The Incredibly Thrilling Investigation of Storm Kicker

by Chengar Qordath

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Adventure, Lyra
Length: 21237

Storm and Star Kicker investigate the disappearance of a family friend during the Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot. Part of the Winningverse.

Freshly graduated from West Hoof Academy, 2nd Lieutenant Storm Kicker decides to enjoy what little free time she has left before accepting her commission with the Long Patrol. And what better way to let down her mane than at the millennial celebration of Celestia’s reign, on the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration?

Well, there is the pesky little detail of a pesky little sibling who decides to tag along and be a pest. Still, it’s the last chance she’ll have to spend time with Star, so they make the most of it. It’s all fun and games, plus she'll have plenty of chances to needle her little sister along the way.

At least, until the two sisters are asked to look into the disappearance of a family friend; it soon becomes apparent that not all is well in Canterlot.

Part of the Winningverse.

Published 2013-09-01 15:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-09-01 15:00:01 UTC

The Adventures of Skunk-Mane and Stalker-Mare

“So, Storm,” Star asked, poking me in the ribs to make sure I was paying attention to her. “Is it true that part of the Long Patrol initiation ritual involves...” she gave an incredibly overdramatic pause just to try and build up tension, “Eating meat?”

My little sister is a total goof.

It was a struggle to resist the urge to roll my eyes at her, but if I did it would only encourage her. “Yes, Star, it’s true.”

“Hey.” She poked one of my wings this time. “You know what that means: it means you’re gonna be an omnivore.” She rubbed a hoof over her chin with a thoughtful frown. “But ponies are natural vegetarians ... so does that mean that once you join the Patrol, you won’t even be a real pony anymore?”

I swatted at her hoof to try and make her quit with the poking. It’s apparently a rule of the universe that younger siblings have to do everything in their power to be annoying. Star might be less than two years younger than me, but that was enough to turn her into a complete brat. “Yes, Star, if I eat one little piece of meat, I stop being a pony. That totally makes sense.” I wing-whapped her on the back of the head, just on general principle.

Star’s horn lit up, and a second later she was telekinetically poking me in the ribs. Stupid unicorn magic. “Don’t make me whack your horn, Star.”

The fetlock-biter snorted at me, but backed off a bit anyway. “Like to see you try.” Still, she stopped using her magic on me, so I could chalk this one up as a win. I wouldn’t have really gone for a horn-smack in any case; sure, it’ll keep a unicorn from using magic for a bit, but it’s also supposed to hurt. Like, really hurt.

She might be a huge pain in the flank sometimes—okay, all the time—but she’s still family.

Plus, Mom and Dad would get pissed if we got into a serious scuffle. They understand there’s gonna be a healthy amount of sibling rivalry, but there are limits on what they’ll put up with. The last thing I needed was for Mom to start putting us through one of her psychologist conflict resolution things, or for Dad to sit us down for a big moral lecture.

I trotted over the kitchen and grabbed a cider for myself. Partially ‘cause I was thirsty, but mostly because I’m past legal drinking age, and Star isn’t. There’s more than one way to get payback. I settled back down on the couch, opposite her, and tipped the bottle back. “Mmmm, so goooood!”

“Featherbrain,” Star grumbled. From the calculating look in her eyes, she was trying to work out whether it was worth the risk of trying to sneak some booze for herself. Naturally, I would sell her out to Mom and Dad in a heartbeat unless she had something of equal value to blackmail me with. Problem was, there was a good chance she did. Trust me, having a younger sibling whose special talent is tracking and location spells makes it hard to get away with anything. Granted, that meant I knew all kinds of ways to deal with said tracking spells, but still...

“So what’s the deal with the whole meat-eating thing, anyway?” Star demanded, still pouting over the fact that I’d gotten one up on her. “It’s weird. Besides, it’s not like you need to join the Long Patrol, out of all the units in the Guard. With your marks at West Hoof, you could’ve gotten into just about any unit you wanted.”

“Yeah, I had my pick of cushy assignments where I’d get to sleep in a comfortable bed every night, but I wanted to be in the Patrol,” I answered her. “I could’ve just grabbed a lieutenancy in the palace guard and spent all day standing around and looking pretty, but that’s not how you get places in the service. You wanna get promoted, you have to be willing to get into the thick of things—and there’s no unit in the Guard that sees more action than the Patrol.”

I definitely planned on going places with my career. Uncle Tornado might’ve been cheated out of getting the position he deserved, but that just gave me all the more reason to make up for it by snagging the job for myself one day. Storm Kicker, Captain of the Guard; it had a nice ring to it. Besides, it had been too long since there’d been a Kicker holding the top job. I’m not gonna say every Kicker is automatically a better soldier than anypony born outside the clan, but that’s just ‘cause the facts speak for themselves.

Granted, every rule has exceptions, but only Kickers stick to the old Pegasopolan ways anymore. When you start getting prepped and trained to be a soldier at seven years old, you have an edge over ponies who don’t even know how to put on a wing blade until they start basic training.

That line of thought reminded me of Star’s other question. “As for the meat thing, it’s an initiation. Half the point of it is to set us apart from other ponies. It’s just like how we have all our clan traditions and stuff. It makes all the ponies in the Patrol feel less like a bunch of random ponies who’re all stuck together fighting monsters, and more like a team.” A moment later, a second line of thought occurred. “Plus, it’s kinda practical. Out in the field, you can’t exactly have a gourmet meal every day. I guess you could always graze if you run outta rations, but getting enough raw grass can take forever.”

Star stuck her tongue out at me. “Well, it’s still gross.”

“Oh, bite me.”

“I’m not the one that needs to worry about that.” Star used the distraction provided by the conversation to try and oh-so-subtly plant one of her tracking gems on me. I let her get away with it. For now. “Just saying, you’re the future omnivore. I should be scared of you biting me.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll get real hungry one night, and just gobble you up!” I decided to supplement that threat with a bunch of over the top eating noises.

“Oh please, I’m not four anymore.” Star rolled her eyes and unleashed some twenty-years-old-but-still-talks-and-acts-like-a-teenager sarcasm. “But seriously, now that you’ve graduated, tomorrow night’s gonna be your last Summer Sun Celebration as a free mare. We should do something—go out and have fun, don’t you think?”

She had a point. I had another week or so before I actually shipped out, but the time was getting pretty close. It felt kinda weird, being done with all the education and training. The idea that now I had gone from being Cadet Storm Kicker to Second Lieutenant Storm Kicker, that pretty soon there would be a platoon full of ponies who would expect me to do the whole leadership thing, it was kinda overwhelming. Sure, I’d been training my whole life for this kinda thing, but now we were at the point of actually doing it for real. It was a pretty scary thought in some ways. I guess I could almost understand why Cloud bugged out.

Almost. The thing is, I don’t crack under pressure; I thrive under it. That’s part of why I wanted to go into the Long Patrol in the first place. If I was stuck guarding Princess Celestia or something, I’d be bored to tears. It takes that extra little push of danger to really make things interesting. It’s why I was always a bit of a procrastinator when it came to homework. I always got it in on time and done right, but I usually never started any of those big projects until two weeks before they were due. Before then, things just weren’t tense enough for me to really get going.

So yeah, I was scared, but at the same time kinda looking forward to getting out there. Still, a last big festival night sounded like fun. There would be other Summer Sun Celebrations, though this year’s festival would probably end up being a bit of a downer since Her Highness had gone off to Ponyville. Even though the Princess wouldn’t be here, Canterlot would still be putting on a pretty huge celebration, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Especially since this was the thousandth year on the calendar. As far as a lot of ponies were concerned, being a round number like that was a perfect excuse to make the usual celebrations even bigger than normal. In fact, there’d been a fair bit of grumbling when the Princess announced she was going off to some podunk town for the celebration instead of staying in the capital.

In light of all that, a night on the town with Star sounded good. Most of my West Hoof friends had kinda started drifting off now that we’d all graduated, but you could always count on your family.

One of my ears flicked as I heard somepony at the front door. I quickly downed the last of my cider, then tossed the bottle to her. “Here, you can finish it off.”

Star expertly snagged the bottle with her magic and shot me a conspiratorial grin. “Thanks, sis.” That grin went away as soon as she tipped the bottle up, only to discover it was empty. There might have been a few drops left, but that would be just enough to make her want more without there being enough left to actually give any satisfaction.

So when Mom and Dad walked through the front door a couple seconds later, they found her with a bottle of booze to her lips, desperately trying to squeeze out the last few drops I’d left behind. My timing couldn’t have been better. Mom immediately fixed my little sister with that one look of hers that seems like it’s trying to be firm but understanding, but really just comes across as righteously pissed off. “Star Kicker. Would you care to explain just what you think you’re doing, young lady?”

Star slowly lowered the bottle, fixing me with the best glare she could manage. That just made my grin even wider. “I hate you,” she groaned.

“Love you too, sis.”

Star didn’t get into too much trouble for my little frame job. While she’s still below the legal drinking age, it’s only by a few months, and our parents aren’t completely naive about what goes on at West Hoof. After all, they went there back when they were our age, and Uncle Tor told me all about one time when she got completely plastered trying out some crazy mixed drink. Guess sibling rivalry and teasing is a thing for the older generation too.

Still, there’s a big difference between knowing that Star was probably drinking and coming home to find her with a bottle of booze in her mouth. She only got a lecture out of it, so I didn’t need to feel guilty about setting her up.

Besides, if she’d ended up grounded, I wouldn’t have a little sister to mess around with for the festival tonight. That would’ve made things dull.

Canterlot on the night before the Summer Sun Celebration always gets a little wild. The thing about most solar festivals is that they tend to happen at times like sunrise and sunset. When the main event is scheduled for sunrise, your options are to wake up a couple hours earlier than normal or just party all night long. Guess which one most ponies decide to pick.

I was used to dealing with sunrise ceremonies. Having the Chief Shadovar as my dad meant we were kinda expected to attend most of the cult functions, and the Cult of Shadow has borrowed enough from all the solar cults that we tend to go for sunrise and sunset with a lot of our ceremonies. Granted, the whole stoic austerity thing our cult’s big on doesn’t exactly fit with the wild party atmosphere that Canterlot had on the night of the Summer Sun Celebration, but I wasn’t complaining. Even Honored Shadow knew how to let her mane down every once in a while.

There were all the usual trappings of a big festival. Streamers and banners, almost always in some variant of red, orange, and gold, decorating all the trees and lampposts. Hundreds of ponies milled about in the streets, while vendors at every street corner sold all kinds of sun-themed toys and memorabilia. Then there were all the food and drink stands. A lot of the food on sale was tremendously unhealthy and horribly overpriced, but between the general party atmosphere and how good it all tasted, I couldn’t really bring myself to care. My only real complaint was that the alcohol was so watered down it barely even counted, but I could understand why the Princess wanted things that way. Nopony wants the Summer Sun Celebration to turn into a bunch of plastered ponies puking their guts out in the streets.

The other big thing with the festival is all the street performers. Pretty much anypony with a lick of talent can just find an unoccupied street corner and start putting on a show. It wasn’t just a bunch of random noponies, though; fairly big-name musicians were involved. Vinyl Scratch was sharing her performance with anypony who happened to be in earshot—which was about half the city considering how loud the noise she called music was. Octavia was set up in one of the parks, to give ponies who actually had good taste in music something to listen to.

The festival offered the biggest potential audience an entertainer could hope for—not to mention that there were a whole lot of rich and influential ponies in the crowd. Any entertainer who put on a good enough performance might land future jobs or even a patron. It was pretty much an open audition for the entire city of Canterlot, and a lot of ponies got their big break on nights like this.

Star and I walked around the city, taking in the sights and checking out all the performances. By unspoken mutual agreement, I put up with being exposed to enough ‘wubs’ to leave my ears ringing and bones rattling, and in exchange I exposed my little sister to a little bit of proper, civilised music in the hopes that she would gain some culture. Sadly, it didn’t take.

