Rainbow Dash took the news better than I’d expected.
“Feathering—what the feathering feather? How the feather—feather this feathering—what the feather are you thinking, you feathering featherhead? You feathering can’t just feathering go and feathering—feathers!”
Well, that certainly illustrated the diversity of the word.
After a while, she managed to at least calm down enough to string together a coherent sentence that didn’t involve any expletives. Rainbow glowered at me for a few seconds, then threw up her hooves and gave a frustrated scream. “It's official! You've truly gone and banged your brains out! That's the only possible explanation! I knew it’d happen one day!” She let out a loud, exasperated groan. “Or is Discord back? ‘Cause that’s the only other thing that could explain why you’re being so feathering stupid!”
At least Blossom was freaking out quietly, though I don’t think she’d have much luck trying to out-shout Rainbow Dash anyway. Once Rainbow was done yelling at me for the moment, Blossom spoke up in the sort of careful, very even tone that tends to get used when dealing with violent and dangerously unstable ponies. “Cloudy, this is your mother. The same mare you've been a wreck over all week because you thought she might be dead. You're not seriously planning on killing her, are you?” Her voice took on a slightly desperate yet hopeful tone. “That’s, like, a figure of speech or something, right?”
I really wish I could’ve gotten away on my own instead of having two tag-alongs. Sure, Rainbow would be a big help in a fight, but it still would’ve been a lot less complicated if she wasn’t here. For starters, I wouldn’t have to explain myself to two other ponies. “I ... look, I have a duty to take care of this.”
Rainbow gawked at me incredulously for a bit, then shook her head and got back to yelling again. “To kill your own mom? What the feather? That's a load of doodie all right!” Wow, even when she’s royally pissed off, Rainbow still won’t let the whole duty to doodie thing go.
I shot her a flat, slightly annoyed look. “Did you miss the part where she's a traitor? That’s kind of a big deal.”
“She's your mother!” Blossom cut in. “Nothing could make you killing your own mother some kind of duty!”
Rainbow let out a loud snort and gave an angry wave of her hoof. “Besides, you’re talking about Missus Stick Up Her Plot being a traitor? Yeah right. I don’t buy it for a minute, and if you do then you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”
I’ll admit, it was a pretty big pill to swallow. I’d spent a good half hour after finding out just trying to come up with some other explanation for everything. “It's ... the evidence is all right there, in black and white.” I pointed to the stack of papers I’d recovered from my mother’s little hideaway cloud.
Rainbow rolled her eyes at me. “Oh yeah, ‘cause if it's written down then it must be true.”
I let out a heavy sigh and nodded to Rainbow. “Yeah, thought about that.” I gave a helpless shrug. “Sure, it's possible this is all some kind of elaborate frame-up, but it doesn't make sense. Setting up something like that is just way too complicated, and there’s too many things that just wouldn’t fit with it. If someone planted all those papers, you’d think they’d report it to the Guard to finish up the frame-job instead of just waiting for them to turn up when one of her family members stumbled over them. Especially since—well, if not for my sense of duty I might’ve just burned all the evidence to protect her.” The idea of just covering it all up was more tempting than I wanted to admit.
That’s not to say that things made perfect sense as it was. If I was gonna be some sort of spy deep in enemy territory, I wouldn’t leave anything that could implicate me lying around, even if it was pretty securely stored. Hideaway clouds were reasonably safe, but all it really took to find one was enough time and determination. If I were in Mom’s horseshoes, I would’ve destroyed any evidence that I was a spy as soon as possible. But then, Mom wasn’t me. Maybe there was some reason she needed to hold onto that stuff, or maybe she’d just gotten sloppy. She wouldn’t be the first spy to get caught because she’d made an easily avoidable mistake.
Rainbow grabbed the stack of documents and started reading over the first one. “Alright, let’s see what the big deal is.” Rainbow Dash started skimming through papers while constantly mumbling under her breath and tossing out the odd expletive and dirty look in my direction.
While Rainbow occupied herself looking over the damning evidence, Blossom appealed directly to me. “So, what? Seriously, you've been in a funk half the week over her being missing, and now...” Blossom swallowed and pawed nervously at the ground. “Cloudy, you're really starting to scare me.”
Dammit, this is exactly why I hadn’t wanted Blossom tagging along in the first place. To be honest, I had kind of hoped that spilling the beans on what I was planning to do might be enough to persuade her to go back to Ponyville instead of staying so stubborn about tagging along with me. After all, the main reason I was even letting her come along was that she’d be more trouble outside our group than in it. I took a deep breath, and reached out to place a hoof on her shoulder while trying to make my voice as gentle and reassuring as possible “Look, Blossom, everything’s gonna be okay.”
“How is it gonna be okay?” A note of hysteria entered her voice. “You’re planning to murder your mother! That’s not okay! That’s the exact opposite of okay! That’s okay's evil twin brother, intent on killing okay and burying it in a shallow grave by the train tracks!”
Before I could come up with some way to get Blossom to relax a little, Rainbow cut in with a question. “All this stuff is talking about how she’s been stealing defense info, but there’s nothing about who she’s working for other than mentioning that she’s working for some queen. Any idea who that is?”
I gave a helpless shrug. “No idea. Could be one of the Griffon Queens. There are plenty of dragons or other nasty things out there that have a big enough ego to call themselves Queens. It could even be some group of nobles within the court that want to overthrow Celestia. Hay, it could even be the Zebras or Saddle Arabians for all I know.” Sure, Equestria got along quite well with them, but even countries with friendly relations spied on each other. “Doesn’t really matter who it is she’s selling Equestria to, does it?”
Rainbow stubbornly crossed her forelegs over her chest. “Yeah, it kinda does. How the hay do you know it's treason if you don't know who she's giving this stuff to? Maybe the Princess sent her on a secret mission or this is some kind of under-the-table deal! For all you know she could be a double agent or something instead of a traitor!”
I suppose that was theoretically possible, but Rainbow was clutching at straws. Besides, if everything going on now was part of some big master plan of Celestia’s, I’d like to think that she wouldn’t leave my entire family completely in the dark about what was going on. She had to know an entire clan full of military ponies might be prone to doing something a bit rash if she withheld too much important information from us.
Blossom leaned over to take a quick look at the documents Rainbow had been going over. After a little bit of reading, her eyes went wide and she flattened her ears. “Okay, it looks bad. Really bad.” Her ears shot back up, and she looked me dead in the eye. “But I still think that matricide is going way too far!”
Rainbow nodded and casually tossed the incriminating document down before adding in her own two bits. “Yeah! How you gonna explain to Alula that you went and killed your mom, huh?”
“What am I supposed to do?” I snapped at the two of them. “Let 'Lula grow up as the daughter of a traitor? Do you know what having something like that hanging over her head would do to her? And it would kill Dad, not to mention it would destroy his career and position in the clan.”
Rainbow gawked at me as if I’d started speaking in Zebrican. “His career? You’re putting your dad’s career over your mother’s life? Are you serious?”
Before I could even start explaining that Rainbow was pretty seriously misinterpreting what I’d just said, Blossom came charging in to offer her own thoughts on the matter. “You really think bringing them her head won’t make things even worse?”
That one I at least had an easy answer for. “You think I’m planning on letting everypony know about this? As far my family and the rest of Equestria is going to know, my mother is gonna die valiantly in the line of duty.”
Rainbow stomped her hooves on the ground and let out a furious snort. “Oh, so that's what this is about. You don't really give a flying feather about Equestria or your mom—you just want to make sure your precious clan's reputation for honor and loyalty doesn’t get messed up by her. What’s next, talking about how she’s not really a part of your family because she married into the Kickers? Or maybe—”
I missed whatever Rainbow was about to say next, on account of being just a little distracted by a white hoof smacking me in the face. Her next comment was clear enough. “Go Blossom! I think I’m gonna give you a raise just for that.”
I admit, I was pretty stunned at getting slapped by Blossom of all ponies. I mean, she’d just kind of whimpered and taken it when I’d completely lost my cool and said some very hurtful things to her, but my mom turning traitor was enough to push her over the edge into smacking me?
While I slowly brought a hoof up to my cheek in dull surprise, Blossom went into full screaming rant mode. “You have a lot of nerve, just writing your mother off like that! There is nothing—nothing—in Equestria worth killing your own mother over! Honor, duty, career, none of it!” Rainbow solemnly nodded her agreement.
For a very brief moment, I was tempted to point out that she seemed to know an awful lot about the importance of mothers for a pony who didn’t have one. Thankfully, my common sense asserted itself before I could say something that unforgivably stupid and hurtful. Again.
Still, the fact that I was even thinking of saying something that hurtful had to be a sign that I was getting a bit too worked up. Not that anypony could blame me for getting worked up about something like this. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down just a bit before answering her. “Nothing’s worth killing my mother? Not even the rest of my family? She's more important than 'Lula, Dad, Aunt Wind, my cousins, and everypony else?”
