Trixie stared at the transfer orders, and wondered whose prank they were. The forgeries looked convincing, and that certainly was Brigadier Deep Field's distinctive hoof-print, but really, who did they think they were fooling? Sixth Guards indeed.
Everypony knew there were four guards regiments. The four-cornered foundation of the EUP, famous and even glorious. The Firewatch on the Draconic Marches; the Meltstream Guards in their garrison-city beneath the glaciers of the Far North; the Sparrowfall Guards in the Vale of Tail; and lastly, the Royals in the celestial city, Canterlot herself. Even after nearly ten years of war to the knife's hilt in the Griffish Isles, those old moss-grown stones had sat, still, square, holding down the corners of Equestria like polished pebbles keeping an unrolled parchment map from curling up on itself.
A sixth regiment of guards, indeed!
Still, even bringing it up to her major might bring embarrassment to Trixie. She knew they were just waiting for her to report to the battalion staff office, to take it seriously, to expose herself to laughter and jeers. Hecklers!
Still…
Trixie's eyes crept to the bottom of the document, the details and direction. Captain Gleaming Shield, commanding; by the hoof of Corporal Two Pings, squadron clerk, 6/1st Guards.
How would anyone in the battalion know that Gleaming Shield was her old bête noire? That the blasted filly - she was still a lieutenant, like Trixie, damnit! - had tried to shake her down for black powder a while back. As if they had the sort of relations that allowed for such casual exchange of favors!
Well, she had directed that annoying bat-hen to the correct supply sergeant, and suggested the proper paperwork. It was only what was expected of her, as a commissioned officer in Her Royal Majesty's equally Royal Artillery!
Even if nopony else thought Trixie was worthy of the service. Thought she'd cheated or slept her way into her inexplicable commission. A dropout from PCSGU? Dime a dozen. And yes, she'd breezed through the artillery officers' candidate school with room to spare. Plus or minus a few scorched tail-hairs. But any idiot who could do low-order math like trigonometry and simple calculus could sleaze their way through that curriculum.
Trixie couldn't help it if most earth ponies were a little thick, and needed math tutoring. She'd tried her best not to lord that over them, but Celestia knew, it wasn't easy.
She leaned back on Big Bertha, and thought about the forgery. Was her paranoia running away from her again? There hadn't actually been anything she could point to, that proved her fellows were conspiring against her. At least, not in the last several weeks.
Months, if Trixie was honest with herself. Ever since her transfer back from the flying batteries to the siege gun battalion. Or before, not since the… incident.
Trixie knew better than to think the expression distorting their faces been respect or admiration. She was wiser than that. She knew she hadn't done anything worthy of either, so it must have been contempt and derision, however little it looked like it.
Trixie kept waiting for the other shoe to drop off its last nail, but the clang never came.
She looked at the forgery. This was the clang, wasn't it?
Trixie knew her battalion commander didn't want her, although she was almost certain the chief of artillery didn't even know her name. Some clerk probably had a cast stamp made of the brigadier's hoof.
But the major definitely didn't want her. Everypony knew unicorns were bad luck among the cannon - any and all of them, falcons, howitzers or the big guns. And since they didn't fire the great guns but twice a year - during the Princess's Birthday, and to herald the end of the Summer Sun Celebration - she was the least amount of bad juju here, in the harbor batteries. In between those ceremonial exercises, the siege battalion's job was to polish the big guns, keep them shining and uncorroded by the punishing salt air, and to stay out of trouble.
Trixie had never been good at that last bit. She was under orders to stay out of the dockside bars. On either side of the Blue Line.
Trixie got up off of the great barrel of Big Bertha, and went to report the forgery to her battalion major. She'd get in trouble either way, so might as well follow regulations and get in trouble by the manual.
The orders hadn't been forged. Trixie found herself staring at the hateful aristocratic features of Sparkle. Not that Captain Shield - captain! if you could believe it - would tolerate Trixie calling her by that epithet. But in Trixie's most secret mind, she couldn't help but call her nemesis by that name.
