It was a cold winter... But it was quiet... Clear snow, every clear winter morning, quietly fell, descending and covering the roads, roofs of houses and transport with a snowy blanket...

This morning seemed the same... Except that today on the central and not so central streets of Griffenheim you could meet soldiers... Among the beautiful historical streets, old small multi-story houses, with curbs and old lampposts... Together with army SUVs and army trucks... There were even such old models "Katze" which were produced since the end of 1006... Soldiers in army uniform, with army jackets and in winter gear arrived on the streets in almost whole companies... Opening the rear doors, and lowering the back door, they almost comically jumped out of the trucks, stretching their paws and fingers, with claws... In rows they unloaded and stood in formation until they received from their commanders the most obvious orders, to clear certain areas and streets, along with them receiving shovels and other tools...

City services also drove along the streets, scattering salt on the roads...

It was a winter morning... It would seem almost the same... An old car was driving past the streets, in the north of the central, historical districts of Griffenheim... It stood out for something... What it was... It was a car that had already survived 30 years in the park of the Griffenheim political world... It was a WG. 201 Black, with a characteristic hump... The car that belonged to the Main Embassy of the Changelings in Griffenheim since 1010... After their capitulation in 1029, it, like almost the entire fleet of the embassy and the main consulate that was located in Rottendedam, was quickly transferred to other structures... They changed the numbers, and even repainted it in almost the same color as before... So more than 10 years have passed since this car served in a completely different unit...

This car should have simply been disposed of, showing another sign of solidarity with the newly victorious Equestria... But there was someone who understood perfectly well that in this action, with all his desire, there was simply no point... It was saved by one griffin... And this griffin was Emperor Grover VI himself.«»

The car drove quietly along the road of the street... Passing poles... Houses... And soldiers who cleaned the streets... It was alone... No one accompanied it... Windows were tinted... The license plates belonged to the Imperial Postal Service... Any griffin or creature that looked at it would quickly understand that something didn't add up here... Or, at worst, would think that it belonged to some newly-minted boss... However, anyone who understood cars would immediately understand that the post office could not have such a car... However, among the soldiers shoveling snow that morning, there were no such griffins...

And she quietly, covered in snow with more and more snowflakes, drove further down the street... Turning onto one street and then onto another...

She drove further and further north, moving along some of the most elite streets of the city... And finally driving onto freer streets... The car turned onto a street that was parked right next to the park... Griefennordsteippark... It was small but very beautiful... With a lake in the center... And almost no fences... It was on the left side of the street... The car moved further down the street with multi-story blue old houses on the right side, parallel to the park, which on this street were higher than the others... Two chapels were visible... Standing among the houses... One was right at the end of the street near the crossroads, and the second was visible from another street that you could get to if you turned right... It was very close...

The houses were also covered with a blanket of snow... Their delicate bluish color sparkled with the snow this morning...

Even in winter, the fountains in the park were working... And their sound, running water could be heard... Two pairs of eyes behind the tinted glass, taking off their glasses and wiping them, looked, seeing how two young griffins were playing on the swing in the park...

The eyes stared at this picture, but not for long... Wiping the glasses, they quickly lay on the beak of the griffin... Finally, the car stopped near a blue, fairly tall house at the end of the street... Near the intersection... Despite the bell tower, the house itself, like all the houses on this street, was quite tall... 10 floors, as opposed to the standard 4 or 5...

The car stood under the snow, standing a little on the sidewalk... Until the front door opened and one diamond dog quickly came out of it... At the same time, one griffin quickly came out of the right door... Having quickly walked around the car from behind, he opening a black umbrella... He opened the car door with one paw... From which Grover came out... Having got out of the car, he froze for a moment in the doorway, with the door open, he slightly pushed the guard's black umbrella aside with his claw... Looking at the sky with his eyes... He stared again, but this time at the sun, which was hidden in the blue-gray clouds of this morning...

After which, lowering his head for a moment, he looked at the watch on his paw... Blinking, he brought his head to a straight position... And moved around the car... The griffin with the umbrellas quickly closed the car door after the emperor left the place where it was moving...

Quickly, smoothly and at the same time moving quickly, the Emperor, together with two guards, entered the house... He was going to do something that he considered unwise... A waste of time... And he did it for the first and last time... However, he wanted to do it now... Two griffins and the Dog entered the elevator of the house... It was quite spacious... And because the emperor who entered the elevator last stood in front of the two guards, silently stood behind him.., The elevator went up to the last 11th floor... There were 11 of them in this building...

He got out of the elevator, silently, without a single sound or word... The guards did the same... Only the elevator, after they left it, arched and rose, making a characteristic sound, similar to the creaking of old cables that set it in motion...

