After everypony had settled down and started to file out of the palace once the news had broken that the problem had been dealt with, Fluttershy had spent a while looking for the Human’s owner.

Well, to say that she’d ‘gone looking’ was misleading. What she had done was wait by the door with the suited-up Human standing awkwardly to her side. Her reasoning was that if the owner was to walk past, he’d clearly notice his precious Human, thank the mare for looking after him, and then take him home.

It didn’t happen. She stood until the palace was completely empty aside from her friends, but nopony had shown even the slightest sign of recognition towards him. Not that most of them were paying much attention: it was a much more appealing prospect to hurry home or generally continue with one’s day after the brief crisis, why would they spare any thoughts to a lost Human?

Hazama himself found the whole exercise to be frightfully boring. Of course nobody was going to come out and claim ownership over him. That was just common sense! And while he knew that the horse next to him had no way of knowing this, he still thought that anyone else would have given up within minutes.

Should he be thankful that the horse cared so much about some random Human she just met enough to wait around this long? Or, for that matter, fly back into an area with dangerous feral Humans lurking about?

He considered that for a moment. Why had they come back? Did they really give enough of a damn about him to come back to a place where they could get seriously hurt? They’d known him for, what, all of about an hour? Even less in the case of the rainbow-haired one.

Either way, he was mildly thankful that they came back for him. If they hadn’t, the whole ‘getting tied up and questioned in front of a town’s worth of horses’ thing might have gone a whole lot worse.

Except now the mare at his side was acting weirdly antsy towards him, a strange contrast to her earlier fawning over him. Not that he overly minded the lack of cutesy animal-talk. She kept sneaking glances his way when she thought nobody was looking, but upon seeing his eyes turn to meet hers, she would look away just as quickly.

So they continued to wait in silence until Applejack cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. She waved a hoof towards the Human.

“So, Fluttershy. Where’d ya find him? He’s a mighty fine lookin’ breed of Human!”

The mare in question flushed lightly, partially hiding herself behind her mane. She looked again at the Human she’d been examining, who was still wearing that blank expression that all Humans shared. But that smile she’d seen for the single second it was on his face. It… Fluttershy wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not.

She proceeded to retell the story she’d told Rarity about how she’d found Polly missing in the morning, and had eventually discovered her approaching this Human near the Everfree Forest. From there, she mentioned Rarity reacting surprisingly well to his presence when she came to visit and her plan to take him to Ponyville to find his owner.

Then, to her shame, she had to speak about completely abandoning him when they found the infected Humans in the alley. Her friends didn’t make her talk more on that matter.

Finally, she expressed her concern that his owner hadn’t been in the palace, where every pony currently in Ponyville had ended up during the crisis.

Various hums of acknowledgement passed around the circle.

Just then, a knocking could be heard at the open castle doors, causing everyone present to look over.

Standing in the doorway was a slightly more muscled horse than Hazama had ever seen before. His fur was a stark white, just as much if not more-so than the one called Rarity, and his hair was fairly long, but unstyled, making it lay flat against his neck. It was a navy blue colour, with a lighter cyan streak along both sides, including his tail. Strangely, though, his jaw seemed a lot blockier in nature than the other horses he’d seen. That, combined with the other small details… Was this an example of a stallion?

Of course, his unspoken query was immediately answered by the Unicorn-Pegasus springing forward with a shout of ‘Shining Armour! It’s been soo long since I’ve seen you!’ as she latched around his neck.

To his credit, he took the tackle-hug with the best possible grace; chuckling at her enthusiasm and not moving an inch with the force of the affection.

“Sure has been a while, huh Twily?” He said, casually wrapping one of his own hooves around her neck in a way that suggested this was not a unique occasion to him.

When the mare tightened her grip, however, the stallion started to wince, unwilling to be the one to say that she was starting to hurt him.

Hazama would have offered his moral support, but his morals tended to be questionable at best.

