Cirrus, Flight Deck, Equestria
2 Years Before the Shadowbolt/Wonderbolt War

All along the return trip to the Cirrus, Rat remained silent as he pondered the problem of the traitor. Bane was right; the traitor deserved to suffer for everything they’d done, and then some. The problem was that this betrayal would hurt a group that had been like family to the Rat Pack, and while Rat knew that they would agree that it was the right action eventually, it was not going to ease their pain. Still, Bane had been right; this traitor was willing to sell out every one of them, and that was unforgivable.

“Well, you actually came back, scum?” sneered Blade as they landed on the flight deck. “So, are you going to report your failure to Nightshade now, or did you want a minute to get your affairs in order?”

Rat pushed Blade aside as Tank snarled at the older stallion, silencing any protest. Blade skulked away, clearly to inform Nightshade of the Pack’s return. Rat continued his march to the traitor. They’d still be in the medbay with their crew. It was unfortunate, but it couldn’t be helped. They deserved to know the truth as soon as the news broke. Glancing to his left, Rat could see that Sin and Shadow had fallen in line with the Pack as they moved to arrest the traitor. Moon and Descent followed along the right.

The door to the Medbay slammed open with a clattering clang as Rat kicked his way in. Impulse yelped and fell off the nearby bench, his angry protest dying on his lips as he ducked away under the aura of Rat’s glare. Whatever Matchstick said fell on deaf ears as Rat pushed past him. Goblin frowned as Rat moved to the other side of his bed. The traitor looked up just in time for Rat to strike them to the ground with a quick sucker punch.

“Banshee, I hereby accuse you of breaking the Code,” snarled Rat as Sin and Moon hauled the mare to her hooves. “In betraying the Cirrus to her enemies, you will now face Tribunal.”

“You’re making a mistake…” spat Banshee.

“I wish I was…” snarled Rat. “May your Tribunal Jury be merciful, for I will not…”

Cirrus, Captain’s Office, Equestria
2 Years Before the Shadowbolt/Wonderbolt War

“And with the selection of Tag 9810922A, this Tribunal Jury has been selected,” announced Starry Skies. “The rest of y’all can go fuck off!”

In spite of the jeers and middle feathers that Starry’s response prompted, the rest of the Shadowbolts gathered made their way out of the room.

“Why am I even up here… I have better things to do than listen to this bullshit…” groused Patch as she stomped through the dispersing crowd up to the ‘planning table’ where the other unlucky chosen were gathered.

“You’ve got goggles, don’t you?” smirked Sin as he settled into his chair. “Goggles got a tag number, and yours came up.”

“I’ll shove your goggles so far up your, ass you’ll puke the lenses,” retorted Patch, her expression promising the next time the stallion had need of her services, he would not find the experience comfortable.

“Now, now, little Patch, you are a Shadowbolt, are you not?” chided Curse with a smile. “Like your adopted father before you, we all have our duty to uphold. Even if we only serve within the walls of the Cirrus…”

“I’d rather deal with Hawk than listen to this bitchfest,” she muttered under her breath, but found a chair and placed herself in it, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring out at the gathering.

The rest of the jury, drawn by lots from a tumbler based on numbers on goggle tags and composed of Prose, Ruin, Moon, and Cloak, were gathered around the table loosely while Nightshade presided at her desk. Rat, as the Accuser, stood in front of the desk on Nightshade’s right while Banshee stood opposite, guarded by Blade and Void.

“We shall now begin the Tribunal for Banshee, who stands accused of betraying her Brothers and Sisters of the Cirrus and the Code we all serve,” declared Nightshade. “The Accuser may begin.”

“Jury of the Tribunal, by the knowing act of working with our enemies at Hekate Torch Bearers, Banshee has deliberately, by direct and indirect action, attempted to kill every last one of us!” began Rat. “These documents detail the correspondence between HTB General Firebrand and the accused, promising the wreck of the Cirrus in exchange for a comfortable desk job and an obscene signing bonus! Every single failed operation in the last few months can be attributed to Banshee’s direct action! The evidence is irrefutable! The crime is unforgivable! The punishment must be absolute!”