After that, we decided to check out a couple magic shows. Most of them were a bit underwhelming: Canterlot’s got too many unicorns lying around for an ordinary magic show to be very impressive. After all, my little sister’s a Gamma, so I’m used to seeing what an above-average unicorn can pull off on a daily basis. The only magician we saw who could actually pull off some impressive stunts ruined the whole thing by going too over-the-top with her bragging. I spent a whole semester learning about every single monster out there, so I can say with close to absolute certainty that a single civilian unicorn couldn’t take on an Ursa Major in a straight fight.

We were in the middle of talking the whole performance over when I spotted a vaguely familiar face headed our way. I’d only met Lyra Heartstrings’ father the one time, after I’d kinda-sorta electrocuted his daughter a little bit. It’s a funny story. Well, it’s actually not all that funny: I was showing off my special talent for Cloud and Lyra, and I’d gotten a little too cocky and zapped her. At least I didn’t do any serious damage to her; her heart only stopped beating for a couple seconds. Not a big deal.

Look, it was a long time ago. I learned my lesson, and I’m a lot more careful now.

Anyway, it was pretty easy to recognize Lyra’s dad, even if we hadn’t met in a long time. The family resemblance is pretty obvious: he basically looks like a stallion version of Lyra, except older and with a beard. The mane-cut was a bit different and his colors were a bit darker than Lyra’s, plus he had light blue eyes instead of gold, but it was all close enough that if you saw him sitting next to his daughter, you could instantly tell they were related. From what I remembered of him, he was a pretty nice guy too. He’d been very understanding about the fact that I’d technically killed his daughter for a few seconds. Though I’m not sure if we ever mentioned that part of it to him. There was no point in worrying him when it all turned out fine.

A second later he recognized the two of us, and started trotting our way. I felt slightly underdressed when I spotted the fancy suit he was wearing, even though it was kind of silly. Star and I were both in our clan reds; full plate never goes out of fashion. Sure, it’s not the most festive thing to wear, but one of the things you have to put up with in Guard training is getting used to wearing your armor everywhere. Trust me, the first time you need to make a visit to the bathroom wearing armor is an eye-opening experience. Bottom line, you get used to wearing it. Plus, for some reason, it kept ponies from crowding too closely around us. I like having a little breathing room.

Lyra’s father—whose name I couldn’t remember at the moment—came up to us and offered a polite little bow. “Ladies.”

I decided to go with politeness to hide the fact that I couldn’t remember his full name. “Hello, Mister Heartstrings.” I suppose it should’ve been Lord Heartstrings technically, but it’s pretty rare for members of the aristocracy to actually make a big deal of their titles. It’s kind of priggish. Plus, the Heartstrings weren’t high nobility: the family just had a hereditary knighthood thanks to services done for the Crown by their ancestors. Then again, if you ask me, those are the best kinds of nobles. Not high-ranking enough to be full of themselves, and the whole point of their rank is to remind them that nobility is something you earn by serving the Princess, not something you’re born with because you’re just better than other ponies.

Typical Kicker philosophy. We don’t have much use for nobles ... except for the useful ones.

Lyra’s father showed that he was one of those by immediately dispensing with the formalities. “Please, we all know each other, you can just call me Legato.” He grinned at us, and said, “Or you could go with ‘Lyra’s Dad, or ‘Hey, You Over There!’ I’m not picky.” He took a moment to chuckle at his own joke. “Regardless, it's a pleasure to see you two again.”

“Likewise.” Star shot a slightly envious look at the glass of champagne he was carrying. Normally sneaking a drink at a big festival like this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I figured that after she’d gotten a big lecture about alcohol the other day, she wasn’t in the mood to risk it. Especially not when she was less than a year away from legal drinking age anyway. Then again, speaking from personal experience, alcohol lost a lot of its mystique once you could just go into any shop and buy it instead of needing to sneak drinks or jump through a bunch of hoops to get it.

I decided to distract Star from her current predicament by making some small talk with Lyra’s father. I went with the first question any Kicker would ask. “How's the family?”

“Chugging along and enjoying the festivities. Carol and I are getting a bit too old to go singing on street corners these days, but Lyra’s taking advantage of having a large captive audience.” Legato took a sip of his champagne. “And yours?”

“Big as ever,” I answered him with a grin. The three of us started walking along in the general direction of one of Canterlot’s many parks. Mostly because those were slightly less crowded, and thus more suited to some casual conversation to catch up on things.

“Heh, you Kickers breed like rabbits.” He finished off his glass. “I guess you have to do something when you’re not stoically going about your duties. I always figured your cousin was a lot more typical of your clan than any of you will ever admit.”

“As a matter of clan policy, we can neither confirm nor deny that Kickers have functioning sex drives,” Star answered him in the flattest deadpan she could manage. Then she ruined the effect by grinning and nudging me in the shoulder. “Oh hey, you forgot the biggest news, Stormy.” She turned back to Legato. “Guess who just graduated from West Hoof a couple weeks ago?”

“Oh, is that so? Well, congratulations then, Storm. You have my permission to brag about it for a bit.” He smirked at us. “From everything I’ve heard, getting through West Hoof isn't an easy feat.”

I let out an amused little snort at his attempt at something resembling humor. “I did do pretty well. Not valedictorian or anything, but my marks were good enough that I've got my choice of postings. Thinking Long Patrol.”

That got a bit of a surprised blink out of him. “Going for the Long Patrol, eh? Well, I suppose that's a good post if you want to be out in the countryside sleeping in a tent every night, instead of having a comfortable bed and a hot meal at the end of the day.” He offered a slight shrug. “Personally, I’m a bit too fond of the comforts of civilization to see the appeal.”

“It is one of the best places to go if you want to prove that you've got the guts to make something of yourself,” I explained. “A pony doesn’t move up the ranks by sitting on their plot eating donuts in Canterlot. You gotta go out into the field if you want your career to go anywhere.”

“Mhm.” Legato shrugged and accepted it, the way most civilians do whenever a pony starts talking about Guard politics. At least Star and I weren’t drowning him in military jargon. “The Long Patrol’s full of hot heads though, or at least that’s what I hear, so be careful.”

The Long Patrol definitely had a bit of a reputation. According to the usual talk, there were only three types of ponies in the Long Patrol: anti-social loners, burnt-out veterans, and young hotheads who were out to make a name for themselves. I guess I fit the last category reasonably well.

Star let out a giggle-snort and poked me in the side. “Well, if it's full of hotheads, Storm'll fit right in. She wants to grow up to be just like that one friend of Cloud’s she still has a huge filly-crush on.”

I just rolled my eyes at that. I swear, just mention once or twice that I thought Rainbow Dash was pretty cool, and next thing I know I’m being accused of crushing on her. Never mind the fact that I’m not into mares. I let Star know exactly what I thought of that. “And if it was full of buttheads, you'd fit in.”

Lyra’s father snickered at us. “Thanks for reminding me why I decided one kid was enough. I hope you two end up going in separate directions. I don't think Equestria would survive if both of you had to work on the same team.”

I definitely couldn’t argue with that. “We'd drive each other nuts.”

“Which means you're both doing your job as sisters,” Legato concluded.

Star smirked and poked me in the side again. “Exactly. As a little sister, it’s my duty to annoy the horseapples out of Stormy, and you know how seriously we Kickers take our duties.”

“Oh, yes. One can’t neglect one’s responsibilities,” Lyra’s dad agreed with a solemn nod, before changing subjects. “But anyways, congratulations, Storm. You're doing your clan proud.”

I smiled and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

Legato frowned at his empty glass. “Well, I need a refill.” He looked around the park for a bit, until he found a stand offering some decent cider. “Care for a celebratory drink, Storm?”

“Sure, but just the one. I don't wanna get too smashed.” I like a good drink as much as anypony, but I’ve never really been fond of getting drunk. I just don’t like the whole idea of having so much booze in me that I’m not in control of myself anymore. Let’s face it, if I got into a drunken bar brawl or something, I’d probably end up putting ponies in the hospital. Or worse.

Lyra’s father gave an approving nod. “Sensible. It’s nice to see a mare your age know how to drink responsibly.” That particular comment brought to mind the last couple times I’d seen Lyra, after Cloud asked Star and I to help track her down after one of her benders. No wonder her dad approved. “Well, now that we have something to celebrate, should we go for more champagne, or would you like something with a minty twist?”

Mint in my booze? Ick. “Not really a mint fan.”

“Shame. But, I guess some ponies just don’t have my sophisticated palate.” Legato grinned and ran a hoof over his chin-hair. “Champagne it is, then.” He pointed to one of the tables and his horn lit up. A second later, a weird light-blue claw-like thing shot out of his hoof and over to the table, where it dropped a few bits and snatched up a couple champagne glasses. Then the claw started drifting back our way, moving a bit slower now so the drinks wouldn’t spill.

“Showoff,” Star grumbled under her breath.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist an opening like that. “Star's just jealous 'cause even after Lyra tried to show her how it works, she still can't pull the spell off.” Lyra and Star had tried to swap spells a year or so ago—I don’t really know the full story on that, unicorn stuff, but it ended with neither one of them learning much and both of them being grouchy for a couple days afterwards.

From the way Legato started chuckling, I guess he must’ve been remembering the same incident. I guess he would’ve been stuck dealing with a grumpy Lyra just like I had to deal with a grouchy Star. “My thoughts exactly.” He grinned as his magical claw finished its journey and brought him a fresh glass of champagne. “This spell’s been in the family for longer than any of us can remember, and not many ponies outside of it have ever had much luck pulling it off.”

“It's not that hard.” Star grumbled. “The spell’s just a bunch of really fine telekinesis.”

Oh Star, you just make this too easy for me sometimes. I grinned and poked her in the side with a wing. “If it's not that hard, why haven't you learned it?”

“Because...” Star vainly struggled to come up with a good explanation for a bit, before giving it up as a lost cause. “Because shut up. I’ll figure it out eventually. It’s only a matter of time—I managed to pass battlefield evocation.”

“Barely,” I helpfully pointed out.

“I wasn’t that bad at it,” Star grumbled. “But the point is, if I can learn to blast baddies, I should be able to learn a fancy little telekinetic trick.”

Lyra’s father and I both had a good laugh at Star’s expense. “Lyra's only learned the basics, it’s probably why she couldn’t really teach you the spell herself. No reason you shouldn’t be able to learn it; I can’t see how tracking would conflict with a hand spell, so it’s just a matter of putting in enough hours to get it down.”

“Maybe Star’s just being lazy,” I suggested. Sure, it was a cheap shot, but sometimes those are the best ones.

“More likely it was Lyra who got lazy.” Wow, way to stick up for your daughter, Mister Heartstrings. “I have a feeling she could give up on trying to teach that spell to Celestia’s star pupil, and Miss Sparkle’s supposedly able to get any spell down in minutes.” He gave an apathetic shrug. “In any case, I do hope you learn it eventually. The spell is very versatile and even, dare I say it, quite handy.” He chuckled at his own terrible pun. Again. It’s usually a bad sign when the only pony laughing at a joke is the one telling it.

He brought his fresh glass of champagne up for a sip, which gave me a theory as to why he was cracking so many bad jokes. A second later, his magic hand floated over to me, allowing me to collect my own glass. The two of us clinked glasses for an informal little toast, and then Legato shot a look at my little sister. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you out. Did you want one too, Star?”

Well, time to nip that bit of hope for my little sister in the bud. “Star’s technically still underage.” Star stuck her tongue out at me for that. Being the mature adult that I am, I responded in kind, then took a long, indulgent sip of my own drink.

“It's a party,” Legato assured us with a shrug. “I doubt any of the gendarmes are going to bother with checking that everypony drinking is of age, so I think we can forget about that for the purposes of learning about drinking in moderation.”

“Storm would rat me out to Mom and Dad as soon as the first drop passed my lips,” Star grumbled and shot me an accusing glower. “Don’t even try to deny it.”

“Okay, I won’t deny it.” I grinned and pulled her into a wing-hug, which only made Star grouchier. “Turnabout is fair play, sis. Do you remember how many times you got me in trouble once your magic came in?” I took a sip of my champagne, just to mess with her.

“The only reason I’d even get in trouble is ‘cause you set me up the other night,” Star groused.

“Don’t think of it as an unfair punishment,” I advised her. “Think of it as retroactive punishment for all the things you did and got away with as a filly. Once you figured out how to track Mom and Dad, you were a terror.”

