(Only Barely Proofread) Chapter 1 - How I Got Here
Lieutenant Commander: my old rank in the Canterlot Royal Guard. Cool, only two ranks below Shining Armor himself, right?
Sadly, it isn’t something a pony can really brag about nowadays. It honestly devolved from being protectors of the princess to nothing more than fancy decorations.
In the past two years, three major attacks had been made against the princesses. Nightmare Moon managed to make Celestia disappear without a single guard even realizing it and even now nopony can figure out what happened back then. Discord was allowed free reign through the Canterlot Halls, and our show at the last Royal Wedding was pretty hilarious, looking back.
To be honest, I got my rank through what I swear was an impossible series of miscommunications or something. I’d never been able to stand at attention; I couldn’t sit still for more than three seconds at a time. I was physically useless; a scatterbrain if I’d ever seen one and I’d often lose paperwork and end up addressing my superiors by the wrong title or name, even though there was only one rank between me and Shining Armor.
But somehow I ended up having the “team strategist” title. Maybe it was those two damned chess knights planted firmly on my flank. I still couldn’t understand what those were for.
So, yeah. I was a Lieutenant Commander, hated the Royal Guard, and was still a lonely stallion who’d spent his free time sleeping on the couch in his apartment or flirting with random mares who would too often had boyfriends.
So I quit my job. I wasn’t going anywhere as a member, and I was the only earth pony. The Royal Guard’s duty had been one thing above others, “Protect the princesses and citizens of Canterlot.” I still cracked up when somepony used “Royal Guard” and “protect” in the same sentence.
I was actually packing up my small, cramped, dark, and overall depressing apartment to leave when I heard several knocks at the door.
“What!” It wasn’t a question; it was an exclamation.
“Sir, your presence is requested at the castle. And bring your guard uniform to return, please.”
I looked at the door where the voice was coming from like it was some demon. After a few moments, I shifted my gaze to my old helmet, breastplate, and hoof guards which lay on the floor.
“Uniform. When I was issued it, it was calledarmor,” I mumbled as I grabbed the box with my mouth and dragged it to the door. Forcibly yanking open the door, I threw the box out into the hallway, not really caring if it spilled, and slammed the door shut again before making sure to lock it.
“Take that uniform back to the castle and get lost!” I placed extra emphasis on the word ‘uniform’ before turning on my rather unimpressive television and maximizing the volume.
I heard an exhale of breath, slow, as if the pony were trying to keep his composure. “Check, get out here right now, damn it!” The voice lost its formality, but the sternness remained.
My mind did a double take when it heard my name. I hadn’t really paid attention to the voice of the pony behind the door, but now I realized it was unmistakably Shining who’d come by. He always called me ‘Check’ instead of my title. It was kind of annoying. I’d decided to join the Royal Guard so I wouldn’t hear my name. Check R. Mate. It was regretfully the name I was stuck with. Everypony else had called me Lieutenant Commander Strat as a nickname, “Strat” being short for strategist.
Finally, I shook my head before opening the door and confronting the un-uniformed guard in front of me. He was a fairly large pony, but not the stereotypical guard pony, overly buff and not so brainy. I hated to admit it, but he was probably smarter than me. Okay, lots of ponies were. “What?”
“You sure you want to leave the guard?” His face was serious, and he spoke as if he were my friend. Like I had any of those.
I looked at him for a moment with a small sardonic smile. “That’s all you wanted to ask? No, Shining. I’m not sure, that’s why I just told my landlord I was leaving tomorrow afternoon.”
He sighed. “We’ve been suffering from those screw-ups these past few years; you leaving isn’t going to boost any of the morale of the rest of the guard. You may have been a pain in the flank, being somepony who couldn’t follow orders, but you’ve at least kept things somewhat lighthearted. You’ve complained at our failures quite a few times, and you’re right; a lot of the guards do need more training, but losing one of our better members right now isn’t going to help with anything.”
I smiled at him and my face softened. “I see…”
Calling me one of the ‘better members’ of the guard? Funniest thing I’d heard all day.
