Cleaning up

Blade struggled to wake up, his eyelids feeling like they'd been glued together by some mysterious force; maybe it wasn't so mysterious, he knew exactly what it was - a combination of despair, fatigue and the worst, absolutely the worst headache he had ever experienced.

Struggling to recall the events of the previous... what exactly? How long had he been out for? He tried to move, and made very little progress in doing so; he was bound to a table with rope, a large piece of cloth tied into his mouth like a bit, preventing him from speech. Looking around, he saw red stains and the broken skulls of various creatures littered around, bunnies and squirrels, mice and cows, a dragon and a pony.

A pony.

A pony.

Blade had already given up. He just turned his head away and sighed.

"You call this binding!? This is a travesty; it's bulky and ugly and it's the most awful shade of brown, beige, tan or whatever this horrible colour is! It matches not my coat, my mane or the crimson on the walls! Even the skulls disapprove! Look at the disapproving expressions on those poor disembodied and broken craniums!"

"QUIET, PONY!"

"And that is another thing, your attitude is awful; you are rude, unhygienic and mmmpf, MMPF!"

Shortly after that, Blade's door opened; a creature stepped into the earthen chamber through the battered wooden door, taking care to latch it shut behind him before absent-mindedly scratching one of the wooden posts.

He then turned and walked on his two back legs towards Blade, before untying the gag.

"Answer me some questions, and I might let you live, you pathetic scum" the dog said, slightly nicking the Captain's throat while staring into his eyes.

"Let me go now, and I might let you live, you smelling mutt" was his response. It wasn't a particularly good one. It earned him a powerful punch round the cheek and a scornful laugh.

"Rarity was right, your attitude is awful, and did I say you smelled?" This comment earned him a savage kick between the hindlegs.

"I have far worse things in store for you, equine turd, should you fail to give me what I want."

"What do you want? A savage beating? Do you like it rough?" a broken nose. This was not going well for him.

"NO! I suggest you quit screwing with me and answer my questions" they were close, and his breath was toxic. Blade would have recoiled had he been able to, but the headboard prevented him from doing so.

"Fine, but answer me one of mine first." He coughed "Where are we? What are we doing here?"

"That's two" the dog pointed out, smiling at the Captain. "I can't answer the first, but we're holding you here until we decide what to do with you."

"What are the possibilities?"

"Slavery, ransom or death, depending on what you do and say next."

"That was very informative," it wasn't, but he was being polite "I feel so safe now," he didn't. "Your turn," finally, some truth.

"Good, I knew you'd come round to... our way of thinking. Who are you?"

"Gleaming Blade"

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm in the Royal Guard"

"That would explain the armour, although I thought ponies never wore real leather."

"We can't make soy leather into armour yet. Dying cows and ponies donate it."

"I suppose that saves the trouble of flaying them alive." As the diamond dog said this a shiver ran down Blade's back.

"Anyway, what do you do within the guard? What is your position?"

"I'm a Captain"

"Oooh, valuable, we can ransom you" the dog's eyes lit up. "I assume it was your men guarding those seven mares and that baby dragon?"

"No" for that he ended up with a black eye; cooperation was overrated.

"You are forgetting I hold your life in my paws; if you cooperate you go free. If you don't, I enslave you and you are sold to the brutes in whichever state you go to and worked to death. We are in the Great North Waste, where the strong barely scratch a living and the weak shrivel and die in days. I survived here by causing pain and terror for ponies, gryphons, wolves and whatever other creatures you care to name, so I suggest you keep talking!"

"Yes, it was my men."

"Why? Why are they so precious to you?"

"They're friends of the princess"

The dog's eye glinted; there was serious money to be made here if he played this right. "What kind of friends? Best friends? Benefits?"

"Very good friends"

"How do they know each other?"

Blade fell silent, the dog couldn't know how they were connected.

"HOW DO THEY KNOW EACH OTHER!?"

"They're in the aristocracy!"

"NO THEY'RE NOT!" the dog cried, pulling him free of his straps and shoving him hard against the wall before punching him again. "They don't have clothes and only one of them has the attitude, and one of them is a DRAGON! Did you expect me to believe you!?"

"You'll never know!"

And Blade's world went black.