Sparkle.
The mare herself had long since abandoned her noble and aristocratic name, distillation of two hundred years of dedication and brilliance in service to the princess. Thrown it away like it was trash. Took up that ugly, stupid cutie mark as if she'd willed herself to be the perfect, idiot soldier. As if she'd conjured that lie upon her flanks by pure perverse will.
A prank played on destiny by a filly too poisoned with hate and cross-tempered ill-will to be who she clearly ought to have been.
Trixie Lulamoon knew something about lying cutie marks, she could see that falseness in others like a mirror reflecting her own twisted visage at her. Judging her. Knowing what lay beneath the silvered reflection.
"Trixie does not understand in the least why the great Gleaming Shield requires her humble resources. A pony of the illustrious House of Sparkle has no need of an artillery lieutenant. A captain of the guards, even less. What could you possibly want me to help you with, Captain Shield? To load griffons into the great guns and blast them at the harbor approaches like bonemeal grapeshot?"
The griffon sergeant beside Sparkle grimaced in disgust at Trixie's imagery. Sparkle said nothing, just waiting with her hoof on the not-a-forgery orders sitting on the desk in the Duchess's own Quarters. Why was Sparkle occupying the Duchess's Quarters in the garrison? If Trixie had any friends she could exchange gossip with, she might know why Sparkle was here, might have some clue as to why Trixie was here.
Burst barrels, if Trixie had only developed the habit of reading the powder-burned libels, maybe Trixie might know what the draconequus was going on here.
"Captain Shield," Trixie said, trying to not show the outrage on her muzzle. "Lieutenant Trixie Lulamoon of the Third Siege Battalion of the Royal Artillery Regiment, reporting as ordered according to transfer number 344215, this third day of May, year 199 of the Fifth Era of our Celestial Princess."
"Lieutenant Lulamoon, by this transfer, you will be accepting a commission in the Sixth Regiment of Guards. Do you so swear and affirm that this is your free will, uncoerced and acknowledged?"
Trixie tried to not gasp in astonishment. She wasn't being seconded?
"Lieutenant Lulamoon, do you so swear?"
"I- Trixie does so swear and affirm."
"Then by my senior commission in the Sixth Regiment, I acknowledge your acceptance of your new commission in the regiment. Welcome to the Crystal Guards, Lieutenant."
"But- but why?"
"Because I need a battery commander. And you were available. And everypony says you distinguished yourself in the Battle of Gilbert Square."
Trixie found her gorge rising, and fought her own body to keep it from vomiting the morning's breakfast all over that nice, clean desk. Who had Sparkle found to keep her office so spic and span?
"Are you quite alright, Lieutenant Lulamoon?" asked the big griffon, speaking for the first time. "You look sick. Do you need a bucket?"
The fucking Crab Bucket.
Trixie glared at the damnable griffon and her taunts. "Trixie has had enough buckets to last a lifetime, sergeant - what was your name again?"
"That's Gilda, Trixie. Talk to me, not her. You're in my line of command, not hers. So you didn't relish doing your duty? I have a commendation here in your file. And a recommendation for a medal. Marked 'refused'."
The stench of sulfur, and the dull red glow of her falcons through the stinking cloud blowing back in her gunners' faces. Number 3's barrel bursting, her number 2 falcon's rammer gargling out her last drowning wheezes around a ruined throat underhoof as Trixie took up the ram and forced down one last soaked charge before the barrel got so hot that it would flash on contact the screaming behind Trixie's back heralding one more rush by the griff-
Trixie blinked.
"Trixie has no interest in discussing such matters with anypony, ever."
"Not even your own commanding officer?"
"What do you want, Sparkle? Fu-fuck you, and fu-fuck your commission. I'm going to go find a stockade to report myself to, and you can take your stinking guards regiment and shove it up your war-crazed posterior."
