"So if I am to understand you correctly, you betrayed all that you trained for and swore oaths of loyalty to for a tournament that you yourself are ineligible to enter due to your professional training," Captain General Gentle Step said in her steady voice which made the guilt he was feeling even worse. "When you become a guard and wear the armour, you cease being the pony. You are one of many, the individual nonexistent because it takes one guard acting on their own intention for the entire system to fall apart. You put aside what is Regal Pants and become a Guard of Equestria when you don that armour. Your life is inconsequential to those you are charged with protecting: the citizens of this city. Your reward is not the financial payment given to you but knowing that countless ponies and citizens are alive because of what you did. By indulging in your own desires and being negligent in your tasks of reading simple telegrams, you have put untold number of lives at risk. Do you understand the ramifications of what you have done today may be the reason why ponies might die for years to come, that the end result of you sleeping through your duties and failing to follow through with your tasks may be the destruction of everything we have built up, that your actions might be the one that spells the end of Equestria itself?" Even though she asked him a question, he knew that she did not want him to answer her. She wanted to him to understand how fully he'd messed up, slamming into him the full width of his actions might have onto others. "You are near incompetent but you did not act with purposeful malice. You will report to the Lower Canterlot Cadenza Guardhouse for retraining and you will be stationed there until such time it is determined that you have learned how to be a proper Guard."