Rainbow Samurai

by TAP BaDap18

Rating: mature
Tags: Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Rainbow Dash, Gilda, Adventure, Sex, Thunderlane, Daring Do, Main 6
Length: 48646

Rainbow Dash vows vengeance against her mother's killer. Her quest will prove to extend beyond that

Orphaned at a young age, Rainbow Dash spent a portion of her childhood living in the slums of Cloudsdale until she was found and adopted by an adventurer by the name of Daring Do. For a while, she lived an average life... until Daring returned from an aventure in possession of a legendary artifact that was rumored to have the power to bring ultimate peace upon the entire world. However, the adventure mare had been unable to discover any significant abilities the artifact was said to contain... Worse yet, a mysterious cult that claims to be in favor of world peace demanded that she hand it over at the cost of her life if she did not comply.

One fateful day, Rainbow Dash returned from school to find her foster mother murdered, and is framed for the death. She vowed vengeance against her guardian's killer, and donned Daring Do's latest treasure as an homage to the fallen mare. Conversely, this artifact will prove that there is an entire journey extending beyond revenge for her to embark on...

Published 2012-09-12 04:04:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-12-16 15:37:37 UTC

The Legend (Prologue)

Rainbow SAMURAI

By: TPurnell18

The Legend (Prologue):

In the many centuries of the existence of Equestria, it has been a relatively peaceful place to live.  In its neighboring lands across the globe, however, there has been many a conflict within their walls between cities ruled by corrupt leaders who promise change to improve their desolate, destitute homelands, as well as international disputes and wars fought for seemingly no reason at all. In their time, each country had hardly ever seen a day that didn’t fill its suffering citizens with torment and relentless back-breaking toil. Resources were scarce, the vast majority of ponies were drowning in poverty due to severe inflation caused by the frequent funding of wars that all but decimated their economies to the point where Equestria couldn't even lend a large enough helping hoof to one country without watching the others fall, which deficit spending between each country only made worse, and death was a practically daily occurrence, thanks to starvation, illness, and murder, largely due to the legend behind six trinkets…

The story goes that in ancient times, this world was roamed by six gods and goddesses alike, as well as the many creatures that exist to this day, ponies included. In this time, the world was divided into six main continents, over which one of each of the divine beings ruled: Meclopolis, the land of Honesty, Trottopia, the land of Loyalty, Gallopistan, the land of Kindness, Great Britmane, the land of Generosity, Hoofania, the land of Laughter, and Equestria, the land of Magic.

These deities ruled their lands in relative peace for a while… However, small disagreements between them escalated into disputes, and soon turned into all-out international wars. The gods and goddesses of five of the six continents had become rather complacent and jaded with their positions of power over the insignificant mortals they watched, and had begun finding even the smallest reasons to bicker with one another for fun. Their constant warring with one another over trivial issues such as territorial disputes and simple competitions of power based on their own arrogant nationalism ravaged the lands and their inhabitants over the centuries of their rule.

Eventually, the leader of these deities, and the only one to rule her land in peace, the goddess of Magic, had grown sick of her fellow beings’ callous, brutal mistreatment of their lands and their subjects. She had argued with them time and time again that they were not leading their lands in the way that was truly intended; in peace and existential harmony. However, she tried holding the belief that her comrades would change their minds on their own. Instead, the other five deities disagreed strongly with her, arguing that if the creatures of these lands were to be allowed to rule without their influence, they’d do the exact same thing, thus believing that such a reason justified their “games.” Consequently, they continued to corrupt the very lands they ruled over for their own amusement.

Appalled and infuriated, the goddess of Magic eventually took it upon herself to dispatch of each of her peers, one by one as she stripped each of the other divine beings of the very element they were supposed to have represented until she was the only being left. Realizing that she’d soon perish herself due to the fact that she could not exist alone, she spent her final hours crafting six pieces of heavenly jewelry and blessing them with the powers of her former brethren. She crafted five necklaces, each of which donned its own representation of its element. She also crafted a tiara, which represented her own element. She then performed the task of separating them by hiding each of them on the continents each respective element was supposed to represent. She unfortunately shortened her time once she’d sacrificed her own element by infusing it with the sacred tiara that bore the symbol of it. Rather than hide her own element in some distant, secret reaches of the land of Equestria, she specially sealed this one away and reincarnated herself into two lesser Equestrian entities after her death. It is said that her last words before her demise were:

“Only those who have proven themselves worthy to bear these artifacts may attain the power to bring harmony to the world…”

Since then, many a creature, be it Pony of any variety from Earth to Pegasus to Unicorn, Griffin, Minotaur, or even Dragon, had tirelessly wandered the globe in search of these legendary trinkets. However, despite these different species of life forms aiming for the same goals, their inherent fear and hatred of each other disallowed them from trusting one another, as they lived in segregation that was largely indoctrinated by the gods they were formerly ruled by. Instead, they’d bicker over why members of their race or species of sentient being were the only ones fit to wield the elements. Nonetheless, the variety of creatures fruitlessly searching for the elements dwindled along with the belief in their existence until the only species still actively searching for them… was ponies.

Even with the majority of the competition eliminating itself, Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies alike were beginning to lose hope in their search for these elements, just about ready to give up on the legend for good… that is, until centuries later, a Pegasus mare from Cloudsdale, Equestria had managed to venture to the vast caverns of Trottopia to secure the necklace that represented the element of Loyalty. The mare was a dark shade of Goldenrod with a spiky, seemingly unkempt mane and tail of various shades of gray. She had eyes of a rich magenta and was often seen sporting a hat and jacket. Her Cutie Mark was that of a compass. This mare was known as Daring Do.

News of her discovery had spread quickly once she returned with the artifact in hoof. The object was a solid gold necklace with a red ruby in the shape of a lightning bolt serving as the decorative charm. However, she could not figure out how to activate the trinket’s power. Rather than give up on it right away, she spent months trying to figure out how to unlock its potential abilities, to no avail. The mare had also found her time with it cut short by the time she spent looking after an orphaned filly she’d found a few years earlier on the streets of a Cloudsdale ghetto.

The filly, in terms of looks, was almost identical to her caretaker, with the only difference being in color scheme. The two had shared the same magenta irises and unruly, spiky hairstyle. However, the filly was bright blue like the daytime sky. Her hair was an explosion of color that seemed to emulate a rainbow. She also had not earned her Cutie Mark at the time that Daring Do had found her, yet had shown she was able to fly quite well for her age. The two would’ve almost been inseparable, had it not been for Do’s frequent trips to foreign lands digging up ancient treasures and artifacts. However, as an archaeologist, it was her passion and job, and if her passion helped to put food on the table for her and her surrogate daughter, then by Jove, she was going to do it. She’d nicknamed the filly, “Rainbow Dash” for her polychromatic mane and tail coupled with the fact that she seemed to be such a busybody that she’d be dashing all over the place and making messes of Daring Do’s possessions. As perturbing and wild as the Rainbow Dash was at first, she’d actually grown on Daring, as Rainbow Dash would tell her all the time that she looked up to her, wanted to be like her when she grew up, and even that she loved her. Rainbow Dash and Daring Do found special places in one another’s hearts.

Daring had built up quite a collection of various artifacts, trophies, and even weapons thanks to her travels. She’d also become quite the celebrity amongst the ponies of Equestria, having novels written about her based on her adventures. This… Element of Harmony proved to be her greatest discovery, as many other ponies she’d come into contact with would clamor to her in droves, pestering her with questions upon questions about the artifact. However, that would prove to be the least of her worries as she soon began to have death threats mailed to her after she respectfully turned down a few surprisingly large money offers from a mysterious organization known only as the “Dark Hoof Seven Tribe.”

Initially, she ignored them as simple pranks somepony was trying to pull on her in order to coerce her into giving up the necklace. She would soon find herself to be horribly incorrect as she’d found several attempts on her life being made, whether it be in the form of someone slipping poison into her meals (that she’d become wary of eating after she’d found cyanide pills in a slice of strawberry cake at one point), trying to pick her off from a distance with bows and arrows that had notes attached to them that read, “Hand over the Element or Die,” or even outright assault from an assailant that would blend into the crowds in a busy street and try to blatantly assassinate her on the spot with a knife. Luckily for Daring Do, she’d learned various forms of martial arts and self-defense techniques, both in hoof-to-hoof and with multiple types of weapons that allowed her the ability to escape her attackers.

As time progressed, however, she found herself the target of failed assassination plots more and more frequently, to the point where she’d developed a case of paranoid schizophrenia. It got to the point where she felt she couldn’t trust anyone but her surrogate daughter anymore, and kept herself holed up in her home with her. She’d also developed an eating disorder, which was characterized by her constantly checking any food she’d gather up the courage to bring home for drugs or poisons. If she’d even had the SLIGHTEST suspicion that the food was poisonous, she’d throw it away. Even if she were to feel safe enough to eat, the tiniest hint of a strange taste would have her barreling towards the restroom to force any possibly lethal materials out. Her adventuring days were drawing to an abrupt close because of this necklace. However, she knew she couldn’t give it up… even if it meant losing her life. Not before she discovered its use and abilities. The attempts on her life were a sort of confirmation of the trinket’s supposed power.

As Rainbow Dash grew, she’d begun to see the radical changes in her mother’s disposition. The bravery, the sheer indomitable resolve in her eyes that she so looked up to had been washed away and replaced with an unmerciful, unending torrent of apprehension and despair. Daring had even stopped going on any adventures for fear that she may not return to the only pony in the world she felt as if she could trust at all. For that, her income suffered to the point where she had to start selling some of her valuable treasures just to make it through a fortnight. She did however, make it a point to never let go of that necklace for any reason or any price.

Rainbow Dash, being only a filly, could not understand why her mother had become such a wreck that she’d basically betrayed her morals and became afraid of everything, including her own life’s joy; adventure and treasure hunting. She was completely ignorant of the assassination attempts on Daring’s life and the plethora of death threat notices, which Daring had done a fairly good job of hiding from her so she wouldn’t wind up becoming fearful and broken like her… Despite this, Rainbow Dash had proven to have picked up Daring Do’s former personality traits of being headstrong, confident to the point of arrogance, and undoubtedly devoted to everything she stood for. Before she’d lost her grip on reality, Daring Do had even begun teaching Rainbow Dash some of her fighting tactics. This knowledge, coupled with her experiences eventually made Rainbow Dash and Daring Do switch roles in terms of who was taking care of whom, seeing as Daring’s mental stability was faltering to the point where she’d seemed to have forgotten all the basic functionality of a normal pony and begun talking to herself loudly and compulsively locking every door and window, too afraid to even peek out of a window, much less walk out of a door. Her moods would swing violently from being seemingly calm at one point, to being completely on edge if she heard so much as a pin drop.

While Rainbow Dash didn’t know who or what was doing this to Daring Do, she figured one thing; they couldn’t have been doing it without a reason, and that reason was causing both her and her surrogate mother enormous amounts of grief and discomfort… Rainbow Dash wanted badly to find out why Daring Do had become so withdrawn. The only thing she could do, unfortunately, was ask her. Every time, however, Daring would give the same answer:

“It does not concern you; you are innocent… Innocent ponies don’t deserve this…” along with other incoherent ramblings her addled mind had allowed her to spew in her disheveled state. Rainbow Dash deeply loved Daring Do, but this recently cowardly attitude of hers had eventually begun aggravating her to the point where she’d tried time and time again to drag Daring out of their Cloudsdale home to at the very least, get some fresh air. She couldn’t keep her efforts up on a consistent basis, however, because she had been enrolled in flight school, which, coupled with the fact that she’d more or less become the caretaker of her own mother at such a young age, exhausted her quite often. However, one fateful day would change the path of and shape the legend… of Rainbow Samurai.

Provocation and Culmination...

Provocation and Culmination…

Rainbow Dash had begun her day as per usual; showering, getting dressed, making sure Daring Do took her medication, and eating her breakfast before going to endure a dreadfully boring day at flight school.

“I’m going to school, mom. I’ll be back with groceries,” the blue Pegasus filly informed the golden yellow mare.

“O-o-okay, Rainbow, h-honey…” the mare timidly responded as she lay in bed.

“Mom…?” Rainbow called as she approached.

“Y-yes dear?” Rainbow decided she’d try her luck one more time in finding out the reasons behind Daring Do’s condition.

“Why…?”

“Why what, Dashie…?”

“Why won’t you tell me what happened to make you like this?”

“You… you are too innocent… innocent ponies don’t deserve this… I… I’m not innocent…”

“What do you mean? You say that all the time, but I don’t know what you mean… What did you do to make yourself not innocent?”

“M-maybe you’ll understand when you’re o-older… It’s time for flight school now… Go along.”

“But mom!” Rainbow defiantly began. “You NEVER used to be like this! You used to always love going out and finding stuff to bring home! Now, you won’t even leave the house anymore! And all you do now is sit in a corner and mumble to yourself all day!” the filly began tearing up.

“P-please, honey… it is… time for school… go to school…”

“No! Not until I—!”

“I SAID GO TO SCHOOL!!” Daring suddenly shouted, startling the filly and herself. A tense moment of silence washed over the two as they stared each other down. Soon, Rainbow Dash turned towards the door and slowly began walking out. She froze in the middle of the doorframe.

“I want my mommy back…” she muttered and sniffled as she gently shut the door. If she was still within earshot, the filly would’ve heard Daring beginning to break down and sob.

“Oh, Dashie… If only you could understand…” she mumbled between sobs.

Rainbow Dash had been breezing her way through flight school. She already knew all the basic maneuvers and techniques, having been able to teach herself how to fly before she’d been adopted by Daring Do. She’d also learned a few tricks from Daring. She breezed through her lessons with ease. Most other students were jealous of Rainbow’s skills, which made them refrain from talking to her. She’d only exacerbated her isolation with the frequent bragging she’d do during each class period. Rainbow Dash didn’t make many friends; in fact, she’d only made one.

The single friend she’d made was not another Pegasus, but a griffin; a creature with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion that went by the name of Gilda. The two shared the same brash, carefree disposition and flying skills, despite being of different species. The two were okay with being isolated, for they found comfort in one another. Together, they challenged one another to strive to be the best fliers they could be, usually spending their recess times racing one another around the play area. On this particular day, however, things would go differently…

“Okay, first one to the flagpole wins!” said Gilda, rearing up and flaring her wings.

“Fine, but loser buys lunch for both of us!” replied Rainbow Dash, mimicking her rival’s motions.

“Hope you brought enough money to treat me, then!” Gilda pompously joked with a smirk.

“Oh, we’ll s—!” Rainbow was interrupted by a cry of pain, followed by a bout of laughter from more than one voice coming from another area of the fluffy white playground. As if something were calling her, she instantly felt like investigating the situation. “Hang on a sec…” she said, looking to her right to see three Pegasus colts laughing and standing over top of a small yellow-and-pink blob. “Let’s see what’s going on over there.”

“Why? It’s just that wimpy little Shutterfly or whatever her name is getting what’s coming to her for being so weak. Let the guys toughen her up a bit.” As Gilda finished her insult, a thumping sound was made coming from the area in question, followed by another despaired cry.

“That doesn’t sound like ‘toughening up’ to me. I’m going over there. Are you coming or not?”

“*sigh* Fine… We’re just wasting our time, though…” Gilda remarked as the two trotted over to the scene. What the blue Pegasus saw appalled her. There were three Pegasus colts, one with a brown coat, the second with a black coat, and the third with an orange coat, standing over another Pegasus, this one a filly with a yellow coat and a frazzled pink mane and tail who was whimpering and cowering in fear.

“What’s going on here?” Rainbow asked with an air of anger.

“None of your business, Rainbow Crash!” snipped the brown-coated colt.

“Well it’s my business now!” she shot back. “What are you doing!?”

“If you MUST know, Fluttercry here is too weak to fly,” said the black-coated colt. “We’re… teaching her what happens to Pegasus ponies who can’t fly so good.”

“Yeah,” began the orange-coated colt. “Like this!” he added as he raised a hoof and slammed it on the cowering yellow Pegasus’s side, eliciting another shout of agony.

“Hey!” Rainbow shouted, clearly unhappy with the colts’ method of education. “Why don’t you try picking on somepony who can actually defend herself!?”

“Ohh, you mean like your mom?” quipped the brown-coated colt. The other two colts let out a unified “Ooooooh…!” “Oh, wait— your mom’s a scaredy-pony now, too! I heard she’s too scared to even set hoof outside her own house because somepony sent her a note!” he followed his rude joke with a triumphant guffaw, which the other two colts joined him in.

“You take that back!!” Rainbow screamed, now furious to the point of tearing up with frustration. Despite this, Rainbow did finally have a sort of clue to follow in digging up her mother’s secret.

“Yeah,” added Gilda. “Dash is way tougher than you dweebs anyway!”

“Ha, that’s a laugh!” remarked the black colt.

“And what if I don’t take it back, Rainbow Crash? You and your weak little friend over here gonna stop us?” taunted the brown colt, gesturing a hoof towards the cowering, shuddering yellow filly.

“Not to mention this freak of nature here!” added the orange colt, gesturing a hoof towards Gilda.

“Freak!? Who are you callin’ a freak, you loser!?” Gilda asked, her temper almost completely lost as she got up in the face of the orange Pegasus. She'd only become angry for the reason that she was the only griffin currently enrolled in an otherwise all-pony flight school.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the colt falsely apologized, stepping back. “I forgot that you’re not alone in being a freak. You have the weakling here who can’t even…!” he paused as he smacked Fluttershy over the head as she was lifting her head up, only to be swatted back down with a new wave of tears and a new reason for them. “…fly! Then you got this one over here…” He pointed a hoof at Rainbow Dash. “The one who has a mom that’s such a big baby that she’d probably pee herself if she even set hoof outside, and has her pwecious wittle daughter do all th—!"

*WHACK*

"OWW!!” Rainbow Dash had seen and heard far more than enough and socked the colt dead in his snout. He stumbled back with a hoof covering his face. As soon as he recovered from the surprise attack, he removed his hoof to see that it was covered in blood.

“Doesn’t feel so good, does it!?” taunted Rainbow, seemingly proud of her violent outburst. The colts didn’t respond; the other two looked in shock at their friend, who had now been crying because of his nosebleed.

“You are SO gonna pay for that, Rainbow Crash!” threatened the black colt as he lifted a hoof to attack her. He instantly found himself blindsided by a force that swept across his face and knocked him down. He looked up to see Gilda shaking her paw and smirking at him.

“That’s what you get for messin’ with us!” Gilda proudly informed.

“Oh, that tears it!” shouted the brown colt as he lunged at Rainbow and pinned her to the ground. He lifted a hoof to strike her across the face, but as if on adrenaline-fueled instinct, Rainbow managed to free a fore hoof and hit him across the face, stunning him long enough for her to free her hind hooves and plant them into his chest, knocking him off of her. As soon as she got back to her hooves, the colt charged again, this time swinging his hooves wildly at her. Rainbow found it surprisingly easy to dodge the majority of his strikes, only being hit once or twice, but brushing them off as she countered with her own erratic hoof swings as the two took flight. She’d actually been landing hits on him far more often than he was doing so to her. Eventually, the colt decided to grab her by her mane to hold her in place. She flapped her wings vehemently as she fought to get free, but could not as the colt had driven a fore hoof into her stomach. He let go of her after landing his hit to have the Pegasus clutching her abdomen in pain with one fore hoof as she landed on her haunches.

“Take THAT!” the colt bragged as he descended. His moment of triumph was cut short by quiet laughter coming from his opponent. Rainbow climbed up to her hooves, seemingly unharmed by the blow to the stomach she’d received.

“For a colt, you sure do hit like a filly…” she teased. “I’ve had tummy aches that hurt more than that!” she added as she readied herself to charge at the colt, only to be stopped by a yellow Pegasus.

“STOP!” shouted the filly as she stood on her hind hooves in front of Rainbow with her fore legs spread out. Her eye, though wrought with tears, was a rich turquoise. The filly’s mane hung down over one of her other eye, obscuring it from view. She was also a bit thinner than any other Pegasus foal. She’d still been weeping, but she wasn’t cowering on the clouds anymore.

“What?? What do you mean, ‘stop’? I’m on YOUR side!” argued Rainbow.

“I… I don’t want you to fight…” she quietly said.

“Well, why not?” asked Gilda. “Don’t you WANT us to help you?”

“No… I mean yes! But I don’t want anypony fighting… especially not over somepony as weak and helpless as me…” she sadly answered.

“Well, we tried talking, but that didn’t work, as you could see,” Rainbow cynically remarked.

“I know…” the Pegasus turned to the brown colt, who was out of breath, but staring at her in confusion. “I’m… I’m sorry… for what my friends did to you. And I’m sorry that I’m not a good flyer… I promise I’ll get better… if that’s okay with you, I mean.” There was an air of collective shock at the yellow Pegasus. She was… apologizing. For things she hadn’t been responsible for, but felt the need to take the blame for. “But could you please not hurt me or my friends anymore? Fighting isn’t very nice…”

“Um… I… guess I’m sorry, too, Fluttershy…” apologized the colt with a guilty frown, seeming to realize his misdeed. “I… WE… won’t mess with you anymore.”

“Y-yeah…” agreed the two other colts in unison as they walked toward their de facto leader, the orange one still holding a hoof to his bleeding nose while the black one was holding a hoof to a purple bruise on his cheek. The three colts proceeded to walk away from the area. The Pegasus known as “Fluttershy” turned back to Rainbow and Gilda.

“Um… Why did YOU apologize to THEM!?” Rainbow asked in outrage. “THEY were bullying YOU!”

“Yeah, what gives??” added the griffin.

“I don’t like fighting,” Fluttershy began. “I know those guys were being mean to me, but I’m sure they were only doing it to help me.”

“Help you?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow. “Look at you! You’re all messy and bruised up because those jerks were ‘helping you!’”

“I… I know. I was going to start practicing flying more often… but I get so scared when I’m flying… I think of all the other foals laughing at me like they usually do, and it makes me scared…”

“…How ‘bout Gilda and I teach you how to fly?” Rainbow kindly offered after hearing Fluttershy’s strife. Gilda looked at Dash in disbelief.

“Dash, you CAN’T be serious!” Gilda protested. “There’s no way tha—!”

“We have to!” the blue Pegasus interrupted. “If we don’t, those guys are probably gonna start beating up on her again.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Fluttershy. “But you don’t have to. I’m not worth the trouble…”

“The hay you are! I’m going to help you because I want to. Learning from the best in the business, you’ll be flying circles around those jerks and anypony else here in no time! What do you say, Gilda??”

“*sigh* Sure, why not,” the griffin reluctantly agreed.

“LUNCH TIME!!” called a grown stallion poking his head out from a doorway that lead into the school building.

“Come eat with us,” Rainbow offered. “The name’s Rainbow Dash, by the way. And this is Gilda.” Gilda halfheartedly waved at Fluttershy, keeping a cool and distant attitude towards her.

“I’m… Fluttershy. It’s… nice to meet you,” said the slender yellow Pegasus filly as the trio walked towards the school building.

“Y’know, you sure are shy. But I guess your name kinda says that.” Rainbow smiled at her new friend and placed a hoof around her neck as they proceeded into the mess hall…

Daring had finished her fit of crying and gathered up the strength to pull herself out of bed. Dash’s last words to her before leaving for school were still fresh in her mind. They replayed again and again like a broken record.

“I want my mommy back…”

“I want my mommy back…”

“I want my mommy back…”

She trotted into the bathroom to clean her face. However, she froze as she looked at her reflection in the mirror just above the sink. She’d hardly recognized herself; her mane was frazzled and even more unruly than by any normal standards, she had bags under her reddened eyes from frequent bouts of sobbing and sleepless nights, and she wore a facial expression that showed perpetual misery. The medications she was prescribed had shown no progress in helping her recover.

“Oh, Daring…” she mumbled. “What DID happen to you? Danger never got the best of you… especially not like this…”

“But the danger is much greater than ever!” argued a voice in her head.

“Y-yeah, but I used to face danger all the time.”

“You didn’t have to face it in the comfort of your own home before, did you?”

“No… but this no different. I’m an adventurer… this kind of thing should be expected…”

“This is VERY different! Nopony has ever tried to kill you in your own home before!”

“There’s… a first time for everything. I should’ve expected this. But this kind of thing is a sacrifice I have to make for my passion… Even with as scary as it is… I can’t let this fear control me like this anymore…”

“It isn’t fear! It’s caution. It is not controlling you; it is PROTECTING you! You AND Rainbow Dash!” a bell rang in the golden Pegasus’s head.

“R-Rainbow…”

“Yes, she doesn’t even know about the assassins! And she shouldn’t! She’s just a filly!”

“She IS a filly right now… but she’s special. I can tell. Through all of this, she’s been standing strong when I couldn’t, even though she doesn’t know the reason her mommy’s been so weak and weary. Maybe I should tell her what’s going on. At this point, she deserves to know…”

“But you’re putting her life at ri—!”

*BANG BANG BANG BANG* a loud, aggressive knock came at her door, interrupting her argument with herself. She knew it couldn’t have been Rainbow Dash. She was at flight school. And she wasn’t expecting any visitors. She hadn’t had any visitors in months. Cautiously, she trotted out of the bathroom and into her living room. She very slowly made her way to the door.

“Who is it?” she asked. There was no reply. “I said ‘who is it’!?” she demanded. Still no reply. “I know you can hear me!” she barked, now fed up with the lack of response. “Who is this!?” she still did not receive an answer. Giving in, she unlocked the door and opened it to reveal three mysterious Pegasi dressed in jet black spandex suits and masks with red goggles. One was a bit larger than the others.

“We are here for the Element,” The larger Pegasus addressed in a sinister deep voice.

“Give us the Element,” demanded one of the smaller Pegasi, this one sounding feminine.

“That is, if you value your life,” chimed the third Pegasus, sounding masculine.

“…You… you’re part of that cult that’s been trying to assassinate me, aren’t you?” Daring warily asked. “The—!”

“Dark Hoof Seven Tribe, yes,” finished the large Pegasus stallion. “We are a covert operative group that participates in various activities for the protection of everypony, whether they like it or not. We take pride in eliminating all threats to the safety of not only Equestria, but the entire world. We have bases of operations all over the globe.”

“You see,” began the mare. “We know all too well about the legend of the Elements of Harmony. They are the reason that the other countries in this world are in such desolate states. We’d been searching far and wide for them for quite a while now…”

“…and our searches have proven inconclusive… that is, until now…” finished the smaller stallion. Daring could hardly make sense of the information she was given. Here, this so-called “secret organization” was claiming to protect the safety of everypony. Yet, they’d spent the last year or so trying to kill her for that necklace.

“If you’re so bent on protecting everypony, then why is it that nopony knows about you? More importantly, why have you been trying to kill me!?” Daring angrily asked.

“It is imperative that no one finds out about us,” began the larger stallion. “We live to serve and protect at all costs. Our search for the Elements of Harmony is the reason for the foundation of this organization. We want to bring about eternal peace to the world.”

“By sneaking around in the shadows and disregarding the laws of the very lands you walk on, and endangering innocent ponies? Hardly seems ‘peaceful’ to me,” Daring spat. “You’re neglecting the fact that you’ve spent over a year trying to KILL me! You’ve all been ruining my life!”

“You must understand that our initial plan was not to complicate or end your life, Daring Do,” the mare started. “If your memory serves to recall, we’ve offered you large sums of money in exchange for the Element of Harmony you found. However, you declined each and every one of them, which forced us to view you as a threat for being so noncompliant. You brought this on yourself.”

“How dare you say that? I wasn’t the one who decided I WANTED to be killed over that necklace! I simply found it, and I saw it as priceless. I’m not keeping it just to say ‘I have it!’ I’m keeping it to do research on it and find out how to unlock its potential!”

“And look where that’s gotten you,” the small stallion shot back. “You haven’t come any closer to unlocking the Element’s potential than you had when you found it, and you’ve put yourself and your daughter in terrible danger for not complying with us. Yet, you still refuse to hand it over to us. We are many; you are but one. If you hand the Element to us, we will prove to be much quicker and more efficient in finding out its secrets, you can go back to digging up old, useless junk from caves and abandoned dungeons, and your daughter will not have to be caught in this crossfire. She won’t even have to know about it.” The stallion’s ultimatum angered Daring greatly. Not because he was trying to extort the Element from her, or because he’d insulted her profession; she was angered because he implied that Rainbow Dash would be harmed.

“You BASTARD!” Daring exploded. “You come into MY house, demand something that belongs to ME, and threaten the safety of MY daughter?? Not to mention you think all the psychological damage you ruthless monsters have caused me in the last year will just wash away??” she turned her around to see a sheathed katana sword lying on her coffee table. She walked over to it, took the sheath off and cast it aside, and turned back to her foes in a readied fighting stance. “You’d better be ready, because you’ll get that Element over my dead body!”

“That CAN be arranged, foalish one…” warned the large stallion as he lifted up a hoof to reveal a hidden blade. The mare and stallion behind him had revealed hidden blades from a seemingly invisible compartment in their hooves as well.