Lyra’s dad started laughing at us. “Well, far be it from me to interfere in the long-standing traditions of sibling rivalry.” He paused and tapped a hoof against his lips. “But speaking of tracking spells, I could actually use a favor of that sort.”

Star’s ears immediately perked up at that. “Yeah? What’s going on?”

Legato waved at one of the nearby street corners. “It’s Lyra. She’s supposed to be putting on a performance tonight, but I haven’t seen her for hours.” He let out a faintly annoyed sigh. “She’s probably just wandered off after spotting a shiny object or something, but my parent-sense is tingling. You know how she can get once she starts drinking: I’d rather not have her be completely hammered and all on her own in the middle of a big festival.”

Star and I both kinda rolled our eyes at that. Not that I didn’t get where Lyra’s father was coming from, but this wasn’t the first time we’d been put in charge of tracking down somepony who’d had a few too many drinks. It wasn’t even the first time we’d been told to to track down Lyra, though in the past it was because Cloud asked us to instead of Lyra’s father.

“She’s probably just sleeping it off in one of the gendarmerie’s drunk tanks,” I reassured him. While the gendarmes might not work too hard to track down underaged drinkers, they were out in force, and had a policy of picking up anypony who was falling-down drunk. The Princess liked to keep her festivals family-friendly. “No need to worry if the Guard’s picked her up; the worst she’s going to end up with is a nasty hangover and a small fine.”

“That all sounds nice and reasonable,” Lyra’s father said. “But you’re just guessing she got picked up. Call me paranoid, but when it comes to my daughter’s safety, it’s not enough to know that she’s probably okay. If she’s in a drunk tank somewhere, then I’ll pick her up in the morning and give her another lecture about how to drink responsibly that she probably won’t listen to. But for tonight, I’d really like to just know she’s alright.”

Something about his tone had me concerned. This wasn’t just a case of overprotective father-ness. “You have a reason to think she's in some kinda trouble?”

“A reason? No.” Legato sighed and finished off the last of his champagne. “Just a gut feeling. I can’t quite shake the idea that my little girl needs me.” A moment later he sighed and gave a dismissive wave of his hoof. “I’m probably just worrying too much. I blame the nachos, they always make me a bit gassy. Besides, Lyra’s a grown mare, she knows how to take care of herself.”

“Yeah, and it's not like this is the first time she's tied one on,” Star commented. I glowered at my little sister and gave her a very pointed nudge in the ribs. She got the message. “There’s a chance she's still got one of my trackers on her, and if not I know her well enough to use some of my other spells. Not a big deal to find her.”

“Thank you.” He gave us both a grateful nod. “If you want some sort of reward for your trouble—”

I waved the offer away. “No need for that, sir.” Sure, chasing Lyra down would be a bit of a pain in the flank, but at worst it would take five minutes out of our night. That’s a small price to pay to make sure a friend of the family isn’t in trouble, and give a father some peace of mind.

“Well, my coinpurse won’t complain about that. Rewards are expensive, and taking care of Lyra isn’t cheap either.” He paused for a moment in thought. “Speaking of...”

When he just kind of trailed off after that and didn’t say anything more, I decided to give him a little verbal nudge. “Yeah?”

“Oh, nothing really.” He gave a suspiciously casual shrug. “It just seems like a good night for a prank.” With that said he walked off, casually whistling.

Star and I watched him go, trying to figure out just what he’d meant by that. Finally, Star spoke up. “What was that? Is this whole ‘find my daughter’ thing just setting us up for a huge prank? Or something else?” One of her ears gave an annoyed flick. “Either way, that's paranoia fuel.”

I snorted at that. “Says the pony who plants tracking gems on all her friends and family.”

Contrary to what I’d hoped, it wound up taking a lot longer than five minutes to track down Lyra. Luck just wasn’t on our side tonight.

For starters, Lyra didn’t have one of Star’s trackers on her anymore. That was annoying, but not exactly a huge shock. Star’s pretty good about finding places to slip a tracker on a pony where they won’t get knocked loose right away, but it’d been months since the last time we’d seen Lyra. More than enough time for something to have happened to knock a tracking gem free. Besides, they tend to burn out after a while anyway.

Of course, Star wouldn’t be much of a tracker if all she had was one spell. Those little trackers of hers were useful, but she had plenty of other tools in her arsenal to find a pony who’d gone AWOL. One quick side-trip later, Star was following Lyra’s trail like a bloodhound.

I reached over and poked my sister’s horn. “It’s a good thing we’ve got this to track her down. Never would’ve imagined you could actually do something useful with all your freaky unicorn magic.”

“Well, I suppose I should give you credit, Storm. I might not have a spell for every situation, but at least you’re consistently useless when it comes to every single problem that can’t be solved by hitting something with a wing blade or a lightning bolt.” Star levitated the manebrush we’d borrowed from Lyra’s bedroom. “Me, on the other hoof? All I need is a couple loose hairs, and I can track a missing pony just about anywhere in Equestria.”

I rolled my eyes at her—silly unicorns and their magical solutions for everything. “If manebrushes had never been invented, you’d be worse than useless.”

“Your face is useless,” Star countered with her usual level of sophistication. After we’d walked along the streets for a few minutes, she added. “Besides, if finding hair lying around wasn’t an option, I’d probably just go for keeping a stockpile of blood samples.”

“Seriously?” If not for the fact that she needed to maintain concentration on her tracking spell, I would’ve wing-whapped her for that. “I swear, Mom must’ve dropped you on your head when you were a foal. Or maybe she drank too much while she was carrying you. Still, keeping blood samples? That’d be creepy even by your normal standards.”

Since Star’s a bit of a weirdo, she completely missed my point. “What’s the big deal? Hair's great since it’s easy to get, but it goes bad pretty quickly. But as long as you store it properly, blood can keep a magical connection to the pony it came from forever. It’s just practical.”

“I didn’t say it was impractical, I said it was creepy.” I nudged her in the side with one of my wings. “You and your creepy unicorn magic. Always with the hair and blood and rituals. This is why I wanted a little brother instead.”

Star countered by poking me again. “Electrocuted anypony lately?”

I knew what she aiming for, but that was no reason to make her job any easier. I grinned and gave a cavalier toss of my head. “You’re still on about that? It was years ago. Aside from the one little incident with Lyra, I’ve got a great record of keeping lightning under control.”

“What about all those times you accidentally electrocuted me?” Star demanded.

“Who says those were accidents? That’s just what I told Mom and Dad so I wouldn’t get grounded.” I thought about that for a moment, then chuckled. “Heh. Grounded. It’s funny ‘cause I always made sure you were grounded before I zapped you.”

Star rolled her eyes at me. “And then you wonder why I used my tracking spells to dig up all your dirty laundry and share it with our parents.”

“No, I didn’t start zapping you until you started tracking me. It was righteous vengeance for you being an annoying little brat.” Though really, I couldn’t quite remember who’d struck the first blow. It didn’t really matter; if I’d started it, then that was just an act of preemptive vengeance. Or something. The bottom line is, she totally deserved it, and I was absolutely, one hundred percent in the right.

Anyway, enough of that. “The whole thing about zapping Lyra is old history anyway. And it’s not like you’ve got a perfect track record with your spells.”

Star shrugged and conceded the point with a slight nod. “Well yeah, everypony makes mistakes. I’m just saying, I never blasted Lyra.”

“One time!” I grumbled. “You have one little case of minor accidental electrocution, and you’ll never hear the end of it...” I buffed a hoof against my chest. “You know what I think? I think you're just jealous of how spectacular I can be. That, and the fact that Mom and Dad planned me, while you were an accident.” Seriously, there’s no way Mom would’ve planned on getting pregnant with Star while she was still bottle-feeding me.

“Yeah, I'm sure that's it,” she deadpanned.

I dealt with her sarcasm by just ignoring its existence. “Glad you agree.”

The two of us moved along at a brisk canter, following whatever magical trail Star had gotten hold of. After fifteen minutes or so, we’d pretty much left the main festival area behind, and were headed for the edge of town. That had me a bit concerned: I was expecting to either find Lyra hanging around somewhere on the festival grounds, or cooling her hooves in the drunk tank. Something about the whole situation just didn’t fit.

I turned to my sister, and tried to hide my worries with a little banter. “Another festival, another day using a tracking spell to find some drunkard, eh Star?”

“Yeah.” She let out a faint snort. “S’not even the first time we’ve had to go find Harp-butt.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we should put a leash on her so she won’t wander off all the time.”

“Careful,” Star let out a giggle. “Cloud might get jealous.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes at that. Considering the way our cousin slept around, that didn’t seem likely. “If she cares that much, then she can hold the leash and keep track of her banging buddy.”

We were getting pretty close to the edge of the city by now. There was pretty much nopony around, and I was starting to get a bit worried. Though we weren’t all that far from West Hoof, which offered one possibility. “Maybe she decided to hit one of the college bars? I’m sure Cloud showed her around there back in the day.” That would definitely be a relief. The West Hoof bars were all pretty safe—nopony likes to cause trouble in a bar full of certified flank-kickers and flank-kickers-in-training, and the ones who tried usually got sorted out pretty quickly.

Star seemed to be thinking along the same lines, though I was tempted to point out that she really shouldn’t be familiar with the bars near West Hoof to begin with. “She should be fine if that’s where she is.” She paused, and frowned at the bit of Lyra’s mane she was using for her tracking spell. “Except she’s not out by West Hoof. In fact, she’s not near anywhere. Only thing she’s remotely near is the lake.”

Huh. The lake wasn’t all that common of a hangout spot in Canterlot, and especially not on a festival night. Still, there’s probably some ponies who like hanging out there, and on a big crazy festival night I would bet some ponies would like a nice quiet place to get away from all the noise. That’s not how Lyra usually works, though. “Think she hooked up with somepony or something? Or maybe she just got really hammered?”

“Being out by the lake would be a first for her.” Star paused and tapped a hoof against her lips. “Still, compared to some of the places we’ve found ponies...”

I kinda shrugged and let out a vague grunt to signal my agreement. “Well, whatever she’s doing at the lake can't be worse than that time we found her hanging upside down from Celestia’s statue in the central square. I'm still not quite sure how she got up there with her tail tied to the horn, let alone how she could sleep in a position like that.”

“Considering the fact that she’s an old friend of Cloud’s, I’ll bet that’s not the weirdest position she’s ever been in.” Star does have a bit of a dirty mind, sometimes. I blame our cousin. That, or the fact that she followed me to the clan brothel that one time. Don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t make a habit of going there or anything, but I went a few times. I think mostly because I had to wait for years after I figured out what the place was before I was actually old enough to be allowed past the front door. The two most fascinating things in the world to teenagers are anything that’s forbidden and sex, so the forbidden sex building was pretty much the most interesting thing in the world. Once I could actually just walk in whenever I wanted, the mystery was gone, and it lost a lot of its appeal.

Since she wasn’t privy to my thoughts, Star was still rambling on about Lyra. “Her getting stuck in all sorts of weird places is why I even bother to bring you along. Levitating her down is a pain in the flank, so I'd rather just have the dumb muscle do it.”

That got my attention, and I gave her an obligatory punch in the shoulder. I had to do it. It’s one of the rules of sibling interaction: let no insult pass unavenged. “I'm not just dumb muscle! Hay, my grades are better than yours.”

“Depends on what class you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you got top marks in your ‘being a weirdo’ classes.” I blew a bit of my mane out of my eyes. “I bet one day, you’re gonna sprout wings, and Princess Celestia’s gonna track you down and crown you Princess of the Freaks.”

“Well if I was a princess you would have to do what I told you,” Star sassed me back. A few moments later she shrugged. “Still, I take back what I said about you being the dumb muscle.” I knew better than to think she was actually gonna back down, and sure enough she followed that up with, “You’re not strong enough to be the muscle.”

I decided to turn her barb back on itself. “You're right, I'm the brains of this operation.”

“We're doomed.”

“Says the pony who got worse grades than I did in every single leadership and command class she’s taken so far.” I supplemented that with another poke in the ribs. “You can’t give me horseapples over being dumb when my grades are better.”

