The town of Wash Margin sat on a forlorn rock just within sight of the mainland. The population might have been three hundred. That might include dogs and cats.

Trixie didn’t care. She was more concerned with when she could leave the island. That was only three years, six months, and eleven days away. Until then, she was known as Private Trixie, the second lowest-ranked Lunar Guard at Camp Driftwood, the outpost that served the town. While her salvation was still three and a half years away, this day was cause for celebration. The new guy had arrived.

Private Melon Rind was probably straight off the farm. His coat was a yellow-green color that looked a little like a melon but contrasted horribly with the purple Guard armor. Melon was a big earth pony who appeared even larger when wearing the armor. He acted tough, but Trixie could tell that’s all it was - an act. She had some experience with that.

But Melon was still the new guy, and that meant Trixie wasn’t at the bottom of the heap any longer. She even had the privilege of taking him out on his first patrol of Wash Margin.

Melon tried to play it cool, but he kept looking around. Trixie kept focused on the middle distance. She had seen everything she needed to see since arriving on the island six months before.

It took twenty minutes to walk from the front gate of Camp Driftwood to the piers. That was about as far as one could walk on the island. Being cut off from the industry of the mainland, the streets were paved with seashell, coral, and gravel instead of concrete.

At the piers, the kelping boats were pulling in for the evening and Celestia was about to put the sun to bed. The two of them paused for a moment, staring at the water and the sun sinking into it.

Trixie asked, “So what did you do?”

Melon looked away from the sunset. “Huh?”

“What did you do to get put on this rock?”

“Oh. I, um, pulled a Flash Sentry at boot camp graduation.”

Trixie snorted. “Which Princess did you hit on?”

“I was really drunk, okay? They changed my orders and redirected me here.” Melon paused, and then asked, “What did you do?”

Trixie waited for him to look at her. She put a hint of a smile on her face. “The Great and Powerful Trixie held an entire town hostage.”

Melon’s eyes widened. “Really!?”

“Princess Twilight had to personally come and stop me,” said Trixie. “Afterwards, I enlisted in the Guard. I suppose the royals decided that they couldn’t waste power like mine.”

“Oh come on, she wasn’t even a princess then,” broke in a voice.

Another pair of guards came strolling up, both of them pegasi. Like Trixie and Melon, both sported older Lunar Guard armor and neither utilized the spell to make them appear as bat ponies. Corporal Meteor Crash had a wide smile on his face. “Is Private Trixie telling about how after she was arrested, Princess Luna took pity on her and offered the choice to either be locked away in solitude...or go to prison?”

Corporal Dusty Daze put on a grin of her own and added, “She should have picked jail. At least there she’d have ponies who couldn’t get away from hearing her talking about herself.”

Melon’s eyebrows went up and he glanced at Trixie before joining in the chuckles.

“Meteor knocked over Princess Celestia’s cake and blamed it on her bird,” Trixie quickly put in. “Dusty tried to seduce the wrong senior officer.”

Melon laughed. “Yeah, but taking over a town? You know the joke about fat ponies being hard to kidnap? Just exactly what were you going to do with a whole town?”

“Does nopony take the Great and Powerful Trixie seriously!?”

“Oh yeah, sometimes she talks about herself in third person,” said Meteor. He gave Melon a friendly pat on the back and walked away with Dusty.

Melon chuckled himself out. “Wow. A town.”

Trixie snorted and trotted away, Melon hurrying to catch up. She’d already decided not to tell him about the buck me sign Meteor had taped to his back.

The two of them took a different route than before. The island was in a rough D shape and had been formed when a hurricane decided it didn't like the way a peninsula was looking at it. This created something of a natural wharf on the flat side of the D that faced the mainland.

Camp Driftwood was at the seaward side, naturally being built on land nopony else wanted. It was a small compound that maintained the lighthouse and housed the Guard unit. Through some twist that nopony ever really determined, it was just a unit of Lunar Guards. Though to be fair, the island was hardly big enough for more than one kind of Guard.

Trixie had already learned the island like the back of her hoof, mostly through endless walking patrols. There was precious little else to do.

She didn’t exchange a single word with Melon for an hour. She could see him glance at her occasionally, but he probably didn’t want to let her do him the favor of answering questions about the town. Really, there wasn’t much to know.

When Melon did break the silence, he said, “So I bet you had an easier time at boot camp.”

Trixie frowned and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The thing where they made us refer to ourselves in third person. ‘This recruit desires to use the latrine, drill sergeant.’ Since you’re already used to talking about yourself like that.”

“You could have started with that instead of asking a random question out of the blue.”

“Well, did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Have an easier time at boot camp?”

Trixie sighed. “No. Mostly because it was full of imbeciles like you.”

“Hey, I’m not an imbecile!”

“You want to prove that?”

Melon stopped at stared at her. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Trixie paused and looked at him. She glanced at the shells that paved the street and selected three reasonably intact ones and a small stone. “See this? I’m going to hide this pebble underneath one of the shells and then move them around. You have to pick which one it’s under.”

