"What are you doing?"

"Stalkin'."

"What?" The unicorn shuffled into Gilda's peripheral vision.

"Look at 'er. Juicy little bit."

The lieutenant frowned at her, moving more deeply into Gilda's field of vision. "It's a field mouse."

"Damn straight it is. Look at me, I'm drooling, your worship."

"Don't be disgusting.” The lieutenant was trying to make eye contact. “And don't call me that."

"If you say so, your dark majesty. And why not? That there is breakfast."

"We give you perfectly edible breakfast in this mare's army. And don't call me that either."

Gilda sat, stubbornly refusing to let the lieutenant break her stalk. "They sure do, but they don't serve live rations. She'll struggle, it'll be glorious, mum."

"Don't call me that, either. Look, we don't have time for this. There's an inspection next Thursday. We have at least two checklist cycles to go through before the formation is presentable."

Gilda sighed, and gave up, turning to look at Gleaming Shield. "Why not? All the old birds call you that."

"All the old birds are Trottish and we make allowances. You are not Trottish, you aren't even Isles. It sounds silly coming out of your beak."

"Missus? Lady Ensign? Dame Screwhead? Milady Madmare?"

"Eat your damn rat, and find my clean cravat."

"Too late, lieutenant ma'am, it got away while you were yellin' at me."

The lazy days on Seafoam didn't last, of course. Six months of productive time-wasting passed by without Gilda even noting it. She rose one dark morning to find Gleaming Shield furiously scribbling down new checklists, a packet of orders by her hoof. The irate battalion-major had gotten the stuffy young unicorn out of his mane by dumping all of the battalion's paperwork on her, hoping to crush her into submission. Instead, Gleaming Shield had taken to it like a pig to slop, and gloried in her non-promotion to adjutant.

"Don't just stand there like a filthy cancerous knot on a log, Gilda. We have work to do!"

"So I see, lieutenant ma'am. Might one ask what work that would be?"

"Trottingham, Gilda! Trottingham! We're out of this blasted salt-stained speck of rotted fish guts. Back to civilization!"

"I thought you said the Trottish were a pack of feral sheep-buggerers that couldn't be trusted with a bit or a foal or a clean load of laundry?"

"Compared to Seafoam, Hades itself would be a desirable posting, Gilda. Get the inventory lists, we need to start planning the Packing."

"Yes, ma'am."

Trottingham was on the main island, Sandstone. It was one of the few islands large enough to contain multiple districts, and Sandstone had a good half-dozen other market-towns in addition to the provincial capital. Trottingham herself was the heart of the Griffish Isles, and the brutal military core of the Equestrian occupation of said isles. It housed most of the permanent bases and permanent fortifications from which the military government operated.

Trottingham the city was to Seafoam or Skye as Griffonstone had been to the horrible little hamlet Gilda's horrible mother had come from. She'd only been back to that filthy dung-heap which had been to blame for her mother's existence the once, but had been impressed at how many vile little cousins could hide in wait in such ancient hayricks, looking to hand out beatings to their city-slicker big cousins. It took a lot of them, but get enough pint-size cat-birds together, and even they could pull down bigger prey.

All those little postings before Trottingham were as to Trottingham as those evil little kits had been to Gilda. The outlying islands and back country districts sent their swarms of underemployed griffons and ponies to crawl all over the big, bad city, and said hicks regularly tore that old heap of stones to pieces. The countryside was full of rebellious griffons, but they preferred to export their troubles to Trottingham, where the resulting messes couldn't get their friends and family caught up in the back-lash, the retribution.

Incidentally, this predilection for the country-griffons to bring their problems to the big city resulted in a certain loathing for the country-griffons among the battered, abused city-folk. There were a lot of ponies in Trottingham, but even the Trottingham griffons loathed their fellow griffs, sometimes moreso than the ponies themselves.

The Trottish and Isle ponies no doubt had their own opinions, and they had their own Territorial battalions, but in the Isles ponies were ponies and griffons were griffons and the twain generally didn't mix, at least not in Gilda's limited experience. All the ponies she knew by name were mainlanders like Gleaming Shield and the other officers. The Trottish earth ponies who dominated the pony districts were nothing but indistinct mobs, something seen in the distance, never interacted with.

Due to the 'export problem' the city had with Sandstone's rural districts, pony and griffon, Trottingham was the unwilling heart of the rebellion. Naturally, that meant that it was where the pony regiments were posted. Real pony regiments, not the slap-dash pony Territorials, either, which the mainlanders seemed to trust but little more than the griffish battalions.