“Let this be a message to your scumbag boss…!” Daring hissed as she charged at the Dark Hoof agents, the handle of her sword her in mouth, that old, fiery determination she seemed to have lost so long ago restored in her eyes as they focused on her targets…

Not Without a Fight...!

Not Without a Fight…!

Rainbow Dash, Gilda, and Fluttershy were enjoying their lunch together; more so Rainbow and Fluttershy, seeing as Gilda had shown little to no interest in the timid yellow filly. Whereas all the Pegasi sat together in groups at specially-selected tables around the cafeteria, Rainbow and Gilda normally sat alone together in one of the far corners of the lunchroom. Here, they’d enjoy conversation about basically anything, from their shared love of flying at high speeds to their wildly different tastes in food, considering that ponies were vegetarian while griffins were not.

“So… Fluttershy. What’s the deal with you?” Rainbow asked as she bit into a large, juicy red apple.

“Oh! Well… I’m a new student here. I used to be home schooled, but my parents started being… at work all the time. My mom’s at work so often now that daddy tells me she only comes in when I’m asleep, so I never see her. Even when I try to wake up really early to give her a hug, I can never catch her.”

“Wow, you’re new here? Funny I haven’t seen you until today,” Rainbow replied with a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. She swallowed the piece of sandwich and took a sip of her milk carton before continuing. “And my mom’s always at work, too… or at least, she used to be. Now she’s home all the time.”

“Oh, my… I wish my mom was home all the time. I only ever hear her when I’m supposed to be asleep and my daddy waits for her. When she does get home, I think daddy gets really excited to see her because they start shouting with joy and throwing things. Sometimes, I want to go down and have fun with them, but daddy tells me that the kind of fun they have is fun only mommies and daddies are supposed to have.” That last statement piqued Gilda’s interest.

“You sure the kind of ‘fun’ they have isn’t actually them just foolin’ around in bed?” Rainbow Dash snickered at Gilda’s shockingly adult joke, but the innocent little Fluttershy was totally oblivious.

“I’m sorry… but I don’t know what you mean,” Fluttershy responded. “They’re not in bed when I hear them having fun. And they throw things while they celebrate mommy coming home.”

“Uh huh…” was all Gilda could say with a raised eyebrow before returning to her strip of animal flesh.

“Um… Gilda? If you don’t mind me asking… what is that?”

“Beef jerky.”

“Beef… jerky?”

“Yeah. Don’t you—? Oh, right. You ponies don’t eat meat.”

“Meat? What is ‘meat’?” Gilda gawked at the naïve little filly.

“You seriously don’t know what it is? Dash, you know. You tell her.”

“Um… I don’t really get it myself, but from what Gilda told me, it’s… um… it’s…” Rainbow, unable to find a good choice of words, leaned in and whispered into Fluttershy’s ear, “Dead animals made into food…” Fluttershy’s eyes went wide as dinner plates as she gasped in horror.

“Animals?? Y-you mean… like fluffy little bunnies…? A-and cows that go ‘moo?’ And cute little piggies and deer and other creatures?”

“Hah! Oh man, you’re such a softy! But yeah, basically,” said Gilda. The terror in Fluttershy’s eyes was comparable to if she had watched someone die in front of her…

“Yyyyeah, changing the subject,” Rainbow suggested, seeing her new friend’s discomfort. “…How—?”

“Dashie…” Rainbow froze as she thought she’d heard a quiet voice coming from absolutely nowhere calling her name. The voice, while sounding very familiar, sounded like it was in a lot of pain. It echoed in her mind as if she were in a cave. “Dashie…” The voice called again in the same melody of anguish. The voice’s owner became clear to her… the voice she was hearing belonged to none other than her mother, Daring Do. The small blue Pegasus went catatonic with a sense of panic as she’d begun having a sinking feeling of fear washing over her. “Dashie… Help me…”

“Um… Rainbow Dash? Are you okay?” asked Fluttershy, taking note of her friend’s sudden shock. The blue filly didn’t respond; she still remained stiff as board with her eyes wide open and staring down at the lunch table.

“Dashie… Mommy needs you… Help me…”

“Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder, making her flinch violently as she snapped out of her trance. Gilda, ignorant of the cause of Rainbow’s trance, laughed at her.

“Wow, Dash! I never expected you of all ponies to zone out like that.”

“Uh, yeah… zoning out…” she agreed with an uneasy chuckle. Try as she might, however, she couldn’t shake the apprehensive feeling in her gut. The voice she’d heard… it sounded so real… JUST like Daring Do, even. But Daring was supposed to be at home, coping with her mental illness. Why would she need Rainbow’s help with anything? And why did she sound like she was in so much excruciating pain? Rainbow’s thoughts were bombarded with fearful premonitions about possible dangers her mother was facing.

Back in the physical realm, three very familiar colts approached their table, lunches in hoof: The first one brown with a slightly brighter brown mane that covered his eyes and a series of bruises and scratches, the second one orange with a dark brown mane styled smilarly to the first colt and an absorbent patch taped over his left nostril, and the third one black with a mane of a bright, icy blue with stripes of a slightly brighter blue that was styled up into a gladiator mohawk. He was the only one of the three whose eyes were visible. They were a golden brown. He had an ice pack taped to his cheek.

“What do YOU geeks want?” Gilda aggressively asked. “We already kicked your flanks once. Don’t make us do it again!”

“Yeah!” Rainbow agreed.

“Listen, we just… wanted to say we’re sorry for earlier,” the brown colt began.

“We shouldn’t have been picking on Fluttershy like we did,” the black colt continued. “We… we don’t have many other friends other than each other…”

“…and we figured it was because everypony was afraid of us. So we made the best of it and started giving everypony a reason to be scared,” said the orange colt.

“Well look where THAT got you!” Rainbow shot back.

“I know,” the brown colt responded. “That’s… that’s why we decided to stop bullying other ponies. Instead, we want to make new friends. Starting with you, Rainbow Cra—! I mean uh… Dash. No hard feelings?” he asked as he extended a hoof. Rainbow was predictably apprehensive at first, given that this was the very colt she’d beaten up not too long before for bullying the new friend she’d just made. She glanced at Fluttershy to see her shaking hooves with the black colt and smiling warmly at him like nothing had happened. Gilda simply turned away, folding her fore legs, but keeping an eye open, looking at her.

“…Fine.” Rainbow finally agreed after much contemplation. “But NO funny business! And NO bullying! It’s seriously uncool,” she added as she touched her hoof with the colt’s.

“Scout’s honor,” he gratefully promised. “My name’s Flight Path, by the way.”

“I’m Trailblazer,” said the orange colt.

“And I’m Thunderlane,” said the black colt as the trio joined their new friends at the table to enjoy their lunch.

Daring made haste in trying to take down the largest of the three Dark Hoof agents, quickly swinging the blade at him. He repelled the sword with his hidden knife blade. She stepped back, charged at him once more and clashed with him again and again, trying to find a way to break his defense. He effectively countered her slashes and slammed his other fore hoof into the adventure mare’s stomach, knocking her back and into the coffee table. The table shattered upon impact as the Pegasus crashed into it. She recovered quickly despite the series of cuts she’d acquired on various sections of her body and face. She shook her head, picked her sword back up and charged the large stallion again. As he prepared for another counterattack, she surprised him by leaping over and landing behind him. The instant she landed, she threw both her hind legs back, placing a strong, well-aimed buck into the stallion’s left hind leg.

*SNAP* He shouted in pain as he was forced onto his haunches as Daring had just broken his leg. The other two Pegasi on either side of her reacted immediately, each of them thrusting their knives at Daring repeatedly. She reflexively dodged their simultaneous attack and countering with a swing of her sword to her right. The mare narrowly avoided decapitation as she ducked, and had tried countering by thrusting her knife at the adventure mare again.

*CHING* Daring had just barely managed to block the mare’s counterattack. The two entered a power struggle as they vehemently pushed their weapons against each other, neither of them backing down. The small stallion took this distraction as a chance to swing his blade at the adventure mare.

*SLICE* He successfully managed to land a strike on the mare as she groaned in pain. He’d managed to make a deep incision just under Daring’s left wing. She faltered in her struggle against the mare and received an additional blow to her face, knocking her back into the remains of the coffee table on her rump. Her sword landed in front of her. Thinking quickly, she felt around the mess, grabbed a shard of glass with her left hoof and had moved her right one to cover up the wound, making sure to conceal the makeshift weapon as best she could all the while.

“I don’t get it… why are you fighting a battle you know you can’t win?” asked the stallion as he wiped the blood on his blade off on the floor.

“Just tell us where the Element is, and we’ll leave peacefully. You may have… NRGH! Momentarily incapacitated me, but you are still outnumbered three to one…” said the injured stallion, standing up, but making sure his hind leg didn’t touch the ground. The three slowly approached the ailing mare.

“You… you must be bad at counting then… hah… hah…” Daring’s words were strained with fatigue and agony, but she still held her confidence strong.

“What do you mean?” asked the smaller stallion. Daring chuckled menacingly.

“I mean… that there’s only TWO of you…”

“Wha—?” before he could finish his question, Daring, in one fell swoop, gripped her sword in between her teeth, picked herself up, and engaged him while still clutching her wound with her right hoof. He’d just narrowly blocked her attack, lifting his blade just in front of his face as Daring clashed with him. The mare took this as an opportunity to disable Daring’s other wing. The injured stallion could see something shining where Daring Do was clutching her wound. While he couldn’t make out a complete image of what it was, he instantly knew the treasure hunter had a trick up her sleeve. He then glanced to see his partner preparing herself for a preemptive strike.

“Agent Stealth, do NOT engage!” the large stallion shouted. He was too late in his warning as his comrade impulsively lunged at Daring with her blade extended. Daring, being cunning, predicted this and, revealing a particularly large, jagged shard of glass held in the hoof she was initially using to cover up her wound, she disengaged the small stallion by stepping back and slashing the glass across his face. She then used her free hoof to land a powerful left hook on him in the same area in which she’d struck him with the glass, and turned to her right to thrust the glass forward.

*KSH!* The adventure Pegasus hit her mark, embedding the glass deep into the belligerent Dark Hoof mare’s throat. It was a gruesome sight to behold. The mare stumbled and fell onto her back, clutching her throat as she pawed at the shard of glass protruding from her neck. She’d tried to scream, but the only sound she was making was a grotesque, wheezy gurgling noise as blood poured from her fatal wound like running water out of an overflowing bathtub. The stallions watched in what could be assumed to be absolute terror as their downed teammate writhed in merciless agony as she tried to pry the glass from her throat. It took a mere couple of minutes before she’d stopped moving or breathing and rolled onto her side. The three combatants sat in silence after watching the Dark Hoof mare’s grisly demise.

“…I didn’t want to… AGH! Do that,” Daring finally said, breaking the silence as she clutched her bleeding wound while still holding her sword in her left hoof. “But you guys forced my hoof. You can leave now and take your fallen comrade with you… hah… hah… or I can end you both… like I had to do her.”

“…I do hope you realize that your death is no longer an option…” began the larger stallion in an eerily calm tone.

“Well that’s fanta—!”

“It is now our primary objective!” the smaller stallion sternly interrupted as he wiped blood from the new opening in his mask. He then readied himself for another assault. The larger stallion also readied himself, despite being handicapped.

“Great…” she irritably muttered. She was getting physically and mentally tired. She was covered in stinging scratches from crashing into her coffee table, her knife wound was still bleeding despite her effort to stop it by holding it, and she had two stallions trying to take her life. Even if one of them had a broken leg, he still seemed like he was determined to fight. She also still had to deal with his assistant, who’d only had a scratch and a possible bruise on his face. If she were lucky enough, he might’ve caught a cold and knocked himself out.

She’d figured she was fighting a losing battle and that she had very little diversity in her options. She couldn’t run or fly away because that would mean she’d abandon the Element and leave it in their clutches if they didn’t follow suit. She’d also risk opening the wound under her left wing wider than it already was, thus infecting the wound with the amount of open air that would blow into it. Even if she were able to escape and the two stallions didn’t find the Element… they’d likely find some way to bring harm to Rainbow Dash as a form of “negotiation,” and that was something Daring was NOT going to have on her conscience. So she did the only sensible thing she could do; she’d prayed that she’d pull through this fight alive and manage to keep Rainbow Dash from harm, and readied herself for the long haul…

“Prepare to die, treasure hunter!” cried the smaller stallion as he lunged at his target. Daring Do came to grips with the situation at hand, took a deep breath and took a defensive stance.

“I’m sorry, Dashie…”

The school day had ended and Rainbow had said her goodbyes to her friends. This was a particularly good day for her. She went through the same motions as before, but she beat up a colt despite what she’d heard about colts being stronger than fillies, she’d defended someone and made a new friend, AND she’d manage to make friends with the same colts she fought. She didn’t mind being alone with Gilda for as long as she’d been, but she’d found much more excitement in making new friends and getting to know them. As she was about to take off to the grocery store, however, that creeping, ominous feeling crawled back to the front of her mind.

“Dashie… Mommy needs you… Mommy loves you… Dashie…”

Rainbow’s heart had begun pounding in her chest like a jackhammer as her premonition only seemed to become more extreme. She found herself freezing in fear at her thoughts just like she did in the cafeteria earlier. She quickly snapped herself out of it and decided to go straight home rather than make any side trips. She just HAD to know that her mother wasn’t in danger.

“Mom… I hope you’re okay…” she said to herself as she took off at top speed, slowing down for nothing.

Daring had parried the first of the two remaining agents' attack, only to be rushed by the other. He didn’t hesitate to attempt to stab her. She barely dodged it, receiving a gash in her right side, and countered by bashing him over the head with the hilt of her sword. He stumbled back from the blow. Unfortunately, she’d left herself open for an attack from her first assailant. With a quick swipe of his knife, he’d managed to make a ghastly incision on her cheek that ran from just under her left eye down to her chin. She shouted in pain as she took a couple steps back and raised her right hoof to inspect the damage.

“That’s just a taste of what you’ll be feeling,” the smaller stallion taunted.

“Hmph… You think THAT’S… ngh…! Enough to stop me?” Daring Do defiantly shot back, albeit beginning to feel the effects of her prolonged blood loss. She’d started feeling nauseous and light-headed as everything around her began to get blurry.

“Don’t pretend like your bravado is lessening the gravity of this situation,” the larger stallion said. “We see it in you already. You are weak. Tired. You’ve been bleeding profusely for a long enough time that you’ve lost some of your coordination. Your end is near, Daring Do. Hand us the Element, and we’ll make sure you won’t suffer in death.”

“I… I told you before…! You’ll get your… ngh…! Filthy hooves on that Element over… hah… over MY DEAD BODY!” with that, she aggressively charged at the duo, sword in hoof for one final effort. She swung quickly, yet erratically, the two dodging her less than tactical barrage of slashes as her vertigo was starting to get the best of her due to her constant movement. She’d lost all regard for whatever she was hitting, as she’d knocked over vases, cut plants, and made cuts all over anything her sword was in reach of, with the exception of her intended targets.

“Enough of this,” the larger stallion calmly stated, growing bored of the defensive. He ducked under a particularly powerful swing of Daring’s. She lost her balance and stumbled forward. He saw the opportunity and rammed his head into her abdomen. He sent her flying into a wall on the other side of the room.

*CRACK* “AAH-uh!” Daring grunted as a sharp, stabbing pain shot through her back. Not wasting time, the two agents lined up juxtaposed to one another.

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” said the smaller stallion in a false sense of concern. He seemed to be bitter about something… possibly that he’d watched his teammate die in battle… “You could have complied with us… given us the Element and went along with the rest of your life, possibly millions of bits richer. But no. You HAD to fight. You HAD to kill her. Now… now you HAVE to die!”

“You’re… blaming this all on me…?” Daring asked, although dizzy, tired, and in excruciating pain. “You… you bastard…! I’m fighting… to protect myself. I’m fighting… to protect my daughter…I don’t… have a choice at this point… You and your Dark Hoof cult have made my life a living Hell… for over a year! I didn’t want your… filthy money. I figured you guys must have had… some shady way of getting it, especially considering how much you… were offering me, coupled with the fact that none of the offers had the same return address… I’d never even heard of you until then… but I told you every single time, I had no intention of selling that necklace… it has too rich a history behind it for me to place any material price on it…”

“We could’ve been much faster in finding out its powers. You haven’t found anything out, evidently.”

“And… you know why? It’s because… you monsters have been cutting my time with it short… trying to kill me because I wouldn’t… sell it to you… You and your disgusting Dark Hoof cult has driven me insane… to the point where I couldn’t even raise my daughter, much less… research that necklace… which tells me a lot about… your REAL intentions. You don’t want peace in the world… for all I know… you probably want to use it for your own nefarious purposes… which is why… like I said before… you’re getting that necklace… over my… dead… body…”

“Humph! You’re already halfway there… Allow us to see you the rest of the way…” with that, the smaller stallion charged at the adventure mare with the larger one following close behind.

“Hmph… lead the way…” Daring was simply sitting leaned up against the wall she’d been rammed into. She’d known this was it… that her death was all but imminent. However, she wasn’t completely afraid. She welcomed it. She’d figured long ago that her perilous expeditions would likely get her killed one day… the only thing she didn’t expect was that she’d die not in some far reaches or secret caverns or abandoned temples in another continent, but in her own home. Nonetheless, the mare stood on her hind hooves, her sword in her left fore hoof, closed her eyes, and braced herself for the inevitable.

“Time to end th—!” *KSH* *SKSH* Daring Do had felt a nerve-wracking shockwave of agony coming from her the left side of her abdomen. As she gasped and her eyes forced themselves open, she also found that she’d managed to impale the smaller stallion through his chest. She’d pulled one last trick in feigning surrender, then lashing out in one final attack before she met her end. The larger stallion removed his blade from Daring’s stomach and allowed a new river of blood to exit her already severely damaged body. She slid to the ground in terrible anguish as she let go of the sword and laid a hoof on her new open wound. The smaller stallion fell back, clutching the sword that found a resting place firmly implanted in his midsection. Blood was pouring out of both the wounds and out of his mouth.

*SLAM*

“MOMMY!” shouted the voice of a young filly. She was absolutely horrified at the sight she beheld. The room had looked trashed. Broken glass and various other materials everywhere, blood practically painting the floor, one dead mare on the floor with her face in a puddle of blood and a shard of glass sticking from her neck, one dead stallion with a sword stuck through his chest and protruding from his back that was drenched in more blood, one living stallion who seemed to be keeping one of his hind legs from touching the ground… and the most devastating sight of all, a dying goldenrod mare lying up against a wall, covered in blood, cuts, and scratches, her head hung low while her hoof was covering a deep wound, with the one live stallion standing over her but looking back at the filly.

“Rainbow… Dash…” Daring Do weakly said as she picked her head up to look at her daughter. Rainbow wasted no time running up to her dying mother and cuddling up against her, despite dirtying her coat with the oozing red liquid her mother was already practically bathed in. With what little strength she had left, Daring lifted her hoof off of her wound and rested it around her daughter.

“Mommy! What’s going on!? What happened!? Why are you all beat up like this!?” the filly asked question after question as she went into a state of utter panic and began sobbing openly.

“I’m… so, so sorry, Dashie…” Daring weakly began, straining every word as tears of heartbreak welled up in her eyes. “I… should’ve… told you sooner… I… some bad ponies don’t want me to be alive… Because of that necklace I found…” Rainbow instantly knew the necklace Daring was talking about; the gold one with the red lightning bolt on it.

“Why didn’t you give it away!? Why did you keep it if bad ponies wanted to take you away from me for it!?” Rainbow’s sobbing hadn’t let up in the slightest. In fact, she began to cry harder.

“I… probably should have… given it away… but the bad ponies don’t deserve it… That necklace is very special… It has the power to help a… lot of ponies… It was selfish of me to keep it… because I… I put myself in terrible danger… and worse… I put you in danger, Dashie…” Daring Do began to weep openly as she shared her final moments with her daughter. “Now… now mommy has to go away…”

“No! Mommy, please! Please don’t go! You said you would take me on one of your adventures one day! You promised you’d never leave me all alone! Remember!? I-I’m sorry for what I said this morning! Mommy, don’t go! Please! I-I love you!” Rainbow desperately pleaded as her sorrowful tears ran free. The implausible amount of sheer hurt in the filly’s eyes reminded Daring of the time she’d found her. That look cut into her her ten times deeper than the mortal wounds she sustained in her battle.

“My only regret… is that I don’t get to… watch you grow into a beautiful young mare… I… I love you, my little Dashie… Live your life well… Make mommy proud…” With that, the last signs of life in Daring Do had withered away, leaving behind a devastated, heartbroken Pegasus filly cuddling her now lifeless body. Rainbow, still not moving from her position, turned to the injured stallion while she cried.

“…Why…? Why did the bad ponies do this to her?” she asked as she wept, her voice shaky with profound sadness. “She didn’t do anything wrong… She was innocent… Why? Why did they take my mommy away from me?”

“I… I’m sorry you had to see this, young one,” the stallion apologized, a strong sense of guilt evident in his voice. “It… was not my intention to… to hurt you or your mother.” Rainbow, though her eyes were blurred with grieving tears, examined the stallion and noticed the blood-stained knife attached to his hoof. She then took a look at Daring Do’s mortal husk and noticed the stab wound in her stomach. She quickly figured out what had happened to end her mother’s life, and was instantly fueled with pure rage.

“YOU DID THIS, DIDN’T YOU!?” she shouted, alarming the Dark Hoof agent. “YOU TOOK MY MOMMY AWAY FROM ME! AND YOU DID IT ON PURPOSE! YOU STABBED HER! I SEE THE BLOOD ON YOUR KNIFE! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!” she exploded as she charged the stallion in a feeble effort to get her revenge. She swung at him wildly, trying her best to harm him. He did nothing to stop her. He absorbed the miniscule blows, feeling as if he’d deserved every single one of them. Rainbow kicked his fore legs repeatedly, and then took flight in order to hit him across the face a few times before she landed back on the ground, tiring herself out while she sobbed uncontrollably.

“I... I am sorry, young filly,” he said again as he gently laid a hoof on her head. Expectantly, she swatted it away and glared at him with such a deathly sense of hatred and anger that it’d scare even the biggest of monsters. The stallion, trying to find a way to ease the filly’s immeasurable despair, grabbed Daring Do’s sword and with a strong tug, pulled it out of his comrade’s corpse. “It’s… pretty ironic. We’re supposed to be bringing peace to all the ponies in the world… and yet, here I am, standing as the culprit of a cold-blooded murder and the destroyer of a foal’s innocence…” he mumbled, more so to himself than the filly who was busy bawling her eyes out in torment. He then placed the sword down in front of the filly, prompting her to remove her fore hooves from her teary magenta eyes to stare at the bloodied object. He then took it upon himself to remove his mask and goggles to reveal that he had a deep red coat, a snow white mane, and blazing orange eyes. He had a large scar running down from his left eyebrow, past his eye, and down to the corner of his mouth. He’d also shown signs of aging as there were wrinkles on his eyelids and cheeks. Rainbow looked up at him, studying every feature of the stallion before her. He stared back at her with utmost severity.

“Remember this face, filly; for it is the face of your mother’s killer. Remember this voice. For it is the voice of the death of your innocence. Remember this day, for it will be the fuel you’ll need… for our grudge match. If you wish to avenge your mother, you will learn how to fight and survive as she did. If you do not, you will die as she did. We, the Dark Hoof Seven Tribe, will come for you once again, whether you are ready or not. As far as you are concerned, you are now the possessor of the Element of Loyalty.” After finishing his speech, the stallion put his mask and goggles back on and painstakingly moved to gather up the corpses of his fallen comrades. “Until we meet again… Rainbow Dash. Farewell,” he said as he took flight out the doorway and away from the scene.

Rainbow Dash was left to her thoughts. However, she could hardly even process what just happened. She’d barged into the house fearing the worst… to unfortunately be right. She’d seen absolutely horrible things that nopony her age should have EVER laid eyes on, which was bad enough… It only got even more horrible as she had her mother die in her hooves as the heartless murderer watched in triumph.

The killer apologized for purposefully stabbing her mother to death. He revealed his face and told her to learn how to fight to avenge her mother or die. He’d even revealed his face to her, and told her to remember it along with his voice. It didn’t make sense. Why would a cold-blooded murderer do all these things? Whatever the reason was, it mattered little now.

Rainbow saw her mother’s killer with her own eyes. He had the nerve to dare Rainbow to find him and try to get revenge. He was a sadistic monster who fed off of misery, and he needed to be stopped... Him and all the bad ponies of this... Dark Hoof Seven tribe. She wasn’t satisfied with telling the police so as to see him locked up. They probably wouldn’t catch him anyway. No… she wanted him dead. She wanted to see him die in the same brutal fashion that he killed Daring Do, her mother. In leaving her alive, going so far as to torment her by telling her to find him, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less. And if anypony WAS going to make that happen, it was going to be her. He’d pay for the innocent lives he destroyed.

But then, what about that necklace? Daring Do said herself that it was special… that it had the ability to help other ponies… What did she mean? And why is it that “bad ponies” wanted it so badly that they… they KILLED somepony for it, and didn’t even proceed to take it when they had the chance? How was she going to develop the skills necessary to get revenge? How was she going to break the news of Daring Do’s demise to anypony else?

The questions intertwined in Rainbow’s young, grief-stricken mind, addling her to no conceivable end for a foal as she continued to grieve over the loss of her beloved caretaker, role model, and only parent. She was an orphan once again. However, she was sure of a couple things: One, if that necklace was special to Daring Do, then that was more than enough reason to keep it… She’d keep it and wear it proudly… in her memory. Two, she was going to avenge her mom… somehow. The killer himself had handed her the sword her mother probably used to defend herself. She’d cherish that sword, too. Not only because it was her mother’s weapon… but also because it would become hers. It would additionally be her tool for raining hot vengeance on that miserable manure-stain of a pony. His death by this sword was all too fitting an end for him.

Rainbow still had a situation at hand: she needed to give her mother’s body a proper resting place. She barely had the strength in her to carry Daring out of the house herself. But she didn’t want to leave the sword or the necklace there for anyone to take them… she needed them. Rainbow walked into her mother’s room and looked around. She saw a large bed, a dresser that had to be at least five times her size, and an open closet with multiple jackets and hats that were identical to one another. She took flight and looked on top of the dresser to see the necklace resting on top of a safe. She admired its captivating beauty and radiant shine. It sure was in an excellent condition for an old artifact Daring had found in a cave. She picked it up. The instant she did, the Element began to glow. It levitated out of her hooves, shocking her. The necklace disappeared in a flash. Rainbow was scared that she’d done something to lose it and was about to begin searching for it. Another light flashed from below her. She looked down to see the necklace had adorned itself around her neck.

“Wh… what the hay…?” she murmured as she grabbed the necklace. She tried to take it off, but she couldn’t. Instead, it disappeared again, befuddling her even more.

“You… you are the one… You are worthy… to wear the Element of Loyalty,” said a mysterious, majestic voice. “By taking this necklace into your possession, you have accepted a new mission; find the other Elements and the ponies worthy of them and unite the world… in Harmony…”

“Who said that!? Where are you? What’s an ‘Element of Loyalty’?” Rainbow asked as she looked around to find herself completely alone. She’d have to figure it out later, as she still had the task of taking Daring’s body away. She landed and walked back into the war-torn living room to see her mother still lying there, motionless. The sight hit the filly with a tsunami of sadness. She wanted to cry some more… to empty the deep well of anger and despair that had been built inside of her. But she could not. She had to be strong now. There was nopony there to comfort her in her time of need… and nopony she wanted there. The only pony capable of comforting her was dead, her corpse resting directly in front of her.

“I’ll get them, mom… no matter how many times you told me you weren’t innocent… *sniffle* you were. They… they won’t get away with this… I promise you…” Rainbow muttered. She looked around and located the sheath of the sword on the floor on other side of the room. She picked it up, and hesitated after turning around. She was scared out of her mind of approaching Daring Do’s body. She’d never seen anything larger than a fly dead before. This was a horrible extreme. The filly steeled herself and slowly cantered over to Daring. She picked up the sword and put it back in its sheath.

*knock knock*

Rainbow was apprehensive about opening the door. It could have been the killer coming back. Maybe he remembered he forgot to take the necklace and was coming back for it. But then, he did specifically say that he considered her to be the one to have it… and he didn’t try to kill her then. Before she got too lost in thought, Rainbow took the bloodied sword out of its sheath and slowly approached the door. Her heart was pumping a mile a minute as she drew closer. She took a deep breath and broke into a short gallop until she was at the door. She opened it ever so slowly, the surprisingly heavy sword clenched in between her teeth. She then threw the door open, prepared for attack, but was surprised by the pony standing in the doorway. It was a black colt. Specifically, it was Thunderlane, accompanied by a full-grown stallion, both of whom were wearing the same expression of shock that she'd had as she dropped the sword onto the floor...

