Forging Hope

By Marching Thunder

Chapter 4

Canterlot

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What the princesses wanted first off it turned out, was for everyone in the group to head to the dining hall to eat before turning in for the evening in a massive guest room they would all be sharing during their time at the castle. The next day though, things were to begin in proper, the group was to do all sorts of team building activities and get to know each other as well as they could during the next week.

Once the group had left the throne room, it was the princesses's turn to speak to each other.

"Luna do you think they'll be able to do what's needed of them?" Celestia questioned, her voice soft as silk but tinged with worry.

"Possibly, Midnight Dawn seems capable as a leader much like Twilight Sparkle was. So long as she remains there I doubt the others will waver from the path that they are given." Luna replied.

"We're asking more from them than just risking their lives Luna, we're going to be asking them to kill others. That is something precious few ponies are capable of doing."

"What would you do instead then, sister?"

Silence was her reply.

"Very well, away from this topic. When do you think you will give Twilight's legacy to Midnight?"

"Not for a while yet, sister."

"But what if she requires time to learn to use whatever it does! We don't even know what that thing Twilight created will do!"

"Then so be it. Before anything can change her, Midnight will have to have solid friendships established with the other ponies so that they can accept whatever changes occur and not lose the blessings of the Elements, Luna."

Luna paused for several seconds to consider the wisdom of her sister's logic before nodding. If the pony to receive the item hadn't been a wielder of an Element of Harmony they likely would have given the unicorn the item immediately, rather than waiting but at this point they couldn't risk upsetting the fragile bonds forming between the Elements.

At that point Celestia spoke again, but not to Luna.

"Doctor, I know you're there, so please come out."

In response a brown stallion with an hour glass cutie mark and a dark brown mane stepped out from behind a pillar and into the main section of the hall.

"I never could quite hide from you Celestia, Twilight did warn me against it, but I never did take her warnings too seriously for the most part," the stallion said with a chuckle.

Celestia looked at the stallion with a mixture of happiness and sadness as she remembered ponies long since past before she spoke to Whooves saying. "So unless I am mistaken, that was your first opportunity to see your descendant, correct? So what do you think?"

Whooves smiled sadly as he replied, "She reminds me a great deal of Twilight, perhaps too much for me to ever really be comfortable around her, but that's going to be an issue for all of us isn't it?"

The room filled with silence for several moments before perhaps the least outwardly sentimental of the group, Luna, nodded in agreement, followed in short order by Celestia.

"Now that that's out of the way," Whooves spoke, returning to his normal, cheery tone, "What do you need me to go and do?"

---------------

As the six ponies made their way through the halls after a rather large dinner, Dainty popped a rather obvious question that had been bothering Midnight for a while as the group made their way about with a pair of guards to guide them.

"So what all does everypony here do for a living? I for one work in Manehattan as a fashion designer, but what about the rest of you?"

Streamer was the first to reply, calling out in a rather loud, happy voice, "I'm a DJ! Oh! And I host parties!" Before ending her introduction with a cheer.

"I buck and sell apples on mah' family's orchard out near Ponyvillie," was Cider's response.

When the ponies looked to Humblefly for an answer, the pegasus quailed before being verbally rescued by Rainbow Sky who supplied an answer as she threw a foreleg over her compatriot's shoulder.

"Humblefly and I are weather pegasi, but Humble also works to help manage wildlife a lot of the time too. So what about you Mid's?"

Midnight gritted her teeth slightly at the nickname Rainbow had given her, but chose to grin and bear it as she gave out her answer.

"Well right right now I'm the Ponyvillie town librarian, but I've only been doing that for a few months. Before that..." She hesitated briefly. The fact she was Celestia's pupil would come out eventually so she might as well get it out now right?

"Before that I was actually, um, Princess Celestia's personal student." she finished. Midnight cringed internally in preparation for the expected backlash from the ponies around her. Most times this knowledge got out, the reactions were immediate jealousy or other nasty emotions, and that's what Midnight was ready for.