“I beat you in all the academic classes,” Star shot right back. “You know, the ones that actually require using your head for something more than headbutts? So there.”

We kept bickering for a couple more minutes, until we were pretty close to the lake. Just like I figured it would be, the lake was nice and quiet tonight, not that that it was ever all that busy. The water was usually far too cold for anypony sane to go swimming in, since the main source of water for the lake was a big waterfall created by runoff from melting ice higher up the mountain. Not to mention that a lot of the inhabitants of Canterlot were far too ‘cultured’ to go swimming in a natural lake in the first place.

While the lakeside was close to deserted, there actually was a bit more activity around the place than I’d expected. Not a lot, but there were a few clusters of ponies just hanging around, talking and relaxing. Looks like I didn’t have anything to worry about after all; Lyra was probably just with one of those little groups.

It looked like our little adventure was at an end. Star was still messing with her tracking spell, but by now we were probably close enough to find Lyra the old-fashioned way. “So, do you have a good lock on her, or ya want me to do a flyby of the area?”

Star shook her head. “No need for that, I’ve got her.” Star trotted along the edge of the lake, until we reached the point where the waters pressed up against the mountainside. “Huh, that’s weird. Either my spell’s not working right, or she’s behind the waterfall.”

“Well, she could be somewhere in the Undermountain.” There were countless miles of tunnels honeycombing the mountain, mostly from gem mining. If Lyra somehow got lost in Undermountain, she could get into all kinds of trouble. I didn’t put any stock in the rumors that there were monsters in the tunnels, but a pony could still get lost pretty easily if they didn’t know their way around. If Star’s spell said that Lyra was somewhere behind the waterfall it probably meant a cave of some sort, and most of the caves connect to Undermountain.

While Star double-checked her tracking spell, I did a quick flyby of the waterfall itself. Sure enough, after I’d gotten a little drenched I found a tunnel entrance. I headed back for shore to give Star the news. “We’ve got a cave behind the waterfall.” I frowned as I thought the situation over. “I hope she didn't fall in with some sort of bad crowd. There are a lot of rumors that the upper levels of Undermountain are a popular hangout spot for petty criminals and such.”

Star shuffled on her hooves. “Sounds like she might be in some trouble then. She always has been a heavy drinker ... you think maybe she jumped up to something a bit heavier than just alcohol?”

I didn’t like that idea one bit, but I’d be lying if I said the possibility hadn’t occurred to me. Well, there was nothing else we could do but head in and just deal with whatever we found. Whatever Lyra was up to, she didn’t need to be doing it in a damp, musty cave. I stretched a couple times to limber up, just in case things got complicated. “Alright, I'll take point and you watch my back. There’s probably nothing to worry about, but that’s no reason to get sloppy.”

Star gave a quick nod, then frowned at me. “You sure you should be on point? I’m doing the tracking, plus you’re unarmed.”

“I’ll be fine.” Sure, I didn’t have my wing blades—those aren’t exactly the sort of thing a pony wears for a festival night—but I still had my training in Krav Pega. Pity we were going underground, so I didn’t have the option of grabbing a storm cloud for some extra firepower. Underground and in close quarters wasn’t a good situation for thunderclouds, Besides, there wasn't even any reason beyond paranoia to think I would need any weapons.

I picked my little sister up and carried her to the entrance so she wouldn’t have to to swim to get there. Pretty soon after we entered, I started feeling just a tad claustrophobic. Not to the point of freaking out or anything, but the ceiling was way too low for my tastes. Like a lot of pegasi, I’m not a fan of being limited to only moving in two dimensions. “Ugh. I hope Lyra’s holed up in one of the bigger caves. I could use a bit of headroom.”

“Aww, is widdle Stormy afwaid of the big, bad cave?” Star threw out a quick light spell so we wouldn’t be stumbling in the dark. “Aren’t you supposed to be an officer in the Guard now? Suck it up.”

“Just sayin',” I grumbled. “Being stuck in a cave takes away a lot of my better combat options.”

Star reached forward and gave me a condescending pat on the head. “Don't worry, I'll protect you.”

I batted the hoof away with an annoyed snort. “Oh come on! We both know that I’m the better fighter even without my blades.”

“Until I use my magic,” Star sassed me. “Or we're in a confined space. Or you can’t find any stormclouds to fuel your lightning tricks.”

I grumbled about my brat of a sister as I took point. The tunnel was about as nasty as you’d expect for something that exited out behind a waterfall. Everything was damp, and the floor was covered in a lovely combination of moss and some sort of pond scum. Once we got away from the entrance, things at least dried out some. The cave was still pretty humid, but at least the stones were relatively dry, aside from the areas where condensation on the cave’s ceiling produced a gentle dripping rain.

As we moved further into the damp, musty cave the smell of mold assaulted our nostrils. Thankfully we weren’t completely dependent on Star’s horn to light the way; several small clusters of glowing mushrooms provided additional light sources. There were also a few leftover gems stuck in the wall, capturing the light and reflecting it. I half-expected Star to start digging into the walls and harvesting the gems right then and there, but after a quick inspection she announced they were useless for enchanting work. I suppose that figured: if the gems were worth anything, the miners who’d presumably dug out this tunnel wouldn’t have left them behind in the first place.

After we’d gone around a few bends in the tunnels the roar of the waterfall faded to a dull growl in the background, echoing off the cavern walls. The further we delved into the depths, the quieter things became, until I could faintly make out another sound, coming from deeper within the cavern.

Singing.

The instant I heard the faint melody, I held up a wing to signal Star to stop. Both of us listened carefully to the singing, just to try and puzzle out what was going on. Something about it just put me on edge. I couldn’t put my hoof on what I didn’t like about it, but something was just not right. One of the many lessons hammered into my head at West Hoof was that I should listen to those gut instincts. More often than not, those sorts of feelings came from your brain putting together enough facts to know what was up, but not quite being able to sort them all out in a nice, neat, one-sentence explanation.

I’m not sure if Star’s gut was giving her the same feedback mine was, but she did figure out at least some of the important facts. “That singing doesn’t sound like Lyra, but as far as I can tell it's coming from where she is.”

I gave a short nod. “Figured it was.” It would be way too much of a coincidence otherwise. Especially considering the fact that Lyra was a musician and all.

Star was clearly thinking along the same lines. “Do you think she hooked up with some music buddies? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Despite the way she tried to maintain a casual tone, her voice came out as a tight whisper, and I noticed that she was moving a bit more slowly and carefully now, watching where she put her hooves so that she wouldn’t hit any loose bits of stone that might make enough noise to give away our presence.

I just let out a vague grunt in response to Star’s question. We both knew all the reasons that didn’t make any sense. Lyra hooking up with a couple of her music buddies, I could buy. Them all hanging out in a creepy deserted cavern, instead of being out on the town during one of Canterlot’s biggest musical events? No, that didn’t add up.

As we moved deeper into the caves, I was able to make out the singing more clearly. Whoever it was had a truly beautiful voice. There was this soft, ethereal quality to the song that made it hard to make out the actual words, but made me want to listen closely so I could. No, just listening wouldn’t be enough. I would have to get closer. Not just at the careful snail’s pace Star and I had been going at, I should start running as fast as I could. I needed to find whoever it was that was doing this singing, get as close to them as I could, just so I could hear more of this beautiful song.

Before I could do that, Star broke into a gallop and slammed into my hindquarters. The collision nearly knocked both of us over—it was a good thing it didn’t, because two fully armored ponies falling down on the cavern floor would’ve produced a ton of noise. More importantly, the bump knocked me out of the trance that song had put me under.

Star took a moment to regain her bearings, and looked like she was about to try and find a way around me through the narrow tunnel we were in. I quickly put my hooves on her shoulders, and gave her a good shake. “Star! Snap out of it!”

My sister blinked a few times, then shook her head. “Storm?” She stared at me for a few seconds as her slightly muddled mind put the facts together. “Something’s trying to get into our heads.”

I nodded. That definitely changed the situation. Whatever was going on here, it was bad news. Mind control stuff was against the Laws of Magic, so we were either dealing with a unicorn that had gone bad or some kind of monster.

“Star, have you got anything that can counter the mind control music?” Generally speaking, the best way to deal with hostile magic is to bring a bit of your own magical firepower to bear.

Star reluctantly shook her head. “Not much I can do against mind control yet.”

“Horseapples,” I hissed under my breath. “If this music thing is already getting into our heads this far away, imagine how bad it’s gonna be once we actually get to whatever’s making it.”

Star tapped a hoof against her chin as she looked for a solution. “I suppose I could try some kind of sound-cancelling spell. That’d be hard to maintain though, especially while we’re on the move. And if we get into combat...”

I couldn’t help laughing at her. “Unicorns. Always thinking with your horns.” I trotted over to one of the clumps of mushrooms and scooped up a couple that looked to be about the right size. “How about instead of trying to come up with some big complicated magical solution, we just go for something a bit more mundane?” I stuffed one of the mushrooms into my right ear, which mostly blocked out the music. What little I could still hear seemed to lack the supernatural muscle it had before.

Star grumbled and started looking for some mushrooms of her own. “I guess that’ll work. Won’t completely block the music, but the less of it we hear, the easier it’ll be to deal with.” We both finished blocking up our ears, only to find a new problem: we couldn’t talk to each other anymore.

Luckily, my sister’s mild obsession with making freaky magical gems turned out to be useful for once. She dug into her saddlebags and pulled out a pair of matching green gems. I think they were malachite—I’m not big on gems, but Star does enough with them that I kinda pick some stuff up just from osmosis. Whatever the gems were, she hoofed one of them over to me, and a couple seconds later I could hear her voice in my head. It was kinda scratchy and faint, but I could still understand what she was trying to say. “Storm? Can you hear me? Just kinda concentrate on sending your thoughts to me if you wanna answer.”

I concentrated and tried to respond. “Little hard to understand, but it’s good enough. I'm thinking we sneak in, identify whoever is singing, and disable them right away. I'll strike first, and you provide flanking support or magical assistance depending on how things go.”

Star’s eyes went wide at that. “Hold on a second! Shouldn’t we go get some backup? This situation’s getting a bit serious for just the two of us.”

She had a point. “There any way you could get a message out?”

She shook her head. “My comm gems don’t work unless we’ve got line of sight, and even then the range isn’t very far. I guess we could go outside and try to send up a signal flare or something, but everypony would probably mistake it for somepony shooting off fireworks.”

It would be our bad luck to run into monster activity on a festival night. “I don’t want to break contact with this thing just to go looking for backup. Who knows what might happen in the time it takes to find some more Guards and get back here?”

“What if it’s something we can’t deal with on our own?” Star countered.

She had a point. On the other hoof... “We still don’t even know what we’re up against. At the very least, I say we move up and try and get eyes on this thing. If it’s something we can handle on our own, we do that. If it’s outta our league, you can go for backup while I stay on overwatch.” For once, I was grateful for the fact that Star had one of her little trackers on me. If I had to move while she was running for backup, the tracker would let her find me without too much trouble.

Star thought it over for a bit, then nodded. “We’ll need to be careful. Whatever we’re up against, that music indicates it's probably some kinda mindbender. Odds are once we’re up in its face it’ll have more ways of getting into our heads.”

“Not to mention what it might’ve done to Lyra.” Most things that were big on mind control liked to have a little collection of thralls around to do their bidding. If we were up against a mind control monster, odds were anypony it had under its control would try to protect it. That could get messy.

Star was probably thinking along the same lines, which prompted her next suggestion. “How's your blind-fighting? If I turn out the lights...”

I let out a sigh and pointed at my ear. “I can fight without my eyes, but going in blind and deaf at the same time’s a no-go.”

Star spouted out a couple words that were probably very impolite, but since she was using her mouth instead of the comm gem, I couldn’t make them out. I got the gist of it, in any case. “New plan, then. I’ll go in with a lot of bright lights and loud noises, then you move in on the mindbender and take it down fast, before it can try anything.”

I nodded; it was as good a plan as we could come up with until we knew what we were up against. “Watch my flank.”

“Somepony has to.”