Framed!

Framed!

Rainbow Dash was totally speechless. She’d had no idea as to why Thunderlane of all ponies would come to her house, and with who seemed to be one of his parents, no less. Worse, why would they choose now of all times? The colt and who Rainbow could guess was his father, given the similarities in their looks with the exception of the stallion’s hair color and eye color, looked absolutely appalled by what they saw. They saw the blood, the completely destroyed living room, and even Daring Do’s body leaned up against a wall, smothered in blood.

“Oh, my God…” the stallion mumbled in utter disbelief as he surveyed the bloody mess. He then looked back down at the little blue filly standing in front of him. He saw that she was also covered in blood. He also saw the sword she was holding. It was, of course, covered in blood.

“You… you killed your mom…?” asked Thunderlane as he tried to process the brutal scene in his mind.

“N-no!!” Rainbow hastily answered as she realized how suspicious she looked. “I would never do that! This… I didn’t do this!!”

“B-but… you’re covered in blood… and so is that sword you were holding… and your mom’s—!”

“That’s quite enough, Thunderlane,” the colt’s father calmly interrupted. “We’re going to get the authorities. They’ll know what to do with your friend. Let’s go.”

“No! Please don’t get them!” Rainbow pleaded. “I swear I didn’t do this! There were these guys and they came in while we were at school and they killed my mom and then they gave me this sword that was stuck inside of one of the guys!” she began to cry again as she tried to explain herself.

“Young lady, I get that you don’t understand the seriousness of what you did…” Thunderlane’s father began. “But you have to understand that we can’t go back home without visiting the police station. It’s also not very nice to lie about what you did. In fact, if you come with us so you can confess, they might let you off easy… well, as easy as I can imagine, given that what you did would be punishable by banishment from Equestria or even to the moon for an adult pony…”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!!” the filly shouted. “Thunderlane, you have to believe me!” she pleaded again, tears pouring from her eyes. “I didn’t kill my mommy! I didn’t!” The black colt stared at her, unsure of what to think, or whether to believe her. Indeed, the two foals had gotten to know each other and become friends at school earlier. But just a short time before that, he and his friends got into a fight with Rainbow and Gilda. But then, she WAS protecting Fluttershy from harm. She couldn’t have been a bad pony. She meant well at that time… but how could she or ANYPONY mean well in killing somepony, especially their own mother?

“Thunderlane, don’t listen to her. She’s obviously become delusional. Let’s go now.”

“…But dad…” Thunderlane uncertainly began to say.

“Come ON, son! I understand you don't want to see your new friend hurt, but we have to. If we don’t, somepony else will, and we’ll run the possibility of being looked upon as ponies who helped her to do it. We’d get in as much trouble as she's going to be in.”

“Thunderlane! Thunderlane’s dad!” Rainbow called as they were taking flight. Surprisingly, they stopped and turned to see the distraught blue filly. “I… I didn’t do it! I swear! You HAVE to believe me! Please!” Thunderlane stared back at her with worry. His father furrowed his brow at Rainbow, seemingly sick of hearing what he perceived to be her fabrication.

“If you didn’t do it, then why are you covered in her blood?” he asked.

“Because I was hugging her before she died! I didn’t stab her!”

“Who said you stabbed her?” He’d trapped her with that question.

“I… well… nopony. But that’s what happened! The bad ponies came in and stabbed her!”

“Enough! We’ve wasted enough time listening to your lies. Come on, Thunderlane,” the black colt’s father instructed as he began to fly away. Thunderlane and Rainbow Dash exchanged stares for a moment; Thunderlane gave her one of worry and uncertainty as Rainbow Dash gave him one of begging and sadness. After a minute that felt like an eternity to the two foals, Thunderlane broke the stare and flew off after his father.

Rainbow was in it now. She’d already been blamed for her mother’s death and who worse to come up with such a misconstruction than one of the four ponies she’d made friends with just earlier? He’d probably go to school tomorrow and tell everyone what he thought she did. Even worse, the colt’s father was going to tell the police. It would be all over the newspapers. Everypony in Cloudsdale would see her as a murderer and she would probably go to prison or worse! She could only think of one thing to do; run. She had to get out of there. Not just out of the home, but out of Cloudsdale completely. Maybe even Equestria. She’d be in a LOT of trouble if she stayed. Nopony would accept her. Not Thunderlane, not Fluttershy… probably not even Gilda. She would be seen as a killer in their eyes. She was completely alone now. As far as she saw it, she had no friends, no family, no one. Her mom was dead and all the friends she had now would be afraid of her or hate her by tomorrow, along with everypony else who’d read the next day’s paper and lump her on the same boat as… as that bastard who ACTUALLY stabbed Daring to death. Rainbow Dash thought of his face for an instant, and became outright furious.

“You…! You ruined my life…! I hate you…!! I WILL find you…! And I will KILL you…!” Rainbow muttered to herself as she went back into the house. She was quick to sheathe the sword again and find her saddlebags, empty them of her school supplies and refill them with necessities and food items. She had to figure out how to get everything she needed out of the house; the food, the sword, and the body. She didn’t have much time to think, so she initiated the first idea that popped into her mind; she took off the saddlebag, set the sword on her back, and placed the saddlebag back on so that the sword was held firm by the saddlebag’s straps. The sword was positioned so that it wouldn’t impair her flight too much, all the while not hindering her neck positioning too badly. It was still an uncomfortable fit, but she’d manage.

The real challenge was picking up her mom. She wasn’t going to leave her here for the cops to find her for any reason. They’d probably do unimaginable things to her before they set her up for a funeral of some sort. Rainbow didn’t want anypony hurting her mom any more than she already was. Even if she wasn’t alive to feel the pain, it would still hurt Rainbow to think of the things they’d do to Daring’s body. Rainbow was going to give her a proper burial. She had to. Where, she didn’t know, but she figured her mom deserved a peaceful resting place. As the filly finished her thoughts, she cast away her previous fears and moved to sling Daring’s foreleg over her neck. She then fluttered her wings hard in order to take flight. She slowly, but surely achieved lift-off. The combined weight was almost more than the filly could bear, but she ignored the strain, as she had an urgent mission to accomplish. She slowly flew her way out of the open door and into the open late afternoon Cloudsdale skies to an uncertain destination…

Thunderlane and his father were flying quickly towards the police station. However, the little black colt was uncertain of what to think. He saw everything back at the scene; the blood, the sword, the body, and the filly covered in blood from the body. Yet, he felt inclined to give Rainbow a chance. The look of hopeless terror in her eyes when they stared at one another… the tears… Rainbow had even said she was “hugging her mother” before she died… why would someone who was intent on killing another pony hug their victim before they died? Maybe she stabbed her mom by accident? But then, that sword was too big. He’d seen her struggling to keep it steady as she swung the door open. The more he thought into the circumstances of his friend’s crime, the more torn his mind was.

“Um… d-dad…?” the colt finally spoke up.

“Yes, son?”

“Wh… why would somepony do that…?”

“You mean kill another pony?”

“Yes…”

“…Well, my boy, I don’t exactly have an answer to that. I can’t even make sense of it myself as to why someone would be so cruel as to take the life of another pony. I also never expected a friend of yours, who you just met hours ago, to be one to do such a thing…That’s why you have to be careful of who you trust. You never know.” Something clicked in the stallion’s head. “Thunderlane… did she say anything to you when you met her?”

“N-no… Only that she wanted to be friends with me before her griffin friend, Gilda, hit me,” the colt lied. He hadn’t told his father that he, Flight Path, and Trailblazer were picking on another pony— Fluttershy, specifically, which led to a series of events that prompted Gilda to hit him. His father was a stallion of strong conviction; believing firmly in a strict moral code in that one must always be honest, respectful of elders, and that under NO circumstances was a colt or stallion in his household allowed to lay his hooves on a filly or mare. He was also a firm believer in chastisement. If he’d have told his father what REALLY happened, he would’ve gotten the spanking of a lifetime. Thunderlane figured he’d get away with just a little white lie regarding his meeting with the sky blue filly, thus saving his own flank.

“Well, alright, then. If that griffin— Gilda, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“If she’s as close to little Miss Rainbow-mane as I assume she is, then she must know something. After we go to the police station, we’re paying a visit to that griffin…” That statement struck instant fear in Thunderlane. He’d almost folded up his wings, he was so terrified. Flying suddenly became difficult, as if he were carrying a sack of bricks as he pumped his wings. He’d tried to keep it smooth, but his father noticed his sudden change in disposition. “What’s the matter, Thunderlane?”

“I uh…! N-nothing, sir. Just um… a little shaken up… about what we saw back there… I uh… I can’t believe Rainbow Dash would do something like that…” the colt lied once again. He’d unknowingly thrown his friend under the carriage on that one. He was so sure he’d give her a chance to explain herself once everything was said and done, but he’d killed any chance he had of possibly defending her from the judgment of his father.

“I’m sorry… A colt as young as you shouldn’t have had to see that… C’mere…” the father Pegasus said as he slowed down to hug his son. He gently wrapped his forelegs around the colt, pulling him into a loving embrace, and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, son. I don’t ever want to see you doing anything like that. You hear me?”

“Y-yes, dad. I-I… love you, too…” Thunderlane timidly replied as the two neared the Cloudsdale Flight School…

Fluttershy was absolutely ecstatic. Within one week of starting at a public flight school, she’d already made five friends. Sure, she got beat up, and two of those friends had to fight her three others, but it all worked out in the end. Rather than go straight home, she spent some time alone after school flying around the race course. She was determined to make herself a better flyer so she would be able to make friends in a more conventional way, as well as make herself stronger so as to be able to defend herself so nopony would mess with her. She worked really hard, using her memories of the recent events that transpired as fuel for her determination.

“Whew…! I think… hah… I’m getting better already…” the filly said to herself as she wiped sweat off of her forehead before taking a rest. “I can’t wait to start practicing with Rainbow Dash and Gilda so I can become even better…” She looked around to see that there was no one around her and that the sun was setting. “Oh, my…! I spent more time out here than I thought… I should get home…” With that, the Pegasus filly gathered her things from a nearby cloud bench and proceeded to make her way home. On her way, she saw two black Pegasi, one of which she’d recognized as Thunderlane, flying towards her. They were flying fairly quickly, like they were in a hurry.

“Hi, Thunderlane!” she called. Her greeting went unheard as they passed by her, not because they were ignoring her or because they were going too quickly, but because her voice was much too soft for them to hear. She was used to such incidents, so this was no particularly big deal to her. She figured they had to go home before sundown, just like she had to. She resumed her journey back home. The filly couldn’t wait to tell her daddy that she’d finally made friends. She took her time getting home, humming a sweet little tune to herself as she smiled brightly, looking forward to the look on her father’s face when she broke the good news to him. He would be so proud of her.

As she reached the doorstep to her humble abode, she could hear shouting and crashing coming from the other side of the door.

“*GASP* Mommy must be home!” Fluttershy excitedly stated. She was eager to see her mother for the first time in what felt like eons. She spent so much time at work, and Fluttershy missed her so much. Mommy and Daddy were celebrating really early, so maybe they’d let her have fun too because it wasn’t bedtime this time. Not wasting another second, Fluttershy quickly grabbed the knob and pushed the door open.

“Mommy, Daddy! I’m—!” She cut herself short as her jaw dropped in shock at what she saw. A yellow stallion with medium-length spiky brown hair, a coat of a slightly brighter yellow than Fluttershy’s, a Cutie Mark of three blue jays, and eyes of a shade of ocean blue, was in the middle of a physical altercation with another stallion. This stallion was a bright leaf green with blond hair that was long and straight, almost like Fluttershy’s. He’d also shared a similar turquoise eye color with the filly. There was also a mare standing, watching in apparent horror at what she was looking at. She had a yellow coat that was a darker shade than the filly’s, curly light pink hair, and eyes that were emerald green.

“Fluttershy!?” said the mare in shock as she ran over to hug the filly.

“Mommy! Wh-what’s going on??” Fluttershy asked in panic. “Why is Daddy fighting that strange stallion?”

“Because your mom’s a slut, honey!” the light yellow Pegasus angrily shouted as he shoved the other stallion off of him. The two had come to a temporary ceasefire to trot forward to the filly, who was now confused and afraid.

“How dare you call me that? In front of our daughter, no less!” shouted the mare as she cradled her daughter.

“Oh, NOW she’s OUR daughter!?” he snapped back. “I’m actually shocked you would say that, considering you apparently don’t even know if she actually belongs to me or this jackass!” The filly gasped, already welling up with tears.

“Stop! You’re upsetting her!”

“I don’t understand, Nimbus!” the green stallion started. “Why? How could you? You led me on all these years to drop this bombshell on me now!?”

“Oh, you know I would never do that!” the mare known as Nimbus retorted, on the verge of tears. “I… the times we’ve had were special! I-I just couldn’t stand to hide this from you anymore! So that’s… that’s why I brought you here…”

“What about me!?” said the bright yellow stallion. “We’ve been married for HOW long now? Since before Fluttershy was born, and yet you hid this from me all these years? I can’t BELIEVE how selfish you’re being right now!”

“You wanna talk about ‘selfish?’ How about all those days you spent ignoring me or shoving off my problems like they were nothing! You never gave me the time of day! It was always you, you, you! Our first few years of marriage were great! In fact, they were some of the best years I’ve ever had! But then you started to change at some point… You stopped giving me kisses goodbye when I went to work, we stopped cuddling together on the couch listening to our favorite songs like we used to, and… and we even stopped making love after Fluttershy was born! You were pushing yourself further and further away from me, and the harder I tried to make you happy, the worse I seemed to make it! So that’s why I stopped trying with you!”

“I gave up my CAREER for you! I could’ve become the head director of the Canterlot Wildlife Refuge! CANTERLOT! I could’ve been raking in ALL the bits! But no, I rejected that offer to be with you! I took up a job on the Weather Patrol Squad to keep us afloat while you relaxed and made sure our baby was okay when you got pregnant! I even took double shifts on an almost-daily basis to make up for the loss of income when you were laid off of your job! Then when you found work as a secretary for the Equestrian Pegasus Immigration Office that trumped my salary even WITH all the extra time, I volunteered to cut my time by more than HALF to take care of our daughter! I cherished every single day I had with her! She became my entire world! And now you’re telling me she may not be mine because you slept with this guy on the SAME night that you slept with me!? That all these years, I’ve probably been wasting my time bonding with a foal I should’ve never had any business taking care of?? I’m sorry if I didn’t seem to be in a very good mood most of the time, but YOU were the cause of it!”

“Mommy… Daddy… please st-stop yelling…!” Fluttershy begged, although she wasn’t audible as she curled up into a ball in her mother’s fore legs and began to sob. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her daddy might NOT actually be her daddy? But what about all the tender loving care he’d shown her ever since she was a newborn? Surely, only daddies can do that, and she’d never even seen the green stallion before. He couldn’t have been her real dad… could he?

“Hold on here!” the green stallion began. “Is THAT all I’ve been to you, Nimbus!? Some… PLACEHOLDER for whenever your husband couldn’t fit your needs? We’ve been together for years! That night we made love, I thought you were the only mare in the world for me… Turns out I was dead wrong, seeing as you already promised that position to this guy! I should’ve figured as much when you wouldn’t return the majority of the letters I sent you from Las Pegasus after the fact! I’d only hear from you if you felt miserable, now that I think of it! There was almost never a time where you sent me a letter telling me that you were happy… Hay, you never even told me you were pregnant! I was confused, and thought you may have needed some time alone to collect your thoughts... Now I see that wasn't the reason you were always switching between reclusion and being an open book...” He turned to face the yellow stallion. “But this is YOUR fault, too! For whatever reason, you shunned her in times of need! Sure, you got your problems, but so does she! You’re supposed to work together in a marriage, you idiot! You can’t just ignore your wife when she wants to talk about a problem she’s having or if she wants a little extra attention from you! She’s your wife!”

“This, coming from the guy from Las Pegasus who saw my wife BEHIND MY BACK for who KNOWS how long without even being able to find out that she was a marri—!” The light yellow stallion interrupted himself as he took a look at the filly being cradled by her mother. Both of them were crying their eyes out, but Fluttershy looked hurt beyond repair. The sorrow in her eyes hit the stallion like an arrow to the heart.

“Am… Am I… a problem…?” she choked out between sniffles. “D-did I… make you all mad…?”

“Of course not, honeybun!” the yellow stallion responded in a tender tone of voice. “You know Daddy loves you!”

“But… you said that you were… *sniffle* wasting your time with me… because you might not be my daddy… Th-this is all my fault, isn’t it…?”

“No, kiddo,” the green stallion solemnly answered. “It’s mine, his, and your mother’s… we all should’ve been honest with each other from the get-go… You shouldn’t have been involved in this…”

“What do YOU know!?” she snapped, shocking everyone around her. She broke free of her mother’s embrace and backed away from all three of the other ponies. She gave each of them a stare that embodied pure enmity and ferocious weeping anger that would possibly only be evident in a dragon. The look she gave them pierced into their very beings, freezing the two stallions and the mare in fear. “If you were really my daddy, you would’ve come to visit Mommy and see me! I don't even know who you are!” she turned to the mare. “Mommy, how could you!? You used to tell me all the time that ponies were only supposed to have ONE special somepony! You told me that anypony with more than one was a bad pony! And you have TWO!” she directed her wrathful stare at the pony she wasn’t even sure was her father anymore. “Daddy… if you even ARE my daddy… Why would you treat Mommy like that? It’s not nice to ignore other ponies!” she suddenly realized something. “And… and you lied to me! You told me that you and Mommy were having fun! This… this isn’t fun! This is just… mean!”

Although she didn’t fully understand all the problems the three ponies had with one another, Fluttershy understood enough to come up with the hypothesis that their problems started… with her. The filly began to think about what the grown ponies said… The stallion she’d gotten used to calling her father said that he was “probably wasting his time with her.” He basically said that if Fluttershy didn’t belong to him… he wouldn’t want to be her daddy anymore. Then there was the whole thing about both of them giving things up for her. Her mom gave up a job to take care of her while her dad worked twice as hard to keep things solid. Then she said something about her and Daddy “not making love anymore” after she was born. Did that mean that they ran out of love for each other because they had to give it all to her? Maybe she needed the extra special somepony to make some love with in order to give to her daddy. But then, Mommy stopped talking to the green stallion after she made love with him. Maybe the love he had to give wasn't the right kind of love. Despite everything else, that one plaguing question still stood... which stallion should she be calling "Daddy?"

“Fluttershy…” the mare practically whispered as she cried. “This isn’t like you at all… but you’re right. I… WE’RE sorry. Mommy should have stayed with one special somepony… Daddy shouldn’t have lied to you. And he shouldn’t have been ignoring Mommy. And… and…”

“I should have come by to physically check up on your mom,” the green stallion interjected. “If I did, you wouldn’t have had to see this mess, and we would’ve gotten things sorted out much sooner… and all of us would know who your real father is…” Fluttershy’s stare fell into a look of utter devastation as she moved a fore leg to wipe her eyes. She said absolutely nothing as she turned away from her parents, whether biological or not, bolted through the door and hastily flew away, crying openly as she left the three crestfallen ponies to stare at her as she took off. The yellow stallion was just about to take off to get her, only to be stopped by the green one.

“Let her go… for now,” he instructed. “I’m probably the LAST pony you’d want to hear that from, but… she doesn’t need to see any of us right now. Not until we sort everything out. She deserves a proper explanation…” The yellow stallion uneasily concurred as the three began their discussion on their current situation.

Fluttershy wasn’t sure where she was going, but she knew she probably wasn’t going to go back home… not anytime soon, anyway. She was too upset at her parents for what they did. How could they say or do such horrible things to each other? She was always taught by both her parents to be kind, gentle, and tolerant of everyone and everything. She loved them dearly, and listened to everything they told her to do. They were the biggest reason as to why she was such a sweetheart to everypony, even when they said or did mean things to her. She’d been taught to “forgive and forget” anything bad that happened to her, but seeing her parents tear each other apart like that would be hard to forgive… much less forget. It only made things worse that the things they did to each other were probably because of her.

As the filly pondered, she came across a house that was being blocked off by the police. There was yellow tape all over the front door and police Pegasus ponies floating about, patrolling the area. She also spotted a black colt standing behind a large black stallion who was talking to a police officer. It was Thunderlane again. He must’ve been with his dad. Inquisitively, she flew over to him.

“Hi, Thunderlane…” she less than excitedly greeted him, still distraught over her parents.

“Hey, F-Fluttershy…” he greeted back, seeming to be equally less than enthusiastic.

“What’s going on here? Why are there so many police ponies here?”

“Um… My dad and I are here because… because of Rainbow Dash…”

“Rainbow Dash??” the yellow Pegasus gasped in shock. “She’s not in trouble, is she? Where is she? Is she okay?”

“I… I don’t know where she is… but… my dad and I… we saw her… she killed her mom…”

Taking Refuge...

Taking Refuge…

Rainbow had been flying for approximately an hour trying to find a suitable place to hide, and fatigue was setting in quickly. Her wings were throbbing in pain, begging for her to land. She’d been thinking about what to do once she found a suitable place to lay Daring Do to rest as she flew. Where would she go? Wherever it was, it was surely not back to Cloudsdale. By this point, the police should’ve been notified and actively searching for her. If she went back now, she’d have no way to clear her name. The sky blue filly eventually came upon the conclusion that she’d likely have to stay away and hope that they found out themselves that she didn’t do it… but then, she realized that the only way they could do so is if they had Daring’s body to study. However, seeing as her mother’s mortal shell was in HER possession now, going back would likely obliterate her chances, as compared to simply severely damaging them by running away.

“Oh, man…” she dejectedly mumbled to no one in particular. “There’s just no way anypony, especially a filly should deserve to go through this…”

As she searched for suitable landing ground, all she saw under her was a seemingly endless labyrinth of forest.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up her already steadily-decreasing altitude with so much weight on her underdeveloped body for much longer, so she took her chances and descended into the leafy canopy. She landed with the grace of a rock as she’d gotten tangled up in some vines on the way down and wound up dropping all of her cargo as she fought to free herself. She broke free and fell to the forest floor with a thud.

“Oooh… That hurt…” she groaned as she recovered and looked around. The welcoming light of the sunset seemed to disappear, replaced by eerie shades of darkness only broken apart by shards of light that managed to shine through the clusters of trees that surrounded and populated the area. Even with what little light she got from the sun, she could still see that this place was not one welcome to outsiders; the tree trunks were contorted in ways that made it look like there were scary faces on them, the air was hot, humid, and musty and smelled strongly like damp fur and compost, and she heard creepy noises coming from various animals all around. She found herself shivering in fear, but shook it off as her eyes were brought back to Daring’s body and her supplies.

“I can’t get distracted now…” she mumbled. “I… I have t—!” She found her monologue interrupted by a feral howl of some sort, which froze her in fear. “Wh-wh-what was that!?” she asked aloud as if anyone were around her to respond. Rainbow was quick to grab the sword and rip its sheath off to reveal the long, slender blade that seemed to have been sharpened to perfection as it a beam of light instantly hit it to reflect a bright gleam off of it. Rainbow clutched the handle in between her teeth and took a stance of apprehensive defense as she struggled to keep the sword steady. Another howl came from seemingly nowhere, prompting her to look around and see nothing… until her gaze met with two menacing yellow glowing half-circles that were angled like a pair of angry eyes. “S-st-stay away! I’ll k-kill you if you don’t!”

“Foal…!” growled a deep, menacing voice, further startling Rainbow to the point where keeping herself still was not an option. “You are unwise to set hoof in the deep reaches of the Everfree…”

“O-oh yeah!? S-s-says who!?”

“Says your predators… your hunters… you are our meal for tonight, young pony…”

“L-like HAY I am!” as Rainbow shot back, a gust of wind began to blow. Despite being frightened beyond all reasonability, she stood her ground, trying desperately to save face.  The thick, leafy bushes around the area began to rustle violently. The creatures were intent on intimidating their prey, tantalizing Rainbow by delaying the true reveal of their presence as they hid. She studied the bushes to see three sets of creepy glowing yellow half-circles swirling around her amidst them.

“There is no escape… We even see you brought us a larger course…” Rainbow instantly knew what they were talking about.

“NO! You’re NOT going to eat me OR my mom!” she tried to charge into one of the bushes, but the sword’s weight slowed her down greatly as she tried to gallop. Suddenly, the bushes stopped rustling and a terrifying creature jumped out of it, startling the Pegasus into stepping back as she quaked. It towered over the frightened filly, who could only stare at it in sheer terror as she backed away. In its maw were a large number unbelievably large, razor-sharp, jagged… wooden teeth coated in a thick layer of saliva as the pupil-less yellow eyes of the beast aimed their gaze directly at Rainbow. Its body seemed to have been constructed entirely out of wood, with tree branches protruding from its back. It roared in Rainbow’s face. If death had a specific smell, that would accurately fit the atrociousness of the creature’s breath.

“You’ll be lucky if one of us decides to swallow you whole…” the creature growled. Rainbow Dash looked to both her left and right to see that the beast standing in front of her had company. Deciding to fight rather than run to save herself, she steeled her nerves, grabbed the sword with her fore hooves and took a wild, clumsy swing at the creature standing in front of her as she squeezed her eyes shut.

*THWACK* She hit her mark! She actually hit the monster dead on. She opened her eyes to see the results of her attack, only to be shocked at what she saw. The sword had indeed made contact with its intended target. However, the blade actually wound up becoming lodged in its cheek. There were no signs of blood, or even that the beast was in pain. She was confused and scared beyond belief.

“A valiant effort, little pony… yet utterly futile. We are Timberwolves. You will need MUCH more strength than that to even hope to harm us…” the wolf taunted as it raised a paw to swat Rainbow.

*SMACK* an explosion of pain washed over the blue filly as she was flung backwards onto the ground. She got up to see the Timberwolf that attacked her still stationary with her blade stuck in its cheek. It began to slowly approach her, baring its fangs as it laughed. Rainbow, not willing to give up and thinking on impulse, rocketed towards the wooden creature, grabbed her sword out of its cheek, flew upwards and with a roar of her own, and used the momentum to bring the blade down on what she could guess was the wolf’s neck with every ounce of strength she could muster.

*SLICE* she hit the mark again, eliciting a howl from her enemy. She didn’t waste time hoping as she made sure to observe the results of her attack. She found the pleasing sight that her sword wasn’t stuck in the wolf in any way. In fact, the blade was partially dug into the ground. A second later, the wolf’s head fell to the ground next to her, startling her as she pulled the sword out of the ground and backed away. The Timberwolf’s body followed suit in falling to the ground as an oozing brownish liquid dribbled from its neck. Rainbow looked at the Timberwolf’s disembodied head to see that its eyes were still glowing. The glow soon faded to black.

“I did it…? Yeah! I-I did it! I killed it!” she cheered, alerting the other two wolves.

“Oh, you killed it, alright…” growled one of the remaining enemies, abruptly ending Rainbow’s cheer as she was startled back into focus. “You have just killed any chance you had of surviving this little ordeal…”

“Yes…” snarled the other wolf. “We were actually considering letting you live… under the condition that you fed your mother, who seems to have met her end already, to us… however, you have killed our brother, and for that, you must pay…” the wood-carved beasts approached Rainbow simultaneously.

“Like I’d seriously let you eat my mom, even IF you let me go!” the filly shot back.

“It… confuses us as to why you are intent on protecting dead meat from serving its only useful purpose… It matters little, for soon, we will be having a feast of pony… whether you comply or not…” the malicious wolves charged full-speed at Rainbow, who quickly flew upwards to avoid their assault.

“Ha! Missed m—! WAAH!” one of the wolves managed to jump and sink its teeth deep into the filly’s hind leg, drawing a copious amount of blood and an agonized shriek from the filly as she struggled to free herself. The wolf came down, Rainbow in its clutches, and slowly began to clench its jaws until a disturbing *SNAP* could be heard. Rainbow shouted in despair again. Satisfied, and with a strong twist of its head, the Timberwolf threw her into a tree.

*CRACK* she flew back-first into the tree and upon impact, felt an eruption of agony surge through her back as she dropped the sword and tumbled to into a puddle of mud. She gingerly climbed back to her hooves, almost falling back into the puddle as she winced, lifting her right hind leg up as she felt a seemingly endless wave of pain surge through it.

“Delicious…” hissed one of the Timberwolves as it licked its teeth clean of Rainbow’s blood. “It’s been… far too long since I’ve had a taste of pony… I believe I require a second sample…” the wolves began to trot towards the filly slowly. Rainbow picked up her sword and lifted off once again to attempt the same maneuver she used to kill the first wolf, only to be cut short during her ascension by a stab of soreness in her left wing, which sent her plummeting into the ground behind them.

