The Strong One
Gilda hastily strapped her two swords across her back as she followed Adam towards the northeast gate. As he walked – and as their escort of warriors walked – so she walked too, forbidding herself the freedom of the air in order to keep pace with the leader of the chapter.
It wouldn’t look good if she was seen to be racing ahead of him, not when he already had doubts about her loyalty.
And what good would it do, in any case? She couldn’t make any decisions until Adam arrived.
Not to mention, she didn’t want to be around Cinder Fall longer than she had to. She did not like that woman.
She wasn’t sure whether Adam didn’t see the fact that she didn’t give a rat’s ass for the White Fang or their cause, or he saw but didn’t care so long as they could help one another out. Sure, she might have powers, she might even be able to get things done, but it was hard for Gilda to get past the fact that, well, she didn’t give a rat’s ass.
She might be a lost soul, like so many of them, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t leave them all to die in order to get what she really wanted.
Suffering didn’t make you a saint; quite the opposite, in fact. Gilda knew that all too well from personal experience. She hated the fact that Dashie had chosen her human friends over her didn’t change the fact that she absolutely understood why. And it wasn’t the luxury either, it wasn’t the allure of the Atlas life, no, that would have been too easy to blame; Rainbow Dash wasn’t the kind to get her head turned by stuff like that.
No, Dashie had chosen her human friends because her human friends were more pleasant to be around than a bitter faunus with a shoebox full of White Fang pamphlets and a chip on her shoulder.
Gilda hated the choice that she’d made, but she didn’t blame Dashie for it.
If half the stories that she’d told were true, then it was the obvious choice.
Anyway, the point was that just because Cinder Fall had suffered the way that the faunus had suffered didn’t mean she wasn’t going to stab them in the back.
That woman’s eyes were cold and dead and had no mercy in them. If the time came to sell the White Fang out, there was no way that she was going to hold back out of anything like compassion.
Gilda wasn’t even sure she had any.
These thoughts consumed her as the group made their way towards the gate. She said nothing to anyone, and Adam seemed fine with that, considering that he said nothing to her either. He just walked, silently, and the mask helped make his face expressionless so that nobody could see what he was thinking.
Gilda, who was still wearing her cheap shades instead of a mask – she couldn’t see properly with the mask on; the eyeslits were too small, and so she almost never bothered with it – doubted that she was so hard to read. If everything that she was thinking wasn’t written on her face in marker pen, then she’d be very surprised.
What was Cinder doing here? They weren’t supposed to be ready to go yet for months, not until the Vytal Festival, and Cinder was supposed to be at Beacon. She’d only come to Mountain Glenn once before; when she first arrived back in Vale, she’d checked on their progress. Afterwards, she had made it seem as though she wouldn’t be coming back.
And that had been fine by Gilda. She didn’t know what had made Cinder change her mind. Did she think they weren’t working fast enough? That was ridiculous; the mine was ready with months to spare! What did she think that she was going to add by showing up now and throwing her weight around?
Hopefully, that was all she wanted to do: remind everyone that she was boss and then go.
If not, then persuading Adam to change his mind about this madness just got a lot harder.
They moved through the city on foot, and none of the grimm who infested this awful place interfered with them in any way. Sometimes, Gilda heard them, or thought she heard them: growls or the scraping of claws on concrete, but she didn’t see them. She certainly wasn’t attacked by them.
It was Cinder’s power, her creepy affinity with these monsters. They were kept safe, under her protection.
Gilda hated it.
They reached the gate, guarded like the eastern gate had been by a section of White Fang troops. Some of those guards were clustered around the open gate itself, where a car was parked a little way beyond by the side of the road leading into the city.
Cinder stood before the vehicle, and with her were all three of her lackeys and two more humans that Gilda hadn’t seen before, and who didn’t look as though they were there voluntarily.
And a dog, with its tongue hanging out.
Adam quickened his step, forcing Gilda and the other guys to move faster to keep pace with him as he strode down the road and out the gate towards their ‘partner.’
Cinder slunk towards him. “Adam,” she purred. “How nice of you to roll out a welcoming committee for us.”
“Cinder,” Adam growled, and it gave Gilda hope that he didn’t seem remotely pleased to see her. “We weren’t expecting you.”
“Situations change, and our plans must change accordingly,” Cinder replied casually. “My associates and I will be staying here for a few days, at least until the enemy scouts arrive.”