I took the lead as we snuck forward, going as slowly and quietly as we could manage. Eventually, the tunnels we were in opened out into a wide cavern with a high ceiling. Big enough to give me a chance to actually stretch my wings, if I wanted to.

The cave wasn’t really the focus of my attention, though. Not when there were a dozen other ponies in the cave, all frantically dancing in a circle around a single mare. Lyra was one of the dancers. The mare they were all dancing around looked like an earth pony at first, but she was the only pony there singing.

I took a closer look at whatever this thing was that was trying to pass itself as an ordinary earth pony: last I checked, mind control singing wasn’t part of the earth pony package. Now that I was looking a bit closer I realized that the mare didn’t have a proper coat, just pale white skin that was almost translucent. It was one of those things that was hard to notice at first, but once you realized it wasn’t normal, it really stuck out. Her long mane was a weird, algae-like sort of green, and was soaking wet and pressed against her skull, like she’d just stepped out of the shower. Her eyes were an unnatural shade of green that almost seemed to glow in the dim light provided by the phosphorescent mushrooms, and when she smiled I could swear that her teeth were green too.

The green teeth were what finally clinched the creature’s identity. I took a brief moment to silently thank Professor Cryptid back at West Hoof—his monster lore classes are required for anypony who wants to go into the Long Patrol after getting their commission. I hadn’t planned on actually moving on to practical application quite that quickly, though.

“Horseapples. We’ve got a rusalka on our hooves,” I warned Star.

Star jumped straight to the most important question. “Can we take it?”

I thought the matter over for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yeah. The mindbending is its nastiest trick—in a straight fight, it’s not much better than an average pony.” I grimaced as another thought about rusalkas sprang to mind. “We have to try, in either case. Rusalkas don’t go for long-term thralls. I’d guess that as soon as anypony messes up one of the steps in the dance, the thing’ll drown them. Hay, from what I’ve read they’ll kill thralls just ‘cause they’re bored. By the time we get back to Canterlot and raise the alarm...”

Star gave a grim nod. Breaking off and coming back later just wasn’t an option. “So, do we stick to the plan we came up with earlier?”

“Should work just fine.” With any luck, I could take advantage of the thralls being stunned to close in and take down the rusalka before it even knew what was going on. That was definitely the best bet: it wouldn’t hesitate to use its thralls as pony shields if things came to an open fight.

I briefly lamented the absence of my wing blades, but there was nothing I could do about that now. My steel shoes would have to be enough to get things done. I exchanged a nod with Star, and went through the traditional Kicker pre-battle ritual. “Death waits in the shadows.”

“Death waits in the shadows,” Star repeated. The words sent an odd little shiver down my spine. I guess ‘cause they reminded me that this time, we were going at it for real. This wasn’t a sparring match or a practice battle. There was a monster in that cave, and I was about to go down there and do everything I could to kill it before it killed me.

No, this wasn’t a good time to start getting nervous. I needed to focus on the mission for now; I could freak out later, when the monster was down and everypony else was safe. “Alright, lay down your spell on three.” I licked my lips and took a deep breath. “One. Two...”

I closed my eyes and clamped my hooves over my ears. I’ve been on the receiving end of the sort of spell Star was planning to toss out, and once was enough. The combination of bright flashing lights and deafening bangs was enough to leave anypony dazed and confused for a few seconds. There’s a reason it’s one of the standard Guard entry maneuvers: attack spells tend to be iffy against some opponents, but just about everything with eyes and ears will be thrown off by a thunderflash spell.

Even with my eyes closed and my ears blocked by my hooves and mushrooms, I could vaguely tell when the spell went off. The rusalka’s singing came to an abrupt end, and I heard a few of the entranced ponies let out yelps of pain and surprise.

I didn’t waste any time jumping into the thick of things. Right now I still had the element of surprise and they were all disoriented, but that wouldn’t last long. If I couldn’t take down the rusalka in the next ten seconds or so, things could get very messy.

A couple of the spellbound ponies were between me and the monster, either by design or just because they were staggering around after getting thunderflashed. I guess it didn’t matter, really. I gave a few flaps of my wings to get past everypony in my line of attack, while Star used her telekinetic tricks to shove the ponies closest to the monster away from it. That would buy me another second or two to take the monster down.

I hit the monster hard, planting both my forehooves into its chest. I’m pretty sure I busted a couple of its ribs when I hit. Rusalkas might have a bunch of mind control tricks, but physically they’re pretty much on the level of an ordinary pony. Well, as long as we weren’t dealing with any nearby bodies of water: from what I remember, they had some kind of special knack for trying to drown their victims.

Too bad for it that the most water it had to work with were a few tiny little puddles of pooled-up condensation. I don’t think it had a very good chance of drowning me in a puddle that could barely even make my hooves damp.

I followed my first strike up with a punch that knocked the disoriented and wounded creature off its hooves. I brought a hoof up for a final strike, intending to shatter the monster’s skull against the stones, but before the blow could fall the creature turned its head and met my eyes. I hesitated, and held back the killing blow. “Cease your spells and release your thralls. Surrender, and I’ll give you mercy.”

The creature’s face fell, and one of its hooves reached out and pressed against my leg. A moment later I looked down at the creature as the enormity of what I’d done to it hit me. The rusalka was beautiful, and I had thoughtlessly marred that beauty by launching an unprovoked and completely unjustified attack on it.

I could only stare at the poor, wounded creature in horror as the enormity of my crime slowly sank in. “I-I-I'm sorry, I-I did-didn't mean t-to hurt you.”

The rusalka tried to answer me, but I couldn’t hear what it was saying. There was something in my ears, something that made it hard to hear the creature’s lovely voice. I brought the foreleg that the rusalka wasn’t touching up to the side of my head and started trying to dislodge the obstruction from my ears. It felt like I had a mushroom there. Why would I have a mushroom in my ear? Especially when it prevented me from hearing—

“STORM!” Star’s mental voice echoed inside my skull. “Snap out of it!”

Star’s shout was enough to knock me out of the trance the creature had put me in. A second later, I remembered one of the bits of rusalka lore that had slipped my mind: while singing was their strongest form of mind control, they could also get into a pony’s head by touch. It wasn’t nearly as strong, but the creature wasn’t trying to completely dominate me—just soften my will up enough that I’d unblock my ears. Thankfully, once I knew what it was up to, I could counter it pretty easily through sheer willpower. It takes a lot of magical juice to just brute force take over a pony’s mind—more than most monsters have. That’s why most mindbenders try to be a bit sneaky and subtle about it.

“Get out of my head!” Just to emphasize my point, I slugged the feathering beast in the face hard enough to knock one of its green teeth out. I moved up on the monster with every intention of finishing the fight then and there, but the rusalka didn’t want to go along with that plan. More specifically, a rather large stallion in guard armor, one of the rusalka’s mind whammied thralls, objected to the way I was treating his mistress.

Horseapples. The fight had taken too long, and the rusalka’s thralls were getting involved. That was not good. That was very not good. Especially since I was up against a stallion who was bigger and stronger than me, and with Guard training he probably knew how to use that size. The only real advantage I had was that mind-control usually doesn’t do much for a pony’s fighting abilities—most ponies will at least subconsciously try to fight against mental domination, which usually means they lose a bit of their edge in close combat.

Still, I didn’t like my odds of being able to take this guy down quickly and cleanly while also trying to play nice with him. The longer the fight took, the more I’d have to deal with the other thralls and the monster itself. The monster had a dozen thralls, and even with four years of West Hoof training six-to-one odds were tricky. Especially when I didn’t want to hurt my opponents. Not to mention that the rusalka would be looking for openings to get into my or Star’s head again.

I didn’t like it, but the cold tactical logic of the situation said there was only one real solution. “Sorry about this, soldier.” I feinted to the left, and the enthralled guardpony took the bait, leaving him wide open for my real attack as I used my wings to get up above him and buck him right in the back of the head. I couldn’t afford to pull the kick nearly as much as I wanted to; I probably left the guy with a concussion. The ugly truth is, it’s just about impossible to take a pony down without doing some damage in the process.

The guardpony went down, still conscious but way too dazed to think about causing me any trouble in the near future. The other thralls coming after me were civilians. I tried to be as gentle with them as I could, but between the odds I was up against and the time pressure I had to deal with, I couldn’t go too soft on them. I didn’t like it, but I’d rather leave behind a few injuries that would eventually heal than let the monster get me and Star.

My little sister didn’t seem to share that line of thought, unfortunately. She was less experienced than me, plus Star’s always been a bit of a softie. Though to be fair to her, she’d taken four of the thralls down, and I think the main reason she was having trouble was the fact that Lyra was one of the ponies she was up against. Taking down another guardpony had been hard enough for me—I could understand why Star might hesitate to fight against an old family friend.

That didn’t make it any less stupid.

Star was so focused on Lyra that she missed the dainty unicorn mare sneaking up behind her until it was too late. She managed to dodge the other unicorn’s flying tackle, but she left herself wide open to Lyra in the process. Lyra didn’t miss the opportunity; she broke out the same hand spell her father used, except in this case the hands stayed attached to her hooves. She made up for that by making them twice as big. When she decked Star in the face, it took my little sister down.

Star hit the floor, and I saw red.

I knew it wasn’t really Lyra’s fault: she wasn’t in control of her own actions. The problem was, right now I was far too pissed off to care that Lyra was technically innocent. The only relevant facts were that my sister was hurt, and Lyra Heartstrings was the one who’d done the damage.

I blindsided her while she was still focused on Star. I went with the classic opening move against a unicorn and smacked her horn. Lyra winced, and her magic hands dispersed. I followed that up by sweeping her hooves out from underneath her, then bucking her in the side while she was off-balance, sending her careening into the only other thrall that was still standing.

As soon as they were down, I did a quick check of the cave. The rusalka was nowhere to be seen—I guess it withdrew once it was clear the fight wouldn’t end in its favor, and left its thralls behind to buy time for a getaway. Maybe I could still catch up with it, but right now I had other priorities.

I knelt down to check on Star. She had a really nasty bruise that covered a large chunk of her muzzle, and from the looks of things her nose was probably broken, but nothing too dangerous. She’d be sore for a week or two, and from the dazed look in her eyes she’d be out of it for the rest of the fight, but she’d live.

Lyra pulled herself up off the cave floor, and I immediately tensed up. I would’ve just gone straight to hitting her more, but there was an unfocused confusion to the way she moved that was at odds with the sluggish menace the thralls had been showing up to this point. She stared at me and gave a few owlish blinks. “What’s...” She winced and rubbed at her head. “Geeze, ow. Storm? What’s going on?”

I was a bit surprised when I heard her speaking loud and clear. A quick check of my ears confirmed that my improvised earplugs must’ve gotten knocked loose sometime during the fighting. Good thing the rusalka had run for it.

I was a bit wary of her, but I was reasonably sure that she wasn’t trying to trick me. Rusalkas need to be pretty close to their victims to maintain their control, and even then it’s pretty basic. I don’t think a rusalka thrall could pull off this kind of deception, especially not when their mistress wasn’t even within sight anymore. “You got mind-whammied by a monster, Lyra. You okay?”

“Sore, but I’ll manage.” She winced and took a few shaky steps towards me.

I thought it over for a moment, and made a slightly risky decision. “Lyra, can you keep an eye on Star while I go after the thing that did this to us? It’s gonna get away if I don’t go after it, but...” I shot a significant glance down at my sister.

Lyra did the math quickly enough, and nodded. “I’ll take care of her. You go get the thing that did this.”

I gave Star a quick pat on the shoulder, got my earplugs back in, then bolted down the tunnels after the rusalka. There were several exits, but I had a pretty good guess which way the monster must have gone. Rusalkas are aquatic creatures by nature; it might have just gone deeper into Undermountain, but I was willing to bet that it was heading out of the cave for Canterlot Lake instead. Once it got to the lake, it would be just about as safe as it could get from most ponies. Being able to breathe underwater is a big advantage.

Still, I had it weakened and on the run already. All I needed to do now was finish the job. If it got away, it was only a matter of time before the rusalka started going after more innocent ponies.

