//------------------------------// // How we wish you were here // Story: Foggy Overcast // by Cake Sparkle //------------------------------// The princessdom was, admittedly, beautiful from the outside. Newly built and clean walls of painted and dyed concrete looked, in Cake’s mind, ripped straight from a fairy tale. The unicorn herself couldn't stand the old stories herself, but she made no attempt to hide that she was very impressed with the progress the site had made. She couldn't deny how valuable the idea Tide Turner had for Unicornia as she got to work climbing up a far wall after levitating up a few tied together vines to work as makeshift ropes. Already she could hear sounds of commotion, hooves hitting stone hard like marching platoons, shouts and commands she couldn't quite make out. The little spy pulled herself over the wall and onto the patrol path, dusting herself she quickly got a good look around her surroundings. Already making out unicorns on the streets below her, wearing crude bits of tied together metal and cardboard made to resemble… armor. They marched out of tune and kept their heads straight as they went by. Cake began to take deep breaths as she observed them. She decided to follow the two marching ponies from her position above on the walls, making sure to stay out of their line of sight and that she wasn't going to bump into another patrol.  “The empress is calling everyhorn to the plaza! Come out every unicorn!” One of them shouted while the other lifted half a rusted trumpet to their mouth and tried to blow into it. A few unicorns stepped out of their little homes made from abandoned storefronts and other tiny buildings and began to quickly make their way to the plaza. Cake found a staircase and descended down from the walls and easily blended into the panic and made her own way to the plaza. Looking up at the ‘castle’ in front of her, now she remembered. This was not something new they had built, the ‘castle’ was once a mall, a large one at that. The only part of it that baffled her was how well they did at hiding that fact. New columns made of concrete stood outside, illuminated by torches all over, and tables of candles that burned brightly. An aesthetic she had prayed to the stars never to see again.  “Yellow, entering castle now, situation red.” Cake whispered into her trottie talkie as she entered inside through a makeshift door where the fire escape used to be.  “Cake, I'm being stalked, do you copy?” Yellow responded through a small bit of static.  “Yellow, avoid being captured at all costs, fly as far as you can.” Cake commanded. “Negative, they aren't-” a grumble of static then, nothing came from the other end.  “Yellow, Yellow do you copy!?” Cake was not doing very well at whispering now. But the other side was dead, she kept the antenna up as she stuffed the trottie talkie into her saddle bag and made her way quickly through a tight maintenance hall. Peeking through another makeshift door Cake looked into the plaza, it was filled with unicorns, all of them had made their way here, all of them staring up at the staircase that had previously led up to the second story of the mall.  There sat an empty chair on the platform where the staircase had branched off. It was fancy, no doubt a throne. Then the few unicorns wearing ‘armor’ signaled for the crowd below to be silent as they pulled out their rusty instruments and began to try to play them. It sounded awful to Cake, but it seemed to get the full attention of the crowd as they all stared at the platform holding their breath.  “My loyal subjects…” Announced A pony who descended down the steps. “Your Empress Celestia has arrived.”  Cake was already fuming with rage as she looked at the pony on the platform, she was wearing a very well preserved all white wedding dress, she had dyed her hair blue and green poorly, not hiding her grey roots, but too top it all off was the crown. Cake wanted to see it as a disgusting mockery of paper, or perhaps just a cheap tiara. It wasn't, it was the real deal. Cake had no clue how she had gotten it, but now she knew where the pony had gotten the idea from.  “It is with great pleasure, my loyal subject, that we have captured… Santa Claus!”    “I'm sick of hearing about this guy, Twinkie.” Minty groaned as she held her head. She was now sitting on the bean bag while Twinkle was looking over the bottles. “But he is real, minty! How do you explain the presents, you have presents from Santa too!” Twinkle exclaimed, pointing to the saddle bags laying on the metal floor.  “I… I don't remember where I got this from.” Minty said as she picked it up and looked it over. It was a pale yellow and had little butterflies on the side. “Hold on, there's a name stitched in here, but I can't read it, my vision is still a little wobbly.”  Twinkle took the saddle bag and looked over where it had the sticking.  “Fluttershy, huh… I think I… remember that name.” Twinkle scratched her head and stared at the little butterflies, she had never seen Minty use this saddle bag before, and the little butterflies on the side made her feel sad. A sadness that was growing and growing. Minty started to frown a little too when she looked at the butterflies. “You know that feeling… when you haven't heard from a friend in a long time?” “Yes, I think I know what you mean, Minty.” Twinkle went in for another hug, trying to fight off the wave of sadness crashing into her. Minty returned the hug eagerly and they both sat on the bean bag, hugging and looking at the little butterflies. Ten minutes passed before Minty shuffled and broke the hug.  “We need to get back to the village, they’ll start to worry if we are gone any longer.” Minty said, turning and positioning herself as she began to climb up the ladder. “Wait a moment, how did you know about this place, minty?” Twinkle asked, picking up the saddle bags and placing them onto herself.  “I… I don't remember.” The earth pony replied as she climbed out and shook herself off, and then turned to give Twinkle a hoof to do the same. The Unicorn took it and was happy to see that the sun was still high in the sky, and they hadn't been out for too long. “And… a part of me just doesn't want to remember.”  “What do you remember, Minty, please tell me. Because… I do want to remember.” Twinkle pleaded, a part of her that she had tried to suppress was clawing at her, gnawing almost as it rushed to force the words, she almost instantly regretted asking out of her.  “Remember what about what?” Minty said in a slightly agitated tone as she looked around, trying to remember the path they took to get there.  “I… I don’t know. It's like when you leave on a hot plate, you feel like you forgot something. Something terrible. But you just can't remember what that something is.” Twinkle explained as she took the lead, remembering the path while Minty followed behind her.  “I don't feel like that, it's like… When I try to… ‘remember’ it makes me feel so, so guilty, Twinkie. I feel like I did something horrible. Don't you, isn't that why you’re always sad when… you try to remember?”  Minty let out a deep sigh. “Maybe you forget things on purpose sometimes. When was the last time you got a bruise, or… when was the last time you got sick?” Minty looked at Twinkle with a raised eyebrow while the Unicorn looked up at the blue sky.  “I can't remember the last time anypony got really sick. I don't remember when my own birthday is. But for some reason, I haven't been able to forget that I should know those things, Minty. I feel… I feel like I've been sick for a long time.” Twinkle slowed down for a moment and took a deep breath.  Minty walked over and placed A hoof on her shoulder. “Is there anything I can do for you, Twinkie? I don't want to see you sad anymore.”  “I don't know… Minty… I… Minty Brew…” Twinkle trailed off, she stared up at her friend with her ears low and looked at her for guidance.  The green earth pony looked at her confused, like she just heard her speak in a language she didn't understand. “Minty… Brew? My name isn't… my name is… its… Battle Brew. Why does everypony call me Minty?”  “Battle Brew? But you told me… when we met… when… when did we first meet each other Minty- I mean. Battle brew?” She now looked confused herself, the longer she stared at her friend the more she looked like an alien.  “We, I had come into the library a few months ago… I knew your name, Twinkle Shine. I asked you for a book and… you gave me that book about Tea Leaves, and when you asked me for my name I just… I thought my name was Minty.” She blinked and looked at the ground for a moment, then turned and looked at her cutie mark, it was a large barrel with a four-leaf clover beside it. “Twinkle, I think I'm starting to feel sick too. And… and I feel cold.”  Cake watched from the sidelines; the crowd too focused on their empress to pay her any attention. “Bring him out here! Show your victory to Alicornia!” the empress commanded. The unicorn guards, all four of them, focused their magic together and slowly the large earth pony, wearing a red suit jacket and tied very liberally to an office chair, levitated down the stairs. Cake felt a bit of relief they weren't dumb enough to just push him. “Now, my little ponies! Come up, one at a time, and ask Santa for whatever you desire, and your empress will make it so!”  One small unicorn excitedly walked up onto the platform. Tide Turner had been gagged and had around 30 feet of hard rope wrapped around him, he looked at her with cold eyes as she got close and whispered something into his ear. Tide Turner showed no reaction and after a few seconds the faux Celestia seemed to not like this one bit. She grabbed one of the many candles in her magic and held it over his leg. “Don't you worry, my loyal subject, Santa will give you whatever you asked him… or he will face the WRATH of the EMPRESS!”  While Cake had no doubt that this would do little to hurt Tide, she still wasn't going to let him get tortured for any longer than she had too, quickly channeling her magic she untied the ropes and casted a invisibility spell onto the earth pony.  “W- WHAT! No! This, this cannot be!” The Empress tossed the candle in her magic as she began to flail around and kick her hooves against the floor in rage. Already little whispers in the crowd began to form, some little ones started to cry believing that they had just lost Santa forever. Surely now he would never bring them presents after such actions. Everypony seemed to be regretting what they had done, except for the little unicorn who had gone up to ask Santa for something. Cake stifled a giggle as she watched Tide give the little mare what she had asked for, a hug. Then Tide Turner quickly ran up the stairs before some pony might have noticed the shimmering light of his presence.  