Broken Feathers

by That Avi Nerd

The end, right?

"This is everything we found in the cave," Phantom said, indicating at the assembly of artifacts laying atop the conference table. He, Rainbow Dash, Archer, Stryker, Twilight, Princess Celestia and Luna, and Shining Armor were in the Ponyville town hall's meeting room, going over all of the evidence that had been recovered. Celestia and Shining Armor were carefully studying the maps and letters, gathering as much information they could. Phantom continued. "Are we all in agreement that the Changeling Hive is in Glacies?" Everypony nodded. "So what do we know about Glacies, Princess Celestia?"

"It is a nation identical to Equestria in size, power, and influence. They have major cities like we do, smaller towns and villages, farms and prairies. The only difference is that it is all snow there. The ponies there are very... bleak... in color, much like the Crystal Ponies before balance was restored to the Empire.

“Glacies is ruled by King Alpha Centauri and Queen Omega Centauri. They have a son, Prince Castor, and a daughter, Princess Andromeda. They are all powerful unicorns, with near alicorn strength. We've worked with the Glacien government before, though King Alpha Centauri was not pleased to do so. I do not know why, but he is not fond of Equestrians. I will probably be able to obtain you access to Glacies, but it will be under the King's circumstances. Should you defy him, it could make things more difficult."

"Understood.” Phantom nodded. “When do we head out?"

"Today. You'll take the train to Canterlot, then board the E.A.S. Aurora, which will take you to Glacies."

"Uh, Princess?" Rainbow Dash asked shyly. "What's the 'E.A.S. Aurora'?"

"It's the Equestrian AirShip Aurora. As it's name states, it is an airship that we use to get to regions not accessible easily by rail or road. Glacies has no rail lines that connect with ours and the roads would take weeks to travel on. The ship will fly you to Glacies, where it will remain and act as a command center until the end of your mission. It will be equipped with anything Task Force 247 may need." The princess looked across the room. "Any questions?" Nopony replied. They each sat silently, consumed by their own thoughts of an unknown future. "Very well then. The train for Canterlot will leave in two hours. You are dismissed."

Everypony bowed, and waited for the three princesses to leave. Shining Armor followed, then Stryker left, trailed by Archer. As Phantom stepped through the doorway, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Rainbow Dash hadn't moved. She stood in place, staring back and forth between the maps of Equestria and Glacies. He sighed, and continued to leave.

Phantom awaited for Rainbow Dash outside of the front door to the Ponyville town hall. She emerged a few minutes later, not at all expecting him to be waiting by the wall.

"Rainbow," he called, startling the mare slightly. She stopped in her hooves and turned to face him. "We need to talk."

"Okay... what about?" she tentatively answered.

Phantom moved down the steps of the town hall, and started to follow a dirt road leading to the train station. Rainbow Dash glided to his side, and having not flown in days, decided to follow at a hover as he continued to wander along. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

"What do ya mean?"

"This. Abandoning your life-long dream of joining the Wonderbolts, and instead joining the Guard, and leaving your home for a deployment that will likely span over several weeks, if not months. And all of these decisions happening over the course of a day. I need to be absolutely, absolutely sure that you are up for this. This'll be a different experience for you, I need to be sure you'll be able to handle it."

"I will. Don't worry about me. I mean, did you see me blast that unicorn into next week? Even you said it was awesome!"

He sighed. "Yes, I'll admit, the speed and efficiency at which you kicked his flank was quite impressive. I haven't see a pegasus move like that for some time."

"Heh, yeah? I'm Rainbow Dash!" The mare threw her forelegs up and proceeded to pull off a quick backflip, stopping to fly upside nonchalantly beside Phantom. "The greatest flyer in all of Equestria!"

Phantom bowed his head slightly, with an inkling of a smile. "I already know somepony by that title."

"Oh really? Who are they? I'll show 'em up, easily. I'll challenge them to a race through Ghastly Gorge! No pony can beat me there."

"Hmmhm. Because it went so well the last time you were there."

"Wait, you know about that?" Rainbow turned back upright, and landed in front of Phantom, forcing him to stop his march. "Just how much do you know about me?"

Phantom took a step back with a guilty smile. Rainbow was unamused, taking a step towards him.

"Rainbow Dash!" a pair of young, female voices called. Rainbow's ears instantly perked up, recognizing them as Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. She looked around to see the two fillies running from Sugarcube Corner after her. "Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!"

"Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, what's up?"

"Have you seen Scootaloo?" Sweetie Belle asked with puppy-dog eyes.

