The Night Watch's Red Tape
Pinkie Pie sat, twiddling her hooves as the stern Pony looked over her file. She had never done a job interview before, so this was a new and frightful experience for her. She had taken a job at Sugarcube Corner when she was just sixteen, but Cup and Carrot Cake had taken her in because she had just moved out of her parents place and was quite literally starving to death. Baking was her favorite way to make people smile, so eventually she wanted to start her own bakery. And while she was sure that the Cakes would give her a loan if she asked for one, but she didn't want to do it like that. She wanted to make her own money, and make her family proud.
The Pie family had always been hard workers. He mother and father had started a rock farm when they were very yoing, and broke their backs making it profitable. They raised four girls, each one of them was a handful in their own way. Maud was the largest one of the entire family, and she knew that, and she wasted no time showing it. Marble was terminally shy, and it caused problems throughout her life and schooling. Limestone was, for lack of a better term, a hardass who never took any nonsense, whether it be from her parents, her sisters, her friends, or any poor fool who tried to haggle and the rock farm. And Pinkie...
Pinkie Pie had never made it easy for her parents since she had left the nest. She was always hyperactive, never calm unless she was unconscious and she spoke very, very quickly. But no one could say she didn't work hard at what she did. Despite her seemingly carefree attitude, no one could call her lazy. She put that on the written application for this new job she was trying out for.
This was an odd job for her to take, at least it seemed that way in the surface. She had never really shown interest in joining the guard beforehand, but it did make sense. She had defended Equestria with her friends several times in the past, and she had a decent enough head on her shoulders, despite coming off as bubbleheaded, or ditzy. She was fairly strong, a talent that came with being an Earth Pony. And she had a good head for Ponies, as she was able to befriend anyone within a matter of seconds. So her becoming a glorified cop made perfect sense, didn't it?
So she asked Shining Armor if she could be a guard, he said that there was a lengthy application process, but it could happen. Given her schedule however, she would have to apply for the Night Watch. That fell under the jurisdiction of one Starless Knight. A Thestral (or batpony, as the common coloquialism had it) who served as Shining Armor's nighttime counterpart. The captain of the Thestral Night Guard.
Pinkie's first impression of this mare, when she say down for an interview with her is that she was intense. When Pinkie described Starless Knight to her friends, she called her the exact middle point between her sisters Maud and Limestone. An unflappable, stonefaced Batpony who kept her patience on a very thin thread. She made it very clear from her expression that she would ruin you if you were in her unit and stepped out of line. Her eyes were the kind of burning yellow that left a scorch mark on your soul. She could narrow them to a mere sliver and scrutinize every inch of you. Her blue coat was just the right amount of soothing to make you forget that murder was potentially standing five feet away from you. Her jet black mane was held back in a tight braid that fell down her left shoulder. She looked as if she could easily subject any poor fool who went up against her to the worst kind of pain. For Pinkie it was no different. She pulled out her most ruthless variety of torture...
Making her sit still for over twenty minutes.
Pinkie was never one to be patient... And she thought it wouldn't look to professional to bounce around on the room on her abnormally springy tail. But it was hard. If Pinkie Pie could harness the energy she stored within herself she could power Canterlot for over a thousand years. So sitting there as Starless Knight meticulously went through her file was abject agony. She could feel herself fidgeting constantly. She wondered if Starless noticed.
"You know if you keep shaking like that," Starless said, in a calm, unbroken tone. "You're going to vibrate through the floor. And the repairs for that come out of your tax money."
That broke Pinkie Pie. "Listen, Captain Knight," Pinkie said frantically, speaking progressively faster with each word that exited her lips. "I know I don't have much experience in guard work, and I know that I can be a little hyper at times, but if you give me a chance I'm sure I can bring a lot of fun back to the Night Watch. And you guys certainly need it. Sheesh, the ones I've met have been scowling all the time, and that's really--" Pinkie was shut up quickly when a dark blue hoof covered her mouth.
"You know, it's kind of amazing," Starless said calmly. "I have never seen anyone so unqualified for this job, yet so overqualified at the exact same time. You've defeated monsters I wouldn't try to take on in my dizziest daydreams. You've hobnobbed with both princesses. You are the Element of Laughter for all things hooved and holy... And yet, you've never had a paying job more stressful than Rock Farmer. You're not very focused. And you've got a little problem with excess energy.
"Really?" Pinkie asked sincerely. "I hadn't noticed..."
"The fact that I honestly can't tell if you're screwing with me, scares me a little bit," Starless replied. " Everything seems to be in order here... Alright. I honestly can't tell if I'm doing this because I think you would do a decent job at it, or if I'm just doing this because I want to see what happens... But I am leaning towards hiring you."
Pinkie stood on one leg blowing a noisemaker as confetti sprung from apparently nowhere. A loud SQUEAK echoed throughout the room.
"But..." Starless Knight said quickly. "There are a few things I am going to need to ask you first. A little aptitude test. Ready?"
Pinkie Pie sucked the confetti back into whatever nether realm of sprang from and nodded intently at Starless Knight. Ready to take any questions she had, and give back a precise answer. That was, of course, Pinkie Pie's version of a straight answer. So total and abject madness."
