Phoenix Rising

The day began as it always did, before the sun was raised. No, most guard's days started nearly four hours before their glorious sun monarch raised her namesake, beginning their days with morning training and exercise with their units. For most guards regiments, this was just the standard gallop around their barracks or track, followed by whatever individual training the particular pony wanted to do. For others, it was more intense cardio and exercise.

For Private First Class Sapphire Aurora, well she fell somewhere in between the two. She strove for excellency among her peers, seeking to be better than the average pony next to her. It was especially important for her to maintain her place as one of the top guards of her regiment, being one of roughly five mares in the nearly five hundred guard strong unit. Mares were held to the same harsh standard as stallions through their entire service, leaving only the best of the best in her majesty's service to begin with.

She, though, took more than her fair share of appreciation for her own hard work, reveling in the joy of being in her position, and simply existing as a guard. It was a total dream come true to wear the standard issue golden guard armor, seeing it on her own familiar body. Secretly, she could be a bit of a narcissist. If she wanted to, she could spend minutes appreciating her own form in the mirror, admiring her shapely figure. She tried not to do so very often, but she was proud of the mare she became over the course of her life.

That, of course, led to her taking some liberties with the uniform dress code of her regiment. She was a pretty mare, and she knew it. She kept her tail and mane groomed perfectly under the gilded golden armor she wore, instead of cropping them short like most other servicemares. Of course, she put them into buns to keep mostly in with the requirements, but you couldn't see it under the uniform anyway.

Through all the prissy styling she went through, most would've said she was a humble and dignified pony to interact with. The perfect picture of a honor-bound and duty oriented mare, at least outwardly. Though she did take that as another point of pride, showing up to all her posts on exact time, being the walking picture of the guard's handbook, knowing the exact angle to set her hooves at to meet her forehead for salutes, she eagerly memorized every detail to become better.

But for her, it was just the average morning she always performed. Three kilometer gallop, followed by two more hours of further exercise and magical training at the gym before the morning formation. If anything, that was the thing she hated the most about it, that damned morning formation. It was an annoyance to wait for her specific company to organize to watch their monarch raise the sun, especially if Celestia forbid anypony was late.

She'd spend her time standing around waiting thinking of a real concrete goal for the future. She wanted to stick around the guard, it was practically the only thing she was raised for, but the path she could take still perplexed her. Her squad leader, Velvet Mint, recommended trying to the battle mage school to become a Warrant. That particular idea niggled in the back of her mind, at least until her commander, Lieutenant Shade, at some point jokingly suggested trying to get a commission from Her Majesty.

She weighed either option at least a few times a day, and especially right now with little else to do. At least, she would've continued to do that unless her fluffy ears hadn't twitched and made her snap out of her little daze. She looked upward at the still black and starry night above her, noticing something she didn't think she should've been able to notice. It looked like that new breed of airship the Pegasi Rangers were testing, but different. More elegant, almost. It was far out enough to barely be recognizable, but nopony else seemed to notice it but her.

How could they not see it? There had to be a hundred ponies in this courtyard. She would've balked and moved her head to look at the others, but she knew better than to do so while formed up. Still, the thought that something like that was flying near Canterlot airspace made her mind wriggle. She couldn't shake the thought that she really should not have been able to notice it, let alone keep thinking about it.

As quickly as she noticed the ship, it had turned the mountain and gone out of farsight. It was probably circling Mount Canterhorn for some kind of visibility test, she reasoned. Or at least, that's the only way it would have made any sense to her. Once again though, her ear twitched at the command of the Captain barking that same order he did every morning. Turn, salute the sun, bow.

She pushed what she saw out of her mind for the time being, and went to work for the day.

Elsewhere above Canterlot, a group of six ponies ride on a very off schedule test flight. They were supposed to test the Incoming Dawn's stealth and experimental magi-tech engines nearly two whole hours ago, before the whole Sun damned guard detail was out and about for the morning. Thankfully the enchanted perception filter amplifiers seemed to be doing their jobs correctly, Celestia be praised.

Two of the six ponies were on the top deck of the smallish airship, the newly constructed vessel on track to becoming their new home for missions and assignments surely to come. One of the two internally mused about how Equestria was progressing fast in the field of air superiority, thanks in part to.. 'extra judicially' acquired Griffish defectors. He turned his attention to the other pony standing nearby, and whistled to catch her attention.

"Tartarus of a boat, ain't she?"