The Emperor and his two guards moved along the corridor, approaching the door with the number 1011. It was the 11th door, the 11th floor... And again Grover froze... He lowered his head a little, realizing what he was wasting his time on now... With two fingers he lifted his glasses a little and squeezed his beak, sighing... He raised his head again, calmly uttering only one word.

«Key.»

Almost instantly the dog took out a key from the bag that was strapped over his shoulder... Smoothly and almost silently, so that even the air seemed to be no resistance, he handed the key to the emperor.

A few seconds later, the only sound was the click of the door lock, which turned 7 times... And when the lock was opened, the door swung open behind it... An apartment appeared before the emperor and his guards... It would seem that it was an ordinary apartment... All the furniture was in its place, at the entrance there was a closet with shoes, and hooks on which clothes were hanging...

However, when the three creatures went further, the emperor and two of his guards... Having passed a couple of turns inside the house, they came out into a passage... In which they saw a large, extremely spacious room... It went out to the edge of the building, There were windows on all sides, they were a monolithic glass structure... Like a planetarium... A round room, and a single window that matched its shape, semicircular... On the window you could see a system that covered it with curtains... Hiding the world from this room, and the room from the world...

However, what was the main thing... There was nothing in this spacious room... It was all as if cut out... Wallpaper that used to make up the beautiful view of this room was gone… The floor was cut out… The entire room was a clean room, concrete, with a dirt surface here and there… The room looked like what it was now… A concrete room, with the floor cut out, the wallpaper, the furniture, the covering… The ceiling… All of this was just concrete, coverings, and wires sticking out in different places, which were the electrical wiring that now came out in different places…

Grover felt some pain for this room for a second, but after a second he reminded himself that this room was now in a much better place… And at the request of his wife… It is exactly the same as it was in this house… After all, it was she who created it… This room was completely cut out… Every part of it was taken away from here, to be moved completely…

This was their child’s room… Both a bedroom and a playroom… For a moment, Grover again remembered this blue room… Filled with everything that was possible at that moment, the number of toys that were in it then, he could not even dream of such a thing as a child… From the models all kinds of military equipment, which Flurry was so strongly against... To miniature models of furniture... For tea parties... And maybe other games... You never know what might come to mind...

And of course the cubes... These were Grover's own cubes... There were exactly 33 of them... And all of them went to his child...

Now, remembering this, Grover again caught himself for a moment on how few times he visited this room when she was here... And even now he thought that he was wasting his time... But he was here... He wanted to do it...

The two guards who stood behind him took out two bags...

Grover came to finally pick up some toys that they hadn't managed to move after the last move recently... He looked at the wall... Under the clean concrete wall, in a little white dust, lay a very recent calendar, which it didn't seem to be because of its dusty appearance... 1042... However, the calendar said November... And now it was already mid-December... Why did he come, maybe it was late... But better late than never... Even with regret... Now a slight smile floated on his beak... As if he was satisfied with something, even if it went against some healthy logic...

Grover was still glad that Flurry didn't insist on taking the child to Equus... Although thoughts about it told Grover himself that most likely it was much better for Saturn herself... Despite the fact that in Grover's thoughts, even after so many years, the thought of what he considered impossible still surfaced... He never thought that they could have a child... It was impossible according to all Biological laws... However, he apparently did not take into account that Flurry was an alicorn... And they were probably capable of a variety of things... Of course, they had almost dozens of conversations on this topic before everything that happened later... But Grover could not even think that they could have a child... Well, or at least Grover could not explain it with anything else... That certain panic and shock that covered him more than 10 years ago, when he found out that Flurry was pregnant... Perhaps he will never experience a greater shock than then... Although Maar knows... With modern reality... The worst of the worst scenarios are possible...

Of course, the birth, as the very fact that they had a child... It was hidden almost immediately... At least for a while... No one could hide it for long, and no one was going to... However, the political shock would immediately be followed by a doctor's... Because about 200 chief doctors in the empire sincerely wanted to see this child within two days of the announcement... Biologists... And doctors from three continents... Grover was a little infuriated by the thought that so many eyes wanted to look at his unborn child, but remembering all the conditions, and who he and his wife were, the objections seemed to subside at that moment... However, Grover himself sincerely wanted to see this child...

However, coming out of his thoughts, Grover sat down, picking up one of the cubes... All the toys were stacked in the far left corner of the room... Lying on the concrete... The workers logically stacked them in the most tidy corner... They were scattered on a white present... Not neatly collected in a pile...

Grover approached looking at them... Bending down, he began to examine them, taking them in his paws... After which he carefully put them in a bag... Two guards just stood near the entrance, under the wall and quietly watched... They knew perfectly well that there was no point in asking the emperor for help... Otherwise, he would not have come here...

