//------------------------------//
// Long Way Up 
// Story: Lost & Found 
// by False Door 
//------------------------------//

The halls of Applejack's Appleloosa Castle were lined with hundreds of family pictures, both paintings and photographs. There were candid snapshots and formal portraits alike. There were brand new babies showcased and celebrated alongside great grandparents. There were earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, cats, dogs and even a yak and a zebra, all of them related somehow to Applejack.
Twilight recognized many of these faces but there were plenty she didn't. As far as she’d gathered, Applejack didn't have any direct descendants, only those of her siblings but could it have been that her alicornhood had altered things in a way that bolstered and expanded her family? Or was it simply that Twilight had lost track of such things over time? There had to be at least four hundred new family members since their days in Ponyville. It was entirely warranted to be unaware of someone's complete lineage spanning a millennium but she knew the Princess of Family remembered each and every one of them.
The little plaques with names and years were exactly what Twilight wanted on everything for her one week stay in the universe.
As if on cue, a yellow unicorn colt came barreling down the hall. “Auntie Twilight,” he exclaimed at the top of his lungs. He slid on the terracotta tile floor, coming to a stop by wrapping onto the, much taller, Princess of Friendship's foreleg.
Twilight smiled awkwardly like a stage actor who'd forgotten their lines.
Didn't I see this kid on the wall, she pondered. What was his name?
“Oh, hey there… you.” She bent down and drew the unidentified colt into a convincing embrace.
“Ain't ya s’pose ta be helpin’ yer ma, Lemondrop?” asked a suspicious Applejack.
“Ah did,” he replied, still holding on. “She let me go. Ya didn't tell me Auntie Twilight was comin’.”
“Ah forgot,” shrugged Applejack. “It's not a big thing; she’s leavin’ tomorrow.”
“Aw,” he groaned.
“We was just on our way ta have an early lunch.”
“Can Ah come too,” he begged, finally releasing Twilight. “Ah'm hungry right now.”
“Only if it's okay with your auntie.”
“Of course,” laughed Twilight. “Why wouldn't it be?”
Applejack's castle was unlike any Twilight had ever seen in Equestria. It was lower and sprawling, almost a ranch style with a desert country motif. Rooms had exposed beams overhead with dark stained rough hewn wood paneling. It felt warm and lived in.
The three took a table at the shady veranda overlooking the river.
“Oh,” squeaked Twilight as Lemondrop helped himself right into her lap.”
“Sugarcube, ya gotta ask first,” sighed Applejack.
“But we always do this,” he argued.
“Ah know but ya still should always ask first.”
“Oh, it's fine,” chuckled Twilight. They must be extremely close, she thought.
Servants had bread and water on the table before the group even raised a hoof. The colt floated himself a slice to nibble on.
“Well, Lemondrop, ya excited ‘bout the big city yet? Gettin’ ta be in Auntie Rarity’s neck o’ the woods?”
“No,” groaned the colt dejectedly. “Ah don't want ma ta remarry.”
“Oh, sugarcube, ya like Wordplay, doncha?”
“Yeah but… Ah want him ta move in here with us instead. Manehattan’s too far away. Ah don't wanna leave the castle and you an’ mah family here.”
Applejack's expression wilted. “Ah know. Ah'm really gonna miss havin’ ya here all the time too. But it's not goodbye ferever. Ya can still visit Appleloosa and the castle and yer cousins will still come visit ya in the city. And in the summer you can come over an’ stay as long as yer parents and school will let ya.”
“He's gonna be the first father Ah remember,” mused Lemondrop, pausing with his bread idle in the air as if the revelation had just hit him. Ah wish Ah didn't have ta leave everyone else Ah know just ta get a dad.”
“You’ll meet the rest ‘o Wordplay’s family at the weddin’,” continued Applejack hopefully. “And they'll all live near ya from now on. You’ll have so many new cousins ta play with. Don't think of it as leavin’ yer family, think of it as growin’ yer family. When they get hitched, it means yer family doubles and ya got twice as many ta love ya.”