"Sure is, LT. I do have to wonder just how many ponies managed to catch a glimpse of her down there though, I don't trust those amplifiers yet."

"Dunno, can't be many though. If you still have doubts maybe you should go ask the Major to explain it in detail. Again."

His mare companion cringed, the maroon pegasus looking away from the cream colored unicorn who struck up the conversation and back towards the city below. Soon enough, the Dawn flew away from visibility, and around the Canterhorn mountain.

"Right, back below deck then. I can't remember who we put in charge of making sure Verd doesn't burn her to the ground. C'mon Halo." His voice almost sounded panicked. Almost.

The pair trotted along the metal deck to the aft of the vessel, going down the set of stairs to below deck which housed the majority of the space for living, storage, and other systems. It was cramped down in this deck, but if any of them had objections none of them said it out loud. The two pegasi made their way inside, immediately turning around to reach the engine room which was tucked behind the stairs. It was a larger room, handling the magitech engines and generators.

The lead pegasus, Lieutenant Shining Dusk, rapped his hoof on the engine bay door and stuck his head inside, which to his immediate chagrin was met with a puff of black smoke and a maniacally laughing Major Shining Armor. Oh, and Lieutenant Verdant Fire, too.

"Blegh! Major, what in the name of Celestia are you doing?!"

"Testing, Lieutenant! These engines are absolutely amazing! I could sit in here for hours and write whole research papers on them!" The almost frantic unicorn stallion said excitedly as he barely even turned his attention to his subordinate.

His companion, Lieutenant Verdant Fire, was not as composed as his superior. In the squad Verd was known for his love of anything that goes boom or fwoosh, especially his pyrotechnics and explosives. It was absolutely no surprise that he was in here. Or that he was feeding the engines with more magic laced fuel to make them go faster.

"Augh damn! That smoke got in my mouth, Halo pull me out!" An exasperated Dusk called out for his companion for help, getting dragged out by his tail by the maroon mare as he rubbed his eyes and closed the heavy metal door, sealing the two officers in the engine room for the time being.

"Holy Sun LT, your face is even more black than normal!"

For his part, he hacked out a puff of the black smoke and rose to his hooves, looking his team member in the eyes as he continued on. "Eugh, with those two in there who knows where our heading is going. I hope somepony is up in control, or we might be in for trouble."

He was already up and moving, going back up to the top deck and moving towards the closed cabin. His maroon pegasus companion following right along, the two made their way up and into the room to see the remaining two ponies arguing about something or another.

"-sten Master Sergeant, the ah'rder was a quick test of the engines capabilities. We've done that! Dock 'er behind the mountain and let's get lunch already!" Dusk recognized the shouting as Staff Sergeant Howling Aura's voice, the team's resident marksmare. Not that he was a mare, he was all stallion as he seemed keen to remind you. He was an entirely grey earth pony, but was always so fluffy and outlandish that the squad just stopped calling him a pony at all, referring to him as their only wolf. It didn't help that he kept his teeth permanently sharpened.

"No, Staff Sergeant. The orders were engines and stealth testing! The amplifier panel is still reading well within regulation, and I want to push it further! And besides, the Major is still putting more power to the engines! That means he wants to check scenarios where we need to push more!"

Sergeant Halo Wind's shoulders slouched, the second voice was one she knew all too well. It belonged to Master Sergeant Long Wind.. her older sister. They were practically identical, except Long's fur was grey instead of her own red, and the streak of grey in Halo's own blonde mane was replaced with red in hers. She hated it when Long was mad enough to be yelling, and when her and Aura started arguing, there was no telling who would come out on top.

She turned her head to look at her current commanding officer, and he looked almost as spooked as she did. That, as it turned out, was a common response. He turned his attention back to the two warring NCOs, poking his head through the door to the bridge to find them face to face and practically foaming at the muzzles. Yeah, that probably wouldn't end well if left alone.

He stepped fully into the bridge, his presence still entirely unknown to the original two. He flexed his wing toward Halo in an affirmative 'go ahead' type of gesture, to which she silently snickered before taking in air to her lungs. "Officer on deck!"

The pair of warring pony and 'pony' balked and scrambled for a moment before turning to face Dusk, the officer in question standing there quite amused as they just stood up and looked straight forward towards him. "Alright alright that's enough, quit treating me like a flag officer. Haven't even been a lieutenant for a month and you're makin me regret it."