Trixie fled the Duchess's Quarters and the present, falling into that terrible, horrible, endless second - that instant when she was turning away from her smoking, steaming falcons, glimpsing for the first time that shattered, smoky stage spread thick with fire and blood - and smelling what she'd made with her cannon and her hard work and the lie burned into her flank.
"Well, that could have gone better, captain ma'am."
"I thought I knew Trixie Lulamoon."
"I could have told you not to do that, just from looking at the file. Battle fatigue case if I've ever seen one."
"Gilda, you've been in the service for a year, stop talking like an old salt!"
"I'm still right." The blue mare's file had contained a draft of the medal citation. Her battery had dealt the majority of the damage to the rebels in Gilbert Square. The graves registry ponies had removed the remains of over a hundred and thirty griffins from in front of Lieutenant Lulamoon's battery's position.
"You didn't help any with that dig about the Bucket."
That's a wound that was festering. "She needed a sharp rap. Better for it to come out here, than in front of the ranks, or worse, outsiders."
"I know, I know, but I thought for sure that mare didn't care about anypony but herself."
"Doesn't take empathy to get hurt. Some things touch you no matter how callous you are." Gilda knew that well enough, herself. And she wasn't a squishy hearted pony.
"Blast. They didn't want to give me anypony else."
"They don't think much of us over in personnel, captain ma'am. All they're going to let us have are broken toys like Lulamoon."
"So you think this is it, this is what we've got to work with?"
"Captain ma'am, we need a great deal more than a cracked battery lieutenant. If we reject her, we won't be getting any other subalterns, not even ensigns for the platoons, not if they decide we're 'picky'."
"OK. So she doesn't want any buckets. I can work with that. What was her deal, what was her deal... damnit, I really didn't pay much attention to her while she was still at the school. Hades, she wasn't even in the academy, she was Gifted Unicorns... oh, right. Showpony family. Kind of a showoff? Smartass."
"Seems to like to refer to herself in the third person. Or is that some sort of psych thing?"
"No, she was always like that. Tartarus, Gilda, there's no point in cheating her into working for us. Let's go track her down before she turns herself into the MPs and demands a nice dank cell in the dungeons."
The cracked unicorn hadn't really gotten that far. They found her two floors down, sniffling in the mare's restroom. Gilda listened as Gleaming Shield tried to therapize her new lieutenant through a toilet-stall door.
"Look, Lulamoon, nopony blames you for what happened. You saved a lot of lives that day. It kind of ended the war."
"Horseapples! I don't pay much attention to things anymore, but I know the war isn't over out there! You can smell the smoke when the wind's in the right quarter!"
"Well, there's some burning and such going on out there, yeah, but it's in the last days. The rebels have lost, the raiders are just burning down all the barns and houses of sympathizers and the like. They're figuring it out. It'll just take them some time."
"It isn't a bomb."
Gilda blinked at the complete non sequitur. She exchanged perplexed glances with her captain.
"Trixie..." Gleaming Shield began, cautiously, "What isn't a bomb?"
"M'cutie mark. Everypony looks at it, says I'm a born grenadier. Or mad bomber. Or genius gunner. It's all Brokeback Mountain oysters. It isn't a bomb."
The powder-blue unicorn's cutie mark was a rounded black device with a flame coming out of a fuse, surrounded by a cloud of grey smoke blending into her blue coat. It couldn't look more like a bomb if it had 'bomb' written on it in twenty-five point type.
"What do you think it is, Trixie?" asked Gilda's unicorn.
"It's a damn stage smoker. A theatrical smoke - well, smoke bomb, but not like that!"
A pause. And just as Gilda started gathering herself to break down the stall door…
"My dad loved them," Lieutenant Lulamoon said. "Used them all the time in his act. Sometimes to escape an enraged mob, but hey, that's show business for you."
"Trixie," Gleaming Shield replied through the stall door, "You graduated from the artillery officer candidate school. Somehow. You became a lieutenant in a reasonable period of time. You would have been a decorated officer of the Royal Artillery if you'd just calm down and let them give you your medals. How can that not be your special talent?"