It was difficult to see from hovering right above him but Twilight thought she could feel him smile. - - -







Twilight sat at her desk amongst a host of paper stacks, dutifully triaged and sorted by a team of aides. She cycled through them one by one in the air, giving each at least a precursory glance before filing it in order of her own gut sense of urgency. The documents were everything from contracts to formal requests to written court appeals that had reached the highest authority of the land only to bounce off and sit in a box unanswered, some of them for decades. Though it pained her to do so, she threw many of them away with reasonable assumption that they’d been forgotten or otherwise reached their expiration dates. Some of those ponies might not have even been alive anymore.
At some point the other Twilight had decided to reformat much of her audiences and meetings into written correspondence which only allowed her to further disengage from her duties and socializing entirely.
Celestia dropped into the room with a flash and looked around the organized chaos with a delighted smirk.
“Well, things seem to be happening in here. I trust everyone has been on task since the security huddle. How is that issue developing?”
Twilight set her papers aside. “No new activity on the border which is good news. We have an emissary en route. If things go well, maybe we'll be having a top level meeting by the end of next week.”
Celestia nodded in astonishment. “It's only a first step but I think I speak for all Equestrians when I say that hearing you've suddenly decided to take this seriously comes as quite a relief. I dare say I'm cautiously optimistic about our country’s outlook with the… revitalized you at the helm. My heart swells, seeing you embrace your leadership role again.”
“I guess you can say I've finally reconnected with the old me,” agreed Twilight.
Celestia sat herself down in a chair on the opposite side of the gargantuan desk. “Everything ebbs and flows,” sighed the former princess, apparently downplaying the rockyness of the last couple of centuries. “I always thought something would eventually come along and shake you out of it if we just waited long enough. No one feels like ruling all the time but I was worried there for a while that you still hadn't found the bottom of your little episode yet.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow at the unexpectedly catty remark but brushed it off quickly. “You know, things have been bad for a while, maybe we should go somewhere fun and catch up. Not now obviously, I'm neck deep in it, but some time in the not too distant future.”
She brazenly made plans and promises not knowing if the other her could or would keep them but she had nothing to lose by talking her up and making her go big. So much of everything she was doing here would be ultimately meaningless if her other self didn't find the inspiration to lead again. She hoped things were going well for her. They hadn't met face to face since switching but she supposed that was ultimately a good sign.
Celestia blinked in surprise at the apparent olive branch from her old protegé. “Why yes, that sounds lovely.” - - -







“I don't know why you wanted to come to boring old Cloudsdale for your extended birthday celebration when I could have taken you to glamorous Las Pegasus,” scoffed Rainbow as they walked through Spitfire Hall. “Games… Rollercoasters…”
“Oh, we can do that next time,” argued Twilight. She subtly eyed her friend’s uniform up and down, the crisp white hat, the stars on her shoulders and bars on her chest below a simple tag with her name and the title ‘Marshal of the Air Force.’ Her ethereal rainbow mane was kept short in a bun. The clean cut look and the tidiness clashed with her memories of the former pegasus as a carefree slacker… at least before becoming a senior Wonderbolt. But even then, she never looked like this. She didn't exude military vibes when Twilight saw her at the breakfast table back in Canterlot either.
“I just want to hang out in a laid back, natural way,” Twilight concluded. “I mean, whatever comes naturally.
“Okay,” she shrugged. “It's just going to feel like Bring Your Supreme Princess to Work Day .”
“What's your favorite thing to do in Cloudsdale these days?”
“Same thing it's been forever,” laughed Rainbow. “Watching newbies sweat.”
She magically opened the double doors ahead of them and they headed back outside. The east side doors took them out to the sprawling physical training area.
Twilight squinted as she surveyed the facility with awe. Above them, new cadets zipped through gauntlets of hoop shaped gates. Down at their level, a line of ponies were testing their stamina flying into intense headwinds generated by an array of big turbines, something like the flying equivalent of a treadmill. Other pegasi were bussing hefty weights from the cloud surface and stacking them on platforms high above.
The Cloudsdale Air Force Base was three times the size of the Wonderbolts’ academy. She wanted to ask what role Rainbow played in the Wonderbolts now if any but she thought the question sounded suspiciously entry level. She could ask the other Twilight if she really wanted to know, she supposed.
“These ponies are all in week eight,” grunted Rainbow. “So unfortunately most of the clowns have already washed out. The athleticism is still fun to watch though.”
