I woke up from a relatively dreamless sleep, to find I was not only in my pony form, though I don’t know how as I had gone to sleep in my human form, but I was not in my own room. My room was pretty plain, dark blue walls, a light blue carpet, and a blue bed. This one was decorated to look just like an indoor version of the night sky, complete with a full-moon. After noticing the small lump next to me, I realised that I wasn't alone in the bed, and where I was, and I started blushing profusely.

Ok, what happened last night?

Luna chose that exact moment to wake up. She was blushing when she realised I was awake, and you could cut the awkwardness with a knife. Eventually, she broke the silence.

“Luna? What’s going on? Why am I in your room? Not that I’m complaining, but I-” She silenced me with a hoof to my mouth.

“Um, Noctis, you mean you don’t remember how you ended up here?” She asked, removing her hoof from my mouth. I shook my head.

“No, I don’t. The last thing I remember was going to sleep in my own bed.”

She sighed before she explained. “Okay. Noctis, while I was in my room, I heard a very loud noise coming from yours. When I went downstairs and looked in, you were clutching your head and screaming in your sleep. The staff were nowhere near, as they’d been instructed to leave you alone, so I tried to wake you up myself, but I couldn’t. After a few minutes, though, you just seemed to calm down, and then you just suddenly switched to your pony form. I was worried it might happen again, so I brought you to my room so I could keep an eye on you, just in case. Are you angry?” Her lower lip was trembling, and her eyes were beginning to water. I wrapped my hooves around her neck and nuzzled her. Not in a romantic sense, just as someone trying to comfort a friend.

“Luna, why would I be angry? You were helping me. You were worried about me. Back home, the only one who ever showed concern for me was Die. Everyone else saw me as a weapon, or a monster, something to be feared and hated, or used until I was no longer useful, and then thrown away. Here, I actually have friends. I have peo-sorry, ponies, that care about me, ponies that I want to protect. That includes you.” She nuzzled me with a small smile on her face.

“Thank you Noctis. But there’s something more important we need to talk about at the moment." She said in a serious tone.

I just nodded my head. "Ok, what do you wanna talk about?"

"Well, I wan-” She was interrupted by the appearance of a strange portal of darkness. After a few seconds, Lumos stepped through, and Standing beside him were two figures. The one on his right was a human with short hair, and pure grey eyes that showed no emotion or life within. He wore a black suit, shirt pants, jacket, tie, all black, and leather shoes. The other figure was like nothing I had ever seen before. It had arms and legs like a human, as well as a normal torso, but they were covered in a mass of differently colored feathers. It's lower legs were similar to those of birds, but its hands seemed to be changing shape every few seconds, and it was wearing blue jeans. There were two wings of the same colors on the rest of its body. It had a human face that looked exactly like Lumos’, and its eyes... its eyes flashed in so many colors that they could give someone a seizure in a matter of moments. And the irises, they were the color of pure gold.

For a good few seconds, we were just staring at each other, before Lumos slowly backed toward another portal, whilst saying "I'm going to leave for now, and come back when less weird shit is happening."

I just smirked and said, "Alright, but your two new 'friends' will have to explain themselves first."

"Wait, you can see them? Well, thats a surprise."

"Yeah, I can see them. Why, shouldn't I be able to?" I asked. Luna gave Lumos a look.

"Yes, why should we not be able to see your friends? Are you casting an invisibility spell on them or something? If so, you need to work on it a bit, they're more visible than Celly's flank when she eats too much cake." She said, grinning a little.

Lumos rolled his eyes. "Well, to start off, their names are Mirum and Malum, they are my Conscience..." He gestured to the one on the left, "Mirum is the embodiment of my chaos. The other is Malum," He continued, making a gesture at the one on the right, who gave a slight bow of his head in respect, "who is the embodiment of my 'order' energy, I only became aware of them earlier today myself. The very fact that you two can see them means quite a bit, either you are both Naturally seers, or the Orbs have even more power than I originally thought."

We were silent for a moment, and Luna spoke up. "Well, my sister and I are able to raise the sun and moon because of those orbs, so I'm guessing it's probably the latter of the two explanations. Also, why are they called Paradox and Evil?"

Lumos gave Malum an angry look. "So THAT'S what you said 'wasn't important,' and 'inaccurate,' if it weren't a direct breach of our contract, I wouldn't let you have any control, damn mental contracts." Malum grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. Mouthing the word ‘sorry’. He then shot a glare at Luna, quickly replacing it with a raised eyebrow when I got out of the bed, switched to my human form, and placed a hand on Tsuki no me, all the while staring at him with a face completely devoid of emotion.

