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Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

Chapter 25: News At The Speed Of Thaumfire

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The camera in Lemon Hearts' horngrip went off with a blinding flash, catching the two princesses, Gilda, Captain Shield, and the white sister in its basilisk stare.

As Gilda blinked away the afterimages, she heard a mechanical whining noise, and just as her vision cleared, she caught a glimpse of green light around part of that camera's mechanism, a different color than the unicorn's purple hornglow. It almost looked like… fire.

Gilda shook away the fiery flashback, and frowned at the interloper, striding forward to put herself between her and the VIPs. "I don't see how it's any business of yours, flunky. Step back in your lane, and get out of here. Where are the guards?"

"Corporal," said the white sister, Lady Livery, "don't. Let us deal with this."

"There's no way this is right, my lady. Is this pest blackmailing you or something? I've heard stories about retainers getting above themselves in noble families, it never ends well."

"Who could imagine?" asked Gleaming Shield, her restraining hoof resting on Gilda's thickly padded field armor. "An underling getting above herself, and interjecting herself into matters above her purview."

"No, let her keep talking," laughed Lemon Hearts. "This is hilarious. I love to watch the griffon heiress play-act. This is a new one, though. From j'accuse to furiously protective retainer in three seconds flat!"

"Go ahead, unicorn, talk about things you know nothing about again," blustered Gilda. Heiress? What did this staff photographer think she knew? And what the hades did that mean? The only inheritance Gilda had claim to was debt and shame.

Lemon Hearts set down her camera, shaking away the humor with a frown. "No, no. I know, I know, this is no time to indulge my whimsy. My apologies, Corporal Gilda. It is, indeed, a time for a more collegial exchange of information."

Gilda rocked back, falling onto her haunches. The torturer, putting away his instruments, a pout on his face. The indistinct murmuring of some other pony, where she couldn't see them… or her.

"Oh, yes. You know where you sit, now, don't you? We can talk about that later, Corporal. And Princess Cadance. I have had a letter. Right out there in the hallway, waiting on your secret little meetings with the roc's handler and your pet colonial-forces officer. Surprised the hay right out of your guards, Princess, they may need to clean their armor. Hello, Twilight, still pretending to be your big, gruff brother?"

"Hearts, what in harmony happened to you?" asked Gleaming Shield, her eyes glittering, her expression tightening.

"Oh, the same thing that happens to all of us in time. The Princess calls, we reply, or fail and fall away," Lemon Hearts said, breezily. Her expression hardened into iron. "The Princess Calls."

"We have kept Celestia informed," insisted Cadance, looking like a kit caught with her talons in the jerky-jar. "We just sent her a letter via the family book this afternoon."

"And, it would seem, that would be why I've been activated," sniffed Lemon Hearts. "Not all of us get ancient magic journals to write directly to the Princess. For some of us, our instructions come in gouts of smoke and flame. I was perfectly fine just tagging along, recording everything you did and everyone you saw for the Princess's information. But somehow I knew that I'd have to break out Moondancer's new auto-thaumfire attachment for today's attendance, to keep the Court instantaneously up to date. And look what we have here! Reason indeed! Meeting with two griffons and the infamously griffon-hating Twilight Sparkle, in a livestock pen, in the dark of night, with only your eldest sister in attendance! This looks very much like plotting, Princess Cadance."

"What did Aunt Celly's letter actually say, Lemon Hearts?" asked Lady Livery, calmly. "I think perhaps you are misinterpreting your instructions. Just a bit."

"This is intolerable!" rumbled Lady George, "Who is this little pest, and why is she interrupting our discussions?"

"Princess George, please," begged Cadance, not taking her eyes off of the photographer, like a picnicker confronted with a coiled rattlesnake beside their luncheon-blanket. "This is more complex than it looks, and Lemon Hearts is not my retainer. She works for Princess Celestia, directly. She is, in fact-"

"The little princess's minder. Because the real Princess doesn't trust her further than someone she does trust can see her. And what's this 'Princess George' business? Is this griffon one of the corporal's jumped-up fake-royalty cousins? Some escapee from the perpetual season of Griffonstonian slaughter? I won't have you corrupting the princess, or getting her involved in your vicious internal civil wars! Step out where I can see you, Griffonstonian!"

"A griffon princess now, am I?" laughed the great bird of prey. "That is a new development in the curse. Never before has it bent that heavily towards something like the truth. No, little morsel, I am not of Griffonstone, or anywhere near it."