My face kept that nice, kind, understanding smile as I slowly closed the door, locked it, and walked towards my kitchen to see if there were any unspoiled foods in the small refrigerator I kept.
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I joined the Royal Guard seven years ago, as a young, promising recruit. Of course, I joined for the sense of honor and pride, and because I wanted to contribute to…
Actually, I did it because I couldn’t hold a job for the life of me. I tried so hard, I really did, and the guard seemed to be my last option. Plus they didn’t call me by my name; it was always by my title. I really liked that. My mother couldn’t name a pony if her life depended on it.
The last job I held before joining I held for one day. I was a waiter, and whenever I would carry soup, I’d spill a drop or two of it off of the tray onto my back. Where else would those drops land but on me? Then I’d scream, buck around, and spray the entire dining room with the soup. I lost my job after I did that three times in a row.
Now it’s always been taboo to join the Royal Guard as an Earth pony. An earth pony isn’t as mobile as a pegasus, and in combat, the magic of a unicorn is significantly more reliable. Not that it matters, the Royal Guard is useless anyways, but there’s always been some unspoken taboo about Earth ponies joining. You should have imagined all of those stares when I waltzed into the office like I owned the place; old captain of the guard walking beside me.
Yeah, that’s right, he’d offered me a position as one of his chief advisers.
….
Okay, they actually caught me trying to sneak into Celestia’s bedroom.
I swear up and down that I was just trying to get my paper airplane, which the breeze had blown through and open window. To this day, I’m sticking to that story.
Of course, he pointed out the door I was trying to sneak through, and how the bright sun design on it was a dead giveaway that it was Celestia’s quarters.
How was I supposed to know that, right? There isn’t some neon blue sign spelling it out for me.
Then he mentioned how I’d snuck past all of the guards without getting caught until the last second, and I kept claiming…
Needless to say, I got in a little trouble. Just a few months of cleaning the halls of the castle with a toothbrush.
But, he offered me a job as a strategist for the guard, saying if I could have avoided the guard, I knew a thing or two about the guard’s patrol. He’d only caught me, he continued, because he’d been walking to her room for something. I laughed at him, saying he should have had better guards at the entrance of her room and that they couldn’t patrol if their life depended on it.
Oh dear Celestia, that training camp was hell. If I hadn’t spent all of those bits on the uniform, I would have left in a heartbeat. Oh, and if I’d known that the captain would be training me I would have been nicer to him and not made fun of his guard members.
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Now, I would like to let you know I told you this not because this is some amazing story about how I saved Equestria or some weird far-fetched tale like that. I’ll leave boring stuff like that to the Elements of Harmony.
I only told you all that I have because it’s the beginning of my story. My story which deeply involves another pony.
Her name is Trixie.
Well, in her world, it’s “The Great and Powerful Trixie”. Not “or”, not “at not being”, just “and”. She’s so insistent that I’m beginning to think that it’s actually part of her first name.
It was the day after the confrontation with Shining Armor that I finished packing my things when I heard a noise at the door. Before I could call out in my most uninviting voice, a cyan pony with a copy of my apartment key stepped into the room. A single eyebrow was raised as though she were already planning on being critical of it before she’d opened the door.
“This room is atrocious. Nothing suitable for The Great and Powerful Trixie.” She stepped over one of my, ehrm, magazines, and looked around the room. “And you, plebeian, what are you doing in Trixie’s new apartment?”
I looked at her for a moment in silence, unfazed. I looked her up and down, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with her. “Sitting on the couch.” Heaving myself out of the worn, coffee-stained excuse I called a couch, I got up and grabbed my saddle pack.
“Can’t believe my landlord rented the room out already. I swear he said I had ‘till this afternoon to be out of here…” I grumbled as I began to walk out of the door with just what was in the saddle. I walked past her towards the open door. “You can keep whatever you find in here, thanks for taking that junk off of my hooves.”
I closed the door and waltzed down the hallway, knocking on one of my crabby ex-neighbor’s doors as hard as I could before running down the nearby staircase to the ground floor.
