When she bid the weather team to bring “some reservists” at the end of last day’s work, Snowdrop had expected a dozen of them, two at most.

The warehouse was so full that she could not tell if her old team was among the crowd.

Snowdrop wore Princess Luna’s gift now. It was a bodysuit made of a silky material, thin yet strong. It carried some kind of enchantment, that was for sure; she could feel every pressure change, every puff of air, every movement in the room. She could almost make out the shape of the nearest pony’s mane.

“Who are you?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.

“I am Private Plover Wing, ma’am!”

Snowdrop pulled her head back, her eyes widened in surprise. A muffled giggle went around the room.

“Plover wing,” she said patiently. “Please use your real voice. This is very unprofessional of you.”

“This is my real voice, ma’am,” he said, imitating an old mare. “I am very sensitive about it, and you are being very unprofessional… ahem, excuse me… you are being very unprofessional by making fun of it!”

He cleared his throat noisily once again. The others were rocking back and forth with puffed cheeks and bulging eyes.

“He’s right, Stormmaster!” Another young stallion called out. He was sitting down and plugging his nose with both front hooves. “Plover’s very sensitive about his voice!”

Meanwhile Plover had finally cleared something out of his throat. He raised his head.

Snowdrop moved just in time. The ball of phlegm whizzed by her face, landing harmlessly on the cloud floor.

“Hey, that’s enough!”

And just like that the room exploded. The whole weather team had showed up after all, but the battle lines were anything but clear. It seemed that everyone had decided to grapple the nearest pony and go from there. Soon they were all flying. A chain of four mares passed overhead, one of them with block of ice haphazardly conjured from a chunk of wall.

“Stop fighting!” Snowdrop screamed, taking flight herself.

Two pairs of hooves grabbed her from below, pulling her to the cloud floor. She ducked to one side, and heard a distinctive metal clink when a hoof struck the floor.

“No. HORSESHOES!”

Snowdrop pushed her wings through the cloud beneath her back. It moved to her will, and all five feet of it opened up like a great mouth. Her attackers screamed as they found themselves suddenly in freefall.

Snowdrop grabbed them around the neck and aimed for the ground. After three mighty strokes of her wings she was plummeting at a good speed. The screams turned from surprise to fear. Her attackers flapped their wings and struggled frantically, but Snowdrop held them tight. Several layers of the city zoomed by.

A small cloud came up to meet her. She waited until it was no more than three metres away before reversing her wings. Giving the two ponies one last push, she released them.

They hit the cloud with a bang.

“Like popping a giant paper bag,” Squall Line would later reflect.

Only an inch of cloud remained, sagging under the weight of two stunned ponies. Overhead all was silent. Snowdrop flew back towards the warehouse atop the city at a leisurely pace.

“Get them to a doctor,” she said to the first group of ponies she passed. “You can all go home.”

The warehouse was full of holes from ponies conjuring ice weapons from its walls and floor. It was more than half gone; with this much damage a building made of anything but cloud would have toppled over from its own weight.

Snowdrop spent two hours gathering clouds from outside the city. The weather team had tried to help her, but she sent all of them home. The roadbuilding project could wait one more day; it already had ten years under its belt.

She had at least two houses’ worth of clouds when she returned to the warehouse, taking a very low route to avoid gawkers. Somepony was waiting for her when she lifted the cloud pile up to the warehouse.

“Snowdrop!” Alpine Breeze said as she hurried over to help move the cloud. “Are you alright? I heard about what happened…”

“I’m fine, ma’am,” Snowdrop said without turning to face her.

“Rest assured, I have already taken Plover Wing and his friends off the active reserves,” Alpine Breeze continued, following Snowdrop with a sizable chunk of cloud. “They will be cleaning latrines for a long, long time. What they did was unacceptable, and completely against their training. I am so sorry that you ended up with those soldiers, and I promise it will never happen again.”

“That’s good to hear,” Snowdrop said flatly, patting down the first refilled hole.

“Snowdrop,” Alpine Breeze said in a less formal tone. “I don’t know you very well, but it looks like we will be working closer with each other than either of us realized. So please, can we talk for a little while?”

Snowdrop bit her lip to hold back her immediate response.

“Work while you talk,” she sighed as she picked out another chunk of cloud. “I would ask your soldiers to do this, but I don’t think I can trust them to build a usable outhouse.”

Alpine Breeze forced herself to laugh.

“They’re not as bad as you think, ma’am,” she said. Judging from her muffled voice she was patching the roof. “They’re a rough bunch, but they’re obedient.”

“Don’t call me ma’am,” Snowdrop said.

