"Wake up! Wake up! Time to get out of bed and watch the sun rise! Come on, fillies!" A loud banging sound accompanied the shouting.

Lifting my head, I saw Bluebelle holding a garbage bin with one wing and banging a club against it with the other. Oh, joy, early mornings. I wonder if they'll let me have a bubble bath before breakfast?

"Good morning Lyra! Hope it's not too early for unicorns from Princess Celestia's school to be up?! Come on! Get those hooves out of bed!" As she neared my bed, I knew Bluebelle wasn't going to stop until she was shouting in my ear. I wasn't disappointed.

Climbing out of the bottom bunk, I planted my hooves on the floor and turned back to the bed. This was the one place a unicorn shined. I had the bed made again, exactly how it'd been the previous night, in two seconds.

"What do we have here?!" Bluebelle's voice was further away, bugging someone else. "Lancer?! WAKE UP RECRUIT!"

I looked across in time to see Lancer fall out of bed with Bluebelle climbing on it to keep yelling in his ear.

"That's a start, recruit! Now on your hooves!" Bluebelle did her trick of getting in everypony's face who wasn't jumping out of bed fast enough for her liking. I noticed Bottle Rocket standing straight at the end of her bunk, and figured it'd be a good idea to take my cues from her.

Once two of us had assumed that pose, the rest of the recruits fell into the same stance.

"Sweet Celestia, and here I thought I was going to have to teach you fillies how to stand! So some of you have something in your heads and the rest are at least smart enough to follow them?! You're practically soldiers already!" Bluebelle marched up and back between us, looking over each pony. "I hope you fillies like running—guess what's for breakfast?!"

Along with everypony else, I shouted, "Running?!"

"You got it, ladies." Bluebelle, who I noticed was already wearing her full armor, gestured to the heavy trunks at the ends of the bunks. "Get your gear on and meet us outside. The last two out will be spending some time in the kitchen tonight."

I looked across to Sweetie Drops—who'd been on the top bunk—and grinned widely. "We could wait until last?"

"You're joking, right? I enjoy being in the kitchen, Lyra, and it still tickles me pink when you help me, but I came here to learn to fight and protect ponies. If I never see the inside of the kitchens here again, I'll be absolutely fine with that." Sweetie turned and opened her trunk to reveal her armor from the previous day.

There was something about her, about the way she seemed to be more the vibrant and exciting mare I'd fallen hard for, that made me smile too damn much. "So you won't want help with your armor?"

"Nope. Gotta learn to do it myself." Reaching into the trunk, Sweetie lifted the armor out and set it on her back. "Though if you could point out anything I screwed up, I'll do the same for you."

First Rose and now Sweetie. It seemed like I have a thing for independent mares—err, females. Tiny bit of homesickness bit at me as I began putting my own armor on. It wasn't complicated. There were two straps for each leg, a wide strap that held my helmet on, and another that went under my belly. It wasn't much more complicated than a saddle, and when everything was done up it was comfortable to wear.

I turned to look at Sweetie and had to hold back every urge to help her. She was struggling with the straps on her upper forelegs.

"Recruit!" A soldier—an earth pony stallion with a brown coat and green mane—who had apparently come in while I was getting my armor on, stomped over to Sweetie. "You need to loosen off your girth strap and back legs before doing your foreleg straps. Like this." The stallion proceeded to unfasten his armor, then demonstrate to Sweetie how to do it back up.

It was a quiet revelation to realize there were things that I could never help Sweetie with, but that it was okay.

"You look like you're deep in thought. What's up?" Sweetie Drops asked, breaking me out of my introspective distraction.

The truth, something sappy… or both? "Just realizing all the ways I'm lucky to have a mare like you beside me." Nailed it!

"Did you spend long thinking that up?" Sweetie proceeded to check my straps.

I nodded. "At least a minute. Did it work?"

"Flattering and silly. Yeah, it worked. Let's get out of here."

It turns out that in your first week at boot camp all you do is running. You run before breakfast. You run after breakfast. You run to get somewhere to have lunch. You run back to the city after lunch. You run laps of the city. You run after dinner. You get the idea—if we're not eating, sleeping, showering, or getting yelled at, we're running.

I thought I was good at running before I started the week, but this training did something else—now I could run with half a pony's weight of armor on my back. By the time we finished that week, I could run as well with the armor on as I could with it off.

"Good morning fillies! I bet we're all super excited for our morning run, aren't we?!" Bluebelle, despite liberally applying sarcasm and irony to every rhetorical question, did just as much work as we did. She ran everywhere we ran, and when we did any other form of exercise, she did it too. The only difference was she was never out of breath and was always ready to shout at the slowest ponies in our squad.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" The shout came easily to me after a week of screaming it back to any question or command. The only exception was if you were being shown something—apparently it was just fine to ask a question to find out the right way to do something.

