Awe

by Impossible Numbers

Rating: everyone
Tags: Drama, Private Pansy, Commander Hurricane, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Chancellor Puddinghead, Dark
Length: 6017

Nowadays, “awesome” is such an overused, weakened word. Not in the old days. Back then, it used to be the province of pegasi. Of the lords and ladies of the heavens. Of thunder and lightning. Of life and death. Of gods.

Commander Hurricane is the latest in a long line of pegasus commanders, in charge of the Pegasus Empire and determined to protect its citizens from threats. She will never break ranks. She will hold the line. Officially.

But when the threat is an eccentric revolutionary who talks nonsense, and who fights with ideas rather than with physical weapons, what arsenal does she herself possess to combat them? The power of the storm. Nature at her beck and call. Destruction worthy of divine wrath. Nothing less than godlike power to put the commoners in their place.

She doesn't think it will be enough. And secretly, part of her doesn't want it to be.

Published 2020-02-02 16:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-02-02 16:50:01 UTC

To Rage Against The Heavens

The dark clouds, menacingly heavy, threatening to drop like cursed mountains onto the land below – suddenly flashed their anger, roared across the ears with rage, shook the bones and teeth of the cowering earth ponies, then slinking, predatory, as though bored of the kill, left them all whilst rumbling and growling in divine irritation…

The message was clear: Do. Not. Mess. With. Pegasi.

Commander Hurricane nodded to Captain Ironhead, who swooped round and led his squadron one more time through the anvil of cumulonimbus. They would hammer the earth ponies until the message sank in.

It wasn’t that she got any particular pleasure out of the exercise. Hurricane never trusted sadists. They made the worst soldiers. More interested in attacking civilians, far too keen to rack up casualties, and always looking for excuses and escape routes to avoid the more dangerous parts of the frontline.

The old commanders would have tutted. Sadists were usually just mercenaries. Mercenaries were expendable, after all, so it was far, far better to sacrifice them for the greater good. Well, let them tut. Hurricane wanted ponies she could trust.

Far below her cloud lookout post – which itself was a lone speck of dust next to the mass of storm – she saw the earth ponies fleeing into their homes. Even the bravest ones were taking no chances, it seemed.

Good. She had no interest in casualties. She wanted them to see reason. But if one shook its hoof and shouted challenges at the heavens, at her pegasi, at her, then the Pegasus Code insisted she respond. Violently.

One pony did look like she was going to try. Hurricane squinted. Oh, that one. She was getting to be a problem, all right.

Hurricane spread her wings and twitched and jerked them. Wings were better than flags – they were easier to control in a freak gust, they were always on a pegasus, and they could bend and stretch more flexibly.

Ironhead must have got the message because he broke off from his current arc and sent the squad shooting up for a new ascent. More time to gather speed.

Then Hurricane watched the figure below. What was her name, now? She knew the coat colours, and the face, but earth pony names never stuck.

If it was a fight she wanted, then she’d get it.

A little smugness crept into that thought. Hurricane glared at it suspiciously.

You fought because you had to, and you had to because if you weren’t ready to fight, the enemy was more than ready to fight you. There was talk of earth ponies testing out new irrigation systems, trying to cut out the weather duties of the pegasi… and so cut out any reason to take the flying weather ponies seriously. We don’t need your rainclouds, they’d insist. We can water our crops ourselves.

And the commander had to reply, Is that so…?

Hurricane narrowed her eyes as Ironhead swerved round for the next charge. The black cloud in turn watched the ponies below, like a dark god inspecting the insects.

Puddinghead! That was the name!

The earth ponies were experimenting, and it was all her fault!

Hurricane bent her legs slightly, wings outstretched. This time, for a purpose much more straightforward than semaphore.

The weird thing was that the earth ponies hadn’t thought up the idea themselves. They’d pinched it off the pegasi, from long ago. Actually, it wasn’t that weird. Earth ponies had rocks for brains. They couldn’t fart and chew cud at the same time.