Various vehicles followed the cubes... A Kalmar 70 fire truck... A police car straight from the city of Landstal... LS-30-2M...

«And how could they forget the aluminum and tin knights figurines?!» Grover recalled, because these were his figurines. Knights, with all their limbs moving, wrapped in imperial armor that also moved. Couldn't they have been taken first? At that moment, realizing what he had said and what he had thought, Grover even felt ashamed for a second, as if he had returned for a moment to the times when he himself was a chick... However, his childhood very soon left him no choice... Except to accept the worst of realities... And except to quickly accept adult positions, he had no choice... However, this does not mean that his child will have to go through the same thing, however, he still will not have the opportunity to be in a blissful childhood for very long... Because his child is who he is... The world does not leave the opportunity to be in childhood for a long time... Unfortunately, not for people like him... Not for ordinary citizens... Not in these times...

Continuing to collect toys... After some time, Grover filled two bags with a variety of toys... Many were already covered in dust, so he quickly but carefully brushed and shook them off, then inspected them and put them in the bags... Initially, he planned to leave some of the toys here, as they were not needed... But when he discovered that among the toys left here, a considerable share were from those that were in the past his personal, he thought for a second and wondered about those builders and movers who took all this away, wasn't it a coincidence? Maar's creations.

Having finished, he shook off his claws... And the two guards quickly took the bags and silently went to the car... Grover himself told them to leave... He would stay here for only a minute or two and return to them... They silently fulfilled his words... Having disappeared from sight after ten seconds...

Grover stood for the last time, probably looking at this room... At one time, before, he did not find much time to visit it often... It was also quite risky, despite all the conditions that he created... Many quarrels with Flurry passed, because he did not find enough time...

However, Grover gave himself his word... That he would find time no matter what, to spend it with her more often... To visit and not miss the little childhood that he still had left... He could give his word to himself, but not to Flurry... Because he knew that during this time anything could happen... Against the backdrop of increasingly worsening events in the new 4th decade... Relations with Equestria were rapidly stagnating... And without that, in the second half The 30s, who were in silent tension... That after tomorrow, the first officially closed hearing will take place, on the case of the trans-imperial mafia... A special committee is already being formed...

This rot from Wingbardia has grown so fast, like the vines from which they make their wine... And if when Wingbardia fell in 1019 and the following decades of reintegration, no one paid attention to it... Now it seems it was too late... Because the problem began to acquire an almost national character... So-called "families" were discovered in almost all major cities. And what's worse, it affected the most vile creatures in the empire... Aristocrats... Who were not at all averse to joining, and quickly merging into this problem... If in Wingbardia, under the Beakolini regime, they were able to almost suppress and cut off the entire mafia, they were not able to kill it... And when his regime fell... It was necessary to immediately pay attention to this...

But the problems certainly didn’t end there... Because if inside the empire new problems were just beginning... At least those that could no longer be ignored or tried to be quickly solved... And when did such problems ever exist in the Empire?! That's on the outside... There were always problems... It's not just Equestria, but the Empire's strongest neighbor... the River Federation... There were never good relations with it... Or to be more precise, there weren't even neutral relations with it in fact... They were always terrible... From the time of the coup in Ozergrad until the unification of the river ponies... In 21, a war almost broke out and Boreas sees that perhaps the war would have put an end to everything that it could lead to now... In the 30s, after both countries acquired nuclear arsenals... There were almost 8 incidents, or border conflicts that could have led to war...

However... The worst of all was what was happening inside... It had long been clear that the Cold War between Equestria and the Griffin Empire was inevitable... It had already begun... And even a blood union couldn't fix anything... However, it wouldn't destroy his family...

Grover knew that he wouldn't allow this... But he knew that life was the most disgusting sometimes a bitch...

He wiped and adjusted his glasses again... Then, clenching the key to this house between his fingers in his claws... He took a deep breath for the last time... Today he probably allowed himself more weakness than in the last year... More than two minutes passed... And so, knowing that his guards would return in about 20 seconds... Grover calmly left the house, closing the door with the key, he turned it once... Then he got into the elevator and went down... Coming out of the house... He was met by an open door, apparently, they had been standing with the door open in the cold all this time... What kind of creatures are these... It seems that his guards used to be much more competent... And where did Benito disappear to? It seemed he was still the head of his personal security... But for some reason Grover caught himself thinking that he hadn't seen him for a long time...

Having gotten into the car, the door was closed in an instant... And the car itself quietly drove out onto the street... Turned right at the crossroads... Just as quietly disappeared under the snowfall...