Bluebelle looked pleased at the sharp and crisp response from all of us already out of bed. Some were working on making their beds, others were caught with their armor half fitted, but we were all snapped to attention. "First up is two laps of the city in armor. Come on, fillies!"

It had been easy to just slip into what was expected. Learning how things were done the right way was important, because they were the right way for a reason, and that was because the right way had been tested so many times. And that thinking is exactly what Bluebelle and the other sergeants had taught us was the right way to think.

"Why're you using your hooves to tighten your armor?" Lancer asked as he walked over to us.

"Because," I said while I pulled the girth strap tight with my hooves, "what happens if I don't have any magic and need to get my armor on?"

"But you're a unicorn! You always have magic!"

"I spent the first seventeen years of my life without magic, Lancer. Even though I have it now, I'm not going to take it for granted." I made sure to win the argument by sticking my tongue out at him.

Lancer looked at Sweetie for confirmation (everypony else did that a lot given my propensity for enhanced truth). "Where would you be that you wouldn't have magic?"

"Lyra wasn't born in Equestria. She is from a far-off land of ponies that screech and devour fruit all day long." Sweetie could always deliver the truth with a deadpan that could almost rival Maud's. She looked at Lancer as if what she'd just said was completely true and obvious. "Trust me. I've met her whole family."

I leaned close to Lancer and, in a not-quiet voice, said, "And of them all, I'm the quiet one."

Sweetie walked up to me and held her leg up. We clopped our hooves and walked out of the barracks together. There was a line of recruits already forming in front of Bluebelle, so Sweetie and I fell in beside them. Looking forward without showing any apparent interest in our sergeant was the right way to stand at attention for a pony.

Some minutes passed before the last few clops of hooves signaled the final recruits leaving the barracks. "Short Wing, Razzle Dazzle, so wonderful that you could join us. Get in line." Bluebelle turned around and started moving. "Four wide. I don't care how you sort yourselves, just make it look good by the time we leave the grounds. Come on, newbies, I want to see you canter through the city!"

I pushed toward the front with Sweetie at my side. Lancer and Bottle took up the last two places. It made for a good line—two earth ponies, a pegasus, and a crazy ex-human disguised as a unicorn. When Bluebelle jumped ahead straight into a canter from a dead start, we pushed to keep pace.

There was something amazing about the sound of a dozen ponies running at a canter. It was like a wave of rolling thunder shooting across the ground. My blood was beating in my ears like a big bass drum.

The ponies of Canterlot cheered us as we ran past them. Our hooves flew over the huge paving stones of the city as we rounded to the west toward the palace. I saw Princess Celestia flanked by a squad of her guards in the distance. They were standing off to the side, but though the princess turned to look at us, those big stallions just stared straight ahead.

As we reached them, eight white hooves snapped to foreheads—a salute from the Royal Guard with Princess Celestia watching us run by.

I swear, if a pony could prance while cantering, we'd have all done it, but none of us said a word. Only the sergeant speaks when in formation, that was the right way.

The rest of the morning run felt easier than ever before. The armor was simply part of me, and running in it was a comfort rather than a burden. We circled the city once, then came back around and performed a second lap—though Celestia wasn't waiting this time.

By the time we stopped at the Guard grounds again, we were all warmed up for the day and knew the drill: helmets off and dunk our heads into some water, then dry off and head into the mess for breakfast.

We each got a big bowl of porridge that was covered in honey and a tall glass of orange juice. In the middle of each table was a big jug of water, though we had barely sat down when the hunger of daily exercise fell upon us.

It was amazing what the smell of good food did. I looked down into my bowl of porridge and hefted the spoon up in my magic—it seemed like a second later the bowl was empty, and my glass too. I used my magic to top my glass up with water and downed that almost as quickly.

When I looked across at Sweetie and saw her own bewildered expression and empty bowl, I couldn't help but chuckle. "I wonder what we're doing today?"

"Running," Sweetie Drops said. "And maybe more running."

Bottle, her own bowl empty, let out a groan. "Why are we running so much? This is the Guard! We're supposed to learn how to fight and fly really fast, and—"

"Oh? Training not hard enough already, rookie?" Bluebelle had managed to sneak up behind Bottle despite wearing armor. "Well, you're in luck. Today we separate you fillies out into unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. You'll all be getting specialist training for your own particular strengths."

I looked around the mess hall. There was another rookie squad apart from ours, and between both squads there was three unicorns. Small class, I guess.

"First day will be testing what you know, then the rest will be teaching you what you need to know." Bluebelle used a hoof to ruffle Bottle Rocket's mane. "And there will always be running. Running, fillies, is what we do."