All the same, even a tribe as dull as cows could pick things up sooner or later. Like diseases.

The idea was called “democracy”.

Hurricane judged Ironhead’s squad as it collided with the cloud.

In protest at this tiny bite, the storm rumbled and shook the air around it and threatened to erupt so noisily that it was easy to think it had already exploded, and then the thunder came.

What looked like a tiny static spark from the cloud sawed the air up. Lightning insulted the air so viciously that everything vanished in white shock – just for a second – and then came back, staggering. Then the thunder followed. Screams, sirens, shots, and sounds too deadly for normal ears to survive: the god of storms sent out a pulse to crush everything around it. Gravity, weight, and mass ran right through them. Even Hurricane, veteran of many a lightning strike, felt for a moment – as it passed right through her too – the reminder that she was so much mush and soap on the great storm of nature, all too easy to pop with a careless wave.

Far below, Puddinghead cowered for a moment. Hurricane saw her shrink where she stood.

Then Hurricane braced herself, threw her weight forwards, and flapped down, into the shadow.

“Democracy”… it sounded like something Private Pansy would come up with. But there had always been pegasi – cowards, pacifists, conscientious objectors: they were all the same – who thought things like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had a say in things?”

Nonsense! Heresy! Insubordination!

How would an army even work with a “democracy”? Hoof soldiers listened to officers, who listened to the lieutenant commanders, who listened to the commander herself, the head of the entire Pegasus Empire. Pegasi did what needed to be done, not whatever the heck they wanted. So hoof soldiers did what they were told, to win the battles to win the war. If they were asked their opinion, they’d say stuff like, “Now you mention it, I don’t think I want to go up against a bunch of pointy spears, thanks. And how come you’re all in the warm while we’re fighting in snowy fields, anyway?”

As soon as hoof soldiers started thinking like commanders, they became bad at both jobs.

Worse, an army that thought too much would act too little. They’d be sitting ducks. Hurricane had no intention of being in charge of ducks. She wanted hawks, eagles, falcons, birds of prey. Not things that quacked a lot and ducked down at the first sign of trouble.

They didn’t worry about trouble! They WERE trouble!

So when the next round of thunder burst over their heads, Hurricane dived as low as she dared. She skimmed over thatched rooftops, weaved between brick chimney stacks, and swooped right down to the green square and swept Puddinghead aside with a burst of flaps before rising and vanishing over the village.

And now earth ponies were trying this “democracy” nonsense! They thought they were smart enough to tell her what to do? To try so-called clever ideas and insult her tribe with jeers and taunts? Not in her lifetime!

Hurricane curved round, noticing Ironhead rally for another attack, and saw Puddinghead had tumbled head-over-hooves into a drinking trough.

Was she moving? She hadn’t meant to hit Puddinghead that hard…

To her relief, Puddinghead rolled over and shot up to her hooves. Phew. Then again, earth ponies were tough as boulders. Puddinghead was the worst of them, like a boulder that bounced back.

Hurricane landed next to her, knees buckling slightly to brace the weight of her own armour. Overhead, the cloud rumbled thoughtfully.

Mud caked Puddinghead, but bright defiance poured out of her eyes like scalding hot water. Privately, Hurricane thanked herself for keeping her distance.

Instead, she stood taller, to compensate.

“I’d go inside, ‘Chancellor’.” Hurricane spat the word. “Because next time, I won’t miss.”

“I’ll decide whether I go inside or come out!” cried Puddinghead over the fresh roar of wind – a nice touch from Ironhead there. “A chancellor doesn’t listen to bullies, except to tell them where they can stick it!”

Hurricane bared her teeth, always a fallback weapon should a pegasus run out of options. Or patience.

“What do you hope to achieve, civilian?” she shouted. “You can barely stand still without making yourself look stupid!”

Puddinghead’s hat, never exactly built for roughing it in the first place, slid off her head. It landed with a splat.

Puddinghead glared down at it, then up at Hurricane. “It took me ages to bake that hat!”