“Ow…!” she groaned as she sat up to see that the wolves weren’t paying any attention to her; they were approaching Daring’s body. “NO! GET AWAY FROM HER!” she shouted as she charged at them, on three hooves and unarmed. She leapt into the air to bite one of the wolves on its tail. It howled in agony as it began barreling towards a tree. It stopped and twisted itself around, smashing the filly against the tree’s trunk. The crushing impact made the filly let go immediately as she fell to the ground. She was barely conscious at this point. Her broken leg was bleeding profusely from the vicious bite she received, one of her wings was in a lot of pain, either sprained or broken, and she suffered a mild concussion from her second impact with the tree, which disoriented her greatly. She couldn’t see clearly, nor could she hear much of what was going on. Everything was becoming blurry as she fought to keep herself awake. The multiple areas of unmitigated physical suffering were quickly taking their toll on her. She was lying on her stomach, defeated, bleeding, tired, dizzy, and beginning to cry.

“Aww, don’t cry, little pony…” hissed the Timberwolf, spraying its foul breath in Rainbow’s face. “We’ll cut you a break… since you’ve got so much fight in you…”

“Yes…” growled the other wolf. “Tell you what; we’ll let you live JUST long enough so that you can watch us eat your mother… and when you’re all tuckered out from the screaming and crying we imagine you to be doing; which shouldn’t be much, considering your current condition… we’ll devour you, too… to put you out of your misery…” the wolves cackled in triumph.

“N-no…” Rainbow moaned, too tired and beaten up to fight anymore.

“What was that? ‘No…? Problem? My, how magnanimous of you…” The wolf began to laugh as its comrade dragged Daring’s body, practically void of any blood and any of the red liquid matted on her coat dried to a dingy brown, over to the other wolf. The wolf dropped the body in front of Rainbow, whose eyes opened up wide. These wolves were merciless. They beat her to a messy pulp, and they were going to rub salt in the wounds by ripping her mother apart in front of her as she helplessly looked on. She’d failed in her mission to give Daring a proper resting place… and worse, she was never going to get a chance at vengeance for her. She and her mom were going to be food for wild animals in an unknown landscape, all because of that dumb necklace that Daring was killed over. Life in jail didn’t seem like such a bad option now… Rainbow closed her eyes and began to weep; feeling utterly hopeless as she waited for what she felt was inevitable… until she felt a surge of incredible power course through her body.

“What is this!?” said a wolf in shock just before it sunk its teeth into the deceased pony before it. A bright, translucent glow enveloped Rainbow Dash as she began to levitate without the use of her wings. Her eyes became glowing white spheres of anger and determination, still weeping as tears poured freely from them. She bared and clenched her teeth as her legs folded into her chest.

“I… said… NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” she roared in a voice that didn’t seem at all like hers. It almost sounded like there was more than one voice speaking at the same time. Nonetheless, she threw her legs in four different directions, causing a wave of the lustrous white light to quickly envelop the area around her.

*KABOOM!!!!* An incredible explosion rocked the area as the light wiped out that entire section of forest. Trees, plants, even the Timberwolves; vaporized in the blast as the filly let her unprecedented raw power ravage the forest. A few seconds later, the explosive wave of pure energy subsided and Rainbow crashed to the ground immediately. She slowly lifted her head and observed the vicinity. She’d created a clearing; there were no trees, grass, mud, or animals anywhere in the immediate precinct; only bone-dry ground as the sun, now beyond its twilight, loomed over the horizon as the moonlight began to set in. The Timberwolves were nowhere to be found. She didn’t even see the one she managed to kill with the sword. She did see that everything she’d brought into the forest was still intact, which befuddled her fatigued mind, while at the same time pleasing her. With what little strength she had left, Rainbow crawled over to her mother and hugged her.

“I… I won’t let anything happen to you, mommy… I love yuh…” she tiredly muttered to her deceased guardian as she drifted into unconsciousness.

In a luxurious bedroom inside of the Royal Canterlot Palace resided a small unicorn filly. She was purple with straight dark blue hair that had two juxtaposed stripes of deep purple and hot pink trailing down the length of it. She’d had a Cutie Mark of a constellation of stars surrounding an even larger hot pink one. She’d been drifting off to sleep as she cuddled with a small, pudgy lizard with varying scale colors of purple and emerald green before she was suddenly awakened by what she sensed was an enormous, sporadic jump in magic activity, quickly followed by its disappearance. The filly had been startled and unable to go back to sleep.

“Is everything alright, my most faithful student?” asked a serene voice as its owner trotted in through the doorway. The being was a magnificent shade of white, its sparkling mane and tail of a mixture of sky blue, teal, and pink flowing as if a soft breeze had been bending them to its will. It stood quite tall; much taller than any normal pony, donning many articles of fine jewelry; four solid gold slippers, a gold necklace with a royal purple diamond embedded in the middle. The crown the being was wearing shared a similar design to the necklace, also having a royal purple diamond crested into it. The being also had both a unicorn horn and a pair of wings that were also much larger than any normal pony, Unicorn or Pegasus. Its Cutie Mark was that of the Sun.

“S-sort of…” began the Unicorn filly. “I felt this huge power not too far from here… It didn’t feel like any kind of magic I’ve ever come into contact with. It felt so much… stronger…”

“So you have sensed it too?” the winged Unicorn asked. “Indeed, this power is unfamiliar… At least, it is to everypony now. Remember that book I showed you? The one about legends and myths?”

“The History of Folklore: Tales and Testimonies of Supernatural Occurrences?”

“Yes. Now, do you remember the chapter that specifically talked about a group of artifacts by the name of the ‘Elements of Harmony’?” The filly, being highly intelligent for her age, figured what the larger Unicorn was implying.

“But… you and everypony else said that the stories in that book were all a series of elaborate fabrications and superstition! A-are you sure it could be—?”

“Yes, my student. I have sent a platoon of guards to investigate the area I sensed the spike in magic coming from in order to find out for sure.”

“How come you didn’t go?”

“I figured you wouldn’t want me to… you seem a bit startled. Would you like for me to sleep in here with you?” a grin of excitement instantly plastered across the filly’s face.

“Yes, please,” she calmly answered, trying to hide her excitement.

“Very well… Sweet dreams, my star pupil…” the being sweetly whispered, giving the filly a quick nuzzle before getting comfortable on the floor.

“Good night, Princess Celestia…” responded the filly as she lay back down to cuddle up to her lizard.

Fluttershy, Thunderlane and his father were on their way to Gilda’s house on the outskirts of Cloudsdale after being given directions by one of the few ponies to know her place of residence. The stallion was determined to get answers from somepony, despite being told specifically to return home by the police. As far as he saw it, there was a murderer on the run, and the only friend said murderer was ever seen with before this day was one of the only creatures other than Pegasi to live in Cloudsdale.

“Hey, um… Butterfly, was it?” he asked.

“Fluttershy… sir…” the filly halfheartedly responded, the stress of her parental predicament and finding out that one of her newest friends had done a terrible thing to another pony greatly taking over her thoughts.

“What’re you doing out here so late?”

“I um… I ran away from home…”

“You WHAT!? Why would you do that?? Your parents must be worried sick about you!”

“I… I don’t have any parents…” she bitterly muttered, thinking more with her emotions than ration.

“Seriously??”

“No. I-I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that! I-I DO have parents… it’s just that…”

“What?” asked both the colt and the stallion.

“My mommy’s in a lot of trouble… because she has more than one special somepony…”

“Oh, dear…” the stallion muttered, quickly grasping the severity of Fluttershy’s situation.

“A-and now I… I-I… I don’t know who my daddy is and the daddy I thought was my daddy said he might be wasting his time with me if he’s not my daddy and mommy said that she stopped making love with him after I was born because I needed all the love and daddy started ignoring mommy, so mommy went to get another special pony to make love with and… and… my daddy and my other daddy started fighting and… and…” Fluttershy broke down crying as her recent memories caused her an enormous amount of grief. “If it’s okay… I don’t want to talk about it anymore…”

“I’m… so sorry… first, I see this Rainbow Dash killing her own mother, and now this… what is this place coming to?” Thunderlane’s father asked himself as they arrived at their destination. The three Pegasi landed on the doorstep, with the stallion taking point and knocking on the door. A few seconds later, an adult griffin male answered the door. He emitted a strong smell of inebriation as his glazed, bloodshot eyes focused on the ponies before him as he leaned on the doorstep.

“Well, whathe hell d’YOU want!?” he shouted in a slurred voice, clearly unhappy with his visitors.

“Please excuse my intrusion Mr… Griffin,” began Thunderlane’s father. “…but is it okay if I have a word with um…”

“Gilda,” Fluttershy finished, looking equally as uncomfortable as the two ponies she was accompanying.

“Oh, her? Yeah, hang on…” He stumbled through a one hundred-eighty degree turn. “HEY GILDA! GET’CHER ASS DOWN HERE! YOUR PANSY LI’L PONY FRIENDS ARE HERE T’ SEE YA!” The looks of disgusted horror on the ponies’ faces went unnoticed by the drunken griffin.

“Coming, dad…!” a feminine voice called from upstairs. A few seconds later, a griffin girl slowly strolled her way down the stairs, a seemingly-uncharacteristic look of fear on her face.

“Make it quick or I’ll kick yer ass out again!” he shouted as he stumbled away from the doorway. Gilda made her way to the doorframe to reveal that she looked disheveled. Her feathers and fur were ruffled, she was limping, and the feathers under her eyes were stained as if she were crying. She was shocked to see the three ponies standing at her door, but only for the simple fact that none of them were Rainbow Dash. She stepped out of the doorway and shut the door.

“What are all of YOU doing here?” she irritably asked, seeming to be trying to intimidate her guests.

“G-Gilda…” Fluttershy began. “Did… did your daddy do this to you?”

“So what if he DID, Fluttercry!? The old griffin’s just making me tougher!” Her words were surprisingly bitter, coming from someone the filly assumed was her friend. Fluttershy was taken aback by Gilda’s rude remark.

“Hey, there’s no reason to take your anger out on her! She didn’t do anything to you,” Thunderlane defended.

“Oh, you mean like how you were ‘taking your anger out on her’ before Dash and I came over and kicked your flank at school today, ThunderLAME?”

“You WHAT??” Thunderlane’s father asked as he glared at his son, angered by what he’d just heard. He sighed and turned to the griffin. “I’ll have to ask you to watch your tongue, young lady. But what was that about what happened at school today?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” she asked, smirking at the colt, who stared back at her in terror.

“Well, he told me that he was trying to make friends with Rainbow Dash, and that you got jealous and hit him.”

“HA! That’s not even remotely true!”

“Oh, it isn’t…?”

“Nope! What really happened was that Dash and I were talking during recess and saw your son and his two bonehead friends beating up on the weakling here. Dash led me over there, one thing led to another, and blammo! We beat him and his friends up. Then he came over to us at lunch, apologizing for being such a dweeb and kissed and made up with Dash and Fluttercry.”

“…I see…” the stallion said before going silent. “Son, you and I are going to be having QUITE the talk when we get home…”

“Ooh, somepony’s in troooooubllllle…” Gilda mocked.

“Anyway, you haven’t seen Rainbow Dash around, have you?”

“Nah, last time I saw her was at school today.”

“Did she say or do anything unusual while you were there?”

“No, not really. She zoned out during lunch with a look on her face like she was scared that something was gonna happen, but that’s all.”

“Has she said or done anything unusual before today?”

“Not that I know of— Okay look, WHAT is the point in all of this?” Gilda asked back, getting impatient with the interrogation.

“Rainbow Dash… k… ki… ki…” Fluttershy tried to answer, but was too scared to utter the words.

“Dash ki— what?”

“She killed her mom,” blurted Thunderlane. Gilda’s eyes went wide with disbelief. A few seconds later, she started to chuckle.

“Yeah, right! She’d never do that! She and her mom were too close to each other for her to even think about killing her, even if her mom was sick and acting all loopy recently.”

“I see…” the stallion muttered again. He mulled over the griffin’s words. If Rainbow was close to her mom, but her mom was sick… why would she kill her? Maybe it was a mercy-killing? That would explain why Rainbow claimed to be hugging her mom before she died. But that didn’t explain the grisly brutality of the crime scene… It looked like there was a huge fight going on in there… “She never mentioned anything about wanting to kill anypony before?”

“No.”

“Interesting… but the fact still stands that she killed her mother.” Gilda’s eyes went wide again.

“Wait… you guys are serious??” Gilda asked in complete surprise, her expectations of the ponies' news being a prank shattered.

“Mhm…” nodded Fluttershy. Thunderlane mimicked the filly’s slow head nod.

“Well, where is she??” Gilda asked, seemingly distraught.

“We don’t know,” Thunderlane answered. “My dad and I went to go see her so he could meet her, but when she opened the door, she had this giant sword covered in blood and the inside looked all messy and bloody. We even saw her mom’s body lying in a corner. We went to go get the police, but when we went back, Rainbow, her mom’s body, and the sword were all gone…”

“So… Dash is on the run?”

“It would appear so,” answered Thunderlane’s father.

“And I’m guessin’ you guys all came here to see if she came over to hide?”

“Seeing as you were apparently her only friend until today, your house seemed to be the only likely place she’d run to.”

“I guess you have a point. But honestly, I haven’t seen her all day. And… and between you and me, she’d NEVER come here. My dad’s… not such a great house host, as you can see… I didn’t even tell her that I was supposed to be moving away to be with my mom tomorrow… and I guess now I’ll never get to say goodbye… Dash, how could you…?” Gilda looked dejectedly at the ground and shed a single tear as she wondered what happened to the only pony she could call a friend.

“Gilda…? A-are you okay…?” asked Fluttershy, snapping the griffin out of her train of thought.

“Uh, ye-yeah! I’m fine! Stop worrying about me, will ya?”

“I’m sorry to say this, Gilda, but you aren’t fooling anypony with that façade. You know, if you need somepony to talk to beore you go, we—!”

“I said I’M FINE! I DON’T NEED ANY HELP FROM ANY OF YOU LAME-O PONIES! You wouldn’t understand, anyway! You don’t know anything about me! Just… just get the hell outta here…!” with that, Gilda went back into her house, slamming the door in the ponies’ faces.

“Well that was… mildly unpleasant and somewhat pointless…”

“Well, now what do we do?” asked the colt.

“I suppose we can only hope everything sorts itself out. But it’s getting really late. WE should all go home now. WE still have to have that talk, Thunderlane…”

“Y-yes, sir…”

“I… I don’t want to go home,” Fluttershy said.

“Listen… I’m sorry for what happened to you, Fluttershy, but you HAVE to go home. If you don’t, where else would you go?”

“I… I don’t know…” suddenly, the filly had an idea. “Is… is it okay if I… stayed with you? Just for tonight?” asked the filly as she unknowingly gave the stallion an adorable puppy dog-eyed look. He found it incredibly hard to resist such a sweet, innocent face.

“*sigh* Fine, but you’re going home first thing in the morning. Your parents must be worried about you. And I suppose it’s better than letting you wander off around Cloudsdale for a place to sleep.”

“I understand. Thank you, Mr. Thunderlane’s Dad, sir.”

“My, such good manners for somepony so young. You must’ve been taught well,” he complimented as the three took off.

“Y-yes…” The stallion’s compliment perturbed the filly. She was glad that he liked how she acted, but there was a nagging feeling of resentment at the phrase, ‘You must’ve been taught well.’ Nevertheless, the three Pegasi made their way home to call it a day and hope that everything worked out for the better… especially for the sake of Rainbow Dash…

Confirmation...!

Confirmation…!

Rainbow Dash awoke with a start in her mother’s room, on the floor. She looked around, confused as to how she’d gotten there. She quickly looked up on the mare’s bed to check and see that Daring Do was sound asleep with a blanket over her.

“Mom! Wake up! I had a bad dream!” Rainbow called. Daring did not stir. “Mom! Wake up! Mom! Mom!” the filly placed a hoof on the mare’s face and withdrew it almost instantly. Daring Do felt cold… ice cold.

“Ra… Rainbow… My baby…” Daring murmured, still not moving. Rainbow stared at the mare, bewildered. She shook it off and proceeded to take hold of the blanket covering Daring.

“It’s okay, mom. I’m right h—! *GASP*” Rainbow removed the covers to see a grisly sight of her mother with deep cuts all over her body, with the bed soaked in her blood.

“D-Dashie… Mommy nee…”

*BOOM* In charged three mysterious ponies through the door on the opposite end of the room, all of them wearing black jumpsuits and red goggles, looking almost identical. One of them had a shard of glass stuck in its throat, while the other had what looked like Daring’s sword lodged in its abdomen.

“Who are you!?” Rainbow apprehensively asked. “What do you want!?”

“You know what we want! We want the Element! Hand it over or we’ll kill you like we killed your mother.” The three said in almost-demonic unison.

“Wh-what!? But, you didn’t kill her! She’s right—!” Rainbow began as she turned around to see that Daring wasn’t in the bed. Shocked and confused, she turned to the horrifying sight of the three ponies with her mother’s bloodied, battered body in front of them. The largest of the ponies picked the body up by its neck with his fore hoof. “Let her go!” she screamed as she charged at the ponies. She stopped when she saw him turn to his left. The stallion threw Daring’s body.

*THUMP* Daring’s body collided hard with the wall. Before it could hit the ground, however, the stallion instantaneously made his way over, forcefully pinning it against the wall with his fore leg. He raised his other one and revealed a long, slender, gleaming object that sharpened to a point, protruding from his fore hoof. “What will you do? You Weak, Pathetic Foal…” he taunted as he retracted his knife before tearing his mask off to reveal the red coat, white mane, and orange eyes she’d come to despise. He turned his head to her, with a sick, bloodthirsty grin on his face.

“Da… Dashie…” whispered Daring, who’d somehow come to life. “Where are you…? Help me…” the mare just barely opened an eye to look at the frightened blue filly, who upon hearing her mother’s plea, charged into action. She tried attacking the stallion head on, only to dive right through him.

“What the hay?” before she could consider what just happened, she tried again and again to attack, seeming to do nothing but pass through the stallion as if he were a ghost. She stopped after realizing the futility of her barrage and looked on in horror as the stallion proceeded to bury his knife into Daring’s abdomen, grinning evilly at Rainbow as he did. He let her body fall to the floor and began to cackle as he marveled his work. Rainbow, distraught and with tears pouring from her eyes, ran over to hug her mom, only to find that she was also intangible. She couldn’t understand what was going on. She looked around again, to see that the setting had suddenly changed to that of her home’s living room, trashed and bathed in blood. The two other Pegasi were lying on the ground, dead.

*BOOM* In came ANOTHER Rainbow Dash, who was quick to grasp her dying mother. Rainbow watched in utter confusion as the other Rainbow Dash hugged her mother. She squeezed her tear-filled eyes shut and shook her head to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. When she reopened them, she found herself in a dark, creepy forest. She suddenly felt vicious aches and pains in her left wing, head, and right hind leg. She almost collapsed to the forest floor as she writhed in agony.

“You did not think… you would get away from us, did you…?” asked a familiarly dark, deep growling voice. The filly’s eyes popped open to see two Timberwolves standing before her. However, there was something different about them… their eyes were no longer yellow. They were a devilish shade of red that aimed their gazes past the filly. Fearing the worst, she curled into a ball and whimpered as one of the wolves breathed its hot death breath on her. It walked past her with the other one following suit. Terrified and confused beyond comprehension, Rainbow turned around to see that the wolves were making their way towards Daring’s body, which she had no idea was there before this point.

“I said NO!” she involuntarily shouted. She then found herself charging at the wolves as fast as she could with three legs, as the force controlling her made sure not to allow her injured leg to touch the ground. Her body was acting completely on its own, no matter how hard she tried to stop herself. She bit the wolf on its tail, causing it to smash her against a tree, introducing a new surge of tormenting pain as she crashed to the ground.

“We’ll let you live… just long enough… to watch us eat your kin…” growled one wolf as the other dragged the body in front of Rainbow. Before they sunk their teeth into the mare, however, the stallion from before, still unmasked and carrying a sword, calmly trotted in between the wolves, stopping in front of Daring’s body and giving Rainbow a serious look. He tossed the sword towards her.

“You are Loyalty… Fight as she did, or die as she did…” he flatly stated.

“You are Loyalty…! Fight as she did, or die as she did…!” he said again, this time joined by the Timberwolves. “You are Loyalty… Fight as she did… or DIE as she did…!”

“You ARE LOYALTY!! Fight as she did… or DIE as SHE DID!!” the three shouted in unison before Rainbow’s body picked itself up and became enveloped in a white light.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!” she roared as the light expanded into a blinding flash.

Rainbow awoke with a start and a shout of terror in a cold sweat, breathing heavily as she was finally freed from her nightmare. She looked around to see herself in a room she’d failed to recognize. She was lying in a bed in a very decorative, fancy room. She sat up and looked out of a window to see that the sun was rising. She averted her gaze to her bed to examine her body. Her head was throbbing as if she’d collided head on with a rock. She found herself wrapped in bandages on various parts of her body. She’d also noticed that her mom’s necklace had mysteriously reappeared. She painstakingly moved to get up out of the bed, only to collapse onto the floor when she touched down.

“Oww…” she groaned as she moved to sit on her rump. She noticed that her right hind leg had been especially cared for, wrapped in a cast. She tried flapping her wings to lift up, only to wince in agony. She looked back to see that both of them had been tightly wrapped in bandages. Her left wing was wrapped more tightly than her right. From all of this, she deduced that she was in a hospital.

“Is the patient awake now?” called a graceful voice. Rainbow didn’t know what to feel; fear, happiness, or confusion. The voice sounded friendly, but she had no idea where she was, how she’d gotten there, or who brought her here.

“Um… d-down here…” she whispered.

“Oh,” said the voice as its owner trotted in to reveal herself as Princess Celestia. The winged unicorn mare walked in and peeked behind the bed to see Rainbow sitting down on her haunches. “Good morning, my little pony. What are you doing on the floor?” Rainbow Dash found herself unable to answer as she gazed at the princess in awe. Every feature of the divine Unicorn captivated her; the mane, her sharp, yet benevolent violet eyes, and the fact that she was so tall...  She was staring in the face of supreme royalty, and had no words to describe how star struck she’d felt. “Are you okay…?”

“Wow… you… you’re…!”

“Yes, I am Princess Celestia. Might I ask your name, young filly?”

“I’m… I’m Rainbow Dash…”

“Well it certainly is nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash.” The Princess smiled warmly as she enveloped the Pegasus filly in a radiant golden magic glow and levitated her back onto her bed. “It’s great to see that you’re awake. You were in a very bad condition when we found you…”

“I-I was…?”And then it hit her: She’d just gone through the worst day of her entire life the day before. Watching her mother die, having the killer taunt her before leaving her to be blamed for the murder, being forced to run away into a forest where she was nearly killed by wild animals before some random explosion saved her… “Oh, yeah… I was…” the filly answered for herself in a much more remorseful tone.

“If it isn’t too much trouble… may I ask what happened to you?”

“No,” the filly flatly answered. Celestia took no offense to Rainbow’s blunt response.

“I understand your feelings, Rainbow Dash. It’s okay if you’re still feeling shaken up.”

“It’s not because of that… it’s because… because…” Rainbow was unable to finish her statement before she began to weep. “…you’re probably gonna think I killed her, too…” Celestia laid a hoof on the filly’s mane, stroking it in an attempt to soothe her, despite her surprise.

“I assure you; I will listen to you and make my judgment only after I hear your plight. I assume that the gold Pegasus mare we found with you was your mother?”

“Yeah…”

“I’m deeply sorry about your loss… It’s… going to be okay…” The Princess felt herself welling up with tears of sympathy.

“No… no, it won’t…” Rainbow tearfully began. “My… my mommy’s dead, and everypony in Cloudsdale thinks I killed her…” The Princess was taken aback by the Pegasus’s confession, gasping in shock. “These… Pegasi came to my house while I was at school and I guess mom killed two of them before the third one got her by the time I got back… H-He took his friends and left, and somepony else came and saw me and blamed me for it. They even told the police…”

“Oh… Oh, my… May I ask what made these Pegasi want to take her life?” Celestia asked. This prompted Rainbow Dash to look down at the luminous golden necklace bound to her neck. She brought her fore hooves to it and lifted it up to show the Princess.

“This necklace, I guess… Mom always said something about some ‘Elements of Harmony’ and how this one was supposed to represent Loyalty… then the Pegasus who killed her said that now I’M the owner of it and that he would come back for me someday… he told me to get ready for him… for a grudge match… and when I went to pick it up so I could wear it in my mom’s memory, I heard some weird voice telling me that I’m the one… and I haven’t been able to get this thing off of me since…”

The fact that a Pegasus filly had gotten her hooves on such a powerful, coveted mythical object that was rumored not to exist was shocking enough to Celestia, but what was more shocking was that it bound itself to the filly. Fearing for the safety of Rainbow, she’d address the issue of possible attempts on the filly’s life before she dug into her about the Element.

“I see… Do you know what the Pegasus looked like?”

“I couldn’t forget if I tried…” Rainbow began, taking a bitter, spiteful tone. “He and his two friends were wearing black suits with red goggles. I think there was some symbol where Cutie Marks are supposed to go, too… It looked like a red letter ‘D’ with a Seven in the middle of it… After he killed my mom, he… he took off his mask and showed me his face. He was red with a white mane, orange eyes, and a scar on his face… He told me to remember it and his voice and told me to learn to fight… then he gave me my mom’s sword and left.”

“How bizarre…” Princess Celestia was a little confused at the actions of the stallion responsible for another pony’s death. Why would he show anypony his face? Why didn’t he take the Element of Harmony when he had the chance? Why did he allow Rainbow Dash to live? And who was he working with if he and his comrades were wearing black suits with insignias on them? Celestia had no answers as of yet, but she was going to get them later. There was a more important issue at hand… “Do you remember that explosion that happened while you were in the forest?”

“Hardly…”

“Do you know what triggered it?”

“Not really… All I remember was me on the ground while these monsters that called themselves Timberwolves were about to eat my mom. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her, but there I was, completely helpless and too beaten up to fight anymore. I almost gave up before I felt this… light take me over and lift me up into the air. Then everything around me blew up…”

“I see…” the royal winged unicorn began to think.

“Princess Celestia!” called another voice from outside of the room, taking the Princess away from her thoughts. Soon, a small purple unicorn filly entered the room, curiously observing the surroundings. “Is the new pony okay?”

“Hm, yes, my student. She is right here,” Celestia responded. The filly scurried to her mentor’s side to get a better look at the other filly resting in the bed. “I… I have an important matter to attend to. I’ll be right back. Why don’t you introduce yourself to our new guest while I’m away?” she asked as she turned to trot out of the room.

“Sure thing, Princess!” the unicorn filly obliged with a wave as Celestia left the room. She directed her attention towards Rainbow. “Hi. My name is Twilight Sparkle. What’s your name?”

“Rainbow Dash…” the Pegasus filly halfheartedly answered.

“It’s nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said as she climbed onto the bed to extend a hoof. Rainbow only glanced up at Twilight with eyes full of sadness before lowering her head down and whimpering. “What’s the matter?” Twilight asked with a hint of worry as she lowered her hoof.

“I… you don’t want to be friends with me…”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re going to hate me…”

“Hate you? Why would anypony hate you?”

“My old friends hate me now…”

“Why??”

“Because…! Just… because…” Rainbow couldn’t stand having to tell the same story about what happened to her again and again. Not so soon. It all just happened yesterday. Simply thinking about the events of yesterday brought about morbid torrents of pain and sorrow. After relentless hours of being forced to hold in her emotion, she finally stopped fighting her tears and let them run freely from her eyes as she fell into fit of mournful sobbing. Twilight was deeply hurt by the injured Pegasus filly’s crying.

“I-I’m sorry... Did I say something to upset you…?” the Unicorn filly asked guiltily. Rainbow said nothing back. She could only shake her head ‘no’ as she continued to cry. Twilight had no idea what to do. She didn’t want to leave her new acquaintance all alone, but the Pegasus was clearly not in a conversational mood. She felt a wave of pity overcome her as her eyes began to tear up. After a few lengthy moments of silence, she opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Rainbow.

“My mommy’s gone… *sniff* My mommy’s gone…” Rainbow choked out in between sobs. “She’s dead… and everypony thinks I killed her… *sniff* I can’t go back home or they’ll lock me up… I don’t have any friends… Nopony likes me… they all hate me… I’m all alone again…” Hearing Rainbow’s grief-stricken confession hit the Unicorn hard. She didn’t expect to hear anything Rainbow had just told her. She was devastated. She couldn’t fathom what it was like to lose a parent at such a young age... to have everypony against her. But what did she mean by ‘alone again’? Being bright for her age, Twilight understood to some extent the gravity of Rainbow’s loss, despite not knowing the circumstances. Crestfallen, the Unicorn slowly inched towards the Pegasus and hugged her before she let her own tears flow from her eyes. Rainbow, although surprised by the Unicorn’s embrace, did not return it.