Rainbow was the first to respond, a low whistle coming forth before she made her declaration.

"Damn, that's really awesome Mid's,"

"What sort of magic did you learn from the Princess, Midnight?" Dainty chimed in next.

The others were quick to follow with questions of curiosity about what it was like, or all other sorts of things about her time in apprenticeship.

To her credit, Midnight did her best to answer all the questions as best as she could, starting with Dainty's.

"Well I learned a lot of the same basic magic that they teach in the normal unicorn classes, but at the start what Celestia really focused on teaching me was control. If I'm not careful enough, my magic can be really dangerous. For example, during my entrance exam... I kind of turned one of the towers here into a tree..."

Midnight Dawn continued her explanations for a while, but not without trading off some questions with the everypony else. Even after they arrived at their room and were set up to sleep, the group kept talking. Over all, she had to say so far the group was getting along quite well.

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-Flashback-

"Whooves. Whooves! Whooves!!" Twilight called from where she had collapsed on the floor.

Instantly the brown earth stallion came running to her, helping the aged Twilight back to her hooves as he spoke to her softly.

"I'm sorry dear, I was finishing the last of the adjustments I would need to head forward to watch over the bearers,"

Twilight nodded tiredly in silent reply before saying, "It's alright, I just... Worried a little at being alone all of a sudden. With what I saw during he scrying I fear loneliness the most now."

Whooves nodded, planting a gentle kiss on his wife's forehead before continuing to speak to her.

"Has anything changed yet? Or is that force still obstructing your magic?"

"It's still there unfortunately," she replied, shaking her head as Doctor Whooves helped her into their bed to rest.

"I understand, Twilight, and I'll do whatever I can to help, but you need to quit attempting to shoulder this yourself and remember that there are others around who will help you."

"I know Whooves, old habits just die hard I guess," Twilight responded as she drifted off to sleep.

With Twilight asleep and resting, Doctor Whooves looked towards the box on her desk and wondered to himself if the toll its contents had taken on her was worth what it was supposed to do.

-End Flashback

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Bright gold light from Celestia's sun streaming in through a large window at the East end of the room proved to be the determining factor on when the ponies inside the guest room finally woke up.  A few of them had rolled over onto to different sides to avoid the too bright sun, but eventually even that was futile as the six ponies began to wake for their day's activities. The first up was Rainbow Sky who proceeded to then flit about the room yawning as she woke the rest by lazily shoving them about in their beds with her hooves.

"Come on everypony, time to get up, Celestia said we'd have stuff to do today, remember?" Sky called out wearily as she moved towards the attached bathroom to clean herself up for the day.

Her call hadn't gone without notice though, most of the ponies in the room had responded with moans of unhappiness, but all were now at least shuffling to get off their beds and head to the bathroom to wash.

All except Streamer who was already up and bouncing, far too happy at this point in time by anyone's measure for how late they all had stayed up talking that night.

Eventually though, all of the six were well awake and cleaned up as they headed back into the dining hall for breakfast, chatting as they went and even after they were seated and served for the day's first meal; blue berry waffles, daisy muffins, orange juice, and several other treats.

"So when do ya'll think we'll get to work on that stuff the princesses have prepared for us?" Cider asked, bringing up the topic of why they were there for the first time.

Everypony was quiet for a few seconds as all of them still were having a little trouble accepting what it was they had volunteered for, but eventually it was Dainty who broke the silence by saying, "Well they did ask us to head to the west courtyard after we were finished with breakfast, so I suppose this morning most likely, but one can never be too sure."

The group was silent for several seconds before Midnight spoke up, having grown uncomfortable with the silence stretching between them. They had something to do, so they might as well get on with it, just sitting her dilly-dallying about it would get them now where and if it was as serious as Celestia said it was, and she did not doubt it was, than time was of the essence.

"Alright, if everypony is finished then let's go. We can't be putting this off or it'll just bother us more than it is now," she said.