“I order you to get back inside!” shouted Hurricane. “Now! Before the next lightning bolt bakes you!”

“Shan’t,” said Puddinghead huffily.

Hurricane’s wing flapped out another signal for Ironhead far above. She didn’t even check if he’d received it. The arrogance of this… this… mud-for-brains!

“Give us the food we’re due,” she demanded, “or we’ll come and take it.”

“Then we’ll stop making some for you.”

“Then we’ll come and take yours!”

Puddinghead’s sneer didn’t quite work under the half-mask of mud still stuck to it. “What, the big strong commander has to throw a temper tantrum to get her way?”

“How dare y–!”

Then Hurricane checked herself. She shouldn’t be acting like this. Much as she’d rather eat hot coals than admit it, Puddinghead had a point. Temper tantrums didn’t look good in a commander. The lieutenant commanders might talk. Talk might lead to… reconsidered options. In plain speak, a commander who didn’t act like a commander pretty soon found she wasn’t a commander anymore.

She could see all this in Puddinghead’s smug eye. So the earth ponies had been talking to pegasus insiders. Traitors in her ranks?

“Too slow, punchy-puncherton! The revolution’s begun!” Puddinghead punched the air with her hoof. Overhead, the thunder cloud hovered, completely immune to such arrogance. Yet if anything, Puddinghead bounced where she stood, more emboldened and sneering with each lack of reaction. “You thought we were just stupid farmers you could push around and tell what to do? Well, now we’re organized. Now we’re thinking.”

“You can’t think! If you could think, you’d know we can fly and you can’t and we have the high ground!” Hurricane gestured at her own tiny white cloud on the edge of the storm. “We make the high ground! We always have the high ground!”

“Oh, you’ll believe an earth pony can fly!” crowed Puddinghead.

Hurricane opened her mouth to shout an insult, but then snapped it shut again. No. There might be a way. Hurricane was a hothead – even she’d admit it – but she wasn’t a fool. There had been reports coming in from her spies. Earth ponies studying birds, some even talking to them. Earth ponies teaching about something called “aerodynamics”. Earth ponies even trying to build machines with screws and flaps that could take them off the ground…

Impossible news. That wouldn’t get them anywhere.

But then there were pegasus traitors. She knew there were. Supposing the earth ponies weren’t acting alone?

A battle against earth ponies could still be tricky. A pegasus who got kicked would stay kicked, and nothing could scare a pegasus recruit more than an earth pony in close quarters combat. But a battle against earth ponies allied with other pegasi?

“You can’t fly!” insisted Hurricane. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“So I want us to do it,” said Puddinghead reasonably. “So that we do know.”

“That’s ridiculous! You were never meant to fly!”

“Meant by whom?”

Hurricane wished her mind had quickly sidestepped the theological discussion. But the doubt rose up anyway.

That sort of doubt was tricky enough among pegasi, some of whom could spend days just describing how the world worked and who was in charge of it all – or even if anyone was in charge at all and whether they were still stuck in primordial chaos. Imagine earth ponies forcing themselves on the issue! It could go anywhere with maniacs like them driving the herd.

Hurricane hated that kind of talk. It distracted a soldier. But earth ponies were taking to it like peregrines to a killing dive. They’d shot down to the depths of the subject so fast that Hurricane could only hope they’d smash themselves carelessly with the effort.

She settled for, “It’s never going to work!”

“Never say never!”

“Get back inside, or I’ll –” Hurricane cut herself off.

The thinking was getting to her. A soldier shouldn’t think in anything except battle strategies and tactics of the art of war. She shouldn’t hesitate. She should shout her threat and then have done with it. She shouldn’t stand around arguing like some pegasus philosopher. Fight! Do! Command!

Still, she couldn’t make the sentence work, in her head, and least of all in her mouth. She just worried over something that made no sense, but which kept getting in the way of her soldierly duties.

Puddinghead had seen it. Seen her weakness.

“It’s gotten to you too, ha!” she cried in triumph.

