//------------------------------// // Clandestine // Story: We Don't Talk About Captain Thunderhoof // by FanOfMostEverything //------------------------------// The alicorn and the impostor held each other's gaze and smile for what felt like minutes. It was familiar territory for Twilight; she just had to tell herself she was making nice with Trixie for Starlight's sake. Thunderhoof's own expression seemed genial, but there was something in those eyes, something that might be fear or scorn or a grudge sixty years in the making. Twilight wasn't sure, but she knew it wasn't friendly. "Um, so... yeah!" "She's Captain Thunderhoof alright!" Both blinked as they remembered that Corn and Peg were still there. Twilight coughed into a fetlock and tried to be as polite as she could to this particular Trixie for the sake of her tiny Starlights. "Allow me to introduce myself." She extended a hoof. "I am Twilight Sparkle. I've been looking for you for some time." "I see." The immense Thunderhoof bumping her tiny hoof against Twilight's might have bordered on the surreal if the entire afternoon hadn't been well inside those borders. "It must have been very important to track me down." "I believe so." Twilight stared into Thunderhoof's eyes, trying to suss out just what lay there. "Potentially critical." All she got was a raised eyebrow. "My word. We'll have to address this posthaste." "I couldn't agree more." Twin gasps drew their attention back to Corn and Peg. "Does that mean you're a do-gooder?" said the former. Twilight permitted herself a bit of pride as she nodded. "I certainly am, yes." "You two could team up!" cried Peg. Corn nodded, so excited he started shooting sparks. "You'd be the greatest do-gooders ever!" Thunderhoof smiled at them. "We would, wouldn't we?" "Yeah!" chorused the foals. Peg kept going. "You can show her the Beam of Friendship and everything!" "I believe I've heard about that particular technique," said Twilight, her voice kept deliberately neutral. "It's made quite the impact on some ponies." Thunderhoof gave a smile that, much like her tone and body, felt like an imitation of Celestia's. "You could certainly say that. I imagine you have many questions." "More than a few, yes. And I'd certainly like to see your particular brand of... 'do-gooding.'" "Certainly." Thunderhoof spread her wings. "Follow me." "Aww, we won't get to see it?" Thunderhoof smiled down at the groaning foal. "We do good for its own sake, Corn, not for the sake of spectators. Coming, Twilight?" "Certainly." Twilight took the first few moments of the flight to organize her questions into mental flash cards. Once the deck was sorted, she said, "So—" "I'm sure you have many questions, Twilight, but I must ask you to wait first. There is something you must see that should clear up most of your confusion." Both were silent for a few seconds. "You know, I thought you might come to see me some day." Twilight's surprise made her bobble in her flight. "You know who I am?" After a moment, Thunderhoof shook her head and smiled. "No reason to make you wait when I baited out the question in the first place." "Assuming I can believe it," Twilight said with a scowl. "Twilight, I swear on the very concept of Harmony that I will not lie to you. In any case, I've tried to keep a few eyes and ears out in the wider world as most of my ponies built our town. And they have had some very interesting things to say about you." Thunderhoof chuckled. "To say nothing of the newspapers that pegasus insists on airdropping, and the Friendship Journal." Twilight sighed. "Ponies keep finding new uses for that book that I never intended." The chuckles continued. "Telling ponies what to think by simply giving them information and expecting them to work it out on their own rarely works out." "I wasn't—" "Weren't you?" Thunderhoof's smile took a turn for the predatory. "What would you call that school you're building if not a place to shape young hearts and minds to your liking?" Twilight snorted. She'd read enough of Caballeron's rants to see where this was going. "I suppose this is where you say, 'We're not so different, you and I.'" "Because we aren't. We each want nothing more than to improve Equestria. See it stand strong, yet elevate the other nations along with it." "Except you'd do it by tearing down those other nations and rebuilding on the ruins." Thunderhoof's smile narrowed to a smug smirk. "Would I? You've seen Galloping Grove. Does this town look like an army in training to you?" Twilight stayed silent for an uncomfortable stretch. When it became clear that Thunderhoof was waiting for her response, she said, "No. It doesn't." She glared at Thunderhoof. "It looks like you've been smuggling in technology from other universes." "How very astute of you. Though smuggling is such an ugly word." Thunderhoof glanced down and smiled. "Ah, wonderful timing. Follow me, Twilight. This is what I wanted to show you." Once they landed, she spread out wings and forehooves both. "Behold, Twilight Sparkle. The heart of Galloping Grove." Twilight beheld. Eventually, she shrugged her wings and said "It's a lake." It was, admittedly, a nice lake. Almost perfectly circular, with crystal clear waters that, from this angle, perfectly reflected Galloping Grove's humble skyline. Thunderhoof nodded. "A lake that has been instrumental in everything I have accomplished since my little wager with