“'Scouts'?” Gilda repeated. “What scouts? Why would the humans be sending scouts here?”
Cinder shrugged. “Because I told them that they’d find us here, obviously.”
“What?!” Adam snapped.
His hand didn’t reach for the hilt of his sword, but Gilda had already drawn both her blades, the sunlight glimmering upon the metal as she levelled them both, point first, at Cinder. “Guns up!” she snapped to their escort. “Take aim!”
One of her minions, the little girl with the green hair, had drawn her own guns, while the faunus – whom Gilda thought was almost as much a traitor to their kind as Dash – settled into a fighting stance as lightning started to crackly up and down her arms.
Cinder, however, made no move to produce her weapons. She smiled and said, “Emerald, Lightning, calm down; we’re amongst friends here, aren’t we, Adam?”
“You sold us out!” Gilda snarled. “You’re no friend of ours, you never—”
“Gilda,” Adam said. “That’s enough.”
Gilda’s eyes widened. “Boss, she-”
“I said, that’s enough!” Adam snapped. He hesitated, and his hand strayed momentarily towards Wilt, before he said, “Explain.”
“It has become necessary to accelerate the timetable of the attack,” Cinder declared. “We can’t wait for the Vytal Festival now. I don’t know exactly how long it will take for our enemies to organise themselves, but I think they’ll move quickly. Can you get the train ready to move by tomorrow?”
'Tomorrow'? Hell no, no way am I going to be able to talk sense into the boss by then!
“I can,” Adam allowed. “But why should I? What is the reason for this?”
“Circumstances-”
“Circumstances may require me to slice you open if you don’t explain,” Adam snarled. “You can’t simply show up here, announce that you’ve revealed our position to our enemies, and then expect me to take your instructions on trust! What is going on?”
Cinder was silent for a moment. The smirk, Gilda was glad to see, had slid off her face, replaced by a sullen look like she’d just been caught spraying graffiti by a cop. She held her peace for a long while, long enough to tell Gilda that she had some bad news but not quite long enough for Adam to actually draw his blade on her before she admitted, “Fortune has not favoured us. My cover at Beacon has been exposed.”
“So you’re on the run,” Gilda said. “And you’ve come to us because you’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Cinder ignored her.
“That explains your presence,” Adam said. “It doesn’t explain why we need to move early, and it certainly doesn’t explain why you revealed our location to our foes.”
“What is the reason to delay?” Cinder asked. “The mine is ready, is it not?”
“It is,” Adam allowed.
“Your men are ready, and eager?” Cinder demanded. “You have the weapons that I supplied to you?”
“And which we got for ourselves,” Gilda growled.
Adam ignored her too, as he said, “True.”
“Then why wait?” Cinder asked.
“When you proposed this plan, you said that the heightened emotions of the Vytal Festival-”
“We cannot afford to wait for the Vytal Festival!” Cinder snapped. “Our enemies know who I am. They will be looking for me. Looking for all of us.”
“They might not have thought to look here until you told them to,” Gilda said.
Cinder smirked, and she had the audacity to chuckle at Gilda. “Oh, Goldie-”
“Gilda,” Cinder growled.
“Of course,” Cinder said blithely. “If you don’t understand strategy, then perhaps you should refrain from comment. You see, by revealing our location here, I have executed a classic ruse of war. Our enemies, you see, are not completely stupid. They won’t simply take my word as to the location of the White Fang base they have been seeking so assiduously. They’ll send scouts to ascertain that I’m not trying to lure them into some kind of trap, and what will their scouts find here in Mountain Glenn? Their deaths, of course, but also a White Fang base, filled with warriors and weapons and all kinds of dangerous things.” She chuckled again. “And when they report all of that back to General Ironwood and Professor Ozpin, well… all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and all the king’s fancy airships too will come roaring down out of Vale to assault us here, even as you pass beneath them to take Vale, which will be completely undefended.” Her smile widened, sharpening as it did so, becoming less like a smile and more like the baring of fangs. “Now, isn’t that a prize worth accelerating our efforts for?”
Gilda’s eyes narrowed. It sounded tempting, for sure. In the same way that someone promising to give you a share in their fortune if you send them your bank details sounded pretty tempting as well, until you thought about it for a minute. “Since that’s your plan, I guess you didn’t manage to set their tech up to turn against them at the right moment?”