Ironhead must have improvised. Suddenly, a fresh downpour rained from the sky as millions of watery casualties, lives from all times and all places falling to join the great growing pool on the green, green grass of the earth. Within seconds, Hurricane felt her mane slick over her helmet and over her eyes with rain. Puddinghead opposite merely crowed, despite her clothes clinging so damply and shining so slickly that she looked, if anything, even more bedraggled than before.

“The Age of Puddinghead – got a nice ring to it, huh? – is just beginning!” Puddinghead pointed at Hurricane like an accusing demon. “Earth ponies will have their say! Let the silent voices cry over the thunder! Let our colours fly brighter than lightning! We make the food of the body, and now we’ll make the food of the mind!”

Hurricane just stood there and took it. The rain, the words, the rain of words pooling in her head.

“We’ll have proper buildings for medicine and herbs and things! We’ll have parley-ments where we can talk about everything important! We’ll make road thingies and big carts to carry lots of ponies from place to place! We’ll make big machine thingies, whatever we want, and you won’t stop us! You can’t stop us! You think you can fly just because you’ve got wings? Well, if the world hadn’t meant us earth ponies to fly, it wouldn’t have given us the brains to control the hooves to make the cogs that’ll move the wings that’ll soon get us in the air! You got an answer to that, dumb soldier girl?”

Hurricane reacted to the only bit that landed. “What? ‘Girl’? Hey, you’re younger than me!”

“And smarter with it!”

Good grief, thought Hurricane, no wonder Puddinghead was popular. She could see the manic energy bursting out of her, promising fireworks. If anyone ever figured out how to fly, then Puddinghead’s whole body language promised she’d be right there. Puddinghead revolutionized so much, she’d probably be controlling magic in a fortnight and still be thinking up crazier and crazier schemes. And even that didn’t sound so laughable to Hurricane: her spies had told her about earth ponies mixing up bottles and talking about alchemical experiments. Potions. Herbal mixes.

How was Hurricane supposed to deal with that? For centuries, earth ponies had just had figurehead mayors who took marching orders from unicorns and pegasi, in return for mostly being left alone to grow the crops and raise the cattle.

And in less than a year, a figurehead called Puddinghead had said no. She’d been appointed by the pegasus lord watching over the district on behalf of the empire, but had immediately turfed him out and started elections. And as soon as the vote was given to the earth ponies, they’d voted Puddinghead, who could think so far outside the box she could convince other ponies that the box didn’t even exist.

And then she’d turned this modest village into a mishmash of workshop, forum, rallying march, and the closest thing an earth pony could come to a military base.

It was like being hit with a war that, instead of punching and kicking pony bodies, was kicking and punching the world in which they lived.

The worst part, for Hurricane, was finding that the world was not the earth and sky and everything in between. The world, for most ponies, was in their heads, made from solid gut feeling below and airy flights of fancy above and everything in between.

At first, she’d ignored it. Who cared about a bunch of earth pony tinkerers, after all? Let them drive themselves insane.

Then the reports had come in. Earth ponies were making machines. Machines for digging trenches and machines for shooting rocks into the sky. Machines for harvesting crops without spending all day out in the fields with family. Even machines that tried to fly.

Pegasus spies had reported back to her and her war council. No one had enjoyed the news, but Hurricane had insisted – in the face of sceptical eyebrows and sniggering comments among her lieutenants – that it meant nothing.

It was when the earth ponies made the machines that made the rain that all of this uncertainty had burst like startled birds into real panic. Pegasi had talked and worried about it. Spies told Hurricane that there were ponies unhappy with how the commander was handling this – or not handling this. Even a stubborn pony like Hurricane couldn’t ignore such an obvious challenge to her very being.

However much she tried.

Pegasi controlled the weather. That was the agreement. That was what the whole Empire was founded upon. If the earth ponies – the supposedly numbskull earth ponies – could take that away from them, what did that make her?

Now she looked up, at the monstrous cloud shadowing all. She’d commissioned it. Nothing would shut up her critics like the biggest storm of the century.