Melon smiled. “Oh, this’ll be easy.”

The tavern was nearby. The two of them got out of the center of the street and sat down on their haunches next to the building. Trixie began the shell game. Melon’s eyes followed the shells as Trixie scrambled them.

After a moment, she arranged the shells in a line. Melon picked the middle one. Trixie overturned it, revealing nothing beneath. Melon frowned and picked the one on the left. Nothing under there, either. Trixie turned over the third shell, and again there was no pebble.

“Okay, so where is it?” Melon asked.

“It’s not under any of them. You are an imbecile because you let yourself get baited into the argument, let me pick the game, and forgot that a unicorn can cheat using magic.”

“Well, pardon me for trusting you!”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Check your back.”

Melon reached behind him, pulling off the buck me note. His brow wrinkled. “What’s this?”

“The thing you’ve been walking around with for the last hour. Meteor and Dusty did that.”

“How do I know it wasn’t you with your cheaty magic?”

“A trick is only impressive when one can actually see it. If the Great and Powerful Trixie was pranking you, you’d know it. It was tiring watching you walking around for the last hour completely oblivious. It’s bad enough that we have this old mismatched armor. Much longer and the whole town would be laughing at us - correction - you.”

The two of them stood up. Melon glanced at the note and dropped it in a nearby trashcan. He opened his mouth, Trixie wasn’t sure whether he was going to thank her or complain more, but was interrupted by a bar stool crashing through the nearby window.

“Ah...whoops,” said a drunken sailor, standing on the other side of the broken window and grinning sheepishly.

“Ugh, and the night was going so well,” Trixie muttered under her breath. She pushed open the door to the tavern.

A pink unicorn mare was laughing and drinking with the rest of the boatload of sailors. Trixie teleported the pebble from earlier to the inside of her bottle. When the mare went to take another swig, nothing came out.

“Had a little too much, Strawberry Rhyme?” Trixie said.

“I can still stand on my own four hooves, can’t I?” Strawberry replied.

“By yourself?” Trixie glanced at the sailors. “Would you gentlecolts mind letting her try?”

As it turned out, they’d been supporting her almost exclusively and she oozed to the floor.

“We’re taking Strawberry home,” Trixie announced. She asked Strawberry, “Is your tab settled?”

“I’ll pay it off at the end of the month.” Strawberry hiccuped.

“What about that window?”

“What window?”

Trixie glanced up and saw the sheepish sailor was already opening his wallet. She managed to get under Strawberry and struggled to lift her. “Ugh, Strawberry?”

“Mmm, yeah?”

“How did you get so heavy?”

“Practice,” Strawberry giggled.

“Lend a hoof?” Trixie asked. Melon took Strawberry with just one muscular foreleg and slung her on his back.

“Hey, we were having fun,” said one of the sailors who’d been directly supporting the sloshed Strawberry.

Melon glanced at Trixie and then repeated her earlier line. “We’re taking Strawberry home.”

“Oh yeah?”

Melon narrowed his eyes and upped his tough guy act. “Yeah. Want to make something out of it?”

Even if Trixie saw through him, Melon was big enough that several drunk sailors were not inclined to start anything. He followed Trixie out of the tavern, carrying Strawberry.

“So this is the town drunk,” said Trixie as they walked. “Strawberry Rhyme.”

“Heyyy,” said Strawberry.

“Her place is up the street,” said Trixie.

“Does this happen often?” Melon asked.

“About once a week, so we see a lot of her.”

They carried Strawberry down the street, past the the Chineighese restaurant. Paperwok, the proprietor came out as they went by.

“She drink too much?” he asked.

“Like a fish,” Trixie confirmed.

“Hey, hush up,” said Strawberry. “Who uses paper woks for cooking, anyway?”

“How else you like your takeout?” Paperwok shook his head.

“I could go for some takeout,” said Melon.

“We’re kind of in the middle of something,” Trixie reminded him as they continued up the street, just in case he had forgotten about his intoxicated passenger.

“Oh yeah,” said Strawberry. “There was this thing. I meant to tell somepony, but now you’re here I can tell you.”

She paused, apparently collecting drunk thoughts. Trixie prompted, “Well?”

“Oh, just this thing I saw. S’back of my place.”

She wasn’t making much sense, but that was par for the course. Her door was unlocked and Trixie told Melon to drop her on the bed. Strawberry was snoring almost instantly.

They left the small house. Melon said, “What was she talking about? Something behind her house?”

Trixie shrugged. “We should probably take a look.”

Strawberry’s house backed up to a populated alley. A few small shops and benches were along the way. A large tree functioned as a message board with a few flyers tacked to it. There was also a fresh carving in the bark.

The Gods of War will rise and spread their reign across Equestria. They will continue their long campaign of bloodshed and battle for centuries to come and revive the haunted souls of the dead as their army. They will spread their hate in the name of vengeance on those they blame for their downfall.

“What the heck does this mean?” Melon wondered.

“Some imbecile just ruined a perfectly good night,” Trixie grumbled.