"George!" barked Gleaming Shield, her eponymous shield glittering around her horned head. "You're going to overload her mind if you keep-"

"Yes," said the turul, snapping her beak. "I think I will. Unicorn, what did they say your name was? Lemony Heart? How do you like my roc? Isn't her plumage magnificent? See how sharp her beak is!" The turul princess's beak snapped and shifted as she spoke, her tongue forming the words distinctly, drawing the eye with every movement.

"Her cries are such that the enemy's bowels liquify in fear. Her calls shake the thatch and the roof-beams, they make these western windows quiver in sympathy with the great sounds she gives forth. These are the terrible sounds that my roc makes." No, she was definitely exaggerating, encouraging the on-looker to see her speaking, to see the physical act of that great beak making speech. "Lemony Heart, can you hear my roc speaking?"

The unicorn, hypnotized, nodded, glassy-eyed.

"Good," nodded George. "Gleaming Shield. Can you oblige us by doing whatever it is you do for yourself for this paranoid pest? I think we need to have a full and frank discussion which is not overly burdened by the side-effects of the coronet's curse. So long as she thinks I am a griffon, this will go nowhere."

The turul sat back down on her drums with her eyes on the dazzled, addled unicorn, and sighed. "Not that she wasn't close to the truth. Perhaps I was plotting to involve the Equestrian princesses in my squalid, brutal affairs. Have we fallen so far, to be indistinguishable from Griffonstonian fratricides?"

Gilda's captain strode forward, and bent her horn over that of the mind-blasted Lemon Hearts, casting her own special unicorn witchery. "We don't know how much damage the full weight of the curse does to the minds of the hypnotized. It may be transient, it may, eventually, cause aneurysms or, I don't know, strokes maybe? I never really studied mind magic that closely." Another globe of shielding formed around the greater princess's spy, a spy sent, apparently, to keep watch on the ponies' lesser princess. "There! Done. I suppose we just have to wait, and see how long it takes for Lemon Hearts' reason to return."

"While we wait, we need to figure out how we're going to explain this, Livery," worried Cadance. "Gleaming, we weren't blowing smoke, Lemon Hearts truly isn't my pony. She works for Celestia; if they decide that this was an assault on one of the Princess's ponies, and her designated minder in our entourage at that, this could quickly spiral out of control. Celestia doesn't trust me, not after the war authorization bill."

"Can you blame Aunt Celly?" asked Lady Livery. "You provoked a riot in the Stable of Nobility."

"Two concussions and a broken leg does not constitute a riot!"

"I've seen street riots with fewer casualties."

"You have never seen a riot in person in your life, Livery. Look at this! She wasn't blowing smoke, this is that new invention that Celestia's weird little student was bragging about. Look! Thaumfire reservoir, and a mechanized crank to dip the plate into the reservoir. She took a photograph, and instantly transmitted it to Canterlot!"

"Aunt Celly's spooks certainly outfitted dear little Hearts handsomely, didn't they?" Livery said, as calmly as she ever did. "And why must you say such sad things about sweet little Moondancer? You once foalsat her, and had nothing bad to say about her then."

"Celestia had me foal-sitting half of the scions of Canterlot, Livery. Oh, not you, Gleaming. You were always one of my favorites. Most of them were hyper little show-offs. You were charming. And so unselfconscious! I always loved how you didn't even acknowledge my status."

"Hmm?" said Gleaming Shield, who was poking at the ensorceled transmission apparatus attached to Lemon Hearts' camera. "What was that? I'm looking at this device. You say it destroys the original in order to transmit? Wasteful! Aren't there thaumically entangled methods that would accomplish this, without destroying the plate?"

"Do you see what I mean, Livery? Little Twilight was never interested in patents of nobility and princesshood."

"What? Oh, that. I didn't notice you were a princess until much later, Cadance. You were just the foal-sitter, and the filly Shining made googly-eyes at."

"And that's why I loved you and your brother, Tw- Gleaming. You made me feel… normal." The pink alicorn smiled sadly, looking at nothing at all. "Oh, I think she's coming around."

Gilda turned away from that familial scene, and glared at the nasty little spook. Gilda was almost positive that it had been Lemon Hearts in that torture-chamber with Flagg Staff. She and this unicorn would have words, after this all was over. Livery was over by the guarded door, and had it open, talking to the guards, something about sending for "Mirror to bring the bag. Yes, she'll know which bag, don't ask questions, just go."

As the door closed on the guards, Lemon Hearts blinked, once, slowly. The pony princess had stepped over to stand next to the reviving unicorn, looking at her intently.