"We were tryin' to get our cutie marks in dentistry," Apple Bloom continued. "Scoots said she had some stuff we could use and went to go get 'em but hasn't come back yet!"

"So," Sweetie Belle went on, "we were wondering if you could help us look for her."

"Well yeah?" Rainbow Dash laughed. "I'm Rainbow Dash, remember? If anypony can find my little sister it's me! Let's go, crusaders!" Rainbow lowered one side of her body, extending her wing on that side to the ground as a sort-of ramp. Cheerfully, the two fillies hopped aboard Rainbow's back. The pegasus slowly, and carefully, glided upwards and towards the other side of town. Rolling his eyes, Phantom flew up next to her.

"Sister?" he ventured in a low enough tone so that the fillies couldn't hear him over the slightly blowing wind.

"Eh, sort-of. She doesn't have any parents, as far as anypony knows, and she lives in the orphanage. We went on this camping trip awhile back and we bonded so, I decided to take her under my wing, since she looks up to me so much. She needs all the help she can."

"Why's that?"

"She... she has troubles flying..." Rainbow could see the coming question in Phantom's expression. "As in she can't. She can flap her wings, but at best all that happens is she might get a few inches off of the ground. She gets around with a scooter. So, I try to be as supportive as I can."

"That's incredibly noble of you, Rainbow Dash. It's not easy growing up as an orphan, let alone one with a flight disability."

"What do you know about that?" Phantom thought her voice sounded bitter.

He let out the air in his lungs, letting the memories of his past come back to him. "I too, was an orphan." Phantom paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, and to let the news sink into Rainbow Dash. "My sister, Nyx” he pronounced her name as nicks, “and I grew up in the streets of Cloudsdale, with barely anything to get by. All we had was an alley by the Cloud Nine we called home, and each other. She also couldn't fly for the longest time."

Rainbow looked ahead to see that they had arrived at the orphanage. She landed softly by the front door to let the fillies off of her back. Phantom landed beside her, and opened the door. "That... that sounds like an interesting story..."

The pair headed up a flight of dark wooded stairs, only to stop at the first door on their right. On it were several colorful depictions of Rainbow Dash performing one of her many, usually totally awesome stunts. Flying next to her in all of them was an orange-coated pegasus filly with a purple mane and tail. "For another time, my dear." Phantom rapped thrice on the door.

It slowly opened without any other influences. Rainbow gasped and rushed in, knocking the door off of its hinges. Phantom stepped in after her, though more calmly.

The room itself was an absolute wreck. Papers were scattered about, the bed sheets were a mess, and the curtains were knocked off of the windows. Holes lined several places along the walls. An overturned table and chair were piled next to the misaligned bed, which had one of its wooden legs broken. However, it was the center of the room that caught the most of Phantom's and Rainbow's attention. There lay a circular burn mark that seemed to twist around in a small vortex. In the center of it was a single orange feather, and a letter.

Do not follow me.

-Sky

Rainbow looked out the shattered window, to the calm skies, a fresh look in her eyes. One of anguish, rage, and vexation. "Let's go get this prick..."

Author's Note:

So there you have it, the explanation of what Glacies is, who's going, their mission, how they're going to get there, and finally, the last cliff hanger. Whelp, that was Broken Feathers, hope you guys loved it. On to the next one! Which, I have chosen on the name "Broken Feathers: Northern Sky". I'll try my best to make this story more intense, action-y, try to stay true to my story tags and notes (including the romance tag, calm down FlyingClaw...)
I'll begin work on Northern Sky at once, well, once I start re-reading my favorite story on fimfiction, since, I'm going to base much of Northern Sky off of that and follow a similar path as it.
So, yeah... Sky fillynapped Scootaloo... At least we can say for certain that somepony's gona to die...
And don't worry, incase you're worried that that whole 'Phantom was an orphan growing up on his own taking care of his sister like a boss,' backstory isn't going to be delved into in greater depth, trust me, it will. In fact, it's going to be one of the first things that I do. ONE OF... I'm also planning on going into greater detail into Phantom's past, and the past of Archer and Stryker (once I come up with something for those two.)
As usual, if you have an questions or suggestions, leave them in the comments below and I'll try to answer them as best as I can/am willing to. Thanks, you guys were great! I'll try to link you all to Northern Sky as soon as I get the first chapter up. But, in the mean time, as usual, I will have the progress tracker on my user page so when ever you're on you can check in with that to get a quick status update. (until I actually start working on the chapters, I'll instead turn it over to what I'm currently doing and see how well that works out.)
See ya on the next story

Comments

[Flying-Claw]

What should I say? Incredible Chapter! A little short, though .
By the way, do you know how mean you are, making cliffhangers like that ?

