The Games Guard Ponies Play
Tiller Draw answered a knock at the door and, after signing a few pages of a shipping manifest, wheeled a rather large package through the door to the modest hovel she shared. The gray mare cracked open the lid and made a quick note of the contents to the sound of marble being laid on marble.
Inside sat a case, a few stands, and a guidebook, just as her housemate had left her a note to be expecting. The unicorn in question currently sat behind her, arranging the pieces of a chessboard.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have done that yourself, a signature isn't spoken.” She called out as she replaced the lid. She met no response as she approached the table. What she did meet were the pair of intense red eyes staring at her. They looked down when she took a seat. “Will you at least let me win this time?” she asked, pressing the button atop a small timer.
A light-colored hoof moved a pawn forward. She could still make out the faint blue stains from the mane dye. The click of the timer switch was her reward for the question.
She recognized the play as one of their more aggressive openings. “Of course not, why did I even ask?”
She positioned a knight to threaten the piece and clicked the timer. Another pawn flanked its fellow in a flash and the timer clicked again. She’d have missed the move with a blink. “Something on your mind, Vigil?”
The white mare continued to stare at the board as the timer ran down.
“I just don’t know what you’d be upset about.” Tiller sassed, waving a hoof in the air for effect before sliding a piece. After pressing the button, she continued, “We were specifically asked by Celestia herself to go on special assignment fresh out of the academy. Not a week on the job with EUP and here we are.”
The thunk of stone striking stone followed by a hollow click marred her statement.
“The first female cadets, top of their class, given priority to replace the next, and need I remind you imminent, openings in the Princesses’ personal guard,” her voice began to rise as she pondered several moves before settling on one, “And what do you do whilst casually meeting the princess off-duty? Chat up a storm and then stab us both right in the back?”
Another move in response, followed by the click of the timer.
“How’d it go again, Vigil? Remind me how you got me roped into all this as well.”
There was silence, broken by the pieces and the timer.
“We were set for a pretty good gig, Vigil. Probably would have caught the eye of a handsome stallion or two, standing up there with one of the Cs.” She swept a bishop across the board, removing the knight that had just claimed one of her pawns. “Or maybe a mare, if that's more your speed.”
Vigil Stance continued to stare at the board.
“Nice pay, decent hours. Nopony asking our names or having to sign fake ones to pick up some blasted instrument.”
Pieces moved.
“I wouldn’t have to swallow a lozenge every night because of some blasted accent. I'm beginning to doubt that was even part of the assignment.”
The timer clicked.
“I wouldn’t put it past a mare like you to go ‘Hey, seal’s broken, might as well toy with Tiller some more’. Well guess what, there's no stopping it now. The whole town has heard me, we’d lose our cover if I stop.”
The mare sat hunched forward, intermittently hovering stained hooves over the board before waiting for Tiller to make a move of her own.
“We've been here a week, Vigil. A week. Do you know what my throat feels like? While you won't say a single word.”
As if to prove her point, the unicorn remained mute.
Tiller grabbed a piece and slid it across the board without looking down. Her eyes remained locked on the horn in front of her. “First few days I thought hey, maybe you're just as surprised as I was that we were being transferred to some hick county. And then I got the letter.”
Another move in response, before the timer was pressed Tiller made her move and slapped the timer with her own hoof.
“The letter, promoting you for your initiative in drafting up this whole farce.” After the switch to her turn, Tiller glanced down and made the first obvious move. “Praising you for your help. Why’d you do it,” she asked, thrusting her queen up the center of the board, “After all this time are you really still that upset, Vigil?”
Vigil’s hooves stayed in place. Instead, a reddish aura swept over one of her vanguard bishops and withdrew it back onto the queen’s space. For the first time in many turns, Tiller Draw processed the state of the board.
She was in checkmate.
The gray mare stood, sweeping her fetlock across the board, and scattered pieces across the room. “Do you really think we're still on duty, Vigil?! Do you think we can call ourselves guardponies out here? Say something already!”
Vigil remained seated as her aura washed over the pieces on the board and carried them back to the table. With an irritated growl, Tiller stomped over to the crate that sat in the corner, throwing off the lid as she picked up the first object she found inside. She turned around and slammed it down on the table as she yelled out “I deserve an answer, Vigil Stance! Or do you still want to play pretend,” Tiller thought back to the fake name she'd signed to the papers earlier, “Vinyl Scratch?!”
For the second time that day, the red eyes met Tiller’s before looking at what now lay on the table. Following their gaze, she saw what she'd slammed onto the chess board and scattered the pieces once more.
It was the bow to a cello.
“Really? You picked our covers off of a pun?”
Tiller looked up to see a smile plastered on Vigil’s face.
She chucked the bow back towards the crate and trotted over to the door. Turning back, a thick, posh British accent filled her throat, matching the aggressively sarcastic tone to her words. “I'm going out for groceries, don’t expect me back til late. Tata!”
Tiller Draw opened the door, crossed the threshold, and slammed it shut with enough force to shake the entire abode.
Vigil Stance sat inside, alone, for a few seconds more. She looked around for the missing pieces before using her magic to retrieve them from her seat.
The board, bathed in red, rearranged itself before she stood and walked over to a peculiar desk cover in lights, buttons, and slider nobs. With one hoof she raised her headphones to cover an ear as the other flipped open an owner's manual and study packet.
Faint, electronic notes met Tiller’s back as she walked away from the house. Her pace quickened. Just up the road, a yellow mare met her and curtsied with their wings. A singsong voice spoke “Um, are you new to the woods?”
Tiller smiled to mask her scowl. She forced the accent to return as she answered “Why yes, I'm Octavia Melody. Pleasure to meet you miss!”