"Lemon Hearts. Can you hear my voice?"

"Yes, princess."

"Where are you?"

"I… am in the warren of the princess's pet's pet. The tamed monster Gleaming Shield was bought with. Immaterial, excepting that it is an excuse for the princess to meet with smugglers and conspirators. A danger to her highness's government and court. A plot."

"What? Damnit, where did she get that idea?" demanded Gleaming Shield.

"From the interrogation of Gilda de Griffonstone, who confessed as much, saying that the Lady George had bought their services with political support and the rental of livestock. The roc."

"Interrogation? Gilda, what in harmony is she talking about?" scoffed the captain.

"I told you as much, captain ma'am."

"I thought you were just hallucinating! You got into my gin supply!"

"I told you that was the chloroform, captain ma'am. It's not my fault you wouldn't believe me."

"Gah! Lemon Hearts, you will remember this: you do not suspect-"

"Twilight! Stop that!" snapped Princess Cadance. She talked over the still-half-hypnotized Lemon Hearts, who had started muttering along with Gleaming Shield's words. "Celestia has enough suspicions about me, we don't need to make things worse by messing with the mind of her dedicated handler, my minder."

"Cadance, my dear sweet sister, you mess with everypony's minds. By now, Aunt Celly expects it of you," said Livery, smiling sweetly.

"Not like this! You! Lemon Hearts! Snap out of it! You should be shielded against the curse - both of them!" The pink princess snapped her hoof in front of the swaying unicorn.

Gilda frowned, trying to figure out how the pony was getting that sound out of an appendage without talons to strike against each other.

"Pr-princess Cadance? What happened? Why am I over here?" asked Lemon Hearts, finally coming out of her stupor. "Why is the roc wearing a crown?"

"It's not a crown-"
"That's a coronet-"

Gilda and Lady George frowned at each other, having managed to mutually interrupt themselves. Lady George snapped her great beak, which was bigger than Gilda's entire torso, and Gilda quailed, lowering her head.

Sometimes the bat-hen forgot just who George was, and what.

"Congratulations, Hearts, you've managed to join a select circle of occulted knowledge, for however long I can keep that shield over your brain."

"Shield? What? Is that why everything is tinted pink and magenta?"

"Yes, Hearts," Gleaming Shield replied. "You were under the influence of a strong curse. We were trying to get the help of the Princess's magical research agencies, to deal with that curse. It's what keeps Princess George here - the true heir of the Great Turul, and rightful owner of the Great Roost of the Turuls - unknown, unfriended, and reviled as a common smuggler."

"Imperial master of all the continent of Beakland," added Gilda, helpfully. In hopes of placating the irate bird of prey. After all, she'd just been arguing against the two princesses' rash plans to go rushing off into the wilderness to find solitary turul for… whatever madcap reason they'd dreamed up.

Gilda needed to mend some fences, she suspected.

"What's a turul? Is it anything like a roc?"

"We are nothing like rocs," sniffed George. "Rocs are like us. Or rather, rocs are what is left when you remove sapience, compunction, and any sense of fellow-feeling from a true turul. The fact that you westerners only know of rocs and their abominations is a deeply saddening fact which I must struggle every day to overcome."

"OK, the roc with the crown is definitely speaking."

"IT IS NOT A CROWN!" bellowed George in a very much not-indoors voice.

"OK! Coronet! Fine! You're not a roc! You're a turul! Which is I guess a super-roc. Also, I think you're S.M.I.L.E.'s business, not mine!"

"Who in Sirrocco's name is Smile?" demanded Gilda, eye twitching.

"Not who, wh- none of your business, Griffonstonian! And my stars! You ponies weren't just consorting with Griffonstonian restorationists! You were plotting with monsters!"

"I never!" sniffed George.

"Lemon Hearts, I doubt Princess Celestia intended you to indulge in diplomatic affairs when she set you to watch over my entourage. Nor did she place you with us to insult foreign dignitaries with slurs and insults like 'monster'," chided the alicorn princess.

"Uhh…" the spy said, looking apprehensively up at the enormous foreign 'dignitary', taken at a loss for words. Gilda rather suspected that they'd have been there all night long, talking in paranoid circles, if a gout of green fire hadn't erupted in front of Princess Cadance's face, and a sealed scroll had fallen out of the burst of flame to land at the pink pony's hooves.

"Oh, look, Aunt Celly has decided to join the party," said Livery, beaming. "Do see what our aunt wants now, Cadance dear?"

