Flurry looked down at the map, then back up at the adults waiting for her orders. Jacques looked bored, or maybe just hungover. Duskcrest and Fierté looked uncertain. Spike, Dusty, and Thorax looked resigned.
Flurry leaned back on her stool and stretched her wings out along the wall. “We'll use a localized Earth Pony Electorship under a Pegasus Military Government below the Princess.” She picked up a pencil stub and sketched lines around the major cities. “Locals vote for a representative that answers to a governor I appoint. These representatives have authority to set laws in their area, provided those laws do not conflict with the government above them.”
Spike blinked and lowered a claw with a half-hearted question. Flurry didn't notice.
“The governor has the authority to set laws for the whole territory, as long as they don’t conflict with my edicts," Flurry continued. "They will have the authority to arrange their cabinet as they see fit, as well as dismiss any of the lower elected officials or bring charges against them for corruption. The governor can’t interfere in the local laws unless they conflict with the territorial laws.”
She continued to sketch lines. “We can combine some of the districts used by the legislature to make the electoral provinces. For right now, we’re not running actual elections, just take whoever wants to step up; the governor can veto them later.” Flurry finished sketching lines across the map with her magic and jotted down known numbers of militias.
“The local militia system is too entrenched in Nova Griffonia to get rid of,” Flurry mumbled, “but the militia commanders have to answer to the governor, not the civilian government. The Air Force and Navy will remain centralized under the governor's cabinet. The militias will be in charge of defending their cities and home territory. The governor needs to be someone that already commands enough loyal militias to remain in control.” Flurry set the pencil down and looked up.
The room was quiet and all the adults were staring at her in varying levels of surprise.
Flurry folded her wings. "What?" she asked, annoyed. "It's similar to the Principality under the Diarchy, just without the extra noble privileges and one Princess. Equestria would've definitely worked better if the Princesses could dismiss everypony in the royal court at will."
"Nothing's wrong," Jacques smirked. “Who’s to be governor, Little Flurry?”
“Duskcrest or Fierté,” Flurry answered. “It needs to a griffon. Duskcrest is local, but Fierté already has established authority and legitimacy as the highest ranking naval commander left.” She turned to the pair of griffons.
I didn’t know that a white-feathered griffon could pale in terror. Flurry kept that thought to herself and resisted laughing at the Admiral. Duskcrest pulled out his flask and drained it dry in one motion.
“I have no experience ruling a country,” Fierté offered quickly, “and you’re describing a military junta.”
“The Pegasus Military Government was a military junta crossed with a martial meritocracy,” Flurry agreed. “It existed before Discord and the Sisters. It took Celestia and Luna years to strip down pegasi militarism. It's still present in some of the emergency codes in Cloudsdale's local charter.”
"Far Sight said you barely passed civics and history," Thorax chirped.
"He was boring," Flurry scoffed.
“The coastal griffs will hate me,” Duskcrest protested with a hiccup and tapped on his empty flask. “I flew with Highhill.”
“They hate Aquileians too,” Fierté squawked.
“Both of you command enough loyal griffons to outgun any potential minor uprising,” Flurry said, “and either one of you is far better than any pony. The Republicans don't have any figure to organize around.”
“I’m needed in the navy,” Fierté tried.
“The navy is currently seven destroyers,” Flurry countered. “Half of them are damaged.”
“You think Grover is going to accept your polite request to stop?” Jacques asked.
“The navy is effectively disbanded,” Flurry shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t, we have to rely on air power to protect the coast.”
“I don’t know the air force, Duskcrest does,” Fierté squawked desperately.
Duskcrest puffed his feathers out. “Don’t you dare wriggle out of this, you Aquileian whore!”
“You can appoint whoever you want to deal with the air force,” Flurry shrugged. "I trust your judgement. Either of your judgements," she clarified.
The pair spoke over each other for a moment, getting paler with each word tumbling out off their beaks. Flurry raised her wings and rolled her eyes. “I’m picking one of you no matter what. Do I have to flip a coin?"