"I DON'T KNOW! Not everything is special talents! I don't even really understand how I ended up here, Sparkle. I wasn't supposed to be this."
A chill went down Gilda's spine, and she remembered a pink lunatic screaming in a dungeon.
"Should bes and would haves will get us nowhere, Trixie. What do you want to be, today?"
"Want to start over," the hidden mare sniveled, like a fledgeling.
Gilda snorted. Lulamoon should get in line.
"We can't go back, Trixie. You're an officer of Her Royal Majesty's armed forces. Hades, you just reaffirmed it, swore to it, not twenty minutes ago."
"I don't want to kill griffons anymore. I don't want to take my beautiful explosives and break things, ponies, people. It isn't fun. It isn't interesting. 'Life's short, and people are delicate.' That's a stupid truth, and I don't want to tell it."
"What do you mean by that, Trixie?"
"My dad used to say that the world's two things - stories, and truths. Good stories are lies that reveal good truths. Bad stories are lies that hide 'em, or distort 'em, or make ponies think that up is down and down is fire and out is in."
Gilda leaned in to whisper in Gleaming Shield's ear. "Wants to be a storyteller. With explosives. Think we can work with that?"
Gleaming Shield looked at her griffon, and shrugged.
"OK, Trixie," Gilda's unicorn said, smiling slyly, "Let's talk about how to tell good stories with the tools we have to hoof. Would you like to do that?"
The toilet stall's door swung open, and the artillery mare nodded her tear-stained muzzle at Gilda and her captain.
Mmmm....
That's good chapter.
war is hell no matter how much of a narsasist you are, if you’re not a complete sociopath it will break you one way or another.
It says a lot about Equestria's current military view on things that they use the term 'Battle Fatigue'. What Trixie needs is help and what she gets is a Twilight who's as bogged down by PTSD as she is but in a completely different way and Gilda.
I need a safety bar, because this chapter was a real roller-coaster.
So, she'd be perfect for something like a misdirection unit?
Would it help or just make it worse for both if Giles and Trixie managed to talk things out? They do seem to be suffering from the same event, just from opposite sides. Not that I know if Giles has mentioned any of his backstory to anyone.
Regarding an earlier comment on Gun/Gonne, yes it was probably a bit of an oversight to introduce flintlocks while cannon still seem to be in a process of refinement, but a tad late to go back on that now.
Could somewhat plausibly point to the presence of magic in Equestria and how handguns with their supply train might have made a poor substitute for unicorns, while there are somewhat fewer unicorns who could act as field artillery.
Other races certainly would adopt handguns however, there just haven't been many in Equestria or facing Equestrian forces.
The gryphons seem to have been relatively poor even before the blockade, and guns and powder is expensive if you're going to field any number of them.
Would like to know what went wrong with that one Falcon that blew up, even if I know that it's a less important background detail...
Just makes me curious if there was some manufacture error, was it a bronze or iron piece, very thin walled or did someone manage to double-shot it?
Yes I know, historic gun nerd.
Interesting. The language struck me as odd, but then I stopped and reflected on the premise that the EUP likely has a rather longer practical reach of tradition than any modern human military.
Trixie's backstory is interesting. It suddenly strikes me that she is kind of overeducated? According to Good Trooper, CSGU is post-secondary, and it's presumably fairly elite, and she went from that to being an artillery officer. Well, it doesn't so much strike me that she's overeducated so much as that she's both a talented wizard and a bored/underemployed artillery officer. With a chip on her shoulder. Anyway...
Ah, I pity Trixie. She reeks of obsessive envy. it's not clear how much it affects her existence otherwise, but it's certainly bubbling up here.
Uh, wait a minute, she was set off by transfer orders. Ooooh, for Trixie, perhaps? That throws a different light on things, but yikes... This is gonna be good.