“Only when she doesn't ruin their careers, apparently,” Blossom shot back acidly.
Dash hit me with a glare, and her voice turned icy cold. “Kicker ... you've done a lot of stupid things, but I think you might be setting a new record with this one. Seriously, you’re really gonna kill another pony, your feathering mother, just for the whole stupid clan and duty thing? Can you imagine what Fluttershy would think if she found about this?”
I had a pretty good idea how Eepy would react to seeing me kill; it was why I had been so adamant about not letting her come along. Eepy would never be able to look at me the same way after she saw me with blood on my hooves, especially the blood of another pony. Hay, if Rainbow wasn’t okay with the idea of me breaking out lethal force on a traitor to all ponykind, how would the gentle-natured pacifist take it? Having Eepy be scared of me, or treat me like some kind of monster, would just about break me.
I was starting to get a little annoyed with Rainbow—using Eepy on me like that was a pretty dirty move, and she and Blossom both were starting to go from being shocked at some huge revelations to just being downright nasty. Either way, this conversation was starting to get me a bit hot under the collar, and I wanted it over. Preferably before somepony blew their top completely. “She was trading away stuff about our defenses to whoever she’s spying for. If somepony attacks Equestria, who do you think's gonna be on the frontlines of the attack? Which ponies are gonna be the first ones to die?”
“You can’t be absolutely one hundred percent sure that she did any of that,” Blossom insisted stubbornly. “'Probably' isn't good enough when you’re talking about killing somepony! Especially not your own mother!”
“Well, I can’t be absolutely one hundred percent certain that you’re not just a figment of my imagination, Blossom.” I gave an annoyed little flick of my tail. “There’s a lot of very good evidence saying my mom’s guilty. That’s not to mention the fact that 'Lula got sick with something nopony recognized right when she needed me distracted. The timing on that is just a little too convenient for me to believe it was a coincidence.”
Rainbow let out an incredulous huff and rolled her eyes at me. “Oh come on! Now you're accusing your mom of poisoning your sister too?”
Blossom shot me a look that was about halfway between annoyed and condescending. “Um, hello? Just about everypony was sick. Feather flu season, anypony?”
“Whatever it was that made ‘Lula feel so bad, it wasn't the feather flu.” I shot Blossom a meaningful look. “Trust me, I’m pretty familiar with the symptoms by now. Besides, I stopped by the clinic real quick before I left town—my mother said she took ‘Lula there to get checked out, but Redheart didn’t remember it.”
“That doesn’t prove anything!” Blossom insisted. “Fillies get sick, that’s just how things work. And maybe Redheart wasn’t at the clinic when your mother brought Alula in, or maybe she just forgot—it would be weeks ago by now. Besides, why would she even do something like that? Your sister was mostly well before she even went missing.” Blossom set her hooves on the ground and tried her best to glare me down. “She. Is. Your. Family, Cloudy, and with one as big as your clan is, I thought that meant something.”
Okay, accusing me of not caring about my own clan was really pushing things. The whole reason I was doing this was for the good of my clan. “Family’s more than a single pony, Blossom. If she's gonna betray Equestria and tell some foreign power how to kill the rest of my family, then she isn't my mother anymore.”
Rainbow exploded at that. “Oh feather you, if that’s what you really think! Your mom is always gonna be your mom no matter what! And if—if—she's betraying Equestria, then we'll bring her back and let the Princess or the guards deal with her. Alive. Even if she's guilty of backstabbing Princess Celestia and everypony else, you don't get to commit murder just because you don't want your family getting embarrassed!”
Ugh, they just didn’t get it. Maybe it’s because Rainbow and Blossom don’t really know what it’s like to have a huge extended family the way I do. Even Rainbow only had her moms and a couple other relatives like that uncle of hers. “So according to you, one traitor's life counts for more than the rest of my family.” I broke out the sarcasm. “Yeah, sure, that makes sense. Save the pony who turned against clan and country, even if it destroys 'Lula and Dad and everypony else in the process.”
“Yes, they’ll be upset when they find out about your mother,” Blossom conceded, though the way she was scowling at me kept it from seeming like much of a concession. “But they'll live, and recover. Because they haven’t been murdered.”
“Exactly!” Rainbow shouted at me. “Are you seriously saying that some embarrassment and a career are more important than a pony's life?” She spread her wings and alternately lifted and lowered them like they were a set of scales she was using to weigh the two options—right up until she shot me a disgusted look and smacked me upside the head with one of them. “Yes, your mother counts for more, you moron!”
I facehoofed—what was I supposed to say to make them understand that I had to do this? “It's not just embarrassment, it's the legacy and honor of the entire clan at stake here! We’ve got more than nine hundred years of—”
“Yeah, whatever.” Rainbow cut me off. “You and your huge family that’s almost as old as Celestia. You know what? Big. Feathering. Deal. Get over it, and get over yourself. What's your clan’s legacy and honor worth if you have to lie and kill in order to protect it? I don’t really get all this doodie stuff you keep going on about, but there’s gotta be something wrong if you’re preserving your family’s honor by doing a whole lot of dishonorable stuff.”
Okay, she had a pretty good point there, but at the same time... “So what, I just let her bring my entire clan crashing down?”
“Your clan’s been around for more than nine hundred years,” Blossom countered, stepping up to gently place a hoof on my chest. “Do you really think a single bad apple is enough to destroy all of that? Besides, it's a risk worth taking. Because family matters.”
Dammit, this argument had been going on way too long, because now all the stuff they were saying was starting to make just a bit too much sense. No, I couldn’t let them change my mind. I had to stick with this, do what was right for my family, no matter how nasty it was. “Yeah, family matters. That's why I have to stop her from hurting my family any more than she already has.”
Rainbow snorted and gave an angry wave of her hoof. “Oh please! You didn't care that much about your family's reputation when you ran out on your graduation.” One of my ears started twitching—why did she just have to go there? “Or is that what this is all about for you?” Rainbow rolled her eyes at me and made air quotes with her hooves. “Is this some sort of stupid attempt at 'making things right' or something? You kill your mom and bury her dirty little secret and that balances everything out? Pff. You're not being loyal or honorable—just selfish.”
Blossom nodded, then hit me with an utterly uncompromising glare. “Cloud Kicker, you’re not acting like the mare I fell in love with. You’re acting like a completely different pony, and I’m not sure I like her.”
Okay, that hurt. Blossom and I had been close for a long time, and now it sounded like she was darn close to calling it quits with me over this. Considering some of the stuff she’d put up with over the years, it really stung that me trying to do right by my family was what seemed to be pushing her over the edge. “Look, Blossom, I know you’re not used to seeing my dutiful side, but—”
“You’re damn right you’re full of doodie!” Rainbow took a couple steps forward and shoved her face so far into my personal space that our noses were practically touching. “So what’re you gonna do if we don't go along with your whole crazy plan? Suppose I say that I'm gonna tell everypony what your mom did. You gonna kill me to save your family's rep? Or Blossomforth?”
Whoa, where the hay did that come from? I looked at Rainbow like she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. “Of course I wouldn't! That’s crazy, Rainbow!”
“You're the one wearing wing blades,” Blossom snapped at me. “If you’re willing to kill your own mother for some stupid honor thing, then who knows how far you’ll go? Most ponies would put their mother above their friends.”
It was like beating my head against a brick wall! It’s like they thought being willing to kill a single traitor who was a threat to everything I knew and loved meant I was some sort of bloodthirsty kill-crazy madmare who was just gonna go running up and down Mane Street butchering everything that came within reach of my wing blades. “It's not—you don't understand! I...” I sighed and sank down to the ground. “You think I want to kill her?”
“Well I’ve got good news for you, Kicker,” Rainbow sat down and brushed a hoof over her chest. “You don't have to kill your mom anymore, because the truth's coming out either way. I’ll just tell everypony what happened.” Rainbow gave a very self-satisfied nod. “Check and mate. I win.”
“You bet your rump we will,” Blossom chimed in her agreement. “If you’re gonna insist on being so stupid about killing your mother to hide what she’s done, then we’ll just take that option away.”
My face fell at their proclamations. “You can't just go and tell everypony!” Even if I burned all the evidence so they didn’t have any proof, just putting the accusation out there would be enough. After all, Rainbow had the whole Savior of Equestria thing going for her—if she went public a lot of ponies would believe her. “Rainbow ... Blossom ... please. You don't know what you'd be doing to my family.”
“I wouldn't be killing one of them.” Blossom stuck to her point mule-headedly. “That puts me a step above what you’re doing. Plus I'd be finding a way to undo whatever damage you think she's done to Equestria. If she really is a traitor or a spy or whatever, won’t the Guard want to interrogate her or something? That’s how it usually works in spy books.”