They relaxed and adopted healthy scowls towards each other, with Long Wind being the one to drop it first. "Right, sorry Dusk. Now help me get this through Aura's thick and mangey skull!"

The pegasus could see this was a fire that wouldn't be easily extinguished, and tried his best to control it before it spiraled further. For his part, the wolf looked ready to bite the mare's head clean off. "Alright that is enough Sun damnit! Work on your aggression towards each other some other time, but we're taking this thing back to the ship yard. Major needs to write more detailed reports on problems... and probably a thesis on the engines."

Long just stared flatly while Aura seemed to brighten up a bit, but he knew when to reign it in as not to gloat. He took that time to properly excuse himself. "R'aight, I'm'a go below deck and keep an eye on things. So I'll be seein' yah."

The remaining three ponies watched him high tail it out of the bridge, seemingly in victory, as he went off to do whatever marksmares did with their special rifles. Halo walked up to Dusk and smiled warmly at her sister, who returned the gesture. "There's the little runt, came to make sure we weren't gonna hit the mountain I assume?"

"..maybe. You should've seen Major Armor though! He's totally nerding out in the engine room." The red pegasus almost buzzed in the presence of her older sibling, it was an interesting phenomenon that amused the rest of the squad.

"I can imagine. He only spent the last week being hyper about every detail about this ship's construction."

It was then that Dusk decided to intervene and give some actual structure to the conversation, reminding them of the task at hoof, "Ahem, if yer all done chatting we have a ship needing to be docked, gentlemares."

The day was almost as standard as the mornings. Instead of waking up and getting ready for exercise and formation, it was almost always guarding or patrolling. Typically, her regiment was stationed on the secondary walls protecting the castle itself. Joy.

Today though she had the pleasure of being given one of the less enjoyable jobs, running security on supplies from incoming airships to various stores in the castle, mostly restocking magical equipment and other things like ink and paper. The reason the job particularly sucked is because she was a unicorn, and even if she was fit she still didn't have that innate earth pony strength.

She still went right with it though, being assigned with her own and another squad to move wagons full of weapon resupplies to the guards barracks for fourth regiment. Those ponies broke their gear more often than the Sun goes down, she swore it. They always seemingly needed a resupply no matter if they sat in their bunks for months on end or were actually training with the damn things.

Nevertheless, there she was hitched to the wooden wagon with another member of her squad, her friend Corporal Soar. The fiery pegasus wanted to do nothing more than be an office clerk, but still had to work his way through the warrant paperwork to actually do so. It was a boring trot even with his.. particular brand of comedy, the fourth's barracks being comically up several sets of stairs away from where airships docked.

"And then I told them, well why wouldn't I want cheese on it? Hahah!" Soar prattled on about something or other, but she was only half listening. She kept an eye on the path ahead of them, through the service hallways the guards walked to secure the castle while being away from civilians who worked there.

"Uh huh, sure Soar."

"Awhh c'mon that was a good one! You gotta laugh on at least one of these.."

Her mind was still not really invested in the current conversation, still thinking about that weird encounter earlier. Oh, there goes the twitchy ear again, snapping her out of the daze.

She turned her head to her right, seeing a seemingly innocuous door that would lead to another series of loading bays. On a whim, she tapped her hoof on the marble floor to let her partner know to stop moving forward, already undoing her harness. "Hey Soar, stay here a sec, this doesn't look right to me."

"What? What doesn't look right?"

She got out of the belted harness and trotted over to the door, reaching out with her magic to open the handle and actually finding it slightly harder than it would normally be. Not significantly hard, more like when you tried to open a jar and find the seal particularly tight. Nonetheless, the door budged and swung inwards, just leading another hallway towards the loading bays.

"Aurora?"

"Y.yeah, this doesn't look right to me. Give me a few minutes to let me check this out, alright Soar?"

"Oookaaay. Whatever you say. Don't be long, we still got other things to do." Her partner idly undid his own harness to stand more comfortably with their cargo while he waited. She was already heading down the newly revealed tunnel when he was talking, though.

It honestly wasn't all that interesting of a hallway, totally unremarkable among the many other Canterlot castle halls. But that's what made it so intriguing for her, it was almost like she absolutely was not supposed to be there, it felt incorrect to her. So onward she traveled, ears twitching the entire way.

Up ahead near the entrance to the wide airship dock, she heard multiple voices loudly arguing over something or another. It was blurry in that way far away voices were, but the actual words started coming together as she moved closer.