“…Now what?” I stepped out of the building to my new life of freedom, and those were the first words that came out of my mouth. A little less celebratory than I’d envisioned. I began to second-guess my thoughts as I went to retreat back to my apartment. No, that’s not right. It was Trixie’s apartment now.
…
Crap.
For an ex-army Lieutenant Commander who was supposed to be a decent military strategist, this was a relatively pathetic oversight. You know, my entire future. Oh yeah, that. See, this is what I meant by “the Royal Guard sucks.”
So I waltzed out onto the street, not really worried about fending for food, when I heard a Great and Powerful voice behind me, “And what does one think they are doing, leaving such a mess in Trixie’s new apartment?” For a moment, I looked at her sideways. Then I looked back at the road ahead of me. I found the second sight more interesting and decided to just pay attention to that.
“Don’t ignore The Great and Powerful Trixie!” She seemed to mystically combine a high-pitched whine with an indignation that matched her proud personality.
“Well, Trixie,” I said, stopping and twisting my head towards her, “maybe I decided The Great and Powerful Trixie needed an equally Great and Powerful pile of junk.”
There was a quick intake of breath on Trixie’s end, and a slap to the face on mine.
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How? I’d taken all of my savings from being in the Royal Guard, and here it had all… disappeared. Maybe Trixie was more magical than I’d thought. I’d somehow gotten roped into buying her dinner, and she’d eaten all but six of my bits worth of food. She’d claimed it was ‘an affordable restaurant’ and somehow fooled me into not noticing the prices.
What was I supposed to do with only six bits!?
Whatever, I wasn’t winning the argument about the money, so on the way out I asked her an unrelated question.
“Now what the heck is a pony like you doing, renting a cheap, crappy apartment in Canterlot? Can’t afford anything better or something?” I knew that the cheap apartments were in high demand; many poorer ponies tried to get rich in this fairly wealthy city and lower-class apartments were few and far between, but from what I’d understood (which was actually very little, considering everything), she was a travelling entertainer.
A bad one, mind you—I could tell by her pretentious behavior—but one nonetheless.
And why would a nomad like her rent an apartment like mine, anyways?
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“Oh, Check, I love you!” Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s personal student said to me.
I’d just finished saving Equestria from some magical demon from space, using superpowers I’d magically obtained from some inadequately explained source.
I’d used super speed and super agility, and succeeded where the Elements of Harmony had failed. And I even got the girl, right? I was handsome, perfect, and oh so modest. Faster than Rainbow Dash. Stronger than Applejack. Smarter than even Twilight, my one true love.
As she leaned towards me, preparing for a kiss, I closed my eyes. Suddenly, her voice started to call out at me, “What do you think you are doing!? The Great and Powerful Trixie does not approve of where you are sleeping!”
I felt a hoof strike my stomach and my eyes jolted open. Coughing, I sputtered out, “W-wha!?”
I was sleeping on a park bench, and here was Trixie, towering over me like she was my mother.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie cannot stand the apartment you’ve left in such terrible condition! How did one live in a mess such as that!?”
Slowly, my eyelids began to grow heavy again, and I mumbled, rolled over, and tried to go to sleep.
This process of her striking me to wake me up and me trying to go back to sleep lasted for a good ten minutes.
Finally, I looked at her and, with disheveled mane and all, groaned, “What.” It sounded like a statement, not a question, and obviously I was upset.
“Get that apartment clean, and… that… that ODOR!” She seemed to suddenly flare up with anger. Her voice slowly picked up volume and passionately she began to rant, “When was the last time you’d removed any of those foods from your fridge? The Great and Powerful Trixie cannot be expected to live in such a hazardous place! And those magazines! Remove them immediately!” Blah blah blah. She just went on and on. The lecture continued so long I fell asleep for several minutes before another strike came.
“Are you even listening to Trixie!?”