Oh man, there is so much to unpack in this. Trixie resents herself and envies Twilight and resents Twilight for not reaching her potential because of obsessive hate, which has a certain irony given Trixie's obsessive envy, but maybe there's also a bit of empathy for Twilight as if Trixie built up Twilight as a self-loathing nostalgic ideal of what she could have been?
Oooooohhh...
I suppose that would be a bit of a hard turn for one with as much of a chip on her shoulder as Trixie. For anyone really, but for how much of her self-image she built around getting where she was, to have it disintegrate like that is a point of extra trauma.
One of the best parts of this story.
Oh dear, it's not just a regiment of bits and pieces because of some explicit goal of diversity, but also because of this... At least they got her to swear in first :P
Welp, I'm invested in Trixie now.
Trixie saying people when she means thinking feeling beings that you should give ethical weight is significant language. It's probably something that quite a few ponies who didn't have specific cause to empathize with something that wasn't a pony before are coming to terms with, due to interacting with griffons as they have.
And we have Trixie. A broken and different Trixie but it just make her more interesting. If she kept her interest in magic, she might be somebody who will be able to bounce back ideas and magical theories with Gleaming in the future. On the other hand, a flexible mind who can detect and use subterfuge can be useful in command. War is deception after all.
But I don't exactly understand the dislike other units have for the new Guard Regiment. Isn't it a chance at promotion for some and the occasion of entering an institution with a long history? Serving a princess directly and all that? The war is coming to an end and a lot of soldiers will finish their services so those who want to continue a military career, isn't it a great opportunity?
And if I understand it correctly, the four Guard Regiments stayed in Equestria to guard it while it's the rest of the armies that went to battle. But the Guard are supposed to be Elite right? The right mark, the hardest training, the best equipment, etc. But before the war with the Griffish Islands, how much action these regiments have seen in the lastfew hundredsof years? Wouldn't that make them obsolete and outdated?
And the Crystal Guards are the sixth Regiment but there was only four of them for hundreds of years. What happened to the fifth one? My guess is that they were Luna regiment and were disbanded when Nightmare Moon happened, so Celestia is keeping it as a place holder for when she come back?
So... Alternate universe mean alternate Cutie Marks? Twilight didn't get her canon one and it seems Trixie didn't get her either. How many ponies are like that I wonder.
Another one who feel that the universe is not right or it's psychological damage that is talking? A meeting with Pinkie would be interesting.
But Maybe it would be good to let Trixie perform some little shows, it might help her a little.
Now there's a mare for the black company!
Trixie? With PTSD? That's a new one. Or at least, I don't think I've encountered it before, not to this level.
Nah. If there's anything I've learned about Trixie, its that she only thinks she doesn't care about anyone but herself, or at least cares more about herself than everyone else. But in reality, Trixie's a decent enough of a pony once you get her to set aside the ego. Personally, I think she flaunts the ego only to shield herself from her own inadequacies, her way of making herself seem better than she thinks she actually is. She's a very insecure pony, really, though she hides it well most times.
I remember back in the first story, when Trixie first got introduced, that I wasn't at all surprised that she was an artillery officer, given her experience with fireworks and there being a whole lot of overlap between the two. But Trixie's right--the two are still not necessarily the same, as one's only for show, while the other is for killing a lot of creatures very quickly. Can't blame the gal for preferring the former over the latter.
Well...having a morale officer couldn't ever hurt. Let her put on a magic show or what have you.
Iiiii shiiiiip iiiiiit
Seriously though, incredible bit with Trixie being the one to recognize this timeline as the travesty of destiny it is. Let's hope she can still find get happy ending though
That chapter. Fuck....
I'm aware this is probably something closer to Hornblower or Sharpe's Rifles than it is to Band of Brothers, but do you plan to make any use of Bill Mauldin's Willy and Joe?
I get the feeling they'd fit right in.
Yeah ... Gleaming and Gilda are not going to help Trixie's PTSD, especially when all they are interested in is using her for their own befit.
9856185 I suspect that the Company wouldn't be interested in Trixie. She's too broken for them to use.
This chapter is fantastic for all sorts of reasons!