"Alright, so we start with the really dumb one," Starless said, looking down at her forms. "Uh... Describe yourself in one word. "
"Pink," Pinkie Pie answered immediately .
Starless gazed at Pinkie Pie with the thousand yard state of a Mare who had been through all of this nonsense before, and knew a very long interview when she saw one. "Well," she said quietly. "That's... Certainly apt. Where do you see yourself in five years?"
"Twenty seven," Pinkie nodded.
"... I'm sorry, what?" Starless obviously didn't want to ask, but did anyway out of some kind of reflexive action to hearing nonsense.
"Well you see, I'm 22 now," Pinkie explained. "In five years I should be twenty seven. Though my birthday is in a month so I guess you could say I'll be almost twenty eight, which I guess makes me 'almost 22' now, so..."
"Right, right, stupid of me to ask," Starless Knight said, and meant it. "How much experience have you had with high tier magic?"
Pinkie's mind boggled at the dozens of otherworldly terrors she could have told Starless about, and the excruciating detail she could go into, but she decided that is was best for her just keep it simple. "Lots," she said succinctly.
The next few words fought like demons to stay inside Starless Knight's throat. "Dare I ask what kind?" She said nervously.
Pinkie figured that the best answer to this question would be to start from Nightmare Moon and work her way up to the really insane stuff. She took in a huge inhale of breath, because this was going to take a while.
"You know what, scratch that," Starless said quickly. "I just need to know if you've ever come close to destroying a town."
Pinkie stared at Starless Knight awkwardly, as a vision of thousands of clones of herself trampling across the streets of Ponyville, causing devastation and havoc in their bouncy , squeaking wake.
"On purpose," Starless Added.
"No," Pinkie answered honestly.
"Good," Starless nodded. "If you could refrain from doing whatever it is that was, and for the love of the Four Alicorns don't tell me. I think you'll do just fine. You're hired. Or enlisted, I should say."
Pinkie did the squeaking, noisemaker, confetti jump again. She had earned it this time.
"Okay, all we need to do now is cut through some red tape," Starless smiled. She bent down under her desk to fetch the forms for new recruits. "I honestly don't know why they do this... Most of these things just get filed away in some underbelly somewhere where some poor bureaucrat dusts it-- No, Pinkie..." Starless pinched the bridge of her nose, and sighed when she saw Pinkie with a giant pair of scissors as she came up from behind the desk. "I just need you to sign a few forms, we don't have to literally cut through anything."
Pinkie nodded and shoved the scissors back into her mane, disappearing into wherever she puts these things.
Starless shuffled around the forms, sorting through them for a bit before coming up with the first form Pinkie needed. "First off, health insurance," Starless explained. "We tend to get pretty banged up on this job, so you should be protected. Takes a little cut out of the paycheck, but trust me, it is absolutely worth it."
Pinkie shrugged, that seemed to make sense. She took the form and signed it in all the little boxes that she needed to.
"Second off," Starless said, taking out another form. "Requisition for the armor. Look, I don't like the idea of a bunch of strangers take my measurements either, but it's what we're stuck with. "
Again, it made sense to Pinkie, so she signed where she needed to and filled out the relevant information.
Starless Knight nodded. "Okay, last up is the Thestral Transformation form," She smiled. "Schedule it for when you aren't going to have anything else.to do. Trust me, the procedure can utterly destroy you for the day if you aren't careful. So get it done, go home, and just sleep for the rest of the day. You should be fine after 24 hours, but it's gonna be tough that first day."
Pinkie was about to shrug and sign that next form, but then she finally heard what Starless had just said. "I'm sorry, 'Thestral Transformation?" Pinkie repeated. "As in... You want to turn me into a batpony?"
Starless gave a look like someone had caught her tearing up at a bad romantic novel in her room. "Shining Armor forgot to tell you." she surmised. "Thanks cap. You sure made it easy for me... It's not like this entire interview has just turned awkward. Yes, Thestralization is a part of the job. Required of every recruit."
About a thousand questions raced through Pinkie's head all at once. It was true that she had never seen a Night Watchpony who wasn't a Thestral, but she just assumed they were all born like that. It had never occurred to her that it would be some kind of transformation. Eventually, she settled on the first question she needed to ask. "Why in Equestria do I need to do that to join the Night Guard?"
"Simple," Starless Knight said, leaning forward as if she was giving an explanation she had given about a dozen times before. "We work at night. We were originally banded together by Celestia a thousand years ago to take on Nightmare Moon should she ever return. Now we're under Luna's command, funny how things work out. Either way, the principal is the same. Leathery wings to fly silently, heightened nightvision, excellent hearing. All of which are perfect for spotting and catching things in the dark. It makes you a more efficient guard."
"So why don't you guys just recruit Natural Born Batponies?" Pinkie asked. "This all seems kinda... I dunno... Mad science-y."