Celestia." Twilight blinked, all her theories crumbling in her mind. "Wait, your wager?" "Of course. Who else?" "The first Thunderhoof." Twilight found herself half-shouting to make herself heard over the ongoing collapse. "Your predecessor. Right?" "The first... Oh!" Thunderhoof shook her head. "Twilight, I'm afraid you're laboring under a misapprehension." As the mental dust settled, all Twilight could say was "What." "Hard as it may be to believe, I am the same Thunderhoof who tried to supplant Celestia sixty-two years ago." "How could that possibly be? You'd be well into your nineties. A pegasus of that age..." Twilight trailed off as Thunderhoof began tittering behind a hoof, inasmuch as she could do anything behind one of her hooves. "What's so funny?" "You, of all ponies," said Thunderhoof, "asking how somepony could achieve incredible longevity." "You..." Twilight shook her head as she processed the implications. "No. No, that's impossible. That's impossible on multiple levels." Thunderhoof just smiled. Her tiara glowed from within and slid off of a short but clearly functional horn. "What." "Are you familiar with Cranke's Third Law?" The chance to lecture got Twilight's train of thought back on track. "Of course. The amount of magic used to produce sufficiently advanced technology is indeterminate. Meaning that technical refinement can theoretically replicate any..." She trailed off as she reached the implied conclusion. "You can't possibly expect me to believe that you ascended by smuggling in technology from the human world." Thunderhoof shrugged her wings and lit her horn. "The only thing I expect you to believe is the evidence of your eyes. When I first came out of the portal with technical manuals in tow, I also had a horn." She gave a sheepish smile. "The other changes came later." "And Celestia never noticed." "Why would she?" Thunderhoof said with a tilt of her head. "Why would she?" Twilight narrowed her eyes. "So, you just came out of the portal with a horn? No light show, no fanfare, no cleaning the carbonized remains of your former body off of the library floor?" "Not all ascensions are as... dramatic as yours, Twilight." Twilight scowled, but ceded the point. For now. It wasn't as though she had a lot of data to work with there. "So where is this portal?" Thunderhoof smiled. "You didn't think I brought you here at random, did you?" She touched her horn to the lake, sending out a single, massive ripple. In that ripple's wake, the reflection of Galloping Grove was replaced by a different, taller skyline. The moment was only slightly undercut by a swan's legs poking out of the lake's surface, then retracting back to the distorted sound of distressed honking. Twilight all but physically picked her jaw up off of the ground. She reached into the water. Through the much less dramatic ripples, she could see a hand on the other side of the surface. She waved her fingers about, noting that her skin had turned an even paler peach than the human Applejack or Flash Sentry. "The entire lake is a portal." "Indeed," Thunderhoof said as if she were discussing some novel new magical appliance. "It used to be much smaller, but it responded very well to expansion efforts." Caution brought swift death to curiosity. Twilight took several steps back from the edge, shaking off her foreleg as she said, "I see." Thunderhoof frowned. "Afraid I'm going to knock you in?" "The thought did cross my mind, yes." That got a sigh. "Twilight, I want nothing more sinister than to work with you. We want the same thing. Together, we could spread friendship and Harmony across this world and others!" Thunderhoof looked off into some wondrous fantasy future. "Imagine it, a society uniting multiple universes, guided by your hoof." Twilgiht narrowed her eyes. "And yours." "Well, I would expect some degree of input." "And not Celestia's." Thunderhoof rolled her eyes. "I have no quarrel with Celestia. She was right; overt conquest would destroy everything I'd hoped to cultivate." "As opposed to covert conquest." "Is that not what you've done with the yaks? The dragons? The changelings?" "I—" Twilight stopped as pieces came together in her mind. The glazed expressions, the dulled minds, the loyalist afraid of a "Friendship Beam." "Of course." Thunderhoof beamed, though thankfully without any capital letters. "It is wonderful to hear you understand—" "Not that. It all makes sense now." Twilight planted her hooves and pointed her horn at Thunderhoof. "Everything fits together perfectly." "I'm... not sure I understand." Twilight lit her horn, preparing a spell she had developed with Thorax's help. As she cast it, she said, "I should have known you'd have a side project like this, Chrysalis." Once the spell struck Thunderhoof, her body went up in flames, just as Twilight had expected... except the flames were magma red rather than acid green. Once they died down, they still revealed a changeling queen, but those parts of the queen's porous carapace that weren't black followed the same color scheme. Between that, the close-cropped mane and tail, and the furious snarl, Twilight realized just how badly she'd just messed up. "Chrysalis?" scoffed the changeling, whose horn really did bend like a lightning bolt. "Chrysalis is a brainless dolt! I am Queen Photuris, the greatest ally Equestria never knew it had!" Twilight passed through several emotions in quick