“Don’t call me ma’am,” Alpine Breeze countered. “Snowdrop, you command my soldiers when they’re not off fighting, and that’s a lot of the time. I’m not your commander, and I never was. And after what happened today, you don’t owe me any respect either. How about you just call me Breeze?”

“I can do that,” Snowdrop said. “I respect you still, Breeze, though I now wonder at the quality of your troops.”

“It’s the transition,” Breeze said. “You are not an army officer, and I had not spoken with them about this specifically. The princess has made her decree, but her word alone means little, especially in this city. Even if it had been Princess Celestia, you would still face some resistance.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Snowdrop said defensively. “Is one princess not the same as the other? They are equals, or has that changed in recent years?”

“They were never equal,” Breeze said. “Can you read by the light of the moon like the light of the sun? Can stars light your work?”

“I can, and yes,” Snowdrop said defiantly. “What are you getting at, Breeze?”

Breeze sighed. She dropped down through the last hole in the roof, landing lightly on the cloud and poking her face through the wall in front of Snowdrop. “I want to help you, Snowdrop.

“My soldiers do not yet respect your authority, and it will take some time for them to accept such a big change. I can scream at them all day and night, and still you will encounter resistance. So here is my plan: I will directly supervise my soldiers. Whatever needs to get done, you tell me. It’ll only be a temporary thing, until they get used to working for you. Then I’ll never interfere again.”

“Really,” Snowdrop said. She was starting to hear her own heartbeat. “How long will it take, do you think? A week? A month?

“These soldiers of yours need to be broken in, and I plan to do just that. I am their commander now, not you. You were not born here, and you do not care about this city. For years you had the entire Cloudsdale Reserve under your hoof, and what did you do with them? You sent them on patrols, you posted guards on the border, and you put them into the same training programs over and over again, just so the city could fall apart. The weather team has been doing almost all the road work for as long as I can remember. That was never our job, but we were the only ones left after pegasi started signing up to fight for Canterlot. No, I do not need your help unless it is to fix those holes in the roof.”

The stunned silence that followed stretched on long enough for Snowdrop to second guess herself.

“I… I never knew,” Alpine Breeze said in a trembling voice. “Snowdrop… do you really mean that? This is not like you at all! I have the utmost respect for this city, but as a part of Equestria’s military I have other things to worry about in addition to roads and schools. Surely you can understand that! Canterlot needs guards! The borders need protecting! Pegasi can travel far and fast, and most of the pegasi guard are here in Cloudsdale! I wish you could see it from my side.”

“I don’t see anything, remember?” Snowdrop retorted. “Thank you for your offer, but I have to refuse. Now will you please let me get back to work?”

Alpine Breeze said nothing else. Snowdrop went back to patching the wall, taking care to keep her eyes pointed exactly forward. It was a very effective cue that she should be left alone.

Alpine Breeze flew away on noisy wings. Snowdrop waited until she was sure that nopony remained on the street before sitting down and burying her face in her hooves.

It must have been very late when Snowdrop returned home cold and exhausted. The seams of her suit were digging grooves in her skin. She threw it aside as soon as she closed the door.

Sunshower sprang into the air when Snowdrop walked by. He had built a large couch in the living room, but only pretended to sleep.

“Mommy!” Wintergreen said, hopping onto the floor. His mane was a mess, and his face was raw. He jumped onto Snowdrop and held on tight.

“Winter, what’s wrong?” Snowdrop asked tiredly, shooting a disapproving glance at Sunshower.

“It’s nothing,” Sunshower answered, landing beside Snowdrop and taking the colt off her back. “What happened? You don’t look well.”

She took a deep breath and faked a smile.

“Winter,” she said. “It’s way past your bedtime. Go to your room. I’m really tired.”

She kissed the colt on the forehead. He lingered for a moment, until his father nudged him to go. Snowdrop waited until she heard the puff of air from the cloud mattress. Then she collapsed on the soft floor, gasping and trembling.

Sunshower piled blankets on her and helped her onto the couch. It was big enough to be a bed, and soft enough too. He held her tight and whispered into her ear.

“Those… animals!” Snowdrop sobbed. “Damn Equestria! Damn Celestia! All those pegasi… on the border! For what?! Let our cities fall to ruin!”

She knew that Wintergreen was listening. So be it. Let him hear it all.

“I’ll break them,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll break them if it’s the last thing I do. They do not respect me, but they’ll learn to fear me yet. They will fear me more than anything from the border.”

But for now it was only talk. Snowdrop slept like a rock, with Sunshower’s neck draped over her shoulder and his hooves holding her tight. In his bedroom Wintergreen cried alone, clutching tight to his bunched up blanket.

Author's Note

Not that happy with this chapter, but as long as it's not published I just can't move on. Definitely need to come back to this.