Okay, she had a legitimate point there, much as I hated to admit it. We didn’t even know who my mother was working for right now, and if we killed her out of hoof we would never know. At the very least, I needed to drag that piece of info out of her before I finished her off. Maybe we would get lucky—since we were headed for the place where she was supposed to rendezvous with the higher-ups, maybe we could just take her down, then stick around and snag her contact. That way we bring back the intel, and tell everypony my mother died heroically capturing this spy. Nopony would believe the spy when he claimed that the pony who gave her life to help capture him was actually a traitor. The clan’s honor would be safe, and we wouldn’t mess things up for the rest of Equestria in the process.
Now to just explain all that to them. “Look, guys, there’s a way to make sure Equestria’s safe without messing things up for the rest of my clan in the process. We just have to—”
“Oh, enough about your stupid clan honor already!” Rainbow snapped throwing her hooves into the air with a frustrated shout. “Look, I met your family, and I guess they’re pretty cool for a bunch of ponies with sticks up their plots, but I really don’t care about them right now. You're the pony I'm worried about, not your whole clan and their inflated sense of honor. You may think you’ve got some kind of duty or something, but I know what it'd do to you if you went through with this featherbrained scheme.” Okay, you know Dash is being serious when she actually uses the word duty properly instead of using the excuse to make a joke even Dinky would think is immature.
I’ll admit, I’d been trying real hard not to think about how the hay I was going to deal with having my mother’s blood on my hooves. I couldn’t afford to worry about how I would handle the aftermath of this whole mess right now. I could deal with the trauma later, after the mission was over. You have to keep your priorities straight. “Yeah, it’s not gonna be an easy thing to deal with, but I have to do this, Rainbow. I have to.”
Rainbow took a step forward and very deliberately planted her hooves on the ground. She met my gaze challengingly. “If that’s how it is, then I have to stop you.”
A second later Blossom was at her side, looking every bit as stubborn as Rainbow. “Me too.” Blossom swallowed, and a slightly nervous tremble passed through her body as she added. “If you're going to kill the mare who raised you, then you can cut through two of your closest friends, friends who love you so much that they’d rather die than watch you do this to yourself.” Blossom gave another little shudder, and Rainbow put a wing over her back before returning her attention fully to me, pawing at the ground and practically daring me to call their bluff.
Needless to say, that wasn’t happening. There’s no way in Tartarus I could do something like that to either one of them, and they both knew it. They were just trying to guilt-blackmail me into backing off on the whole Mom issue, because they still didn’t seem to get that there’s a huge difference between killing my mother and killing a traitor to clan and country who happened to be my mother. “So that's it, then? My entire clan's counting on me, and you two are determined to make sure I let them all down again?”
“Horsefeathers they're counting on you to do some in-house wetwork,” Blossom grumbled under her breath.
Rainbow gave a sharp nod to show her agreement with Blossom, then glowered at me. “Let them down again, huh? So this is just some sort of stupid thing you’re trying to do to make up for not being a good little soldier. Sheesh, does your clan know that you're gonna kill your mom for them? ‘Cause somehow, I don't think your dad and everypony else would like you making that kind of decision for them.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes at her. “Of course they don't know. Think, Rainbow! The entire point of getting rid of her and saying she died in the line of duty is to make sure nopony aside from the three of us ever knows what she did!”
Rainbow rolled her eyes right back at me twice as hard. “Well if your family doesn’t know, then how the hay can you be sure that your clan would even want you to do this? Maybe if you actually asked your dad, y’know, the pony who’s out there busting his flank right now trying to find your mom, he’d tell you that she counts for more than all that stupid honor and legacy stuff! Maybe he’d tell you that you’re being a feathering idiot, and that you need to stop being so stupid!”
I buried my face in my hooves and let out a frustrated scream. “Dammit! I never should've told you two! I thought I could trust you, and instead you're—”
“We’re what?” Blossom demanded, abandoning her position at Rainbow Dash’s side to fly up into my face. “Telling you to stop and think before you kill somepony you love? Telling you to think before you do permanent damage to somepony else? Telling you that maybe, just maybe, you should be absolutely sure before you go and commit murder?”
Blossom dropped down to the ground, and hesitantly reached out to put a hoof on my chest. “Cloudy, this isn’t you. You’ve somehow gotten it into your head that you have to do this thing, but you don’t. You’re a good pony. Please ... I’m trying to stop you before you do something that you’re going to end up hating yourself for.”
“Yeah, we’re just trying to be the voices of reason here,” Rainbow added. Okay, I’ll admit that gave me a pretty compelling reason to sit down and think. When Rainbow Dash of all ponies tells you that you need to sit down and think things through before you go off and do something dangerously impulsive...
Rainbow was staring at me with a thoughtful little frown on her face. “I just really don’t get it. You really thought we'd be okay with you offing your own mom? Either you don't know us at all or...” Rainbow trailed and eyes widened “...or you never wanted to kill her at all. You told us because you want us to stop you. Like, on an unconscious level. You don’t wanna kill her, but you can’t find a way out that’ll satisfy all your stupid clan honor stuff, so you tell us so we can talk you out of it.”
Before I could even figure out how to answer that Blossom frowned at me and tossed out a question. “Cloudy. Do you want to kill your mother? Forget all about what you think the honor of your clan and your weird sense of duty tell you, and just answer that one simple question. Do you want to kill her?”
I tried not to think about that question. I’d been trying not to think about it ever since I realized what I had to do for the sake of my clan. Now that Blossom had put it out there, though, I couldn’t ignore the issue any longer. The uncomfortable truth that I’d been trying very hard to ignore ever since I found out Mom had turned traitor came boiling out. “Of course I don't wanna kill her! She's my feathering mom!”
“Then don’t!” Blossom and Rainbow both shouted at me at almost exactly the same time. Rainbow had a bit more to say than just that, though. “Nopony's making you! Not the Princess, not your clan, not even you! You don’t wanna kill her, so just—just stop!”
I wanted to. Celestia, I wanted to. But no matter how much I wanted to just forget about this whole thing... “But the honor of my entire clan is at stake here.” My voice sounded weak, like even I didn’t really believe what I was saying. Probably because I didn’t.
Rainbow sighed and shook her head, then fluttered up to put a hoof on my shoulder. “Cloud Kicker, every pegasus clan in Equestria backed the wrong pony in the Rebellion except for yours. And you know what? They're all doing just fine.”
Despite the utter seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help letting out a tiny little snort of laughter at that. “Uh, Rainbow? The clans that weren’t just outright killed off during the war were all forcibly disbanded.” There’s a reason Derpy’s family is just her parents and her brother instead of the massive extended clan that I’ve got, even though the Doos were about on par with the Kickers back in the day.
Rainbow’s face fell, and she gave a frustrated little flick of her ear. “Oh. Guess that’s what I get for sleeping through all my history classes. Anyway,” Rainbow hastily changed the topic, “that's not important. My real point was, are you so sure your clan cares so much about its honor that it'd want you to kill your own mom? What do you think that'll do to you, having to comfort Alula for something that you did?”
“Your mother's life is on the line.” Blossom looked me in the eyes and worried at her lower lip. “Especially if you're wrong ... Cloud. Could you really live with yourself—hay, could your oh-so-important clan live with it if you killed her and found out afterwards that you were wrong?”
I sighed and sat down—even though Rainbow and I hadn’t flown all that far or hard today, I felt tired. Drained, and not in a good, post-Orgy Night kind of way. “I know, Blossom, I know. I know that things look really bad, though there’s always a chance Mom’s innocent. But I can't stop thinking about everything else too. How a century from now, we're gonna be the clan that always stayed loyal ... until my dad was in charge. How 'Lula's gonna spend her whole life with the shadow of being a traitor's daughter hanging over her head. How am I supposed to handle all of this? I’ve got the fate of my entire family resting on my shoulders, and if I feather it up...”
My eyes started stinging, and my vision got watery. Well that’s just great—my family’s counting on me to take care of this, and here I am just sitting around and crying like a little filly. Rainbow silently trotted up and wrapped a wing over my shoulders. Though she’d deny it vigorously if you ever said it to her face, Dash can be a real sweetheart sometimes.
I let out a frustrated little sob and moved up against Rainbow. “It doesn't make any sense! Why would Mom even go traitor? Sure, the evidence is all there to say that she did it, but I don’t understand why! Money? We've got enough. Power? Sure, Mom's always been ambitious, but not that kind of ambitious. It doesn't fit!” I ran a hoof over my eyes. “But why she did it doesn't really matter, because there’s no reason that could change the fact that this is gonna rip the heart out of my entire family!”
“You’re right.” Rainbow tightened her wing around me. “None of this whole thing with your mom turning traitor makes any sense. So maybe we should go find her and get to the bottom of this. If she’s guilty we pound some answers out of her, and if something else is going on we figure out what it is and take care of it.”
