It was a cold winter’s day inside the citadel. Snow was already on the ground and the sky was overcast. The tall buildings lining the street splintered the diffused sunlight into individual rays and shadows rolled across the pavement. Despite the cold, the citizens of Hope were a lively bunch. The colts and fillies were dashing around wearing their bundles of layers that made their small bodies look puffy. On more than one occasion, one of them fell over and sent a cloud of flurries into the air, prompting their amused though admittedly stressed parents to excuse themselves from the vendors at their shops to help them back to their hooves. Of course, foals being foals, the process began again with renewed vigor. The ponies didn’t even know each other’s names but they were content with running around on the blanket of snow that gripped the citadel while their parents did their business, blissfully ignoring the myriad of complications the snow had on the community. Things were quiet and slow in the wake of the blizzard. The ponies were mostly concentrating on digging out the roads before things went back to situation normal.

A stranger to the settlement walked down its many streets. A heavy metal case was strapped to her side. A large and thick brown leather coat kept her hide from the chill in the air, the shoulders bearing the indentations where the stars and bars of service were forcefully pried out and discarded. Those epaulets would have gotten her shot long ago if she still wore them proudly. Instead she wore her hood far ahead of her snout and moved with a bowed head. It was fitting that she found this place when it was at its most… lethargic state. The road leading up to its high walls was devoid of traffic and the snow was mostly undisturbed.

Turning the corners of the buried streets, she saw colorful murals emblazoned on the walls of the mostly gray and black buildings that stood after the end. The colors were muted in the winter haze but injected some kind of life into the cold. The power of children, she supposed with a small smile as she went on her way. She asked the rare loner going about their day where she could find the one named Steiner, and his ‘partner’ as she once heard him refer to the stallion on a DJ Pon3 broadcast a great while ago. They graciously pointed her in the direction towards the home deeper into the citadel and she walked on, feeling a pang in her heart with every hoofstep that brought her closer to him.

It was a wild thought. A crazy one even. Maybe she was losing her mind and this whole venture across Equestria was the manifestation of a growing psychosis. Being a doctor, she contemplated such things quite regularly. It felt… right… to do it, at the very least. That even if it were some crazed and desperate grab for something that was not there, the fact that she did it would absolve her of her sins. The effort of carrying her heavy cross and laying it at that house would be enough. She could start again after seeing the end of her journey, be it what she expected to see, or what was the actual reality. What she knew could not just die with her. She was an accessory to many dark and decrepit dealings and the burden on her soul was one she could not stand now that she was free of them. It was time to be good again. It was time to heal again.

She came up to that lone house standing in the open lot. An island in an urban sprawl. It stood alone with the tops of monolithic skyscrapers poking up into the skyline behind its large roof, a tranquil escape from the crowded and packed cityscape a few blocks away. The snow gave it a somber feeling, this forlorn place removed from everything else, but maybe there was peace because of it. He was due for some peace in his life, at the very least. She trod over to the front door, crossing the lot and stepping onto the half-buried porch. She rapped a hoof against the door and waited.

She was startled by the rattling of the garage door opening. It moved aside and made one last loud retort when it stuck in place. Shortly after, a stallion appeared, brown coat, blond mane. His black shirt hardly seemed a fitting thing to wear in the cold. He stood at the threshold to the garage regarding her evenly before finally speaking,

“I haven’t seen you around here before. I haven’t seen you in all of my life, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not mistaken,” she replied with her gentle voice. No, he wouldn’t have seen her at all, really, had things been different… if things were the same as they were before. “I take it you are -- Steiner, was it? -- You are Steiner’s partner?”

“You’re a fan?” Klaxon asked, cocking his head. He took on a contemplative look before stating flatly, “He doesn’t sign autographs.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said the mare. She took a deep breath to steel herself and then said, “In all honesty, I’m not here for either of you.”

Klaxon snorted. “That’s pretty damn honest, miss.”

“Please, pardon me… this is all so odd for me. I have had so much time to prepare and yet, standing here at this moment I find myself grossly vulnerable and downright clueless.”

She stepped anxiously in place and took another deep breath. “Does the Shadow Bane live here?”

Klaxon blinked a few times. Finally, when he got over the bluntness of the question, he responded, “So what was that about being vulnerable and clueless?”

“I know, I know, it’s all insane. I’m just going off of some stretched out hunch I have had for… dearie goodness… months now?” Klaxon watched her pace about on the porch. He rubbed his chin with one brow raised.