Rat stepped back and took his seat without another word. Part of him wondered what sort of justification Banshee would offer, but part of him scoffed at the idea that there could be any justification, no matter how crazy, for Banshee’s actions.

“The Accuser has finished,” declared Nightshade. “The Accused may now defend their actions.”

“I did not work to bring down the Code…” began Banshee. “I was trying to save it… from a lie!”

“And what lie would that be?”

“The lie that you are the rightful Captain!” sneered Banshee.

The jury burst into an uproar, only to be silenced by the Captain’s right hoof.

“Were this not a Tribunal, I would rip out your tongue for daring to say that…” replied Nightshade slowly. “As it stands, you may continue with your defense…”

“Nightshade used Enhancement Magic to increase her strength and blinded Dante with Illusion Magic so that he would not defend against her blow!” explained Banshee. “I could see the energy haze over Dante’s eyes and around Nightshade herself! How else could we explain Dante’s swift fall?!”

“I knew that no Shadowbolt could stand against such sorcery!” spat Banshee. “And why wouldn’t our ‘illustrious leader’ use such tricks to stand on top?! The only option was to bring her down! Yes, I worked with Firebrand, but only to cauterize the festering wound that Nightshade was upon us! I deliberately lied about our strength and timed this when most everyone would be away! Only Nightshade and the other traitors to the Code would have been slaughtered! We’d have then retaken the Cirrus and elected a new leader the right way! The Way set forth by the Code! The Code that she sits in defiance of!”

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of Banshee’s gasping breaths as she came down from her insane rant. Rat honestly didn’t know how to rebut something so… insane. Fortunately, he didn’t have to, as one stallion made the only rational response to something so insane. Curse laughed as he applauded slowly.

“A wondrous and fanciful tale, but I’m afraid that it’s just that: a tale told by the imaginative ravings of a madmare…” chuckled Curse. “A pegasus casting spells like some coneheaded windbag? Quite impossible. I would sooner believe a Wonderbolt to be an Alicorn…”

“PRINCESS WONDERDOLT, INDEED!” cackled Ruin. “I’LL EAT MY GOGGLES IF I SEE THAT!”

“With ketchup or mustard?” asked Cloak.

“Ketchup,” Prose chuckled, “closest thing he’ll get to being the bloodsucker we know he is.”

“You make jokes when our leader was betrayed and murdered?!” shrieked Banshee.

“Dante was not the young stallion he used to be, Banshee,” Prose said with a frown, “he was slowing down, we all saw it. And your claims are extraordinary, and quite hard to prove. How do we know this isn’t another lie to delay punishment or justify your actions?”

“I saw it with my own eyes!” snapped Banshee. “Ask the Lunatic! He’ll have records!”

“The only lunatic I see is the one who couldn’t hold a diagram right…” snarled Patch, her voice cracking like a whip, eyes flashing dangerously with green fire.

“OOOH! SNAP!” Ruin cackled.

“And what color was the energy haze that you saw?” asked Prose.

“Pink! A horrible, evil Pink-” began Banshee.

Curse burst out into a full-blown laugh.

“Are you quite serious?!” chortled Curse as he wiped a tear from his eye. “Your evidence is that you saw a pretty pink light during the fight and then your beloved Dante lost the fight?! I expect that you’d have us believe the Mad King Sombra was a justified hero in his folly as well?!”

“Rat! Please!” begged Banshee. “You have to know! It just doesn’t make sense! Dante couldn’t have fallen without outside interference! I know I saw her use magic! She broke the Code first!”

“So you would sell out your family just to have your petty revenge?” countered Rat quietly, with a sharp edge of malice. “Did Limpet break the code? Did Crosswire? Did Krieg? Oracle won’t be getting over losing her ‘crazy big brother’ anytime soon. I don’t fucking care what you think you saw; you betrayed everything that Dante stood for. You betrayed the Code and everything that it means to be a Shadowbolt: Have the decency to die like one...”

