A Hero Untold

Wolfram burst through the door into his house, where he saw his father sitting at  the coffee table, drinking a cup of tea. His father had not been well recently, and the bad weather wasn't helping.

"You seem upset," Wolfram's father said imploringly.

"I am, and for good reason." Wolfram replied. He was extremely upset with his squad, and he was still angry at himself for destroying the possibility of making a friend.

"What reason would that be?" Wolfram's father, Ferrous,  asked with a worrisome tone.

Wolfram relayed the whole day to his father, even his anger with himself for being terrible with words. He did perk up during the parts where he was busy beating two enemies at once, but his mood quickly descended when he got to the enemy commander cheating by moving his flag.

"Well, it sounds like you did the right thing at every given opportunity to me." Wolfram's father pointed out.

"How does that help when everyone I know thinks otherwise?" Wolfram asked in contradiction. Now that he was home, he didn't feel like being quiet about anything. He was going to express his frustration, and his father was happy to let him vent.

"You continue to overlook that young pegasus, Moxie, you said?"

"I pretty much ruined anything I had there by being a general dick about it." I should have just let her be rude, instead of retorting like that.

"Don't worry, doing the right thing will always pull through. Everyone get's what they deserve, and unless either your story telling, or my judgment, is extremely flawed; You deserve good things."

"You say that, but frankly good things haven't been in abundance for me lately, or ever for that matter." Wolfram retorted, he was done with his venting, and didn't feel like having a debate about morality with his father. He just huffed and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.

He was exhausted, emotionally and physically. He felt like the day should be over already, but it was only early afternoon. He came back to the pantry eating an apple, when his father piped up.

"If you don't feel completely exhausted of your supply of good deeds, I'd like you to do a favour for me."

"And what, pray tell, would that be, father?" Wolfram asked patriotically with his mouth full.

"The high humidity lately rusted my uniform, I'd like you to take it to the blacksmith to have it fixed up."

Wolfram sighed, and took the last bite of his apple, core and all. He then stood up and went over to the rusted collection of steely bits that made up his father's uniform, and placed it over his lower back like a satchel.

"You know, we're not all bad, Wolfram. A lot of the Royal Guards here are true heroes."

"And a lot of them are dishonorable prudes." Wolfram replied to his father's defense of the uniform before leaving.

The first portion of the travel to the blacksmith was somewhat boring. He didn't see anything of interest in the forsaken streets of the Canterlot slums. All he took notice of was the abnormal amount of disapproving glares he received. A lot more ponies than usually seemed to be disgusted by him. He couldn't think what might have put them in such a bad mood.

He rounded a corner on one of the streets he spotted a very young filly unicorn. She couldn't have been old enough to even be in school yet, and she was crying while sitting down with her back to the wall. Normally she would have had a bright yellow coat, but it was riddled with filth making her seem an uncleanly brown. And her mane was not tended to properly at all, it was unkempt beyond reason. Wolfram wasn't one for hair styling, but the mane of this filly was simply horrible.

Despite the poor child's crying as she clinged to a doll, countless adults walked by her without even glancing at her. Wolfram felt her pain, and trotted up to her. She seemed afraid of him at first, but he knelt down before her and said in the most calming voice he could muster

"Hey there, are you hurt?"

She stopped audibly crying, but she sniffled, and cringed away from Wolfram.

"My name is Wolfram, what's yours?" He implored, trying to appear as humble as he could.

"I'm Lillypad..." the filly said quietly, she sniffled again and looked at Wolfram directly.

"Well hello, Lilly. Is something wrong? I'd be happy to help you."

"I can't find my mommy, or my house. I'm lost."

Wolfram did not actually remember what it was like to be all alone as a child, but he knew he had suffered through the same situation. He was just even younger when it happened. Due to that, Wolfram had a soft spot for children in need, and as such he immediately offered to help the filly find her mother.

With the offer of help from Wolfram, Lillypad perked up, and accepted. Wolfram let her ride on his back while they searched. Wolfram spent a good deal of time looking around, but nowhere he brought the filly seemed familiar to her. He asked what her house looked like, and Lilly described a house of immense size. Painted white, with a front and back yard where her dog liked to play.

Wolfram came to the conclusion that this house must be in the inner city, rather than the slums he had been searching through. How a foal came this far from her home, he did not know. But he did know he had to help her. Wolfram set aside his initial task for the time being, while he began his march to the inner city.

He had been to the inner city only a few times before, it always seemed eerily happy. The inhabitants all had much brighter coloured coats and manes, and they all wore fancy clothes which he couldn't find for sale anywhere in the outskirts. The whole inner city had many more shops than it did houses, and the whole place was always booming with life and speech. He didn't like it, everything seemed too friendly, and he didn't feel like he was in control of himself while he was surrounded by ponies who thought of him as an inferior.

Only a few minutes after going up a stone staircase which marked the elevation into the inner city, Wolfram passed a cafe, which Lilly exclaimed as being familiar. She became very excited, and started talking about her home life. Wolfram listened intently, and talked with the little filly the whole way. Eventually, Lilly saw a house and said that her home was just down the street from the one they had just passed.

"Well, hang on tight. We aren't going to keep your mother waiting any longer!" Wolfram said playfully.