Cinder glared at her for a moment. Gilda glared right back.
What, are you upset that I’m not convinced? Bite me!
“It hardly matters,” Cinder said. “Since they will be here, and you will be there.”
“Us?” Gilda said. “But not you?”
“Vale is yours; I care not for it,” Cinder said. “Do with it as you will; I will not interfere. I would never dream of taking a share in your glory.”
“Or our peril?” Gilda demanded. “That sounds like a fancy way of saying you’ll land us in the fire but don’t have the guts to go near it yourself! Boss, I need to speak to you, alone.”
Adam was still, and silent. For a few seconds, he did not respond. Abruptly, he turned towards Gilda. “Wait here,” he snapped at Cinder, as he strode towards Gilda, and then walked past her, striding away from the road.
Gilda kept pace with him, and as she walked she unfurled one wing to drape across Adam’s back so that Cinder couldn’t see what they were talking about so easily.
“Let me guess, you’re going to speak truth to power to me some more,” Adam muttered.
“Adam, I know that you don’t want to hear this, but you have got to call this off, right now!” Gilda insisted. “With the enemy on their way, we need to start clearing out right away if we’re to be gone before they arrive.”
Adam turned his head towards her. “You want us to run?” he demanded. “You want us to stick our tails between our legs and flee?”
“It’s what we do when they find us; we move on-”
“I know it’s what we always do!” Adam cried. “Haven’t I explained to you that I am sick and tired of doing what we have always done, of fighting as we have always fought, of dying like rats as we have always died!?”
“We might not die like rats, but we’ll die anyway once the Atlesians arrive,” Gilda hissed.
“We won’t be here when the Atlesians arrive; we’ll be behind them.”
“Adam, you know that’s a load of bull,” Gilda insisted. “You have to see that. You don’t seriously think they’re going to send all their forces here to Mountain Glenn and leave it so we can just walk into Vale, do you? Our people in the city counted eight Atlesian cruisers, plus support ships and attack squadrons. They can send… they can send half here to Mountain Glenn and still have troops in Vale, plus the Valish. And even if I’m wrong, even if they are dumb to send everybody here, they’ll still turn back as soon as they realise that we’re there instead!”
“If we can occupy their defences, turn their weapons against them-”
“This isn’t going to go the way you want it to!” Gilda yelled. “This… Adam, I know that you want this to be the last battle. I want that too, it’s what we all want, for this to be over, our struggles rewarded, but this isn’t it. The Atlesians are fully armed and operational, they know where we are, and if they haven’t figured out the plan yet, it’s only because the plan is so insane that they haven’t even considered that we’d be nuts enough to try it! We don’t have enough rolling stock to mount all our forces.”
“Oh, Adam?” Cinder called. “There’s something that I forgot to mention; it slipped my mind, I’m afraid,” – she let out a little titter – “the person I gave the message to about your whereabouts was Blake’s new best friend, Sunset Shimmer, while these two guests of mine, these lost sheep I found wandering across Vale, are friends of Blake’s new partner, Rainbow Dash. So when I say that our enemies will send scouts to ascertain our whereabouts, I suppose I what I really mean is that-”
“Blake will be here,” Adam said, his voice a whisper charged with anticipation. It became a growl, anger mixed with desire. “She will come, and those who took her away from me will come, those for whom she betrayed me, the Atlesian dog and the little pony, the traitors to our race! You will bring them here and deliver them into my hands?”
Cinder smiled. “And here, they will find only death.”
No, Gilda thought. No, boss, please don’t go for this, please, not just because of this! “Adam,” she said. “This is bigger than-”
“Yes,” Adam said. “It is bigger. It is so much bigger than you or I. At stake is nothing less than the future of our people. I know, everyone here knows, that this will be desperate and dangerous. They know that for many, it will be their last battle. But none of them need to be told what is expected of them because they are all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to achieve victory and the freedom of our kind. The question is: are you?”
Gilda stared at him. Her mouth felt dry. She swallowed. “Yes,” she said softly.
“Good,” Adam replied. “Then follow my orders. The time for speaking truth has passed. The time for courage and obedience has arrived.” He turned away from her, leaving her to watch his back as he walked back towards Cinder and the others.