I went on guard once I got close enough to the exit to see and hear the waterfall. Since I hadn’t caught up to the monster before it reached the water, it was a safe bet that it had gone underwater now. Well, unless my guess was wrong, and it had fled deeper into the tunnels under Canterlot. If that was the case, it was too late for me to do anything about it. The only thing I could do was proceed on the assumption that I’d gotten it right.

I very slowly stepped out of the cave, my eyes fixed on the water’s surface. I knew enough about how rusalkas operated to guess what its plan was. It would lurk somewhere under the water, patiently waiting for me to come close enough to the water’s edge, and then it would strike, dragging me under and drowning me. On land I had the advantage, but there was no way I could hope to take on a rusalka if it got me underwater. So I focused all my attention of the lake, searching for the slightest disturbance in the water to forewarn me of an impending attack.

Since I was so focused on watching the lake, I didn’t hear the sound of a hoof scraping the rocky mountain ledge above me.

The rusalka leaped down and tackled me before I even realized that it had suckered me. The force of the impact knocked me right into the lake, with the rusalka latched onto me.

Oh horseapples. It had me in the water. The one thing Professor Cryptid absolutely hammered into me about rusalkas was to never let one get you in the water.

The rusalka’s hooves pressed down on my back, forcing me all the way down until my face was pressed into the mud at the bottom of the lake. I tried to get my forelegs around the hooves holding me down, but with the awkward angle I just couldn’t get enough leverage to break its grip. It didn’t help that since all I could see was lake mud, I was pretty much operating blind. The only thing I could really do to the rusalka was wing-buffet it, and that didn’t do nearly enough damage to let me break free.

I thrashed and squirmed and did tried every trick I could think of to try and break loose, but it just wasn’t doing any good. On land I could win a fight against a rusalka, but drowning ponies was pretty much their special talent—or whatever the monster equivalent of a special talent was.

It had me. Unless I could manage a miracle, I was going to drown.

My lungs were burning from how long I’d been holding my breath, and eventually I just couldn’t manage it any longer. Instinct took over, and I opened my mouth and inhaled a lungful of muddy lake water. I could feel my body getting weak and sluggish as it became harder and harder to summon up the will for another vain effort to break free. It was over. I should just give up now, and use what little time I had left to make my peace.

At least while the monster was killing me it would give Star, Lyra, and the civilians a chance to get away and raise the alarm. Too bad I wasn’t dying in a heroic sacrifice or anything—instead I’d just gone chasing after a monster I’d already sent running, and look where that had gotten me. Drowning in the middle of a muddy lake.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

Darkness began to encroach on my vision, and the pain and desperation that had been driving me to keep fighting faded, replaced with a sort of dull numbness. I could almost sense this boundary up ahead, like some sort of line drawn down the center of a courtyard. I had a feeling that was it. Death. It was coming up fast, and there was no way I could stop myself from crossing it. Time to just lie down and die.

I was almost ready to do that, when a single thought sprang into my mind.

No.

Maybe this thing was gonna kill me, but I’d be damned if I made its job easy for it. I gritted my teeth and forced my sluggish, waterlogged limbs into action. If this monster wanted me dead, it was gonna have to drag me over that boundary kicking and screaming. Maybe I was gonna go in the end, but not without putting up one hay of a fight first.

Then the weight holding me down abruptly vanished. A moment later, something grabbed me and hauled me out of the water, depositing me on the lakeshore. Somehow I had enough presence of mind (or just plain instinct) to retch up the water in my lungs almost as soon as I was back on the surface again.

“Get the feather away from her, you bitch!” I’d never been happier to hear Star’s voice in my life (I guess my earplugs must’ve been knocked loose during the fight). I turned my head to the side, just in time to see her cut loose on the rusalka with a sort of fire spell that sent a dozen little homing fireballs after it, each one scorching away chunks of its mane and flesh when it hit.

The rusalka let out an unearthly shriek of pain and scrambled back towards the water to get away from Star’s fire. That course took it back towards me, and for a moment Star was distracted, throwing a few more of her fireballs between the creature and me instead of focusing on stopping the monster from getting away. It dove into the lake and immediately fled deep underwater.

I felt a pair of hooves dig under my wings, and looked over to see Lyra hauling me away from the shoreline. Good thinking; the last place we needed to be right now was anywhere near the water. Next time the rusalka hit us, it would probably just try to drag whoever it grabbed out into the middle of the lake and deep under the surface, so nopony would be able to help.

I rolled onto my hooves and got to work heaving out the rest of the contents of my stomach and lungs. The water itself wasn’t too bad, but getting the mud I’d swallowed out was horrible. It was the worst possible combination of wet, slimy, and thick. It took a couple minutes of retching to finish barfing everything up, but once I’d finally gotten the last of it out of my system, the mere absence of that thick, disgusting sludge in my lungs felt like one of the best things I’d ever experienced in my life.

While Lyra patted me on the back and generally tried to make sure I was going to be okay, Star kept watch over us as I heaved everything up, glaring at the lake and probably hoping the rusalka would dare to poke its head above the water again. Once she was sure I was going to be alright, she galloped away to warn the civilians around the lake, most of whom were already heading our way out of natural concern for a pony who’d almost drowned.

Once I had a minute or two to catch my breath, I started feeling more like a proper pony again. I slowly got onto my hooves, and gave a quick shake to get the rest of the water out of my coat and wings. Star didn’t turn from her vigil over the lake, but she did check on me out of the corner of her eye. “Stormy? You okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” I would need to check with a medic once this was all over to make sure of that, but for the moment everything seemed to be working properly.

“Good.” Star frowned out at the lake. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that I actually took it out with those fireballs?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.” I dredged up the memories from my monster lore class. “Rusalkas heal very quickly when they’re in the water. Not instant regeneration or anything, but it’s not gonna die of its wounds, and it’ll be completely patched up after a couple hours of rest.”

“Horseapples.” Star scowled at the lake. “Got any ideas for getting it out of the water? I suppose we could just send Lyra for backup, but...”

I gave a sharp nod. Calling for backup wasn’t a bad idea, but we both wanted to take this monster down on our own if we could. Yeah, in hindsight it was stupid pride, but it felt kinda wrong to let somepony else finish the fight we’d started. Besides, the thing’s injuries would heal while it was in the water, and it might have some sort of getaway plan of its own. Overall, keeping up the pressure seemed like a better move than sitting back and waiting for backup “I have a plan.” I threw a significant look up at some nearby clouds. “Make sure nopony's near the water. Once I drive it out, you finish it off.”

“Got it.”

I gave my wings a couple flicks to get the last of the water out of my feathers, then took to the sky. My flying still felt a bit sluggish on account of being waterlogged, but it wasn’t like I was trying to do any high-speed aerial maneuvers. All I needed to do was get a decent number of clouds positioned over the lake. Easy stuff.

Then I got down to business.

I bucked the first cloud and sent a bolt of lightning flashing down into the water. I followed it up with more from the other clouds, hammering the water in a systematic search pattern that left the monster with nowhere to hide.

I had to cover most of the lake before I finally managed to nail the rusalka. Not that I was surprised; I’d set up my lightning strikes to slowly box the creature in, until there was nowhere left for it to run. When something large started thrashing around in the water right after one of my strikes, I knew I’d finally nailed it. I focused fire on the disturbance in the water, pounding it with every lightning bolt I could squeeze out of the clouds I’d gathered. Either I would do enough damage to actually kill the thing in spite of whatever healing it got from being in the water, or all the electricity would drive it out and right into Star’s waiting hooves.

Eventually, the rusalka settled on option two, staggering out of water twitching and smoking. Star wasted no time telekinetically grabbing it, dragging it completely onto dry land and promptly setting the monster on fire. It let out another unearthly moan, which only grew louder when I followed up with another bolt of lightning.

Star and I kept pounding the rusalka until it fell silent, not even reacting to our continued attacks. Then we hit it a couple more times, just to be sure.

Once I was finally sure it was down and out, I landed and carefully approached to confirm the kill. Despite the fact that it looked very thoroughly dead, I kept my distance and didn’t take any stupid risks. Monsters tend to have this annoying habit of not dying when they should.

I tensed up when I saw that the rusalka’s eyes were still open, and quickly averted my own gaze. Most mindbenders can do something to you with direct eye contact. When I shifted position a bit her eyes didn’t follow me. So I guess it just died with its eyes open and I was just being overcautious. Now that I was a bit closer, I could tell that it definitely wasn’t breathing anymore. I stepped a bit closer and checked its pulse, just to get total confirmation. No pulse. “It’s dead.”

Then I made the mistake of looking directly into its eyes. In my defense, dropping your guard around a corpse is understandable.

The next moment, I felt something in my head. It wasn’t an outright attack or attempt at domination like I’d faced before. Instead it felt like ... well, almost like a message, I guess. I wonder if that’s what it was? Some sort of dying message from the rusalka to the ponies who’d killed it.

There wasn’t really much to it. Just this feeling of loneliness. Terrible loneliness. The sort of isolation that might drive a monster to, say, mind control a dozen innocents just so it would finally have somepony to keep it company.

I staggered away and hastily closed my eyes to block out the attack. After a couple seconds I opened them again, then stepped back up to the rusalka, taking extreme care to avoid any kind of eye contact, and reached over to shut the monster’s eyes. I didn’t want anypony else going through what I’d just experienced. Once that was done, I staggered over to one of the nearby trees and leaned against it for a bit to catch my breath.

Star trotted over and put a hoof on my shoulder. “You okay? What happened just then?”

I took a couple breaths as I tried to shake the feelings that creature had stuck into my head. “I’m fine, Star. Just need a moment.”

Star gave me a quick little squeeze on the shoulder. “You sure? That thing had you under the water for a long time. Need me to have somepony run ahead and get a medic?”

“Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.” I wasn’t very happy about the idea of having a doc poking and prodding at me for a bit, but I didn’t wanna end up in worse trouble just because I wanted to act tough. Plus, it’s not like I was the only injured pony here. “Get somepony to run ahead and let the Guard know what’s up, and that we need some medics here to patch everypony up.” I self-consciously rubbed at the side of my head. “Might not be a bad idea to have Mom send a couple of her ponies too.”

Star frowned, and moved to giving me a one-legged hug. “That rusalka thing got into your head, didn’t it? How bad?”

“Might have had me back in the caves if you didn't scream into my skull, for starters.” I shivered at the memory, then added. “And just now ... it wasn’t exactly boring into my skull or anything, but I got this weird sort of ... last impression or something, I guess.”

“Oh.” Star stared at me for a bit, seemingly at a loss for words. What do you say to finding out something like that? Eventually she settled into the standard Guard fallback: focus on the mission first, and put off the trauma until all the practical stuff was taken care of. “Let’s round the rest of the thralls up and send somepony to go get help.”

I slowly nodded along. “Duty first.” I pushed off the tree and took a moment to steel myself. “We can talk about the rest of it later.”

Lyra had already beaten us to the punch when it came to getting the rest of the former thralls sorted out and ready to move. I was a bit surprised to see her showing that kind of initiative, since I’m used to thinking of her as a friendly but lazy drunk. I know that’s not quite fair, but that’s what she usually acts like. I guess being in a crisis situation brought out her better side. It wasn’t unusual for ponies to be that way.

Once we did a quick check of the ex-thralls to make sure nopony had been too terribly hurt, we sent the one guardpony among the group out for help. I suppose it might have worked better if Star or I had gone, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off I didn’t really feel up to running to Canterlot and raising the alarm myself. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the whole nearly-drowned thing was catching up to me. I guess I could’ve sent Star, but right now the idea of having her around sounded nice. I guess I just needed some family.

Star didn’t say anything. She just sat there next to me and kept one foreleg wrapped around my back, quietly offering me a little support. Nothing too obvious, but it helped.

Once all the ex-thralls had settled in to wait for the Guard to show up and sort things out, Lyra headed our way. I felt a guilty little twinge when I saw that the bruises I’d left on her were starting to show now. I wonder if she’d figured out where those injuries had come from? Most mindbenders leave their victims’ memories a little fuzzy, but even if Lyra didn’t remember a single thing about what happened she could probably do the math.

I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding what was going on in my head, because Lyra shot a concerned little frown my way, then settled down next to me on the side opposite my sister. “Hey, Star? Why don't you go check on the others and make sure they don’t need anything. I just need a little breather with Storm after all ... whatever that was.”