"Sergeant I told you not to bring us that close, even with the amplifiers going we have absolutely no idea how strong they are yet."

"Yes that's why we tested them! The ship isn't that different from other Raptor class productions, the only thing weird about it would've been seeing it round Canterhorn!"

"It's top secret for a reason, you know that. We'll just have to see if anypony reported it, I doubt the Princess will be very happy about that if it does happen."

"Aye, Major."

She quietly made her way to the open entrance of the dock and poked her head from the hallway, or at least as quiet as she could be in the plated gold armor she wore. What she saw when she sneakily poked around were four ponies in what looked like battle mage gear, except instead of the grey arcane armor they typically wore, the color was gold like the normal guard armor.

The niggling thought in the back of her mind that she was not supposed to be here or see the things in here was only made worse when she turned her head and saw that same ship she saw earlier docked in the port. In fact, it was the only ship docked in this one at all. Two more ponies in that same strange armor trotted out from it, and towards the group that was talking before. This was too weird.

She removed her head from around the corner and subsequently immediately lost her standing, falling straight onto her face with a loud clank and a groan. All the talking just kinda stopped as hoofsteps moved over to her. It couldn't get any worse really, weird guards doing weird things and her ass being straight in the air while her face was in pain. Perfect.

"Issa a regular goldie? What in the unholy moon is she doin here?"

A clank reminiscent of an armored hoof hitting the back of a helmet rang out, "Cut it Aura, don't swear on the damn Moon around me."

A single set of hoof trots made it's way right up to her as she picked herself up to look at the strange armored ponies, seeing the one who stepped closer to be a white unicorn with hair the same color as her own practically. "Now, who are you?"

"P.private first class Sapphire Aurora.." She smiled awkwardly then spied the bursting sun on the ponies' collar, and then tacking on a hasty "...sir."

He just looked unamused. "You shouldn't be here Private. How did you get into this bay?"

"I.. opened a door and walked through the hallway sir?"

His eyebrow seemed to twitch before looking back to another pony behind him, throwing them a glance before they walked off, probably to inform somepony else, then his attention was back to her. "Okay. That literally should not be possible. Give me a second.."

His horn glowed and she felt magic wash over her, she let out a small squeak as the magic brushed over every inch and then vanished just as fast as it came. "...at least you're who you say you are. You need to be leaving now, Private."

"G.got it Sir. Uh, if I may ask... who are you?"

"That isn't important at the moment. Report back to where you're supposed to be, Soldier. Expect a letter soon."

She prided herself on usually being rather calm under intense situations, but the combination of that ominous set of words plus the growing dread of simply existing in this area made her start to sweat. She stood up and quickly saluted to the Major, and high tailed it as fast as she possible could out the way she came.

The group of five assembled ponies just watched her leave, utterly baffled. The first to speak was Dusk, "Well that was interesting.. what're you gonna do Major?"

Major Armor just sighed and looked to his squad before he spoke again, "I'm gonna write a letter of recommendation, for one."

Later that evening after her duty for the day was over, and after trying and desperately failing to explain what in the Sun happened in that dock to Soar, she rotated back to her specific barrack for some much needed rest and recuperation. Being in armor all day is difficult, no matter the chain mail.

She opened the door and found her roommate absent, which was fine with her at the moment. The small but not cramped two pony room was exactly as it should be... save for one thing on her side of the room.

On her pillow lay a small letter, and as she approached it that feeling in the back of her mind crept to the forefront of her thoughts. She lit up her horn and picked up the parchment, bringing it closer to her face and nearly gasping out loud as she saw the royal seal of the Sun princess herself stamped in wax on it.

She carefully broke the seal, and pulled out the written letter inside the envelope.

Dear Private First Class Sapphire Aurora,

I am writing to you personally on this day because you seem to have stumbled upon something that you were not meant to. Do not be worried, my faithful guard, you are not in trouble. On the contrary, I believe I might have a special offer for you in light of your apparent diligence.

Major Shining Armor wrote me an urgent letter on the matter of your discovery of him and his fellow guards, and urged me to push this as fast as possible. Therefore, I do humbly ask for a meeting with you tomorrow morning after dawn. I hope you will accept my invitation.

Yours Hopefully, Princess Celestia.

She nearly fainted on the spot, but at least had the forethought to remove her armor first.