“So, things may have gone a little awry there,” I said over the phone.
“I told you it was risky. How is she doing?” Mom asked.
I looked back over my shoulder to see Dash still shaking and wrapped up in a blanket like a cocoon on the couch, watching anime with the boys. Not sure she’s paying attention, but the kids definitely aren’t. She won’t even look at Haze.
“Not well. Would you mind, like, getting something from the bakery and swinging by? She doesn’t like pie, and her favorite flavors are cherry and chocolate.”
Mom sighed, said something to somepony nearby, then came back to the phone. “I’m still with Mr. Sandwhich and his wife. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Thanks.”
“Forty years old and I’m bailing your ass out all over again. You’re lucky I like that little clown so much.”
“Yeah, yeah, see you later.”
I dropped the phone to let it hang on my neck, then prepared myself for another round of, ‘Honey, are you okay?’ Things went so well with Mom, I thought maybe I could work the same trick on Dash. The plan was right, Haze did his part excellently… but I misjudged how hard this would hit Dash.
“Prism, scoot over.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He moved to the armchair, and I sat myself on the other side of Dash.
“Come on, Mom, this is your favorite part!” Haze exclaimed, “The next episode is the battle scene where the two best friends finally realize they’re fighting each other!”
“Uh-huh…” she moaned. Which, of course, is, like, all the response we’ve been able to get out of her in the hour since we’ve been home.
“Cavalry is on the way, boys. It’s gonna be a long hour.”
Haze let the enthusiasm die on his face and sank back into the couch against his mother. “Oh thank the Goddess. I don’t know what’s worse, seeing Mom like this, or really not knowing what the hell happened.”
“I mean, I would tell you at this point—”
“No!” Dash screamed. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t! You promised! You can’t, you can’t!” She shook me hysterically for a moment, wrapped herself around Haze, and then started to cry again. Loudly, and ugly. I couldn’t even hear the music from the show's ending.
By the time autoplay cycled to the next episode, Dash had sunken back into her cocoon again, looking like a dead pony.
“But that keeps happening. If the cavalry doesn’t break her out of this, I’m calling in the big guns.” And if I did, Mrs. Windy would be some kind of pissed off. If anypony is capable of reaching down into the depths and dragging Dash out of shit like this, it’s her own mother, but that’s going to require a lot of favors and, even if she does get Dash back to normal, there’s no way it’ll end up with her ever saying anything about the fall to Haze. If anything, she’ll probably close herself off and pretend like it never happened, deny any mention of it, react violently every time it’s brought up. Course, I was wrong today, so maybe I’d be wrong then too, but maybe Mom is the real answer here, and I don’t have to get magic involved to get her here in a reasonable amount of time. Dash still has a job to return to on Monday.
“It’s you, Mountain Glow, in that roboknight, isn’t it!?” the deuteragonist shouted from his red robot.
The scene was silent for a moment. “That’s right, After Burner. It’s me.”
“How could you side with them!? They hate your very existence; they loathe you, they loathe us! Don’t you realize they’re just using you!? They know you’re better than them, yet they’re making you fight like this! Why, Mountain Glow, why!?”
The red robot charged with his beam saber drawn. A clash between blue and red, one crying and wild, one somber and silent in the flashing lights.
“I know that, After Burner. But… they’re not all bad. And you, the independence movement… you attacked innocent ponies and destroyed a colony. How many lives had to be lost for your freedom!? And what had they done to oppress you!? Was it their fault these two foolish governments went to war over a question of genetics!? What is the point of all this death!?”
The red robot hesitated, and the blue one, in a quick stroke taking advantage of that moment, slashed right through the armor and joint for his sword hoof. Forced down to his last option, the red robot switched hooves, drawing his final beam saber.
“Damn you, Mountain Glow, damn you! They were part of it! They were the very ponies who said they’d remain neutral! But while they lied to our faces, they were developing weapons for the Federation! The very roboknight you pilot is one of them! There were no innocents! They were all guilty!”