“I’m… really sorry, Rainbow Dash…” Twilight managed to choke out. “If… *sniff* if it helps… I don’t hate you… and even if I’m the only one to do it… I’ll be your friend… no matter what happens…” Rainbow heard Twilight Sparkle’s words loud and clear. She found comfort in them. It was… strangely uplifting to hear Twilight say she wanted to be friends with her, even after what she’d heard. Her tears were still flowing, but not entirely out of grief at this point; a small amount of them were out of relief.

“Thanks… Twilight Sparkle…” Rainbow choked out as she closed her eyes and placed a fore hoof to return the Unicorn’s hug. Neither of them noticed the Element of Loyalty taking on a dim, yet slowly strengthening glow as the two fillies let out their sadness. Just then, Princess Celestia trotted back into the room, followed by two guards. She saw the heart wrenching scene of the two fillies forming a bond, but what really caught her attention was Rainbow Dash’s necklace glowing.

“I see you two are getting along well,” Celestia stated with a small smile, alerting the fillies as they broke their hug and directed their attention towards her. “Twilight, I need to speak to Rainbow Dash… alone,” she informed with a serious tone and face. Twilight was confused by Celestia’s request, but she obliged without question.

“Okay, Princess,” the purple Unicorn responded as she climbed off the bed to walk towards the door. “I hope you get well soon, Rainbow Dash! Maybe we can play together sometime!” she said with a smile before she left.

“Rainbow… What I’m going to ask you may not be the easiest for you to answer right now. I understand if you do not want to answer right now, but I’m afraid I need answers. First, why were you in possession of your mother’s body?” Rainbow, who hadn’t finished grieving, wasn’t exactly willing to answer any questions of such magnitude. However, she felt like she had to, given that she was speaking with royalty.

“I… I promised I’d give her a proper burial. I didn’t want anypony doing anything bad to her…”

“I see… I understand your sense of concern for her, but you should have left her where she died… You understand that taking her with you would serve to make proving yourself innocent of a crime as severe as murder much harder, do you not?”

“Y-yeah, but I didn’t kill her!” Rainbow shouted defensively. “I wouldn’t do that to her! Ever!”

“I believe you. The stab wounds on her body didn’t match the shape of the sword you were in possession of, despite the blade being covered in blood. Do you know where the blood on the sword may have come from?”

“It was stuck in one of the dead Pegasi I saw when I found her… the stallion who killed my mom pulled it out of him. Wait… what are you doing to her?! You’re not hurting her, are you?”

“I assure you, your mother’s body is in no worse shape than we found it in. We merely examined the wounds on her and compared them to the shape and size of the sword. As I said, they do not match. Now, onto the next question…”

Fluttershy awoke bright and early in the morning. She figured Thunderlane’s father would’ve wanted her to, given that he said he would take her home first thing. She looked around to see Thunderlane still soundly asleep. The house lacked a guest room, so the Pegasus filly had slept in the colt’s bed with him, separating herself accordingly so as to avoid any awkward situations. She made sure not to disturb him as she rose and carefully climbed off of the bed. She exited the room to see her friend’s father up and walking towards her.

“Ready to go, Fluttershy?” he asked.

“*yawn* Yes, Mr. Thunderlane’s dad, sir.”

“Please, call me Roaring Wind.”

“Okay.”

“You hungry?”

“No thank you, Mr. Roaring Wind…”

“Y’know, I like you. You’re sweet. You have impeccable manners.”

“Um… Thank you…”

“You’re welcome.” With that, the two walked out of the door and took flight towards Fluttershy’s house. The flight was a slow and largely silent one, given that it was early in the morning. Eventually, Fluttershy broke the silence.

“Mr. Roaring Wind?”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t mind me asking… could you please not be too hard on Thunderlane?”

“I’m sorry for what my son did to you. I taught him better than that, and he will be punished accordingly.”

“I understand… but don’t hurt him. He was only trying to teach me to be better at flying…”

“Is THAT what he told you? Well trust me, Fluttershy, he and his friends hitting a defenseless filly hardly counts as a ‘flight lesson’. That’s what Flight School is for. It’s a good thing you had Rainbow Dash and Gilda come to your defense; even if it DID escalate into a fight that shouldn’t have happened. Speaking of which…” the stallion trailed off as they noticed two griffins, one large, and one small, headed in their direction.

“Gilda?” Fluttershy said as the griffins halted in front of the Pegasi. Gilda looked like she’d seen something horrible.

“Oh, hey…” she halfheartedly greeted.

“Good morning,” greeted the larger griffin. “I’m Gilda’s mother. My name is Nala,” she added as she extended one of her eagle claws towards the stallion.

“Good morning to you, too,” Roaring Wind Greeted back. “I’m Roaring Wind. Nice to make your acquaintance,” he added as he mimicked her gesture, shaking hoof with claw.

“Um… I’m… Flu’rsh…” Fluttershy timidly greeted, looking away.

“I didn’t catch that, dear. What was it?” Nala asked.

“Fl’r’sh…” she whispered even more quietly.

“*sigh* It’s Fluttershy, mom,” Gilda impatiently answered for the filly.

“Oh. You must be quite the shy one, huh?” the larger griffin asked. Fluttershy only nodded as she looked down.

“I take it you’re here to take Gilda away from her father?” asked Roaring Wind.

“That I am. Her father hasn’t exactly been treating her too well, to my understanding. So I’m taking her to live with me in Wingspan Rises. It’s just outside of and well above New Colt City.”

“I see…”

“Wait…” Fluttershy finally spoke up. “Isn’t your house back that way?” she asked as she turned and pointed a fore hoof behind her.

“Yeah,” Gilda answered. “But I just had to make sure you guys weren’t lying to me about Dash… I kinda wish I’d have just listened…”

“What happened there anyway?” Nala asked.

“A filly by the name of Rainbow Dash is on the run. She murdered her own mother, and as it appears, she took the body and fled,” Roaring Wind explained.

“Oh, dear! That’s horrible! And this Rainbow Dash was your friend, Gilda?”

“Yeah… I guess not anymore… I won’t be seeing her ever again…” Gilda said in a tone uncharacteristic to her usually intransigent and impulsive nature. She sounded remorseful and dejected. “…can we just go now? I’m getting tired of this place already…”

“Aw, of course, sweetie…” Nala answered in a tone of worry. She then turned to face the Pegasus stallion. “It certainly was nice meeting you, Mr. Roaring Wind. Maybe we’ll see one another around sometime?”

“I’d like that,” he assured. With that, the two parties said their goodbyes and headed off to their respective destinations. A short time later, Roaring Wind and Fluttershy arrived at the doorstep to her home.

“Well, little filly, looks like this is your stop,” announced the stallion.

“Thank you… for letting me stay at your house for the night, Mr. Roaring Wind,” Fluttershy said, flashing him a heartwarming smile.

“Aww, you’re just adorable… The pleasure was mine. Don’t be a stranger if you want to stop by for a visit or a play date with Thunderlane. Hopefully, he and you can get along well together as you spend time in school. Speaking of which, he should be up and preparing for school by now. I suppose you should do the same.”

“Okay,” agreed the yellow filly.

“Have a good one,” Roaring Wind said as he took off. “I hope everything works out between you and your parents!”

Fluttershy flinched at the word, ‘parents.’ It refreshed all the recent events of her parental situation in her mind. She smiled and waved at Roaring Wind until he was out of sight. At that moment, Fluttershy’s demeanor quickly changed from one of calm to one of sadness and guilt. The events of the day before came flooding back to her… her parents’ bickering and arguing… their mentions of sacrifices… unhappiness… the cease to their lovemaking… all because of her.

Her parents gave her so much… maybe it was because they gave her too much; to the point where they didn’t have enough to give to each other. She figured it was all her fault. Daddy ignoring Mommy… Mommy getting unhappy and finding a second special somepony— who could quite possibly be her real Daddy— to get love from… they tore each other apart… all because they were trying to make Fluttershy happy. The filly was brought to tears by her guilt over her parents’ situation. She didn’t even want to open the door. She figured that maybe she should just go someplace far away. That way, her parents wouldn’t have to be bothered with her anymore. That way, they could have all the love they needed for each other. Fluttershy was just about to act out her grief-stricken impromptu idea and take flight away from the home when the door suddenly opened up to reveal a Pegasus mare equipped with a couple of suitcases.

“Fluttershy, honey! You’re back!” the mare practically shouted as she dropped her luggage to hug the filly, who didn’t return the embrace. The mare took note of this, and released her.

“Mommy… why do you have those suitcases?” Fluttershy inquired. “Where are you going…?” The mare almost froze at the question. It was bad enough that poor little Fluttershy was caught in the middle of an argument that had nothing to do with her but… how was she going to break this bad news to her? Nimbus pondered for a moment, all the while trying not to make it look obvious. This was going to hurt her more than it was going to hurt her daughter.

“Um… Mommy… just needs a vacation, sweetie,” Nimbus said.

“A vacation? C-can I come with you? If that’s okay with you…?” the filly asked.

“Ooh… I’m sorry, ‘Shy… this vacation is uh… for mommies only…”

“Oh… okay…” Fluttershy dejectedly looked down at the ground and whimpered. The evident look of disappointment on her face was a killer for her mother to see. Nimbus couldn’t stand to see Fluttershy in such an unhappy mood, so she was quick to wrap the filly up in a tight embrace.

“I… I promise to be back REALLY soon, okay, honey? I-I’ll send you gifts and letters and even pictures to let you know how I am… I’m going to miss you so much…” Nimbus soon found herself on the verge of tears as her voice cracked up, followed by her sniffling. This didn’t go unnoticed by Fluttershy, who took it as a sign that her mommy needed comfort. So she returned the warm, loving hug that her mother was giving her.

“I’ll miss you, too, mommy,” Fluttershy began, tearing up. “You don’t have to go on vacation. You can stay with me and Daddy and we can all make love with each other and be really happy…” That last line almost alarmed Nimbus, but knowing her daughter’s innocently naïve nature, she was merely confused. What did ‘Shy mean when she said ‘make love with each other’?

“Sweetie… what do you mean by ‘make love’?”

“Oh, um… I don’t know, really… I heard you say that you and Daddy stopped making love with each other after I was born… It’s because you gave all of the love to me, so you couldn’t make any more with each other, right? That’s why you got a different special somepony? So you could make some love to give to Daddy and me?” Nimbus went silent. She had no idea where to begin explaining things to the filly about her inaccurate observation. She was getting close to the age where she’d learn about ‘the Birds and the Bees,’ but at this point, Fluttershy had no idea of the terminology behind ‘making love.’ Nimbus could only blame herself, as she did say that right in front of her.

“Um… S-Sort of… Hey, it’s almost time for school. Why don’t you go and get ready?”

“Oh!” the filly said. She realized that she was going to be late if she stayed for too much longer. “Okay… will you be here to say goodbye to me?”

“Of course I will, honey,” Nimbus assured as she kissed Fluttershy on the forehead. “Now go along and get ready…” Fluttershy wordlessly complied as she quickly made her way up the stairs to clean herself up. Nimbus took it upon herself to make the filly some pack lunch before she saw her off. It was the least she could do, considering the fact that she probably wouldn’t be seeing her only daughter again anytime soon after this day… Eventually, the filly came back down. “Here, ‘Shy. I made you some lunch for school today.”

“Oh! Thank you, mommy,” the filly said as she gave her mother one last, tight hug before she was out of the door. “Bye bye! I hope you have fun on your vacation!” she added as she flew off. Nimbus said nothing as she smiled and waved until her daughter was out of sight. She soon shed her happy mask and fell into a state of despair as she moved to pick up her suitcases and take flight. As she flew, her vision became blurry and her stomach began tying itself up in knots. Her heart was pounding as if she were in a race.

“I’m so sorry, Fluttershy…” she whispered as streaks of tears began to run down her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry… You don’t deserve this… You’ll understand… someday…”

Circumstance & Adjustment...

Circumstance & Adjustment…

A little over a month had gone by since Rainbow’s arrival in Canterlot. She made a speedy, albeit incomplete recovery, as she regained the full use of her wings. Her cuts and bruises had also healed, but her hind leg was still troubling her, as she still couldn’t put very much pressure on it without sending small jolts of pain through her body. Despite this, she hadn’t needed to wear a cast, which was a plus for her. Instead, the ailing appendage was wrapped with gauze. Over the course of the past month, she’d made friends with Twilight Sparkle and managed to become acquainted with the Princess and some of the guards around the castle.

However, she was still troubled by her growing homesickness and coping with the loss of her only family. She’d also been plagued with recurring nightmares regarding that life-changing afternoon. Despite her melancholy feelings, she’d accommodated well to what she began to think of as her new home. When she wasn’t going through therapy to whip her leg back into shape or being lectured on various boring topics not straying far from books and magic by Twilight during the day, she was out in the gardens, zooming around in the open air and practicing aerial maneuvers to take her mind off of her situation.

The exhilaration of flying at high speeds always relaxed Rainbow when she was upset or sad. The feeling of the wind pushing itself against her as she tore through open skies practically made her lose herself in a blissful daydream where no one could disturb her. She’d always chosen the garden as a suitable flight spot because it, with consideration from Princess Celestia and the royal gardener, became the final resting place of Daring Do. The knowledge that her mother could always be close to her, despite being separated by a rich, beautiful assortment of carnations, dasies, and other miscellaneous flowers, as well as six feet of earth, brought her a mystic feeling of relief... Almost like the mare was still physically alive to watch over her. With everything that happened on that fateful day, she found more solace than ever in flying freely in open air. She’d been bedridden for two and a half miserable weeks after she was brought to Canterlot, and she was going to make up for lost time.

“Rainbow Dash!” called a masculine voice from an open door. “It’s lunch time! Come on in!”

“In a second, Mr. Aegis,” the filly called back. “I just need a few more minutes!” with that, she flew very high into the air and continued her airborne ballet.

“Rainbow, if I have to come up there again, you’re gonna be sorry!” Aegis shouted impatiently. Aegis was one of the two guards assigned to keep a constant watch over Rainbow in the case that the group of ponies she’d warned Celestia about had come to attack her. The two had grown somewhat close in a short amount of time. Rather than a bodyguard for the filly, he more or less became a foalsitter for her. In that time, Rainbow proved to be a bit hardheaded when it came to obeying orders, as he proved to be impatient with her rambunctious disposition. He’d had to drag the strong-willed filly just about everywhere, especially when he had to end her flying time.

“Oh yeah!?” she playfully challenged. “Come and get me then!” she stuck her tongue out at him before flying off.

“Oh, that little…!” Aegis took off after her, quickly gaining on her. Rainbow turned to notice him closing in and picked up speed. The Pegasus guard followed suit, intent on capturing the rebellious filly. Just as he inched himself to a close enough distance to be able to wrap her up in his fore legs, she pulled a ninety-degree turn upwards, effectively blinding him in the trail of polychromatous light she inexplicably left whenever she soared past a certain speed. Not one to tolerate being made a foal of, Aegis shook off his blindness and continued tracking his prey, who’d taunted him by hanging her tongue out and shaking her head wildly as she made a teasing noise before dashing off. His determination and anger increased dramatically, he sped up after her. Time and time again, the crafty little Rainbow Dash would trick her foalsitter into thinking he’d caught her before pulling some sneaky tactic that would throw him off.

“What’s wrong?!” Rainbow called behind her as the two Pegasi flew upwards. “You used to be able to catch me all the time!”

“Yeah, keep pushing me!” Aegis shouted, thoroughly infuriated at his inability to catch Rainbow. The filly suddenly went into a dive bomb, flying at a speed she had no experience flying at before. Aegis didn’t hesitate to follow suit, but he was shocked to find two things: He couldn’t catch up to her and he noticed an air cone forming around Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow, wait!” He fearfully called, afraid of what might happen to the filly as she accelerated. He found his call completely ignored as she began rapidly picking up speed, the cone around her body becoming more evident as she lost track of her bodyguard. Rainbow Dash was speeding towards the ground at an entirely dangerous rate, but she was too caught up in the excitement of how fast she was flying to stop. Aegis tried desperately to catch up to her, to no avail as she was much too far out of his reach. Rainbow had shown no signs of slowing down, and any attempt at doing so would prove disastrous… if not fatal if she wasn’t careful. Horrified at the thought, Aegis pumped his wings beyond their limits to save Rainbow from what he perceived would be her dreadful death, until…

*KABOOM!!!!!!!!!!*

An intense explosion rocked the entirety of Canterlot as Rainbow Dash suddenly shifted direction upwards at a ninety-degree angle, leaving a kaleidoscopic shockwave of colors in her wake. Alarmed, the filly craned her head to marvel at her endeavor. She saw that her mane and tail had united into a multicolored streak of light as she flew much faster than she’d ever even dreamed of. She also took note of the shockwave she’d created, and was beyond impressed by her creation. She managed to gradually slow herself down to a stop before rejoining with an utterly dumbfounded Aegis, who gawked at the filly with open-mouthed shock.

“H… how… did you DO that!??” he found the sense of reason to ask.

“I don’t know… It just kind of… happened, I guess,” she replied, just as clueless as he was.

“What’s going on out here!?” Princess Celestia shouted as she galloped into the garden through an open door, accompanied by her most faithful student and her pet dragon to see the results of Rainbow’s flight. The mare and the filly took on looks of disbelief as they looked on to see that the garden had been severely damaged and most of the windows in the surrounding area were completely shattered. They’d also caught the last semblances of the shockwave before it scattered across the land. Rainbow and Aegis joined up with the Princess and the Unicorn filly, Aegis’s face still frozen in shock.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight called. “What happened?”

“I-I don’t know! I was flying and then Aegis tried to catch me, so I flew faster and faster until this really huge explosion happened behind me!” Rainbow’s words rang a bell in the Princess’s head.

“Sonic… Rainboom…” Celestia murmured, capturing the attention of everyone around her.

“A… a what?” Aegis stuttered.

“Sonic Rainboom…” the royal Winged Unicorn began. “It is said that any Pegasus pony who accumulates enough speed to exceed terminal velocity by a certain exponent, would not only break the sound barrier, but also cause a temporary disruption of the color spectrum… This was supposedly proven to be completely impossible to achieve…”

“And look!” Twilight practically squealed as she pointed towards Rainbow’s flank. Rainbow quizzically turned and looked, her face brightening up at what she’d laid her eyes on: A portrait of a cloud with a lightning bolt consisting of the colors red, blue, and yellow coming out of it, right there on her flank.

“My Cutie Mark…!” she said in quiet excitement. “I got my Cutie Mark! Yes! Yes!” she cheered as she flew around in excitement.

“You’ve also gotten yourself in a lot of trouble, young filly,” Celestia scolded, cutting Rainbow’s celebration short. “While it’s wonderful that you’ve performed a feat that nopony has ever performed before and you found out what makes you special, you’ve also caused a lot of damage and possibly attracted attention to yourself, I’m sure not all of it welcome. The shape of your Cutie Mark also raises some concern… We must go inside. Now.” With that, the entire group of ponies made their way into the castle to further discuss the event and its possible consequences.

It had been a slow and uneventful school day for Fluttershy. She hadn’t been showing much focus in her schoolwork or her flight lessons, feeling as if she’d lost all motivation to do so. For the entirety of the month that had gone by, she hadn’t heard from or seen her mommy at all. Her daddy was far too busy to spend time with her, making up for lost income by taking on extra shifts at his job on a daily basis. She was further demotivated by the series of rumors that had spread about her almost-friend, Rainbow Dash.

Every time the blue filly’s name was mentioned, it was instantly linked to the subject of homicide, which was scary to the frightful filly in itself. These same rumors caused most of the other schoolfoals to steer clear of her. Stemming from the rumors of Rainbow killing her mother, another rumor formed about Fluttershy regarding her knowledge of it. Ponies were genuinely afraid of her, silencing themselves and staring at her like injured animals whenever she walked by. She hadn’t been alone in the isolation, however. Thunderlane, Flight Path, and Trailblazer were also lumped together as accomplices, for the simple fact that they’d been seen conversing with Rainbow during lunch the day it happened. It certainly didn’t help that Gilda had moved away almost immediately afterwards.

“I don’t understand… why doesn’t anypony like us…?” the filly asked her only friends as they sat at a lunch table far away from other ponies.

“They still think we had something to do with Rainbow doing what she did…” said Flight Path.

“This is so lame!” Trailblazer complained. “All we did was talk to her, and now we’re as alone and unlikeable as she was! Why did she have to do that!?”

“I… I um… I don’t think she did it…” Thunderlane nervously confessed, capturing the attention of everyone around him.

“What?? What do you mean you don’t think she did it!?” asked a shocked, yet inquisitive Flight Path. “All the evidence was right there in the house!”

“Yeah, but… what no one knows as of yet is that… is that my dad and I were the first to see her after everything went down… she was covered in blood, yes, but… she came to the door holding a sword that was too big for her to hold steady, much less stab somepony with…”

“So?” said a skeptical Trailblazer. “Doesn’t mean she couldn’t have done it.”

“Yeah, but… when I saw her mom, she had cuts all over her… that and Rainbow was only covered in blood; nothing else. No bruises, no scratches, nothing. But then, her house looked totally trashed inside, like there was a huge fight… and Dash kept swearing that she wasn’t the one that did it. She kept saying some bad ponies did it…” As Thunderlane explained his views on the circumstances of the events, he captured the group’s full attention.

“Well… why didn’t you tell your dad that you didn’t think Rainbow Dash did it?” Fluttershy asked. The question froze the black colt in embarrassing fear. After a moment of silence, he finally spoke up.

“Because… because I lied to him about how we met…” he bitterly admitted. “I was too scared of getting punished for beating up on you, so I lied and told him that Gilda hit me out of jealousy for trying to become friends with you, her, and Rainbow Dash…  and then I told him that I was shaken up by what Rainbow did after seeing her…”

“Oh… I guess it didn't help that he found out the truth from Gilda?”

"No... but thanks to you, he didn't punish me too badly. Thank you, Fluttershy..."

“Dude!” Trailblazer shouted. “What the hay!? You should’ve told him!”

“He wouldn’t have listened to me anyway!” Thunderlane snapped. “He never listens to me or ANYpony, for that matter! Once he gets an idea, he keeps it unless he’s proven wrong!”

“Oh, so lying to him to save your own flanks only to get found out makes everything better?” Flight Path began. “What about Rainbow Dash!? Everypony thinks she’s a murderer and only NOW are you telling us that she might not have done it. It’s too late to change any minds at this point.”

“And for that matter, if you knew all of this from the start, why didn’t you let Rainbow know that you believed her!?” asked Trailblazer.

“I don’t know!” the black colt answered, now feeling guilty for his actions. “I… I was scared… and my dad would’ve probably punished me even worse if I—!”

“Who cares what your dad would’ve done!? Rainbow Dash ran away with her mom’s body and nopony’s heard from or seen her ever since the day it happened. She wouldn’t have had to run away if it wasn’t for you. Now she’s probably somewhere far away, starving, injured or even dead… all because you were too scared of a little punishment from your dad to tell him the truth. Plus, everypony’s scared of us and won’t even so much as look at any of us because they think we know about the—!”

“Trailblazer…” Fluttershy tried to interrupt.

“…murder. All of this is YOUR fault!” The orange colt’s harsh words cut deep into the black one’s conscience. Why DIDN’T he say anything? Why did he allow his father’s will to overpower his judgment so strongly? His cowardice got Rainbow in a lot of trouble… possibly even killed, for all he knew. He lost the power to even look any of his friends in the eye as he lowered his gaze to the table below, a knot in his throat and tears welling up in his eyes.

“It… it’s not his fault,” Fluttershy defended as she scooted close to Thunderlane to hug him, which alarmed all three colts. “He didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know how to prove that Rainbow Dash didn’t do it… not to say that she DID do it… or that she didn’t do it. Mr. Roaring Wind should’ve asked Rainbow what happened and listened to her… but he didn’t. It’s not his fault, either, though…”

“Well, whose fault is it?” asked Flight Path.

“Nopony’s,” Fluttershy simply stated. “At least, it’s nopony’s fault until we… um… we…”

“…find Rainbow and find out what she knows,” Thunderlane finished as he finally gained the courage to lift his head up to show a look of determination in his eyes.

“What??” the other two colts simultaneously asked in surprise.

“I’m going to look for her. I’m starting after school today. I messed up in not telling my dad that I believed her, and now I’m going to correct that mistake. Are you guys with me?” At that, a long, tense silence passed over the table. However, before anyone could give an answer, the bell signaling the end of the lunch period rung, prompting each of them to go their separate ways to their respective classes.

Later…

The remainder of the school day had passed rather quickly, with each of the four foals being distracted from their isolation by their contemplation of a possible new mission. After the final bell had rung, Thunderlane took it upon himself to wait by the entrance of the school for his friends. Eventually, the four foals were reunited to discuss their plans.

“So… you guys with me on finding Rainbow Dash or not?” the black colt asked.

“…Sorry, dude. I can’t. I’m still on thin ice for what we did to Fluttershy a month ago,” Trailblazer apologetically explained. “If I don’t get home soon, I’ll get grounded again…”

“I honestly don’t think it would be that easy to find her…” Flight Path began. “It’s been way too long. She could be anywhere in Equestria by now. Maybe even in another country, for all we know. There’s no way four foals are gonna find her if nopony professional could. Count me out.”

“Are you serious??” Thunderlane asked, appalled by the unwillingness of his friends to locate the blue Pegasus filly. “We might not have been friends with her for long before she disappeared, but we have to! I honestly believe she didn’t do it, and we should at least try to find her to give her a chance to explain herself.”

“Dude, you’re not making sense! We have NO idea where she is, and we’d be wasting our time looking around like we do! We don’t even know if she’s ALIVE at this point!”

“I’ll help you…” Fluttershy offered. The black colt lit up with relief at her.

“Thank you!” he praised. “At least SOMEpony has a sense of faith…”

“I just need to fly home and let my daddy know that I’ll be going out first… if that’s okay…”

“That’s perfectly fine. Meet me at Rainbow’s house in about a half hour, okay?”

“Okay…”

“I’m telling you, you’re just wasting your time…” Flight Path warned before the group dispersed to their respective homes…

Fluttershy hadn’t been able to catch her daddy before he left for his second shift of Weather Patrol Duty, so she left him a note explaining her whereabouts before she left to help Thunderlane. She was lost in her thoughts about Rainbow Dash and her current objective. She really didn’t know how to go about taking up such a task; searching for somepony who could quite possibly be a murderer on the run? That sounded extremely dangerous! But then… what if she wasn’t a murderer? What if she was only on the run because she was afraid and/or hurt? In that case, she’d be helping a new friend clear her name and regain her life, for the most part. The conflict going on in the yellow filly’s mind was frustrating to mull over, but she was confident that she was doing the right thing… that is, until she heard an enormous, yet distant explosion coming from seemingly nowhere.

“EEP!” Fluttershy quietly shrieked in fear. “W-wh-what was that???” she asked as she stopped in her tracks to look around. Less than a moment later, she caught sight of a blinding multicolored flash of light heading towards her at a rapid rate. Before she could react, the light collided with her, hitting her with a dangerously strong gust of wind akin to that of a powerful hurricane. She tried her hardest to resist, only to be blown away like a stray piece of paper. She flared her wings to try and stop herself, to no avail as they were too weak to battle the heavy momentum at which she’d been sent plummeting through the air. She was powerless; unable to open her eyes to see, unable to stop herself from spinning uncontrollably to the point of complete disorientation and developing a sudden case of nausea, and unable to hear anything but the wind blowing into her ears as she was thrown like a ragdoll towards an area very far away from Cloudsdale.

*CRASH*

*BOOM* Shockwaves of agony burst through the poor filly’s body as she barely managed to open her eyes to gain some insight as to what happened to her. Her vision was blurred, she felt sick to her stomach, and she was in too much pain to move. She managed to catch a glimpse of her body to see that she’d been severely damaged; cuts and bruises all over her. She found herself succumbing to the grips of unconsciousness before she’d been able to take a look at her surroundings. The last thing she laid eyes on was a blob moving towards her before she passed out.

Thunderlane had arrived at the rendezvous point and had been waiting there despite hearing, but not seeing the results of an explosion shortly after arriving home to tell his father he was going to play with Fluttershy. The colt’s father wasn’t home, however. He had work during the afternoon and usually came home about two hours after Thunderlane did. The colt figured he’d leave a note that said he was going out to play with the yellow filly before taking off to Rainbow’s house. There, he’d waited there for about an hour for Fluttershy to arrive so they could begin their search.

“Hmph… I guess she can’t make it…” Thunderlane solemnly mumbled as he took flight away from Rainbow’s house. He’d wondered why Fluttershy agreed to help him, only to stand him up. He didn’t know her very well, but from what he could tell, she was really nice... she was also kind of… dare he say, cute.  Considering the way she presented herself, she couldn’t be one to lie about anything. But at the same time, she seemed like one to be extremely frightful of everything. Maybe her dad came home early and told her to stay after that explosion happened.

