New Recruits
The winds whipped high in the hills of Appaloosan Mountains, the early summer air washing away the cold dew of the night before. It would still get cold on those nights, but then again, the base wasn’t meant for comfort, and soon enough those nights would be near the same temperature as the relentless days, with the moisture all but gone from the area. Sleep would become a luxury to both enlisted and officer alike, even with the magically-cooled officer's quarters, and for a small group off in the southern portion of Camp Clydesdale, today was a very special day indeed.
“Atten-tion!” the lieutenant said, causing the group of young, bright-eyed stallions to immediately stop what they were doing and fall into line, their pristinely trimmed pelts and manes standing out underneath their training armor. As soon as they had fallen into line, the lieutenant blew into his whistle to erase any thoughts of idle chatter amongst them.
“Show some respect lads, for today you’re getting a special treat,” he said with a grin as he marched past the recruits, his silver armor glinting in the sunlight.
“Sir, what is it, sir?” the largest of the recruits asked.
“An excellent question, Private Rogers!” the stallion replied, snap-turning as he marched up and down the row of Equestria’s newest batch of potential royal guards. “As you little colts know, you’ve been chosen from the best of Equestria’s recruits to serve not in our navy, nor our air force, but under the banner of our princesses. As such, those among you who make it through training shall not only have the glory and honor of doing such a thing, but you shall become one of the few, elite, royal guards.”
The stallions were hushed, partly from being called little colts and partly due to the images that flashed through their minds. Glinting golden armor, silent and proud; strong figures keeping the princesses, heads of their kingdom, safe from any and all harm. It was what every colt dreamed of being when he was little, and it was a position as lofty as it was respected. To be a royal guard was not only as close as it came to talking with the princesses on a regular basis, something few did, but it also meant prestige for one’s family and an almost guaranteed success in one’s personal life. The stallions of the royal guard, no matter their individual faults, worked together at a job that was more religious in some ways than others might expect, and to be one of those few and proud was assuredly the desire of every fresh recruit in Equestria’s armed forces.
“As such,” their lieutenant continued, snapping the group out of their thoughts, “it brings me great joy knowing that today, maggots, you’ll be meeting the cream of the crop; a guard whose family legacy you all know. He is not only a good friend of mine and fellow graduate of this unmatched academy, but he is also one of the toughest instructors you’ll ever have the chance to meet.” He quickly glared into the faces of each and every recruit, an almost maniacal smile gracing his lips. “So, I any of you little baby-waby colts wants to go home to mommy, be my guest! ‘Cause after today, you’ll be wishing you were home, and not here!”
Off in the distance, a bright light glimmered in the air, coming closer and closer with every steady wingbeat. “Aha, there he is!” the lieutenant said, walking past several nervous-looking recruits and walking towards the landing pad. “Privates! May I introduce the captain of the royal guard himself, all the way from Canterlot specifically for this day, Captain Clavier!”
With a gust of wind rivaling even the mightiest of pegasus wingbeats, a creature a good half again as large as even the largest earth pony landed on the landing pad, stopping within feet of the lieutenant. With a mild roar he arched his back, folding his large, leathery wings to his sides as he surveyed the recruits. None of them turned and ran, but a few were thankful they had emptied their bladders earlier that morning, or else they might have been truly embarrassed.
The captain before them was unlike anything they had seen before. He was a dragon, to be sure: strong jaw, long snout, spines and scales and talons and all the trimmings, but there were a few things about him that made them look even closer. His rear feet were hooves, sharp-looking too, and he had a mane running down his neck, with his curved dorsal spines neatly parting it down the middle. On his large muscular flank, peeking out from under his golden armor lay a cutie mark: a shield and a sword, crossed over one another and inside of a ring of green fire.
“These are the recruits, Lieutenant Parsons?” the captain asked, his voice sounding rather harsh and incredibly deep in tone, almost like the actor Morgan Freemane. His long, sinuous tail hovered slightly above the ground, kept at balance due to his larger body and long counterbalancing torso.