Blossom stepped up and nuzzled me before gently guiding my head onto her shoulder. “Cloudy, we want to do whatever it takes to help you. But killing your mother isn't going to get you the answers you're looking for. It's just going to drive away the other ponies who're looking for them.” I felt Blossom shake a little as I buried my head into her shoulder. “And it’s going to drive us away from you.”
I wanted to promise the two of them that I wouldn’t kill my mother, but much as I hate to say it, I couldn’t completely rule out that possibility. Let’s face it, if Mom really was a traitor she wasn’t likely to come along quietly. If she tried to make a serious fight of it, holding back and trying to avoid using any potentially lethal strikes could get all of us killed. Rainbow might be good in a schoolyard scuffle, but she’d never gone up against a fully armed and armored Guard. Neither had I, unless you counted training and friendly sparring matches. Even then, all that training was seven years back, so I was probably a little rusty—not to mention that I’d learned wing blade combat from Mom in the first place.
We could deal with that when we got to it, though. No sense worrying about how a full-force fight with my mother would go when I couldn’t even be sure if that fight would happen or not. My shoulders shook a little, and I wiped my eyes against Blossom’s coat. “Yeah, okay. We look for answers first, then we decide where to go from there. Okay?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow slowly wrapped her forelegs around me. “C'mere, you dodo.” Blossom joined in on the hug, carefully avoiding my wing blades, while Rainbow held me, gently rubbing a hoof up and down my back as best she could through my armor. “S'okay, Kicky. Everything’s gonna be okay...”
For a while I just let the two of them hold me. Nopony said anything for a while—sometimes words aren’t needed to really communicate. Eventually, I managed to choke out something resembling a sentence. “Maybe she's not—maybe somepony is mind controlling her or somepony’s trying to make it look like she’s stabbing Equestria in the back or something, and she's not really...”
“Maybe.” Rainbow whispered back. “But whatever's going on, me and Blossom are here to help you through it, okay? You don't have to do this alone. We’ve got your back.” Blossom nodded emphatically, before leaning in to nuzzle my cheek. “It'll be okay,” Rainbow continued. “No matter what happens, I can guarantee you that you’re gonna be okay. Know why?”
“Why?”
Blossom kissed me on the cheek. “Because we're with you.”
“And because you're Cloud Kicker, one of the most awesomest ponies out there.” Rainbow puffed her chest out a bit. “And of course, you’ve got me along with you, and we all know I’m the coolest pony in the history of cool ponies. Between the two of us, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
Blossom gave a very weak little smile at both of us. “So I guess that means my job is to keep your hooves on the ground, because if you two don’t have somepony keeping an eye on the two of you then your egos will run rampant.”
It wasn’t the best joke I’ve ever heard in my life, but under the circumstances it was good enough to get a laugh out of me. “Yeah. Thank you, both of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I gave Rainbow a peck on the cheek, and Blossom a kiss that was decidedly less platonic in nature.
Rainbow blushed just a bit, though I’m not sure if it was because I’d kissed her or because she was still kind of hugging me and Blossom while we were kissing. She let out a nervous little chuckle and idly ran a hoof through her mane. “Heh, well, you'd do the same for me.”
I broke the kiss with Blossom, and just went back to hugging them. “Thanks. I love you both to bits, you know? Not exactly the same kind of love, before Pinkie gets worried, but it’s still love.”
Blossom didn’t hesitate to return the sentiment, but Rainbow was her usual self. “Yeah, well, uh ... me too. You know, stuff. Yeah.” Rainbow very loudly cleared her throat and tried to shift the topic away from the whole feelings and emotions thing. “Okay, that’s enough of this sappy stuff!” Rainbow tried to use one of her hooves to noogie me, but my helmet kind of got in the way. Unperturbed, Dash turned to me. “We’re camping out here, aren’t we? You better have brought enough snacks for s’mores, or I'm kicking your butt!”
After a night full of stressing out and not getting nearly as much sleep as I should’ve, we got moving again. If we had set a fast enough pace we might have been able to make it to the cave where my mother was supposed to be meeting with whoever it is she’s working for before we had to camp for the night. It was probably a lucky thing Mom had to go to ground in order to duck all the ponies who were out looking for her, or she might be long gone by now.
Pushing ourselves too hard would just mean that we would all be exhausted by the time we actually got to my mom’s hideout, though. Taking her on when the three of us were all tired and worn out wouldn’t end well. That wasn’t the only reason I didn’t push as hard as I could, though.
It’s not that Blossom’s in bad shape. Spending all day and quite a few nights on your wings doing weather work is gonna put some muscle on a pony. It’s just that there’s a big difference between being reasonably fit, and hitting the Rainbow Dash level of athleticism. Plus, two weeks of relative bedrest due to the feather flu probably hadn’t done her body any favors. Bottom line, when we set up camp for the night Rainbow and I felt fine, but Blossom was looking pretty bushed.
I had a bit of a dilemma on my hooves now. Back when I’d been in full cover-up mode, I didn’t have much choice about letting Blossom tag along. However, if I was gonna be operating a bit more out in the open, I had some options available to me. After all, if I headed into camp I could hook up with the rest of the clan, and getting somepony to keep Blossom out of harm’s way no matter how stubbornly determined she was to tag along with me wouldn’t be hard. While I appreciated the gesture and was glad she’d been there for me last night, the simple truth was that Blossom really didn’t belong here.
On the other hoof, while I wasn’t gonna jump at the chance to cover things up anymore, I’d still rather keep things discreet if I could. If I just walked into my Dad’s camp and told them exactly where to go, I’d have a lot of difficult questions to answer. Once it got out that there was evidence that Mom might be a traitor, she’d have a hard time shaking that stigma even if she turned out to be innocent. It would be a lot cleaner to just bring her home and never mention that for a while I thought she might have gone bad on us.
Hopefully I could sit Blossom down to talk about it—and hopefully she wouldn’t take it the wrong way when I did. I wasn’t too worried about getting her to understand the practical side of things. A day of reasonably strenuous flying was enough to make it pretty clear that, her initial optimism aside, she was gonna slow us down. The problem was that after the way things had gone last night, she might see it as me trying to get her out of the way so I could go all kill-happy. While Rainbow is a damn good pony, she’s probably not the best choice when you need a pony to exercise lots of moral restraint and authority. She’s got just a few too many vices of her own.
The conversation could wait for a bit, though. Right now Blossom was ravenously tearing into her share of our trail rations. Since my supplies had pretty much all come from raiding Derpy’s fridge, that meant she was eating muffins. Heh, Blossom was eating Derpy’s muffin.
We were about halfway through our meal when I heard something moving around in the trees. I instantly went on guard—we weren’t someplace like the Everfree where you couldn’t take five steps without running into a pony-eating monster, but there were plenty of ordinary wild critters like bears that might make things complicated. Normally a campfire would’ve scared any wild animals off, but I hadn’t wanted to risk one tonight. If the Guard or my clan had any patrols in the sky, we might as well have just started shooting off fireworks and shouting ‘Hey! We’re over here! Come find us!’
A couple seconds later a form emerged from the treeline. The good news was that it wasn’t a hungry bear or some other animal that might mess up our nice little campsite. The bad news was that it was a pony in red armor. One I recognized quite well—it might be a fairly dark night out, but that dark grey coat with the little flecks of white in it was fairly distinctive. Guess it figures that if we were gonna get found out by a pony, it would be her. Tracking and location spells were her special talent, after all. I decided to play it cool. “Hey Star, been a while. Wanna muffin?”
“Yeah, sure.” Star Kicker casually trotted into camp and found a comfortable patch of ground to settle down on before taking the offered muffin. Her silver-blue eyes looked the baked good over for a moment, then took a bite.
Rainbow and Blossom were both understandably confused by the arrival of this strange new pony, so I took it upon myself to handle the introductions. “Rainbow, Blossom, this is my cousin Star. Star, my friend Rainbow and fillyfriend Blossomforth.” Star idly waved to the two of them, and gave a proper greeting once she’d finished swallowing a mouthful of muffin.
“Your cousin?” Blossom frowned over at Star. “But she’s a unicorn. I thought the Kickers were a pegasus clan?”
Star let out an amused little snort as she pulled a twig out of her light-blue mane. “The Kickers have also spent nearly a thousand years living in a unicorn city. Is it really that much of a surprise?” She nibbled at her muffin for a bit, then shrugged and added, “If it’s any consolation, my sister Storm’s got wings.”
Looks like Star still had that wry sense of humor I’d tried very hard to encourage back when I’d been around the clanhold more often. Nice to know clan living and West Hoof hadn’t completely crushed her sense of fun.
While the two of us easily could’ve spent a couple minutes dancing around the subject and idly swapping small talk as if we’d just run into each other by happy coincidence, I wasn’t really in the mood for that, so I cut right to the chase. “So, how’d you find me?”