“I know that you and Steiner know him. That is a fact.”

“Did you come here because of that DJ Pon3 thing? How far away are you visiting from? That was--”

“A long time ago, yes,” the mare interjected, nodding. She didn’t answer his question. “You and Steiner were around the Ponyville area after the Enclave attack on all of the ground settlements.”

“We were living in the Ponyville area long before any Enclave--” Klaxon gave the stranger on the porch an icy glare.

“Mm,” she hummed at this turn of events, unsurprised. “I’m going to assume that you find an issue with the Shadow Bane being brought up in the same context as the Grand Pegasus Enclave?”

“It is a mistake to assume. Something, something, donkeys come out to party when you assume.” Klaxon snorted, his whole body rippling in a way that was distinctly not a shiver, but his muscles tensing up, preparing for action.

“I’m not here to cause trouble. My life has had enough trouble in it already. I just want to make amends.” The stranger sat on her haunches and sighed. “I come from an Enclave outpost that was once located near the Ponyville area. Skyfort Ursa Major. It was wiped out when the Stable Dweller became the Light Bringer…”

Klaxon glanced down at the snow-covered ground, then to the sky. He exhaled sharply through his nostrils, vapor dispersing in the cold air. “That’s a piece of history I might be oddly familiar with. I take it you Ursa Enclave ponies were involved in attacking here and Ponyville?”

The stranger only nodded. “Please spare me the details,” she all but muttered.

The corner of Klaxon’s mouth twitched. He always imagined an encounter with an Enclave pegasus, a full grown soldier, would be one of vindication and an exercise in his capacity for cruelty. He couldn’t bring himself to deride this one pony, though. He couldn’t torture her with descriptions of how he watched her comrades being riddled with holes, gasping for breath on bloodied asphalt after they fell from the sky. He couldn’t even bring himself to buck her off of his porch.

“Son of a bitch, I’m getting soft,” he growled.

“Pardon?”

“‘Spare you the details’, you weren’t out and about shooting ponies with your fucking… Nova-shit rifles or whatever the fuck they are called?” Klaxon barked at the stranger.

“I was the bastion doctor, not a field operative. I had the option at one point to be a field medic but--” She shook her head. “I don’t have the blood of any ponies you might’ve known on my hooves, if it offers you any consolation. And not all of us wanted to carry out that operation, I overheard the radio chatter. I heard soldiers resisting their orders and then…”

The mare swallowed hard and hung her head. “Maybe the reason the Enclave is so reviled down here is because all the good that was in it got culled.” The words stabbed into her heart and she whimpered as if she had experienced the physical pain of it.

Klaxon cleared his throat. “So you think the Shadow Bane used to live in your neck of the Enclave woods, is that right?”

“I have other reasons for thinking this… reasons that aren’t nearly as concrete… if you can call all I just said concrete. There are rumors told by ponies that involve a pegasus with glowing wings, and you and Steiner. I don’t know what to make of the glowing wings. I just know that you must have met a pony in the area underneath Skyfort Ursa, a pegasus from the Enclave.”

Klaxon eyed the mare critically for a long time, silently considering her. Her words, how she was dressed, how she acted. “Oi,” he said after the extended pause, “tell me the name of this pegasus you think is the Shadow Bane.”

“His name is Falcon Wing, isn’t it?” the mare responded without hesitation. “There are things he needs to know. That’s why I am here. I need to tell him the truth about what happened to his parents.”

Klaxon blinked several times though he kept a stone’s countenance.

“Right this way, lady,” he said to the mare, gesturing to the interior of the garage with a foreleg.

In the lab, Steiner and Falcon did their jobs, indifferent to the snow that currently blocked their ground-view windows. The unicorn in his white coat tended to the chemicals and mixtures that swirled through the tubes and bubbled in the beakers and the pegasus at his terminal eagerly awaited the results so that he could record them. He kept still and silent so as to not disturb Steiner, but Falcon’s eyes were wide as he watched the unicorn float test tubes over cylinders and administer a few drops into them, turning the color of the liquids inside all kinds of hues.

“We have a result for the chroma poultice, Falcon,” Steiner reported without looking away from the chemistry set up. He started belting out the compositional notes and Falcon, with swift hooves, punched in the keys to record the dictation. He had gotten quite skilled at doing so, and being an assistant in general. There were surprisingly few magic related hijinks in recent times, and no explosions of any magnitude to speak of.

“Klaxon, what’s this?” he heard Steiner said and almost typed that into the console. Falcon looked up over the screen and his eyes went wide with shock this time, as opposed to anticipation.