This would not end well. Gilda knew in her bones that this would not end well. And yet, there was nothing that she could do about it, not now. It was too soon, too soon to persuade Adam, too soon to persuade the rest to go against Adam; too soon. All too soon.
Too soon to do anything but watch the White Fang die in the fire.
Too soon, maybe, to do anything but die alongside them.
“So,” Adam said, “what do we do with these two?”
They were quite different, Gilda saw, these friends of Rainbow Dash. One of them was strong, athletically built, with muscles visible upon her arms. She was also the one with a gag in her mouth, the one restrained, the one who looked as though she wanted to tear every last one of them apart with her bare hands.
The other one was more slender, more feminine, slight and willowy and looked like you could knock her down with a breath of wind. Her eyes were wide with fright. Her whole body was trembling.
Fluttershy? She looks like a Fluttershy. I never wanted to see any pictures of Dashie’s friends, but she definitely looks like a Fluttershy. Which would make the other one… tough-looking, cowboy hat… Applejack!
“Secure them both,” Cinder commanded, “and then I need to let Rainbow Dash know that I’ve got her friends.” She laughed. “After all, what use is bait if the person you’re baiting doesn’t know about it?”
“We can’t get a signal out here,” Gilda said.
The look Cinder gave her was downright contemptuous. “Oh, I’ll get a signal,” she assured Gilda, as she began to type in the number.
Dashie’s number.
Gilda was about to hear Dashie’s voice.
And Dashie was about to hear that this psycho had her friends.
Gilda shut her mouth and resolved not to speak.
She really didn’t want Rainbow Dash to know that she was a part of this.
She wished that she wasn’t a part of this.
“Fluttershy,” Rainbow managed to get the word out, to force it out past her shock and her fear. “Fluttershy… is that right? Are you okay? Have… have they hurt you?”
“No,” Fluttershy said. “No, I… I’m not hurt. I’m sorry.”
“'Sorry'?” Rainbow would have laughed if the situation had been any less grim. “What do you have to be sorry about? Listen, Fluttershy, I have to ask you something. Is… is Applejack with you?”
Rainbow heard a mumbled shouting sound coming from out of her scroll.
“Your other friend can’t come to the phone right now,” Cinder said smugly. “She’s a little… tied up at the moment.”
A bestial growl rose from Rainbow’s throat. “You little-”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Rainbow Dash,” Cinder snapped. “Not unless you want your little friend here to suffer from any irritation that you might cause me.” She sighed. “There was a part of me that wanted Sunset to come alone to me at Mountain Glenn, although I knew she wouldn’t. And then, on my way, I stumbled across these two. Rather careless of you to let your friends wander around Vale at a time like this, don’t you think?”
“Let her go,” Twilight begged. “Please, you can hate us if you want to, but please, let Fluttershy go. She’s not a huntress, she’s not with the Atlesian military, not really. She’s an innocent in all this. Please, if you have any pity in your heart at all, you’ll let her go and give her back to us.”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “In ancient times, there was a king who came to a river,” Cinder said, “where he saw all the fish swimming in the river, their scales glistening in the sunlight. The king sat down and took out his flute and began to play a song, but the fish took no notice whatsoever; they simply kept on swimming along. So the king took a net and dragged it through the water until it was overflowing with fish, whom he dumped upon the ground and watched them flapping their fins desperately in the air. ‘It is all very well you dancing now,’ the king told them, ‘but the time for that was when I was playing my flute.’” She chuckled. “It’s a little to late appeal to my mercy when you have chased me out of Beacon and had me branded a criminal.”
Had you branded? Chased you out? It’s not like we framed you or anything. Rainbow kept silent, her jaw clenched, her magenta eyes fixed on Twilight. She didn’t dare speak, she didn’t dare say anything that would provoke Cinder into harming Fluttershy or Applejack.
“And yet, despite the wrongs that I have suffered, the ills and hurts in which the soldiers of Atlas and you two in particular have played some part, I am not without compassion,” Cinder continued. “I take it Sunset has told you where I am.”
“Mountain Glenn,” Twilight whispered.
“Indeed,” Cinder said. “I’m a little disappointed that she isn’t coming on her own, but not too much. But if I must suffer Pyrrha’s company, then I can ensure there is room at the feasting table for you. If you want your friend back, you’ll come find me here. Don’t take too long, though. The White Fang aren’t particularly fond of Atlesians, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to… restrain them.”