Star frowned, and her foreleg tightened around me possessively. “I think I’d rather stick with my sis. Besides, didn’t you just finish checking up on everypony?”

Lyra sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, lemme rephrase: Star, could you bugger off for a bit so Storm and I can have a private conversation?” She took a couple breaths, then reached out and gave Star a pat on the shoulder. “I get that you wanna be there for your sister, and that’s really good, but please?”

My sister grimaced, and then gave a single very reluctant nod. “Okay, I'll give you two a little space. I’ll be close by if you need me, okay Storm?”

“Yeah yeah, stop trying to act like you’re the one who’s the big sister.” It felt good to poke fun at her again, kinda like things were getting back to normal.

Star let out a weak little snort, then reached and poked at my forehead. “Hey Storm, I think a skunk must’ve drowned in the lake and then somehow got stuck on your head during the fight.” She cocked her head to the side, then shot me a teasing grin. “Oh wait, that’s just your mane.”

“Oh, get outta here already.” I took a half-hearted swipe at her. “The sooner you’re gone, the sooner Lyra and I can start talking about you behind your back. Though with what a weirdo you are, you probably planted listening devices on both of us when you heard we wanted to have a private conversation anyway.”

“Oh please.” Star rolled her eyes at me. “I don’t need to do something like that. I implanted a listening device under your skin years ago, Storm. You always were a heavy sleeper.” She shot me one last grin, then trotted off to check on the civilians.

Lyra stared after my departing sister. “Um ... that was a joke, right?”

“Probably, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be checking my body for unexplained lumps the next time I take a shower anyway.” Which, come to think of it, might have been what Star was planning from the start. Using her own weirdness to make me get all paranoid about her is exactly the sort of trick I could see my little sister trying. She did have a sneaky streak to her.

“Right...” Lyra scooted a bit closer to me, now that Star wasn’t staking a claim as the only pony allowed to comfort me. “So, um ... hey.”

Well, she was just jumping right into this conversation. “Hey yourself.” I decided to put things off for a bit. “You doing okay?”

Lyra slowly stretched out each one of her limbs. “A little sore, my head's still a bit fuzzy and I can’t remember much of what I did tonight, and then there was all the fighting...” She sighed, then offered me a faint grin. “But hey, look on the bright side: at least all this craziness got me sobered up.”

Thank Shadow for small favors. Imagine how weird this whole thing would’ve gotten if Lyra had been blitzed for the whole fight. “Gotta find the silver lining on the cloud.” I tried to think of something else to say to delay the obvious follow-up question, but I couldn’t think of anything. I guess that just left sitting around and feeling awkward.

Lyra picked up on my mood pretty quickly. “You alright?”

“Fine.” Sheesh, between the dull tone of my voice and the way I couldn’t even look at her when I said it, not even I bought that lie for a second.

She sighed and shifted around so that her back was resting against the tree behind us. After a bit I copied the way she was sitting; it felt a bit odd, but it did give me a nice view of the night sky and the lake. It all looked so calm and peaceful; hard to imagine that that a couple minutes ago I was pounding that lake with enough voltage to power Canterlot for a couple days. I guess it’s a good thing no fish lived there.

The two of us just sat there silently for a minute or so before Lyra spoke up again. “You're acting rather subdued for 'fine', don’t you think?”

Well, no point in trying to hide that I was out of sorts. Probably a side effect of my parents being who they are, but I’ve never been very good at hiding when I need somepony to talk to about my problems. Kinda figures, what with both of my parents dedicating their lives to helping ponies deal with their problems. Hay, that’s how Mom and Dad met: Mom was doing the psychological counseling, Dad was taking care of the spiritual side of things.

Unfortunately for me, Mom and Dad weren’t here. Lyra might not have their training, but she was here, and she cared. Right now, that was enough. “Lyra? How much did that thing get into your head?”

She sighed and rubbed her forehead and around her horn. “I can’t really say for sure. Memory's cloudy. I’ve been getting bits and pieces of it, I imagine the rest’ll come back soon enough.” She reached over and gently started rubbing my back. “Is it about the scuffle with, well...?” She sighed and waved a hoof at one of her bruises. “Because if that’s what you’re worried about, then don’t. Doesn’t matter if I can’t remember everything that happened, I know that ... that thing made me do things. And Star...” She closed her eyes for several seconds, then took a deep breath and continued. “I know you didn’t hurt me or anypony else more than you absolutely had to.”

I hadn’t been too worried on that point before, but now that she brought it up it was on my mind. If I’d seriously hurt any of the ponies while they were under the rusalka’s control, things could get messy. Some of these ponies might end up with doctor’s bills or missing days of work, and once they remembered who exactly was responsible for their injuries, they might start looking for compensation. The last thing Star and I needed was some civilian lawyer who’d never seen a day of action digging into the whole fight and analyzing every single attack I threw. Not just because of the legal trouble a lawsuit would cause, but also because that kind of overanalyzing can mess up a pony in combat.

I’m sure if I sat down and carefully thought out the exact blow-by-blow of the entire fight, spent hours and hours pouring over it, I could come up with some way to win that would’ve left some of the thralls less hurt than they were now. The thing is, those hours of analysis are looking at decisions a pony has maybe a split-second to make on the ground. Yeah, doing a post-battle rundown is an important part of refining your combat tactics, but you don’t want to go to the point of overanalyzing every single little detail and spending hours and hours beating yourself up over not getting things absolutely perfect. That can lead to overthinking things in the middle of a fight too. When you’re in the middle of a life-and-death fight, you can’t really afford to spend even a few seconds pondering all your options. You need to react and take the best choice you can see with what you’ve got in front of you. Analysis paralysis will get a pony killed in the field.

Lyra put one of her forelegs across my back and gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Sure, I don’t remember the whole thing, but the way I see it, you must’ve done the best you could. ‘Cause you’re a good pony, and you wouldn’t wanna hurt a pony who’s only doing bad things ‘cause they’re being forced into it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Looks like I was gonna be talking things over with Mom and Dad before this whole thing was done. Not that I really thought I’d gone overboard or anything, but ... I needed to hear it from them. That I’d done the right thing.

There was still one other looming problem, though. And this was one Lyra was a bit more qualified to help me sort out. “The rusalka ... it got into my head a bit too.”

Lyra immediately tensed up. “Storm, what did it do to you?”

I quickly shook my head. “Nothing serious, it didn’t manage to completely break into my head or anything. The one time it even got close, Star snapped me out of it. No, the problem was when I—after Star and I killed it.” My body shivered at the memory of what I’d seen in the rusalka’s mind. “It was lonely and scared. That’s why it did those things.”

Several emotions flickered over Lyra’s face in the next few seconds. Surprise. Sympathy. Anger. When she finally spoke, there was something cold in her voice that I wasn’t used to hearing from the energetic, outgoing mare. “Why does it matter?” She let out an aggravated snort. “I don’t give a flying feather if the reason it decided to mess around in my head and make me hurt my friends was because it was lonely. ‘Cause that doesn’t change anything about what it did. Maybe I can feel a little sorry for it, but it still did a lot of unforgivably evil things. Being lonely doesn’t make it okay to mind control ponies and try to kill them!”

“Well yeah.” I couldn't argue on that point even if I’d wanted to. “But if it’s being motivated by loneliness, then maybe we could’ve tried negotiating with it or something? Found a non-violent solution to the whole mess.”

“Yeah, ‘cause trying to talk things out with a monster that had a mind control voice couldn’t possibly go wrong.” Lyra let out a patient sigh, then gave me a reassuring little squeeze. “Look, Storm, I’m not a violent pony most of the time. My opinion, most of the time ponies get into fights, it’s over something stupid that they could’ve found a better way to fix if they really wanted to.”

“So you’re a Harmonic?”

“Huh?” Lyra gave a few confused blinks, then shook her head. “Nah, not really. Never been much for all the cults and philosophies you get running around. Not that I don’t respect them, but...” She trailed off with a shrug. “Whether you’re talking about the virtues of harmony, venerating an ancestor and trying to live up to her example, or practicing the Solar Rite—the bottom line is that all those different ideas boil down to ‘be a good pony, and do the right thing.’ I like that message just fine, so why complicate things more than that?”

She leaned in and gave me a quick little nuzzle. “The bottom line is, you did the right thing. You saved me and everypony else that monster had. Anypony who tries to tell you that you did something wrong is just full of horseapples, and I don’t care how they try to justify it.”

“Huh.” I have to admit, there was something really appealing about the way Lyra laid it all out. One thing about Mom and Dad, I learned a whole lot about ethics. Whether an action was right or wrong got picked apart, analyzed, and run through all the big sets of rules. Plus, I’d kind of taken an interest in theology and philosophy for a while, which just made me even more inclined to think about those sorts of ethical issues. Maybe I think about them too much.

Ethics are nice and all, but there’s a lot to be said for good old morality too. No big systems for sorting out what’s right and wrong; just trust those basic instincts a pony has. That’s one thing I’d always admired about that one friend of Cloud’s, Rainbow Dash. She didn’t need to think about what was right, she just did it.

Lyra gently wrapped her other foreleg around me and pulled me in for a hug. “You know what I think, Storm? I think you’re just a little shaken up from that monster getting into your head.” She frowned, and shot a look at the rusalka’s remains. “What was that thing, anyway?”

“It’s called a rusalka.” I leaned into the hug a bit. “There’s a couple theories on what they are. Some ponies think they’re some kinda ghosts, but most scholars figure they’re trickster spirits.” A moment later I thought about what I’d just said, and facehoofed. “Here I am getting all upset about the fact that I took down a monster that might’ve just been lonely, and I completely forgot it’s a feathering trickster! Of course it would try and make itself look like it’s just some kind of poor victim that didn’t deserve what it got. Shadow, I’m an idiot...”

“Nopony’s perfect.” Lyra gave me another reassuring little squeeze, but didn’t say anything else for a while. When she did finally speak, she’d shifted topics. “Storm? You want to be in the Guard, right?”

“Yeah.” I hate to admit it, but Lyra bringing that topic up got me a little wary. I’d overheard her talking to Cloud once or twice about how she shouldn’t feel like she had to live up to the whole family legacy. Then Cloud went and dropped out of the Guard. I know that was all Cloud’s choice, but it’s kinda hard not to wonder if Lyra’s talk about how she shouldn’t be afraid to find her own path in life had an influence on that decision. “I’m going to be in the Guard. Already graduated and got my commission and everything. In a couple weeks, I’m gonna be Second Lieutenant Storm Kicker of the Long Patrol.”

Thankfully, Lyra didn’t try to go down the whole dissuading me from being a Guard route. “If you really wanna spend the rest of your life in the military, then you need to be ready to deal with the fact that you’re gonna be fighting for a living. And most of the things you fight will be like that thing.” She waved a hoof at the rusalka. “They'll have their own emotions and motives. Some might just be doing all they can to help themselves. Hay, if you’re going into the Long Patrol, some of the stuff you fight’s just gonna be wild animals that’re hungry enough to think a pony makes a decent meal, and you just gotta deal with that, y'know?”

“Yeah.” I’d heard similar things from the instructors back at West Hoof and the ponies in the clan before, but for some reason the words hadn’t carried the same weight back then. I guess because I’d just never been in a real life-or-death battle before. It’s not really the kind of thing you can explain to a pony who’s never experienced it for themselves. “Doesn't matter whether it was a pure evil monster or if it was only enslaving ponies 'cause it was lonely. Either way, that doesn't change the fact that it was, y'know, enslaving ponies.”

“That’s how I see it.” The two of us just sat there silently, looking up at the stars for a while. The moon looked nice tonight, though a bit odd. It took me a couple seconds to figure out why; the Mare in the Moon wasn’t showing up very clearly tonight. Weird. Lyra pulled my mind back to the present. “Thanks for pulling my flank out of there.”

I tried to give a modest little shrug, but I’m not sure how well I pulled it off. “It's what I do now, I guess. Hay, in a couple weeks I’ll be the second-in-command of a whole platoon full of ponies who do that kind of thing for a living.”