After Burner charged forward again, but was repelled when Mountain glow drew his second beam saber, catching his opponent’s blade between both of his and forcing him away.
“After Burner… I know you don’t believe that. You’re trying to justify it, but deep in your heart, you know you can’t settle with that. You were always too soft for things like this. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be fighting at all. Come on, After Burner. Let’s go home. Let’s… stop all this and go back to the way things were.”
“You know that can never happen! Damn it, Mountain Glow, why are you here!?”
A final charge, and After Burner’s robot was dismembered. The better pilot remained unharmed. “It’s over, After Burner.”
Bleeding in his robot as it malfunctioned, the engine preparing to explode, After Burner sent out his distress signal.
“It will never be over, Mountain Glow! Not until the Federation is destroyed and Equestria is ours once again! The Enhanced will take back the planet and all the lower ponies will be eradicated in the process! You may have defeated me here, but we will not stop! I will kill you, Mountain Glow, just you wait! Just you wait!”
Beams shot across space, forcing Mountain Glow to back off as After Burner’s allies came to retrieve him.
“Mountain Glow, fall back! If you stay there, you’ll be swarmed! We’ve accomplished our mission here; return to the ship at once!”
The young stallion slammed his hoof down at the controls. “Damn it, damn it all! Why… does it have to be this way?”
“We once were as one, but now nothing remains
Even in twilight, the colors have all changed~”
I rubbed at my temples as the ending song for this episode played. “Prism, don’t you have something, I don’t know, happier we could watch?”
“Come on, Dad, I picked this out because it was Mom’s favorite! I mean, I like Roboknights: Seed too, but Roboknights is kinda famous for being tragic. The conflict between Mountain Glow and After Burner is what makes this series so good in the first place. Not that they didn’t ruin it in the second season, but this one is still good if we pretend the second doesn’t exist.”
“I mean, Seed 2 is garbage, but you gotta admit, the main Roboknights are awesome in that one,” Haze chimed in. “After Burner’s knight would be so cool if it didn’t have that stupid horn jutting out of its face like a mile up and those weird clown hooves. I mean, Mountain Glow’s knight is cool too, but the designs from the older shows are just better, ya know? If I’m going to blow my allowance on a new kit, it’s gotta look good, and better than the Seed 1 kits.”
Prism huffed. “Oh, you know The Strike and The Freedom are top tier knights.”
“Okay, that’s like two suits that aren’t recolors of older designs out of, what, twenty or so unique suits and another ten grunt suits? Come on, you own a model of, like, everything from the original Roboknights; don’t give me that.”
It was true, I paid for all of them. ‘Dad, Dad! This is the random Roboknight the principality used in episode whatever that never shows up again and they only made this one specific toy for! Will you spend fifty bits on a twenty bit model to get it for me from overseas?’ And so it goes.
“Nothing will ever be as cool as the Wing Zero…” Dash mumbled, barely audible in her zombie voice.
Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.
“Ugh, but Wing is trash!” Prism moaned. “I could’ve written a better show than Wing, and we all know what my grades are like!”
Damn it.
“It’s not… that bad.”
“It is, Mom, it really is. You know, it was supposed to be some reverse harem shojo show in its original concept, but that didn’t do well with the audience reviews, so they corrected course midway, taking that absolutely ridiculous pacifism angle. IN A SHOW ABOUT GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS! Hey guys, I’ve got a great plan! Let’s not coordinate at all and try to get the whole world to unite and disarm by forcing it to happen with superior weapons! And then, better yet, let’s make some random teenage girl the queen of the world, too, with no forethought at all! That’s what the dark, gritty Roboknights series everypony loves is all about, right!? RIGHT!? Goddess, if ZZ weren’t totally canon and just as shitty as or more shitty than Wing, I don’t know if I could bring myself to keep watching this stuff. We need quality Roboknights. I’m gonna go get the one about the orphans.”
Great, now he’s going to get the saddest one.
I put a hoof on his shoulder before he could get too far. “If it has to be Roboknights, can’t we just watch the silly tournament one? Or even Wing, for your mom.”
