//------------------------------// // Chapter Nine // Story: Starlight // by PurpleFire135 //------------------------------// Silver Rain cruised high above the treetops of the forest that ran next to the city, hoping to find a trail. She had started in the last place her quarry had been seen and moved from there, finding first the bush where their hoof prints had stopped and then reappeared on the other side. She had followed those prints for about an hour before they stopped. It was clear that they had flew from that point on, a fact Silver was not happy about. There were ways to track pegasi when flying, but following on the ground tracks was much easier. The only advantage was that, while most fugitives covered their land tracks, they never thought to conceal their passage through the sky. Most pegasi didn’t even know it was possible to track a contrail; it was a technique that Silver herself had discovered. Each and every pegasus left behind a trail in the sky when they flew. When they were going fast, or deliberately trailing it, it was actually visible to the naked eye. Silver Rain’s personal trail looked like big blue rain clouds. However, even those visible trails faded in time, and the non-visible ones faded even faster. Silver pulled a pair of goggles out of her saddle pouch and slipped them on. They were light-refraction goggles and allowed her to see more of the visible light spectrum. With them on, she usually could pick up trails in the sky, even hours after the pegasus who made them had moved on. She looked down at the picture she had been given. Rainbow Dash… if she had to make one guess on what that pegasus’s trail looked like, she would bet it was a rainbow. She looked up and sure enough, spread out in multicolor, was a trail of rainbow, stretching out far over the Everfree forest. With a small smile, Silver followed the trail. --- It only took Silver an hour or so to reach the spot where Rainbow Dash and the unicorn had come down. Their hoof prints were easy to find in the clearing where they had landed. Silver followed them around the clearing a few times. They must have gotten lost. Then the little set, the one she had been looking at, disappeared and then Rainbow Dash’s prints had gotten very far apart, meaning she had been going faster. Silver followed these frantic hoof prints to a spot where a tattered and torn giant spider web stretched between two trees. The tracks indicated there was a struggle, Silver hoped that her fugitives hadn’t been eaten, but sure enough, the tracks left the clearing. Then Silver noticed something; instead of one set of adult sized hoof prints, there were two. She looked at these new prints for a few seconds, another female pegasus, she decided. She could tell it was female because the prints were small and pegasus since their weren’t indented very far. Earth ponies were heavier and their prints always hit the ground on all four hooves. Pegasi tended to float a little. Silver couldn’t be entirely sure which set were Rainbow’s, but it didn’t matter since they continued together. Another ten minutes of tracking lead her to another clearing. Sitting in the very center was a small cottage that the hoof prints lead right up to. Jackpot. It was early afternoon right now, and Silver wanted to wait until they went to bed to strike. She knew that the only way she was going to sneak up on Rainbow Dash was if the other pegasus was unaware and Silver had the element of surprise. She found a particularly good branch to perch on and settled in to wait. She smiled. This was going to be good. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she could smell the start of a storm on the horizon. Perfect. --- Dash whipped her head around at the scream, her eyes narrowing. “Stay here! If they come up here, hide!” She said, turning to Starlight, who nodded fearfully. Rainbow Dash turned and ran to the stairs and leaped over the railing down to the main floor. She did not have time to waste on stairs if Fluttershy was truly in the danger Dash was sure she was in. Dash skidded around the corner and was met face to face with a dark blue pegasus who held a knife in her hoof. Fluttershy was lying on the floor on the other side of the room, not moving. Dash could see a puddle of something formed around her, but in the darkness of the storm she couldn’t tell what; though she had a guess. The intruder wasted no time and charged towards Dash, her knife going straight for Dash’s neck. Rainbow Dash turned at the last second and the attacker went past her, but only for a fraction of a second. With startling speed, the attacker whipped around and turned her over shot into another stab, this time, she nicked Dash’s shoulder. Dash pulled back and with a powerful flap of her wings jumped and came down hard on the back of the intruder. She was sure she had the attacker pinned, but in another burst of abnormally fast speed and flexibility, the other