The garrison fortresses encircling sullen Trottingham were bristling with barracks full of hard-hoofed, mean-eyed veteran ponies with distinctly Equestrian accents, whose tours were long and bloody and relentless in their violence and conflict. Van Hooverans and Tall Talers from the rumored far west; dusty, squint-eyed pegasi from the San Palamino deserts of the southwest; fast-talking, ruthless city ponies from the Equestrian seaboard cities, Manehattan and Baltimare and Fillydelphia. All volunteers, of course, or so was the party line. Gilda had little opportunity to talk up the soldiers of the EUP regiments, they were quartered separately, and had their own brigades, entirely distinct from the Territorial command structure.

High command by policy only assigned enough griffish territorial battalions to Trottingham fill out the numbers and to put a griffish face on the war, one beyond the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers, who didn't number nearly enough for the public to see much of them.

The Pony Territorials were in garrison as well, but rigorously segregated from the Griffish Territorials. Nogriff would tell Gilda if there'd been any history of the battalions coming to blows with each other. Everything had always been organized so that they never came into contact with each other. Everypony in the general staff was convinced that battalions from the two tribes would naturally quarrel if put in quarters together, and had never been willing to make the experiment.

And so, the city garrison consisted these four elements: the 'real' regiments from the EUP, a clawful of squadrons from the Princess's Own Griffish Rangers, the griffish territorial battalions, and the pony territorial battalions. The general staff were careful to not post so many Territorial battalions in the garrison as to invite a crisis if the rebels corrupted the griffish regiments and lured them into mutiny, but they needed to make up their numbers. Pony Territorials' sole purpose might have been as a stop-gap or an insurance policy just in case the Griffish Territorials mutinied, Gilda wasn't sure.

Not that a mutiny was particularly likely, as far as she could tell. Many if not most of the Territorials were recruited from the gutter-scum and ghetto-trash of the big city herself, and enough of them shared the city-griffons' hatred for the rebellious countryside that their ire was generally aimed at the rebels, not at the ponies in their own, distant, neatly turned-out neighborhoods. Which high command piously kept the Griffish Territorials away from; patrolling those quiet, inoffensive blocks were was what the Pony Territorials were for.

Well, when the labour unions weren't on the war-path. The rebellion had depressed the union radicals' pretensions, though, and the old birds told Gilda that there hadn't been a general strike since the Bloody Thirteenth.

What this all meant in practice was that the Griffish Territorials weren't trusted in the stews and mews, as the rank and file called the streets they had come from once upon a time. They were brigaded together in an administrative Territorial Division while they were assigned to garrison, but they generally answered to the brigadiers' staff, and the clerks of Division were nothing but a rumor, an idle subject for gossip. Instead, it was the officers of the Brigades who polished up their battalions and sent them off in daily parade through the main thoroughfares of the griffish two-thirds of the city. This was officially known as 'suppressive marching', but in practice it was nothing more than an opportunity for swagger and show.

The neighborhood bosses and birds of means encouraged their workers, their clients, and their neighbors to come out and enjoy the pageantry as their beloved 'crab-backs' marched through their respective districts. The work-day in the bustling city was organized around the daily parades, and the Territorials, as they tromped their way from barracks to post, and from post to barracks, enjoyed the attention. Meanwhile, as the city was occupied watching the battalions march and eating their breakfasts or dinners in the open air, strike-forces drawn from the regiments of the EUP and the Rangers would sweep the back alleys and crowded ghettos. As crowds cheered the Crab-backs and ate their chowder with their co-workers, friends, and family, the other regiments accomplished the day's work of suppressing rebels, capturing fugitives, and generally scouring the usually, otherwise crowded griffish districts - those factories, the shops, and the neighborhoods where the workers lived.

The Griffish Territorials knew what was expected of them, and competed accordingly. After all, their cousins and childhood friends were watching! The more elaborate the march-steps, the more flamboyant the display, the better their rations, the more kindly the pony higher-ups looked on their proud-feathered pet griffish battalions - and the more the city-griffons puffed up in pride over their proud troopers, their Crab-backs. And so, the 'Crab-back Marches' had a tendency to evolve over time, becoming ever more elaborate, ever more blatantly a matter of pride, display and a celebration of the city herself.

As the Fifth Territorial Battalion and Gilda arrived in Trottingham, the 'marches' were still done in standard field uniform, but the actual movements were by no means still by the manual of arms. Only a hallucinating dope-fiend could have possibly written such a hypothetical manual of arms, could have conjured the prose which might have done justice to way the battalions got from point A to point B and all the showboating in between.

The real show was only just beginning as Gilda and the old birds of the Fifth arrived to make their debut.

The big, showy 'marches' emptied out the ghettos, and as everyone involved was aware, it was intentional. The ponies and city-griffons got a free show, and the soldiers got mostly-empty tenements that weren't full of noncombatants, orphans, waifs and alleged innocents. The bosses and the birds of means left their representatives to observe the raids, and to make sure that nothing important was looted or burned down in the process. Everygriff other than the rebels won. And as the rebels were mostly not locals, and were continually replaced from the countryside, nogriff clued them in on the scam.