With a hint of a self-satisfied smirk, Star announced, “Mom put one of my trackers on your armor when she went to Ponyville to give you the news.”
Damn, I should’ve known Aunt Wind would pull something like that. I guess it made sense, really. Even before I found out about the whole ‘possibly a traitor’ thing, I’d been pretty tempted to armor up and go running out looking for Mom. I probably would’ve done the same thing if I were in Aunt Wind’s horseshoes.
“So,” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out, “what happens now?”
“Oh, I’ll escort the three of you to our basecamp.” Star floated the last bit of muffin into her mouth, and left us all waiting while she chewed and swallowed. “Your father and everypony else will be glad to see you, and we’ve got room for your friends to wait while we get this all sorted out.” She gave a conceding nod in Rainbow’s direction and amended, “I’m sure we could find something useful for ponies of their talents to do. If half of what I’ve heard about Rainbow Dash is true, slapping some armor on her and putting her in one of our patrol squads would be a very smart move.”
A scowl appeared on Blossom’s face, and her voice turned positively arctic. “So you expect me to just sit in your camp like a good little filly and not get in the way while Cloudy and everypony does the real work? I don’t think I like that idea.”
Rainbow took a couple steps forward and very deliberately placed herself at my side. “Thanks, but not happening.” Rainbow couldn’t help preening a bit as she announced. “As good as I’d make the rest of you look, especially if you guys gave me a really sweet set of armor or something, we’ve got things under control.”
I gave the two of them grateful nods—I really appreciated the backup, especially after how things had gone last night. “Well, you heard the ladies, cousin. They don’t wanna go, and I don’t think I want to either.”
Star let out a resigned sigh. “I told Mom you’d say that, but she insisted that we had to give you a chance to come in willingly.”
“Sounds like Aunt Wind.” While she wasn’t afraid of being forceful when she needed to, my aunt always did prefer a soft touch. Speaking of forceful... “So what happens now, Star? Are a dozen Kickers gonna drop out of the sky to ‘escort’ us to camp?” Sure, I couldn’t see a single pegasus in the sky, but at night it’s not exactly hard to hide if you’re high enough up.
Star chuckled and shook her head. “No, Mom figured that if I came in with a squad of ponies to back me up you’d get all defensive and angry, and there’d be no reasoning with you.” I’ll give Aunt Wind credit where it’s due, she was probably right about that. Sometimes diplomacy works a lot better when it isn’t blatantly backed up by the threat of force. “So for now, it’s just you and me sitting down and discussing things like a pair of reasonable ponies. So ... why are you pulling the whole solo act instead of working with the clan?”
I took a couple seconds to think about how best to explain it without giving anything away. “The situation’s gotten complicated.”
“So, cryptic reasons you refuse to explain to me.” Star always did seem to share her mother’s knack for getting right to the heart of things. “I’m guessing there’s no point in trying to get the rest of the story out of you?”
I couldn’t help grinning at her. “You catch on fast. Not even out of West Hoof yet, and you can already tell when a pony’s stonewalling you. I didn’t even have to break out the whole ‘need-to-know’ information line.”
Star smiled right back and gave an amused shrug. “I always was a fast learner.” She let out a heavy breath. “So, things have gotten messy, and for some reason you’ve gotta solve it while keeping the rest of us in the dark about it. I’m guessing that this is important enough to be worth running the risk that your father and Alula might lose two ponies they love at the same time?”
Okay, that line really would’ve stung if I wasn’t so sure that I had to do this. To hay with it, it still hurt thinking about something like that—the pain just didn’t change the fact that I had to take care of things on my own. “Yeah. It’s my mother. This is something I need to do for myself, even with all the risk that goes along with that.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Star grumbled under her breath. “I’m halfway tempted to just throw Mom’s whole diplomacy thing out the window and drag you back to camp by your tail. Lock you in a room with Mom for an hour, and you’d finally start giving straight answers instead of a bunch of cryptic comments that just make me wanna know more.”
Aunt Wind probably could pull that off—she’s annoyingly good at getting inside my head. Thankfully, I had a couple tricks to leverage on Star. “Yeah, I guess you could try that. Except that would mean crossing your cool older cousin who you’ve always looked up to.” Technically Star had a big sister already, but Storm was only a little more than a year older than her, while I was quite a bit older than both of them, so I’d kind of fallen into a cool big sister-ish role for both of them back when I’d still been around the clanhold on a daily basis.
Star didn’t give me any answer, and I knew I’d scored a point. Time to quickly follow it up before she got her hooves back under her. “Star, trust me, this is really important. It’s my mom, for Celestia’s sake. I can’t tell you what’s going on, not yet, but I promise you that I’ve got good reasons for doing this, and when everything’s over I will explain it. But for right now, I need you to have faith in me. Please?”
Star’s head dropped down, and for several seconds she studied the dirt intently. Finally, she made her decision. “Shadow’s teats, Mom warned me you’d try to talk me over to your side, but she didn’t tell me you’d be so good at it. Fine, you win.” She let out a very annoyed sigh. “I’m supposed to send up a flare when I find you, just to let ponies know. Red if we’re coming back on our own, green if you still need ... persuading. I can give you a fifteen minute head start before I give the signal.”
“Thanks, Star.” I gave my cousin a quick nuzzle. “Once this is all done I’ll help you hook up with that cute pony you’ve got your eye on.” I didn’t know for sure that there was such a pony, but Star was in the middle of that hormonal late-teen phase, so it was a pretty safe bet that there was.
Still, a fifteen minute head start wasn’t much—especially since it was night and all of us, especially Blossom, had already gone through a pretty rough day of flying. Even with a bit of lead time, we probably wouldn’t be able to avoid all the fresh and well-conditioned ponies looking for us. Unless we did something like split up, or have Blossom stick to her promise of serving as a distraction to pull all the patrols away.
Wait ... oh, that’s a great idea.
“Actually, cancel the whole head start thing, I’ve got something way better.” Star shot me a confused look, but gave me a chance to say my piece. “First things first, can you take that tracker off of my armor?” I grinned and gave her a teasing little nudge. “By the way, I did notice you didn’t mention that when you offered me that head start.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Star grumbled under her breath. Bluish-silvery light flared up from her horn, and a second later a tiny sapphire floated out from one of my shoulder joints. “Okay, tracker’s off.”
“And the backup one,” I prompted her.
Star let out another, much more annoyed grumble as she removed a second gem, this one hidden around the tail section of my armor. “Okay, you’re off the radar. Now what?”
Now came the tricky part. “Hey, Blossom, I know we’re a little early in our relationship for gems to be an appropriate gift, but since when have I been one to worry about what’s appropriate?” I took the two gems out of of Star’s telekinetic field and passed them over to Blossom.
It took Blossom a couple seconds to figure out exactly what I was up to. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I offered to help.”
“Well, you did say you were willing to serve as a distraction.” I stole a quick kiss from her before I turned back to Star. “So, here’s what I’m thinking: you followed your trackers and found Blossom here flying around with both of them. Blossom, our story is that I found the trackers and hoofed them over to you so that you could throw everypony who’s keeping an eye out for me off track.”
Blossom was scowling at me, but compared to how pissed she’d been at me last night this was a pretty mild state of fury. “When I offered to serve as a distraction I wasn’t being serious, and I certainly wasn’t planning on leaving you in the process.” She took a step closer to me and put a hoof on my shoulder. “I want to stick with you on this.”
I sighed and gently nuzzled her hoof. “I know, but things have changed. Besides, I’ve still got Rainbow with me.” Hopefully that should calm any worries she might have about me flying completely off the handle.
Blossom’s glare intensified, but when she spoke I could hear a hint of pain in her voice. “Yeah, but she’s not me.”
Damn, I hated seeing her hurting like this, but this was just how things had to be. It got the clan off my tail for enough time to get things done, and put Blossom somewhere safe and far away from the action. “I know, sweetie, but if we all end up stuck in camp...”
Blossom petulantly crossed her forelegs over her chest. “So why isn’t Rainbow being the red herring instead?”
“‘Cause I’m blue,” Rainbow answered with her usual level of subtlety. “Also, I’m a little too fast for ‘em to try and keep up with. Besides, you kinda suck at fighting.”
I applied hoof to face. “Smooth, Rainbow. It’s a wonder you don’t have a cutie mark in diplomacy.”
Blossom’s wings flared out a bit. “Hey, I held my own against Flu—okay, bad example.” She sighed and shuffled her wings uncertainly as she turned back to me. “I just hate being left out of this, Cloudy.”
“I know. You are helping, okay?” I stepped up and gave her one last kiss. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.” She gave me a second kiss just for good measure, then reluctantly broke away from me. “I just hate waiting, y’know?”
Considering how crazy I’d been going waiting for word about what happened to Mom before the world went and turned itself upside-down, I could definitely relate. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back before you have time to miss us.”