Klaxon had opened the door and stepped aside to let the mare in the brown coat through. She walked down the stairs and stood on the laboratory floor proper with the bronze stallion close behind her. Alana appeared seconds later, scooting through the door and closing it gently. She watched from the top of the stairs, puzzled as to what was going on on this snow-laden day.

“It has been a long time, Falcon Wing. I see you’ve done well in keeping yourself in good health.” The mare noted something odd about the way his cloak fit his body. Something about the way the fabric took to his wings seemed… off. The wrong shape.

“I-- uh… I…” the pegasus stammered. When he reined in control of his words, he deadpanned, “It’s been easy to do that when I don’t have to worry about getting my ass kicked every time I go outside. It’s nice.”

“I can only imagine,” said the mare in the coat. She sat on her haunches and started to unzip and shed her winter wear. She undid the fasteners on the case and let it clatter onto the floor. Underneath the coat, she wore a grayish dress shirt complete with a neatly tucked away black tie. A pen was in the pocket. All the white mare needed were some glasses to complete the look of your everyday doctor figure. Her cutie mark was that of a health potion, the purple elixir inside a rounded vial.

“You’ve grown up into a respectable young stallion. No longer a colt, eh?”

“Patchenfix… I’m so sorry but… I have no words. It’s all a huge shock to me to see you again…” Falcon Wing didn’t know if he wanted to go hug his old doctor or fly up to Alana, take her hoof and run off to some place where he didn’t have to deal with this. The last time he dealt with the ponies he used to know…

“I understand,” she told him with her kind voice, as if she read his mind. “I don’t want to burden you any more than I have to. But I want to tell you the truth. After I tell you the truth, I’ll be gone again from your life. And we will both be free of the torment of our peers.”

“... What the f--” Falcon glanced up to Alana and then, with the smoothness of someone chewing on broken glass, uttered: “--phoenix are you going on about?” It all brought back memories of his last talk with Flint and how well that went. At least she planned on leaving him alone, instead of asking him to mercy-kill her.

“They kept it from you so well, didn’t they? The lies they told you about what happened to your mother and father?”

“Hey lady!” Alana shouted down to Patchenfix. “That’s enough. I’m normally a lot nicer than this but… who do you think you are!? To just show up out of the blue and--”

Falcon raised a hoof to her in a placating gesture. She eased slightly, shifted in place and eyed Patchenfix like a hawk. Or a mother bear watching over her cub, if said bear were on top of a ridge and quite willing to pounce down on the transgressor.

“I already know that what happened to them wasn’t any accident,” Falcon said to his former medic. “If that’s the truth you came here to share then I’m sorry to say some… things… have beaten you the punch.” And how.

Patchenfix raised a brow. “So you know the story about what your mother and father did? Or, what they tried to do? About who they were?”

“I knew them… for as short a time as I had them,” Falcon said, looking away from her. “I don’t want to know why the Enclave turned on them. I don’t want to know why Flint and Erasure pretended to care for me. I don’t want to know just how much of my early life was an illusion you all set up around me, an illusion that the others liked to shatter by beating me and…”

He bared his teeth, glared and turned his fire on the snowy mare. “I am different now! I’m not a damn victim anymore! All that stupid… in-fighting and pettiness… I want to leave that behind me! This--” He raised his forelegs and looked around the basement, at the shelves of books tucked away on one side of the room, at the chemistry set up, at the crates of potion bottles and other equipment. “-- This is my life now! My friends, and my work…!”

“Kid,” he heard Klaxon say. His voice was relaxed and mellow. It almost disturbed him to hear the bronze stallion speak in any way that didn’t have some gruffness in the undertone and inflection. “Remember way back when, before any Enclave, before Hope? Remember the cellar? Remember what you said about getting over your past to move on?”

“I moved on just fine,” Falcon insisted, folding her forelegs.

“Nah, kid. Sounds to me like you were just fine with rejecting it. That’s not gonna do you any good. Trust me, I tried it.”

“Klax…” Falcon sighed. He looked from the bronze stallion to the blue unicorn, who watched everything with a great intensity in his eyes, as if he was fighting a constant battle with himself to stay out of the exchange. From him, the pegasus looked to Alana. She teetered in between jumping to his aid like the hero she was and a confused outsider who didn’t know what anyone was talking about. He could see that she wanted to do something but like Steiner, was doing all she could to control herself.

