Light Family Home, Outside of Canterlot
4:00AM Local Time
Dusk Light

Coffee, long the standard wakeup call of many ponies. To be fair that caffeine is damn good at doing just that. But like anything, eventually the effect just doesn’t do as much as it used to. For four years I’ve drank the stuff just out of habit. It felt regular, consistent, hell even safe.

“Up early again?” My wife said as she hugged me from behind.

“Well you’re the one with the psychology degree. Think you can tell me why I keep doing this?” I said with a smirk.

“Didn’t we agree to avoid that rabbit hole?” Dart chided, sounding somewhat unnerved.

“Yeah, we did… Sorry, bad choice of words.” I admitted. But as I looked out on the yard, I caught a pair of headlights coming down the driveway. “What the hell?”

Dart took notice of the headlights too. “Is that a rover?” She asked.

Come to think of it, Dart was right. “It is… Wait here.” I said, handing the cup of coffee to Dart and walking down the steps to where the rover parked. By the time I hit the driveway the pony at the wheel had gotten out. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yeah Dusk, you can.” The unicorn said as he rounded the hood of the Rover, finally coming to a point I could make out who it was.

“Cosmo? What are you doing here? I thought you were still off on some black book gig.”

“Technically I still am.” Cosmo admitted “But Storm Cloud and I had to come back to Canterlot to brief the Princess on what we found.”

“Then why are you standing in my driveway?”

“Because the VIP we rescued from Palas has a hell of a lot to do with you, and that one lie you’ve been telling me since we met.”

“Cosmo, what the hell-”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Princess Celestia was your mother?” Cosmo immediately spat. “We’ve been friends for twenty five years. And every time it came up, it was ‘Mom died giving birth to me’. Never anything more, not at least until a few hours ago. And under any other circumstance I would’ve never questioned it.”

“Cosmo, again, what the hell are you talking about?” I knew Cosmo had me dead to rights. The colt always been into information, that’s why he joined the Intelligence wing of the Guard after I retired. But apparently playing dumb wasn’t going to solve a damn thing. What it did get me was a fist to the jaw and a concussion spell straight to the chest that sent me careening back into the stairs that led up to the porch. Cosmo was right on top of me, horn crackling with energy and eyes focused in anger. But from the clashing tan and silver glows of magic lighting up the porch, Dart was already primed to try and blast Cosmo back to the stone age. “Cool it babe, Cosmo’s a bit upset that he wasn’t privy to half of the family history.”

“Upset? If it was anypony else I wouldn’t care, but your family history, and by extension heritage, got her ass summarily kicked by De Witt’s old gang down in Palas.”

“Wait, what the hell was Celestia doing in Palas?” Dart retorted.

“I never said it was Celestia.” Cosmo countered. “But that foal of yours told me everything I needed to know about that family history of yours that you wanted kept quiet.”

“Foal… What the hell are you taking about?” I asked. “You know damn well-”

“I thought I knew too!” Cosmo yelled. “But apparently your Mother’s side of the tree is pretty damn fucked up. Because that VIP we found down in Palas? That was your daughter!”

Four Years Ago
Canterlot General Hospital
Col. Dusk Light, Royal Marines

“Get the fuck out of my way!”

“Colonel, please, there’s procedures-”

I didn’t wait. I instead grabbed the security guard’s head and smashed it into the wall next to the door. While he was slumping to the ground I tried the doors. Locked tight. “Clear the lane!” I yelled before blasting the double doors off their hinges with a breaching spell. The few staff on the other side of the door were cowering behind carts and open doors to avoid the flying fragments of wood and glass. I grabbed the first one to stand up by his collar. “Where is she?!”

“Uh… Down the hall, hang a left at the end. Room 314.” The orderly meekly answered.

“At least one of you schmucks knows how to answer a damn question!” I shouted as I ran down the hall. Rounding the corner, I ran into a familiar face and suit of armor who immediately blocked my path. “Sentry, get the hell out of my way.”

“Not yet.” He said, a rather neutral expression plastered on the pegasi’s face.

“And why the hell not?”

The pegasi got rather close, and immediately looked less serious. “Because for a member of the Royal Family, you’re way out of line.” He said with a whisper.

For the first two seconds, the statement didn’t hit me. In the third second it was a matter of ‘wait, what?’ and from the fourth on it was a mixture of sheer panic and dread “How-”

“Relax, the Princess read me in on day two.” The pegasi replied. “The Captain of the Royal Guard can’t do a good job of watching out for the Royal Family if he doesn’t know that that one Marine he constantly butts heads with is one of those ponies that need Crown Level protection.”

“Awe hell…” I muttered.

“Let me guess, you smashed a security pony’s head into a wall and kicked the door in?” He asked as he motioned for me to follow.

“Well you’re right on the first part… Did a bit more than kick in the door.”

“So you blew it to smithereens then and traumatized a bunch of ponies that had nothing to do with why you’re so pissed off?”

“Maybe?”

Flash rolled his eyes. “Look, I’ll make sure that we take care of it.”

“Like how we took care of General Winterfell?”

Flash shook his head. “I heard that you and Sergeant Cosmo had something of a disagreement with the General?”

“If you call treason a disagreement.” I retorted. “This whole damn thing was a setup. And he was paid to not only help line up Dart, but he kept the news of the attack from leaving his desk. He was manually filtering incoming reports to ensure I didn’t find out that Dart had been attacked.”

“I take it that you secured the evidence?”

I nodded. “Cosmo has it personally locked down. Sent copies to his Mother’s office down in Appaloosa for safekeeping, just in case the originals go missing or turn up in a fireplace.”

“This fucking stings… It was my recommendation that led to Winterfell being put in charge of the Capital Security department. Any idea who he was working with?”

“Nope… Just that he got a payout in the ten million in Griffish platinum ingots to set this all up.”

Flash stopped me. “Ten million in platinum bars? You realize what that means?”

“That whoever paid for this had access to the platinum reserves in the Griffon Imperium? That was the first thought, but the quick test we did on the stuff that Winterfell had hidden in his office showed it was basically pure. Not enough impurities to trace it back to the Imperium. Cosmo has his brother heading over to Winterfell’s condo to recover the rest that’s stored there.”

“And Wintefell?” Flash asked as we started walking down the hallway again.

“Well when I left him Cosmo was tossing him into a cell with Marines corralled into guard duty
. Although he’s not doing any magic tricks anytime soon… Or ever again. But that’s not why I’m here.” I said, observing that we had reached the door labeled 314. “My wife, the foal?”

Flash took his helmet off and dropped it on the ground next to the door, that stoic guard look dissolving for one of pure sorrow. “Dusk, I don’t know what to say so I’m just going to say it… I’m so sorry.”

Author's Note

Well I'm back, and trying to do something more original. There's going to be some dark undertones here, even tragic. But it's my hope that this will eventually pan out to make a compelling story.

And for the sake of picturing our characters in some way, here's some reference sheets;