The groans of everypony that heard her failed to reach my lips. I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd learn. Magic, of course, but what kind of magic? That said, I did feel a little sad at losing out on my weekends with Twilight.

"Unicorns!" a voice bellowed. "Unicorns over here!"

I leaned across the table and met Sweetie halfway with a kiss. With spirits higher than ever, I grabbed my helmet up and trotted over to the big unicorn stallion who'd called. "Sir!"

"You'd be Lyra Heartstrings? Right. You're going to go through the wringer first. If we can pass you as already being proficient, you can head over to the earth ponies, so they can break you." The stallion was marking things on a clipboard. "I'm Sergeant Precise Pedagogue, you can stick to Sergeant Precise."

Pulling my helmet on with a hoof, I fastened the strap down tight. The other two—Razzle Dazzle from my squad and a mare named Sparklebright from the other—arrived and got ticked off.

"Alright. Follow me to the magic practice field." Precise turned and led the way out the door. "Razzle, you didn't list any training. What spellcasting have you done before?"

"N-None, sir!" Razzle, when I looked at him, looked a little embarrassed. "We weren't really in a town big enough for a fancy school."

"What about you, Sparklebright?"

"Sir!" Sparklebright was a tall, pale mare who looked more like she'd be into fashion than fighting. "Tried to learn basic level spellcasting, but I can only manage fire spells."

"Fire's better than nothing. Alright, Lyra?"

"Sir?" I asked.

"That is the practice field over there." Lifting a hoof, Precise pointed at a circular platform right at the edge of the main city platform. "Get there as fast as possible."

"Are you timing me, sir?" I asked. When Precise rolled his eyes, I teleported such that I was in the middle of the platform and facing them. I could easily see two shocked expressions on my fellow recruits' faces and a satisfied one on Precise's.

"Teleporting is pretty useful stuff, though I'd like to see what type you're using, and gauge how much it takes out of you to perform. Some ponies could teleport all day long, others could only do one a day." Precise held up his clipboard. "Show me the weave you used."

Weaves, weaves, weaves. Twilight had drilled me on weaves so much I was surprised I didn't accidentally cast spells in my sleep. The weave I'd used included simple aiming data—I hadn't seen a point in using anything complex—with a slight twist of a one-eighty turn at the end. I lit it up in the air before me.

Precise Pedagogue examined my weave with almost the same intensity as Twilight Sparkle would have. "That's a fine weave, though I can see a few mistakes—not enough to prevent casting. When did you last reinforce this one by rote?"

"Sir, I reinforced all my intermediate spell weaves every month, the last was a week—two weeks ago. I am using a non-standard form of the teleport spell." At my words, Precise's left eyebrow raised perceptibly. "The variations were made by—"

"Using modified spells is advanced magic. Don't tell me you're Princess Celestia's own prodigy I've heard so much about?"

"Sir, she's my mentor. Twilight Sparkle."

"Every time you open your mouth, newbie, you impress me a little more. However, actions speak louder than words. Show me a weave to teleport behind me." The moment Precise finished talking, I adjusted my weave. They looked about to open their mouth again when they paused. "You already did it?"

"Vector transposition weave, Sir." I was showing the heck off, and it felt good. This was work I'd sweated for over six months, and it was paying off. "I can do coordinates, but I'm a little slower at that."

"Well," Precise's tone dripped with sarcasm from the first word, "I'm glad we finally found something you hadn't mastered. Do a lap for me. Eight points, and I want you to teleport between each in a loop."

"Sir!" I trotted right to the edge of the platform and took a quick look over the side. The fall from Canterlot was a long one, but I'd not be testing that yet. Dividing the circle up into half, then halves again, then yet more halves, I constructed my points and started.

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

*POMF*

Each jump was small, and using simple line-of-sight made it the most efficient kind of teleport.

"That will be fine, newbie. Keep going until you feel yourself running low. I trust you know when that will be?" Precise raised an eyebrow at me.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" Deep down inside I wondered if I would prefer this or running. Running I could have done all day, but I wouldn't even make lunchtime with this.

Each spell drained a little more from me—at least that's how I wish it was. In truth, each spell drained a lot from me. By the time I'd done ten laps of the field I was starting to feel the strain of the effort. Five more and I was about ready to call it done.

I stopped when I felt my magic nearing empty. Tilting my head up, I judged it as not even an hour having passed.

"That it? How many laps?" Precise's tone held no condemnation.

"Sir. Fifteen, sir." I felt like I should be panting, but I wasn't hot or physically overwhelmed at all. I just felt drained.

Precise let out a whistle. "Over a hundred and twenty teleports? Nice work, but we'll have you doing more by the time we're done with you. Hit the mess and ask them for a power boost. They'll know what you need."

For a fraction of a second I considered teleporting there, but I knew how stupid that could be. As straight as could be, I trotted down from the field we'd been practicing on and made my way back to the mess.