She’d only meant it as a show. Scare Puddinghead out of her arrogance. Actually attacking anything… well, she wasn’t against it, but the fact remained that she was being threatened. It just wasn’t a threat that involved swords or arrows or pikes or axes. Just words and ideas. What harm could feeble words and airy-fairy ideas be?

How could she be scared of them?

She wasn’t, she insisted. Yet the more she insisted, the more her heart squirmed in her chest and the more she wanted to back away from the triumphant smirk of Puddinghead.

So she reacted in the only way she knew.

“All right,” she growled, channelling the thunder in her tones. “If it’s a fight you want, then you’ve got it.”

“Ooh, what are you gonna do? Zap me?”

From behind her back – how that was possible, Hurricane never understood – Puddinghead drew a kite, on a string, with a key dangling under it and a jar tied to it with yet more string. She flew the kite up and let the key swing on its string. The jar sat snugly by her leg.

“Go on, then,” mocked Puddinghead. “Hit me with your best shot.”

What the flying feather was this?

A kite? A key? A jar? Against a bolt of lightning? The earth pony had cracked –

Had she? Hurricane looked into Puddinghead’s cold, mocking eyes, and realized that she had no idea what to make of this. It was too insane for insanity. It was so insane that Hurricane felt the madness crackling through the air and earthing itself in her own mind, making it wonder if this nonsense might actually make more sense that she’d dared comprehend…

No. She wouldn’t risk it. Hurricane was flying without a map.

She’d go back to more familiar territory.

So she shot up, ignoring the jeers of Puddinghead behind her. Overhead, Ironhead hung back as he’d been ordered to do, and saluted Hurricane’s arrival.

“Commander!” he barked. “Will she surrender?”

Ah, so Ironhead hadn’t heard them talking. Hurricane brushed his words aside.

“We won’t,” she said firmly. “That’s all that matters.”

“Operation Knock Some Sense Into Nonsense is a no-go?”

Hurricane looked down at the village spread out below her. Up here, it was an anthill under the eye of evil, the storm stretching from horizon to horizon.

“Affirmative,” she said. “Commence Operation Shock and Awe.”

Ironhead nodded. He’d make a good lieutenant commander after this. The stallion flinched at no order.

Hurricane led the squad in formation, V-shaped, shooting up to the heart of the cloud. Surrounded by cold that struck as sharp and sudden as hail, she felt the reassuring push of Ironhead on her right and Private Flash on her left. They’d both get promotions after this.

She swooped round, sensing the air shiver around her, and shot down.

As if sensing her aim, the storm around her began to gather in anticipation. Its dark audience howled, howling louder, to howl as high as their voices would rise, just waiting for the moment when she burst through the banks and the village became nothing more than a target on a map…

She burst through. The spies had informed her beforehand of which building was which. She aimed at the “village hall of parley-ment”. The place was said to be a conspiracy hotbed.

Sparks crackled around her as her coat lit up.

Then she cut an arc as though bouncing off the roof. Electric static clung to her coat and then threw itself off, spinning her slightly out of control before she righted herself.

Her lightning bolt, the bolt of Ironhead, Flash’s bolt, and a dozen other blasts of concentrated divine wrath shot into the tiled roof, down the copper pipes. For a second, she thought – incredibly thought – it hadn’t worked.

And then some of the sparks met timber and glass. Shards exploded. Fire bloomed. The boom burst the building like a bubble, shattering droplets of dark matter over neighbouring walls and rooftops. Some of the thatch ignited. Ponies poured out of their houses.

By the time Hurricane rose up, she was set. Once the first bolt had struck, there was no going back.

Part of her recoiled in horror.

The rest of her didn’t dare listen to it. Instead, she returned to the cloud, swept through it until the next charge clung to her coat, and then whirred round and shot down for the next attack.