*CRASH*

“What was that?” Thunderlane asked after hearing something break from within the abandoned household. He cautiously approached the front door, being very slow to open it. He was shocked to find that it had been unlocked in the first place, not to mention afraid of entering a house in which someone had died. However, his curiosity overrode his other feelings as he carefully entered the house, shutting the door behind him.

“H-hello…?” he called. No answer. He observed his surroundings to see that any sign of a crime being committed was erased. No blood, no broken furniture… in fact, the house seemed empty, save for a few artifacts, as well as a bouquet of flowers surrounding a picture of Rainbow and her mother smiling with joy sitting up against a wall. Under the picture was a ribbon that read, “Gone, But Never Forgotten… Rest In Peace, Daring and Rainbow…” The epitaph sent a chill down Thunderlane’s spine. He already knew Daring Do was gone, but the mere thought of Rainbow Dash suffering the same fate… it frightened him stiff. He would never live down the guilt of knowing that she’d run away and died because he didn’t tell the truth when he had the chance…

“NO! She can’t be dead…” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Rainbow!” he shouted, assuming the mysterious presence to possibly be that of the blue filly he’d been searching for. “Rainbow! I believe you! I don’t think you killed your mom! You don’t have to hide!” He galloped through the living room and made a right, hoping to discover the filly in hiding. He threw the door open, but was shocked by what he came in to see: A mysterious grown Pegasus pony of an indiscriminate gender in a black spandex suit with red goggles and a strange symbol on its flanks. The figure was standing in a room that seemed to have been ransacked, various materials scattered messily about the room. It took notice of the colt and froze in place. “Wh… who are you…?”

The figure said nothing as it slowly approached the colt. It crept towards him as if to attack.

“What are you doing here…? W-Why are you here…?” Thunderlane frightfully asked as he backed away from the ominous figure, intent on hightailing it out of the house as fast as he could.

“You are searching for the one called Rainbow Dash?” the figure finally spoke, still approaching the colt. Its voice was low and monotone, yet feminine. How it knew of Rainbow piqued Thunderlane’s curiosity, swaying him from his initial decision to run.

“What’s it to you!?” the colt defensively asked as he stood his ground, ready to defend himself. The figure moved up and stopped right in front of him.

“I can help you…”

“Yeah, right! You expect me to believe you? You’re in her house and trying to steal from it, thief! How do you even know if she’s alive?”

“What if I told you… that she IS alive?” Thunderlane’s resolve was quickly deteriorating to a mixture of curiosity and apprehension as he listened to the mysterious mare.

“How would YOU know?”

“Did you not hear the explosion that happened earlier? Did you not see the results of it?”

“Well… I heard it, but I didn’t see anything.”

“I see… well, have you ever heard of the Sonic Rainboom?” Thunderlane’s eyes widened with shock.

“Yeah… but nopony’s ever been able to pull one off. It’s not possible.”

“Oh, it’s very much possible… In fact, take a look at this,” the mare said as she reached into a compartment in her suit to pull out a picture. She showed it to the colt to reveal it to be that of the daytime sky with a rainbow-colored distortion running through it.

“Wha… how…?”

“As I’m sure you’ve heard, anypony who successfully initiates a Sonic Rainboom will cause a disruption of the color spectrum that takes on the colors of the performer’s hair.”

“Yeah…?”

“And do you see how this picture shows that there is every color under Celestia’s sun in the disruption?” The colt was alarmed beyond belief at the information he was receiving. Rainbow… alive? And performing a Sonic Rainboom? It was ridiculous! There’s no way this thief could be telling the truth… but then… the thief HAD proof that the explosion wasn’t caused by any normal circumstances.

“H-how do I know you’re not lying…?”

“I will answer that with this: Why do you think I am here?”

“To steal stuff, obviously. You’re a thief. The suit you’re wearing says it…” At that, the figure sighed in annoyance before moving to take off the goggles and mask, much to Thunderlane’s shock. The mare revealed her coat to be dark blue with a long, wavy mane of golden yellow with sporadic streaks of a brighter yellow in it. Her eyes were a brilliant light brown. Thunderlane was captivated by her beauty, but dumbfounded as to why she’d reveal her face to him.

“Listen to me, and listen hard,” the mare sternly began as she lowered her head to meet his gaze. “I am also searching for Rainbow Dash. I am part of a secret operative group that is on a mission to bring harmony to the world. The organization I am with works in the shadows, making sure that everypony is able to live their daily lives without the threat of danger. We believe that this Rainbow Dash can help us in ways neither you nor I can imagine. Despite her going missing for an extended amount of time, the Sonic Rainboom gave me a clue. Taking into account the strength of the shockwave, she can’t be too far from here. As for you, for the simple fact that you see me as I am now, you are now faced with the choice of joining me in my search or dying.”

“W-wh-what?? Why do I have to choose?”

“Because, colt… We follow a strict code so as not to be seen or known about by any civilian ponies, be it stallion, mare, or foal. Those who catch wind of us are either recruited into our ranks… or killed where they stand, so as not to reveal any information about us or possibly become a threat to our cause… we haven’t had many deaths since our foundation, so the rest is up to your imagination…” she lifted a hoof to extend a knife, the sight of which made Thunderlane gulp in terror. She leaned in close to him, pressing the broad side of the ice-cold blade to his cheek while pressing the side of her muzzle against his other cheek. “And you could be of some use to me, with proper training…” she enticingly whispered into his ear. “What’ll it be, handsome…?”

Thunderlane was caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side, this enigmatic mare claimed to know Rainbow’s whereabouts. The sooner he could find her, the sooner he was able to tell her that he would help her regain her innocence, thus clearing his own conscience. Plus, if this mare was telling the truth, he and Rainbow could possibly become part of an expedition for world peace, and who doesn’t want that? On the other side, that came with a hefty, contradictory price: Joining up with this thieving stranger who was threatening to kill him if he didn’t comply. Who was she? What organization did she work with? How did she know who Rainbow Dash was? And what did she mean by “proper training”? The questions were building up in his mind, but he didn’t feel like he was going to have them all answered immediately, considering the pony giving him the offer was also pressing a knife to his cheek.

“Well?” The mare asked again, nudging the knife after a brief moment of silence.

“I’ll… I’ll join you…” the colt reluctantly answered, valuing his life and wanting to know where Rainbow could possibly be, as well as what kind of organization this mare worked for.

“Smart colt…” she whispered before retracting the knife, caressing his face with a fore hoof and planting a small kiss on his cheek, further bewildering him. She backed away from him a little to grab her goggles and mask. “Just… one more thing before we leave, sweetheart…”

“What’s that?” the mare didn’t answer. Instead, she trotted towards him again, lowering herself to his eye level. She then wrapped her fore hooves around his neck and pulled him into a surprise kiss. Thunderlane was thrown for the loop of his life as his eyes widened in both shock and a bit of arousal as the mare pressed her lips to his. Part of him wanted to pull away and ask what she was doing. However, another part of him began to enjoy the rush of the moment. It was of course, his first kiss, and it happened to be from a pretty mare. Suddenly, a wave of pain erupted in the back of his neck, and everything went black before he'd hit the ground. The mare delivered a strike to the back of his neck, effectively knocking him out. She proceeded to put her mask and goggles back on before picking the unconscious colt up and placing him on her back.

“We can’t have you knowing everything just yet… You’ll understand soon enough, when we return to base…”

In the throne room, Princess Celestia, Rainbow, Aegis, and Twilight were discussing the significance of the Pegasus filly’s self-discovery.

“Your Cutie Mark… It bears a striking resemblance to the Element of Harmony you’re wearing…” the Princess informed Rainbow. “In addition, said Element has bonded with you, unable— or possibly unwilling— to part with you. This is beyond the shadow of a doubt, a sign…”

“A… sign of what, Your Majesty?” Aegis asked.

“A sign that the time for the Elements to make their presence known is soon approaching… A sign that this world has fallen into such a collective condition of poor shape and dissonance that only the Elements of Harmony would be able to make things right… As you know, Aegis, many of our neighboring lands have been in conflict with one another for centuries. No matter how much Equestria has tried lending a helping hoof in settling these chronic disputes, things never turn out well.”

“Yes… in the past year, Great Britmane and Gallopistan have been at each other’s throats over the issue of fair trading. Hoofania and Meclopolis have been warring with one another for almost a decade. And Trottopia has simply been a third-world country since its civil war a little less than seven years ago ravaged its resources and divided its people over many of its problems…”

“And we have tried many a time to extend aid to each of them, and to promote peace and unity. Yet, every time Equestrian officials set hoof in one land, at least two of the others become upset. Each time we lend financial aid to one country, the others expect us to do the same for them, forcing us to explain that we don’t have the kind of money necessary to fund all of the other countries, especially when they use the money to fund more fighting and segregation… No matter how hard we try, there doesn’t seem to be a way to save them all… at least, until now…” Celestia finished, turning her gaze to Rainbow Dash.

“Wait… ME???” the blue filly asked in shock.

“Not just you, Rainbow… There are five other Elements hidden across the lands of this world… and five other ponies who have been chosen to wield them. However, I do not know who these other five ponies are and I cannot look for them myself, as I have an entire country to oversee…”

“But Your Highness! She’s just a filly!” Aegis argued. “Plus, she’s still injured! There’s no way she’d be able to find the others in her current state! Not alone! She doesn’t have the skills necessary and she’s not old enough!”

“Yes, I realize that… that is why I am hereby instructing you to train Rainbow Dash in the royal guards’ chosen form of self-defense once her leg is fully functional.” Her order alarmed everyone in the room.

“I… I will obey, Princess Celestia…” Aegis concurred, albeit with a grain of salt.

“Princess…?” Rainbow spoke up. She had already accepted the fact that she would eventually embark on an arduous journey. However, the journey she had in mind was a bit different from the one Princess Celestia had in mind for her.

“Yes, dear?”

“What… what about—?”

“The sword you were in possession of when you were found?” Celestia could tell that Rainbow wouldn't resist that she'd have to take up the task. However, the filly still showed signs of uncertainty.

“Yeah… It belonged to my mom… and I want to know if I can use it in my training… as a way to remember her…” Rainbow had more reason than the simple fact that the sword belonged to Daring Do for her to request that she be able to use it. She still remembered her promise of revenge against the adventure mare’s murderer. Fearing that such a reason would cause the Winged Unicorn to deny her permission to make use of the weapon, she kept it secret.

“I see… There aren’t many guards who are trained to use weaponry such as that sword… However, I will see to it that one who has the necessary skills is appointed to you when you’re strong enough to carry it.”

“But I’m strong enough now!” Rainbow argued. “I was able to kill a Timberwolf with it when I was in the woods!”

“I see… but exactly how were you able to use it to accomplish the act?” Rainbow was stumped as memories of her battle came flooding back to her. She’d remembered the first swing she took with the sword; how clumsy and uncoordinated it was and how it did next to nothing to harm the wolf.

“I… It was really heavy for me…” she admitted. “I had to fly really high up in the air and swing at the wolf as hard as I could… after the first swing I took got the sword stuck in its cheek…”

“Yes, and this is why you need to train yourself up to be able to keep it steady before you learn how to use it. It may take years before you’re strong enough, and I know that isn’t what you want to hear… but as the bearer of the Element of Loyalty, it is your responsibility to be able to defend yourself as best you can to complete this mission.”

“Princess Celestia…?” Twilight finally found it in herself to speak.

“Yes, my student?”

“What about me? Do I have a part in all of this?”

“Hmm… yes, actually. Throughout your time here, you’ve shown that your aptitude in magic is far beyond that of any normal Unicorn. It was only a year ago that you took the entrance exam in my School for Gifted Unicorns in which you had to hatch the egg that contained your pet dragon. In that exam, you were on the verge of failing before you allowed your frustration and pure determination to unlock your true potential. I remember it as if it happened yesterday… Such power in such a small filly… Not only did you hatch the egg, you turned the baby dragon into a full sized one, all the while transforming your inspectors and your parents into various items and losing control of your power before I intervened… I was originally going to train you to control your power for the sake of you and everyone around you. But now I see that there is a greater cause in your presence here. You will continue your studies under me and the School for Gifted Unicorns, but you, Shining Armor, and I will be spending more time training you to control your energy.” Twilight hardly needed to ask why to be ecstatic about spending more time with her mentor and idol alongside her older brother, whom she'd harldy ever seen after he'd been drafted into the Royal Guard. However, given the circumstances, she asked anyway.

“Why?”

“Because when your training is finished, I’d like for you to accompany Rainbow in her quest for the Elements.” Once again, the Princess managed to elicit reactions of shock from everyone else.

“Princess!” A different guard shouted as he galloped into the throne room.

“Yes, what is it?”

“There have been numerous reports of an explosion followed by a rainbow-colored shockwave seen by all of Canterlot! Many citizens are in a state of panic! What should we do?”

“I will attend to the matter posthaste. Gather up a platoon of fellow guards and inform the city that I will be making an address at the heart of the city in one hour.”

“As you command, Your Highness!” the guard complied as he quickly rushed out of the room.

“It appears this discussion has reached its end. Twilight, you are free to go until I return so we may discuss your training regimen. Aegis, accompany Rainbow to the rehabilitation center. Aid her in her recovery until she feels she is ready to begin her training.  I must take my leave. Farewell, all.” With that, Equestria’s leader swiftly made her way out of the throne room, leaving the two fillies and the Pegasus guard to perform the tasks she had given them…

Mobilization...

Mobilization…

“Little Pony… Are you okay…?” said a low, growling, yet gentle voice. The barely-conscious yellow filly slowly opened her eyes to find that she had come face to face with a creature the likes of which she’d never seen before. The creature was horrifying to look at; its big, sharp, jagged teeth… the long, pointy nails on its claw running themselves across her mane, its dark green scales… and its humungous red snake-like eyes that would have struck fear into the filly’s very being… had she been able to realize where she was or how she’d gotten there.

“Y-yes…” the yellow filly quietly answered. She moved to get up, but felt a sharp burst of pain in her head that forced her to wince in agony.

“Careful… you had quite a fall…” the creature warned.

“I… I did?”

“Yes… I saw you crash into my animal shelter not too far away from here…”

“How did that happen…?”

“I figure I was supposed to be the one to ask you that. Do you remember what happened?” The small pony went silent as she tried to recall the recent events that led to her discovery by this strange creature. However, she could only faintly remember flying, followed by a rainbow attacking her, followed by blackness.

“I… I can’t remember…” Her answer worried the creature.

“Oh, dear… you may have been injured worse than I initially perceived… tell me, young pony. What is your name?” The filly went silent once again. Did she have a name? If so, what was it?

“I… I don’t know…” the filly answered, tearing up at the fact that she couldn’t remember her own name.

“Oh no… do you at least remember where you live? Maybe I can return you to your kin…”

“Um…” The filly drew another blank. She was becoming distraught at her inability to recall anything about her life. All she could remember was a rainbow… Why was it that the only image her mind could bring up was a rainbow? “I… I can’t remember… I can’t remember anything. Not even my own *sniff* name…” the filly broke into tears of sadness and worry. She didn’t have a name or a home. She woke up in the care of some scary creature she’d never seen before, somewhere that looked completely unfamiliar, with no recollection of anything important regarding her life until this point.

“Aww don’t cry, little filly…” the creature cooed to the filly as he gently caressed her teary face with a gargantuan finger to comfort her. “You can live with me…”

“I… can?”

“Yes, sweetie… I will take care of you until your memory returns… Until then, I will name you… Butterfly.”

“Butterfly…?” the filly asked in wonder. She liked the name, but it sounded oddly… familiar.

“Yes… judging by your wings, you’re a Pegasus pony. And butterflies are adorable. You’re adorable, too. I think it suits you…” Fluttershy Butterfly found it in herself to smile.

“Me too… but if you don’t mind me asking… who are you? What are you?”

“My name is Kentaro’ali. I am a dragon. But you can call me ‘Ken.’ It’s certainly nice to meet you, my little Butterfly…”

“Yes… it’s nice to meet you too, Mr. Ken,” Butterfly replied, brightening her smile as the dragon softly petted her mane.

“You’re so cute… I think you’ll have a wonderful time here. Now as for your living arrangements…” With that, the dragon carried the little filly to an area just shy of a forest, where a lone shack was located. “Once you’re feeling good enough, you can live here. Right now, the only residents of this house are all the small creatures I take care of. But I can’t do it alone, since I’m much too large to fit in the house. Until you’re able to remember who you are, can you help me take care of them? They’d love a new friend…” Butterfly lit up with excitement. She took notice of all the cute little beavers, birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and miscellaneous other animals, studying each and every one of their adorable faces as they observed her and the dragon. Deep inside, something awoke inside of her. A sudden, instantaneous attachment to these critters formed as she lay her eyes on them, captivated by their natural beauty.

“I would LOVE to, Mr. Ken!”

“You will? That’s great!”

“Can… can I stay here now?”

“Are you sure, little Butterfly? I don’t want you to get hurt… what about your head? Doesn’t it stull hurt?”

“Yes… but… *yawn* I think I can… take care of all these cute little animals for you…”

“Aww, so cute… but now, you seem like you need rest. How’s about you get some sleep back home and when you wake up, I’ll bring you back here, hm?”

“Okay, Mr. Ken…” Butterfly obediently complied. The dragon carried the filly back to the cave he resided in. By the time he arrived, the filly had fallen asleep in his hand. He lay down and gave the filly a quick, loving nuzzle before making sure to carefully lay Butterfly down on his back.

“I just know you’ll love it here, Butterfly…”

Thunderlane had awoken in a daze to find that he saw absolutely nothing. He almost panicked, thinking he’d gone blind as he brought his fore hooves to his eyes to find a blindfold tied firmly to his face. He almost attempted to take it off until…

“I wouldn’t do that just yet if I were you…” a feminine voice warned. He instantly recognized it, and became even more confused. As he could deduce despite his lack of vision, he was being carried on-hoof on the back of the mare who had kissed him before knocking him out.

“Y… you. What’s going on? Why am I blindfolded? Where are we? And… and why did y—?” The colt asked in panic.

“Relax. The blindfold is for precautionary measures. We just need to verify that you’ll be loyal to our cause before I put you to use.”

“We? Who’s we? Where are we? What do you need me for?”

“Answers will come soon enough. Be patient…” Thunderlane did not answer. He was frightened beyond belief and had no idea where he was being taken. However, he figured that if he had gotten this far with this enticing, mysterious mare, he might as well obey her… for his sake. Eventually, the mare stopped, although she still did not instruct Thunderlane to remove the cover from his eyes.

“Grandmaster Uno, sir” the mare spoke after a lengthy silence followed by the hoofsteps of a few other ponies.

“Agent Mesmerize,” said a new, unfamiliar voice in a stern tone. “State your business.”

“I have acquired a new recruit.” The area went silent for a brief, yet tense moment.

“What use is this ‘recruit’ of yours to our cause?” asked another scary voice.

“He has connections to the pony who we believe is in possession of the Element of Harmony that found itself in Equestria; Cloudsdale, to be exact.”

“And you feel that his admittance into our ranks is beneficial to our mission for what reason?”

“With proper training, he may be of use in the case that the pony we seek puts up a fight in a similar circumstance to how the now-deceased Daring Do had against Agent Tactic and his team… or at least, what used to be his team…” Thunderlane couldn’t believe his ears. Rainbow really DIDN’T murder Daring Do. It was this… this secret club’s fault for her death. Yet, here he was, on the verge of joining said group against his will. He couldn’t turn back now, though. He was in far too deep. As the mare had previously warned, backing out now would most certainly mean his death. From the sound of it, his only use may have been due to the fact that Rainbow knew him. What were they hoping to accomplish? Why did this mare need him?

“An interesting point, Agent Mesmerize…” said yet another voice, seemingly intrigued by the mare’s proposition. “This colt may indeed be a key factor in bringing about a more desirable outcome than Agent Tactic’s method… That is, in the case that he is as close to our target as you speculate him to be… Colt. State your name,” the voice beckoned. Thunderlane wasn’t sure if the voice was talking to him or someone else, so he didn’t reply. “Colt! State your name!” the voice commanded.

“He means you,” Agent Mesmerize whispered to the colt.

“Th-Thunderlane, sir…”

“Thunderlane…? How… vaguely familiar…” the voice pondered.

“Familiar?” Thunderlane asked, his curiosity piqued. “How s—!”

“Silence, whelp!” a fourth voice shouted, prompting the colt to shut his mouth tight. “You will only respond when directly spoken to.”

“Agent Mesmerize,” called the first voice.

“Sir?”

“You may keep this new pet of yours… However, he will be put through a series of tests when the time comes. See to it that he is trained to the fullest extent of the potential you see in him.”

“Roger.”

“Remove his blindfold…” with that, Agent Mesmerize kneeled down in order to allow Thunderlane to climb off of her back. Once he planted all four of his hooves on the ground, the mare then moved to untie the blindfold, finally allowing the black colt to view his surroundings. What he saw shocked him, to say the least. He was in a room that was almost entirely pitch black, save for a few spotlights aimed at him, an unmasked Agent Mesmerize, and what seemed to be a council of this mysterious group’s leaders. Each of them had their entire bodies hidden under black hooded robes with red trim. Thunderlane looked around to see that there were six of them in total, surrounding him and his newest ally. Before he could open his mouth to speak, one of the mysterious ponies did.

“Welcome, colt. Today is a very special day for you…”

“R-really?” The colt asked in terror.

“Yes… Today is your new birthday. Today is the day you become one of us; an eternal seeker of ultimate tranquility across this planet… An advocate for freedom and harmony… An executioner to all who threaten the sanctity of our cause… today, you become an agent of the Dark Hoof Seven tribe… let the initiation… COMMENCE!” with that, the entire room flashed a bright white. Thunderlane shielded his eyes from the intense light before being caught by surprise as a cloth found itself wrapping over his eyes yet again.

“It is time for you to begin your journey as a member of our organization, Thunderlane,” Agent Mesmerize informed him as she took hold of his fore hoof and guided him in an indiscriminate direction. A few steps later, they had stopped. Mesmerize took it upon herself to turn the colt around and give him a peck on the cheek, further discombobulating the colt. “I wish you much success. You and I are going to be spending a LOT of  time together once your business here is finished…” before Thunderlane could speak, his hoof was taken by somepony else as he was guided further into the unknown…

Rainbow Dash had just finished up yet another very easy rehab session in which she was to test her ability to walk. Despite wincing in pain a couple of times when she placed too much pressure on her right hind leg, she showed that her recovery was much quicker than anticipated.

“How are you feeling, Dash?” asked Aegis.

“A LOT better… My leg still hurts a little, but it doesn’t really bother me like it used to anymore. Still, I wish it would heal faster so we can start training…”

“Hmm… well, who’s to say we can’t begin your training now?” that statement surprised the filly in a way that filled her with a mixture of excitement and confusion.

“How? My leg’s still not healed all the way.”

“Your wings are though,” the Pegasus guard countered. “I figure we’ll need as much time as we can get before you go off on this crazy journey of yours and considering that you’ll be traveling the world, you’ll need to be prepared for everything. So how’s about we head to the barracks to practice your aerial maneuverability?” at that, Rainbow scoffed.

“I’m pretty sure you KNOW by now how well I can handle myself when I’m flying…” she remarked.

“Yes… but what about when you’re fighting?”

“I’m pretty good at that, too,” she boasted.

“Oh really? Why don’t you show me?” Rainbow agreed with a nod before the two headed out of the rehab center and to the barracks of the royal Pegasus guards. Once there, Aegis removed his helmet to reveal his long, sandy blonde mane before the Pegasi began their sparring session.

“I hope you’re ready for a beating, Aegis!” Rainbow teased as she assumed her aerial battle stance.

“Ha. Brash… alright, show me what you can do!” Aegis replied, motioning his hoof in a come-hither motion. With that, Rainbow began her assault. She charged at him with a speed he could hardly comprehend and was quickly thrown off guard as the filly started with a barrage of speedy jabs to his face. She swiftly followed with a short flurry of cuffs to his abdomen before finishing her assault with a left hook to the Pegasus guard’s face and a kick to his abdomen with her left hind leg, knocking the guard back a little. From the looks of it, Aegis was disoriented by the attack.

“See? I told you I was… huh??” Rainbow was shocked to see that Aegis looked entirely unharmed, save for a miniscule scratch on his cheek.

“Not bad at all,” he complimented as he brushed himself off and shook his head. “Seems you already know a thing or two about fighting in midair. But I have to say… you’re pretty weak,” he taunted with a laugh.

“Weak!?” Rainbow shouted in offense, already losing her cool. “I’ll show YOU weak!” she charged him again at the same blinding speed as the last assault. However, Aegis was prepared. He anticipated every move the filly was making, and adapted accordingly to her fighting style. He was able to duck, dodge, and block every one of Rainbow’s strikes. Not being one to give in when things don’t go her way, Rainbow augmented her belligerent effort as she swung more wildly at the Pegasus guard. Unfortunately, her increased effort did nothing to break through Aegis’s defense, as he was still protecting himself with relative ease. Getting jaded with her inability to land a hit on him, Rainbow dashed a few feet backward, much to the surprise of her mentor before charging him again. Aegis braced himself for another assault, but was surprised yet again as Rainbow quickly altered directions so as to quickly fly behind him to land a blow. Despite this, Aegis did not move to turn around. As she maneuvered herself to get behind him, she cocked a fore hoof back, aiming for the back of his head.

“Take THIS!” Rainbow shouted as she brought her hoof towards Aegis’s head.

*SWIPE* “Huh??” Rainbow completely missed her target, much to her shock. Before she had time to react, she felt a sudden, sharp pain in her abdomen. She doubled over in agony but as she did so, she felt another shockwave of pain in the back of her head that sent her plummeting to the floor.

*THUMP* “OOF! Nrgh…!” the filly struggled to get up, but as soon as she did, she was met with her mentor standing in front of her, laughing.

“See what I mean?” he asked.

“No…” Rainbow groaned. “You’re too strong for me. Plus, you’re a royal guard. Of course you’d know how to beat—!”

“No excuses!” Aegis suddenly shouted, startling the filly. “A true warrior accepts their failures and learns from them. The fact that I’m a guard means nothing. And strength alone will not win a battle for you. Now tell me; what did you learn from our little sparring session?” Rainbow wasn’t sure how to answer that. She was aware that her chances of actually defeating him were expectantly low. However, she was unable to get a clue as to what he meant.

“I… I don’t know. What was I supposed to learn? Like I said, you’re stronger than me.”

“Hmph. Since we are just beginning our training, I’ll tell you just this once where your faults are: One, You’re too aggressive. Now don’t get me wrong. Belligerence isn’t a bad thing. But you charge in blindly, expecting your opponent to crack under the pressure. Against a novice opponent, that MIGHT work. Against someone as experienced as me, however, it won’t. Plus, you lost your temper when I said you were weak. A true fighter knows to keep a level head and think before he or she acts.”

“Okay.”

“Two: There really isn’t much weight behind your strikes. Your speed is beyond impressive. Astounding, even. But that means nothing if your attacks feel like you’re trying to tickle your opponent into submission.”

“But what about that scratch on your cheek?”

“Scratch?” the guard asked as he felt his cheek. “I honestly didn’t even notice. Even so, this is FAR from good enough to take someone like me down. Maybe one of your classmates back in Cloudsdale would cry about it, but no.”

“Oh…”

“Once your leg’s back at a hundred percent, we’re going to start doing exercises to build your muscles. Three, and listen to me on this one: Your ingenuity needs help. I like your sneak attack when you flew around to get behind me. If I was less experienced, you’d have gotten me right there. You really show that you have the speed and reflexes to handle yourself in a fight. But, the problem there is that you tried to rush me in the same way you did when I was facing you. That MAY work in some cases, but what will you do if your opponent expects it?”

“Hmm…” Rainbow seriously pondered the question. If placed in the same situation, what would she have done differently if she knew he was expecting her attack? “I don’t know…” she shamefully admitted as she lowered her head. Aegis moved to run a hoof along her mane, prompting her to look up at him to see him smiling warmly at her.

“Don’t get so down on yourself. We’ve got a LOT of time to spend training you. Just take into account what I told you, and learn from it. Accept that you’re not a perfect fighter right now, and only then can you begin to grow into one, Dash.” At that, Rainbow smiled. Not a smirk or a smile of excitement, but a genuine, foal-like smile that revealed tenderness in her that nopony other than her mother had seen. “On the other hoof, you’ve got a lot of potential. You really did catch me off-guard a couple times. Where’d you learn how to fight?”

“My… my mom used to teach me whenever she had the time…” Rainbow hardly talked about Daring Do. Bringing her up caused her to almost lose her composure. Though a lengthy amount of time had gone by since the incident, the vivid, gruesome images were still fresh in her mind as if she’d just seen them recently. Her discomfort was made evident by the fact that she looked away from Aegis and toward the ground in dejection. The stallion took note of this.

“Oh… I’m really sorry, Rainbow.”

“No, no it’s… just that… *sniff* I miss her. She was the only parent I had left…”

“Well, holding it in won’t do you any good.  If you’re okay with it, you mind telling me a little about her?”