Fierté craned her neck to glare at Duskcrest with her good eye, who glared back just as venomously and tapped the silver-plated pistol holstered under his wing. "I'm a bandit, and you can't take the risks I can," Duskcrest said to the Admiral and gestured to her wing. "We both know it. The Nova Griffonians actually like you somewhat."
Josette turned away first. “I wanted to be behind a wheel, not a desk,” she sighed to Flurry. “You saved my life, and a lot of my sailors. If that means I need to set my paws on land forever, fine, but I do things my way.”
“Fine,” Flurry acknowledged. “Governor Fierté, you are in charge of Nova Griffonia.” Flurry shifted some papers around with her hooves and ignored the griffon’s shiver. “The priority now is getting the factories running and daily life back to normal.”
“Some of the smaller militias are organized around the unions in the factories,” Jacques suggested. “Blackpeak was a hard strikebreaker.”
“I don’t care who owns the factories, how long the shifts run, or if the griffons and ponies are drunk on the factory floor,” Flurry groaned. “They need to hit production quotas for the war; I don’t care what they do outside of that. They're free to 'seize the means of production' or whatever Caramel Marks wrote.”
“Jacques,” Fierté moaned. “Boreas help me, you’re now part of my cabinet.”
The yellow griffon cackled and slapped his claws on the table. “Of course!”
“Spike, you too,” Flurry said, addressing the dragon. “You’re good with numbers, and I need you to organize what we seized during the fighting. I want food distributed and an account of the gold and silver we looted last night.”
“What if the griffons want their stuff back?” Spike asked dourly, recovering from Flurry's explanation.
“Seized for the war effort,” Flurry answered. “They’re too rich anyway. Open up the High Hotel for the homeless griffons from the bombing raids. See if they can foster a sense of community. Mansions as well. No reason one family should live in a house sized for a dozen.”
Flurry ran down the list of militias. “The Aquileians are in charge of Nova Griffonia’s coastline. Duskcrest, your militias have the frontier. I want the mixed militias and the ponies to gather along the Crystal Mountains. Edvald and Katherine can defend the southern border with the Herzlanders. That should help limit violence along the coast.”
“There’s not many of the Herzlanders,” Thorax reminded Flurry.
“There doesn’t need to be. Chrysalis will be distracted.” Flurry slid a piece of paper over to the changeling. “Supplies, guns, ammo. I need it in Evergreen. Tell Rainbow to prepare some planes; I want transports and fighters.”
“Why?” Thorax asked.
“You told me last night that Chrysalis will come for us,” Flurry stated with a grim smile. “We gather the pony militias together into a proper army and strike first.”
“If you want to cross the border, we should use Nouveau Aquila as the supply point,” Fierté tapped a claw on the south.
“We’re not crossing the Equestrian border.” Flurry stabbed her pencil down into the map, right over the Crystal Mountains. “We take the Crystal Empire.”
The room was quiet again. About what I expected, Flurry grumbled to herself.
Duskcrest, the native frontier griff, shook his empty flask. “Let me understand this,” he said slowly, “you wish not to cross the flat border to the south, which we know is lightly defended, but to try to cross the Crystal Mountains in winter?”
“We have pegasi now,” Flurry said confidently. “They can mitigate the worst of the storms coming down from the mountains. And we know that the outposts along the range are abandoned.”
“Because no one in their right mind would try it,” Thorax spoke to Flurry. His green magic seized the pencil and unstuck it from the table before floating it through the mountains on the map. “There are a few trails we used for smuggling, but none of them are wide enough or safe enough to move an army. Let alone in winter.”
“The Crystal Empire is mostly tundra and snow,” Spike spoke up next to his friend. “Even if we managed to get an army across the mountains, it’s just mining camps and oil fields, some small towns to the south.”