(Sees the chapter title) Trixie?
(Sees the very first word) Nice.
Oh. Oh dear. I shouldn't be surprised that someone in this story has some painful history, but that still hurts to see.
Now that is interesting. On some level, Trixie senses what could have been, the heights Twilight could have reached, and she hates her for wasting potential that Trixie herself could only dream of.
Oof. The Bucket was a bad day for everyone, but some more than others. I'm not sure how Trixie's going to recover in the Sixth. I'm not sure if she will. But hopefully they'll find some use for her. If nothing else, there's always value in someone who can dream of a brighter tomorrow. Or adjacent today.
If Trixie is the Lieutenant to Twilight's Captain, does that make her the de facto second-in-command?
9860888
Not really. They're assembling a chain of command, but the squadron isn't stood up yet. Non commissioned officers can handle training recruits and suchlike.
I was just working on some draft chapters where Gleaming's executive officer shows up.
They're kind of tripping over themselves racing to get themselves assembled, and occasionally they're putting the artillery horse before the caisson- or was that vice versa?
Odd. Aside from Pinkie no one else seemed to believe there was anything else to life other than the hand they got dealt. Some sort of residual sense?
9858536
Just an observation... but reading your comments I get the feeling that you're not going to be content unless or until the mane characters of this narrative are so much pink and purple (and white, orange, yellow, and blue perhaps) paste on the ground.
9969657 You're not entirely wrong ... Pinkie was already on my shite list for her action in the previous story, and Gilda and Gleaming are heading down a similar path and picking up speed.
says Gleaming, and then she immediately goes to see how she can manipulate a pony that she knows is broken into service so that Gleaming can use her knowledge to go and kill some more. Apparently that's not "cheating" somehow.
Trixie needs counseling and medical care, neither of which she is going to get being an "asset" for the Sixth Guard.
This was a cute chapter.
Woooooo yea! Trrrrixie!
Ohh boy
Wow, she has a self-esteem problem
So, that's what they're calling PTSD, huh? 'Battle fatigue'
Ahh. Stories get weird when characters start realising they're in a split-off universe
Dammit, I just want to know what their actual purpose is!
Remarks and corrections:
> That's a wound that was festering. "She needed a sharp rap. Better for it to come out here, than in front of the ranks, or worse, outsiders."
Seems to me that first piece is supposed to be inside the quotes
10423390
No, it's actually a thought, unvoiced. But yeah, it should have been in italics. Fixed.
Ouch, yeah, this timeline broke Trixie bad... But, unlike Pinkie, she seems to be capable of recovery still.
The Discorded future can be sensed by some few who see outside of seeing... some far too clearly. Already strained from their preternatural senses, they snap from the tension and existential wrongness of what the aspect demon had turned their world into.
Only one can set things right... and naturally, that one is Alondro, the ALLMIGHT OF ALLMIGHTS!! THE KNIGHT SO WHITE HE'S PRACTICALLY INVISIBLE!! THE DEUX EX SELF-INSERT!!
Yes, nothing can stand against Alondro's limitless OC Gary Stu God-powers!
10437056 Mitch H did it, and his victims feel the pain.
Such a bastard.
And another chapter that sets things up and looks to be going one way, only to swerve so damn well into making things much differnt and.... just so damn tragic.
Yeah, you made me feel sorry for Trixie... for all she still has the ego, she's also utterly crushed by what she's done, deep in PTSD, and so self-hating over it she can't even conceive of anyone not hating her for what she's done.
She is just.... broken. But, that seems to be the default state of everyone in the Sixth. We're pulling a Bridge Four here it seems.... though thankfully without being anywhere near as dark as the situation it took for Bridge Four to come together and escape. And, oh look, a mare torutured by having killed so many with her cannons, and a griffon who saw nearly his entire family get killed by those cannons, both in the same command, yeah this is going to go somewhere.
Ow. I feel for Trixie.