I slipped inside—there was a pair of recruits from the other squad cleaning tables—and walked up to the counter. "Sir?"

"Let me guess. A unicorn on their second week of training looking a little like a wet and wrung out towel. I bet Precise sent you." It was Stiff Peaks, though unlike the last time I'd seen him, he was in uniform with an unusual set of marks on his shoulder.

I'd picked up on sergeant chevron, but this was two bars. Still, anyone not another recruit deserved a—"Sir! Sergeant Precise Pedagogue sent me to get a power boost, sir!"

Stiff rolled his eyes at the response I gave. "At ease, newbie. You look like two should do you. Try drinking these." He set two glass bottles of some kind of liquid on the counter. "And what did I say about what to call me in the kitchen?"

I used my magic to pick up the first bottle and pop the cap. "Sir. You're wearing a uniform. I was instructed to always treat—"

"Right. Just drink the bottle."

The drink smelled of cherries, and when I tipped it up and let it spill into my mouth, it tasted of them too. But sweeter than the actual berries, and I could taste a strong amount of salt in the drink too. As soon as the liquid touched my belly, every nerve in me screamed for more of it. The contents of the first bottle disappeared just as quick as it would pour out. "What's in that stuff?!"

"Wild run, rocket fuel, magic juice, power boost… There's as many names for it as different parts of the E.U.P. Guard. It's about eighty percent sugar by weight, two percent salt, a bit of caffeine, and the rest is cherry tea. Drink the other bottle too." He pushed the bottle closer to me.

The second bottle didn't inspire the same rush of hunger that the first did, but it definitely filled a hole I hadn't realized I'd had. I gulped it down all the way until the bottle was empty. Staring at the bottle for a moment, I shook my head. "That stuff's amazing."

"Just remember, it's a tool, not a crutch. You'd better head back out before the sergeant comes looking for you. Take it easy with your magic for a bit, let your body have some time to turn all that sugar into more potential." Stiff caught up the bottles with a hoof and turned around. "Dismissed, newbie."

There was something about Stiff Peaks' tone that sounded both more formal than any of the sergeants and at the same time relaxed. I shook off the desire to ask him and trotted back to the entrance. Outside, I struck my hooves and leapt into a canter.

By the time I reached the field Precise, Sparklebright, and Razzle were at, I felt a lot better than when I'd left it. Seems like a short run was exactly what I needed. "Sergeant Precise!" I waited for his nod toward me before stepping onto the field.

"As you can both see, Lyra has almost recovered completely. This tells me several things about her. Lyra, would you like to take a crack at what it tells me?" Precise asked.

I stood there, realizing how terrible it must be for Twilight to always be called on in class by teachers. Unlike Twilight, however, I hadn't studied ahead. "That those drinks are amazing?"

"Power boost is certainly that. What it tells me is that you have recovered much of your energy, so while you have a large reserve, you lack stamina and will respond well to specific training for it. Have you done anything similar before?"

"When I first became a unicorn, I—" I froze at the shocked look of all three ponies. "Uh, guess that wasn't explained, huh? Born and raised in another world, magic broke loose and turned everyone into ponies. Mum and I came here at Princess Celestia's invitation."

"How long have you been studying magic?"

"About eight months. Twilight has been the biggest help—I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am without her."

Precise seemed to relax a little. "Right. Of course. Princess Celestia's special student. The princess definitely has an eye for talented unicorns. All right, let me see what you can do. I want you to start with a light spell and work all the way through every single spell you know."

The weaves for basic spells was less actual work and more rote memory. Some of them I hadn't reinforced for several months, but they were so simple that I didn't need to reinforce the weave more often. One by one I worked through them as Precise called them out. I barely even realized he'd stopped.

"What intermediate spells do you know?"

I grinned and put up a blank (lacking coordinates) teleportation weave.

Precise rolled his eyes a little. "Yes, yes. I think we've seen that one already. Quite proficient. Any others?"

I only knew two other intermediate level spells. The one Twilight'd taught me after teleportation was cloudwalking. Combining the magical elements of motion and change together, it made the layer of cloud that contacted your body solid and made it resist being shoved away by your step. It was a simpler weave by far than teleportation, but no less concentration should be spared for building it. Twilight's words exactly.

I built the weave up, and being just two weeks since last reinforcing it, I managed it with very few mistakes. The weave practically begged me for enough magic to cast it.

"Cloudwalking? Useful spell that, especially if you can teleport. You have an error or two"—Precise pointed out the exact errors I knew already (though I couldn't remember exactly what was right, I knew they were wrong)—"but I'm confident that is nothing refreshing them won't fix. And this will definitely work as-is."