"Ok.I’m running out of patience here, so I’m going to ask once. What are you doing here, and what’s this about a contract."

Lumos looked me right in the eyes, with no readable expressions. “I guess I’ll answer your second question first, as I actually know the answer to it. I made a contract with them that requires them to control my body for at least 5 minutes a week each, or more if I need their help.” I raised an eyebrow curiously, “As for the first question, I was trying to use a dark passage, and... we each chose a different location... I’m lucky I’m not inside a rock or something.”

Luna giggled a little, and the four of us turned to her. She almost burst out into full-blown laughter before regaining her composure. "I apologise, but you're not the only one that has happened to in the past."

Lumos blinked twice, "Really? Who else has this happened to?" He asked, waving Mirum and Malum over.

Her face became deadly serious. "You must swear that this conversation will never be heard by anypony outside this room. Not Die," She said, looking at me, "Not Clare or Ventus," She turned to Lumos, Mirum and Malum, "And most definitely, not, my sister."

We all nodded silently, and she began the anecdote. "When Celestia and I were still relatively new to being rulers, we had just started learning to teleport, and she tried performing it with two young unicorns, one of whom was Starswirl the Bearded. However, they had never agreed on a destination before casting the spell, all of them thinking up a different location, and they ended up teleporting right into a concert hall in the middle of a performance. Starswirl and the young unicorn were unharmed for the most part, but Celestia, she got a cello stuck to her horn, and it took well over an hour to pry it off. It's why I call her Celly sometimes."

Lumos stayed silent for about two seconds before saying "That’s... Interesting"

Both Mirum and Malum suddenly burst into laughter. <THAT WAS HILARIOUS!> Mirum shouted, almost falling over. Lumos sighed and shook his head, watching them roll around on the floor, laughing their butts off. Luna and I rolled our eyes at their antics, before she held up a hoof for silence.

"Now that your laughing fit is over, it's almost time for you to begin training the Lunar Guards, Noctis. Have fun." With that, her horn flashed and I found myself outside the training grounds, along with Lumos, Mirum, and Malum. My head only felt slightly on fire.

"You know, I think she enjoys giving us headaches." I said to Lumos, who was still holding his head in his hands.

He chuckled. "You're lucky, all you have is a headache, meanwhile, I'm about to puke." He said, clutching his stomach. "Do you mind if I take control of this training session?"

I just shrugged. "Sure. If you want. Just call me when it's my turn to train them. In the meantime, I'll be taking a nap. I didn't get much sleep, according to Luna."

Lumos' eyebrows rose at this, and he said jokingly, "Oh, is that so? I'm surprised your relationship has gotten that far already!"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "It wasn't like that. Apparently I was screaming and clutching my head in agony last night, and when it was over I suddenly switched forms, which she said should only have happened the first time. She brought me to her room so she could do something if it happened again. Honestly, I already have a clue what it means, but I don't want to worry her. Anyway, wake me when you need me."

Lumos rolled his eyes, and said, "Yeah, be right back," and then fell into a dark passage in the ground below him.

When he came back, he was holding the hand of a very confused Clare beside him, while she staring at Mirum and Malum. He let go and said, "Sorry about this, as for those two, I'll explain later, could you please increase the gravity to 20 times that of this planet within these grounds for my training of the guards?" Clare did nothing for a moment, then nodded, and began to focus. I started to feel very heavy.

He turned to me. "Brace yourself."

I just nodded and said, "Sure, just wake me when it's my turn to train them. Oh, and if you start seeing any floating images emanating from me, that's just cause of the lunar orb. Sometimes it projects my dreams for some reason." before laying down for a nap. I sighed as I allowed sleep to take me into its embrace, completely unaware of what Lumos and his friends were going to see...
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Great, our first mission and we're crawling through a sewer system. This is not what I imagined when I joined SOLDIER, though I guess the dream I did have is unattainable now...

I shook off the memories that were worming their way into my thoughts and snapped back to reality. It stunk, literally. We'd been walking on the very small, very narrow pathway overlooking the murky water and who-knows-what-else, for the past half-hour, and we'd still found no trace of the missing children we'd been sent to find.

There had been reports of children going missing for over a week, there were at least 30 confirmed missing. We'd been sent in to find them, as a test of our abilities. The residents were more than helpful, already having made some investigations of their own, presenting us with several pieces torn from clothing apparently belonging to the children. All of them had some sort of slime coating them, and reports from the ones who found them said that the latest article was found near a sewer entrance. So naturally, Die and I head straight into the den of water and, other substances, to find them...