"Well, first off there are Discrimination laws in this country," Starless said, smiling. "But even if there weren't it would still be impossible to fill out the ranks. The Thestral strain is a very rare recessant gene found in Pegasi family lines. On average, only about fifty ponies a year are born Thestrals, and that's in the entire world. In order for us to fill out any sort of new recruitment goal, we'd have to draft every single Natural born Thestral on the planet, either at birth, or when they hit recruitment age. And that just isn't right on a number of levels."
"Look, it's not that I'm prejudiced or whatever," Pinkie said quickly. "You can ask Princess Twilight, I'm friends with absolutely everypony. It's just that a friend of mine for turned into a Batpony once and... Well it didn't work out so great."
"Went feral, right?" Starless said, nodding as if she had heard this before. "Completly mindless? Hissing like a rattle snake? Seriously afraid of light?"
"And sucking the juice out of Apple's with her fangs, yeah," Pinkie said, remembering the altercation with "Flutterbat" all to well.
"And I assume that this was some kind of magical accident right?" Starless guessed. "You were casting some kind of spell on a few bats and it backfired?"
"Hit the nail right on the purple horned head," Pinkie nodded.
" Not an uncommon occurance, trust me, " Starless Knight said, shaking her head. "Our form of Tra nsformation is different. We have seven of Luna's personal Mage Unicorns cast a spell all at once when the moonlight hits you just right. The transformation takes hold all at once, no gradual progression like what I assume happened to your friend. You keep your mind and your sanity. You feel like crap on the day after, but you stay sane."
"Okay, well at least now it doesn't sound mad science-y," Pinkie said, with a note of genuine relief. "Now it all just sounds vaguely culty, which is... I don't know... Better, I guess?"
"Pinkie, we're an ancient order of knights with roots that go back a thousand years," Starless explained. "We were built to stop an ancient evil, and we turn ourselves into bats in order to combat the evil of the night. Everything we do is kinda culty."
Pinkie nodded, and then she realized something. She wasn't bolting for the door. She had heard what she needed to do to get this job and she was still considering doing it. Why? Why was she thinking of going through with this? Was it just because she was curious? Did she think it would be fun? Was there some darker side of her that wanted to visit the more experimental side of magic? Was this the same impulse that made her use the Legendary Mirror Pool, this causing the near destruction of her whole hometwown?
No... No this was something much more basic. An impulse she didn't often give into, but it was there. And right now, it was the thing on Pinkie's mind. "Alright, so that's the catch," Pinkie said. "What's my starting salary?"
"750 bits a week," Starless said frankly. "We actually get paid more than Day Guards of the same rank because the work we do is more dangerous at night. You can thank my old CO for negotiating that one."
"Okay," Pinkie said thoughtfully, that was a little more than she was making at Sugarcube Corner. Not a bad salary. "Benefits? I know I just signed the insurance stuff but how much does that cover?"
"Any damage you take on the job, we will cover," Starless said, nodding. "For the damage you take off the job, that depends on you. If you decided to purposefully run face first into a mountainside because you thought it would be funny, we're not going to cover you being insane. Oh, and full dental, take it from me, fangs can be tricky. "
Pinkie nodded once again,. She'd have to be careful off the job from now on. It's not as if she would purposefully ran herself into a mountainside, but she did, in regular occasions fire herself out of a spring-loaded canon. She had to be careful where she aimed it from here on out. "This transformation," Pinkie said, not wanting to offend anyone with her next question, but she really did need to ask. "Is it reversable? I mean, if I get fired or have to quote for some reason, and I don't like being a Batpony, can I change back? Or is this something I'm stuck with for the rest of my life of I take this job?"
"You'd be stuck with it for about a year," Starless explained. "The Ritual to change you back can only happen when the moon is in some certain position that it was in when you transformed the first time. I don't know the details, that's the Mages job. Point is, a year and a week. And we can't ask Luna to move the moon into that position sooner because it might screw with other Ponies transformations. Plus the princesses take the work very seriously. They probably wouldn't take kindly to us shifting the moon around to help somepony quit their job"
Pinkie bit down on her hoof, unsure of what to next. "I'm still on the fence, I've got to be honest," she said. "I mean, this is a really big decision, I may need to think about it."
"I completely understand," Starless Knight said , raising her hooves. "The offer won't be going away any time soon. I'll call you in three days, that should be enough time to think it over. I hope you'll join us. If for no other reason than to eat the cake they serve at the New Recruit Party that my husband !makes. Don't know what it is about that came but it is freaking ambrosia."
"Give me the form," Pinkie said immediately. "When can I start?"
"Starless was absolutely right, that cake was delicious," Pinkie explained to her friends some time later. " And those Night Guards are some of the nicest ponies you'll ever, ever meet. And those Mages look scary at first, but they are actually really fun. During the ceremony they kept cracking jokes that were really funny. It did make me kind of nervous that they would make some mistake, but it worked out fine."
Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack stared at Pinkie Pie, with her pointy, fuzzy ears, reddish eyes, fangs and leathery wings, and each one of them had to pick their jaw up from off the floor.
"What?" Said Pinkie Pie. "What's wrong? Something on my face?"
Author's Note
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