Blossom was still frowning, but at least she didn’t seem outright mad at me anymore. “Be careful, okay? Don’t make me come looking for you.”
“Yes ma’am.” I snapped off a salute to her.
Star let out a snort and smirked at the both of us. “Done yet, lovebirds?”
“Oh, shut up,” Blossom grumbled.
Star rolled her eyes, and blew her light-blue mane out of her eyes as she returned her attention to me. “Anyway, Cloud, use this if you need it.” She hoofed over another one of her enchanted gems, though this particular gem was of noticeably low quality even to my untrained eye. “Granted, if you do use it I’m so busted, so try not to.”
“Will do.” I recognized this particular little trick of Star’s. Ever since her magic came in she’s had a real knack for making little enchanted gems, even though her talent’s in tracking spells and other sorts of location-based magic. Anyway, this particular little gem was one of her staples—smash the gem, and it would send a message back to Star. Given how tricky any kind of communication magic was (unless you had a dragon to serve as a direct line to Princess Celestia) those little gems were all kinds of useful, especially for the two-thirds of ponykind who can’t cast spells at all.
The fact that she had one of those gems on her said a lot. Sure, maybe she just happened to be carrying one of her communication gems in case she needed it, that was plausible. It was also plausible that my aunt sent out my little cousin on the grounds that if anypony could talk some sense into me, it was her. However, I couldn’t help wondering if maybe my aunt, with her keen insight into the equine mind, had actually guessed that I might talk Star around, and made sure that if I did she could still do something to help me out.
I guess it didn’t really matter either way—I still had to go find my mom regardless. “Alright ... well, I’ll be back with my mom.” One way, or another.
With Blossom and Star covering for us, we didn’t have any trouble getting to the rendezvous point the next day.
It was a cave, an ordinary looking little hole in the ground. Well, the side of a hill, but whatever. I’d been expecting something ... more than just that. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to find—I knew from the papers I’d found at Mom’s place that it was gonna be a cave. I don’t know, it’s just that the place seemed so small and insignificant. Considering just how huge whatever was in there was gonna be for me and my entire family, the place should really be a bit bigger and grander than just some dank little cave.
Rainbow settled down next to me and put a hoof on my shoulder. “Hey, you know that whatever’s in there, I got your back, okay?”
I took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah.” I shot her a quick smile. “Thanks, Rainbow.”
“‘S no big deal,” Rainbow replied with surprising modesty. “You’d do the same for me.”
“Yeah, I would.” There was a short little pause as I pondered just what to do with Rainbow. A hug or kiss didn’t feel right for this moment—we were about to go into battle, now wasn’t the time to start getting all sappy and stuff. After a little bit of thought, we settled on the old standby of a hoof bump. For a very brief moment, I envied Pinkie Pie—Dash really was one hay of a mare.
I mentally prepared myself, and the two of us stepped into the cave.
It didn’t look much like the classic image of a cave. No stalactites and stalagmites or small, cramped tunnels; just a single big, empty cavern. Judging by a couple sets of very old, parallel gashes in the walls and floors, I guessed that something like an Ursa or a young dragon had used this place as a home. Hay, the creature might have hollowed the entire lair out on its own.
Whatever the case, the place’s original inhabitant was long gone, and it had thoughtfully left behind a nice big cave for us to use. There were a couple patches of some strange green substance spread around the cave that gave off an easy phosphorescent glow bright enough for us to see by, if not as well as I would like.
My first instinct was to keep things quiet and low-key until we knew what was going on, but unfortunately I was here with Rainbow Dash. “Hey!” my less-than-subtle companion shouted. “Whoever’s here, come out right now, and tell us what the hay’s going on here!”
After a couple seconds of eerie silence, something started moving within the shadows of the cave, and my mother slowly trotted out into the light. Her armor’s uniform enchantment was apparently off, but aside from her coat being its natural light yellow and her close-cropped mane being brown she looked the very image of a proper Royal Guard. Certainly not like a pony who was being held against her will, or was stuck hiding because of some horrible misunderstanding. “Rainbow Dash, Cloud,” she said our names casually, as if we’d just happened to pass her on the street instead of running into each other in the middle of a cave out in the middle of nowhere.
I really wasn’t in the mood for beating around the bush, so I just pulled out the papers I’d snagged from her cloud-house and slammed them down in front of her. “Explain.”
Mother trotted up to the stack of papers and flipped through a few of them, an annoyed grimace forming on her face. “So, you found my papers. That is ... inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?” Dash exploded. “We find a whole bunch of evidence that says you went and betrayed the Princess and your entire feathering family, and all you have to say about it is that it’s feathering inconvenient?”
“Yes,” my mother replied levelly.
I needed a couple seconds to calm down, or else I would end up mirroring Rainbow’s reaction. That stoic calmness was pretty darn infuriating, not to mention that her not even being a little surprised by the evidence didn’t say good things about her potential innocence. “Mom, please. Give me some kind of explanation for all of this. Tell me you were framed, or it isn’t what it looks like, just ... something. Anything.”
My Mom very slowly shook her head. “It is as it seems,” she announced simply. “For the last year I have undermined the defenses of all of Equestria in the service of my queen.”
I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as she confirmed my worst fears. “Why?” The question echoed through the cave, having left my lips before I even knew I’d asked it.
My mother looked at me as if I’d asked her why the sky was blue. “As I said, my actions were all performed in the service of my queen.”
“That’s not an answer!” I didn’t even realize I was screaming at her until I heard my voice echoing through the cave. “And who in the hoof is this queen of yours anyway?”
“You do not require that information.” Something about the way she said that just infuriated me all the more. Not only was she admitting she was a traitor and completely shutting me out and refusing to tell me anything about why the hay she had done this, but she was just being so distant. Mom’s never been all that great at the touchy-feely stuff, but she was acting like a total stranger, like the bond between mother and daughter meant absolutely nothing to her.
“So that’s how it is, huh? Fine.” I’d given Mom a more than fair chance to offer some kind of feathering explanation or something, and she’d turned me down flat. That left me with exactly one option for resolving things. “We’re taking you back to camp. Take off that armor—traitors don’t deserve to wear a Guard uniform. You’d best drop the wing blades, too.”
“Unacceptable.” Mom snapped her wings open, brandishing her blades. Rainbow and I both went tense, but she didn’t make any further hostile movements. “You will leave this place immediately, and inform none of my presence here.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Rainbow snapped at her. “You’re going back to Canterlot to answer for your crimes. The only choice you’ve got is whether we do this the easy way, or the hard way.”
“Rainbow,” I hissed under my breath, “be careful. She’s got blades and armor, you don’t. You should—”
“Cloud,” Rainbow cut me off and whispered right back, “If you start spouting off some horseapples about how this is something you’ve gotta take care of yourself without any help from me, I’m gonna smack you silly.”
“Feather that.” One thing I’ll say for West Hoof’s training, they do a good job of getting silly romantic notions like that out of a pony’s head. “I’m fixing to go blade-to-blade with a pony whose special talent is bladework—I need all the help I can get. I’m just saying, be careful. You’re gonna have to time things just right if you wanna land a hit that’ll count and not get sliced up in the process.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Thankfully, things weren’t quite that grim. After all, my mother wasn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore. Not to say she was ancient or anything, but she was hitting the age where she was getting older and slower, while I was still in my prime. Of course, there was the slight detail of me being just a bit rusty with my blades. Hopefully a little mortal peril would be enough to bring all those skills flooding back before I ended up dead.
Rainbow was a pretty big advantage for me too. Sure, she might not have a good weapon for busting through Mom’s armor or any armor of her own, but she was still a second combatant on the field. Especially as, given Dash’s speed, Mom would have to keep a close eye on her or risk getting outflanked or hit from behind. Even if Dash didn’t do much damage herself, that would create openings for me.
That still left the matter of Mom having a talent for wing blade combat. That was a pretty huge advantage, but I’d figured out a long time ago that there are tricks to get around it. Sure, Mom would win any straight wing blade fight, but that just meant I’d have to be an idiot to actually take her on with nothing other than my own wing blades.
Mom and I slowly closed on each other, warily looking over each other’s defenses and searching for openings. Mom’s stance looked a bit different from what I remembered, but she was probably deliberately changing things up to throw me off. We’d sparred often enough that I was reasonably familiar with how she fought. Thankfully, I’d also made a few adaptations of my own over the years.
Mom took a couple swings at me. Nothing too serious, she was just testing out my defenses and reaction time. I should probably be doing the same, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to actually attack. Sure, I’d sparred with Mom plenty times in the past, but this was no sparring match. This time, if I got through and made a kill stroke, it wouldn’t end with a padded wing blade at her neck and the two of us laughing, or her telling me I did well. Dear Celestia, those sparring matches had been one of the ways we did a lot of the usual parent-child bonding. I’d never thought that one day I’d be putting all that training to work to actually kill her.