“Wha… Oh yeah, just take it up with the landlord…”
There was a moment of silence, and, following the trend of our past few meetings, I figured she was going to slap me. I tensed up and closed my eyes, bracing for the strike. It never came.
I opened my eyes and saw her figure walking off.
“She actually believed me…”
I sighed knowing that when she figured out it really was my job to clean up the apartment before I left, I’d get two slaps.
I got three.
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I finally had thirteen bits, enough for the average train ticket. I was thinking Manehatten or Trottingham, maybe Appleloosa if I could afford it.
Hard to believe I made that extra seven bits in only two weeks. You definitely can’t make that kind of money in the Royal Guard.
I was finally out of here, and not a single trace of Trixie after she’d successfully forced me to clean her apartment. I swear, with her magic, it would have been easier to just use that to make it go away, but apparently magic like that was “beneath Trixie.”
“A ticket to anywhere, please,” I said, using my hoof to fish out the bits from my saddlebag.
“Coming right up!” The cashier took my bits and placed a single ticket on the counter. She spoke with a lot of energy, having a bright smile plastered across her face.
“…”
“Sir, is there something wrong?”
I stared at the ticket with about as much confusion as a pony would if they saw a whale in Canterlot Castle. Maybe more, seeing as the Royal Guard would probably fail to prevent any attempts by a blue mammal to invade the castle uninvited.
“This is a ticket to Canterlot Station, from Canterlot Station, ma’am.”
“Yes, I decided to book you on the least crowded train, and it’s also the shortest ride of them call! Consider it a favor!” She smiled as though she’d accomplished something great, the genuine happiness radiating off of her making me feel uneasy.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands a ticket to anywhere.” She stood on her hind legs as she ignored the line and approached the ticket counter.
“Oh no…” I covered my face with my hoof. I couldn't bear to watch.
“Yes ma’am! I’ll do it right away.”
Another ticket.
Another passenger on their way to Canterlot.
Now why would she get a train ticket to leave after renting an apartment?
I opened my mouth to ask that very question when a flurry of arguments broke out between the chipper ticket mare and her newest unfortunate customer about how tickets bought couldn’t be refunded.
She spun around and began to storm past me, marching past the entrance of the train station and throwing her ticket to the ground. I shrugged and walked towards the train. The ticket said there would be an in-train meal, so I decided to get on and eat a free (well, thirteen-bit) dinner, even if the destination was nowhere.
The real issue was that I was out of bits again.
Great.
On the train ride, I met more than a few oddballs, but with nothing else, I ended up talking with a few of them, and eventually got roped into playing a board game with them. Chess.
Now, my cutie mark is that of a chess knight. It’s because I’ve always been talented at chess. I’d never lost a game before in my life.
Well, if you don’t count the ones I had, anyways.
To be fully honest, I wasn’t really sure what my special talent was. I’d always assumed it was because I was some military strategist or something. It just sorta showed up. I’d never really payed attention to my flank, and one day noticed, “Hey, there’s a black thing on my ass.” When it had showed up and what it was that had made it show up? Not really sure. Since then, I’ve decided that the best reaction to that is to simply not care.
Oh, I actually won one of my chess games that night, too. Just hope that old geezer doesn't figure out I cheated.
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The next day was uneventful. I thought about how my “lower class” appearance turned off so many upper-class ponies. My mane was unkempt and I didn’t wear any fancy collars or suits. It was actually nice, and I purposefully decided to not look pretty. A wide gap would form around me in crowded areas, and it was nice to be able to walk around unhindered. I was even able to make lines for certain places disappear.
Of course, the disadvantage was that some establishments (all of which I couldn’t afford) refused to serve me, and I wasn’t able to keep that appearance when I was trying to find a job.
Oh well, I still smelled decent, I wasn’t like some homeless bum that never showered.
Well, I was homeless, but I tried to stay clean anyways.
“…” It was the distinct sound of a pony making no noise. I turned around to face Trixie as I got up from the usual park bench. “You smell.”
Those two words surprised me. She didn’t say a sentence that didn’t center around her. It wasn’t “Your scent repulses the Great and Powerful Trixie,” or something. But still, me? Smell?
