Celestia Gambit

Celestia, co-ruler of Equestria and Princess of the Sun, carefully parted the waterfall curtain and peered out into the bar of the Thunderhead. As always the bar was gloomily; the black clouds made the place dim and it was only really properly lit by the occasional flash of lightning across the ceiling.

The Thunderhead was what the pegasi of Las Pegasus called a ‘crater’, i. e. what you got below a dive. It was a squat cloud building at the one end of the strip, built out of a permanently gloomily thunderstorm that seemed to match the predominate mood of its patrons.

One such patron sat slumped over the end of the bar. A fairly young opal coated mare, she sat in her own personal cloud of gloom, a row on empty glasses in front of her, and her amber mane lying messily around her head.

Celestia let the waterfall flow back and turned to the ponies in the back room. "That’s her?” She waved a hoof at the bar.

“Yep, that’s her,” an orange coated pegasus said from where she was lounging on a cloud with a drink. “The famous Lightning Dust”

“How long has she been here?”

Stormcloud, the owner and barpony for the Thunderhead, looked at the clock. “What day is it?”

“Wednesday”

“What month then.”

All the ponies in the room gave him painful glances; apparently a bad sense of humour was mandatory for running the Thunderhead.

“I think she came straight here when you threw her out of the academy, Spit,” the bar pony said. “She glided, in slumped down, ordered a rainbow ‘the hard way, hold the dust’, and she has not moved since. What did you say to her?”

Spitfire shrugged. “I did not think I was that harsh on her.”

“You did just chuck her out of her dream. Anypony is going to crash-land hard after that,” the bar pony added. The Thunderhead had seen a lot of ponies who were on the downside of their personal dream.

“She had just wrecked a balloon and nearly caused five ponies to fall to their deaths.” Spitfire stopped and looked thoughtful for a few moments. “Well, four ponies. I am sure that Fluttershy would have remembered she had wings eventually.”

Celestia turned to the fourth pegasus in the room, a very nondescript gray stallion. “Are you sure about her?” she asked him.

The pony nodded. “Absolutely,” he said, “ever since Spitfire told me about her we thought she would fit in nicely.”

Celestia knew the fourth pony only as ‘Snowflake,’ and she knew it was not the name his mother had called him. But Celestia had known him for many years now, and since he had proven his loyalty in many and varied ways, Celestia had not pressed him on the deception. The circumstances of their meeting had been -- to say the least -- odd, but since then he had come to be one of the ponies she relied on the most. His efforts had saved the kingdom of Equestria, and indeed the world, from more horrors than imaginable, but there would never be a statue or stained glass window of him or his friends anywhere. The very idea would horrify him.

“Snowflake, my little pony. She is brash. Impulsive. Reckless. And not good at team work.”

“Or to put it another way, Tia. She is resolute. Inventive, assertive, and independent. And while I agree she does not work well with a group of ponies -- but that is because team work involves going at the speed of the slowest pony, and she does not want to have to slow herself down to their level. She would never make a good soldier in the Guard or a cloud pusher, or probably not even a Wonderbolt. But give her a partner that can keep up with her, or is even better than her, and an impossible task and she is in her element. That is probably why Spitfire had her paired off with Rainbow Dash.”

Spitfire nodded. “That, and there was no way I was going to have either of those two lose thunderclouds with anypony else; the results would have been catastrophic. At least by putting them together they might be able to keep up -- and I would not have too many ponies crashing.”

“I still do not get why you made Rainbow the wingpony.”

“It was to help her learn about leadership.”

“Spit, how do you learn about leadership by being the wingpony?”

Celestia examined Snowflake. It was true that he did not know much about motivating ponies or team work -- his own particular skills did not lie in that area, and all the ponies that he worked with were, to say the least, self motivated. She did not think that he could be that stupid; maybe he was just testing Spitfire, that would be much more like him.

“By learning what it is like to be the one on the receiving end, of course. It is much easier to inspire ponies if you truly know what they are going through. I know I have explained this to you before, Snow, are you deliberately being dumb or have you taken one too many blows to the head?”

“So you think that you can work with Miss Dust?” Celestia dragged the conversation back around to the topic at hand before her two friends started on the insults for real.

“Oh yes.” The pony known as Snowflake waved a wing. “I think I have just the couple of ponies that can work with Miss Dust out there.”

“Are you sure that they will be able to keep up with her?”

“Tia, the question will not be whether they can keep up with her, but whether Miss Dust can keep up with Sunbeam and Lightning Bolt. They were part of the team responsible for that business on the Zebrcan border last year.”

“That was you lot?” Spitfire exclaimed. “Equestria Daily said it was caused by a rogue dragon.”

“And the Equestrian Inquirer said that Discord had escaped again. I think ‘The Sun and Moon’ said that it was caused by a creature from the stars that landed in a strange metal box -- they even had a picture of it on their cover. But no, that was teams thirteen and fifteen.”

