Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

Seven Years Ago, in the City On A Cloud...

Stormy had woken up early, once again. Not as early as he would in the future years to come, yet early enough to see the sun rise. He had gone to the restroom and then walked into the kitchen to fetch himself a bagel before he went off to take a jog.

He never had to worry about school anymore, he had skipped third grade, seventh grade, and his sophomore year,  allowing him to gain a scholarship to Cloudsdale University For The Gifted Minds. He had taken an IQ test to be sure he qualified. All he knew is that it must be high, since they only allowed in those with an IQ level of one-hundred thirty. No pony would ever tell him what he scored, but that was fine; he didn't know and didn't care.

He had gone to grab his jacket from the closet to protect him from the chilly autumn air when he began hearing a scraping sound, like a knife along a piece of whetstone. It was coming from the den!

He slowly walked into the dimly lit room, where he saw the silhouette of his father, holding what appeared to be his military saber.

"Dad," Stormy called in a hoarse voice. His father looked up from his work and at his son. "Dad, what are you doing?"

His father sighed, put his sword down, and stood up from his chair. He walked over to his son and put his hoof on Stormy shoulder. Stormy shook it off.

"Your deploying again, aren't you?" he asked harshly.

Rainbow Blitz looked down at his son and sighed. "Yes, Stormy, I am. I've been reactivated and called to help with an emergency in the Crystal Empire. Changelings are attacking, and I have to bring my old platoon back together and go beat the shit out of them."

Stormy began to get agitated, feeling as though he had just been stabbed in the back. "Dad, you said you were out for good! That you were retired and that we could finally spend time together! So what the hell?!"

"Son, you don't understand! I'm leading the best Special Forces squadron there is! I'm the best of the best, and Equestria needs my services!"

"No, it's you who doesn't understand! You said you were done with the Army, that we could be together as a family again, you, me, Mom, Thunder, and Lightning, and you lied! You lied, you lying son of a bitch! I can't even believe you betrayed my trust! You made a promise you knew you couldn't keep! You ought to have known you were still eligible for reactivation! What is wrong with you?!" Stormy kept berating his father, only pausing for effect.

"You should've known! You gone and fooled your own family, but I'll tell you what, you haven't fooled me! I knew this was going to happen! You can't fool me!"

Blitz just stared at the ground. Stormy waved his hoof in front of his father's face. "Are you even listening, or are you just off in La-la Land again?!"

Blitz finally snapped. "Shut up, you ungrateful whelp!" Stormy flinched only slightly, but then braced himself for the worst. "Look what I've done for you! Look around you! You've got a mansion's roof over your head, a bedroom to yourself, and more privileges than a stallion your age could dream of! And yet you go on, blowing all that off so you piss off on your own father! So let me ask, what is wrong with you?"

"A hell of a lot more than you!" Stormy's face began to melt into tears. His father had successfully broken him.

"I'm being driven insane by the sound of my own voice, dad! I'm lonely, and I've got this pounding in my head! I can't hardly sleep, and when I do, I wake up with these nightmares of me creating the storm of the century and getting you and Mom killed, and every day, I get a nagging feeling that it's going to wind up happening!"

Stormy lifted up his right hoof, revealing scars along it. "You see this! I do this without even thinking!"

It was then that Blitz began to get worried.

"That knife you gave me last time you came home; I've been running across my wrist, and I don't even know why!" Stormy's voice began to become choked with tears.

"Dad, you have to help me! You can't leave, I need you! We need you!"

Blitz sighed. "My country needs me." he muttered.

"Is your country more important than your family, all of the sudden?"

Blitz jerked his head up. "Stormy, don't say stuff like that!"

"Why? Because you know it's true, huh?"

"I need to leave. I should have been gone an hour ago." Blitz grabbed his sword and his duffle bag and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. Stormy just stood there in shock and dismay.

He then charged up to his room, flew out the window, and sped faster and faster in a circle around their eighty-four acre estate. He kept going, faster and faster, bringing all the clouds in the sky and the water on the ground closer and closer together. He lay at the very centre, never stopping.

The wind began to howl in Blitz's ears as he looked up at what his son was doing. "No... what have I done?"

***

Firefly snapped awake in her bed, shaken by some unknown force. She walked into the living room to see what was going on. When she looked out the window, she saw what her son had created: a massive hurricane in their backyard. She instantly dashed outside to stop her son, whom  she could barely see through the clouds swirling around him. She also saw her husband trying to steer the hurricane away, but she knew it was a lost cause; Stormy had grown much stronger than his own father.

She decided to at least help out and so flew towards the monstrous storm. She and Blitz were working together to veer it away from the house and away from their daughters.

Blitz couldn't hold it any longer. The immense force of the storm finally pulled him in.

"No! Blitz!" Firefly cried. She dived in after him, but was instantly spun out of control. She was flung at the ground, where the back of her skull hit the sharp end of a very large boulder. She didn't move at all.

Blitz tried his best to get closer to Stormy. He couldn't keep his balance, and he constantly was flung at the ground and brought back up.

"Stormy!" he shouted. His son either couldn't hear him over the wind, or was deliberately ignoring him.

"Stormy, you have to stop this! This is insane!" he pleaded.

His son screamed back, "So were your lies!"

The hurricane finally sucked Blitz into its jaws, swallowing him up and dashing him to pieces.

At last, Stormy ran out of stamina. He had vented out all of his anger, but as he looked around at the torn up landscape, he wasn't so sure it was worth it.

Luckily, the house had been saved, though a few shingles were missing from the roof, and the garden was a mess. But what really struck Stormy were his parents. They lay, strewn to pieces, a few inches away from each other.

Stormy looked down at the bloodied mess of what was left of his father and mother and began to tear up as he exhaled hysterically.

"Wha... What have I done?"

He fell to his knees in between his parents' bodies and sobbed uncontrollably. It was then that he heard sirens. The police! No, no, he had to get out of there, else they might take him away. What would happen to his sisters? Worse yet, what would happen to him.

He didn't care. He just kept sobbing, kept weeping on the ground. Maybe no pony would know it was him?

A gruff stallion approached Stormy. "Mr. Dash, I'm going to have to ask you to step away--"

"NO! Don't you touch them!" Stormy screamed.

"Sir, we have to take them in for--"

"No! No, no, no, no, NO!" Stormy refused to move away from the monstrosity he had committed. No pony could know.