
entire life!"
Everypony else was sitting on cushions, too, their eyes
wide and their expressions running from Twilight's absolute
shock to Pinkie's quivering excitement to Applejack's pinch-
mouthed concern to Princess Luna's simmering anger.
"Fortunately," Rarity went on, "Fluttershy put together a cloud
for us, and I--"
"What??" Dash couldn't stop it from bursting out. "A
cloud?? Fluttershy??"
All heads swung toward her, and Fluttershy leaped into the
air. "Oh, Rainbow Dash!" Quicker than Dash had ever seen her
friend move, Fluttershy zipped across the throne room and
wrapped her in a huge hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
The force of the greeting almost knocked Dash over. "What
the--??"
"Your cloud!" Fluttershy let go, landed, started hopping
up and down like Pinkie, her eyes curled into crescents. "The
one you made in Princess Luna's library earlier! It got me
thinking about how I could never do clouds back in school, and
then when Rarity and Ory and me went falling off the cliff,
there was all this water from the waterfall! And I just--"
"Cliff?? Waterfall??" Dash looked back and forth between
Fluttershy and the rest of her friends. "Whatta you guys been
doing tonight anyway??"
Chapter 12
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