I was sitting on a couch in the back room of the aircraft, staring at the floor. My mind couldn't quite comprehend the idea of leading so many. How many would it be? Hundreds? thousands? A million? So many ponies looking to me to lead them, to be their light. I don't think I can do it.
I reached for a nearby pillow and, rolling to my side, held the thing close to my chest, pressing my muzzle into the fabric. Footsteps walking into the room caught my attention as I closed my eyes, and I waited for a voice to talk to me.
It was Thunder.
"Hey," he greeted. "You doing okay?"
I moved my muzzle away from the pillow to talk. "I don't know," I mumbled.
I heard him sit down. "I know it's a lot to take in, especially since you just woke up from being unconscious. But we really do need you."
I sat up right, leaving the pillow still resting against my torso. "What happened?"
"Pardon?"
"When you rescued us? What happened?"
"Well..." He chuckled. "It's sort of a long story. Are you willing to listen to it all?"
I didn't answer, mainly because I didn't want to.
"I'll take that as a yes then..." He cleared his throat. "Every year during the games, the capitol sends us the televised show even though we are not a part of the nation. People of our nation have the option to watch it, but most do not. However, our leaders always watch it. And that was then they spotted you. I don't know how, but as soon as they saw you, they knew you were who they needed. From that moment on they made plans to free you during the games.
"We tried three times, and only on the third try did the attempt work. Discord knew about our second attempt, and after it he heightened security. We had to double our troops for the third attempt, which was a challenge, especially when we were trying to be discrete. But, we got lucky and you provided both the perfect distraction as well as the perfect opportunity. We were close to turning off the arena, but not close enough. Your 'earthquake' or whatever you want to call it was just enough to get the job done.
"After that, Blitz worked his abilities and blasted a hole in the arena. Tough stallion he is - I don't know how he does it. So fast and yet so strong. I think he might even better than his mom but, she would never admit it-" He paused. "Oh, sorry, You'll meet Blitz soon enough, I'm sure. You'll like him."
"Anyways, We were planning on finding you, but with the power out, we realized that we had no way of telling where you were. If it hadn't been for your beam of light, we probably would have wound up searching for hours, and by the time we would have found you, we probably would have been captured and killed. We quickly flew towards you and your light, and almost as soon as we got there you passed out. We got you and your friends, and it was a good thing that two of them could fly. It made carrying that light-blue pegasus a lot easier. He might be average size for a stallion, but he is literally all muscle and actually quite heavy. It didn't really make a lot of sense.
"We tried to get The dark blue unicorn, but she didn't exactly want to cooperate with us. She tried to attack us, and I reckon that once she saw just how many of us there was she ran off. She was yelling at us that she would be the one to win, or something like that. The capitol probably found her and will declare her the victor, if they don't try to interrogate her about us first.
"We then brought you and your friends to the ship where we- er, TBB treated all of your wounds and safely removed all of your trackers and disposed of them off of the ship. Your friends weren't unconcious at the time, but we had to make them so for the procedure of removal. Right now they are just asleep. They might be for a while, after everything they had been through. In fact we were supprised you woke up as early as you did. After using so much magic, Luna was guessing that you were going to passed out for a long while. few ponies can handle such strong magic like that.
"Anyways, after we got rid of the trackers, we left and well, you know the rest I guess."
I sighed shakily. "That answers most of my questions, but I want to know about my dad..." I mumbled.
"What do you want to know?" Thunder asked shyly.
"Why he left us - left me - and didn't tell us why. He could have tried to take us with him. . . He. . ." tears started to fall down my face and quickly following them were sobs.
I brought the pillow up to my face and buried my face into it, attempting to hide my crying from this near-stranger. I wasn't sad, I was just mad and upset. "I just don't understand . . . why . . . "
I hugged the pillow even tighter with no avail to muffle the sounds of my crying. Thunder reached out towards me, wrapping his forelegs gently around me. I didn't want to cry to a stranger, but at the moment, a stranger was all I had. I leaned into him, and rested my temple against his shoulder. We sat there for a long while and he just let me cry. And I was grateful.
He let me cry until the ship began to slow and it was getting time for us to land. He had to leave and stand guard among the other soldiers as we exited the ship. As he trotted off, I sat on that ship until the landing gear made contact with the ground, thinking about what exactly was in store for me and my friends. For all we knew, we could meet our end or set the nation on a path to a better future. And in that moment, I could not tell which was going to happen, and I almost wished that I could just vanish from the world and live on my own, away from this fighting.
But that was not the case. That was not the case at all.