An experienced night watchpony at the Baltimare docks develops a second sense to the crashing sounds of impact. A drunken sailor or two flapping their way back onboard one of the griffon airships would normally express serious profanity before and after their crash, sometimes repeating the impact multiple times with increasing profanity until they were able to stagger back into the air and get back to their berth. Sometimes the occasional freight hauler with a defective tie down or cargo gate would spill a box or two from altitude along their designated flight paths, making even the most careless watchpony give a habitual glance skyward when crossing the bright yellow lines on the ground. And, of course, there were always the ‘accidental’ jettisoning of cargos occurring when Customs got a little too inquisitive about some shabby tramp skyliners’ manifest.

Beet Salad would have preferred to work the nearby seaside docks, even though the number of plummeting airborne items would be nearly the same due to cargo winches hefting huge pallets of bananas and mangos from the burro crewed freighters on their way to Equestrian cities. Still, the splintering crash splitting the air on his way home seemed more to be a mid-air collision than a cargo failure.

The burly night watchpony paused with one hoof shading his eyes, scowling up into the bright sunny day. If it was not bad enough that the airborne citizens of the city had decided the docks made a good shortcut, it was only made worse by their inability to follow the clearly-marked public skyways. The interminable staff meeting he had just left had droned on and on about the importance of the docks to Equestrian commerce and how everypony needed to be on the tips of their hooves with the new security warnings being hammered on an almost daily basis. And of course the staff meeting had to happen during the day, when he normally would be sleeping. Pegasi, griffons, or whoever else trespassed across docks airspace were to treated strictly and all traffic regulations enforced from now on, with no exceptions.

So the crash he had just heard was going to make him late getting back to bed for a few hours of sleep before having to get up again and return to this same spot in the dark.

I’m off work! Bucking brats playing in the pallet piles. Even if I chase ‘em off, I’ll probably still have to do paperwork I won’t even get paid for!

Still, he had developed a fairly effective way of making sure the young pegasi or griffons in the city did not make a habit of trespassing on the docks. Beet Salad pried loose a fairly thick slat off a nearby pallet with his magic as he strolled in the direction of the noise. It only took one lesson for the teenagers who thought sneaking around the docks at night was cool, although the lesson normally came at the expense of their dental bills and some limping for a few weeks to complete the educational process. Beets had been in far more than his fair share of brawls as a child, and had carried his enthusiastic habit through his life to the present, as his craggy face and considerably bent nose showed. Ropey scars down his thick legs and chips in his heavy hooves only showed the failures of his fighting history. The truly impressive scars all adorned other ponies who had been either stupid or drunk enough to get into a fight with him once and only once.

He really did not try to get into fights. Fights came to him. So there were a few teeth of his still not pointing exactly the right way, a number of permanent chips in his somewhat-short horn, and a general musky smell in his vicinity reminding one of a damp dog. None of those physical traits explained just why other ponies picked fights. Perhaps it was the kink in his tail.

His naturally pink tail, which he refused to dye any other color.

It was an extremely pink pink which drew derisive comments far more than his mottled tan and brown hide, which looked dirty even when pristine clean. That brilliant flash of color should have been a warning to inebriated sailors and airponies, much as a venomous snake might shake a rattle in order to warn foolish predators.

The problem was that the lessons it taught were only learned after a rather abrupt trip through a barroom wall or window and subsequent awakening in an intensive care facility of some sort while attached to tubes and wires. Jobs for ponies who attracted violence and dealt with it were few and far between, but Beets had taken to the job of Night Watchpony with a grim enthusiasm. Over the years, he had shown no problems dishing out the kinds of beatings he had received, and then some. Sometimes it got dicey when more than one teenage pegasus was involved, doubly so with griffons, but he had always come out on top because he had no problems cheating in a fight. The sharp nails sticking out of the pallet slat he was carrying in his magic were not there just for looks.

“Hey, kids,” he growled as he came around the corner of the stack of pallets. “The Beast is here, so you better get your asses out of my patrol area.” Beets waved the stick while looking around for a prospective target, only to come up empty. Normally at night, he had to get fairly close in order for the little brats to see his ugly face and run away. In the sunlight, they must have torn out of there before he could even see them.

Still, it kept him from having to fill out any paperwork.

“What did you little bastards break this time?” muttered Beets as he poked around the tall stacks of wooden pallets. Goods from the farthest corners of Equestria had probably traveled through the Baltimare port on these pallets dozens of times and probably would again, if youthful idiots did not break them into pieces first.