“Alright,” Falcon conceded, bowing his head. “Let’s hear the truth about my parents. Why did the Enclave mark them for death?”

“Falcon Wing, your father and mother were…”

***

Another bad stormy day in the Equestrian Wasteland. The cloud barrier roiled and churned with the winds but never opened up. It was a dark maelstrom, that blanket over the sky, until there was lightning and thunder. Then the sky was bright for split-seconds at a time. No matter the weather, though, ponies had to work. Their jobs just weren’t things that yielded to whatever mood the world happened to be in two-hundred years after becoming one hell of a burn victim. The sheets of rain fell but the flyers kept flying.

“You know, back when I first did my rounds in stormy weather, I thought my suit was going to bring a lightning bolt on my tail for sure!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we all thought that. We can kick clouds all we want until we see some actual action. Then we pray to what fuck-off divinity is out there to get out of it alive.”

“You have such a way with words, Heron.”

“When will you call me by my codename, Sideslip?”

She scoffed. “I always called you by your codename -- up until we got married.”

“You might have married me officially, but we were already married to our missions long before we first met. Diamondback out.”

“Copy that, Diamondback.” He could practically hear her trying not to stick her tongue out.

“Keep it professional, Cottonmouth.”

Sightseer and Razorback. Blue Heron and Gale Sideslip. A duo with bonds forged through military service. Birds of a feather may flock together, but pegasi of a kind leave everypony else behind. And that was certainly true for these two ponies that tore through the violent and turbulent skies on wings sheathed in metal. They rolled, banked, swerved, climbed and dived all while having pleasant small-talk over their suits’ communication systems. They were two of the top operatives in Outpost Ursa’s recon special forces group, a squad known as WARHAWK. They tore across the skies over Ghastly Gorge. Other members of WARHAWK were en route by their command. A group of five, they were headed by Wildcat and Bobcat. Erasure and Flint by any other name.

Diamondback tucked in his wings and dropped out of the sky, doing a roll all throughout the rapid descent before opening them again as he fell into the gorge. He then glided through the canyon, Cottonmouth hot on his tail. Before long, Diamondback flared his wings, killing his forward flight and hovering in place, his partner doing the same.

“This is the place?” she asked as the rain pounded her armor.

“Not quite. I had the foresight to get an actual meeting place inside a cave.”

“I could see you sitting around the rec-room with a bunch of weather forecasts, you know. Making sure you have every tiny detail down.”

“What’s a tactician for?” Diamondback replied, grinning underneath his helmet.

They descended onto an outcropping that led into an alcove at the side of the gorge’s rock walls. It was a vacant quarray eel’s nest, expansive and oddly smooth. Water flowed down the side of the gorge and washed over the hole and platform, showering the two ponies as they walked into shelter.

Cottonmouth put a hoof to the side of her helmet, dialing in her communication frequency to another friend’s and sending a call out. “Hey, Patchenfix. I bet you’re liking your office a lot right about now.”

“If all the data you’re sending me right now is anything to go by then, yes. I very much love my office,” said the medic-mare over the channel.

“It’s all for the best,” Diamondback chimed in. “Is anyone onto us?”

“Nope. No one has a clue about your unauthorized outing. This is such a violation of my permissions. You guys owe me.”

“That we do,” said Cottonmouth. “Anyway, Patches, talk to you later. Closing comms for now and heading into deep cover.”

“Roger.”

Just like that, the link was terminated and the two continued ever further into the nest. On the off chance that the signal was intercepted, it wouldn’t be able to be traced by the Enclave termination squads, but their cover would be irreparably damaged. Patchenfix was running a huge risk in aiding this mission of theirs. Diamondback and Cottonmouth might have had a recourse if they were discovered, but she didn’t. For that bravery, she was a cherished friend, irreplaceable.

The rest of WARHAWK arrived and took up ranks in the cave, standing in a circle with Diamondback and Cottonmouth at the center. Flint, Erasure and the other operatives listened closely as they spoke. They sat on their haunches, their gazes hidden away behind their helmets.

“The Enclave isn’t self-sustaining anymore. In a few years, it’s going to have to make a move to take back the Wasteland. If it isn’t some outside factor, it’ll be internal; we just don’t have the resources to stay above the clouds as a whole.” Diamondback started pacing, head held high as he made his rounds to each soldier present.

“Our missions on the surface have gone from surveillance and assessment of settlements to resource collection and logistics keeping. If that isn’t a sign of our decline, I don’t know what is.” Cottonmouth fell into step with him, and together their brave voices manifested a commanding presence.