“Jury, how do you find the Accused?” asked Nightshade.

Banshee’s fate was decided in two minutes of discussion. Curse smiled cruelly. Rat blinked in shock, rubbing his eyes. A moment of doubt now slipped into his mind.

“We find the Accused guilty of violating the code and endangering, or otherwise killing by proxy, her fellow Shadowbolts,” Prose intoned softly, a cold edge to his tone and eyes.

“The punishment for which is death, and shall be carried out immediately…” stated Nightshade, gesturing briefly to Void and Blade.

“No...NO!” screamed Banshee as she was dragged away. “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO BURN! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”

Rat flinched briefly and looked away. The doubt he felt continued to grow, prompted on by a faint memory. He couldn’t be sure, but when the verdict came down, Rat swore he saw a flash of neon pink...

Cirrus, Flight Deck, Equestria
2 Years Before the Shadowbolt/Wonderbolt War

Rat frowned as the jeering crowd gathered by the railing. Matchstick was the only one of his crew in attendance, and yet he seemed troubled to be there. Of his original crew, only Goblin and Inque would remain once Banshee’s sentence was carried out. Sure, there were trainees like Oracle, Impulse, and Venom to name a few, but Rat would miss Krieg screaming about being “conductor of the poop train”.

At last, the moment came for the traitor to meet her fate. Banshee continued to thrash and scream incoherently as she was forced down the gangplank.

“Brothers and Sisters of the Open Sky, this pitiful wretch before me has broken our Code, with the intent to betray and murder you all!” began Nightshade. “We shall grant her a courtesy better than she deserves and grant her a few last words…”

“Please!” begged Banshee. “Just break my neck! Slit my throat! Gut me alive! Stab me in the fucking back! Just please don’t do this!”

Nightshade leaned in swiftly, seizing Banshee’s wings and hissing in her ear.

“May you find mercy in the Open Sky…” sneered Nightshade. “…before the Ground claims you.”

In a single, swift motion, Nightshade pulled and rotated Banshee’s wings, dislocating the joints and breaking the bones with a sickeningly fleshy snap. The traitor’s scream echoed across the open sky as Nightshade kicked Banshee off the edge of the Flight Deck. Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds, Banshee screamed her last, fading into the clouds below. At forty seconds, the scream stopped short. Rat sighed at Banshee’s misfortune. She’d been conscious the whole way down; a cruel fate, but probably better than she deserved.

As the crowd dispersed, Rat frowned at Curse’s cocky sneer, staring down at where Banshee fell victoriously. Another flash of pink caught Rat’s eye. Despite betraying her family, Banshee was right: There was something rotten going on. He flipped on his Comm unit.

“Hox, I want you to look into Banshee’s claims,” whispered Rat. “Check your Hummingbird records, frame by frame if you have to. She may have tried to sell us out, but something isn’t sitting right with me. We’ll meet back in the Pit to go over it.”

Cirrus, The Pit, Equestria
2 Years Before the Shadowbolt/Wonderbolt War

“...Well? What did you find?” asked Rat warily.

Hoxton frowned heavily, placing a marked tape cassette into the reader. The screen crackled to life as the reader scanned to the correct timecode.

“Well… Banshee wasn’t wrong about what she saw, but it gets… complicated...” sighed Hoxton.

“Show us,” demanded Rat.

With only a moment’s hesitation, Hoxton played the tape, And Dante and Nightshade appeared in living color, vibrant as the day the fight occurred. The moment the two moved to strike played out over the next five minutes in slow motion, faster than anyone beside Impulse could have processed at the time. A brilliant pink glow emerged from Nightshade’s eyes, undeniable and exactly as Banshee had described, and soon engulfed Nightshade’s hoof as it prepared to strike. Dante’s hooves were set to block the clumsy blow, but as the hoof approached, the pink glow shifted his hooves almost imperceptibly out of the way, allowing Nightshade’s amplified strike to hit Dante’s heart directly. The glow lasted for three tenths of a second, and could have been easily dismissed as a trick of the light. Hoxton rewound the tape and then exchanged it for a totally different tape.