They weren't welcome, anyways.

The only thing that pissed off the old birds in the Territorials was that they didn't get in on the looting of whatever the rebels brought with them into the city. Gilda got an earful from more than one irate old birds about how the damn ponies got most of the gilt, and left the dross for the griffons whose neighborhoods were getting rearranged by the fighting. And the Griffish Territorials, the pride and joy of the city? All they got was the opportunity to peacock, and to enjoy the cheers and jeers of their beloved crowds.

The 'marches' brought out something in now-Lieutenant Gleaming Shield that Gilda hadn't thought was in her. Every time the Territorials brushed off and tarted up for their performances, the purple unicorn's magenta eyes lit up with something unholy, something evil. It was clear that something deep in the new lieutenant's soul was stoked by the prospect of fine marching, worshipful attention, and the cheers of the crowd.

Unfortunately, that something often resulted in Gleaming Shield insisting on regular baths for Gilda. It was infuriating, it was.

“I said, I think I -awk!” The soap poured over the sputtering griffon, as a magenta horn-field held the bucket over her head.

“Keep soaping up, Gilda. I don't know how you manage to find so much mud in a city with cobblestoned streets.”

A glowing brush ran through her belly-fur, as a pick dug into the claw-bed of her left paw.

“They say when you've drawn blood, you've exfoliated, lieutenant ma'am!”

“Nonsense, you're not bleeding. That's mud dripping out of your tail. You have to learn to keep it high when we're moving along, you know that!”

A curry-comb tugged through Gilda's tail-fur, while a soaped-up feather-pick did a jagged dance through her left wing as the griffon grimaced at the unwanted attention.

“Griffons weren't made for marching, we were made for flying. Ow! Keep your horn-field to yourself, lieutenant ma'am! And this is not proper preening technique!”

“Oh, stop sniveling, sooner I'm done, sooner you can towel off. And then go and wash these out in the laundry.”

“Ack! Ack! Not the crest, not the crest! What - you aren't even looking, what is that?”

“Uniform manual. Checking to see what the parameters are.”

“The what?”

“What we can get away with, in terms of uniform standards. The Eleventh and the Twenty-Third are just too athletic, Gilda. We won't be able to outshine them, not with their time in garrison, they've had too much practice. We need… enhancements.”

“What, like herbal remedies?”

“No, you oxygen-deprived alley-cat. I swear all of you spend too much time in the shell, it leaves you hen-witted and full of baffle. I'm talking improvements to the parade uniform.”

“Sounds like it would cost bits.”

“Everything costs bits, Gilda. Your impossibly large breakfasts, for instance, cost the Peytral a mint.”

“I'm a growing bird.”

“You're a fat quail, is what you are. But no, I have resources. And, I think, leeway. Some foal mis-wrote this manual, it only specifies minimum standards. Says nothing about sumptuary limitations on uniforms. That's a loophole I can fly the entire battalion through, you wait and see.”

“You can't fly at all, lieutenant ma'am. No wings.”

“Just you wait, I'm working on that too.”

This unfortunate conversation led, eventually, to Shield haunting the garment district just on the pony side of the city on her off hours. Said district was impressively large by Gilda's standards, consisting of a number of blocks along the east side of the centre city, right next to the 'Blue Line' dividing the griffish neighborhoods from the government and commercial core.

Gilda's officer brought with her a contingent of conscripted guards from the ranks, plus Gilda herself. Nominally Gleaming Shield's guards, their purpose was only revealed when they were forced into service as ponyquins for the use of those clothiers, hatters, milliners, cordwainers and bootmakers into whose hooves their lieutenant delivered her victims. Gilda noticed a lot of side-eye from the ponies on the street as Gleaming Shield marched her little contingent of griffquins to and from the shops, but the new-minted lieutenant didn't seem to give her fellow ponies a second glance.

What the unicorn did eventually find among the clothing-ponies was a willing co-conspirator, another mad unicorn from somewhere deep in the pony interior. This white-coated monster was bound and determined to wrap her griffon victims in leather, brocade, and strangely-dyed linens, and seemed to take an evil delight in the challenge the 'Crab-backs' presented. The shop the white-coated monster worked out of didn't seem to actually be owned by her, but she dominated it with the strength of her personality. As the white unicorn worked over the new contingent of 'griffquins' that Gleaming Shield had brought her, she directed a swarm of pony and griffon assistants, who together with the thoroughly cowed pony who actually owned the shop, apparently serviced the griffon trade from the other side of the 'Blue Line', just beyond the check-point outside.

This was how Gilda first met that white-coated monster, Rarity the Unicorn, or, as the other Territorials eventually came to call her, the Stinging Needle.

Author's Notes:

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