Her squad hit their target. The “alchemical smithy” earthed some of the bolts down copper pipes – Hurricane noted this carefully – but a few strays stabbed at the heart of the building and found something that blasted green smoke and pink fire over everything. Whatever experiments they’d been cooking up were now well and truly burning up.

Hurricane allowed herself one, officially sanctioned, smirk. It was just job satisfaction. Nothing more.

After all, they deserved to lose that building. Aping pegasi was bad enough. Aping unicorns was just bad taste. She felt no guilt whatsoever about that.

“Aim around the copper pipes!” she shouted over the rumbling storm, which was getting impatient. Whether her squad heard her or not, smart soldiers like Ironhead and Flash would probably have worked out the rest for themselves.

She’d soon find out. They turned and shot down again for the third strike. As they approached, she saw the dancing figure of Puddinghead, waving the string with the kite attached. No, not dancing. Stamping and beating her hooves in rage.

Over the scream of friction, Hurricane swore she heard Puddinghead shout at her.

“YOU COWARD!”

Hurricane hardened against the word.

She was no coward.

Yet as she aimed for the flight machine workshop, where the alleged blasphemies against pegasi were being cooked up like poisoned cakes, she had to lock away a part of her that had no choice but to shut its eyes.

She failed. She shut her own eyes at just the right moment to miss what happened next.

She let her pegasus senses push her up at the right time. She trusted her memory to steer her back up to the cloud. She heard the crash and boom behind her. She could even, if she pretended, see the promising machines melt and snap under the fire and force.

It had to be done. There was a threat. Now there wasn’t a threat. Oh, the earth ponies might rebuild and come back for more, but that was a mission for the future. For now, she’d proven the superiority of the pegasus tribe and would have made her previous commanders – all the commanders of history – proud for keeping their spirits alive.

For the last few targets, she felt dead inside. It was just a job now, happening to someone else.

Coward?

Her?

Hurricane never ran away from anything.

She flew away from the village once the last of the buildings lay crumpled and crackling. She wished she was out of range of the screams and curses, yet once she’d flown far enough away, if anything they shouted louder inside her head.

Headquarters went through the usual routine, once she’d returned. The lieutenant commanders congratulated her on her successful run. They even complemented the size of the storm she’d commissioned for the “war effort”, as if she’d been going up against soldiers and warriors. She got a heroic applause from the war room staff, and only when she’d found Pansy on the edge, pretending to smile along with the other soldiers, did she make her excuses and head back to her own private barracks.

On the way, she flashed a seemingly casual wing. A signal across a busy, noisy room, that Pansy would hopefully recognize.

Commanders did not usually sleep in barracks. Commanders usually slept in lush cumulus apartments with views of vast stratus fields, and maybe some ornamental nimbus clouds decorating the sky over them. Hurricane had preferred the old barracks. It helped her image, too: the recruits and even the civilian pegasi called her a “mare of the common ponies”. It was the fad of the moment, whatever it meant.

She sat down on a bed an ice block would think too hard and cold, and waited until Pansy’s nervous breaths told her she wasn’t alone.

“Erm, Hurricane?” whispered Pansy breathily. That was Pansy all over. She tried not to exist, in case her very presence offended someone.

Right here, right now, Hurricane was not in the mood for this sort of rubbish. She rounded on her. Yes: same stupid soppy expression, same bend of the knees, same oversized helmet and armour plating. Private Pansy was like a tortoise prepared to duck into its shell at any moment.

“Stand up straight when you talk to me!” snapped Hurricane. She needed someone to snap at.

Pansy straightened up so fast her helmet spun.

“Sir, yes, sir!” she squeaked.

“And don’t call me ‘Hurricane’! It’s ‘Commander’. It’s been ‘Commander’ for a while now. Don’t you ever keep up?”

“Sorry, sir! Will keep up, sir! Hurricane, sir, Commander, sir!”

This was all by way of being standard salutations; bullying was a chance to let her own heart beat something out of itself. Only this time, Hurricane’s heart wasn’t in it at all.

A flash of anger lit up inside her. Rebelling.