…
Okay, I was really starting to smell. But what could I do? My shower was in my apartment.
“Why are you here?” I asked, keeping a stone face aside from a light eyebrow twitch.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie needs not explain her actions.” She said, standing proudly.
“Oh, okay.” I said, lying back down on the park bench.
“Oh, okay.” She echoed, caught off guard by my apathy.Her hat seemed to visibly droop of its own accord as she spoke.
A silence descended, not unlike the silence caused by visiting my in-laws’ who were married to my more successful family members.
“…Well Trixie came here because she needs an assistant, and after careful observation, Trixie has concluded you are worthy of the job as her assistant.”
I heard one word: job.
“How much will it pay?” I ask her, carefully noting to myself I’d asked the pay before I’d asked what the job was.
“Well you’d naturally get enough for travel expenses and the basics, plus some of what Trixie gets from her powerful displays of magic.”
Making a second mental note about how I still hadn’t asked what the job was, I decided. “No thanks. I doubt you make much, renting a crappy apartment in Canterlot and all. And you just said travel, why would you rent one if you were going to leave right afterwards?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie needs not explain her actions,” she said again.
“Oh, okay.”
“AARGH!” Trixie cried out because of what I could only assume was my lack of caring.
Which was odd, because really, I didn’t.
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It was another day, another moment of having to deal with The Great and Powerful Nuisance.
I took a deep breath and spoke slowly, “I said I never took the job, Trixie. Okay?”
She looked at me with a form of disdain. “And after the Great and Powerful Trixie put all of this time and effort into getting two tickets to Manehatten so she can put on a show?”
“It isn’t hard to get train tickets to Manehatten, Trixie.”
“You’d be surprised.” She smiled knowingly.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
She looked at the ground and thought, her face one of concentration and thought. “But nopony else wants to go with Trixie…” She tried a different strategy to get me to go. The lower lip sticking out made her face look more like there was a tumor on it than puppy-dog-ish.
“You make it sound like I want to.”
I ducked as her hoof whizzed past my head.
“HA! Missed me!”
Next thing I knew, a heavy weight struck me in the side of the head. Should have paid more attention to that horn of hers.
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Manehatten: place of wonder, freedom, high-class snobs, and Trixie’s performance.
… She managed to convince the staff on the train she wasn’t kidnapping the tied up unconscious heap that was levitating with her. How she did it would probably remain a mystery to even the most talented linguists.
How she actually managed to get me to work for her, however, was not as impressive. She had my ticket back to Canterlot, and the few things in my saddlebag were still on the park bench.
I took another breath as I tried to wash away all of my filth with the measly supply of soap and shampoo. Trixie had chosen to take another room and had given me my key and waved me off. She was better off than I had realized.
Stepping out of the shower, I looked at the room. One bed, a lamp, some books, and a table. It wasn’t much, but it was nicer than my apartment. I could walk through the room without the fear of stepping on week-old meals and dirty laundry with a mind of its own.
As I laid my head into the pillow, feeling cleaner and better than I had in years, I heard a knock at the door. “Who is it?”
I had almost screamed out my old apartment greeting of “Go die in a hole!” but realized that it might not make sense seeing as I wasn’t in my apartment.
“The Great and Pow-”
I interrupted her by opening the door. “Why are you here now, Trixie?”
“Trixie would like to discuss plans for the upcoming performance.”
“I don’t know the first thing about anything, Trixie. You haven’t done anything but kidnap me and make me shower.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I suppose we should talk.” I sat at one of the chairs at the small coffee table. Trixie pulled herself onto the other seat.
“So what are the plans? Where is the performance going to be staged? And when?”
“Trixie has dealt with all of this, the performance shall be in a…”
She managed to glorify the idea performing in eight or nine coffee shops in such a way it almost actually sounded like a good gig. I didn’t argue with it, though. She mentioned how much all of the performances would be together, and she promised me thirty percent of that.