Prism frowned at me. “I’m not putting myself through that again.”
“Prism, buddy. Please. For her.”
“I can’t do Wing, Dad. It’s just too stupid. It’s, like, actual torture.”
“Guys, shut up, the next episode is starting,” Dash grumbled.
“Though I can’t fly,
I’ll give you my wings to soar~”
Raising his snout, Prism smirked. “See? Told you it’d work.”
“Whatever.” I married such a tomboy. Oh well, I suppose it’s better that she can relate to her boys so well. It could be worse. I could’ve been stuck in a relationship like Dad’s. One of these days, I’m going to have to get the real story out of him. Poor guy.
But for now, I have to sit here and watch sad shows about war and broken friendships until Mom arrives. Personally, I don’t care one way or another about this stuff. Truth be told, I like the one the boys hate, if only because that… well, really bad protagonist reminds me of myself back in my academy days. Lovestruck, little more than a newbie with no record, and with far and few opportunities to prove himself between: I can relate all too well. The show is still crap because of stupid plot contrivances, but still. Really, all the shows with the young ensigns growing into leadership positions get to me. I was more like the bad protagonist, but I ended up living like the giga-chad protagonist who literally stole away an enemy pilot and carried her off to make a life with her after the war.
I wonder if he had to deal with some weird traumatic event later on with his second kid? Maybe. That timeline kinda sucks for normal ponies. War breaks out every ten years or so with the same old flames burning hot again. Nuclear attacks, dropping asteroids and space colonies on the planet to ruin it. Hard to raise kids in a world that keeps getting set on fire.
Three episodes later, Dash had crept out of her cocoon a bit more since, apparently, Prism knows his mother better than I do, and she was getting into arguments with him and Haze about which Roboknights would be more or less powerful than her beloved Wing Zero. Really, I’m pretty sure she just likes it because the robot has literal feathers on it… for some reason. I spent three hundred bits and a dozen days building her big model of that thing. So many pieces, so many wires, and those awful, awful screws…
My phone rang as the credits song started to play for the third episode, and I was beginning to wonder where Mom was. It was her, of course.
“Hey, where are you? I thought you said you’d be here in an hour.”
“I am here. There was traffic, and Mrs. Pie insisted she make a special cake just for your wife. Will you open the door already? I’ve got my hooves full just trying to carry this thing.”
“Alright, alright.” I hung up the phone and then went to open the front door. Sure enough, there was Mom with a big cake box on her back. She passed it off to me, and I let her inside. “Geez, Pinkie really went hard for this one, huh?”
“I’ll say. More surprised she managed to make something that crazy in fifteen minutes. I suppose when you have all kinds of cake bases lying around, it isn’t all that hard, but still.”
“Ugh, who did you bring here?” Dash complained, loudly. “I don’t want to see anypony; we’re watching Roboknights!”
I sighed. “Dash, Mom. Mom, Dash. Take a seat, why don’t you? I’ll go put this on plates for everypony.”
Dash blinked. For the first time since we got home, her attention was nowhere near the TV. “What? Mom? You mean, like the mare you wouldn’t tell me about?”
“He had his reasons,” Mom intercepted. She strode into the living room and held a hoof out in front of Dash. “Hi there. I’m Downy Snow, Soarin’s mother.”
In a different kind of daze, Dash shook the hoof. “Uh, Rainbow Dash. His wife. Uh.” She turned to me for help. “Dude, what? When? Why? How?”
“Oh, this is my fault,” Prism said. “I caught Dad out in a lie, then we ended up going to see her the day after you went to Cloudsdale. They had some stuff to get over, but they did, and now she’s been here a few times to go over this thing between you and Haze.”
“Bro, what the fuck! You’ve been scheming behind my back!?” She was still looking at me, of course.
“So what? This mopey bullshit and your vice grip on Haze has got to stop. I tried being sneaky, I tried being indirect about it, and none of that worked. I went so far as to work out my own problems with my mother just to try and help you! I did my part, now you’ve gotta talk to Haze.”