succession: Surprise, of course. Then relief that she'd finally found something that made this all make sense. Then concern that her reaction to unmasking an unreformed, irate changeling queen was relief. "Um... sorry?" Photuris quivered with rage from horn to tail. One of her eyelids twitched as she forced words out through gritted teeth. "I suppose I can assume that you're not interested in helping me?" "Definitely not," said Twilight, still sorting out how she felt about this revelation. That conflict resolved itself quickly, because standing in front of a pouncing changeling queen does wonders for mental clarity. A quick teleport three feet to the right left Photuris eating dirt. Twilight then took off, not caring which way she went so long as it took her away from Galloping Grove. The fuchsia-eyed swarm of unreformed changeling drones rising in front of her didn't seem to care much for that idea. Twilight sped forward anyway, a spell charging on her horn. Just like with Nightmare Moon, she'd get them to commit, then teleport behind them. This time, she'd just keep going. Then a thin beam struck her from below, and the teleport unraveled before she could even cast it. "You're not getting away with that twice, Sparkle!" Photuris cried as she rose. Twilight banked left. This was hardly her first encounter with a dimensional anchor, though this time there were far higher stakes than the kitchen cookie jar. She didn't have the time to dispel it, so she'd have to head back to the town proper. No matter how placid the townsponies were, they'd still react to a changeling swarm. Sure, said her inner critic. A changeling swarm that could compel them to forget about the disruption and go about their days, blissfully radiating love none the wiser. Twilight pressed on anyway, dodging diving drones and horn blasts alike. It wasn't like the forest was any better. One shot nailed her left wing at the base, turning flapping into agony. Twilight gritted her teeth and went into a glide, shedding far too much altitude with every evasive maneuver as Galloping Grove came into view. Yes, the forest definitely wasn't any better. "The forest might have been better." Twilight's plan had started off strongly. The changelings had fallen back, she'd been able to land and trot into town, and the townsponies seemed at best mildly interested in the mare with the scorched wing. Then chimes and buzzes sounded across the town, prompting ponies to take out their phones, gasp, and canter off. "What's going on?" she'd asked one mare. "Emergency alert! Everyone needs to get in their homes, lock the doors, and close the blinds!" Within moments, Twilight was the only pony still outside, not counting any and all changelings who could now pursue her with impunity. She galloped with no real goal in mind beyond staying a moving target. She tried extending her bad wing. Just spreading it sent agony dancing along her nerves. "Now I know how Daring Do feels," she said, fighting back a hiss. "Wonder if she's been through here yet." A droning buzz approached, all too similar to what had filled the air during the wedding invasion. Twilight looked around. Aside from a few storefront awnings, everywhere was visible from the air. Any hideaways were no longer an option after the emergency alert, which itself said volumes about the degree of control Photuris had over the city. Twilight made for the densest part of the town, going for alleyways that would minimize the effectiveness of swarm tactics. But even that might not help. It all boiled down to one simple difference. Chrysalis was ultimately a bully who had wielded her troops like a cudgel. But Photuris was a trained military officer, one who had actually thought about how to use her forces effectively. The buzz swept overhead, shadows speckling the sky and ground alike. None dove down like in the Canterlot invasion, but a trio soon sprang out from behind a newsstand. Then the newsstand itself flashed into deep red flames and resolved itself as another pair of ambushers. Twilight made quick work of them. She still couldn't teleport or get any altitude, but horn blasts, quick hoofwork, and a few bucks to faceplates did the job. It also worked for the next group. And the next. And the next. The one after that managed to tackle her to the ground, forcing her to burn a lot of magic in an expanding shield before subduing them. The one after that... After a short eternity, Twilight staggered into an alley, sides heaving and limp wings dragging. She collapsed onto a nice soft garbage bag, trying very hard not to think about why it was soft. One hoof reached for her earring. "Okay. Got a moment to myself. Time for the con—" "Twilight!" said a familiar voice. She straightened up as best she could. "Moondancer?" Further in the alley, Moondancer's head poked out from behind a trash can. She waved. "Over here!" "What are you—" Twilight stopped, groaned, and blasted Moondancer in the face. She winced at the burning sensation in her horn as much as the realization. "Right, changelings." A bolt hit Twilight in the back of the head. She tipped forward, and halfway into the garbage bag's embrace, the sensation of falling became a cross between a falling accordion glissando and a deepening shade of blue. Just before her senses grew so scrambled that she passed out from sheer incoherence, Twilight thought to herself, "I can't believe I fell for that."