“Well?” she barked.

Pansy looked as though she was seconds from a violent death. “Sir?”

“Don’t you ‘sir’ me, Pansy! Do you take me for an idiot?”

“Y– No, sir! Never, sir!”

Hurricane narrowed her eyes. They were alone. In theory, she could do what she liked to Pansy, and on a bad day she often did. Getting Pansy to tell the truth, however, was way beyond her at the moment. Oddly enough, Pansy was too cowardly to break under pressure. She came pre-broken.

“So it’s all true,” said Hurricane, pacing around Pansy and daring the mare to break off from her stiff, taut, frightened standing-to-attention pose. “I saw it all, exactly where the spies said they’d be. I saw the machines. I broke the machines. Impressive stuff, for an earth pony.”

Pansy made a noise. It could have been a tiny hum. It could have been a squeak. It could have just been the world’s shortest prayer to any god with very good hearing.

“I can’t abide traitors, Private,” said Hurricane.

Pansy tried hard to keep staring straight ahead.

“And what I really can’t abide,” continued Hurricane, “are pegasi with funny ideas. Ponies who want to rock the boat might capsize the whole boat. Ponies who want to rock the boat get tossed overboard. For the good of the voyage. You hear me?”

“Crystal, sir!” Pansy’s armour rattled under the shaking.

“I know,” said Hurricane slowly, “who’s been feeding this information to the enemy.”

“Y-Yes, sir?”

“We have traitors among our ranks.”

“W-w-w-we do, s-s-sir?”

Hurricane drew in a relish of breath. “Did I give you permission to ask questions, Private?”

“Nosir!” squealed Pansy.

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

“N–” Too late, Pansy almost swallowed her own lip.

“Answer the question, Private!”

“Nosirsorrysir!”

“Did I give you permission to say sorry?”

Pansy closed her eyes tight and shook her head, which in any case was rattling under the helmet. Hurricane pulled herself back a bit. She’d learned long ago where Pansy’s fainting point was, and nothing was more embarrassing than having to revive someone you were trying to chew out.

She stopped in front of Pansy and looked her up and down. Pansy desperately tried to stare ahead without actually looking the commander in the face. She was white with the effort.

This was taking too long, Hurricane knew. But if she got straight to the point, she’d never have time to, oh say, surreptitiously check the windows and doors for any pegasi loitering. With intent.

No one knew what she’d say to Pansy in private. In public, a commander couldn’t talk to a private like best chums. Even in private, it was best not to let the hoof soldiers get too chummy with their superiors, in case that sort of thing led to insubordination.

What Pansy had, though, was wriggle room.

Pansy was what Hurricane hated and admired, all at the same time. No one could love a coward. But cowards sometimes had interesting things to say. They also made the best tacticians, because getting gloriously fatally wounded and dying honourable deaths was not among their noted favourite pasttimes.

It was a point of pride for Hurricane that she’d lost so few soldiers during her campaigns. The lieutenant generals always wondered how she did it. How did she get to be so brilliant? She’d even once taken the castle fortress of the King of the Unicorns all by herself, before having to retreat when her massive Empire had needed more help at home. She’d spread the Empire so wide it was starting to get a bit thin in patches.

How did she do it? And with so few casualties!

And best of all, no one suspected a mere puddle of miserable idiocy like Pansy. Pansy was one of those soldiers who’d hold a pike the wrong way round by sheer nervous accident.

Hurricane’s wings flexed slightly. No one was close. Good.

She relaxed.

“I’ve got a job for you,” she said, softly.

Private Pansy stopped shaking. The tone was important. Shout orders at Pansy, she’d just get flustered and confused. Softly tell her what was going to happen, though, and she’d be so relieved at the reprieve that she’d charge faster and work harder than even the most demented of berserkers. And unlike berserkers, she’d still have her brains within reach if she needed them.

“There were a lot of fires after Operation Shock and Awe,” said Hurricane. “Ironhead called off the spies just before the attack. If a pegasus was quick, they could nip back and… make sure there aren’t too many casualties.”