Letting the weave go, I only had one other thing I could show him. Twilight and I were both working on this one together. I picked up the weave about as quick as her, but since the targeting was overly precise, she was ahead of me on that. I began weaving motion and emotive energy together into a moderately complex weave. I got about halfway through building it when Precise used his own magic to halt mine. "Wha—?"

Precise released his grip on my magic—something I'd never seen before—just as quickly as he'd initiated it. "A lot of errors. I could see what you were trying—possession—but you need to work on this weave more. How long have you known this spell?"

A little whine worked its way into my voice. "W-We're working on it at the moment. I thought I had that one…"

"You study the weave how often?"

"I was working on it every night for an hour before bed."

"And you haven't had an hour before bed to do so for the last week. Understandable. Afternoons from now on will involve study, so you can work on it then." Scribbling furiously on his clipboard, Precise gave me no sign of his thoughts on the matter. "Alright. I want you working on some exercises, but not running. What methods have you used to expand your magic?"

"Basically, what I did earlier. Casting spells until I am at my limit and then stopping. Doing that every day. You should have seen how pitiful my magic reserves were before!"

"If you had to do that to reach your current level, I can well imagine how little you started with. Your capacity now is acceptable, and if you wish to return to doing that exercise at the end of each day I'd advise it. What I want you to do, however, is build stamina. Stamina comes in two ways and both are helpful. You can use less magic per spell and you can recover your magic quicker." Precise seemed to twitch as he looked over my head at Razzle and Sparklebright. "You two can start on the exercises I gave you."

"Sir!" Razzle Dazzle and Sparklebright said together, and I heard them walking away behind me.

"Sir, why all this time spent on me?" I asked.

"Because Razzle's best claim to being a unicorn is that he can make it rain bright lights, and Sparklebright is great at setting flammable things on fire." Precise gave me a significant look at that, which led me to think exactly what he thought of the pair. "The Guard needs unicorns with a spell repertoire greater than the number of hooves they possess, a brain in their head to know when to use which spell, and the reserves of magic to be able to use the right spell at the right time—every time.

"In case you haven't noticed, I've already figured out you have the first thing. The second I'll find out later, but in the meantime we can work on the last. So, this is how you're going to increase your rate of recovery…"

I welcomed the evening run. Running made me at least feel like I'd done something, instead of spending the whole day wringing my magic out like a sponge, refilling it, only to repeat the process. The key part of it, Precise had explained, was ensuring I was always at my lowest levels of magic to encourage my body to make more.

"You're quiet tonight." Sweetie Drops was running at my side, her movement matched to mine and matched to everypony else in our squad. "What's up?"

"Magic stuff. Lots of magic stuff. Remember when I overdid it that time?"

Sweetie looked shocked. "They worked you until you passed out?"

"No, but the trick to increasing my magic regeneration is to keep myself at low reserves all the time. It builds a pattern so that my body wants to—It's complicated, but it works." I didn't bother saying that if I didn't think it would work, I wouldn't have done it. But then, they wouldn't have used it if it—Ugh! Brain! Why are you doing this. Just run!

The last thing I did that night before bed was to drain my magic down almost completely. The moment I closed my eyes I was asleep.

My routine changed then. First thing in the morning I would bleed my magic off before going for my morning run. Breakfast was normal, but then I had a morning of studying new spells and reinforcing existing ones (Precise wasn't as forgiving as Twilight, which was a bit of a shock).

Lunch was a fleeting few moments of relaxation while I gulped down a double ration of food (Precise's orders), and then my afternoon was back studying magic and mathematics before dinner, an evening run, a shower and once again bleeding out my magic. Then I got to collapse into bed.

After a week of that, I started to feel the extra boost to my magic. After the first month of training, I was having to bleed off magic during the day, too. Every night I more or less passed out into bed, and every morning I woke up just before Princess Celestia raised the sun.

After breakfast on the first day of the second-last week, I was just giving Sweetie a kiss over the table when I heard Precise's hoofsteps entering the mess hall. I'd gotten used to the slightly prancing way the stallion walked, mostly because of how much he paced when teaching.

"Recruit Lyra Heartstrings?!" Precise asked, his voice showing no hint that he would expect to not have me in front of him in five seconds.

I grabbed my helmet with my hoof and raced over to stand before him. "Sir!"

His eyes betraying a little humor, Precise gestured to a mare at his side. "Recruit, for the next week you'll be spending mornings training with Sergeant Broad Strokes. I still expect you to maintain your magic drain."

"Follow me, recruit." Broad turned and marched outside the mess hall.

There was no option but to follow. The bright light of morning hit me square in the face as I left the mess.

"Normally we have more unicorns signing up. I know there were two others, and I also know that they weren't found fit for specialty training." Broad's voice was rich and deep. She had the most vividly red fur I'd seen yet, and a bright pink mane to go with it. All of that was restrained under the standard E.U.P. Guard armor—armor that looked fit to burst. "Which makes you super lucky."