Again? Bloody typical

The changelings had fanned out and surrounded Ponyville, concentrating about the dirt roads leading from the makeshift gates which were protected by the magical shield; they had no assets on the inside, so the shield wasn't coming down any time soon. While it couldn't be seen in its entirety, the bubble was a sphere, covering above their heads and below their feet, as well as in all the horizontal directions. It was impenetrable from any direction, by air, road, river or even through the earth.

They were probably going to have to do this the old-fashioned way; namely, set up some more permanent shelter and bum around for a while as the ponies starved and then attach a fancy label like "siege" or "blockade" to their minimal activities in the mission report. For an isolated town that was used to functioning for long periods of time independently, this may take some time.

But it would eventually fall.

"We must negotiate with the ponies! Everyday we sit here wears away at our troop's loyalty and will to fight!" a changeling said in that strange, rasping and clicking language of theirs; he was decorated and bore the Changeling insignia of a Captain. "We must get them doing something as soon as possible; many people in our army have harvests at home that will require tending to and many will leave the army."

In the tent, another changeling - outranking the Captain - voiced his objections to the idea.

"If we negotiate, they realise we don't want to fight, which makes us look weak, then the ponies start getting ideas; they may risk a sally in which they will be slaughtered, but we lose troops. If the pony guards send another large detachment we may not escape with our targets!"

"And wasting time is a better idea?"

"CALM YOURSELVES!" the General, having magically amplified his voice - thankfully unable to compete with the Royal Canterlot Voice - shouted at his charges. He would not have loud arguments in his command tent, for the walls were only made of cloth and offered no soundproofing. He continued "I have already wrangled with this issue myself and believe we should open negotiations. The Colonel's concerns are irrelevant."

He then proceeded to leave the tent and call for two of his personal guards, who had been standing beside the tent, and then walked up to the barrier, ostentatiously removing his weapons and throwing them to the floor in order to draw attention. He motioned for his two guards to do the same, before knocking on the barrier.

Whinnyam was barely awake, wishing he could see Vinyl, wishing he could tell her how he felt, wishing she hadn't left for Canterlot to drum up some business in the big city clubs. His heart ached; he'd felt like he'd been stabbed, despite not taking part in any big fights. He was more concerned for her safety than his own, though she was far away in Canterlot, and he was facing the changeling horde, for lack of a better word.

Stop this Whinnyam; you're obsessing. You've got far bigger problems!

While he hated to admit it, the little voice of sanity in the back of his head - trying to escape from the rest of the crazed mass of thoughts - was right, although perhaps "voice of sanity in his head" seemed a bit oxymoronic.

His attention was drawn by a rippling in the coloured bubble above his head, tinting the sky. Looking for its source, he noticed three changelings, completely unarmed, knocking on the shield.

Looks like they want a word. What harm can it do?

I suppose that stallion was nice.

Vinyl fumbled with her vinyl; she was dropping discs all over the place tonight and she had no idea why; she had recently lost a Static Stallion record, which had rolled onto the dancefloor and probably hadn't survived. Was she drinking enough water? More than usual. Was the thermostat too high? No, it was lower tonight. Was she shivering because it was cooler than usual? No, she would've noticed.

Frustrated at herself for screwing up so much, she decided to quit early, packing up her stuff and going over to the bar for a drink; the business she needed in the long term didn't matter as much as the beer she needed now. Those first two drinks had the counter-intuitive effect of clearing her head and helping her figure out what was going on, and if she didn't like the answer she just continued drinking to forget it. It was a very good system, Vinyl thought as she staggered to the bar, her body already anticipating the effect.

After 'a few' rounds of various beers, ciders and shots - all of which looked questionable - she collapsed on the two-bit bed in the two-bit flat, for once thankful there wasn't a two-bit colt next to her.

He wouldn't approve of that; in her drunkenness she had realised something. She realised why she had been thinking of Whinnyam all day, even though he barely knew him. She realised why she had been fumbling all day with everything.

I like him; I love him

Happy at this conclusion, she rolled over, and fell asleep like a log.

AN: I've decided that my story merits a romance tag, even though I have little to no experience with the subject whatsoever; here's hoping I get something right!
Also, while faving this makes me feel good about myself, only constructively critical comments are going to make me better. Just sayin' ;)