“Exactly,” Flurry shrugged her wings. Her horn light up and a map propped against the wall floated over to the table. “I borrowed this from Heartsong’s crystal ponies,” the alicorn explained and unrolled the map with her hooves. It was an enlarged map of the Crystal Empire from before the Great War.
It had always been a running joke that the so-called 'empire' was just one city surrounded by a perpetual winter storm in a frozen tundra. The storm was a lingering remnant of some magic spell, supposedly cast by Sombra long before the Empire’s banishment. The territory that her mother and father claimed was rich in oil and rare metals, but small, comparable to Nova Griffonia in size and dwarfed by the Principality of Equestria to its south.
“I’m aware the map is out of date,” Flurry stated to end any obvious observations, “but the Changelings haven’t invested in our infrastructure or railways; they’re busy bleeding us dry.”
Flurry tapped her hoof on the Crystal City in the center of the Empire’s territory. “There is one railroad connecting the Crystal City to Equestria. It’s a line straight from Canterlot.” She jabbed her hoof in every direction. “My parents built all the other railways across the Empire. They all connect to the Crystal City, not Equestria. If we can take the city, we cut off the supplies of every garrison, mining camp, and oil field in the Empire.”
“We don’t know what state the Crystal City is in,” Thorax remarked. “Hive Marshal Trimmel is in charge of some research facility.” He folded his hooves on the table. “We have never had anypony escape through the storm wall. Some of the ponies that escaped nearby camps said that the trains coming from the city are armored to make it through the storm.”
“That’s not even touching the Crystal Heart,” Spike added. “The shield is weak, but it’s still there. It has to be.”
“The Crystal Heart only kept out the weather and made our coats shiny until my mother stood with it,” Flurry snorted. “My mother is dead. The Changelings have nothing.”
“They have a wall of ice and wind,” Thorax countered.
“And I have a shield that can block both,” Flurry replied. “I’ll lead an aerial assault through the storm wall. We take the city ahead of the army, cut off the supply lines, then regroup with a united front in the north.”
“You want to fly over the Crystal Mountains from Evergreen?” Duskcrest asked. He flipped the map of the Crystal Empire over to look at the map of Nova Griffonia underneath it. “That is the only airbase that can support a large air wing to reach the city, and it would be a one-way trip for most of those planes. They'll run out of fuel.”
“I know. Our pilots are already entirely griffons and pegasi. With a tight formation, I can squeeze in a few transport planes with heavily armored ground troops to fly down. I drop the shield, then we have to ditch.”
“They will be entirely cut off of support and supplies.” Thorax slammed his hooves on the table. “We don’t know how many soldiers are in the city, and the army will be too busy freezing to death crossing the mountains to provide support.”
“I cannot agree to sacrificing a portion of our planes to a suicide run,” Fierté sighed and tapped her claws together. "Princess, this is madness."
Flurry was quiet for a moment and stared down at the maps. “I am an alicorn,” she stated quietly. “I am the only natural-born alicorn in known history. It's not suicide if I'm there. I can get through the storm wall, and I can take that city. I was born there.”
“Sounds like you wish to die there as well,” Jacques quipped.
Flurry didn’t glare at him. She took a breath and let the comment roll off her wings. “If necessary,” Flurry sighed again, “I can use my shield spell again and destroy the city. That will still sever the supply lines to the north.”
“The Crystal City is the Crystal Empire,” Spike protested.
“The crystal ponies are,” Flurry corrected. “The spell will kill many of them still in the city, so I hope it won’t come to that.”
“I’m told you are a great pilot,” Dusty said with worried eyes, “but urban combat in a city is different.”
“You helped teach me,” Flurry shrugged. “I’m confident that I can hold my own.”
“A Princess has no place on the front lines,” Jacques said flippantly, “where one bullet can splatter her pretty brains all over her nice crown.”
“I will not hide while my subjects fight my battles for me.” Flurry did not raise her voice to say it, but there was something about the look in her eyes that ended further protests.