“Yeah,” Twilight agreed absently, still looking up with visored eyes. Her attention fixed on a white cadet who stood out amongst the rest as she screamed through the uneven rings in a serpentine maneuver.
“Wow, who's that one?” marveled Twilight.
“That must be Shooting Star,” groaned Rainbow. “She's good but she's a real showboat. There's always one.”
They continued to watch as she tore through the hoops at top speed.
“See, she's going too fast. That exercise is supposed to hone control and accuracy, not be a time trial.”
No sooner did Rainbow say this than the cadet clipped the fourth ring hard with her outstretched wing. Twilight gasped as she went spiraling in a barrel roll, legs flailing all the way to the spongy cloud surface where she bounced once before coming to a stop.
Medics and an instructor were on the scene quickly. They checked her first as she laid heaving in pain on the surface. Medics brought a stretcher but the injured pegasus was able to stagger to her feet and gingerly walk away with them toward the infirmary.
Rainbow turned to Twilight and cocked her head at the group. “I should go check on her. C’mon.”
The two alicorns loitered, talking in the infirmary until all the commotion had died down before making an unannounced visit to the injured mare.
Shooting Star laid on her stomach upon the bed. Her left wing was wrapped to her body. She looked up in surprise when Rainbow and Twilight entered.
“Wow, I got two princesses at my bedside,” I'm in even worse trouble than I thought.
“Shooting Star,” nodded Rainbow. “How are you?”
The cadet's eyes fell to the floor. “It's broken,” she murmured forlornly.
“I'm sorry to hear that”
“If the gates had more padding-”
“The gates have padding,” Rainbow quickly retorted. “You crash into anything hard enough there comes a point where even the padding can't save you. If you had been using the equipment properly-”
“I never should have joined. I should have gone to the Wonderbolts or something. They'd appreciate me. I keep trying to achieve excellence here but the instructors are always trying to beat it out of me. How can you lead such a stifling place? I thought you were all about freedom.”
“I am all about freedom,” Rainbow replied evenly. “But I'm also all about loyalty. And the Wonderbolts would be telling you the exact same thing I am; striving for excellence isn't the problem, it's putting that agenda above the words of your instructors and the needs for your team’s success. Strive for excellence in being an asset to your team.”
“But you can't have freedom if you're always held back by everyone else,” argued the young mare.
Rainbow sighed. “Freedom doesn't just mean the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want. That's a foal’s idea of freedom. Freedom’s not something that we can just hope for or steal for ourselves, it's something you have to build and maintain. It’s a responsibility that requires sacrifice by everypony but especially you, cadet. When you're in the Air Force, all of Equestria stands on your shoulders. You're the foundation of freedom.”
Shooting Star grunted in frustration. “That kind of thinking doesn't come naturally to me.”
“I'm gonna be blunt, cadet; ponies who can't grasp that idea don't belong in the military. Does that make you want to give up on being in the Air Force or the Wonderbolts?”
Shooting Star frowned. “Kind of. Yeah.”
“Do you want to give up on flying too?” shrugged Rainbow.
“What? No way. I love flying. I need to fly.”
“But your wing is broken.”
“Yeah, but it'll heal.”
“You're right, it will,” nodded Rainbow. “If you take care of it and let it heal. You know, just being able to fly at all is one of nature's greatest freedoms but like any freedom, you can lose it. I bet you wanna be able to fly right now more than anything but guess what, if you flapped your wings right now, you'd just end up spending more time in a cast. And once you do get back in the air, you can't fly recklessly and expect to keep flying for much longer. That's what responsibility and sacrifice for freedom is all about. You’re a custodian and a patron.”
Shooting star looked at her broken wing but said nothing.
“I'm sorry you're going to miss graduation this time but I hope to see you on the track again some day and I wish you a speedy recovery.”
Rainbow turned to the door but Twilight lingered just long enough to see the tears beginning to stream down Shooting Star’s cheeks.
Twilight followed her friend into the hall and let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. “Think she'll come around?” she asked.
“Maybe. She's still processing a lot right now. She'll have a much clearer head tomorrow morning though.”
“Well, I thought it was inspiring anyway,” Twilight remarked.
“Yeah, I have a lot of practice. I end up giving that same pep talk in some form or another to every batch that comes through.”