“Yessir,” the lieutenant said, snapping a salute off to his superior. “Captain Clavier, I must thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit us here at Camp Clydesdale. It’s not every day the captain of the royal guard comes out to inspect recruits.”
“Yes well, I should think not, Parsons,” Clavier replied, giving the lieutenant a small wink as he walked towards the group. “Hmm, what have we here?” It had been too long since he had inspected a batch: what had it been now, five years?
Like a predatory feline he slunk up and down the group, his eyes slits and tongue flickering out through his fangs like a snake. Most of the recruits had no real fear of a dragon, or at least, weren’t afraid of the idea of one. However, to be in the presence of the captain of the royal guard, whose father was a general (among other things), and was as close to a pure-bred, fire-breathing dragon as one could get... well, suffice to say that a few of the recruit’s mouths were a tad dry.
“Private,” Clavier said suddenly, stopping and staring down a particularly small recruit. “What is your name?”
“S-Sir, Private B-Bean, sir,” the cadet said with a small stutter, saluting as best he could.
“Private Bean, where are you from?” the captain asked, watching the recruit intently. He could always smell cowards, or scoundrels, or even those who were complete idiots: he likely inherited such an acute sense of smell from his father. The smell off of this one, however, was familiar: a faint hint of lilac with earthen tones and raindrops.
“Sir, P-P-Ponyville, sir, near the southern fields,” Bean replied. “Sir,” he added quickly.
“Would you happen to know a pony by the name of Morning Dew?” Clavier asked. Morning Dew was Fluttershy's oldest daughter, a fine mare who had her mother's inner spunk and her father's business smarts.
“Sir, yes sir, that’s m-my mother, sir,” the recruit said, swallowing the sudden excess of spit in his mouth. This captain was awfully intimidating...
“Yes, well, I’ll be sure to congratulate her personally when you graduate,” the captain said, giving Bean a small, professional smile. “I myself am from Ponyville. We grew up together, your mother and I did: our parents were good friends.”
“S-sir, how old are you, sir?” Bean asked, a question that brought a few sharp intakes of breath from several other recruits.
The captain cocked his head to the side slightly. “A little over seventy years, give or take a decade,” he said. “Why, may I ask?”
“S-Sir, you don’t seem a d-day over thirty, sir,” Bean replied, feeling the urge to hide the barrack’s outhouse.
“Yes, well, that’d be my father’s side in me doing that,” Clavier said. “Spike was indeed a well-known dragon in Equestria, though I’m not so certain many of you know much about him. A lot gets lost within a generation or two.”
“Such as?” a recruit asked, only to clasp his hands over his mouth in surprise asking such a question.
“He trained at this very camp, just as you will,” Clavier replied, turning away from Bean to look at the rest of the group. “Unlike you, he wasn’t good enough to some of the instructors to make it into the royal guard, even though he outscored nearly everypony else they let in. So, what did he do?”
The cadets were silent at that: they had yet to get around to the history of the camp and it’s more illustrious graduate, Spike the dragon. The new mess hall was even named the “Dragon’s Den”, and it was rumored that Spike ate where the site was when nopony would let him sit with them at their table in the old mess hall.
“He stayed the course and decided to prove them wrong: that he was better than what they thought he was, and the fact he was a dragon meant nothing to him,” Clavier said, his words becoming far less calm and more filled with an emotion similar to anger, but far more resolute: pride. “He trained harder, longer and more brutally than any other recruit. Where others would strain under three bags of sand, he would shoulder seven, and where others would only go on the obstacle course when they had to, he would go whenever he had a free moment. Do you know what happened after he graduated with the rest of the “normal” service members?”
Again, silence: perhaps of the gathered group, only Clavier and Parsons knew the tales of Spike the dragon. Oh well: better now than ever to tell these recruits.