“Sugarcube, I think ya may wanna loosen up, there…” Applejack as politely as possible informed Twilight that she was essentially choking the stallion.

Twilight glanced down at her hooves around his neck, and detached herself with a nervous chuckle, rubbing the back of her head as a sheepish grin formed on her lips.

“S-Sorry, BBBFF…”

“Not a problem, Twily. I’ve been away for quite a bit, so this is just making up for lost time!” He chuckled weakly, raising a forehoof to massage his throat.

Hazama didn’t know what a ‘BBBFF’ was, but he had the feeling it would disgust him if he ever found out.

Regardless, the new arrival intrigued him, and not just because he was the first male horse he’d come across yet.

No, it was the mark on his rear that caught Hazama’s eye. When he first spotted them, he thought it was just a trend shared between friends like some ‘pact of friendship’ or whatever. But this newcomer also had one, and a lot of the townsfolk that he’d seen gathered in the palace earlier had them too.

Did everyone here just get tattoos on their asses here when they came of age or what?

He had to spare an internal chuckle as he realised that the same sort of thing applied to the Murakumo units and their insignia. Maybe these were along a similar vein, and they denoted purpose or some such?

That seemed a bit far-fetched, given that the yellow horse had three butterflies as her tattoo, and the Pegasus-Unicorn had a purple star. Try as he might, he couldn’t find possible meanings behind the mark. But then, no outsider could have figured out the Murakumo units’ symbols either.

“So why’re you here, Shiny?” The purple one grinned again, standing side-to-side with the stallion.

‘They’ve got to be doing it or something. I mean she’s almost as clingy as that shitty Murakumo doll.’ Hazama thought, feeling much more out of place than usual as he leaned against a wall outside of the circle that had formed around the newcomer

“Uh, officially? To respond to a potential outbreak of infected Humans and to deal with the threat as the crown has deemed necessary.” He spoke, puffing out his chest in a grandiose manner. But afterwards, he dropped the act, smirking again. “But off the record, I’m here to keep my little sister and her friends safe.” The stallion wrapped a hoof around the Unicorn-Pegasus’ side as he mentioned the ‘little sister’ bit.

Hazama almost choked. ‘Siblings?! Christ, looks like she’s trying to get him into bed or something, the way she’s acting. Or murder him, one or the other.’

Maybe she was more like the thirteenth Prime Field Device than he had initially thought…

“Well that’s mighty kind of th’ Princesses to send someone like you to help, but aint there more of ya?” Applejack uttered appreciatively regardless, tipping her hat towards the stallion.

Shining Armour waved a hoof dismissively. “It’s not just me! The other members of the Royal Guard platoon are securing the two escaped Humans and investigating the cause of death.”

Twilight turned her head towards her brother in a confused manner. “I thought that Applejack’s stall, uh, ‘dealt’ with them.” She mumbled, still finding it a little freaky whenever Shining Armour spoke about death in such a professional tone.

The stallion tutted, glancing out the open door in the direction of the market.

“That’s what finished them off, yeah. But… This stays between you five and me, right? I’m not technically supposed to share this detail until we know what’s going on properly.”

The mares all made various noises of acceptance.

Shining Armour nodded, and continued.

“It turns out that, apart from the fractures and injuries dealt by the stand falling on them, great construction work on that thing by the way Applejack, it turns out that they were already pretty severely injured.”

A collective gasp came up from the circle as Hazama tried to sink more into the wall, suddenly not quite as confident in his work.

‘Shit! I didn’t know they’d be getting a goddamn Royal Guard squad out here. Hell, I didn’t even know they had a Royal Guard!’ Hazama groaned internally, realising that he’d been too careless.

A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he looked to the left a little bit.

He was discomforted to find that Fluttershy was staring right at him, a frown on the edges of her lips.

She knew something. She definitely fucking knew something! It made the shiftiness towards him earlier make so much sense! But why wasn’t she saying anything about it to the rest of her friends?

Was she…Protecting him?