[That Avi Nerd]

3356001 Well, effectively it served it's purpose as an Epilogue, to set up the next story. But yes, I am mean

[Flying-Claw]

3353368 Who said that shipping = "over18stuffyouknowwhatimean" ?

[That Avi Nerd]

3356021 No one said it directly, this is just the general impression that I developed over the first few months of being a Brony. So I've always had the tendency to steer away from most stories that mentioned shipping, had the mature or sex tags on the stories. But I have delved into a few stories with the romance tag as a sort of experimentation on what I found tolerable to read.

[Azhanzhang]

...whats your favorite story....?

[That Avi Nerd]

3358041 Betrothed and Betrayed. What saddens me is the author hasn't updated it in awhile so I'm stuck in this giant freaking cliff hanger and it's really, really, making me angry

[Azhanzhang]

3358079
sounds interesting i'll add it to my read later because it's currently 10:56 and i sleep at 11:00 because it's a good habit to have
My favorite story has a sequel that's almost finished so its my favorite story kind of it called Loyalty of the Creed its an awesome story and i don't actually play Assassin's Creed so you don't have to have much context about it to understand the rest explains itself along the way and trust me, its a pretty frikin awesome story so now you have something to do other than reread that other story hope you like it cause there's a reason why it's my favorite
props to you for reading this long comment

[That Avi Nerd]

3358694 I've read that series actually lol, lately though I've been falling off of the wagon in favor of writing.
3358712 It's funny you mention that, that's actually my third favorite series (second favorite is Rainbooms and Royalty) Still waiting on story 4....

[Azhanzhang]

3358733
IT'S SO AWESOME THAT I READ IT 14 TIMES ALREADY! (I'VE BEEN COUNTING)

[That Avi Nerd]

3362563>>3358712>>3356021>>3349605>>3349258>>3347595 For those of you who are unaware, (and since the story tag feature in the blog posts is broken,) Broken Feathers: Frozen North has been uploaded! Yay! Go read it! Woot! And yes, I changed the name even though you guys really wanted "Northern Sky" BUT, if you look at the Hasbro map of Equestria, it mentions a region called the "Frozen North" so... yeah... that'll be the rough area where Glacies is. Hope ya'll enjoy the story!

[Azhanzhang]

3400081
already read it
btw i read your story 5 times cause i only just discovered it like 2 weeks ago i've been busy with school work

[That Avi Nerd]

3400578 so awesome

[Azhanzhang]

3401950
it really good

[Bluezonefoxtrot]

Is rainbow shipped with phantom? If so someone put this under the wrong folder in the "soarin and the wonderbolts" group

[That Avi Nerd]

3428637 That's... interesting... to say the least. I laid the foundation for shipping between Phantom and Rainbow Dash in this story, and will build on it more in the sequel. But as far as Rainbow Dash and Soarin'...? It's apparent whoever put this story in that folder didn't pay too much attention to what was going on... Oddly enough, the sequel to this story is in that folder as well.
Thank you for telling me about this, I'll get in contact with the group's founder sometime today and inquire about it.
Hope you enjoyed the reading!

[VampDash]

I'm... confused. Is Soarin really a bad guy or was he always a changeling?

[That Avi Nerd]

3474056 On my list of things yet to explain in Frozen North

[VampDash]

3474164 Thank you it's been confusing me... when are you gonna explain it?

[That Avi Nerd]

3474168 Hehehee... yeah... uhhh I need to figure out when I'm going to throw him back into the story, and how. I might start working on that angle in the next chapter or two, start hinting at it. I don't know though, I need to try to stay on my notes so this doesn't end up going haywire like the first story did....

[VampDash]

3474267 Okay I understand.

[That Avi Nerd]

For those of you who favorited and are wondering what changed: I added a prologue. Nothing big, just adds to some effect of the story.

[That Avi Nerd]

3987940 Thanks! To your satisfaction, there's a sequel that's long than this one!

[Starlight Nova]

Prequel: Birthday Dash (read at your own risk, I know it's terribly written)

Why not rewrite it then? You can edit your stories on Google docs.

[That Avi Nerd]

4139164 I did rewrite it. It was actually worse than it currently is now at one point.

[PrincessTwilight312]

When's the next chapter???

[That Avi Nerd]

4140277 Hate to disappoint you, but this story is done. HOWEVER. HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER... There is a sequel right here! that is even longer than this story! So head over there and enjoy it!