Pansy shuffled her hooves. For once, Hurricane let the lack of discipline go unpunished, but she’d have to keep an eye on it next time.

“If any earth pony asks,” Hurricane continued, “you were tipped off by traitor pegasus spies. Usual cover story.”

“Yes, sir?” said Pansy politely.

“And if any pegasus catches you,” promised Hurricane, much more sharply, “you’re on your own. Plausible deniability.”

Pansy sighed. “I know, I know.”

“The Pegasus Empire comes first.” Which meant, My reputation comes first. Hurricane tried not to think about it.

“Understood, sir.”

“Right now, I’m officially shaking you down for contacts. No one’s going to ask too many questions, not about a wet streak like you.”

Pansy’s face, for a moment, turned to ice. “Business as usual, sir.”

“No offence,” said Hurricane, and then she wondered why she’d bothered saying it. It fooled no one.

Instead, she angrily barked, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get to it, Private!”

Pansy saluted hastily – another mark against her soldierly discipline – and shot out so fast she burst through the cloud wall and left a Pansy-shaped hole. Flapping wings faded away.

Hurricane tried not to think of the fires, the broken buildings, the ponies rushing to put out their dying homes. It had to be done. Ponydom had its place. Earth ponies grew the food. Pegasi protected them and gave them the weather they needed. Unicorns… presumably moved the sun and the moon, but Hurricane had her doubts about that. They were just pointy-headed extortionists. They acted like they were gods on earth. It was pathetic, and annoying, and if it wasn’t for their freaky magic, Hurricane might have just kicked them over the horizon for good.

Anyway, that was the nature of things. She knew this. She’d grown up with it drilled into her by sergeant after sergeant. Start mucking up the natural order, and anything could happen. Mass panic. Chaos in the streets. Ponies starting to question why they were being led instead of leading their own lives…

She tried to feel outrage, pride, anything. Of all the pegasi, she was the greatest. She was the most awe-some of all. The god among gods.

That was what the older commanders would have said.

Her?

She didn’t know what to say. She just gave someone else’s commandments, like she was channelling the lightning words of long dead warriors. She didn’t even know who’d be left if they were taken away.

Then she remembered she was supposed to be giving Pansy a head-start, and turned to leave the barracks. Despite her protests, no one else used these ones. To share quarters with a commander would be unspeakable arrogance!

If only she had the energy of someone like Puddinghead, though! In a way, she admired the fool. That kind of revolutionary spirit could be just what the Pegasus Empire needed. But in a muddled earth pony, it could knock down all civilized order.

Flying machines! Only a soft-hearted pegasus could suggest something so bone-headed. Wouldn’t it be nice if everypony was nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all fly? Then we’d be equals. Yes, that was a Pansy idea all right. Everyone getting along in the heavens.

No. It was stupid. Dangerously stupid. That sort of thing couldn’t be allowed to fly.

Pegasi had to be the gods of the world.

Earth ponies had to be left in awe at the might of those above them. Otherwise, the pegasi would be mortal. They’d be weak. They’d be lowly. They’d lose the skies, their sole domain. Fools like Puddinghead had to be kept in awe of them.

“Awe”: that was the word. The dread and uncomprehending fear of pegasi. What awe-full things they could do to their enemies. What awe-some beings they were, overlooking the lowly beasts of the earth.

“Awesome,” murmured Hurricane under her breath. Yes, she liked the sound of the word. “I am awesome,” she murmured. The gasping “awe” of the open mouth, the solid grip of the lips in “some”.

Yes! She – they – would show the world their awesome might!

And nothing else. She daren’t show anything else.

Yet as she joined the celebrations and the feast for War Hero Hurricane, Warrior of Shock and Awe, she kept an eye and an ear out for Pansy. She wanted to know: had her own fires been extinguished? For good?

Meanwhile, she beamed and bragged, and danced and drank, and told her tales, and – surrounded by admirers – felt like the only traitor in the empire.