Twilight gasped. “You… you’re a monster.”
“I am what I have been made, as we all are,” Cinder said.
“Fluttershy, Fluttershy, listen to me,” Rainbow said. “And Applejack too, can you hear me? I am going to get you out of there. I am going to get you both out of there, and we’ll go back to Sugarcube corner and see what Pinkie’s cooked up while we’ve been gone.”
“Aww, now isn’t that sweet,” Cinder said. “You’d better-”
“Don’t!” Fluttershy cried. “Rainbow, Twilight, don’t come, it’s a trap! They’re going to-” She collapsed into wordless shrieking, howling incomprehensibly as they must have gagged her too.
“Fluttershy!” Rainbow yelled. “I swear, I swear if you hurt either of them, then I will-”
“What?” Cinder demanded. “Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.”
“I don’t,” Rainbow growled. “But if you hurt them, I’ll break your bones and see you burn. I swear.”
“Fire doesn’t frighten me, Rainbow Dash,” Cinder declared. “I know it far too well.
The line went dead.
“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, her voice trembling. “Applejack?”
Rainbow roared as she struck the dorm room wall with her fist, making Twilight gasp in shock. “I’ll kill her! If she’s harmed one hair on either of their heads, I’ll kill her. I… I…”
Rainbow couldn’t think. She couldn’t express the anger that she was feeling. She couldn’t express the desire that she felt to rip Cinder Fall into pieces. She couldn’t express the fire that was burning inside of her, raging like an inferno, howling like a tempest, snarling like a beowolf. She couldn’t express it, and she couldn’t do anything with it. All that she could do was let it eat her up as she stood with her head bowed and her fist pressed against the plaster of the wall.
Applejack… Fluttershy… I’m so sorry.
What am I supposed to tell Apple Bloom?
What am I supposed to tell our friends?
What am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to save you?
What do I do now?
How do I protect you when you’re so far away?
How do I bring you back when I don’t know where you are?
What do I do now?
“Rainbow Dash… please look at me,” Twilight begged.
Rainbow looked at her. Twilight's eyes were huge behind her glasses, huge and brimming with water at the bottom as the tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
"Don't do this," Twilight begged. "You don't have to do this."
Rainbow frowned as she straightened up. She ran one hand through her prismatic hair.
"What am I doing that I don't need to do, Twi?" she asked hoarsely. "Because from where I stand, it doesn't look like I'm doing anything to help our friends right now."
"That!" Twilight cried. "You don't have to do that; you don't have to blame yourself-"
"Who should I blame?"
"I don't know, Cinder?!" Twilight snapped. "The White Fang? The people who are holding Fluttershy and Applejack for who knows why-"
"I know why," Rainbow replied. "You heard Cinder, you heard Fluttershy; it’s revenge. Revenge for what we did, for the fact that we beat her; it’s a trap so that she can get us where she wants us."
"That doesn't make it your fault," Twilight repeated. "They did this, not you. You don't have to take this on your shoulders, you don't have to keep it to yourself, you don't have to… You're not the only one who cares about Applejack and Fluttershy."
Rainbow stared into Twilight's teary eyes for a moment, the prick of guilt joining the anger that she felt rolling like the waves inside of her. She sighed. "I know," she whispered. "And I… I didn't mean to… I'm sorry, Twi."
"I know that I'm not a great warrior like you, but they're still my friends,” Twilight insisted. “They're still a part of my life; they're still a part of my heart. And I want to help you get them back. I can help you. And Ciel and Penny and Blake and Sapphire can help too. You don't have to do this all by yourself. You don't have to feel it all by yourself. You don't have to be the strong one all the time."
Rainbow snorted, a wry smile making a momentary appearance on her face. "Yeah, I do."
"No, you don't."
"I do," Rainbow repeated, more firmly this second time. "I do because… because if I'm not that, then what am I, Twilight?
"I'm not super smart. I don't have a big heart with room for the whole wide world, I don't put smiles on people's faces when I walk down the street. I'm not generous, I'm not kind. But I have my strength and my speed, and I can fight the battles that no one else can; that's who I am. That's what I bring. I'm the one who takes the bullet; I'm the one who goes back again and again until everyone's safe. And if I'm not that… if I'm not that, then what am I? If I'm not that, then why would you even want me around?"