“Very cool.” She gave me a slight grin and bumped shoulders with me. “That rescue and the way you took out the monster was awesome. Kinda like something Rainbow Dash would do.”

My ears perked up a bit at that. “Yeah?” I admit, I really did like the idea of being compared to Rainbow Dash. Back when I was a little filly, I had a bit of a hero worship thing for her. I mean, she was my cool older cousin’s even cooler friend. What impressionable young filly wouldn’t be wowed by a pony like that?

Of course, ever since then I’ve had to deal with Star getting on my case from time to time about the so-called crush I had on Rainbow Dash. For the record, it wasn’t anything like that. I just thought Rainbow was cool. Besides, I’m straight. Now, if Rainbow Dash were a stallion...

You know what? Let’s not take that line of thought any further.

Lyra, thankfully unaware of the rather disturbing train of thought that had just popped into my head, was still singing my praises. “Yeah. You just charged in and chased that rusalka thing off all by yourself. Well, I was all entranced during the fight, but I imagine you did most of the legwork.”

“Star helped,” I answered modestly. “Without her tracking spells, we never would’ve found where it had you in the first place. Plus, her stunner let me start the fight on my own terms.”

The older unicorn just grinned and nudged me. “You were probably more awesome, though.”

“Well, duh.” I felt a grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Really, Lyra, you’re comparing me to Star. That’s not even a fair contest.”

Lyra let out an amused little snort and nudged me. “You two and your sibling rivalry... But seriously, if Rainbow Dash were here she’d say it was awesome, cool, and radical.” Her smile turned distinctly teasing. “She might even be so impressed she’d give you a little kiss.”

“Ugh, not you too!” I groaned and facehoofed. “I swear, someday I’m going to get her back for all that teasing.”

“What can I say? I’ve always been a romantic at heart.” Lyra gave me another teasing little nudge. “Don’t worry, I’ll be your wingmare. As soon as I get back to Ponyville, I'll be all like: ‘Hey, Rainbow, guess what I did for the Summer Sun Celebration?’ And she'll say: ‘What?’ And I'll reply with: ‘Got saved by one of the most awesome pegasi ever.’” Lyra let out a giggle. “Granted, she’ll probably be confused at first because she’s sure that she’s the most awesome pony in Equestria, but I’ll sort that out for her. I bet she'll probably tease me about being a damsel in distress, but she'll think you're amazing too, and that’s the kind of sacrifice a good wingmare makes.”

I rolled my eyes and shifted a bit away from her. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me saying that I’m not a fillyfooler?

“Relax, I’m just messing with you.” Lyra grinned and used one of her hooves to mess up my mane as best she could, given how close-cropped I kept it. “Seriously though, everypony’s gonna be proud of you. I know I am.” She pulled me in and nuzzled my cheek. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re my hero.”

I put up with the nuzzling for a bit, but eventually felt the need to politely push her away. “Hey now, don't get too crazy. I’m not my cousin.”

“Hey, you knew I was a hugger when you decided to talk to me. You should’ve known this was gonna happen sooner or later.” She kept invading my personal space for a bit longer, then pulled back and tousled my mane with a hoof instead. “Aw, you don’t need to worry, Storm. You might be cute, but even if you weren’t picky about only going for stallions, I’ve seen you grow since you only came up to my belly.” She raised a forehoof off the ground to demonstrate my supposed height, exaggerating quite a bit. I was hardly a mere filly when we first met.

I suppose I must’ve been scowling or something, because Lyra giggled and mussed up my mane some more. “Oh relax, Stormy. Don’t get all sour and stoic on me, there are enough ponies in your family like that already. My only point was, I still think of you as that little kid, even if you’ve grown up into a big sexy mare now. If Kicky were here, she’d say banging you would be against my rules.” Lyra shrugged. “I don’t really have a written-down set the way she does, but ... yeah, it’d just feel weird to try and seduce a pony who’s that much younger than me.”

Well, that was a relief.

Lyra grinned and tapped me on the nose. “Besides, you saving my life was nice and all, but that just makes up for that one time you kinda-sorta killed me.” She tapped a very slightly discolored patch of fur on her chest. “Still got a scar and everything.”

Oh. Right. That had happened. “Y’know, I still feel bad about that whole accident...”

Next thing I knew I was getting pulled in for another hug. “Yeah, I know. Relax, Storm. Accidents like that happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah, nopony’s perfect.” I shot a fleeting glance at the large cluster of clouds I’d assembled over the lake. “At least I finally got a chance to show you how much I’ve improved since then. Guess having nine extra years of training really paid off.”

“Yup.” Lyra offered me a cheeky little smile. “There were a whole bunch of lightning bolts in that little show you put on, and not one of them even came close to hitting me. Thanks for that, getting electrocuted once was enough to put me off of it.”

“You’re welcome,” I grumbled.

Lyra gave me a playful little poke in the chest. “So, what’s next for Lieutenant Storm Kicker, hero of Equestria and savior of ponies?”

I thought it over for a bit. “Well, once we finish all the cleanup here, I guess I’ll need to talk to Mom and Dad for a bit. You’re a good listener, but they do that kinda thing for a living. After that, I guess I’ll just head on into the Long Patrol. At least I’ve already gotten my trial-by-fire out of the way, so the rest of the ponies in the Patrol won’t need to worry that I’m some fresh fish of a commander who doesn’t know anything about soldiering other than what I’ve read in books.”

“I guess there is a benefit to having some practical experience.” Lyra slowly got back to her hooves and stretched out. “As for the rest of it, I'm sure your parents can talk you through any lingering issues.” She paused, and a thoughtful frown crossed her face. “Could use a talk myself, really.”

“Need a talk with Mom after the whole monster captivity thing?” Some kind of victim counseling was probably standard procedure for anypony who’d been taken by a mindbender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Lyra would prefer talking to Mom over some random counselor she’d never met before. Not sure if Mom would be up for that, though—these days, she spends more time as an administrator than she does as an actual therapist. The hazards of being too good at your job and picking up a few promotions.

Lyra frowned a bit. “There is that too I guess, but I was thinking of something else.” She gave me a sardonic little smile. “This is probably going to be a bit of a shock to you, but I think I might have just a little bit of a drinking problem.”

I let out an amused snort, and shifted my voice to a high-society accent. “Surely not!”

“I do. And don’t call me Shirley, my name’s Lyra.” That earned her a wing-whap on the back of her head. From what Sergeant-Instructor First Response told me, that was the standard Guard response to a smartflanked soldier. Lyra rubbed the back of her head for a moment, then shrugged and accepted that she’d completely deserved it. “Anyway, I really would like to get the whole drinking thing sorted out.” A downright goofy grin popped onto face. “You see, there’s this really nice mare called Bon Bon: she's really pretty and lovely and wonderful and just ... wow. She's a down-to-earth kinda pony though, so I have to clean up my act if I wanna impress her.”

I let out a faint snort. “So the jobless drunk thing isn't gonna win her over?”

“Nope. At the moment, she doesn’t seem to think all that much of me.” Lyra shrugged and grinned. “But she isn’t avoiding me or anything, and she always helps me back home when I'm hammered, so I think I might have a chance. Just need to let her know that I’m willing to make a change for her and stuff. I think if I do that, I’ll get into her good books.”

“Probably.” If nothing else, this Bon Bon would be impressed that Lyra was willing to put out that much effort for her. “Couldn’t say for sure, though; I’m more into stallions, myself.”

“Eh, to each their own.” Lyra shrugged, then glanced over at something and reached over to tap my shoulder, then pointed over at Star, who was talking to the Guard stallion we’d sent to go get help. “Looks like we’re gonna have company soon.”

Sure enough, once Star was done getting a report from him, she trotted right over to us. “We got word to the garrison, they’ll need a bit before they can send anypony out. Apparently things have gone a little nuts in Ponyville.”

Wasn’t that where the Princess was for the Summer Sun Celebration? That didn’t sound good. “What’s going on?”

“Nopony knows for sure,” Star answered with a shrug. “But there’s gotta be something bad going on. Dunno if either of you’ve checked the time, but I just did and we’re an hour past due for sunrise.”

Oh. Yeah, that sounds bad. It wasn’t unheard of for sunrise to run a couple minutes late—the Princess does have a lot on her plate—but an hour was really pushing it. Especially for a really big event like the Summer Sun Celebration. “Do we need to get back to Canterlot and get ready to mobilize?” I didn’t like the idea of just leaving the ponies we’d rescued on their own, but it would only take them a couple minutes to walk back to Canterlot proper, and orders were orders.

“Nah, right now Command’s still trying to figure out what the hay’s going on and what we should do about it,” Star answered. “Besides, the way I figure it if the Princess hasn’t been able to raise the sun yet we’re probably dealing with a Code Gold anyway.”

“Code Gold?” Lyra asked.

”Means that we’re up against something only the Princess is qualified to deal with,” I explained for her benefit. “Well, either the Princess or somepony using some of our high-grade artifacts, like Shadow’s armor.” Supposedly there were a couple other secret weapons in Equestria’s arsenal, but I didn’t really know what they were. Funnily enough, the higher-ups liked to keep our secret weapons secret. The only reason I even knew about Shadow’s armor was because it was a famous family heirloom.

“Oh, yeah.” Lyra nodded, then shot a concerned look down the mountain in what I presumed was the general direction of Ponyville. “I hope nothing happened to Bon Bon, Kicky, and Rainbow Dash...”

“They’re fine,” I reassured her. “I don’t think there’s anything that Cloud and Rainbow couldn’t handle together. They’re kinda awesome that way.”

Star poked me in the ribs. “Sheesh, just ask Rainbow out already.”

“Oh shut up,” I grumbled. “We might be in the middle of some kind of major crisis, and you still wanna tease me about the crush that you completely made up?”

Star smirked and offered a one-word answer: “Priorities.”

“Aaaaw.” Lyra wrapped a foreleg around me and my sister, and pulled us both in for a group hug. “You two are the most awesome comedy double act slash flank-kicking soldiers slash pair of sisters ever.” She nuzzled each one of us in turn.

Star rolled her eyes and shot me a long-suffering grin. “Sheesh, Lyra, always with the hugging.”

That just made the unicorn tighten her grip on both of us. “Hey, you knew what you were gonna get when you came to rescue me.”

“Guess we really should’ve known that you’d start getting all huggy to punish us for saving your life,” I grumbled.

“Get used to it, kiddos.” Lyra smirked at us. “Because rescuing me from a pony-killing monster pretty much means you’re going to be getting hugs all the time from now on.”

“Oh goody,” Star deadpanned. “Maybe you should’ve warned us about that before we mounted the whole rescue mission in the first place.”

“Oh, don’t be a sourpuss.” Lyra gave my sister a playful little nudge, then finally released us. “Well, I’m gonna go see if I can find anypony who can spare some booze while we wait for the Guard.”

“And not five minutes after you told me you were trying to sober up,” I observed.

“Eh, I’ll start cutting down tomorrow.” Lyra gave a nonchalant shrug. “Bons will still be there tomorrow, and tonight is no night for a pony to quit drinking.” With that settled, she trotted over to the nearest group of ponies and starting looking for anypony who could spare a drink.

Once Lyra had trotted off, Star trotted up to my side and nudged my shoulder. “You doing better now? The talk with Lyra help?”

“Yeah.” I sighed and ran a hoof through my mane. “I’m a little shaken up, and knowing the horseapples might be hitting the fan down in Ponyville isn’t helping, but I'll be okay.”

“You sure?”

I thought it over for a bit, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Good.” She wrapped her forelegs around me, and gave me a squeeze. “I love you, Storm.”

I hugged her back. “Love you too, Star.” After enjoying the moment for a bit, I offered an amendment. “Even if you are a weirdo whose coat makes it look like she’s covered in dirt.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a dapple.” Star playfully punched me in the shoulder. “And at least my mane doesn’t make it look like a skunk died on my head.”

“Creeper.”

“Featherbrain.”

“Weirdo.”

“Plot-head.”

“Plot-face.”

“Oh, real original, Storm.”

“Now you’re being a whiner too.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“Mule!”

“Nag!”

It was nice to finally have things back to normal.