The princess broke the seal, and unrolled the scroll. "Oh, she's angry that we're not replying in the book. Hm, hm, hm - Celestia recognizes a turul when she sees one, and says - huh. We're getting a team of specialists as soon as they can get a ride with the next courier ship. We're to do nothing else until the specialists have their say." Cadance looked up at her 'court photographer', and hoofed the scroll over. "Princess Celestia has very kind things to say about your proactivity and your celerity, but wonders if perhaps you aren't expending your very limited thaumfire supplies at an unsustainable clip."

"So I see, your highness. And also that I am to advise and assist you in any diplomatic matters related to 'the foreign dignitary', the details of which, hrm, I should apply to you for, on a need to know basis." Lemon Hearts looked up, suspicious. "Did you know that was- well, you wouldn't say, even if you did. This checks out, your highness. I am to place myself in your inner circle, and my communication supplies likewise are to be available for your use. I don't know what this all is about, but I've never seen the Princess so - expansive. But it's definitely her hornwriting."

"Who else would be using thaumfire missives?" wondered Gleaming Shield.

"Among others?" asked Lemon Hearts, rhetorically. "Dragons. We haven't had any incursions in a number of years, but the agencies keep a weather eye for, well, 'dragon weather'."

"That being settled, I think we've just accomplished a great deal towards your priorities, Princess George, don't you think?" asked Princess Cadance.

"Quite satisfactory, Princess Cadance. And I have to agree, however regretfully, with Gilda's objections. An expedition into the Bugbear Country would entail a great deal of effort and resources, to no good effect. My people are too spread out, and too hard to track down at this season." George looked down at Gilda, who was in turn looking up, confused. "I did not want to be so ungrateful as to reject your generous plans out of claw, so I could not say so before. I thank you, little bird, for saying what my sense of gratitude kept me from saying. You are correct, the birds of this city have more pressing needs than I do, especially in this hunting season when all our efforts would accomplish would be to freeze the feathers off of her highness's pegasi."

Gilda blinked up at the enormous princess, unsure what to say.

"What, Corporal, am I carved of marble, that I am incapable of feeling for the guild-griffons I see almost as much of as you do? The strange pink colonel's plots concern me almost as much as they apparently concern you. Something, indeed, must be done. But what can we do, other than find a way to put protections into place?"

"Gilda's delusions aside, neither she nor I command even so much as the Fifth Territorials," objected Gleaming Shield. "And Princess Cadance is merely a guest of the Duchess of Trottingham here in the city, or in the Isles. She has no power, not over the institutions of the city, nor even the EUP high command."

"Celestia has always made that crystal-clear," Cadance agreed, looking a bit miffed. "She's never trusted me, not when I make such messes. If she could, she'd lock me in a nunnery and throw away the key."

"You underestimate Aunt Celly's love for you, Cadance," chided Livery, opening the door to a knock from the guards. Another White Sister appeared at the door to hoof over a leather-bound codex. The pony, presumably the sister Mirror, waved at the gathered notables, smiling cheerfully, before her elder sister slammed the door in her face.

"She's always had great hopes for you," Livery continued. "She has been simply… careful in her approach to the manifestations of your aspect. You have to admit that you can be a hoof-full."

"That… is fair. You can still see the scorching in the old throne room."

"The seneschals want to rebuild that wing, but Aunt Celly won't let them. Something about 'an object lesson'."

"It wasn't the only incident. And the scars from the days after the Thirteenth still ache. You weren't there when she dressed me down about that." The pink princess looked introspectively aside, clearly thinking about the past.

"Well! Water under the waterfall. We have changes in priority we need to bring to Aunt Celly's attention. There are options I don't think you're aware Auntie put in train, in case of eventualities like this. Trusts she didn't want you to know existed, until the opportunity came for them to be deployed to best effect," Livery said, blissfully. "Gleaming Shield's commission, for one."

"What about my commission?" asked Gleaming Shield, baffled. "I haven't looked at it, I've been too busy. What about it?"

"Later, dear," Livery said, "and you of all ponies should know to read the fine print."

Lady Livery turned to her adopted little sister, who towered half a head over her smiling head.

"And as for you, dear Cadance, you have more options than you think. An alicorn princess riding to the salvation of the griffish victims of a dastardly and brutal plot by a runaway staff officer, is exactly the sort of eventuality Aunt Celestia must have had in mind. How, I never can figure. She always seems to be prepared for this sort of mad possibility."

Author's Notes:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help to Shrink Laureate, Oliver, and the general Company.

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Good Trooper Gilda

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