“Is there a reason you guys are talking like I’m not in the room?” Haze asked.
“Yes, and it’s because you’re literally right there. Go on, Dash, I already broke my promise and told Prism and Mom all about it. You’ve got to tell Haze.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you fucking kidding me!? That’s not fucking cool, why would you—?”
Mom reached out and put a hoof on Dash’s shoulder. “Mrs. Dash.”
My wife scratched at her mane, irritated at the interruption. “Look, Downy Snow, It’s great to meet you and all, but we’re kinda having a discussion here, and I think I need to go beat the shit out of your son for lying to me.”
Mom couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “As much as I’m sure he deserves it, he did all this for you, you know.”
“What, betraying my trust!? Going behind my back, breaking his promises, his vows to me!? He swore he wouldn’t tell anypony what happened, and now—!” She made a quick glance at Haze. “And now…” She sniffed, her tear-worn eyes starting to fill again, the fear, the sadness, the emptiness of regret taking over once more.
Mom sat down on the couch, took hold of Dash’s hoof, and had her sit back down too. “I… have an understanding of what you’re going through here. I know what it’s like to… regret holding on to a story so important to your son for a long time and it doesn’t lead to places you want to go. Surely, you understand what a problem this is for the rest of your family, right? All of them, getting together, working with your friends and family just to help you through this.”
Again, Dash turned her ire on me as I started to dole out cake. “Who else did you rope into this?”
I set her piece on the coffee table. “Applejack and Whiskey, Discord’s whole family, Pinkie and Cheese. I’d planned to bother Twilight next. This has to be done.”
Dash’s lip quivered .“But… but I…”
Living into the mare I always knew she could be, Mom gently took her hoof and ran it though Dash’s mane, just like a mother would. “I know it’s hard… to explain something like this to somepony you love so much. You think of all the ways you could tell the story wrong, all the ways it could hurt the pony who needs to hear it, all the ways it would be better if things were left unsaid. But… in truth, that can often make things much, much worse. I’d been living a lie for my son’s sake and for that… I missed out on most of his life.” She chuckled. “If he weren’t so damn stubborn, I’d probably still be in my house smoking and drinking and wasting my life away, bitter and angry things… ending up the way I left them.”
That got through.
“Wait, wait, wait… what?” Dash was totally lost now. “Hold on, go back a step here. What happened to you? Soarin hasn’t told me anything about you. I didn’t even know your name until a few minutes ago.”
Mom shrugged. “Well, it’s quite the story, and by now, I’ve told it so many times I have all the details pretty straight. Only… if I tell you what mistakes I made, I need you to tell him about yours. I deprived my own son of his mother, thinking that was the only way to see him succeed. My mistake is in the past and set in stone. You, however, don’t have to ruin your relationship with your son. The truth can still come out, and if it comes out now, it won’t be too late to change course.”
She stuck a hoof out to shake on it. “How about it? A story for a story?”
Dash stared at the hoof for a long time. Blackened at the tips from years of smoking, dull and old and in need of a trim; the withered foreleg it was connected to, the wrinkled skin of a mare younger than she appears.
In the end, she sighed and took the hoof. “Alright, sure. I know if I don’t do it now, Soarin will bother every pony on Earth until somepony gets me to do it anyway. I just…”
She turned to her son, putting both hooves on his shoulders. “When I… when I tell you what happened, promise me you won’t blame yourself for anything, alright? It was… it was all my fault. I… made bad decisions. Mistakes. Mistakes that didn’t have to be made, but I…”
And she fell off there. “So much went wrong, all at once.”
Haze hugged his mother. “I promise, Mom.”
They held each other, and with her attention focused on Mom, we sat down in the living room for a story.
“After telling this so many times in a week, I think I have the flow down better. To start at the very beginning, it goes like this: When I was a filly, an earth pony born to an earth pony clan for earth ponies and earth ponies only, I had a dream:
“I wanted to soar.”