“I… I guess.”

With that, the two sat down as Rainbow informed Aegis of the mare known as Daring Do. She told him about all the adventures she went on to find a plethora of large treasures, how caring and nurturing a parent the mare was, and even revealed something that she’d never had the courage to tell anyone before; that she was adopted.

“Adopted?? But you two looked so similar! I mean, except for your coat and hair colors, but still!”

“Yeah, we used to get that a lot… Truth is, before she found me, I was living on the streets of Cloudsdale. My real parents left a year or so before that during a terrible thunderstorm one night. They worked together as managers of the Weather Patrol Agency… The storm was brought in with way too much power, so they were called in alongside a few other Pegasi to clear it out. I still remember the last time I saw them… They tucked me into bed and kissed me goodnight, telling me they would come back…”

“I… guess that wasn’t the case?”

“Yeah… I woke up early that next morning home alone. I figured that they must’ve been so busy that they came back really late and decided to turn in. I checked inside of their room and found nopony. I was a little disappointed that they weren’t home right away, but me being so young, I figured they must’ve already went back to work. So I waited… and waited… and waited… A few days of them not showing up later, I began to look for them. Eventually, about two weeks later, somepony told me that my mom and dad were counted amongst those… ‘Taken away’ by the storm… I knew that was just a sugar-coated way of telling me that they were killed trying to disperse the storm though…”

“My goodness…”

“I was devastated…” At this point, Rainbow’s voice began to quake, the filly fighting back tears. “That same pony took me to a shelter where I’d be placed with a foster family somewhere in the slums of Cloudsdale. I can tell you; those were the most miserable two months of my life…”

“How so?”

“For one thing, there were already like seven other foals there. And there was only one parent who cared for each of us equally. But she wasn’t there anywhere near often enough to show it. The other one, the one who looked over us the majority of the time, liked to pick on us and pit us against one another for basic needs like food or water for his sick, twisted amusement… That’s where I started learning how to fight.”

“That’s awful! But… I guess you won out the majority of the time?”

“Oh, god no!” Rainbow harshly answered. “Whoever won those little games was given a ‘special alone-time session’ with the dad whenever the mom wasn’t home. I just fought enough to get me something to eat and share with whoever didn’t get anything. I’d lose on purpose to keep away from the ‘alone-time’ after I saw some of the others come out crying and hardly able to walk. I made the mistake of winning once… at about the time I’d gotten sick of everypony there, and most of the other foals got fed up with being molested… by that time, about three or four of the other foals were already gone. The mother saw how unhappy they were, even though she couldn’t figure out why, and took them back to the shelter to be relocated.”

“Oh… jeez, Rainbow, I’m SO sorry…” Aegis felt like wrapping Rainbow in the tightest hug possible. He also felt a growing, burning resentment towards this awful stallion. Who in their right mind would even dare to THINK of doing such malicious things? And to CHILDREN, no less!

“It wasn’t too bad…” That statement almost threw the guardspony over the edge.

“What!???”

“No, not like that!!” Rainbow hastily countered, realizing the error in her phrasing. “I mean… when he dragged me into his bedroom, he started kissing me on the cheeks and touching me and rubbing me in weird places, in weird ways… telling me that he was going to ‘make me feel good’ and that he was going to ‘give me a special growing-up present’…”

“Rainbow, please… I… I don’t—!” Aegis was deathly afraid of what she was telling him, fearing the worst had happened to his newest companion. He didn’t want to hear any more of the gruesome tale, but Rainbow kept going.

“I knew right away what he was really trying to do to me. He was going to hurt me like he did the others. I started fighting. Swinging away at that pig with every last ounce of strength I had. I thought I was going to get away, but then he swatted me really hard… I flew into a dresser and hit my head… Then he came up to me and grabbed me by my mane. I wasn’t going to let him victimize me like he did the others, though… so, with both my back legs, I kicked him square in the dick as hard as I could. He let go of me and went down almost instantly. I took that as an opportunity to fly far away from there and never look back…”

“Wow… In the dick, huh?” Aegis was a little surprised at the filly's use of vulgar slang, but he was more so relieved that she was able to get away from such a horrble situation.

“Yeah. After that, I spent the rest of that year homeless, drifting aimlessly through the town doing odd jobs for ponies just to feed myself for a day…”

“Didn’t anypony offer you a home??”

“I was in the slums… Nopony could help themselves, much less me… I’d be lucky to have even gotten enough bits to buy a decent meal for myself that would last me. Resources were scarce. As I spent more time alone in total destitution and loneliness, I began to think of ways to bring in some money. But, I had no idea what to do... So in order to calm myself down, I started flying around aimlessly. I flew when I was happy, I flew when I was angry, and I flew when I was sad. The more I flew, the more I grew to love the excitement of soaring through the air with no cares in the world… I found myself in such a state of peace when I flew. It gave me time to think about my situation and how to get out of it. I also found that the faster I whizzed through the open skies, the more I’d lose myself in the excitement of being able to fly…”

“Whoa…”

“Then one day, she came…”

“Daring Do?”

“Yeah… She told me I caught her eye when she noticed me doing tricks during one of my flight sessions and asked me where I learned how to do some of them. I told her about my situation, one thing led to another, and soon, she adopted me as her own…”

“Amazing…”

“Yeah… it was so nice to be able to live in a comfortable home where you didn’t have to fight or sell yourself out just to make enough to get by… to just cuddle up to somepony you know would protect you and love you, no matter what… She was the best mom anypony could ever ask for, even if she spent a good amount of time going on some sort of adventure while I was in flight school… but then she found this weird necklace.” Rainbow moved a hoof to gesture toward the Element of Harmony, but noticed it wasn’t there.

“You mean the Element of Harmony?”

“Yeah. After she found it, things started to change. Over time, she started getting scared of everything, she stopped going on adventures, and she started changing into a completely different pony… She would never tell me why, saying that I was ‘too innocent…’ She became miserable.  But then… then…” the filly found it increasingly hard to tell the story. She choked, the dam of tears she was holding back growing stronger, harder to resist. The frustration, the sorrow… the vengefulness… It was tearing at her insides like an inferno as she tried not to cry.

“They… killed her?” Aegis guessed. Rainbow didn’t reply with words. She broke down crying yet again as she buried her face into her hooves. The Pegasus guard, wracked with guilt and a bolstered conviction to the protection of the filly, wrapped her up in his fore legs. She didn’t fight him. Instead, she welcomed his embrace as she continued to drown out her sorrows. “Rainbow Dash… I… I’m here for you. From here on out, I’ll train you to be the best fighter you can possibly be. I’ll protect you till the bitter end, or die trying. You have my word… you hear me? If ANYPONY EVER tries to harm you… I will personally make sure they pay for it…!” The little blue filly, unable to put into words how much her bodyguard’s words meant to her, instead opted to strengthen her grip on him and nuzzle into his chest as they embraced… Once again, her necklace instantaneously faded into view, taking on a glow…

The black colt stood alone before the council of the Dark Hoof Seven’s leaders, his face blank and emotionless, all evidence of his initially timid and frightful demeanor vanished and replaced with disheartening emptiness.

“Your initiation is nearly complete, young one,” commended one of the leaders. “All that is left is that you swear your life and your allegiance to us and no one else…”

“Yes sir,” the colt flatly replied.

“Good. Now, repeat after us…” At that moment, each of the leaders surrounding the colt recited the group’s trademark motto, with Thunderlane reciting right after them. “Stealthy as the Night, Deadly as the Dawn… The Dark Hoof Seven is Infinitely Strong. Close as A Shadow, Yet Twice As Mute… All Foes will Fall before They Are Able to Dispute. Peace, Not Violence, is for what we Vie. But Stand in our Way, and You WILL DIE!”

“Excellent… From here on out, you will no longer reply to the name of Thunderlane, for it holds ties to a colt who is officially deceased as of this moment. But, until you prove your worth to our organization, you will be addressed as Recruit. Do you understand, Thunderlane?” The colt did not reply. “Good. Now do you understand, Recruit?”

“Yes sir.”

“Outstanding. Agent Mesmerize!” the council pony called. Almost immediately, the mare strolled in, ready to receive her orders.

“Reporting, Commander Zwei.”

“See to it that this colt is properly trained for the testing phase. He is to be under your supervision and your supervision alone unless we order otherwise. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good. This meeting is adjourned. You may go.” With that, Recruit, now accompanied by his new teacher, trotted out of the room and into a sizable foyer with the organization’s logo printed on the center of the floor. The two took a left down a long corridor filled with doorways. The walk was mostly silent, but the colt formerly known as Thunderlane had his reasons. He’d thought about his initiation… how brutal and ruthless it was. How they tortured him into obeying everything they commanded him to do… How they threatened to kill him if he so much as shed a single tear during the taxing, relentless process. He felt lucky to have made it through without much more than a whimper at the beginning of his canonization. He still remembered his life before he’d met this mare, though. His father, his friends… especially Rainbow Dash. The fact that he was doing this to get a clue of her whereabouts was majorly what pulled him through. Eventually, the two made it to their destination: A room devoid of anything but a magic candle and a single bed. There was another door within it, which likely led to the lavatory.

“Recruit?”

“Yes, Agent Mesmerize?”

“Please, just call me Mistress.”

“Will do… Mistress.”

“Good boy… but you know… you’ll soon understand that joining us is beneficial to you. I know the initiation must’ve been hard for you, but all of us as members of the Dark Hoof Seven had to go through it… even me.”

“Really?” asked the Recruit, showing the first semblances of emotion since before his introduction.

“Yes… except, there was nopony to… hold my hoof after I was done. In fact…” the mare trailed off as she began to remove her uniform. “I’ve been feeling REALLY lonely lately… thinking of all the time I’d spent as an Agent without a teammate to share my experiences with…” as she spoke, she cast her spandex suit aside to reveal her Cutie Mark; a pair of hot pink kissing lips. The suit fell messily about the room’s floor. Agent Mesmerize climbed onto the bed and lay flat on her back, her wings fully erect, shooting the Recruit a suggestive glance. The Recruit suddenly began to feel hot, but at the same time, frozen in place.

“I’m… s-sorry to hear that, Mistress…” the colt uneasily replied.

“No, don’t be sorry… Be mine… come here, sweetie… let me talk to ya REAL close…” she suggested, gesturing a fore hoof in a seductive come-hither motion. The colt, despite being afraid out of his mind, found the courage to approach the enticing mare as she massaged her tender areas. The closer he trotted towards her, the faster his heart began to beat. With an impulsive gulp, the Recruit climbed onto the bed with his mentor.

“I-is there something you’d… like me to do?” Rather than reply right away, the mare wrapped the colt up in her fore legs and pulled him into yet another robust, lengthy kiss; this time, slipping him some tongue before releasing him. He could only stare at her in total bewilderment.

“Today isn’t your new birthday JUST because you’re joining us, you know…” she said, winking at him as she positioned him over top of her before moving a fore hoof to grope his genital area. She smiled at him with half-open eyes that emphasized what she wanted from him. At this point, what little resolve the colt had tried to harbor against doing this mare’s bidding melted away, evidenced by the fact that his wings were flared and rigid. “Today’s also the day you become a stallion…”

**A/N** I've never explicitly done clop, nor have I had the intention to. However, I am considering elaborating on this spicy little scene between the colt formerly known as Thunderlane and his new master in either a separate bonus chapter OR in adding it to this chapter. Please let me know what you'd prefer in the comments below.

Lost & Found...

Lost & Found…

Roaring Wind had spent the majority of the afternoon looking for his son, whom he hadn’t seen since he went to school. He searched the neighborhood high and low for Thunderlane, unable to get so much as a clue as to where he went. At one point, he’d even visited the respective homes of Flight Path and Trailblazer, who relayed to him that he went searching for Rainbow Dash, much to the stallion’s dismay.

In a similar instance, Fluttershy’s father had been doing very much the same thing, although he hadn’t but the smallest  clue as to if the filly even had friends or not. Instead, he flew to Cloudsdale’s flight school in order to gain some insight on Fluttershy’s whereabouts. From some of the teachers, he’d learned that Fluttershy had indeed shown up for school and had not been picked up early, which ruled out the possibility that the filly’s mother had taken her. However, he also learned that another stallion by the name of Roaring Wind had lost his foal as well. Not taking any chances,

Fluttershy’s father quickly maneuvered his way around Cloudsdale until he was able to find the stallion he was looking for.

“Excuse me! Sir?” called the father of the yellow filly as he spotted Roaring Wind flying away from the doorstep of someone’s home with an expression of evident dejection on his face.

“May I help you?” he asked, sounding less than enthusiastic.

“Er, yes. My name is Sunny Breeze. I’m not sure if you know me, but I’m Fluttershy’s father.” Instantly, Roaring Wind was filled with contempt.

“Oh.” He flatly stated, now slightly agitated.

“Oh? You don’t seem too pleased… I understand that you’ve lost your son, but if I could ju—?”

“No. Get out of my sight.”

“But please, I—!”

“Leave.”

“I will, just as soon as you tell m—!”

“Dammit, what part of ‘leave’ do you NOT understand!?”

“What the hell’s YOUR problem??” Sunny Breeze asked, taking offense.

“You’re my problem! How dare you make that poor, innocent little filly suffer like that? Her AND her mother.” Sunny Breeze was taken aback by Roaring Wind’s statement. He didn’t remember telling anypony about the affair… and Nimbus left town almost immediately after that night…

“What happened between my family and I is none of your business,” was all he could muster. “…but I don’t remember telling anypony, so you must’ve seen Fluttershy around at some point, right?”

“No. I haven’t seen her since the day she stayed with me after she ran away from you.”

“*sigh* Fantastic…”

“Why? Is she missing, too?” Roaring Wind asked, replacing his contempt with wonder.

“Yes… All she left me was some note telling me she went out to help somepony named Thunderlane look for some other pony named Rainbow Dash. She hasn’t been home at all since.”

“Strange… my son told me that he went out to play with Fluttershy… Although, his friends just told me that he was looking for Rainbow Dash, too… They must’ve gone somewhere together…” the two stallions floated and pondered where their foals could have disappeared to until Roaring Wind came up with a conclusion. “Daring Do’s house! They must be there!”

“Daring Do…? Why does that sound familiar…?”

“She was the Pegasus known for traveling around the world and digging up lost artifacts and whatnot. She had a daughter named Rainbow Dash. But for some strange, twisted reason, Rainbow Dash killed her and ran off to Celestia-knows-where. Some say she got lost and died, but I’m not so sure myself…”

“Are you serious?? Fluttershy went with your son to go look for a murderer??”

“Unfortunately, it seems that way. In any case though, that would probably be the first place they’d go.”

“Right. Let’s go.” With that, the two Pegasus stallions made their way to the abandoned household and quickly noticed that a window had been left open.

“See that, Breeze?” Roaring Wind asked, pointing towards the open window. “That window’s open…”

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t you see? Nopony’s stepped hoof inside of this house since they cleaned it up and placed a memorial inside last month. Every door and window was shut… until now.”

“But… the door’s open too,” Sunny Breeze countered as he turned the knob on the front door and pushed it open. They stepped in to see nothing out of place in their immediate surroundings.

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy, honey! Are you here?” called Sunny Breeze. No answer.

“Thunderlane! If you’re here, show yourself! You and Fluttershy come out now!” still no reply. The two opted to search separate parts of the house for any clues to their children’s whereabouts. Sunny Breeze checked the bathroom and Rainbow’s room to find nothing out of the ordinary. Roaring Wind, however, was greeted with a huge mess in Daring Do’s room. “Breeze, c’mere quick!”

“You find someth—! What the…?”

“It looks like somepony was in here. This room’s a mess… What’d you find?”

“Nothing. Everything else seems completely undisturbed.”

“How odd… if those two WERE here, why would they only search one room; and not even the room that belonged to Rainbow Dash herself?” They went silent in thought for a moment. Eventually, Sunny Breeze came up with an answer.

“What if… somepony ELSE was in here, looking to rob this place?”

“Possible, but not likely. Nopony in Cloudsdale would be so bold and disrespectful that they would bring themselves to desecrate the home of a deceased pony. Plus, a thief would likely ransack the entire place for anything of value that wasn’t nailed down. Besides, even our kids would know some sense of restraint…”

“Maybe somepony heard a noise and came in, alerting the thief into running away before they could make their way through the rest of the house. But then… there’s the fact that the living room was untouched… I dunno… But as for our kids, I’m sure they would show restraint… Fluttershy in particular, if she knew about the murder, would likely have been too afraid to even come anywhere close to this house, much less inside of it. But then that means they couldn’t have been the ones to have trashed this room like this…”

“Fluttershy did know about it. Good point, though…” Roaring Wind stated before having a frightening epiphany. “Oh god… no… Please, Celestia no!”

“What’s the matter?”

“What if… What if those two came here and ran into a thief who kidnapped them?”

“Whaaaat? No way,” the father of the yellow filly dismissed, although feeling a new sense of anxiety himself. “Listen, why don’t we just form a search team so we can comb different areas of the city until we find them? I don’t think they were…” he trailed off as he watched Thunderlane’s father pick up a small black feather.

“This feather… this belongs to my son.” Sunny Breeze’s heart sank.

“Really?? A-are you sure?? Maybe it’s ju—!”

“No, I know my son’s feathers. He WAS here… but I don’t see any yellow feathers anywhere…”

“Well… just because Flutter-Butter didn’t shed any feathers, it doesn’t mean that she wasn’t here with him… right?”

“I… I suppose… but now I’m more worried than ever. They’re just foals. I wouldn’t expect them to stay out this late, much less come here of all places to look for Rainbow Dash of all ponies or wander off very far from this area of Cloudsdale… Let’s head to the police station to report them missing. Hopefully, they can start up a search team on the spot?”

“Sounds good to me…”The stallions made haste in leaving the house mostly unsullied by their hooves as they made their way to the Cloudsdale Police Department. Once there, they filled the officers in on how their children had gone missing and that the only leads they had were in the form of a black feather and two notes explaining that the foals had teamed up together to find Rainbow Dash. Fortunately, the feather and the notes were evidence enough to allow them to warrant a search. However, the search warrant only applied to the vicinity of the late Daring Do’s house, as that was the only place found with suitable evidence of even one of the Pegasus foals’ presence there.

Not wanting to waste a second waiting for the police to begin their search or blindly searching other areas of the city, the stallions requested that there be a “Missing” poster made for them. Unluckily, they would only be able to do so if Fluttershy and Thunderlane had remained missing for more than forty-eight hours. The stallions opted to accept whatever help the police station’s officers could lend and take it upon themselves to separate and inform as many citizens of Cloudsdale as they could of the missing foals.

Two weeks later…

Sunny Breeze and Roaring Wind had, with the aid of a few altruistic citizens of Cloudsdale as well as a team of officers, scanned the city high and low for any traces of the colt and/or the filly, dismally coming up with no further leads in the fortnight that had passed since the search began. Some had theorized that they had possibly gone to one of the towns below, such as Ponyville or one of its neighboring settlements. Initially, that possibility was incredulously negated as being outright silly. Despite this, time had changed the minds of those who at first thought it impossible for two kids to run off into a completely unfamiliar city.

Extensive efforts were made to try and locate the missing children, but as more and more time passed, hope in finding them had dwindled significantly. Search teams were called off, reports— despite one pony reporting a sighting of a yellow, pink-maned filly— came up inconclusive, and chivalrous citizens had given up, telling the two stallions heading the search that they were “sorry for their losses,” as if to imply that Fluttershy and Thunderlane were dead. After a total of two months of inconclusive searches, the two finally gave up, heartbroken and distraught over their children who were presumed dead.

“Excellent work, my student!” congratulated Princess Celestia as Twilight had just finished casting a high-level transformation spell on her brother that turned him into a statue. The filly was quick to change him back to his original state as the three ponies stood in the center of the Canterlot Archives library.

“Nice job, Twiley!” congratulated Shining Armor, shaking off the uncomfortable feeling of being turned to solid stone. He was a larger-than-average Unicorn with a marble white coat, slightly unkempt long, dark blue hair with light blue stripes in it. He wore traditional royal guard attire that protected his vital areas, but he was not wearing his helmet. “Your magic’s showing a LOT of progress.”

“Indeed,” Celestia concurred. “In a much smaller timeframe than I’d anticipated, you’ve mastered spells that most Unicorns would struggle with well into their adult years, and you’re hardly an adolescent.” Twilight’s smile brightened with joy at the words of her family and mentor.

“Thank you!” she excitedly said. “I just want to be as proportionately equipped for this journey as I possibly can be. I’m aware that there are a plethora of perils headed our way when Rainbow Dash and I take off on this voyage, but with my magic and the fighting skills she’s acquiring from Mr. Aegis, we will prevail!”

“That’s the spirit!” Shining Armor lauded, hugging his younger sister. “But… speaking of fighting skills… Hoof-to-Hoof combat is actually just as important as Magic ability in self-defense.”

“It is??” Twilight asked in shock. “I thought I only needed to use magic to defend myself!”

“Yes, but magic won’t save you from everything. Just like how in Rainbow’s case, flying won’t save her from everything. You have to be prepared for times where your magic might be rendered useless. I mean, there’s already been a couple of times where somepony, whether Earth pony, Pegasus, or Unicorn, was able to evade all of my magic attacks, forcing me to rely on my own four hooves to defend myself and take them down. That’s why when Her Highness is done training you on the use of magic, you can spend time learning physical defense and strategy with me.”

“If I may interject,” Princess Celestia respectfully inputted. “…I believe I have nothing else to teach you at the moment, my most faithful student.” Twilight was alarmed beyond belief. Even Shining Armor was caught off-guard.

“Nothing else to teach me, Princess??” the Unicorn filly asked. “But… you’re Princess Celestia! You’re the most powerful Alicorn in the entire world!”

“Indeed I am… However, I am also just one pony. You are able to learn more about magic from other ponies, you know. Even my sister, Princess Luna… That is, of course, if you can keep yourself awake long enough to consult her after she’s raised the moon.”

“Yes, but—!”

“This does not mean we’re finished with your lessons entirely, Twilight. It’s just that you’ve passed all of your exams with flying colors, you’re on your way to becoming possibly the youngest and most prestigious graduate of my School for Gifted Unicorns, and you’ve proven over the couple of months that you’re able to handle spells far beyond the comprehension of other Unicorns your age. However, the recent discovery of Rainbow Dash’s Element of Harmony is a sign that this world is nearing the brink of destruction unless the Elements and their destined bearers are found and united. For now, I must halt your personal training so that you may gain insight from other ponies as you journey across the far reaches of lands this planet in search of the other Elements.”

“I… I understand, Princess,” Twilight obediently concurred.

“Good. Now I must attend to my duties. Shining Armor, make sure she learns everything she needs to.”

“You have my word, Princess,” the large white Unicorn stallion promised, prompting the royal mare to smile at them both and stroke Twilight’s mane.

“I just know you’ll succeed…”

“I will do whatever it takes! You can count on me!” Twilight affirmed. With that, the Princess trotted out of the library.

“Hey Twiley. Why don’t we head out to the courtyard to start your self-defense training? Better now than never. Afterwards, we can spend a little time catching up,” suggested the stallion as the two Unicorns trotted out of the library and into a long, decorative corridor.

“That would be great! We hardly see each other anymore… Plus, I admit I’m… worried about this adventure… I’ve never even been outside of Canterlot yet. I don’t know what to expect out there…”

“Honestly, I wish I could go with you… but my job as a royal guard binds me strictly to the precinct of this castle. You’ll be fine, though. I just know it. As Celestia said once, you’ve been proving yourself to be very powerful over the last year or so you’ve been living here… possibly the most powerful she’s seen in all her years. By the time you learn how to defend yourself without the use of magic; you’ll be unbeatable in battle! Other than that, I’ve caught glimpses of how your friend Rainbow’s been doing on her training with Aegis. She’s showing a lot of progress despite them starting their training just a couple months ago while her leg was still bothering her. I guarantee you two will make an excellent team.”

“I hope so…” Eventually, the siblings had reached their destination and did not hesitate to begin Twilight’s physical training. Here, the knowledgeable Unicorn showed a significant weakness in that she’d never been in or anywhere close to a physical confrontation in her life. Within a few minutes, she was already curled up on the ground whimpering, on the verge of tears after her older brother lightly hit her on the head during a sparring session.

“Aw, come on, Twiley! That was nothing but a tap!”

“Taps don’t hurt. You hurt me…” she whined.

“Oh boy, this is gonna take a while…” the stallion thought. He took a deep breath. “Listen. If you can’t learn to defend yourself without magic, then you won’t be able to go on that adventure with Rainbow Dash. And if you can’t go on the adventure with Rainbow Dash…”

“…th-then that means I— *sniff* will let you and Princess Celestia down…”

“Exactly. And don’t forget about Rainbow. Then there’s what she said about the world being on the brink of disaster unless those other Elements are found… but I digress. My point is do you want to let me down?”

“No…”

“Do you want to abandon Rainbow Dash?”

“No…”

“Do you want to let Princess Celestia down?” he asked, taking on the approach and vocal tones of a militant motivational speaker.

“No…”

“I can’t hear you.”

“No.” Twilight repeated with less sniffling and more assertion.

“Do you want to watch helplessly as the world is plunged into darkness?”

“No!” Twilight repeated again, this time gaining a small sense of enthusiasm.

“Alright then! Now tell me what you want to do!”

“I want to…! Um… I want to…”

“…Make me proud, right?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes!”

“Make Princess Celestia proud?”

“Yes!”

“Help Rainbow Dash and make sure she can rely on you?”

“Yes!!”

“Save the world from destruction?”

“Hell yes!! *gasp* oop!” the filly clasped her mouth shut quickly after her accidental slip of profanity. The damage had been done however, as the Unicorn stallion stared at her in shock. He was quick to shake it off and clear his throat before continuing his motivational speech.

“…well then you’re not going to get to do any of those things unless you learn how to defend yourself in battle! The strong don’t cry or whine or cower in the face of adversity! They challenge it! They fearlessly stand up to it! And they conquer it! Are you strong!?”

“Yes!”

“We’re gonna work long! And we’re gonna work hard! And we’re gonna work together until you become the toughest fighter and the strongest Unicorn you can possibly be! Do you understand that!?” the stallion asked, failing to hold back a smile.

“Yes sir!” Twilight answered, her newfound enthusiasm bolstered as she saluted her elder sibling with a bright, determined smile on her face.

“Then let’s get to work, soldier!”

“Yes sir!” the filly answered, getting into a battle stance. Shining Armor did the same, preparing to resume their sparring session.

“Quick question.”

“Yes, big brother?”

“Where did you learn that word?”

“I… may have overheard you saying it a few times during your military training…” Twilight sheepishly admitted.

“Oh… I guess I have myself to blame then…” He chuckled. “Enough joking around now. Let’s begin!” with that, the two Unicorns commenced their training session once again...

Progression...!

Progression…!

Aegis worked long and hard to train the growing Pegasus mare known as Rainbow Dash to become the adventurer she needed to be. Once Rainbow’s leg was healed, however, he gradually upped her already-grueling, intense training by more than a couple of notches over the course of the next few years. He didn’t have much to teach Rainbow on the subject of aerial maneuvers, as she seemed to have perfected her own graceful style of flight that she incorporated into her combat training seamlessly; not to mention that she’d proved to be much faster and more agile than her master.

Instead, their training focused mainly on muscle and stamina build-up and endurance, mixed in with extreme combat lessons and the occasional test of fighting ability in the form of heated sparring sessions. Aegis had proved himself to be quite a strict teacher, never letting up on the difficulty of his lessons. Despite this, Rainbow persevered and made it through each and every lesson the Pegasus guard had to throw at her. In addition, as the two had spent more and more time together, they’d grown very close. When they weren’t practicing or exercising, they’d either spend time hanging around and gaining insight on one another while they roamed the castle while Aegis was off-duty, or Rainbow would stop by his post for a quick hello before she was off to continue her daily schedule. One afternoon, however, Rainbow had let Aegis in on a secret she’d been keeping since the day she’d arrived in Canterlot…

“Hey, Aegis?” Rainbow addressed as she and her closest friend and mentor strolled through an extensive hallway.

“Yeah?”

“You think… maybe during our next session we could… use weapons?”

“Weapons?” Aegis asked, intrigued by the sky blue mare’s request.

“Yeah. I kinda wanted to start learning how to use them for a while now. But, I wasn’t sure how to ask...”

“Hmm, I guess so. But there really isn’t much to teach you about the weaponry we guards use. All we get are spears and shields, with a select few who have actual swords in place of a spear. They’re hardly worth fighting with…”

“Why?”

“It’s mostly from my point of view, so don’t take it in as fact. But… Spears aren’t really adequate for close-quarters combat. They’re made to basically deliver a killing blow or to keep an aggressive attacker at bay. But given your speed and reflexes, you wouldn’t have any use for it. As for shields… you MAY need to keep one in handy, but our armor does the majority of the shield’s job. It’s meant purely for defense, but I figure that if you get pinned down or are forced to constantly turtle yourself, you really won’t have a good chance at fighting back.”