The broken pallets did not look the way they normally did when the teenagers messed with them. There was a dark lump in the middle of the shattered wood, as if a heavy bag of trash or an animal had been dropped from a great height. Occasionally, a land-bound pet from one of the zeppelins would get loose and fall, but Beet Salad was fairly sure this was not a dog or some reptile. It seemed to be an insect of some sort, nearly the size of a smaller pony with filmy translucent bug wings. The crushing impact of its landing in the pallets had twisted and bent both punctured wings and limbs in directions they were not meant to go, leaving it motionless in a bed of splintered wood and nails. All across its chest, sections of dark exoskeleton had been caved in nearly flat, and a film of clotted green ichor formed at every single tiny crack, making the battered creature look like some sort of three-dimensional puzzle abandoned partway through assembly.

“Hey, Beast. Open up. We’re going to be late for work.” The hammering at his apartment door did not stop until Beet Salad unlocked the two deadbolts, unhooked the security chain and let it swing open from the force of his best and only friend’s pounding hoof. “About time,” continued Nectarine as he stepped inside the tiny apartment. “I was beginning to think you had somehow bedded some blind mare either drunk or stupid enough to fall for your personality.” The lanky stallion flicked a membranous wing over his back and cast a critical look at where his friend was tucking a blanket over a motionless shape on the floor. “Oh, no. Not again.”

“It isn’t a dog like last time,” said Beets as he made sure there was some water in one bowl and a couple pieces of dry dog food in the other. “It’s some sort of exotic pet, I think.”

“Huh. Let me see.” Nectarine craned his neck to look over his friend’s shoulder. “I’m the critter expert, after all.”

“You’re a pest pony,” scoffed Beets, although he did tuck back a corner of the covering blanket. “You deal with fruit flies and cockroaches.”

“Eww,” said Nectarine while wrinkling up his nose at the sight. “You found something uglier than you. It’s a huge bug of some sort.”

“So glad to have an expert opinion from a professional pest,” snarked Beets as he tucked the blanket back over the motionless form.

“You’re not going to keep the thing, are you?” Nectarine’s golden eyes blinked as he considered the grim glower his friend seemed to have draped over his ugly face like a comfortable mask. “Ninth life’s the charm?”

“You’re never going to quit bugging me about the cat, are you?”

Beets used his magic to lift the pull-down bed back into its vertical position, which would have made it look almost but not quite like the bookshelf it pretended to be, if not for the rumpled sheets sticking out of the cracks. The high-pitched squeak of aged springs caused Nectarine to lay his fuzzy ears flat against his head until the Murphy bed settled into place with a thud and his friend picked up his night watchpony gear. After retrieving his keys and buckling the thick belt holding the truncheon around his waist, Beets chased his friend out the door and locked it behind them. “This is different,” he added as he levitated the door key into his pocket and turned for the short walk to the docks.

“It’s some critically wounded critter you dragged home and are going to nurse until it dies on you like the last five or six times you dragged some broken cat or dog home,” said Nectarine with a shake of his head which made cascades of violet mane swish around his neck. “Seriously, I worry about you sometimes. You need to find a mare.”

“Yeah, a blind one,” he grumbled as they trotted down the street.

“Or one with reeeeeealy low standards,” added Nectarine. “Or both. Since we work at night, you can’t just hope for darkness to hide that ugly mug of yours on a date.”

“Shouldn’t you be looking for bugs instead of bugging the night watchpony?” said Beets with a glance at where the sun was just tucking itself behind the horizon for the night.

“Have a little respect for the Agricultural Produce and Health Inspection Division, ingrate. APHID has a brand-new security protocol, so I’ll have to have a manual in one hoof for every ship I inspect tonight. At least whatever has Security all batty has driven away a bunch of the fruit ships so it won’t be such a killer of a night.” Nectarine yawned, showing off his sharp nocturne teeth. “I can’t even snitch a mango off one of the ships for lunch any more without filling out twelve forms.”

“Poor foal. Now go on and scat. Protect Equestria from a horde of pony-eating spiders or something.”

Nectarine recoiled in false shock, holding one charcoal-grey leg across his chest. “How dare you insinuate Arianie could possibly hurt a fly. Just because she bit you once or twice when I let her out of her cage.” The lanky batpony laughed as he flapped up into the darkening sky, leaving his friend to start his patrol path for the evening.