The mare answered something polite and trivial, but the words fell on deaf ears. Tiller thought back on how the tales about the elements of harmony she'd heard in her foalhood. If nothing other than the last account being recorded a millennia go, then this encounter surely disproved their existence.
The element of honesty would smite her for the lies she’d just told.
With a short goodbye, she continued on her way into Ponyville.
Tiller weaved a path through the streets of half-timbered homes that filled Ponyville. She'd studied the layout of the town before the move, of course, but transitioning the map to a general sense of how to get around was proving quite a trite exercise. Nevertheless, she had to get the lay of the land if she was going to convincingly adopt this small town persona of Octavia Melody.
Just thinking about the name and it's now apparent inspiration made Tiller cringe. Where did Vigil get off on the idea of robbing her opportunity to guard the princesses. Be it walking besides the Canterlot elite with Celestia or touring the nation with Mi Amore Cadenza, the admiration of standing next to one of the Cs and basking in the jealousy of the rest of the EUP would have set her for life.
Now she strode down dirt roads in a town too cheap to lay out gravel.
Their first meeting wasn't bad enough to enact this sort of revenge. Vigil was losing as many opportunities as she was, so why?
These townhouses weren't all too different from those in the desert, all those years ago.
Tiller Draw stood tucked between two stallions in a line of cadets pressed against the earthen wall. The noon sun beat down on them to the sound of hooves anxiously crunching the sand underneath. They'd formed ranks for room clearing five minutes earlier in what was supposed to be a quick maneuver.
The swirling illuminated sigils that covered the space left by the door they'd knocked in had thrown a wrench in that plan.
"Sarge," the cadet in front of her called out, "I thought barricades on the entrances were against the rules."
She'd read the same parameters as the rest of them, before they were sorted into teams. The rules specifically said...
"-not to use the furniture to secure the door." Their Sargent finished her thought in his answer. With a nod towards the door's wards and the squad's unicorn examining it, he continued, "Door wasn't blocked."
"That's horse apples," Tiller interjected, pulling her thatcher closer to her chest, "and we all know it. Hey wiz, do you know where the thorn is?" Her question was directed at the unicorn studying the door.
"Uh, I think second floor, middle of the room above us." He answered, hardly glancing over his shoulder. A bead of sweat rolled off his brow as his aura ebbed and flowed over the threshold. His breath had grown deeper the past few minutes as he tested his magic against the unicorn inside.
"Sarge, we're not getting in there as long as that thorn is up." Tiller stated, checking her pouch of specialized bolts. They were all training rounds, their tips blunt or payloads swapped for safe substitutes. Most all could be loaded into the magazine of her magazine-fed crossbow, affectionately called a Thatcher by the EUP.
The Sargent looked back at and addressed her with a kurt, "Yeah, well we can't really do anything about them from here, Cadet Draw."
Her hoof rummaged through the ammo pouch a few more seconds until it found the one bolt too bulky to be loaded in a magazine. Gripping it, she pulled it out and flashed a smile at the Sargent. "Permission to break formation, sir?"
If the plan failed, she'd have a broken neck. If it succeeded, she'd have some of the instructors chewing her out for reckless behavior.
Either way, she wasn't just standing around waiting and soon the rest of her squad wouldn't be either.
Tiller Draw braced herself against the outer wall of the house and carefully walked up, slinging the slack of the rope below her on the way up. She hoped nopony inside had heard the bolt digging into the roof a few seconds earlier. She muttered a request to Celestia that it wouldn't slip free as she was rappelling up the side. In the middle of the second story wall, she took the bolt she'd shown the Sargent and dug into into a small slot. After fiddling with a dial near the back, she continued her climb up to the roof as quietly as she could manage. Tiller held the rope just slightly below where she'd stopped so it would be the right length later.
This would work better if they weren't expecting her.
She only had a limited amount of time to secure the room firmly around her flanks at the right length and steady herself further up the slanting tiles.
She braced herself on all hooves there, counting down the seconds in her head.
Three...
She took four short, confident strides towards the ledge before kicking her back legs as hard as she could, launching herself into the air.
Two...
She twisted her body in the air as she flew out over the street. For a moment, she saw the faces of her squad below her as they glanced up. The feeling of weightlessness fell way to an all too real weight within her gut as her body began to fall.
One...
The rope went taunt, pulling her back into a curve towards the second story of the training building. She flashed a grin. Exciting things didn't tend to happen back home, before she'd enrolled in guard academy.
Back home, property damage was discouraged. Here, it was just part of the job when the occasion called for it.
Zero...
A wave washed over her as the timer on the concussive bolt ran out.
It did nothing to slow her momentum.
Her body barreled through the hole it'd knocked in the outer wall, her body flying in with the chunks of plaster still drying from the days prior.
One hoof yanked on the knot about her hip, setting her loose from the swing and allowing her to enter the room unabated.
Her other hoof, she thrust out in front her towards the white unicorn sitting there. She only saw the flash of red eyes for a moment before her hoof made contact with their jaw, the whole of her body weight and its fall off the roof carried behind it. The figure crumpled to the ground as Tiller clumsily caught herself on her back hooves.
She'd hardly set her balance before being pelted with bolts from all sides by the confused dusts and quills of the other team. The tips were padded, but she'd certainly feel the welts the next day.
Now considered out of the scenario, she fell to the ground with a smirk on her face.
Their thorn must have thought it was being really clever with those wards. Her body was already beginning to smart from the snap in the air and the bolts. She looked up as her squad flooded the room and the Sergeant hopped over the white unicorn's limp form.
Worth it.
Turning a corner, Tiller Draw saw the local grocery down the way. Sure, there weren't many things she could best Vigil in, but at least she had that memory to look back on.
She lacked the armor, the thatcher, and the freedom to speak in her own voice, but at least she had this.