“That still leaves the mountains,” Duskcrest said after a moment of shared, worried frowns. “It’s hard flying for a griffon bundled in winter gear and carrying equipment.”
“I'm not planning on the army flying over it; we have earth ponies and unicorns. What's the shortest path through the mountains?” Flurry asked.
“There isn’t one,” Thorax answered. “The northern trail winds through a few valleys and along a few low ridgelines into Nova Griffonia, but it still takes most of a day in small groups and good weather.”
“Draw it,” Flurry ordered.
Thorax shifted the two maps so they were side-by-side on the table; half of the Crystal Empire crinkled against Dusty's hooves. Thorax scratched a rough, squiggly line through the mountain range from memory with the stub of a pencil.
Flurry studied it for half a minute before picking up the pencil stub in her magic. “What about this?” she asked and drew a straight line into a series of low valleys. The valleys were part of the original trail and connected to the tundra of the Crystal Empire. There was a small mining town nearby with a railway.
“You drew a line over a mountain,” Thorax pointed out.
“Through it,” Flurry corrected. “Tell Katherine to get those Bronzehill griffons out to Evergreen. Get them what they need to set up a tunnel and reinforce it.”
Jacques laughed. “There are not enough explosives in Nova Griffonia to blast through a-” His eyes flicked up to Flurry’s glowing horn as she set the pencil back down. Jacques snapped his beak shut, then leaned back in his chair; the wood creaked audibly.
They stared at each other for a moment before his eyes turned mirthful. “You think you can make a tunnel large enough for us to run trucks through?”
“Yes,” Flurry replied with absolute confidence. "I can cut a battleship in half. I can cut through a mountain."
“I have never been very good at plans,” Jacques said slowly, “so I won’t say if this is a good plan…”
“It’s not,” Spike jumped in with a snorted plume of smoke.
“But this plan,” Jacques kept going, “relies on the dear Kaiser accepting your ultimatum.”
“It does,” Flurry accepted. "In exchange for Nova Griffonia, I open another front to take pressure off his army."
"Anything else?" Dusty asked.
Flurry stared down at the map and didn't respond. Jacques and the group processed that. “What if he doesn’t accept?” the Aquileian asked.
Flurry swallowed. “Per my letter, I fly to Griffenheim and kill him.”
Jacques hummed and tapped a claw on the table. “You did send him an advance warning; let’s say he’s not in the city…”
“I was never planning on sticking around to try to find his corpse,” Flurry nickered. “It’s enough to destroy his capital. After that, I’ll fly to the River Federation; the border is a few hours flight away.”
“I doubt they’ll let you in.”
“I’m not going to make an official request,” Flurry chuckled, more to herself than the others. “I’ll go along the Reich’s border from the Riverlands and blast at the border guards. See if that starts a war.”
“Your backup plan is to start a war that will kill millions?” Spike asked, horrified. His claws dug into the table.
“It’ll take pressure off Nova Griffonia,” Flurry insisted.
“It’ll take pressure off Chrysalis as well,” Jacques said and snapped his talons. “What about the dear Queen?”
“When I make it back from Griffonia, we go with the war plan,” Flurry said. “I have no illusions about this. We can’t fight the Reich and Chrysalis at once. Either we win, or everyone else loses with us.” Her voice hardened, but her natural high-pitch dampened the threat.
The table shared uncertain looks. Duskcrest set the empty flask on the table and stared longingly at it. “I needed more alcohol for today,” he despaired.
“At least you had some,” Fierté muttered to him. "I was sober last night."
“If anyone has a better plan, I’m willing to hear it,” Flurry offered.
“We wait,” Spike said loudly. His tail thumped on the floor and he gestured at the maps with a wild claw. “If the Reich keeps coming, we build up the forts on the borders and keep sending out our planes. Let Chrysalis and Grover bleed each other.”
“Whoever wins will be attacking us from all sides,” Flurry replied.