Twilight was silent, her mouth forming an O of surprise, her eyes having gotten even wider, if that were possible, until they seemed to be taking up most of her face.
"Is that," she murmured. "Is that what you think?" Her voice rose, growing higher and more shrill with anger. "Is that why you think we hung out with you?! Is that what you think you are to us, some kind of bodyguard?!"
"Twi-"
"Quiet! If Pinkie were here, she would be kicking your ass so hard right now!" Twilight snapped. "So what if you're not smart? So what if your heart's not as open as Pinkie's is? You've got other things, things that are just as important. We all know that even if the entire rest of Remnant turned on us, we could count on you to stay by our sides. You're not our fighter, you're not our protector; you're our friend, and we love you. You're a part of all of us, just like we're all a part of you. You don't always have to be our strength. Sometimes… sometimes, we can be yours."
Rainbow said nothing. Shame doused – at least partially – the anger that had been burning up inside her. She had… she hadn’t really believed it, not most of the time, but sometimes… sometimes, she’d wondered why they all wanted to be friends with someone like her.
“The system works, G.”
“The system works for you, you mean! You with your rich human friends and your fancy connections. I’ve never had dinner with the great General Ironwood. I don’t have friends who have a sister-in-law on the council; how well do you think the system is working out for me?”
“Don’t bring my friends into this; I’ve never-”
“You think they’re really your friends? Do you really believe that? You’ll never be nothing but a faunus to them! I bet they only hang out with you so that they can brag at parties about how totally not-racist they are because one of their best friends is a faunus!”
Rainbow shuddered. That was the last time that she’d spoken to Gilda until the fight on the train; she’d been so mad that she had stormed out of Gilda’s house and never come back, because as far as she was concerned, there wasn’t anything more to say between them…but she wouldn’t have gotten so mad if what Gilda said hadn’t struck a nerve, planted a seed that had stuck with her all these years: why did they want to be her friend?
She felt ashamed now to have ever considered it. Of course it wasn’t what she’d been afraid of. They were all too good for that, too pure, too full of friendship to ever do something like that.
They were all parts of her heart… which is why it would have hurt so much to learn that she wasn’t part of theirs.
Rainbow held out one hand. “I’m sorry, Twi.” She smirked. “But come on, like Pinkie could ever kick my ass.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “Yeah, I know. Don’t tell her I said that. Not about the ass-kicking, about-”
“I get it,” Twilight said. She took Rainbow’s hand. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks,” Rainbow said. She smiled briefly. “So, how do we save our friends?”
“You’ll need to find them first,” Twilight replied. “Fortunately, I can help with that.”
Rainbow frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I put a tracking device in Fluttershy’s hair clip,” Twilight explained. “Once I activate it… at this range, I could only confirm that she is in Mountain Glenn, but once I put the locator app on your scroll, then you’ll be able to pinpoint her position once you get close enough, like inside the city.”
Rainbow’s eyebrows rose. “You put a locator… in Fluttershy’s hair clip? The butterfly?”
“That’s right,” Twilight said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Rainbow grinned. “That’s our Twilight,” she declared. “Although… when did you manage to do this?”
“It was just something I threw together when they came to visit and I found out where they were planning to go. I mean, they were going to traipse through the wilderness of Vale; I wanted to be able to find them if they didn’t come back in time!”
“I’m not judging you, don’t worry,” Rainbow assured her. “Once you turn it on, will Cinder and the White Fang know about it?”
Twilight hesitated. “I… I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought they were that technologically sophisticated, but they did almost hack the CCT. I don’t know.” She frowned. “What do you think?”
Rainbow considered it for a moment. “Wait,” she said. “When we get to Mountain Glenn, and you’re in position with Team Tsunami, then activate it. It won’t do us much good until then anyway.”
“And if they’re not in Mountain Glenn?”
“They’re in Mountain Glenn,” Rainbow declared.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because she wants us there,” Rainbow said. “And I’m not sure she’d risk us finding out that they were somewhere else. And because she’s arrogant enough to give us a chance to rescue them.”
Twilight nodded. “I hope you’re right about that.”
“I hope I’m right too,” Rainbow whispered. “I should tell the General about this.”
“Right, and when you do, can you ask him if I can have an AK-200 body?” Twilight asked. “He won’t be getting it back, to be clear.”
“What do you want a Knight for?”
“To help you,” Twilight answered. “The best way that I know how.”