There was always a certain dichotomy to being a night watchpony. If nothing happened, boredom would threaten to drag the guard into a sleepy somnombulance, while if something did happen, it never was good. There certainly was something going on behind the scenes keeping Beet Salad on his toes in the night, because more than one sleepy supervisor was out under the stars and walking a beat too, where they normally just fought paperwork in the office and drank coffee all night. The constant low-level tension of the evening had an almost synergistic blending with the fatigue caused by Beets’ midday staff meeting and subsequent medical attention to the wounded creature. The results left the stocky stallion stumbling around almost in a daze by the time Celestia’s sun rose into the sky and his timecard descended into the mechanism with a solid ‘thunk’ indicating the close proximity of a bed and long-delayed sleep.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said about his friend, who came swooping down the moment Beets stepped one hoof outside the office.

“So, Beast. I was thinking we could stop by the breakfast bistro with the cute little waitress this morning and pick up a quick nibble before going home.” Nectarine waggled his eyebrows behind his sunglasses. “You could even buy a doughnut.”

“Sleepy,” declared Beets with a descriptive yawn which had his friend waving a wing to dissipate the smell.

“Stinky,” said Nectarine, taking a moment to dart over to a nearby newsstand on their walk back home and grab a short stack of old newspapers out of the recycling. “Here you go, buddy. You’re going to need some papers for your new pet, if you don’t want the landlady getting on your neck about the carpet.”

“Yeah. Good idea.”

It was a fairly short walk home, and Beets yawned again as he opened the door to his small apartment. Nectarine hovered rather unobtrusively nearby to ostensibly say goodbye before taking off for his morning coffee and crumpet, but he poked his nose in the open doorway before flapping on his way. Then, after a brief inspection of the motionless lump showed it was still breathing, Nectarine slipped away with a little morning romance on his mind, just like always.

The creature had seemingly not moved since Beets had left this evening, although there was a little water missing from the bowl, and its breathing sounded somewhat better. He had to move it slightly in order to clean up the damp mess it had left overnight, the urine smelling somehow less like ammonia and more like flowers to his tired nose. A few extra newspapers under the center for its next ‘accident’ would help keep the threadbare carpet free of any more stains, and he sat back to examine his mangled pet once he had finished putting the rest of the newspapers around it.

“You are one squished bug,” he murmured under his breath, taking in the numerous fractures and splintered projections of cracked chitin still visible under the crosshatched dry green goop sealing most of the minor injuries. He made an attempt at straightening one leg, but stopped from the sudden increase in labored breathing and the quiet moans of pain accompanying the motion. A veterinarian visit was about the only thing he could think of to help, but if the trip there did not kill the creature, the most likely response from the vet would be to put it to sleep and still charge him a bundle of money. There was still a roll of stretchy adhesive bandage left over from his last expensive trip to the vet with the now-dead dog, so with as much care as he could muster, Beets screwed up his courage and began to wrap the creature’s broken limbs as straight as he could despite the pathetic whimpering that came from the slightest motion.

It took a few hours, and he had just wrapped the last of the bandage around the creature’s least injured section of its back leg when a familiar tapping at his front door preceded Nectarine’s return visit, with an orange juice and two doughnuts for his friend and a little smear of lipstick on one cheek indicating a side trip for his own benefit.

“Still alive, I see,” whispered Nectarine as he hoofed over brunch. “You want me to go see about renting a cart to take it to the vet?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Beets took a hefty bite out of his doughnut. “I really don’t think he’d be able to help either. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Maybe one of the visitors to Princess Cadenza’s wedding accidentally dropped a present for the Royal Zoo off their sky-yacht,” said Nectarine, scooping up an old newspaper off the apartment floor and hoofing through it. “I don’t remember seeing any announcements on the society page, though. A guest could have just been bringing it to the Royal Couple as an exotic pet.”

“Doesn’t fit,” said Beets with a distracted frown. “The wedding was yesterday, just about the time I found it in the middle of those shipping pallets, so if it’s from a guest, they’re really, really late getting to the party.”

“Huh. Well, it sure took a shellacking from the fall.” Nectarine raised one fluffy eyebrow. “Get it? Shellacking? Bug? You know. Because shellac is made from bugs?” Failing to get the nervous tension broken with a laugh, the handsome nocturne pegasus got up and headed for the door, but stopped before leaving. “Look, Beets. Don’t get all tied up over this. It’s just a pet. You know what you were like after the last dog died.”

“I’ll be fine, Nek.” Beets lit up his horn and shoved the lanky stallion out of the front door of his apartment. “Get some sleep and I’ll see you at work tonight.”

Once his friend was gone, Beet Salad took one last look at the sleeping insect. It looked so vulnerable and weak, curled up in the middle of the floor and making little whimpering noises as any motion made the fractured chitin rub against itself. All he wanted to do was to curl up in his own bed and go to sleep, but after putting the uneaten half of his last doughnut in the creature’s food dish, Beets trudged over to the door and slipped out into the bright morning sunlight.

It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.