Broad gestured to the nearest field—the one we were walking to. "You get to help me give a demonstration of why fighting an opponent with magic is a bad idea. Precise told me you don't have much in the tank, but I think you'll have enough to give the recruits a challenge. So far all they've had to deal with is training dummies and each other."

Her pause made me think it was time to ask questions. "Sir, it will be sparring?"

"Exactly. The reason I pulled you out first was to give you an idea what you will be fighting against." Broad Strokes stepped onto the grass of the practice field. "So show me what you've got."

Broad just stood there with no attempt to come at me. Well, the easiest way to completely shut down any creature that relied on the ground for movement was levitation. I grabbed her around her middle with my magic and lifted.

Even with my magic depleted like it was, I should have been able to lift her from the ground, but Broad felt like a literal ton of bricks—perhaps two tons.

"Telekinesis isn't going to work unless you're a lot stronger than most unicorns, although it will work on some of us. An earth pony has an innate tie to the ground and the solidness of stone. Meditation and training increase this to the point where if an earth pony doesn't want to move, it'd take Princess Celestia to move them." Broad's tone completely lacked any boasting, she was stating a fact. "And you'll find us slippery, too."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Try actually targeting me with a spell. Something weak, don't put much oomph behind it."

Simple meant basic, and there wasn't much more basic than turning something green. I put a whisper of magic behind the weave and sent it at Broad. It seemed to work right up until the moment when the spell should have connected. Magic seemed to drain out of the spell as if it had never been. Staring in shock was all I could think to do.

It was as if magic soaked into Broad and out of my weave.

"Figure it out?" Broad asked.

Then it hit me. The reason was exactly what she'd already said. "You earthed out my magic. It drained through you into the ground."

"Precise owes me dinner. You got it. Ways to fight an earth pony simply should be obvious—don't cast at them directly, and don't try to pick them up. Put items in their way, hit them with something heavy, or just get off the ground." Widening her stance a little, Broad Strokes raised an eyebrow. "My class is coming out now, want to show me what you're going to try?"

Ideas came to me quickly, but my brain locked on their last suggestion. Aiming a vector straight up, I performed a teleport and was already working on two new weaves. Making a pile of water and boiling it was foal's play, and a quick cloudwalking later and I stood nearly four ponylengths above the field.

"Nice work, now get down here."

I just stepped off the side of my little cloud and dropped. A year ago, if I'd tried that, I'd have broken legs and been a pretty miserable biped for a few months. Ponies seemed built for such things and Equestria was a lot more forgiving than Earth.

"Welcome to the next step in your training. I have a special guest dummy here today—say hello to Lyra." Chuckles and a few Hi Lyras came from the crowd at Broad's introduction. "Normally we'd have the unicorns of the squad spar against the earth ponies one week, then the pegasi the next. Lyra's as solid a recruit as I've seen for a while, but she can't take you all on." Broad leaned over to me. "Can you take them all on?"

"Sir! That wouldn't be fair, sir!" Comedy I could handle, and Broad had given me an intro if I've ever heard one. "For a start, there's under a fifty of them!"

"You know, I think she's right. Luckily, Sergeant Precise did a number on her before she got here, and I just made her burn all her magic on a teleport. I figure you lot should be able to take her one at a time. Form a line!"

Lancer, of course, shoved his way to be first in line. My mind raced as to how I would deal with him. I couldn't afford to teleport for ALL of them—my magic wasn't regenerating fast enough for that. So I'd have to test every single one of them to work out if I need to use a teleport or can just knock them down another way.

"You're up, Lancer," Broad said.

"You're going to teleport away again?" Lancer asked as he stepped up to the platform. "Because that's totally cheating."

While he spoke I cast the smallest spell I could—I made his hoof glow. Seeing the golden light around his left-rear hoof, I couldn't keep myself from grinning. "Lancer, how much training did you do on grounding magic through your body?"

Behind him, several other ponies noticed his hoof glowing and pointed it out to yet others.

"What do you—"

I didn't let Lancer finish. Using the simplest trick for any unicorn, I picked Lancer up by his glowing hoof and held him in the air.

"… Mean?! Hey! Put me down!" Lancer's hooves reached futilely for the ground.

"Would anypony care to explain why Lancer messed up?" Broad asked the queued up ponies.

The next mare in light raised her hoof.

"Go ahead, Dawdle."

"He focused on grounding out magic hitting the front part of him, sir!"

Okay, I hadn't actually thought about that. The reason I'd grabbed his back leg was so he wouldn't immediately see the glow—not that I was going to admit that. Interesting bit of knowledge, however.