“He went home and got married, right before being shipped out to the war in the east,” the captain said. “He left my mother behind with me inside, and while he was off to war, he pushed himself to win, to achieve victory where other commanders thought there could be none. He scouted, patrolled, ambushed and captured: he routed enemy charges, reinforced flanks all his own, and do you know what happened? The troops began to believe in him more than in their own commanders. He began to rise through the ranks faster than any recruit ever had, and with it came the requests of countless fellow soldiers to be put into his squads and then his platoons. Why?”
“B-Because they trusted him?” Bean asked after a few moments of silence. None of the other recruits really wanted to say anything, for fear of the captain's mood doing a complete 180 and rounding on them. He was still a captain, after all, and he was rather scary when he was like this.
“Yes Bean, yes they did,” Clavier replied. “They trusted him to bring them back to camp or their homes after every engagement, and if he didn’t, they knew the enemy would pay dearly for taking his soldiers, his friends and brothers in arms from him. He indeed came back, a general and war hero. look to the recruit on your left, and now your right: you may not be headed for a war, but you're gonna need all the help you can get in this place. Trust in your fellow recruits, become friends, and maybe, just maybe, you'll make it through all of this. It's what my father did with his troops, and what I've done with countless recruits myself: learn to trust. This camp still exists, paid for on the interest gained from his estate, just to keep that memory of perseverance alive. Now, tell me, do you have what it takes to keep his memory and the memories of your forefathers alive? Do you have what it takes to be a member of the royal guard?”
“Sir yes, sir!” the recruits said.
“I can’t hear you!” Clavier said, cupping a talon-tipped hand to one ear. “I said, do you have what it takes?”
“Sir yes sir!” the recruits shouted, even louder this time.
“I’m sorry, I thought I was talking to the future royal guards, not a bunch of bottle-drinking babies!” Clavier shouted, his loud voice carrying far over the camp. “I said, do you have what it takes?!”
“SIR YES SIR!” the recruits shouted.
“Good! Now, go run the obstacle course three times apiece, and if one of you doesn’t finish, you all get no lunch!” Clavier shouted, his eyes ablaze. “Now, get moving!”
The recruits all saluted in unison and sprinted off towards the obstacle course, bean near the back. He looked back at Clavier to see the captain give him a small salute, and the recruit nodded in return before joining his fellows on the course.
“I must say, old friend, you sure do have a way with words,” Parsons said as he walked up beside the captain.
“Oh, come on now, did you really think I’d come off immediately as some crotchety old geezer who didn’t know what it was like to be young?” Clavier said with a smile. “You and I both know you were far more book-smart in boot than I was, and you were better than me in the tests because of it.”
“Yes, well, you had a lot to live up to, and you’ve still a long way to go,” the lieutenant replied. “To think, our drill sergeant was the son of the same drill sergeant that gave your dad such a hard time.”
“Yeah, he must have hated my guts for what he put us through,” the captain said with a smile. “Remember having to run the obstacle course in the dark?”
“Oh, yeah, I get bruises thinking about it,” Parsons said with a small shudder. “Thankfully your night vision saved us from diving right into the barbed wire, though.”
“Yeah, can’t forget about that,” Clavier said with a grin. “Hey, show an old friend around: I haven’t been back here in several years, remember? Is the grub the same?”
“Meh, it’s better now than it was for us, but it’s still terrible. Come on, let’s go get some,” the lieutenant said, turning around and walking off with his old friend. The ache in his aging bones had not set in yet; he too still had some years of fight left in him, though nowhere near those of his good friend. “Maybe they’ve still got that toilet seat stuck to the roof of the latrine?”
“I should hope so: that’s a historical artifact,” the captain of the royal guard said with a laugh.
Author's Note
I really liked writing Captivated, and I really liked writing this. In fact, I've become inspired to just keep writing small stories like this in this universe I've created. Maybe I'll make a group about it someday!