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Turning the corner, the MNT-3 SUV Standard all-terrain vehicle consisting of infantry regiments, as well as military police and communications regiments, in modified versions, drove out onto one of the main streets of Aquila... The capital of the Region of the Kingdom of Aquileia within the Empire...

In the front seat of the car with a radio in his claws was Senior Sergeant Marcilio Ternati... Who was currently arguing furiously, violating subordination, and violating the coded communication order of soldiers on the radio, he was actively engaged in a dialogue with the commander of the 14th battalion that occupied the central military unit in the city... Of course, not counting the special unit for the guard unit... In which there were actually units of imperial knights...

Aquila was a city in which there was simply an incredible contrast... There were far more ponies here than in any other corner of the empire... It could even be a fifth of the population... It was not for nothing that Aquila and Rila were called the cities of imperial hooves... This contrast was reflected inside SUV... Because in the back, in the back seats, two seats were occupied by soldiers of their battalion, Fast Kay and Blue Pepper...

The bluish pegasus was examining the new weapon that their unit had recently received... Which was better, since they were a reconnaissance battalion, they had received a magical weapon, Blue Pepper was already rubbing it with his hoof from all sides for the tenth time, examining and not taking his eyes off it... But Fast Kay, propping up his muzzle with his hoof, simply looked out the window of the SUV... Not noticing how he bumped into it with his horn... Seeing the changing buildings in the center, which he had seen for maybe the hundredth time... He had lived here for a very long time... Although if a year and a half can be called a long time...

Aquila... Just like Aquileia itself was not his home... There were no clean strawberry fields... Grape orchards... And silence... Silence for kilometers...

He himself was from De Vleugels... But over time, having entered service there, he was transferred to Aquila... By the way, the capital of Aquila was much more lively, but much less calm... Incredibly beautiful central streets... And constant noise... At the same time, on the central alley... Where there were 4 lanes of cars, and central streets... With an exit to the Dezhor fields... And rows of planted chestnuts... That in rows accompanied the dark asphalt and smooth stripes of the road...

Looking at this, he even forgot about all the noise... What seemed to simply disappear in the center, giving way to this greatness... Dark bricks, with warm white and yellow monolithic marble parts... The central opera... The city hall...

Their car quickly drove past the main objects of this part of the city center... Passing other streams of cars that rushed through the center together with them... As usual, there were dozens of civilian cars in the stream...

You should already understand that it is your ass that will be sent to the east! "These words of their commander, which were clearly louder than anything else in his earlier argument with a clearly superior commander, now nevertheless brought the pony out of his thoughts...

«Maybe somewhere in the lands of Katerina or even further, in the swamps of Longsword.» - Marcilio shouted in a half-friendly, half-threatening voice. Paper still could not get used to such a tone of conversation, a much lower rank Senior Sergeant, spoke to the battalion commander as an equal, of course, they were old acquaintances, but it was still difficult to get used to it. Blue Paper himself would never have been able to say anything like that, even if they were friends.

However, the SUV stopped not far from the center, turning onto another street and stopping on it. «We've arrived.» - Their driver, a Griffin named Peter Ventry, said quite quietly. Peiper knew him the worst, he was transferred to them only 3 months ago... And to be honest, he had seen quiet ponies, he had seen quiet Griffins... But this guy was something completely different... He spoke very quietly, and as rarely as possible. It was not a fact that in 3 months he had said even a couple of dozen words.

Getting out of the SUV, their commander put down the radio, laughing a little at the end... All four of them got out on an empty street... They stopped at a gateway... A small corridor between two fairly tall buildings... Everyone silently followed the commander... No one asked any special questions... Just walking behind...

Between the walls that surrounded them in a narrow passage, between the buildings... Hundreds of rotten announcements, various advertising posters and paintings hung... Everything was, not surprisingly, covered in graffiti...

They stopped, all three of them, as the commander did... They stood in this position for a quiet and long 30 seconds... After which a door opened not far from them and a griffin in a suit came out of it... In a suit that looked like it cost more than this entire alley...

There were no more sounds except for dripping water in the distance... Only silence... Only two bags... Two black bags... One was in the claws of Marcilio and the other in the claws of a griffin in a suit... They exchanged bags... They didn't shake hands... No... They just quietly parted ways... After which they also quietly left this place, reaching the car...

The only order they had from both the commander and those above them... Don't ask questions... None... And none of his 3 subordinates asked any...

The SUV started moving... The commander went on air... But now no jokes... No shouting... No anything else...

«We're going back to the unit, over.» That was the only thing he said then... Marcilio... After that, the SUV went to one of the central military units of the city... To the place where the 14th battalion was located... After all, their day was just beginning...

Author's Note

Sorry, I feel like this came out so-so... Maybe later I can improve the writing. Thanks for reading.