“...OK, so the traitor was telling the truth. How is that complicated?” snapped Hawk as he gestured at the screen. “We just broadcast this shit to Descent, and-”

“Keep watching…”

The tape whirred to live and then…

“Duh-buh-duh-buh-duhm! Duh-m doo-doo, duh-m doo-doo… Duh-m doo-doo duhm-duhm doo-doo! BAAO doo-doo, BAAO doo-doo… BAO doo-doo BAO-BAO doo-doo- HEEEEEEEY-ey-ey! HEEEEEY-ey-ey!” sang Cloak off-key as he danced a sort of pelvic-thrusting shuffle from the shower while singing into a toilet brush. “WHAT’S-”

“FUCKING HELL, HOX!” shouted Hawk as he covered his eyes. “WE DIDN’T NEED TO SEE THAT!”

“Oi! Don’t take that tone with me, ya wanker!” snapped Hox as he ejected the tape. “Compared to the shite I’ve had to watch, that’s pretty low on the list! I mean, seriously! You wouldn’t believe how much shagging happens in the training rooms late at night-”

“Focus, please!” interjected Rat.

“Right… Sorry…” flinched Hoxton as he played the correct tape.

A new sequence showed Nightshade alone in her new office. She moved rigidly toward her desk, a few errant twitches and shakes being the only sign that betrayed her actual feelings. She moved to sit at the desk, tremors moving through her limbs before her face twisted into a rictus of pain.

“Fuck…” whispered Nightshade, barely more than a hiss, before she flipped the desk and screamed. “FUCK!”

Nightshade stumbled, hissing in pain and massaging her arm. “What the fuck was that?! Why- …Why did we do that?! What was so important that we had to make Dante suffer?! And now we’re in charge?! What the fucking hell?! Why?! WHY ARE WE IN CHARGE?!”

Nightshade threw a bottle from off the shelf at the overturned desk. She then fell to her knees and wept.

“Descent… I don’t know what to do…” sobbed Nightshade. “Why’d you have to get yourself broken like that? Dammit, you big oaf, I need you here… I can’t ask your whelp… He’d take advantage of my weakness in a heartbeat… I need you, dammit...”

“...Is there more we need?” asked Rat.

“Not really-”

“Then turn it off…”

“Rat?” asked Hoxton.

“Turn it off, Hox…” ordered Rat.

The tape ground to a stop. Silence filled the Pit. No one wanted to acknowledge that the mare they all feared was broken as she was. Or that Banshee had a legitimate reason for her accusations. Or that there was a larger set of wheels turning for reasons unknown. Cloak finally broke the silence.

“Orders, Boss?” asked Cloak.

“Hox…” sighed Rat. “Take those tapes and burn them.”

“…Have you lost your mind?!” asked Hawk. “This is a betrayal of the Code, a Code that you hold above all else! This cannot go unanswered-“

“And it won’t, but we need to take our time with this,” explained Rat. “If we’re taking this news poorly, how do you think the rest of the Cirrus is going to take it?”

At this, Hawk froze mid-objection and frowned. The Pack exchanged uncertain glances at Rat’s words. For however much Nightshade had exerted her control following the Challenge, her reign as Captain could hardly be called “secure”. The only things stopping an all-out schism were the Code and the traditions surrounding it. Clearly, as Banshee showed, there would be violent reprisals as a result of this knowledge.

“...So, what do we do, Boss?” asked Dagger.

“...We keep an eye on Nightshade,” replied Rat. “As long as her thoughts and actions are her own, it doesn’t matter how she got into the position of Captain.”

“...And what happens if her thoughts and actions don’t stay as her own?” asked Phantasm.