pegasus flipped around and with a little bit of boost from her wings, pulled both of them up and then slammed Dash down to the floor. Dash’s head cracked against the hardwood floor and stars danced in her vision. She tried to push up or pull out, but the attacker’s hold had no weaknesses. She struggled, but it was in vain and the dark blue pegasus had her knife out and was swiftly going for Dash’s throat. --- Silver had waited for the storm to roll in and every light in the house to go off. Even then, she gave it another hour before she even thought about making her move. As the rain slicked down her back she smiled grimly. She may have hated these missions when they started, but in the thrill of the hunt, she had no regrets and she never held back. She flew to one of the upstairs windows and let herself perch on a branch. She peered in, hoping to see who was inside. The small form of a filly lay in the bed. This is the room she would go to last. She pushed off the branch and heard it snap beneath her. She hovered for a few seconds, hoping that the filly inside hadn’t heard it. She couldn’t get a clear view of the bed anymore, but it still looked like the small form was in it. She sighed and went to move onto the next upstairs bedroom, when a small pair of eyes peeked over the window. Silver’s eyes connected with the small purple ones for only a second before Silver dropped down to the lower level of the house, but she knew it had been enough. Silver need to work quickly if she wanted to keep the upper hand. She looked into the window before her. It seemed to be a living room. On the couch, the sleeping form of a pegasus breathed softly. It had to be Rainbow Dash, Silver was sure. This wasn’t her house, so it would only make sense that she was the one on the couch. Silver put her hoof against the window and was surprised to find it unlocked. She crept into the house and pulled her knife out of her pouch. She slowly inched her way over to the sleeping form. A quick cut to the main vein in the neck would do the trick, quiet and efficient. She pulled her knife back and thrust it down. At the last possible second, the pegasus turned, her eyes flew open and she screamed. Silver’s knife connected, but not where she had wanted it to. The spot she had cut was a killing blow, but it would be from loss of blood, not quick, not quiet. A burst of lightning lit up the entire room. Silver could see the pony she had attacked and her heart stopped when she realized its coat was yellow, not blue. She swore. If this wasn’t Rainbow Dash, where was she? A thump as something landed behind her caused Silver to turn around. Rainbow Dash came around the corner, ready to attack. Her magenta eyes were narrowed menacingly in intense anger. Silver Rain smiled. This was just about to get interesting. --- Starlight heard crashing and banging downstairs. She went to hide in the closet, but an even larger crash than before made her turn around and race down the stairs. She couldn’t just leave Rainbow alone to face the intruder. She came around the corner into the living room at top speed. She saw the attacker, who had Rainbow pinned to the floor and a knife darting for Rainbow’s neck. Starlight didn’t even think. “RAINBOW!!!” She screamed and her horn flared with a huge outburst of dark purple magical energy that flew at the attacker and literally picked her up and threw her against the wall with a crash. Rainbow was up in an instant. “Stay back, Starlight!” She yelled and went towards the attacker who was already getting up too. Luckily her knife had been dropped in the scuffle and now she and Rainbow faced each other equally. Neither said a word, but in almost perfect unison, they charged. Rainbow knew how fast and how skilled the attacker was. Now, since she had a clearer picture of her opponent, she could use that. Just before they would have reached each other, Rainbow stopped and leaped upwards. There was enough time for the attacker to stop, but not nearly enough time for her to avoid Rainbow coming down right on top of her. This time it was the attacker’s head that hit the floor hard. With all of Rainbow’s strength behind the blow, she was out cold in seconds. Rainbow huffed in relief, but only for a second. She turned away from the now unconscious intruder and rushed over to Fluttershy. Starlight followed. Fluttershy did not look good; her pale yellow coat looked even paler in the stormy light. “Fluttershy! Fluttershy?! Wake up! Can you hear me?!” Rainbow Dash cried, panic rising in her voice as Fluttershy’s still form remained motionless. Rainbow leaned down and put her ear to Fluttershy’s chest. She exhaled in relief. “There’s still a heartbeat, but she is losing blood fast.” Rainbow said and wiggled herself under Fluttershy. She stood up with Fluttershy on her back. A soft moan escaped from the yellow pegasus, but she remained still. “Find a towel to wrap her neck with. It won’t help