“What where they trying to do?”

“Best you don’t know, Spit,” Celestia broke in, “let’s just say that they managed it and leave it at that.”

“Well, those are some inventive ponies you have over there at SISTER.”

“We try our best, Spit, we try.”

Celestia gently parted the waterfall and again looked out at the forlorn little pony.

Secret Intelligence Service Taskforce for Extraordinary Reconnaissance, S.I.S.T.E.R, was the name for the Princess’ special teams. An organisation that only showed up on the treasury reports as ‘operations team 34’, and who reported directly to the Princesses, SISTER used groups of ponies -- usually one of each type -- to get things done. Quickly, efficiently and usually without anypony knowing what, or more importantly who, had done it.

It still nagged at her that she needed an organisation like SISTER, but if there was one thing she had learnt over the many hundreds of years that she had been Princess of the kingdom of Equestria, it was that sometimes a subtle, and above all secret, hoof in the right place early on could prevent the need to employ all four legs later. Snowflake and his SISTER teams were expert at putting that hoof in just the right place.

She looked at ponies in the back room “Spit?” she asked.

“If he wants her, he is free to have her. Just don’t blame me if she ends up tearing up a cloud city or something worse.”

“Spit, my ponies never destroy entire cities. Unless I tell them to, of course,” Snowflake responded. “But I am sure SISTER 13 will be able to keep her in line, and I need a new pegasus. Firestorm got herself a little bit singed on that last run, and she will be out of it for a few weeks. That should give them enough time to show Miss Dust the works and get her properly trained.”

The way he had said trained made Celestia shudder. SISTER teams were not only the toughest, most aggressive ponies about, but they had one of the most rigorous training courses that ponies could devise -- and their final ‘test’ was enough to make any normal pony cry just thinking about it.

“You know your ponies best, Snow,” she said, “if you want her, go ahead and recruit her.”

Snowflake grinned, then stood up, stuck his head out of the back door and gave a shrill whistle. He waved a hoof towards the bar. “This should be interesting.”

The slender, light green coated stallion walked into the bar of the Thunderhead and took a seat next to where Lightning Dust was slumped. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything an opal hoof shot out, stopping just before his lips.

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘what’s a nice little filly like you doing in a dump like this’, then I will kick you so hard you will spend the next thousand year looking down on Equestria from the moon. Understand?” Lightning Dust said without raising her head.

The stallion reached up a hoof and gently pushed the offending limb away from his mouth. “I understand, hay, that is some attitude you have there.”

The mare leapt off her stool and spun around, wings out and waving a hoof under the nose of the stallion. “You are damn right it is,” she growled at him. “It is a damn ‘can do, push yourself to the limits’ attitude. A ‘the best is the best and the rest can eat my dust’ attitude. It’s the attitude of a winner and a record setter and what did she say--” Lightning Dust seemed to collapse in on herself at this point. “--it’s not about being the best.” She flared up again. “Of course it is about being the best, it’s always about being the best. You need to be the best and then some. That’s how you win.”

“I hear you, mare.” The stallion waved. “That’s what it is all about. It’s about being the best.”

“That’s right.” Lightning Dust’s wings settled back to her side. “That’s what it is all about; you need to be the best. You know how many academy records I broke?” The stallion shook his head. “Well neither do I, but it was a lot -- and do you know what she did? She threw me out. Me! Just because of some silly balloon.” The mare slumped back over the bar. “She threw me out,” she repeated quietly. “She threw me out of the Academy and out of the Wonderbolts, it... I...” she trailed off.

The stallion waved to the barpony, who wordlessly placed a new drink on the bar. A small glass full of a sticky red liquid. The air above the glass seemed to be hazy. This sort of behaviour was not unusual for the Thunderhead, and the barpony knew what to do.

“It was all I ever wanted,” Lightning Dust almost cried, “to be a Wonderbolt. To fly, to be part of the best flyers there are. And she threw me out.” She lifted her head, grabbed the glass in her mouth and tilted her head back, downing its contents in one go. “She threw me out of the one thing that mattered,” she continued, seemingly oblivious the effect of the rainbow chaser.

Despite himself the stallion was impressed. Whatever else this mare could do, it seemed that she could handle her drink. He waved a hoof to the bar keeper who wordlessly replaced the glass with a similar one, but orange. “But what does she know,” he sympathised as Lightning Dust reached out for the new drink.

“Yer, what does she know?”

“The Wonderbolts are not so great.”

“Yer, they suck. Them and their suckey suckness.” Lightning Dust downed the new drink.

“Yes, the Wonderbolts are not pony enough to handle a mare like Lightning Dust.”

“Yer, they can eat my dust... wait.” An opal head twisted sharply and two orange eyes gazed slightly unsteadily at him. “How do you know my name?”