I saw something that might have been an opening, or might have just been Mom baiting me. Either way, I froze. I guess Blossom and Dash would’ve been glad to hear it, but I just couldn’t actually take a swing at her. It’s easy to talk about doing your duty for clan and country around the campfire at night, but now I was actually here, crossing blades with my own mother. I just couldn’t do it—I couldn’t go after my own feathering mother with the intent to kill.
If not for Rainbow Dash, I probably would’ve died. I might be freezing and choking, but Mom wasn’t having any problems in that regard. Thankfully, she was so sure she had me on the ropes that she stopped keeping an eye out for Rainbow, and Dash wasted no time jumping on that opening. Even without any weapons, Dash still slammed her hooves into Mom’s side hard enough to send her staggering.
Dash wasn’t quite fast enough at getting away though, and when Mom sent an awkward, off-balance slice at her I saw a bright line of crimson appear along one of Rainbow’s flanks. It looked like just a flesh wound thankfully, but that didn’t change the fact that Rainbow was bleeding. My mother had just drawn blood from one of the my best friends.
That hesitation I had about actually fighting my own mother went away in an instant. This fight wasn’t just about her and me—Rainbow’s life was on the line too. Sure, I could try to tell Rainbow to get out of there, but it would be easier to pull off a foursome with Celestia, Luna, and Discord than to convince Rainbow Dash to leave my side in the middle of a life-or-death fight. That made things pretty simple—if I didn’t get my head in the game, Rainbow was probably going to lose hers. I wasn’t okay with that.
I took the opening Dash had created for me, moving into ideal wing blade distance. Instead of making a wing blade strike like anypony would’ve expected me to do, I took another step forward and slammed a steel-shod hoof right into Mom’s face. I might not be able to beat her at bladework, but thanks to Dad’s Krav Pega lessons I had an advantage when it came to straight brawling.
Mom went staggering back, and I quickly stepped up and hit her again. And again, and again. If I eased up Mom might get her hooves back under her and then we’d be back to fighting an even match. Right now I was too close for her to effectively use her wing blades on me, and there was no way I was going to surrender such a huge advantage now that I had it. So instead I just kept pounding the feathers off of her, all the while desperately trying not to think about the fact that I was beating the hay out of the mare who’d given birth to me.
Mom tried to fend me off by wildly kicking out with her forelegs, but she didn’t have the leverage to make the blows really count, especially since her hooves were smashing into my breastplate instead of anything sensitive. Her real plan became apparent when she finally managed to land a solid hoof strike—thanks to my armor the attack didn’t hurt, but the force of it still stopped my advance in place, buying her a quick moment to slide back to wing blade range.
From anypony else I would’ve suspected that the next strike just got lucky—even for Mom, it was one hay of a well-aimed slice. Her blade slid right into the gap between my peytral and crinnet, and if I’d been a fraction of a second slower in pulling back I might have wound up with worse than a nasty cut at the base of my neck. Necks are a pretty important part of the equine anatomy, and I preferred mine intact.
I backed up further as Mom worked her blades through a series of defensive flurries. No sense in trying to take her on in a pure wing blade fight, and she couldn’t keep up such an intense defense for long. Let her tire herself out holding me off. I was pretty sure I’d come out of that exchange ahead.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a very close call with my mother’s wing blade just then—to be honest I was just a little shaken up by how close I’d come to dying. But aside from being a little shaken and losing a tiny bit of blood, I wasn’t too badly off. Mom, by contrast, had taken a good dozen hoof strikes to the face. With any luck, one of her eyes might swell shut, or I might have left a cut on her forehead bleeding down into an eye. I might have even busted her nose, which would mess up her breathing quite a bit.
Any one of those injuries could be a fight-ender. Not literally a fight-ender, but those sorts of wounds are the kind of things that turn an even match lopsided. If I knew it, then Mom almost certainly knew it too. “Time to throw in the towel and come quietly. It’s over—we both know you can’t win unless you get really lucky.”
Mom finally stopped whirling her blades in a defensive pattern, allowing me to get a good look at her face. To my immense disappointment she didn’t look nearly as battered as I’d expected—her face had a nice collection of budding bruises, but none of the game-ending injuries I’d been hoping for. I must have overestimated just how effective a hoof strike to the face is. In my defense, Krav Pega usually advises against hitting a pony in their face. After all, faces have a lot of hard bones in them, and you can usually get better results from hitting somewhere else. Too bad most of those places were covered by Mom’s armor.
To my further dismay, Mom’s defensive flurry hadn’t just kept me off of her for a while, it had also bought her time to fall back to the edge of the cave. Now she had a wall at her back, which would make it a lot harder for Rainbow to flank her.
This was just getting better and better.
Maybe the smart move would be to pull back and withdraw from the cave—have her follow us out into the open, where we’d have a sky’s worth of room in which to outmaneuver and double-team her. Not to mention I might be able to throw another couple surprises her way if I had access to some clouds.
There was just one problem with that plan: Mom would have to be an idiot to follow us into the open. Sure, Dash and I could just withdraw from the cave and keep an eye on the entrance while we tried to wait her out, but that assumed the cave only had the one way in and out. If Mom had been planning her little bolt-hole for a while, odds were she had another way out of there than the front door.
I still had the call stone I’d gotten from Star. Unless I got insanely lucky or things got weird the fight with Mom would be long over by the time anypony got here, but it’s not like I had anything to lose by using it. Besides, maybe the threat of it would be enough to make Mom back down. I pulled out the cheap piece of quartz. “Mom, I’m warning you. Surrender and come quietly, or I’ll bring the whole clan down on your head.”
“We both know they won’t arrive in time to save you,” Mom snapped at me. A second later a cruel smile appeared on her face. “I suppose I should thank you, though. I admit, some of my plans did not develop entirely to my satisfaction, and the fact that you found my papers earlier than planned was unfortunate.” She turned to Rainbow and shot her a particularly nasty smirk. “However, I’m sure my queen will overlook such minor affairs when I present her with the corpse of one of the Element Bearers.“
“Over my dead body!” Dash shouted back.
There was a brief and slightly awkward pause, then Mom let out an annoyed little huff. “That would be the idea in presenting your corpse, yes.”
If not for the fact that it would mean taking my eyes off of Mom, I would’ve facehoofed at Rainbow. I was a little tempted to ask what Mom meant about the whole finding her papers early thing, but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots on my own. Hay, I’d already gotten pretty close to guessing it. The scandal of finding out my Mom was a traitor would be a nasty body blow to the entire clan. Since from what I could tell she was done with whatever mission she’d been performing, I guess she must have decided to throw one last nasty little parting shot on her way out—thank Celestia it had backfired on her.
Well, it might be a little early to call that a goof on Mom’s part—she was still very much in the fight right now. First things first: I dropped the call stone and smashed it. Even a one-in-a-million chance that backup would get here before the fight was over was better than no chance at all. Plus, it might push Mom into rushing the fight, and ponies who are rushing are more likely to make mistakes.
Sure enough, Mom went on the offensive a second later. She wasn’t going for an all-out blitz, but she was definitely being a lot more aggressive than usual. After all, time was definitely not on her side right now, especially if she wanted to have enough of a head start to get away from the rest of the clan while lugging Rainbow’s body along to present it to whoever the hay her queen was.
I parried as fast as I could, but it was a lot of work just keeping those blades away from me. After all, Mom was quite possibly the best wing blade user in all of Equestria. Thankfully, all the blocking and dodging took every bit of concentration I had—for the first time since walking into that cave, I wasn’t worrying about the fact that I was fighting my own mother. There wasn’t any time to think about that, or anything else except the rapid-fire slash and riposte of battle.
Now that I was finally in the zone, I felt my body slipping into the old familiar rhythms—patterns of attack and counterattack and careful hoofwork Mom had spent countless hours drilling into my head, just so I’d be ready for a day exactly like today. Suddenly those attacks Mom kept sending my way didn’t seem so dangerous anymore.
In fact, now that my brain had finally kicked into pure adrenaline combat mode, I realized something I should’ve picked up on a lot sooner. Mom was fighting horribly. I’d been so wary of facing her blade combat that I hadn’t noticed that her skills weren’t anywhere near what they should be. The timing and coordination of just about every single attack was subtly wrong in ways your average pony might not grasp, but a skilled bladesmare could easily see. She was practically fighting like an amateur—like she knew how the moves were supposed to work, but her body just wasn’t used to fighting on that level.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this—there was no way Mom could be fighting this badly unless it was deliberate. What could it mean? Was she somehow being forced to fight against me, either through magical compulsion or something a bit more mundane? Maybe she really was some sort of double agent or something, and she had to put up a fight against me to maintain her cover?