much but hopefully it will last long enough for us to find help.” Rainbow said quickly, turning to Starlight, who nodded and ran to the kitchen. In less than a minute, Starlight was back. She wrapped the towel around Fluttershy’s wound and Rainbow nodded. “Good enough. Alright. I know of some pony who can help Fluttershy, but it’s going to take a while to get there by hoof. I can’t fly both you and Fluttershy. We’ve got to go as fast as we can, Starlight. You have to do your best to keep up, okay?” Starlight set her mouth in a hard line and nodded. --- The General faced the four members of the Council. She was in their meeting room and the five of them all sat around a conference table. “So what options do we have?” Silver Shard, the calmest and most collected of the group asked the General who just shook her head. “At this point, I would think that we just need to wait it out. Hopefully a solution will present itself.” She shrugged. She had explained the crisis facing them, and obviously it had not been easy to come to a consensus, or even get every pony to discuss it rationally. Iron Flare had opened the meeting by refuting her sources and making sure that every fact was checked three or four times, not quite believing what she told him. He had to be in control and gather the facts again; his way. Once that was done, Copper Wire delivered her own ideas by way of a dire prophecy. Currently she was sitting in the corner repeating over and over, “We’re all going to DIE!” in an incredibly creepy voice, trying to catch the eyes of any pony with her rusty stare. The General was doing her best to ignore her. Steel hadn’t said anything at all, just stood there silent and imposing. Silver Shard was doing her best to be the mastermind she was supposed to be and come up with a plan, but the impossible situation was baffling her and ruining her cool. The General knew for a fact that when they wanted to be, the Council was a terrifying and deadly force that had been the driving force that caused the Uprising. However, on days like these, she had to wonder how they managed to all get up out of bed in the morning and dress themselves, much less run an entire country. She shook her head. That was what she was for, she guessed. “So I motion for the meeting to end, awaiting further developments?” The General posed the question. At that, Copper Wire jumped up and raced out of the room like her tail was on fire. Steel shrugged. Any problem that couldn’t be fixed by brute force was far beyond his ability to solve. “General, I expect you to do anything and everything in your power to resolve this issue. I trust you implicitly.” Silver Shard said as she walked out the door, but her glare was anything but reassuring. The door swung shut and the General was left alone with Iron Flare; a situation that she really needed to try harder to avoid in the future. He trailed a hoof along the edge of the table. “Normally I would issue some ultimatum so that you would get the job done and work everything out. However, not even I expect you fix the sun. I do expect everything will be done to solve this problem. You have never failed the Council before, or failed any pony, far as I know. That’s the reason we chose you for your position all those years ago, after all.” Iron Flare turned to leave and did not look back. The General growled in frustration when he left. Why all of this fell down on her shoulders eluded her. She went back to her office and slumped in her chair, mulling over the problem. Magic! All my problems in the last 10 years have come down to that! Why couldn’t everything just been left the hay alone?! Now we have a problem that can’t be solved! Not unless we had a whole ton of unicorns! Buck! My Guard can’t even find one! The amount of magic we would need to solve the problem would be huge! More powerful than the Royal Pony Sisters when they were in power! The most powerful magic in Equestria… Her eyes widened and she stared and the spot where the hidden drawer in her desk was; where her element lay, unused and dusty. She grabbed quickly across her desk to a buzzer that connected to her second in command’s office. “Yes Sir?” A voice came over the intercom. “Override the kill order on Rainbow Dash! Make sure that she is brought in ALIVE! Send a patrol out over the Everfree forest to stop that agent that the Council sent out!” “Yes Sir!” The General sat back, her mind spinning. The Council was not going to be happy when they found she had gone behind their backs. A very dangerous thought had appeared in her head. Using magic. The very thing she had given up almost everything to destroy. She shook her head. There wasn't time to waste on regret. She had to do whatever was unnecessary. As ridiculous as it sounded, the planet's fate could literally hang in the balance. Hopefully she hadn’t been too late. Before, Rainbow was a problem, but now, now they needed her. Her and that unicorn filly.