"ugh, are we THERE YET!?" Die shouted.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, immediately wishing I hadn't as I gagged on the putrid smell of the water and excrement. I got back what little composure I could, turned back to Die and whispered "Die, for the last time, no, we're not there. Now be quiet. Do you want to alert whatever creatures are down here to our presence?"

Die shut up with a sheepish grin on her face and we continued walking, eventually coming up to a massive open area. What we saw, we prayed we'd never see again.

Almost all of the missing children were there, but we had been too late. Not one of them had survived. Most of them were nothing more than piles of bones, but those who still had flesh on their corpses had been mercilessly disembowelled and dismembered, and judging from the blood in the cages, it had been done while they were still alive. Die and I fought the urge to vomit as we searched for the cause of their deaths. It didn't take us long. They were humanoid, except with a turtle-like shell covering their torsos, a slightly extendible reptilian neck attached to a gilled eel-like head with its eyes at its sides, long, reptilian tails, webbed feet, some sort of fur covering their shoulders and wrists, and claws. Most of them were carrying tridents. One word came to mind.

They were gathered around something, and as we slunk closer to get a better look we saw, to our horror and rage, that it was the last child, who was around my age. She had been badly beaten, tears and mucus mixing with the blood seeping from the various open wounds on her body as she cried, desperately pleading for her life. The leader stepped forward, a sahagin king, basically the same in terms of physical description except for its height. It was much taller. It was carrying a large trident, caked in the blood of the children whose lives it had so mercilessly ended. I rushed forward after telling Die to stay put and only interfere if it looked like I was in trouble, but even if I had been as fast on foot as Bahamut in flight, I wouldn't have made it in time. All I could do was watch as the King brought the trident down on the child's throat, then raising it again and bringing it down on her chest, piercing her heart. I froze as I saw her look through the crowd to me. I could see words forming on her lips as she took her last breath, and my own caught in my throat as I realised what they were...

'Why?'

I just stood there, paralyzed as the group finally started to notice me. None of them made a sound as they advanced with their own tridents raised while the King just stood there, studying me, probably determining if I was worth killing with his own trident. I didn't pay attention to them. I was too busy looking at the face of the little girl who'd died because we hadn't been in time, a solitary tear dropping from one eye. Because I, hadn't been in time. I was in charge on this mission, the responsibility ended with me. It was my fault she was dead, my fault that thirty children were dead. I had to be the one to inform them that their children, who should only have had to worry about school and chores, were gone, killed by these monsters. I had to go and shatter what little hope they had while more of these things did exactly the same thing the ones here were doing. While more innocent people die...

No. NO MORE! I Won't let them get away with what they've done. No survivors. No MERCY!

I felt a cold wind pass through, despite us being underground, but I didn't react. I didn't react as the sahagin started to shiver uncontrollably, or as Die called my name. I didn't react when my entire body was encased in ice, or when said ice started to cover my body like some sort of armor. I didn't react until the remaining ice exploded outwards, impaling some of them, and knocking back the majority. As I rose up off my knees, not even realising I had been on them, I uttered two words in a tone completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

"Frozen Heart."

And then I charged.

It was a massacre. Most of them didn't even have time to bring their tridents back up to defend themselves before being bisected or decapitated or even just rapidly dismembered. Those that did only lasted a few seconds longer, their tridents bouncing off the ice-like armor covering me, as if they were rubber balls thrown at a brick wall, before I dispatched them too. This just terrified the creatures more, and several of them tried to run. They didn't get far. When I had finished the ones that actually tried to fight, I started dragging the ones who tried to run back to the center of the area, right where the King was standing over the girl's body, and one by one, I slit their throats. I watched as they brought their clawed hands to the wounds in a fruitless attempt to stop the bleeding, and I watched as the light eventually left their eyes. The whole time, I felt nothing. There was no anger, no regret, no sorrow. There was absolutely no emotion whatsoever.

The King turned to me, his face had a look of rage, and he charged me, stabbing me with the trident in his hands. This one didn't bounce off. It cracked the armor. It didn't pierce it, but it came close. When he brought it back for another stab, I rushed forward and grabbed it with one hand while pushing him back as hard as I could with the other. He couldn't keep his grip on it and he stumbled backwards, just barely keeping his balance. I snapped his trident in half as if it were a twig. His only response was to spit water at me in a narrow, high-pressure stream. He smirked, or gave the closest thing he could to a smirk when he saw me being pushed back, but it soon turned to shock as the armor's other function kicked in.

The stream started to turn to ice, and the ice was starting to overtake the water. He quickly cut off the stream before it reached him, but it was too late. With a single wave of my hand, the ice suddenly created several spears right below him, impaling him in several places. Somehow I had missed all his vital spots, but as the ice receded, I knew he wasn't going to recover.