Whatever the case, I wasn’t sure what to make of this change in the situation, so I decided to make an effort at getting a better handle on things. I didn’t throw any killing strikes, but I started escalating things beyond the level Mom was currently fighting at. Not much, but enough to let her know I’d figured something was up. If we started shifting tempo up and down, we would’ve managed some rudimentary form of communication just through bladework. I’d know something important—that as serious as this fight was, neither of us was out to kill the other.
Instead of matching my escalation, Mom actually got worse with her blades. Before long I started noticing gaping holes in her defenses, and I saw a hint of barely-concealed fear in her eyes. This wasn’t some sort of effort at communication. I was just plain outfighting her, and that fact terrified her. Something was very, very wrong here.
Before I could puzzle out what was going on, Rainbow let out a battlecry and charged in on Mom’s flank. A quick twist of my left wing and flick of my right let me lock both of Mom’s wings up above her head, leaving her completely exposed to Rainbow’s charge. There was nothing she could do but helplessly stare at the rapidly approaching pegasus.
And then something shifted in Mom’s throat. It was a strange sort of movement, and just subtly wrong. I’m not a doctor or anything, but when it comes to basic equine anatomy I know that a pony’s throat just isn’t supposed to move like that. A second later Mom’s mouth opened wide, and she hacked out a huge glob of some kind of green goo. The goo hit Rainbow in mid-air, and she dropped like a stone as it tangled up all six of her limbs. “What the feather?”
I turned back to the thing I’d spent the last minute or so fighting. “I don’t know what the hay you are, but you’re not my mother!”
The creature smirked at me, and then my mother’s form disappeared in a sudden flash of green fire. The thing that stood in her place only had the vaguest resemblance to an actual pony. It had the usual head, body and four legs of a pony, but instead of coat, mane, and tail the creature’s body was covered in insect-like black carapace with a horn-like protrusion on the forehead. In place of my mother’s feathered pegasus wings it had the wings of an overgrown housefly, and its eyes were soulless blue voids.
I said the first thing that came to mind. “You are one ugly bug.”
The beast opened its mouth, revealing a nasty set of fangs. “SKREEE!”
I slugged it across the face with one of my forehooves, but while the blow staggered the creature it didn’t seem to cause any lasting harm. I guess that explained why all my other punches hadn’t worked so well—I was going up against a creature with an exoskeleton. That kind of changes things.
On the bright side, the thing’s insectoid wings couldn’t support my mother’s wing blades, and the weapons collapsed to the cave floor. Her armor wasn’t sitting too well on it either, though with how tough its exoskeleton was having the armor sit awkwardly didn’t give me much of an advantage.
I quickly pulled my muzzle back as the thing snapped at me. Normally biting isn’t a big part of pony combat tactics, but ponies don’t have inch-long fangs. I countered with a wing blade to the face, which accomplished absolutely nothing against the creature’s carapace. The creature responded by smacking me in the face with one of its chitinous hooves, which hurt me a lot more than my similar strikes had hurt it.
Damn. If only I had a weapon that was better-suited to busting through armor. Wing blades need a certain degree of finesse. If I had a couple minutes to sit this thing down and study it I’m sure I could find all the little chinks and weak points in its exoskeleton, but I doubted the monster would cooperate with that. My only choice was to smash it with brute force. Too bad my mother’s special talent wasn’t in the charge lance or hammer hooves.
Judging by the stream of expletives coming from her general direction Rainbow was still thoroughly entangled in that green goop the monster had hit her with, so I was on my own. First things first, then. I might not be able to smack through its exoskeleton, but there was one rather major portion of its anatomy that wasn’t armored. As luck would have it, that happened to be the very part of pony anatomy a wing blade is designed to take off.
I took another swing at the creature, deliberately pulling the blow just of the beast’s face. Just as I’d hoped would happen, the monster took the bait and chomped into my foreleg. For the record, getting bitten with fangs like that hurts.
However, like Steel Striker once said, sometimes you have to be willing to trade blood for victory. I gritted my teeth and used my good foreleg to yank on my wounded one, letting out a shout that was half battlecry and half scream of agony. The creature didn’t have anywhere near the leverage to resist my pull, and I yanked the thing completely off balance. Operating on instinct, the monster flared its wings to serve as a counterweight to my pull.
My blades sliced out, and I took its wings.
The beast let out a high-pitched squeal of agony, freeing my leg from its mouth in the process. My right foreleg was gonna be useless for the rest of the fight, but the creature just had two tiny little ichor-spurting stubs where its wings had been. A pegasus can still fight at fairly close to to full effectiveness with only three usable legs, as long as their wings work.
More to the point, now that I’d taken away its flight, I had the advantage of three dimensional movement. I got up as high as the cavern ceiling would allow. That wasn’t very much, but every bit of height I could get would help. The creature spat out another glob of goo, but I’d seen the warning signs from when it snagged Rainbow, and I knew when to dodge.
The monster seemed to have guessed what my plan was, and it chittered nervously while scampering around on the cavern floor, trying very hard not to be anywhere close to directly beneath me. A normal hoof strike might not do too much to its exoskeleton, but if I dive-bombed it to gain momentum and managed to put its body between my hind legs and the cavern floor, I could probably do some real damage.
That’s when the monster made a big mistake—it focused all its attention on me, and staying where I couldn’t get to it. Not a bad tactic, except that it had forgotten there was another player left on the field. With the beast so focused on avoiding me, it was practically child’s play to slowly herd it towards Rainbow’s position. Thankfully, Dash seemed to catch on to what I was doing, and stopped cursing and trying to break free.
Finally, after half a minute of maneuvering for position, I feinted a dive, and the creature dodged right into hoof range of Rainbow. Dash immediately latched onto its rear legs, and I dived for real. It was rather satisfying to see the look in its eyes right before my hind legs connected, when it realized just how utterly screwed it was.
Trapped between my hind legs and the stone floor, the creature’s carapace cracked open in a dozen places, and more green ichor started pouring out of the cracks. The beast twitched pitifully and let out several weak chitters before it finally stilled. Just to be safe, I smashed its head against the rocks a couple times, until I was absolutely sure it was dead—I hadn’t gone through all this mess just to fall for a possum play.
“Pretty sure ya got it, Cloud,” Rainbow grumbled, having resumed her struggle to free herself from the adhesive green goo. “So, do ya think you could get me outta this stuff? I’m kinda stuck here, and this thing’s kinda bleeding on me and getting its guts in some really awkward places.”
“Yeah, yeah.” A couple of quick but carefully measured slices of my blades cut Dash free and restored basic mobility, though she wasn’t going to be flying anywhere until she had her feathers thoroughly preened.
“Thanks.” Dash looked down at the beast and idly kicked its corpse. “Okay, so if the thing we thought was your mom was actually some sort of shape-shifting bug-monster thing, then where the hay is your real mom anyway?”
That was a damn good question. “Okay, let’s search the area and—” A stab of pain from my foreleg as the adrenaline started wearing off forced me to reassess my priorities. “Okay, let’s get a bandage on my leg, and then we can start searching.”
For the record, bandaging your own foreleg is pretty hard to do right. Rainbow tried to help, but she doesn’t exactly have a light touch on the best of days, and with all the sticky goo and bug guts covering her I could just see the potential for all kinds of disaster. Fortunately, a team of ponies from Mom’s Machwing Company showed up when we were about halfway through the process, and one of the pegasi had enough fieldcraft to get the bandage on for me while the others went about securing the area.
Once I was bandaged up the team leader, a sergeant judging by his insignia, hesitantly trotted over. His demeanour instantly put me on edge—he was just too subdued for a situation like this. “Ma’am. You’re Lieutenant Cloud Kicker, the Major’s daughter, right?”
Wow. I don’t think anypony had ever actually addressed me by my technical military rank that didn’t actually count for anything before. I got even more apprehensive. He was being formal and solemn. “Yeah.” I couldn’t keep a quiver out of my voice as I asked. “Why?”
He said exactly what I was hoping he wouldn’t. “There’s something you need to see.”
I didn’t want to see it. Celestia, I didn’t. But at the same time, I knew I had to. I’d guessed as much ever since I realized the thing pretending to be my mother wasn’t her, but I didn’t want it to be true. Maybe these shapeshifter things needed to keep the original alive for some reason? Like, to keep the disguise up or something. It was possible, right?
I slowly followed the sergeant to a dark little corner of the cave, while Rainbow supportively walked alongside me and draped a goo-covered wing over my back. Finally, the sergeant stopped, nervously shuffled his hooves, and announced, “I’ll give you some time alone. I’m so sorry, ma’am. The Major was...” He didn’t finish that thought. He just slowly drifted away.
For a long moment I refused to look down. As if it wouldn’t be real as long as I didn’t see it. In the end, though, I had to. Mom deserved at least that much.
I looked down. I saw her. The tears started flowing. “Momma...”