“Turtle?” Rainbow inquired.

“When I say ‘turtle,’ I mean perpetually hiding behind the shield and waiting for a safe enough time to strike back.”

“Ohh, I see… Heh, that’s pretty creative of you,” the Pegasus mare chuckled.

“Thanks,” Aegis smiled. “Where was I…? Oh yeah: The swords we use aren’t very long. They can’t really be used without the shield. They’re used mainly for swift counterattacks, but once you’re on the offensive, you’ll need to keep it that way at all costs, while at the same time making sure not to leave yourself vulnerable. Like I said before though, your speed and reflexes in hoof-to-hoof combat are phenomenal. Plus, you’ve gotten MUCH bigger and stronger since you were a filly. You’d have little to no practical use for our weapons, especially since you’re supposed to go on an adventure around the world. Buuut, I suppose I could at LEAST teach you how to disarm an enemy.”

“That sounds good… but I didn’t mean those weapons. I meant a different kind...”

“Really? What kind?”

“Follow me. I’ll show you,” Rainbow instructed before rocketing off.

“Hey, wait up! You know you’re faster than me!” Aegis laughingly called as he took off to follow the young mare. A short time later, Rainbow arrived in her room, Aegis following close behind. She trotted towards the closet and dug out the item she was looking for. She pulled it out and showed it to an alarmed Aegis. However, as he registered the shape of the weapon, he remembered a specific request Rainbow had made the day she earned her Cutie Mark:

“What… what about—?”

“The sword you were in possession of when you were found?”

“Yeah… It belonged to my mom… and I want to know if I can use it in my training… as a way to remember her…”

“Ohh, I remember now… You said you wanted to use that sword in memoriam to your mom, right?”

“Y-yeah…”

“Hmm…” Aegis was perplexed. He would happily allow Rainbow to use the weapon… if he had any useful knowledge of its properties. He’d only heard a small amount of information on katana swords, but they were only used in the farthest reaches of Hoofania: And even they had largely stopped using them after they had terminated their honor system that dictated proper use of the sword due to the system’s unfathomable brutality. “I… don’t really know how to use one of those. I mean, if you’re strong enough, maybe you could spend some time swinging it around…?”

“I guess so, but I REALLY need to learn how to use this thing.”

“Okay sure. But other than you using it in honor of Daring Do, why’s your ability to use it so important? I don’t really see you needing it very often. It’s not like you’re the one going to intentionally kill somepony… right?”

“Yeah, but… I need to because… because I… I made a promise the day my mother died…” At this, the Pegasus guard was very intrigued.

“A promise…? What did you promise her?”

“No, not to my mom... well, sort of… but it was more so to the pony who killed her…” Aegis read the message loud and clear.

“You promised revenge???”

“Y-yeah…”

“Rainbow… You have to realize how serious that is.”

“I do… and I mean it,” the mare’s tone became malicious and angered. “That bastard’s gonna pay for what he did…! Him and whoever he was working with. They’re ALL going to pay…!” the room went silent as Aegis registered her words in his mind.

“…No,” the guardspony finally mumbled.

“No? No what?”

“I can’t allow you to use that sword,” he answered as he gently took hold of its sheath, yet finding expectant resistance from his student. He looked at her to see an expression of extreme hurt in her eyes caused by his words. “Not if you’re going to deliberately murder someone.” Rainbow’s face quickly changed from dejection to anger.

“…I knew you wouldn’t understand…” she spat.

“Oh, I understand just fine. And what I understand is that you’re willing to end the life of another pony for a VERY selfish reason. Revenge, Rainbow? You should know better than that! You ARE better than that!”

“I DO know better… I’m not just doing it to get the revenge I promised both him and my mom; I’m also doing it because he asked me to.”

“What? What do you mean ‘asked you to’?”

“The day I came home to find my mom dead, he stood over me. He ripped off his mask to show me his face, and even told me to remember it and his voice. He told me to never forget that miserable day… because he wanted me to challenge him to a grudge match. Plus, he told me that he and his buddies in this… Dark Hoof something-or-other clan were going to come for me because of this necklace.” Aegis was beyond words at Rainbow’s explanation for her use of her mother’s sword.

“I… I see. But… I cannot condone you killing anypony… unless— and that’s a HUGE UNLESS! It’s absolutely necessary for self-defense. The most I EVER want you doing is knocking somepony out if they pose a threat. As for this one stallion who told you to challenge him… I expect no different treatment when you do fight him; even if he IS responsible for Daring Do’s demise. Defeat him if you must, but DO NOT kill him.”

“Why shouldn’t I!? He deserves it! Besides, if I do, he won’t be able to hurt anypony else!”

“But what would that give you? Satisfaction in knowing that you killed somepony? Gratification knowing that you saw an eye for an eye? Do you have ANY idea what kind of torment would follow??”

“What’s the big deal!? I’m not killing anypony BUT him!”

“Rainbow… You don’t know… You just don’t know…” Aegis’s voice began to waver as finding words became difficult. He took a deep breath. “It’s such an awful experience… killing somepony. It’s one of the few things worse than actually dying: living with the fact that YOU ended someone’s life prematurely… waking up every single day and at some point or another being reminded that you robbed someone of the most precious gift in existence… It’s a vile, horrid feeling that festers in your gut like an infected ulcer and eats away at your sanity… You wanna know what it’s like to kill somepony?”

“…” Rainbow was silent, studying the stallion as he lectured her. “…well, I killed a few Timberwolves before I came here, using this sword…” At that, Aegis scoffed.

“Let me tell you, it’s absolutely NOTHING like killing a Timberwolf… One day a few years back before I met you, I was in a platoon that was guarding a high-class party on the southwest end of Canterlot. Everything seemed to be going so smooth… until somepony who had snuck into the building with a switchblade tried to assassinate one of the guests. I was the one who moved to take him down while the others calmed the guests down and evacuated them. The assailant and I were in a heated fight, neither of us able to best the other. Eventually, he tried using the knife on me… He almost got me too, as he aimed a strong jab at my neck while we were locked in combat. But I thought quickly and on impulse, I dodged out of the way, grabbed his fore leg, and hurled him across the room. He got back up to try and charge at me. I warned him… I warned that idiot not to do it… but he did. He came barreling towards me, switchblade clamped firmly in between his teeth, intent on killing me. So I turned around and planted both my back hooves square into his jaw. He flew back, the knife flying out of my sight. I watched as he landed on his back a few feet away. I watched as he opened his mouth wide to stretch his jaw after the kick I gave him… I watched as that switchblade came hurtling back down, the blade planting itself firmly into the back of his throat… I heard the gurgling, the gasping for air, the lurid choking sounds he made… I saw the helpless, desperate look on his face as he writhed on the ground, clasping his neck as the blood was flooding out of his mouth… Then he just fell over. He stopped moving completely, a look of wide-eyed torment frozen on his lifeless corpse. A part of me died along with that stallion that day… and I just sat there and fucking watched…”

“…whoa,” was all Rainbow could muster. She’d seen the death of a pony happen right in front of her before. She’d had experience in killing before. But Aegis’s story revealed a new tier of malice in the act of life-taking; killing a pony. Rainbow had indeed never killed anything that was capable of showing compassion. She’d killed Timberwoves, but they were just wild animals looking for a meal. She had to defend herself. However, she was totally unable to imagine what it was like to place a pony in a situation where she had to kill him or her using that blade. “But… that wasn’t your fault…” she reasoned, although having a bit of difficulty believing her own words. “He came at you. You defended yourself. He basically killed himself.”

“With my help. I tried for quite a long time to convince myself of that… that it wasn’t my fault… that he technically committed suicide… but then it comes right back at me, for the simple fact that I was the one who kicked that knife into the air rather than find a way to properly disarm him…”

“Oh…”

“I didn’t teach you everything I know so you could go chasing some pony over a brash, selfish promise… In fact, the only reason you needed the training was so you’d be safe in the case someone tried to attack you. That’s the same reason Princess Celestia wants Twilight Sparkle to go along with you. You shouldn’t HAVE to kill anypony. Your objective is to locate those Elements and locate the ponies destined to wear them. Nothing else. Do you understand me?” Aegis’s eyes were stern, yet sincere as he locked his gaze on the Pegasus mare. He wanted to make ABSOLUTELY sure that Rainbow wouldn’t corrupt herself with the knowledge of being a murderer.

“Y-yes sir…” Rainbow agreed, although not entirely. She still wasn’t fully convinced that killing a pony could be much worse than killing a Timberwolf. However, she respected Aegis enough that she would abide by his wishes and not kill unless ultimately necessary. She was at least satisfied that he didn’t say she wasn’t allowed to defeat that stallion in combat.

“Good,” he affirmed as the tension in the room settled down. “Now let’s go find a place for you to wield this thing…”

“Really? You’d still let me train with this sword?”

“Sure. I trust you enough that I don’t think you’ll kill with it. I CAN trust you… right, Speedy?” he asked as he playfully mussed her mane with his fore hoof.

“Yeah.” Rainbow smiled a little.

“Plus, it DID belong to your foster mom. I’d be heartless not to let you carry it around without knowing if you were strong enough to use it properly.” With that, the two Pegasi left the room to find a suitable area for sword training.

The grown Unicorn mare by the name of Twilight Sparkle was in the midst of an intense physical training session with her older brother, in which she was running laps around the courtyard. She’d shown considerable progress in her ability to fight without magic, as well as building up her physique. However, her progress was largely hindered by the incredibly small increments of time she’d get with Shining Armor. Her opportunities to train with him were few and far in between. His duties as a royal guard had kept him very busy most of the time; especially since he’d recently received a promotion to the rank of Captain. When Armor wasn’t around, Twilight would either practice with Rainbow Dash whenever they’d gotten a chance to meet up, or spend time studying up the wide range of possibilities surrounding magic in the Canterlot Archives in order to keep her mystic abilities strong and fresh. Once in a blue moon, she'd even catch Princess Luna and have her show her a thing or two that Celestia never got around to teaching her. Her training time was also cut short by her own duty as the guardian of the young dragon she kept, whom she’d named “Spike.”

“Aaaaand that’s fifty! Even with Spike on your back! Good job, Twiley!” congratulated Shining Armor as his younger sibling tiredly made her way back to him, only to unceremoniously collapse onto the ground at his hooves with a heavy groan.

“Jeez, Twilight. I haven’t seen you this tired since you pulled that all-nighter reading that entire encyclopedia on quantum physics,” joked Spike, the Unicorn’s pet dragon as he climbed off of her back, eliciting a laugh out of the white stallion. He’d grown considerably, but was still much smaller than a typical full-sized dragon. He was only a small amount taller than a foal.

“Yeah… why don’t… hah… you try running… a few… laps around here…” she breathlessly retorted as she slowly picked herself up. “Ohh, my legs… they’ll likely be sore for weeks…”

“Why don’t we take a little break?” suggested Shining Armor

*thwack*

*thwack*

*thwack*

“What’s that noise?” asked Spike, looking around.

“I’m not sure, but it sounds like it’s coming from over there,” answered Twilight, turning around and pointing towards the right.

“Let’s go see.”

“Okay.” The two Unicorns and the young dragon strolled their way towards the noise to find Rainbow Dash alone, cutting away at a tree with a long, slender sword, the hilt of which was clenched between her teeth. As the trio arrived to be greeted with the sight of her, Rainbow took the sword out of her mouth with a fore hoof, wiped her brow, and sat down to take a breather before noticing Twilight and the others.

“Hey guys… hah… what’s up?” asked the blue Pegasus mare, showing signs of fatigue from her workout.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash!” “Hey.” “Hey Rainbow,” the three greeted simultaneously.

“Hard at work as always?” asked Twilight.

“You know it! At this rate… I feel like I’d be able to… take on fifty royal guards and STILL come out on top! Even you, big guy!” she taunted, pointing a hoof at Shining Armor.

“Be careful what you say,” Shining Armor joked. “I might just be tempted to put you up to that.”

“Hey, speaking of guards… Where’s Aegis?” the purple Unicorn mare inquired. “Doesn’t he usually help you with your training?”

“Yeah, but not today,” Rainbow answered. “He needed to go back to his post a while back. So I’ve just been out here practicing with this sword. What brings you all here?”

“I just got done running fifty consecutive laps around this entire garden… My poor knees are still trembling with ache…”

“Yikes! That’s killer on your legs.”

“Tell me about it…”

“Heh, sure! How about over lunch though? I’m getting kinda hungry.”

“We’d love to!” With that, Rainbow moved to sheath her sword and join Twilight, Shining Armor, and Spike as they trotted into the castle.

Elsewhere…

“Yes, there she is…” said a mysterious pony who’d been keeping an eye on Rainbow and her friends from atop a cloud. The pony then placed a hoof to its ear and began to speak: “Mesmerize to Tactic. Do you come in?”

“Yes, what do you have to report, Agent Mesmerize?”

“We have positive identity on the pony we’ve been suspecting has been hiding in Canterlot. Rainbow Dash is in Canterlot. I repeat. Rainbow Dash is in Canterlot. Celestia’s palace, to be exact.”

“I see. We may face a bit more opposition than initially anticipated. Still, this is excellent news. Tell me, how is she faring? What exactly did you see her doing?”

“She just finished up practicing fighting with the use of a sword. Why do you ask?”

“Good, good. So she still seems to remember…”

“Remember what?”

“…Nothing. It’s something of a… personal matter.”

“Rrrright…” replied Mesmerize, seeming none too interested in Agent Tactic’s hazy response to her question. “In any case, when do you want me and my partner to strike?”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll be there with another Agent tonight to give our target a… ‘Surprise visit’ of sorts. You and Agent Secrecy are relieved for now…”

“Roger.” With that, Mesmerize ended her conversation with Tactic. After turning off her communication device, she rolled over on her back, still lying on the cloud with her partner. “Hey Secrecy.”

“…Er, Y-yes, Mesmerize?” the other mysterious pony answered in a tone that made him seem as if he’d been shaken out of a vivid catatonic daydream.

“I thought I told you to call me ‘Mistress.’”

“Yes right… Mistress.”

“Whatcha thinkin’ about over there?”

“Nothing… Just… I can’t believe she’s still alive…”

“Isn’t that what I told you all those years ago, sweetie?”

“Yeah but… why’d we have to wait for so long? Why didn’t we come here earlier?”

“Hell if I know,” Mesmerize sighed. “Ol’ Tactic suggested to the higher-ups that we be patient and confirm that it was her and that she had what we’re looking for. So far, we know she’s alive. He mentioned something about noticing little kaleidoscope-mane falling into a forest the day he wound up getting his teammates murdered, and then an explosion happening a few minutes later. He saw her body, but then saw a group of Celestia’s guards on their way to search the area before he was able to recover her.”

“So… he knew she was here all along?”

“I suppose, but his assumption was falling on deaf ears until recently. I only had a clue of her being alive when I found you. That Sonic Rainboom she pulled a while ago wasn’t very solid evidence to follow, and I was the only one to follow it while Tactic was being reprimanded for his failure. He suggested that Rainbow might be alive, but nopony listened to him after he tarnished his rep by getting his flanks handed to him by Daring Do. Big lummox returned to base with the bodies of his two teammates and a broken back leg... shameful, really. Up until then, he was regarded as one of our best. To screw up so badly on an operation that was ranked a D+ in difficulty… Anyway, it was only about a week ago that I finally gave in to his crazy ramblings about Rainbow Dash being alive in Canterlot and made this little trip here with you. He trusted me with the information I’m relaying to you.”

“We’re… we’re not going to kill her… are we?” Thunderlane Secrecy’s voice showed his concern for his target.

“Not if she complies with us, we won’t. We follow a strict rule not to kill unless somepony is so much as suspected to know something that may have us discovered. We SHOULD be on our way to snuffing the little bitch now, as a matter of fact…” That statement greatly worried Agent Secrecy. “…but she’s also rumored to have her hooves on an Element of Harmony. Plus, we can’t do so without an order or some kind of provocation. But… that’s enough about this silly little mission… come over here and gimme some sugar… I’m in the mood for some more of your hot, delicious cream filling…”

“Again? We did it four times before we left base…”

“That’s not a BAD thing, is it?”

“Uh no o-of course not…” Secrecy semi-lied. Over the years, when he hadn’t been honing the skills he needed to become and maintain his position as a Dark Hoof agent or being assigned to various reconnaissance missions alongside Agent Mesmerize, he’d been frequently subjected to her sexual advances. Although he didn’t mind spending quality time with his partner/lover, he had his limits. She, however, proved repeatedly that “limits” was a word nonexistent in her mind. Days where Mesmerize didn’t want him inside of her were few and far in between. Whenever he’d refuse or try to reason with her that he didn’t feel up to the task, she would resort to teasing, begging, or in extreme incidents, forcing herself upon him, telling him that she needed him badly. Not one to like disappointing her, he almost always obliged, however reluctant he was feeling.

“Good…” Mesmerize moaned, grabbing hold of her partner and pulling him down next to her. “…because so long as we don’t have any objectives to complete, we have all the time we want to spend together…” she gently laid a hoof on his chest and slowly dragged it down his body.

“Your wish is my command, Mistress…”

Later that night…

Aegis had seen Rainbow Dash off to bed and assumed his nightly post outside of her room door alongside a dark gray Unicorn guard wearing armor identical to that of Aegis’s.

“Hey, Aegis?” beckoned the Unicorn guard.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve been doing this for quite a while now.”

“Your point?”

“I mean… it’s been literally years since we were assigned to watch out for dangers involving Rainbow. Wouldn’t you think by now, she could protect herself?”

“Probably, but so long as she’s bearing an Element of Harmony, it’s imperative that we give her as much protection as she may need. By order of Princess Celestia herself, no less.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that…”

“I honestly don’t mind watching over her.”

“Because you’ve made a habit of spending your free time with her, I’d guess?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’ve caught glimpses of you training her, I’ve seen you two hanging around and talking on occasion, and… you smile whenever you come out of her room after kissing her good night…” At that, Aegis’s cheeks turned a light pink.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about. Shut up and do your job…”

“Heh heh, whatever you say, softie…” the Unicorn guard teased as they turned away from one another.

*CRACK* “AGH!” a sudden shout was heard coming from the gray unicorn. Aegis was quick to turn around and see a shadowy figure attempting to wrap its hooves around his neck. He ducked and rammed a fore hoof into the stomach of his assailant, sending them stumbling back a couple feet. Once he recovered, he took notice of his comrade lying on the ground with his eyes closed, either unconscious or dead. Standing before the body was two shadows, one larger than the other. He couldn’t get a definitive image of due to the corridor being dark.

“Who are you!?” Aegis asked. “How did you get in here undetected? What have you done to Gleam?”

“It’s not important to you who we are, Officer,” replied one of the voices, sounding deep and sinister.

“But we’ll let you in on a little secret…: Your friend here AIN’T asleep,” added the other voice, sounding not quite as deep, but definitely carrying a gravelly, malevolent tone.

“You…!” Aegis was already infuriated and standing his guard.

“Where is Rainbow Dash?” asked the larger shadow. The question sent a ripple of shock and anger through the Pegasus guard.

“What…? What could you possibly want with h—?” Then it hit him… She’d mentioned something earlier about a mysterious group of shady individuals warning about coming after her at some point. That point must have come today. “You… You’re part of that organization that’s after her for the Element, aren’t you?”

“Where is she? If you tell us, we MAY allow you to continue drawing breath…”

“Oi, why don’t we check this room,” suggested the smaller figure, placing a hoof on the knob of the door Aegis was assigned to guard. Aegis was quick to act, taking flight and with a swift spin, kicking the intruder away. “You’ll pay for that… with yer life, you bloody imbecile!” cried the figure as it launched its attack on Aegis, the larger figure preparing to follow behind.

“Aegis, what’s going on out he—!” asked another figure as it stepped out of the room to find the Pegasus guard locked in combat. She also took notice of a Unicorn guard’s lifeless body sprawled on the ground.

“Rainbow, go back into the room!” shouted Aegis as he broke free of the smaller Dark Hoof agent’s grasp and landed a solid right hook to his face. Just then, she noticed the larger agent making a move to attack her. She was quick to dodge out of the way by taking flight to avoid him and attempting to deliver a kick to his head, which the intruder ducked under.

“My, how you’ve grown since our last encounter…” the larger agent commented. Rainbow Dash almost immediately recognized his voice. In that same instant, she was outright livid.

“You! You finally decided to come back for me, huh!? I guarantee you’ll regret what you did to my mom!!” In blind, unadulterated fury, Rainbow charged at her enemy full force, unleashing a barrage of jabs and kicks, most of which he was able to block or maneuver around.

*THUMP* Rainbow managed to land a definitive strike to the invader’s abdomen with a side kick, causing him to stumble back a few steps.

“Not bad. You show much growth. But is it enough… to defeat me?”

“The less you open that filthy mouth of yours, the sooner we’ll find out, murderer!” With that, Rainbow reengaged her foe, the two trading blows in their heated debacle.

Meanwhile, Aegis had gained the upper hand in his battle with the other Agent. He’d been able to force him to defend himself without fighting back. Using the agent’s turtling to his advantage, Aegis delivered a coordinated series of cuffs and kicks to various weak spots in the Dark Hoof agent’s defense.

“You’ll pay for what you did to Gleam, you son of a bitch! You’re gonna wish you’d never even THOUGHT about breaking into this castle!” the Pegasus guard shouted as he delivered blow after blow to the trespasser. Little did he know, the trespasser had a trick up his sleeve. The agent’s forehead took on a bright red glow and a blinding flash of white enshrouded it a second later, effectively disabling Aegis from seeing.

*KRSH* “AAGH!” The agent revealed his hidden hoof blade and in an instant, shoved the blade upwards, where it met with the guardspony’s eye. Aegis was forced to back away as he screamed in agony, clutching his injured eye.

“How’s that feel? Yer eyeball’s lookin’ pretty nasty there, mate…” the attacker taunted with a snicker.

“Aegis!!” Rainbow shouted as she turned around to see her mentor incapacitated, blood drenching his face as his assailant was about to advance on him with the killing blow. Thinking quickly, Rainbow darted away from her primary enemy in an effort to save Aegis.

*CRASH* Just as the attacker’s blade was about to meet with Aegis’s windpipe, Rainbow tackled the assailant and threw him against the wall. Immediately, she descended upon him with a rapid barrage of punches, making sure this would-be murderer suffered dearly for his attempt to kill Aegis.

*THUMP* THUMP* *THUMP* She was fueled by her mentor’s agonized wailing and groaning as she landed punch after punch after punch.

*THUMP* *CRACK* *THUMP* for a moment during her unrelenting assault, she thought about Daring Do. The thought of the adventure mare laying in a puddle of her own blood… the killer standing there in triumph as he watched her die before his eyes… Daring’s last words to her before the last semblances of life ebbed away from her corpse… It was almost too much to bear thinking that Aegis might wind up the same way if she wasn’t there to help him.

*CRRACKK!!* With one more powerful haymaker to the agent’s jaw, Rainbow immediately charged at her primary target, who was recovering from her pervious attack.

“Rainbow… Rainbow, get out of here… They came for you…” Aegis painstakingly mumbled as he clutched his damaged eye. She didn’t hear him, however. She was busy attacking the larger Dark Hoof agent in a fit of pure, vengeful rage. Though his vision was blurred and impaired by the gouging of his eye, he cast his hazy gaze over at Rainbow. He saw her in an intense struggle with the other intruder, seeming to be having trouble as he was showing an impressive defense as the two took to the air. None of her moves seemed to be getting through his rock solid defense. In fact, he was landing more blows on her than she was him, consequently causing her to lose focus. In turn, the intruder was gaining an edge over the Pegasus mare. “Didn’t you hear me!? I said stop fighting and le—!” He was unable to finish his request as he felt something wrap around his neck.

*KRRSH!!* “AAAGH!!” the Pegasus guard shouted in despair as he felt a shockwave of pain course through him starting at the base of his neck. The agent Rainbow had previously beaten to a pulp managed to recover from the attack in order to finish his assassination of the Pegasus guard by plunging his hidden blade deep into Aegis’s upper chest.

“That’s right, scream fo’ me…” The bitterly sadistic attacker twisted and tugged at the knife so as to cause more damage, thus making Aegis wail in anguish. Rainbow quickly took note of the agonized screams coming from below. What she saw devastated her.

“NOOO!!! AEGIS!!!” she shouted in sorrow, rushing away from her losing fight to attack her mentor’s assassin. Unfortunately for Rainbow, he backed away as soon as he saw her coming. Instead of chasing after him, she landed by Aegis’s side, hurriedly kneeling down to take hold of his head and cuddle into it, not caring in the least about the blood from what was left of his eye coupled with a copious amount of it now pouring from his mouth staining her. She was beyond tears at the sight of his suffering.

“Rainbow Dash… don’t… *cough* don’t be sad…” Aegis painfully choked out. “I should be the one to… nrgh… to be sad…”

“What do you mean?”

“I… let you down… I’m sorry…”

"Wh… what?”

“I told you I would… protect you until the bitter end… or die trying… *cough cough* Looks like the latter is true here… agh…!”

“That’s too bad…” spat the pony responsible for Aegis’s murder as he strolled towards his partner. “Looks like you’ll be pushin’ up daisies pretty soo—!”

“Agent Malice. That’s enough. We’re done here,” ordered the larger intruder.

“What d’you mean ‘done?’ We still need t’ take the little blue one over there dead or alive, do we not, Tactic?” he asked as he approached his comrade.

“Trust me; that time will come soon enough. For now, we retreat knowing that our message has been delivered,” he whispered.

“What message?” Malice asked quietly.

“The message that it’s time for our little friend here to get herself ready… for next time, if she is not ready, we WILL end her and take her Element for ourselves.”

“Bloody ‘ell…! She’s got the Element…?”

“Take a look…” Tactic gestured a hoof towards the mourning young Pegasus and her fallen friend. Around her neck, the Element of Loyalty surely showed itself, glowing as it had whenever something greatly emotionally stirred her.

“Dash… don’t let my death upset you… I… I figured it would end this way, anyhow…” Aegis said, tears beginning to pour from his eye. Despite this, he let out a small chuckle. “I just… never thought it’d be so soon… mmph! And… and in the embrace of someone I cared for…”

“Aegis…” Rainbow murmured as she cried, lovingly nuzzling her friend as she held him.

“I… I thought I’d get to say this much later, but… I… I love ya, kid…” he choked out, managing to gather enough strength to gently wrap a fore hoof around her neck. “Stay strong… and save this world… for me…” With that last message, Aegis let out one final sigh, breathing out the last remnants of his life as his body went limp.

“Aegis… Aegis, no…! Please…!” Rainbow pleaded, nuzzling the deceased Pegasus guard tighter, holding onto the slightest hope that he was still alive.

“Aww… Sucks, don’t it? Losin’ somepony special right before your eyes,” Agent Malice commented, much to Rainbow’s frustration as she glared at him. “Don’t you gimme that bug-eyed look. You knew this was comin’. The only surprisin’ factor shoulda been a matter of when.”

“Both of you… Both of you are dead…! You hear me!? You’re FUCKING DEAD!!” she shouted through her anguished tears as she held Aegis in her fore legs.

“Ooh, this little bitch is feisty…” Malice retorted, purposefully egging her on. “Just how I like ‘em…”

“That’s enough, Malice. Get us out of here. Now,” ordered Agent Tactic.

“Why? She’s obviously rarin’ t’ go a few rounds with the both of us.”

“Rainbow Dash? Are you okay?” called another voice from seemingly nowhere.

“Aw, bugger…” Malice disappointedly muttered as he placed a fore hoof on Tactic’s back before casting a spell to teleport the two out of the area. A moment later, Twilight Sparkle came around a corner to be greeted with the sight of Rainbow holding Aegis’s lifeless body and sobbing while the body of another guard was laying on the ground.

“RAINBOW! What happened here?? Who did this??” The Unicorn mare frantically asked as she approached her friend, already in hysterics over the gruesome sight.

“They… they’re trying to kill me. They killed Aegis…”

“Somepony broke in?? We have to alert the Princesses! Immediately!”

“Fine… but we… *sniffle* we need to take him with us…”

“No. We can’t. We need to alert Princess Luna and Princess Celestia now. Taking the body with us would do no good.”

“Then… then you go tell them. I can’t leave him here…” Rainbow suggested as she wept. Twilight was ready to argue that she wouldn’t be doing any good in just sitting around, but she quickly realized the relationship between Rainbow and the fallen Aegis. Rainbow was mourning her loss and ripping her away from her current position would be detrimental to the Pegasus’s wellbeing.

“O-okay. I’ll be back as swiftly as I can. Just… just sit tight, okay?” the Unicorn shakily suggested as she turned around to begin her trek. Rainbow only nodded as she saw Twilight off. As soon as Twilight was out of sight, the blue Pegasus nuzzled into Aegis’s body once more.

“I… I love you too, Aegis…”