“Injured? How d’ya mean? I sure as hay hope you ain’t implyin’ that mah farm is mistreatin’ our Humans” Applejack glared, hoof steadying her Stetson.

“No no no, nothing like that!” Shining Armour was quick to respond, waving a hoof in a placating manner, “I mean to say that they’d already had a tussle with something or somepony before they died. One of them had severe bruising on his neck, and some bones were broken as well. The other one’s head was barely…Uh…” He trailed off, noting how green Fluttershy and Twilight were looking. They got the point.

Applejack nodded, satisfied that he wasn’t trying to belittle her farm, and Rainbow Dash turned her glare to the room’s other occupant.

Oh great, now the rainbow-haired one was giving him the evil eye as well. Hazama didn’t get the impression that she knew precisely what the yellow one suspected, but the experience of him ‘conveniently’ managing to avoid her dive-tackle earlier had obviously made her less-than-accepting of him.

It was Fluttershy that spoke up next. “W-What…What do you think did it, Mr Armour?” she whispered.

“We don’t quite know yet, as I said. It’s why I shouldn’t really be sharing details with you.” Shining Armour shrugged, wishing that he himself knew the answer to their questions. As if he hadn’t been stressed enough with Cadance being summoned to Canterlot to deal with some emergency or another, now he had a mystery of his own to solve.

Fluttershy spared a strangely sympathetic glance towards Hazama, flinching as the Human visibly tensed up at her stare, before making her voice heard again.

“I-Isn’t it a good thing that something was attacked and got away?”

She shrunk back as Shining Armour fixed a curious look in her direction, alongside her friends. She calmed down, however, when he fixed her a calming smile.

“It’s not that we’re saying this is a bad thing in and of itself, but the fact that something not known to the Guard was able to fight off two very well built infected Humans seemingly without injury is…Disturbing. We just want to know who or what did this, and gauge whether or not they’re a threat.”

The explanation seemed to quell Fluttershy’s fear. The question hanging in everypony’s mind, however, was ‘why was she nervous to begin with’?

Hazama understood what she was doing, and appreciated it greatly, though he’d never say it to her face even if he was capable. She’d gotten the information he needed straight from the source.

He couldn’t trust it outright though. This stallion was part of the Royal Guard, which sounded distinctly like it was overseen by the rulers of the land, which he assumed to be a Monarchy of some description given that the cowboy stereotype horse had spoken about Princesses.

He was keenly aware that ruling organisations were not to be trusted in any regard. He would know; he’d been part of a tyrannical order’s plot to destroy the world before. For all he knew, these Princesses were planning to do the same, though he doubted that they would go about it in quite the same way.

“W-Well, if it’s alright with everypony, I want to go home now, and… And welcome this one into his new home.” Fluttershy piped up after a few moments of silence. Upon seeing everypony’s shocked and questioning expressions, she elaborated. “I mean… If his owner wasn’t here, and I found him hanging around the Everfree Forest, then maybe… Maybe h-his owner is… Is… Isn’t coming back.”

‘Everypony? Really? Isn’t that somewhat non-inclusive?’ Hazama wondered to himself as a distraction from the obvious problem at hand.

The yellow one knew much more than he’d like her to, and from the look she sent his way as she beckoned him forward to follow her home, he was going to have a lot of acting to do if he was to convince her of his dumb, animalistic nature.

Resisting the urge to hold his hand on his hat and sigh deeply, he trudged forward, taking immediate note of the stallion's curious expression that flickered out of existence within an instant of him noticing it, and the rainbow-haired one's clearly disdainful glare.

This could be trouble.

Author's Note

This chapter took a while to come out, and I think that's going to be a precedent for sundays, as I have quite a bit to do during them.

I don't have much to say about the character this theme belongs to, other than the fact that he's drunk a lot of the time and has a habit of being a womaniser, as well as also being one of the strongest players on the protagonist's side.

No, he is not a ripoff of Qrow from RWBY, believe it or not.