"Exactly. While a physical attack can be blocked and checked by your forequarters, you cannot assume magic won't come at you from any random direction." Broad gestured to Lancer. "Lyra, could you put him down now?"

I lowered Lancer back down to the ground, and the moment one of his forehooves touched down my magic slipped off him. He'd grounded all of himself.

"Next?" I asked while trying to think of how to handle Dawdle.

"You're up next, Dawdle. Learn from what you've seen—Lyra is a clever unicorn which makes her formidable despite her reduced level of energy. Energy, I will point out, she is recovering by the second." Broad turned and winked to me.

As Dawdle proved that she didn't live up to her name and started to run, my mind connected a few dots. It wasn't just touching dirt that made an earth pony able to ground things—Lancer had still had some dirt on his hooves even in the air—so all I had to do was break her contact with the ground.

Shoving my magic down and along, I waited for Dawdle to get about three ponylengths from me before I ripped the soil and grass up, lifting Dawdle into the air with it. Her connection with the ground broken, I let go of the dirt and grabbed her by one back leg instead.

Two down and my magic was regenerating still—I had more in the tank than when I started on the newbies. "You want down?"

"That's cheating!" Dawdle's shout worried me. I didn't know if there were rules about these skirmishes. Did I do something wrong by ripping up the grass?

"Put Dawdle down please, Lyra. There is no cheating in sparring except we do ask you to avoid breaking Canterlot itself." Broad nodded to me, at which I lowered Dawdle back to the ground I'd ripped out from under her. "Next! And remember to be quick on your hooves."

The next one I just straight up picked from her hooves (it turned out she sucked at grounding).

The one after that I had to teleport, and she was quick enough on her hooves that I couldn't grab the ground out from under her. I hovered on a cloud of steam I'd made while I created a wind spell that, with enough force, eventually made her back down from the platform.

Then I had to face my toughest opponent—Sweetie Drops.

"I give!" I said as she stepped up onto the platform.

"You can't give up before I even reach you!" Sweetie stomped forward, but no matter how menacing or fear-inducing her approach, I wouldn't cast against her. Finally, she stopped just in front of me and lifted her hoof. "Boop."

"She let her win!"

Waving us over, Broad had a wry grin on her face. "Alright, alright. Bluebelle warned me about you two. Sweetie Drops, I'll find you a Guard to spar with later. Next!"

By the time lunch rolled around I was sweating. It wasn't just the mental effort of remembering and building weaves again and again, but I also had to come up with more and more ways to disable the earth ponies, and sometimes that meant I had to run.

I sat opposite Sweetie while we had lunch, and found myself gulping down more than usual as I tried not to give her a chance to ask me something, though she eventually did.

"Why didn't you fight me?"

I gestured at my mouth (packed with as much salad sandwich as I could get in it), and shot Sweetie my best apologetic smile. This method worked to keep her question at bay until I ran out of sandwiches.

Under the glare of Sweetie I eventually caved in. "I just can't."

"Why?"

"Duh," I said. "Because I love you."

Sweetie looked concerned for about ten seconds, then her face broke into a big grin and she leaned across the table. "I can live with that, Lyra Heartstrings." And then she kissed me. "But don't you ever not talk to me again."

It was, in our own way, the first real argument we'd been in. "Sorry. I just couldn't work out what to say. In the end I figured you deserved the truth. I could never hurt you—not intentionally like that."

"Silly. I'm an earth pony. You couldn't hurt me without putting a lot more effort into it." She looked into my eyes with the same kind of devotion as I felt for her—it was both terrifying and amazing. "One more kiss, and let's go get back into it."

How could I say no?

Precise, when I approached him, nodded to the same classroom-like building where he'd been working with me on all my spells. When we were both inside and alone, his neutral expression spread into a grin. "You made me five bits with that display this morning. Great work.

"So far we've just been working on building up your capacity for magic, and focusing on ensuring you can cast any one of your spells at a moment's notice. That's the first step. Your inventiveness on the practice field was impressive, but a lot of those tricks have already made it into combat unicorn doctrine."

He stood silent, waiting.

"But there's some more I don't know?" I asked.

"I'm glad that you understand where this is going. Now, there are four main methods for dealing with an earth pony: deprive them of their contact with the ground, use your magic on things other than the earth pony, remove yourself from their reach, and direct interaction. Now…"

I wish this were all one sided, but while Precise Pedagogue taught me many ways of dealing with a foe that draws their power from the ground, Broad Strokes taught the earth ponies how to deal with unicorns.

Each day their resistance was better, their movements more erratic and swift, and then I had to start sparring groups of them at once. Sometimes I won, sometimes they did.

The week wound up with me given the chance to have all my magic and have a skirmish between the earth ponies. I was swapped from side to side so everypony got a chance to work with a unicorn for once. That was fun.