Empress Celestia looked over her crowd of ponies and took a few steps back. “Y- your Empress will fix this! She just needs some time to think. Do not disturb me!” She very quickly trotted back up the stairs and towards her inner sanctum of the mall using the opposite staircase Tide Turner was climbing. Cake watched the little ponies slowly make their way out of the mall, ushered out by the guards to return to their homes. Cake waited for the knights to take their focus off the platform as the citizens were busy being pushed out the doors to regroup with Tide outside of the Empress’s Quarters, Cake recognized it as some high-end clothing store, guessing it wasn't a mystery where she had gotten the wedding dress from. The windows had been covered in different colored bed sheets, and the door was another plywood makeshift that had a sun painted onto it. Cake even let the thought of the dress being an original Rarity roll around in her head for a minute before her attention focused back onto Tide Turner.  “What the fuck happened; did you give her that crown!?” Cake said as the spell wore off, now that she had a better look at him, she could see the bruises on his body. “Ma’am, it's bad. Really bad. They didn't capture me, I was jumped outside my cabin by cows, three of them. They handed me, and that crown, over to her. I- I'm sorry, commander.” Tide Turner looked at the floor for a moment. “But I do have something you will find interesting.”  He reached into his suit and handed Cake a pair of dog tags.  “The southern commune, Private Folklore.” Cake read it out loud and gave it back to Tide who stuffed it back into his suit. “Here, report in with Yellow, I’ll lead the interrogation and make it brief, it looks like we have a lead on the source of all our problems thanks to your nimble hooves.” “Always was a good smuggler.” Tide Turner said with a prideful smile as he positioned his hind legs to the door, with one swift kick the lock broke and the door swung open. The empress was sitting at a desk and turned to the noise, her face went from rage to fear as she looked at the duo. “Please… please don't turn me into coal! I'm so sorry! I just wanted my subjects too-”  Cake closed her throat in her magic as she walked into the room. She casted a spell that coated the walls and in a little pink glow as Tide Turner stepped in and closed the large piece of plywood behind them. “Now, we are going to ask you a few questions and then you are going to go back to your subjects and tell them that ‘Alicornia’ was a failure, and you are dissolving it and returning to ‘Unicornia’ to try and appease Santa. Do you understand, Inkwell?”  Inkwell coughed as she tried to breathe again “Y- yes… anything you wish.”  she rasped as she took another few breaths.  “Good, now then. The lie, the idea. Where did you get it from.” Cake said as she slowly walked toward the mare. “For this… Empress Celestia.”  “Cows came in, they gave us Santa and said… They gave me the crown and told me to remember who it belonged to. I remembered who it was, it was… mine. I am not Inkwell, I am Empress Celestia!” She said, her eyes flickered for a moment as if saying it triggered something in her. “And you will respect that name!”  Cake shook her head at the sudden shift of confidence. “No, no you are not Inkwell. You may be correct; you are not just ‘Inkwell’ you were at one point in time… Raven Inkwell. You were an aid to Celestia, and then you became our inside mare against her when she became Empress Daybreaker. You remember it, don't you?” Raven blinked her eyes, she focused onto Cake, scanning her face for a moment and before she made her mouth wrapped into a frown then small tears formed in her eyes. “No… no please… don't make me remember. I don't want to remember.”  “Then what are you doing, playing pretend, digging up the past in some hideous mockery. I needed you; I could have gotten another site with another dozen ponies if you had chosen to not forget. So why is it now that you want to… return to the old ways!” Cake got closer now, she wasn't quite tall enough to stand over Inkwell in her chair, but she made her feel like she was looking down at her regardless.  “I just wanted to see them happy. When they brought me T… Turner I… I just wanted to see them happy.” She broke down and began to openly sob into her hooves and into the soft wedding dress.  “The cows, where did they go, tell me Inkwell!”  “T- they said… they were going to… make us all remember.” Raven choked.   Cake gave a quick hug and took off the crown, she walked away from the still sobbing empress and trotted to the other side of the store where Tide Turner was explaining the situation to Yellow Diamond.  “Cows… yep… yeah you guessed it… yeah, we’re done here… you did what?... Alright… okay I won't.” Tide smiled and gave the trottie talkie back over to Cake who stuffed it into her saddle bags.  “Yellow Diamond is waiting for us back at the bike, and she has a surprise for you. She asked me not to spoil.” Tide was seemingly still cheerful about their situation despite everything which made Cake frown.  “This is a fucking disaster, Tide! Thanks to this, we are going to have to restart! Again! And that's not even to mention that these fucking cows are coming down sou-” She stopped, her eyes went wide as she focused on the window behind Tide, she pushed him out of the way to get a closer look, she stared out the window frozen for a moment before she began to breath heavily, holding a hoof over her chest.