There were murmurs of agreement as chairs were pushed back and everypony stepped away from the table before heading to follow Midnight Dawn as she set a reasonable pace out of the room and towards the West Courtyard.

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The West Courtyard was just that, a courtyard, a large open expanse of space, some of it set up around a fountain, another section in a garden, and one rather large section that took up roughly half the space was a section of crushed white gravel that seemed to be a sort of parade ground.

Waiting at this section was Princess Luna along with two gold armored, gray unicorns along with one white unicorn in the same armor.

As the group of six ponies approached, they were given a gentle smile by Princess Luna, along with a nod from the white unicorn guard before they came to a rest a good eight to ten feet from them, giving Luna a courteous bow.

"Ah that will not be necessary, my little ponies," Luna replied before continuing, "You will be taking up a roll that will make all of you just as important as my sister and I if not more so, so please, do not worry over such trivialities."

After a few hesitant nods from the gathered ponies Luna continued speaking.

"Now for continued introductions. This is Captain Silvermane of the Royalguard, he will oversee the bulk of your training, as matters of state have unfortunately made it so that neither Celestia or I will be able to over see your training all the time. He will do so in our stead with his lieutenants Shield Breaker and Shadow Cutter." Each of the ponies nodded in turn as they were introduced to the group so that they would know who was who, though for the two lieutenants, it was still nearly impossible to tell them apart.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have some matters I must attend to before assisting my sister," Luna said calmly, giving all the ponies gather a mild bow before taking walking out of the area, a pair of guards falling into step behind her as she left.

Once the Princess was gone, Captain Silvermane turned to the group to speak, his voice surprisingly gentle for a a pony of his stature and position.

"Alright, now that we all have been introduced, I'll tell you what you'll be doing today. The princesses told me that this is the first time that all of you have ever met, so I had planned some team building exercises till lunch. How does that sound?"

"That sounds pretty good actually," Rainbow replied, her tone carrying the shock she felt at just how kind the captain had been just then.

Agreement came from the rest before the captain nodded and said, "Very well then, let's get to it."

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Four very long and tiring hours later, Midnight Dawn, Rainbow Sky, Applecider, Humblefly, Dainty, and Streamer and trudged their way into the dining hall for lunch, silently cursing Captain Silvermane for his so called 'exercises'. What they had expected to be like the meet-and-greet team building things they had all done in school turned out to be nothing like what they expected, instead shortly after getting their agreement, a dozen guards had come out and begun setting up an obstacle course the likes of which they had never seen.

First they had had to run the course as a group, working together to get past all the obstacles, using everypony's skills from magic to flight to strength, but it had been extremely difficult to get the needed cooperation the first time through and so it had taken them nearly half an hour to make the run.

the next one went better, closer to fifteen minutes, but then Silvermane had made things worse. he and his two lieutenants had begun lobbing objects from the sidelines to distract or trip them and use their magic to make them mess up so that another pony would have to step in and help. That run took nearly forty-five minutes, but the one after that had been faster, again close to half an hour.

There had been breaks in between each run that brought them to the top of the hour and allowed them to plan and rest before attempting to go again, so by the time lunch came around, everyone was incredibly worn out, but also beginning to understand the proper way to work together if they wanted to get through the obstacle course within the ten minute time that Silvermane had set as par for the course.

Little did they know that the Captain had much worse prepared for them, and if they wanted to get through it, they were going to have both get better, and cooperate more.

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So there's the end of chapter four (five if you count the prologue) and I hope that everyone who has been reading this is enjoying it. I'm going to work to get a chapter out every couple days or so, but I might not be able to promise anything especially in about two weeks when college picks back up again. Otherwise though, I'll do my best to stay regular.

Other than that though, if you spot any errors, feel free to inform me, whether by PM or by comment, I don't care which, I just I appreciate being told so that I can fix it.

Many thanks,

Marching Thunder