The filly grabbed around Wolfram's neck as best as she could, and Wolfram entered a running gait. He picked up speed quickly, and Lilly laughed with delight as they galloped down the street. The pedestrians who he raced by all gasped with surprise and let out small mutterings of disapproval. But within a minute of running they reached the house.

"That's my house, there it is!" Lilly cried with simple glee.

Wolfram stopped running, and walked through the front gate to the white and blue house. He followed the tiled path up to the front door, and knocked on it. Within the minute the door opened backward revealing a flustered mare. She had a clean yellow coat and blue mane which had obviously been styled at some point, but it was a bit bedraggled, making her look frantic.

"I think I may have found your daughter, ma'am." Wolfram said proudly, as he turned slightly to reveal the filly on his back.

"Mommy!" She shouted, and leaped off of Wolfram's back.

"The nice stallion helped find you!" She told her mother, who assumed a look of relief and joy. She sat down, and hugged the filly tightly before speaking.

"Oh thank you so much, she's been gone for ages! What can I call you by?" The unicorn mother inquired.

"My name's Wolfram, pleasure to meet you." He said in response, bowing his head slightly. The unicorn seemed shocked.

"You mean the Wolfram? The one who hospitalized two royal cadets earlier today?"

Wolfram was about to say something in his defense, but the horrified mother continued before he could speak.

"Come on sweetie. We aren't going to talk to this pony anymore, alright?" She attempted to comfort her daughter.

"Mommy, what does "hop-sit-alized" mean?" Was the last thing Wolfram heard from either of them before the door slammed shut.

For a moment, Wolfram stood there with a look of utter disbelief. He was shocked and appalled by the unicorns second hand judgment of him. Wolfram wanted to be angry at someone, but he couldn't figure out who to fault for his reputation. Maybe he really was too brutal to the guards, after all it was just a game. But they were horrible cheaters, and they got away with it too, they deserved some pain for that. Wolfram continued to conflict himself as he mindlessly began walking back to his house. He had completely forgotten what he had meant to do when he initially left.

Wolfram did not feel okay at all, he just wanted to get home as quickly as he could and retire into a book or something. With this in mind he decided to walk through a few back alleys to get home faster. They were barley any more dangerous than the main streets when you were in the outskirts. Unfortunately, his luck was bad that day. Not more than a few steps down the second alley he was abruptly stopped by a pair of stallions.

"Well would you look at that, Lance. Now you can prove your claims!" The first one said.

Wolfram recognized him, and the other too. They were Lance the unicorn and Cannon the earth pony from his squad. Lance was a dark red in hue, and had dull brown hair. He was slightly taller than Wolfram, and he was thicker too. Strangely enough Wolfram still outweighed him a bit. Cannon was a lot stockier than Wolfram. He was heavier, thicker and shorter, with a coat the colour of dark iron, and a mane as black as coal.

"You wanna help me out on that, Cannon?"

"Oh yeah, I do."

"I'm not in the mood right now, guys." Wolfram stated plainly.

He planned on walking past them, and began to do so. But just as he started to walk by, Cannon rammed Wolfram into the brick wall of the alley. Wolfram knew it was his own tactical error to have walked between a potential enemy and a wall so close together. He could have retaliated right then and there, but he decided to slump down onto the ground, and tell them off one more time.

"You don't want to do this, Cannon, and neither do I."

"You don't scare us, you backed out of fighting one enemy in the match today!" Cannon argued.

Wolfram sighed and leaped back to his feet. He had no fear of being defeated, he was better at fighting than either Cannon or Lance. But he still didn't want to. Before either one of his enemies was prepared, he spun around and kicked Cannon in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. Lance tried to rear up on Wolfram, using his superior height. Wolfram slid out of the way of Lance's falling hooves, and jumped into the air. He flew up a good three meters, and proceeded to fall onto the dazed Cannon. The impact was strong, and Wolfram felt it almost as much as Cannon did.

As Wolfram was getting back up after slamming cannon into the ground, he felt the all-too-familiar sensation of being kicked in the stomach, forcing him to fall over. Lance stood over Wolfram, and as he tried to get up again, Lance met his attempts with another hoof to the side of his ribs. Wolfram lay there for a moment, hoping Lance would accept triumph and give Wolfram a chance to get up. But Lance showed no signs of wavering.

Wolfram decided that laying there any longer would just result in getting kicked again, so he rolled to the side. Lance was a slow turner, so Wolfram had just enough time to jump upward, into Lance's underside. Using his wings for extra propulsion, Wolfram lifted Lance into the air, and once he felt he couldn't hold the large unicorn any longer, he dumped him head first onto Cannon.

Both of the stallions were dazed and bruised, but Wolfram had made sure not to actually injure them. He floated back down, and bowed gracefully to the heap of fur and hooves he had made.

"Thank you for your time," Wolfram said "But I've had enough of this for now."

And with that he went back home. Time had passed much since he left, returning the filly to her home had taken a long time to do. The sun was almost setting already, and Wolfram was tired enough to sleep early.

"Did you get the armour fixed up?" Ferrous asked as Wolfram trudged to his room.

Wolfram muttered an apology, and some sort of feeble excuse, before dropping the armour on the table which his father was still sitting at, before he retired to his bed.