“They’ll be weakened,” Spike countered. “It’ll be years before they regain enough strength to launch a proper attack; we take some time now to build up and recover.”
“For how long?” Flurry asked back. “A few years? We’re already running out of food, fuel, and supplies.”
“We’ve taken over some of the oil rigs in the frontier,” Duskcrest stated. “They were owned by some of Blackpeak’s cronies. Some of the Herzlanders were engineering students and surveyors, and we’ve already expanded some of the mines. Given a year or two, we can get the industrial sector back up and flying.”
Dusty sat up straighter. “We have earth ponies, Princess,” she reminded the alicorn. “If you want to do land redistribution, the farms we’ve set up in the frontier are flourishing, despite the terrain. Imagine what we could do with some of the plains in the south.”
“As governor, I will happily sign off on that,” Fierté jumped in. “The Princess will gain legitimacy if we take a little time to provide for our subjects.”
Flurry watched as her council offered more suggestions, first to directly her, then to each other. The voices started to blend together. Thorax didn’t join in. His ears swiveled with the discussion, but he was looking across the table at the alicorn. Jacques added some quips and joking suggestions, but his eyes never left Flurry as well. Both of them watched as her frown got more severe until she slapped her front hooves on the table.
“You’re telling me to wait!” Flurry laughed in despair. “Like I’ve been waiting for years! You want me to watch my subjects die and do nothing!” The last sentence was stuck between a snarl and shout.
“If the Reich keeps attacking, we’ll need you in the air. I’m sure Rainbow will tell you that,” Thorax said with a soft voice. “You won’t be doing nothing. You can shield the cities on the coast at night and fly during the day.” There was a chorus of nods.
“It’s not worth it,” Spike pleaded.
“Not worth what?” Flurry challenged.
Spike took a moment to search for appropriate wording. “It’s not worth the soul of Equestria,” he said, while his pupils shifted to her horn and wings.
He’s lying, Flurry realized. He means that it’s not worth my life. She looked at Thorax for a moment, but the changeling didn’t react to his friend’s words. They don't think I can do it.
“It was worth it to Twilight,” Flurry sighed and her wings drooped. “It was worth it to my parents.”
“You don’t have to be them,” Spike repeated.
I’m not. Flurry opened her eyes slowly and scooped up her coffee mug in her hooves. “I have a short list of edicts somewhere in here,” the alicorn muttered and lifted some papers with her magic. “I’ll announce a few of them on the radio tonight, like the declaration of racial equality and freedom of speech, but Josette should get familiar with all of them.”
Governor Fierté blinked at Flurry using her first name. “Of course,” she offered a bit lamely.
“The Kaiser still has a few days to respond,” Flurry continued, “so let’s stick with setting up the war plan for now. I will…I'll think about your suggestions of what to do otherwise.” Flurry stood up and shuffled past the seated adults.
“Okay, Flurry,” Spike sighed with relief. He smiled at her and moved his tail out of the way. “That’s all we want.”
Liar.
“Your shield was very effective last night,” Jacques remarked before she made it to the door. “Do you plan on doing it again?”
“Yeah,” Flurry nodded and looked over her withers. “I need to explain it on the radio.” She bit her lip. “I was thinking of going to Nouveau Aquila tonight and casting it there,” she revealed. “Go to a different city every night.”
“The Reich seemed to divert bombers to the shield, not away from it. We’re pretty sure they’ll send more bombers to Weter tonight,” Thorax warned. “Rainbow can talk more about it, but yesterday was a good night for our planes.”
“I’ll stay here then,” Flurry decided. “Does anyone want some coffee? I’m told it’s the good kind.”
Jacques eagerly raised a claw. “It would help me sober up,” the griffon claimed.
“You seem plenty sober,” Flurry whickered in Aquileian.
“Practice,” Jacques proudly replied back in the same language and puffed his cheeks out. It made the bags under his eyes more pronounced.
Flurry Heart managed half of a chuckle and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.