The holes in his body meant that his limbs were just hanging off him at various points. His Torso was intact, saved by his incredibly dense shell, and so was his head, but everything else was just dead weight. He looked at me, terror in his eyes, and he knew he was going to die. He knew that I was going to kill him without hesitation, remorse, or regret. He started pleading in the language of his people, knowing that it was pointless. I raised my blade, which was literally absorbing all the light around it, leaving only shadows. I made sure to make my aim just so. He, no, it, gave me one last pleading look.

I brought my blade down, and its head rolled behind me, across the slime-covered ground. It stopped at the body of its previous owner's last victim, and as it did so, the ice around me broke apart and melted as it hit the ground. My head started throbbing, and I could feel my emotions again. I turned and walked towards the poor girl, picking up the bodiless head and tossing it away. Her eyes were still open, so I closed them for her, praying that she could find peace in the lifestream. I picked up her body, then I turned and walked past Die, who was still sitting there, wide-eyed with her jaw dropped, before she regained her senses and followed me back to the sewer entrance to inform the families of what we had found, and so that they could begin preparations for the children's funerals...
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I woke up with a slight start, I noticed all the present guards staring at me with a mix of shock and horror etched on their faces. After a few minutes of stillness, one of the lunar guards came up to me.

"Sir, what was that?"

I gave him the short version. "My first mission. That's what that was. Now, where's Lumos?"

"Uh, Sir, he left. And he told us he wasn't to be disturbed." The guard replied.

"Alright then. Everyone form up in groups of four."

In less than a minute there were around seven groups of four, consisting of the 22 Lunar guards, and 6 Solar Guards, with three Lunar Guards and one Solar Guard per group. I took note of their complete lack of expression and movement once they were in their lines, and decided to give them a standard test for Shinra stealth units.

"ALRIGHT, LISTEN UP!" My voice was booming with almost the same intensity as Luna's was when she saw Lumos standing over me, but the guards didn't react much, only flinching slightly. "WITH LUMOS, YOUR TRAINING SO FAR HAS FOCUSED ON STRENGTH, SPEED AND STAMINA! With me, you'll be training your stealth skills." I made the last sentence just loud enough for them to barely hear.

"When this is over, most of you will be a part of a special unit under the direct command of the Lunar Guard. Solar Guards will still be part of their original regiment. The groups you are in will be your team for this next exercise, and will be altered if necessary to balance each one out afterwards. Now follow me." We started walking out of the training grounds towards the garden, followed closely by Clare and Ven, who had joined us a little while ago while I was still asleep.

"What are the rewards, sir?" One of the Solar pegasi asked.

"That, soldier, is a surprise. Just be patient, and don't mess up." I said calmly. Eventually, we reached our destination, a large hedge maze in the center of the garden. "Now, your training session will take place in this maze. Your job is to get to the center of said maze, retrieve the object inside, and get back out, without being detected. If you are seen, you fail the exercise, and will be made to do it again after everyone else. If you succeed, you can take a break from training if you so choose. You will succeed as a group, or fail as a group. Is that clear?" They just gave me a determined look. I channelled energy into the Lunar Orb, and focused on the maze. The drain was massive, but I kept it up until I was finished. The groups all had a few raised eyebrow

"Alright. First group, you're up. Let's see what you can do."

The first group that stepped forward consisted of two pegasi, a unicorn and an earth pony. But as they were about to begin, we were rudely interrupted by the arrival of a messenger, much to the chagrin of myself, the groups, and Ven and Clare.

Seriously, am I ever gonna get involved in the training?

"I apologise for interrupting, but Princess Luna has requested your presence immediately, all of you." He said, looking from me to Clare, to Ven, and back again. "She says that it is urgent!" He continued, quickly becoming breathless.

I sighed, annoyed that training had been interrupted right when I was supposed to get involved, and nodded. "Sure. Come on guys." Ven and Clare just nodded, and the three of us followed the messenger leaving the seven groups to train alone...
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A lone pegasus was flying around, just enjoying herself, when she saw something standing in a large crater. Being unable to make it out from the height she was at, she lowered herself to get a better view. What she saw terrified her, almost as much as the horrible roar that erupted from the thing's mouth. It was worse than being hit point blank by the Royal Canterlot Voice at full volume when it's amplified by several megaphones. It was more than enough to knock her through several trees, breaking bones and causing several large gashes all over her body. The poor mare barely managed to muster up the strength to limp back to Canterlot, but she did, wincing with every step, blood flowing profusely from every cut, as she made her way back to warn the city of its impending doom...