So she told me what I needed to do, how I was supposed to do it, and everything in between. I was silently cheering because of how much work I was really going to have to do. Only a couple phone calls and I was going to be done.
After the discussion, I walked over to the door and opened it, “Well, see you tomorrow, Trixie.”
She didn’t get up from the chair.
“I’m going to be going to sleep now, long day ahead of me.”
“Actually… Trixie has lost her key…” Her voice was a disturbing cross between her normal cocky voice and a whimper.
“… I was planning on breaking into your room; here’s an extra key.” I handed her one, and she seemed shocked.
“You had an extra!?”
Fate always had a way of sending her towards me. So if she, for some miraculous reason, had lost her room key (which she had), I made preparations so she’d not stay in my room. This was my pseudo-strategist side acting.
So, when I handed her the key, she turned to walk out, and passing the bathroom, tripped.
The key landed in the toilet, and as repulsive as it was, I wasn’t going to share the damned room. The hotel said they had two keys, so I wasn’t giving this key up.
I sprinted into the room, and as fate would have it, tripped. I smacked the handle to the toilet, and felt my poor old heart burst as I saw my last hope to keeping the room to myself literally go down the drain.
“Shit.”
“Yes, the key does happen to be covered by that now.” Judging by the tone, it seemed she wasn't too happy.
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She’d taken the bed for herself and I was stuck sleeping on the carpeted floor, which, not surprisingly, was more comfortable than my old bed.
I felt bad for her because I snore. Unlike her; she was a remarkably graceful sleeper.
Rolling over, I tried to go to sleep. Of course, I succeeded, I mean, I hadn’t slept in a comfortable place in over a few years. Or a few weeks. Same thing.
“Good night, Trixie.”
“Shut up...” It was almost inaudible, a mumble that was barely heard above the silent roar of nothing.
I was pleasantly surprised with the response, but I would never admit that I was. As for my attempts at sleeping, I hadn’t slept in a semi-comfortable room in over twenty minutes. Or a few weeks. Same thing.
I woke up in the morning with a severe lack of sores. The morning pains had begun to grow on me.
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“Yeah, I remember. You asked for it to be scheduled at six.”
“You scheduled it for six o’clock!? I told you seven-thirty! Are you insane!?” I screamed at the manager of the coffee joint as the stallion patiently tried to deal with me.
“Okay, I’ll make it seven-thirty, Is that better?”
“No! I came here to get the meeting rescheduled!”
“To when?”
“Six!”
I was very kindly escorted out of the office at that point. This scheduling stuff was harder than I’d realized.
Many of the places Trixie had booked as a location for one of her performances had such annoying staff.
Thankfully, it worked out and everything was scheduled perfectly by the time the first performance came around. It was partly luck and partly effort, though the effort was simply there to try to cover up my own mistakes. Best of all, I didn't even have to do anything during those shows.
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I was actually able to afford my own dinner by the end of the week. We’d made a lot of money.
Of course I could see why she traveled so much. She was almost always chased off the stage because of her show. But who cared? She was the one looking like a moron, and the places still had to pay us what they’d agreed on. Of course, they often confronted me, the manager, and started complaining, and I usually just shrugged my shoulders and braced myself in case the place had some particularly violent stallions working there.
To be fair, unimpressive was not really how I would describe the performance. Trixie’s display was completely and utterly pathetic. Whatever force that had created the Elements of Harmony was probably hard at work trying to solve the atrocity that was Trixie’s talent.
And it was probably failing.
The thing was, she wasn’t bad at magic. She was actually fairly decent. She was, however, sporting the wrong cutie mark. Her talent was obviously annoying everypony around her. I wanted to slap her, because more than two-thirds of her show was just her bragging about how much better she was then everypony else. Once she built herself up to being this incredible pony, the magic was more than a little disappointing. She’d do simple things, such as manipulating a rope or fireworks. Usually the show dissolved to her calling out to the crowd to challenge her claims, before embarrassing them with some (usually) simple magic spell.
I wanted to go home already, but I didn’t have one.