“...Then a Shadowbolt Civil War is inevitable, I suppose…” sighed Rat.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a frigging minute!” exclaimed Hawk. “You ‘suppose’? We’re leaving our asses to the wind on a supposition?”

“Yes, Hawk, we are, because that’s the best we’re going to get without our home ripping itself apart,” countered Rat. “I don’t like it either, but I find the alternative to be far worse. Besides, if there’s something out there that can control Nightshade, we’re all screwed anyway.”

“So you’re sure about this?” asked Arclight.

“No...I’m not…” replied Rat. “But it’s the only option we’ve got…”

Green Pastures, Cloak’s Front Porch, Equestria
50 Years After the Shadowbolt/Wonderbolt War

Cloak slumped back in his rocking chair, ghosts of memories finally overwhelming him to break from his story.

“...How could you?” demanded Kingfisher. “You knew that there were problems and you just ignored them entirely? How could you?”

“Quite easily, at the time, since a Shadowbolt Civil War would have killed so many of us for no reason,” smiled Cloak bitterly.

“It was Nightshade!” argued Kingfisher.

“And she was a Shadowbolt,” replied Cloak. “What do you want me to say? That we could have prevented the war entirely?”

“Yes! You could have!” snapped Kingfisher.

“And all it would have taken was the life of one Shadowbolt Captain?” frowned Cloak.

“Yes!” insisted Kingfisher.

“...Fine…” replied Cloak with an even expression as he drew a knife from a concealed sheathe in his armchair. “Kill Cold Snap. Right now.”

A deathly silence fell over the group. Kingfisher and Cold Snap stared at Cloak in disbelief. Cloak’s expression did not change. The wicked blade left Cloak’s hoof to flop on the table like a copy of the Canterlot Times, landing in front of Kingfisher with a dull thud.

“That’s not funny…” protested Kingfisher.

“No, it’s not,” agreed Cloak. “We must defend Equestria at all costs, right? Regardless of the threat, right? He’s the grandson of two Shadowbolts, the great-grandson of Descent himself, and the grandson of the Seaddle Mafia’s Capo. Who else could be a greater threat to Equestria’s future security?”

“But he hasn’t done anything!”

“But it’s not about what he’s done, is it? It’s about what he’s going to do-”

“How should I know that?! It hasn’t happened yet-”

“AND HOW COULD WE HAVE KNOWN WHAT NIGHTSHADE WAS GOING TO DO?!” howled Cloak, smashing the table beneath his hooves.

The only sound that broke the silence was Cloak’s heaving breaths as the stallion hyperventilated, standing as his hooves rested over the broken table. Cloak swallowed hard as his breathing returned to normal, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Hindsight does no good in this conversation,” replied Cloak. “Could we have changed the course of history in that moment? Yes, we could have. Could we have saved lives that would have later been lost? Yes, but at the cost of how many lives that would have otherwise lived? Who’s to say the war wouldn’t have been worse? I’m not going to go down that line of thought. Only madness lies there. I have lived for fifty years with the knowledge that we could have changed the war, and I will go to my grave with the doubts associated with that knowledge. But we made the choice to stay true to those we loved and cared about, and I will not apologize for that.”

“...I’m sorry, sir…” whispered Kingfisher. “That wasn’t fair-”

“Maybe not, but I can’t say that I haven’t had that doubt over the years, or even had that same argument with the other members of the Pack, surviving or otherwise…” mused Cloak. “Regardless, that’s enough for tonight. We’re nearing the end now: The war is just on the horizon. But for tonight, let’s get some rest. We’ll finish things up next time…”

To Be Concluded…
End of Arc 5

Author's Note

And that wraps up Arc 5! I gotta say that going forward, I think I'm going to do the chapter by chapter approach for Arc 6 rather than save it all at once. I can save the "Full-Arc-at-a-time" approach for future stories.

Speaking of which, I have not started writing that arc yet, but the details are fully outlined. For those of you who have read the Wonderverse stories by Calm Wind, you'll recognize the events in the background of the next arc. "We're in the Endgame now..."