When the weekended, and the new one started, I found myself greeted on Monday morning by Bluebelle. I remembered that the last week of training would be me with the pegasi.

Drained as usual, I found myself on the practice field facing a line of pegasi without any warm-up from Bluebelle. "Today you get tested against flying opponents. I will caution everypony here to only use practice-level abilities. You can start whenever you wish."

Bottle Rocket was first in line, and she jumped into the air with a pump of her wings.

Not wanting to know what she had planned, I grabbed her back legs with my magic and pulled. My telekinesis gripped her just fine, but she was strong, and I strained to hold on and pull her down. The moment I pulled her all the way to the ground, Bluebelle blew a whistle.

"That one's Lyra's. Quite a grip you have with your magic. I'd suggest against relying on that." Bluebelle turned to the queue of pegasi. "Come on. Next!"

The next pegasus, I didn't recognize them, flew right at me with his hooves stretched forward. I could practically trace a line from his legs right to my face.

I threw a shield up to deflect him, and felt a hard concussion against the construct as he connected. Pegasi weren't as solid physically as an earth pony, but they had speed and their wings made up the bulk of their strength—it seemed.

I spent the whole day trying to grab and shove them off course, pouring energy into my telekinesis and shields more than anything, and even burning a few teleports when particularly tough fliers evaded my other methods.

Despite my inexperience with this new foe, I only got beaten twice.

The first was by a mare who literally plowed through my shield so fast I could barely get my teleport off. She circled under the practice field we were on and came at me just as fast again on my blindside. That fight had taught me to always keep looking around.

The second defeat had involved the pegasus zooming up to the clouds and coming back with one. I'd stared in shock for a few seconds before a lightning bolt lanced out and hit me before I had a chance to raise my shield. And from that I'd learned to just keep my shield up all the time.

My afternoons were again spent learning ways to disable flying enemies, most of which I was instructed not to use in sparring because they would permanently harm the flier.

Saturday came before I knew it, and after just a few months of hard training I felt like a completely different mare.

Waking up, we were led on our morning run as usual, but after breakfast there was no sparring. All three sergeants led us to one of the big classrooms and we all sat down—in our armor—and waited.

I was more than a little surprised when Stiff Peaks walked into the room and right up to the front. He turned and looked around the room. "I see a lot of promise here. Earth ponies. Unicorns. Pegasi. The Guard."

My brain started to catch up. Why everypony had shown respect to him, and why my instinct had driven me to defer to him. He was the commander of the training regiment!

"I've watched Sergeant Broad Strokes, Sergeant Precise Pedagogue, and Sergeant Bluebelle build you from diligent citizens to hard as rocks privates of the E.U.P. Guard. It was like watching you all bloom. But, now you each have to make your decision. Sergeant Bluebelle will take sign-ups for the full-time guard, and Sergeant Precise Pedagogue will take sign-ups for the reserves. No matter your choices, I'm proud of all of you."

I stood up in silence. Sweetie Drops was beside, but she too was quiet. Together we walked to the front of the room and stood between the two desks where the sergeants were signing ponies up.

My discipline broke first. "What will this mean? Will you ship out and—?"

"Privates." Stiff Peaks' voice snapped me out of my panicked rush of questions. "If I may?"

"S-Sir," I said.

"Sergeant Bluebelle explained your situation to me. The way this works now is full-time soldiers choose what track they wish to pursue, and they will begin specialist training in that field. That will take up to another six months depending on what specialty they take. Then there will be a mandatory year of duties at various outposts around Equestria.

"The others will go back to their lives. Every three months there is a mandatory two-week training and evaluation camp. You will be expected to maintain your fitness and skills, and should the need arise you may be called to serve Equestria. Any questions?"

"Visiting…" I tried to finish the question, but my throat was choked. This was her thing as finishing off school was my thing.

"… Is encouraged. We're not about splitting ponies up from their loved ones. The E.U.P. Guard is a family, and you're both part of it now." Stiff looked between us with a warm smile. "As part of signing on full-time, you have a week before extended training starts to settle your civilian matters."

I was sorely tempted to just sign up. To go and tell Princess Celestia I was joining up and wouldn't need her school anymore. The idea was so pervasive that when Sweetie walked toward the full-time sign-up table, I almost followed her. There was something inside that called to me, however, demanded that I learn all I can from Celestia.

Destiny might be wonderful sometimes, but other times it can be a bitch. "You'd better not split us apart for too long," I muttered under my breath to the cosmos. I walked to the reserves table.

Just a heads-up. This story is being shifted into M + Sex territory. This will not mean it is suddenly a clopfic. What this means is that particular scenes that I'd hoped I could squeeze out into a companion story are far too important to the plot to do so, and they happen to occur in the bedroom. I will mark such chapters in advance.

No questions?!

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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