The stallion was even more impressed; nearly halfway through her second rainbow and she could even pick up on that little anomaly.

“I know a lot about you, Lightning Dust,” he said pushing the next drink, green, that the barpony had poured, across the bar towards her. “I know that you won every race that you entered when you where in school. That you spent most of your final year at the speed track, and yet still scored an impressive ninety five percent on your final exams. That you hold the current record for clearing clouds in the west stratus range -- and you also hold the record for the most demerits at junior speedster’s camp. I also know that you were just kicked out of the Wonderbolts academy for causing a tornado that destroyed a balloon and nearly killing five ponies.”

“I would have caught them myself if that show off had not got to them first!” Lightning Dust interrupted.

“I have no doubt that you would have. You like to be the best and you like to win -- and most importantly you like to push your limits.”

“Yer, so what?” Lightning Dust prodded at him with a fore hoof, only missing by half a hoof width. “What do you want? I already told you I may be drunk,” She reached over and downed the next drink before continuing, “but I do not lift my tail for just any barfly pony.” A blue drink appeared in place of the empty glass.

“No, nothing of the sort. In fact I want to offer you a job.”

“A job!” Lightning Dust exclaimed. “Lishten whoever you are. Who are yous anyway?”

“Star Cloud.”

“Lishten Star Cloud. I do not need a job. What I need to do is get drunk and forget that I just got kicked out of the one thing that ever mattered to me.” She reached down grabbed the drink and swallowed it in one go.

“The Wonderbolts.” Star Cloud waved his hoof dismissively. “I thought you wanted to be the best.”

“The Wonderbolts are the best.” Lightning Dust rounded on him savagely. “They are the top flyers in Equestria, they are the most awesome ponies in all of...” she trailed off, her rainbowed brain trying to find a way to end that sentence.

“Bunch of butterflies.” Star Cloud waved a dismissive hoof again. “Prancing around stadiums doing tricks; they are nothing but a bunch of show ponies. I thought you wanted to push your limits to see what you could really do if you try.”

“What are you talking about?” Lightning Dust said, her eyes trying to look into his.

“I am talking about the chance to be part of something impressive. To work with ponies who do not know the meaning of the word ‘failed’. Ponies for who that little trick with the tornado is something you would do before breakfast, and who do sonic rainbooms while walking down the street.” He turned his head and fished a small card out of a pouch strapped round his neck. He placed the card on the bar and the barpony placed a purple drink on top of it.

“Finish your drinks. Get that soppiness about the Wonderbolts out of your system. Sober up and then follow those instructions. And see what life as a SISTER is like.” He stood up. “That is, if you think that you are going to be able to keep up.”

Lightning Dust watched the strange pony walk out of the Thunderhead bar, then turned back to look at the last drink on the counter.

That was a very odd pony, she thought as she tried to order her eyes to focus enough to pick up the last drink. What had he been on about? The Wonderbolts where the best, every pony knew that. There were only two ways to be a Wonderbolt; to go through the rigorous Wonderbolts academy and then through five years of flight training, or to be selected from amongst the ranks of the army. Only the best and bravest flyer ponies made it. They where the best of the best of the best -- it was what she had dreamed off.

...and what I will not have, she thought glumly as she grabbed the drink and downed it in one. The harsh taste to the end of a rainbow burnt her throat.

She dropped the glass back on the bar and a nagging thought crossed her mind. That strange pony had not paid for his drinks. The Thunderhead was not the sort of place where you ran up a bar tab. A sign hoof tacked to a particularly back cloud hovering above the bar read: ‘do not ask for credit as lightning bolts ALWAYS hurt’.

“Barpony,” she called out a little unsteadily. The barpony wandered over to her. “What do I owe you for the drinks?” she waved a hoof at the line of empty glasses.

The barpony flicked his wings dismissively. “On the cloud,” he said, “Star Cloud is a friend of Snowflake’s, and I still owe Snow my skin. The least I can do is sub him a few rainbows.” He walked over to the other end of the bar and left Lightning Dust pondering that. She looked down at the small square of white card sitting on the brown of the bar top. She bent her head low and tried to read what it said.

‘113 High Cloud Way, Las Pegasus,’ was printed at the top. Underneath in rough mouth scrawl was: ‘knock three times and say that Snowflake wants to see you.’ She picked it up in her hooves and turned it over; there was more mouth scrawl on the other side. ‘Trust me, you will not regret it. And you have a nice flank.” There was a scrawled picture of a star peeking over a cloud next to that. Lightning Dust picked up the card, hopped off the bar stool, and made her way as steadily as she could towards the door.

Like the pegasus had said, it sounded like fun -- and Lightning Dust had never been one to resist a challenge. She reached the exit, walked though the waterfall that served as a door, then spread her wings and leapt into the sky.

Anyway, she thought as she set off to find High Cloud Way, that stallion had a nice flank too.