“Things are actually getting better on the surface. Damned if we’ll be labeled Dashites, we can be strong with the other Wastelanders. It’ll be a hard fight just to survive at times, but we’ll also be fighting for the right to live. No more regiments. No more sanctions. No more politics to run your life.”

“We are few, but we’re also skilled. Friends, I believe we can spur a movement that can lead to a brighter future for all of us. And when the time comes, we can fight the Enclave when it decides it's right to leave the clouds and do who knows what to the land below. We can help preserve what’s been growing all this time right beneath our noses!”

“Who are we!?” Diamondback said, thrusting a hoof into the air.

“WARHAWKS!” the others proclaimed. Everyone, sans Wildcat and Bobcat, who simply held a foreleg across their chests in what appeared to be some kind of salute. No one thought anything of their hooves pressing against their suits.

They laid the foundations of their dreams in that cave, during that terrible storm. In the cold, damp and dark, they lit the flames of their cause. They pulled themselves together when their meeting concluded, shoving their rebellious plans into the shadows for safekeeping. Then, as the tight-knit unit they were, they took to the black and angry skies. When they reported back to their outpost, skimming over the cloud layer after braving the harrowing lightning and thunder, they used the cover of the chaotic weather to mask their reentry to the skyfort.

It was all for naught. They were discovered hours earlier, before they ever set hoof outside of the bastion, their bold dreams undermined from the outset. The traitors in their midst hid well, snakes in the grass to the snakes themselves. Hidden in plain sight beside them since the very beginning. When the WARHAWK operatives returned home, they were met with rifles and black carapace.

“We’ve delivered the insubordinates with plans of treason, and as promised we have the proof to pass judgement as well,” Bobcat said with a smugness in his voice as he stepped up to the front of the group, facing the guards with their energy weapons without fear. Wildcat came up beside him then whipped herself around to point an armored hoof at the duo. “They were going to turn all of WARHAWK into tools of rebellion against the Grand Pegasus Enclave.”

“You sold us out?” Gale asked, appalled. “We trusted you two… confided in you two… how? And--”

The gradual whir and warble that the guns made as they charged up, coils crackling with green light, made her stop talking in a heartbeat.

“We could have done something good for the future!” one of the others shouted. “Look at what you’ve done! How the hell can you live with yourselves!?”

“We are loyal members of the Enclave. Our service will be rewarded generously. You have forgotten the sovereignty of pegasus superiority, we haven’t!” Erasure shot back.

“Enough of this,” one of the guards growled. “Take them into custody. We’ll let the high order determine what to do with these… vermin.”

The would-be dissenters were marched by the group of officers across the floor made of clouds. They did not resist. They did not speak. One pony out of the group of ambushing guards stayed with Flint and Erasure to retrieve the recorded evidence from their suits. Once the data was transferred, the officer followed the others out of the room, exiting through a hole in the wall which promptly came together behind him, reforming the door.

“I feel so rotten, guys,” Patchenfix spoke up at long last. She had been with the guards the whole time, standing at the rear, hiding. With the pain in her heat, she did not want to be seen by her one-time friends. She sank into the background, silent and unmoving.

“Don’t be,” Erasure said to the doctor, the bravado in her voice giving her an air of authority. “If you hadn’t complied with us, we would have been forced to report your using of the executive channels to stage these… meetings of theirs. It would have dragged you down with them.”

Patchenfix let her head hang as Erasure and Flint walked off, leaving her alone in the room once the cloud door shut. There, she was left to simmer in her own thoughts.

“We have to make this right. We can’t make this right. We have to try to make this right. Falcon…”

***

“Get the hell out of my home,” Falcon snarled.

Patchenfix nodded. “I always imagined it ending like this.”

“Get. The. HELL--”

“Falcon. We’ve got this.” Klaxon put a stern hoof on the doctor’s shoulder. “No more words.”

“Quite,” said Steiner in agreement.

“I have some things of theirs that I saved before they were terminated--”

“I don’t want anything that you can give me,” the pegasus growled as tears welled in his eyes. “I don’t want any damn thing that would not only remind me of ponies betrayed and sentenced to death, but the one who fucking helped betray them as well!”

Patchenfix nodded somberly and obeyed the direction of the two stallions. As she walked up the stairs, Alana gave her a murderous look. “If you ever come around here again--”

“I don’t plan to, miss.”

Doctor Patchenfix was gone from Hope by midday. She left the same way she came, retreading her footsteps in the snow.