A few days later
Gilda had been surprised at how much Rainbow Dash had changed since they were together. Then again, she’d changed a lot as well. Full military training and service in the Griffhala Reserve had left her tougher than before, and she’d hoped that her oldest friend would have been improving as well, but it seemed that the Pegasus had gone the other way. She was too eager to associate with ponies well beneath her, and pushed Gilda away when she tried to make her side clear. Still, if she didn’t want to be friends anymore, she could live with that.
On a whim, instead of just returning home, she travelled just up the mountain to Canterlot, staying in the larger city for a few days using the money she’d ‘borrowed’ from Ponyville’s mayor. The large city hadn’t been what she’d expected, with most of the buildings destroyed and the ponies not trusting anything bigger and scarier than them. The inn she was staying at almost hadn’t accepted her, until she’d offered to pay almost twice as much as she really should have.
All in all, her little holiday in Equestria was turning out to be a disaster, and she was about to write the entire week off when she met Cloud Skipper.
Skipper had been pointedly avoiding both Midnight Blossom and Shining Armor, avoiding talking to them as much as possible. What Midnight had seen was an old wound that he badly wanted to keep closed, and with Equestria pulling itself out of a downward spiral, he didn’t need to remind anypony that it was never all sunshine and roses to begin with. He took more patrols out in the main city and only came back to the castle well after dark, refusing to debrief even if he brought a scoundrel back to be placed in the dungeons.
It was late afternoon when he caught the griffon stealing from a roadside fruit stall, a lemon that she picked up with her tail while the owner was haggling over a bunch of grapes with a pony with a duck for a Cutie Mark. She thought that nobody had seen, until she heard Skipper call after her, “Hey! Are you gonna pay for that?”
Turning her head, Gilda saw that he was a Pegasus, in full armour and armed. But that worked to her advantage; he’d never catch up to her in all that armour. Looking forward, she only saw about five other ponies, and none of them could fly. “Catch me if you can, sucker!” she shouted as she took off forward, and made it about twenty feet before he’d pinned her wings and tackled her back to the ground.
“Bad move,” Skipper whispered where he assumed her ear was. He grabbed the sides of her head, but she quickly bucked with her back half, spreading her wings to throw him off. She turned around as he landed on three hooves, picking up his spear with his right foreleg. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said, shouting across the plaza. “You can’t run. Come quietly.”
Gilda just laughed at him, unmoving. “It’s nice to finally see a pony with some guts. But it won’t do you any good.” She drew her claw across the ground, scratching an invisible line into the stone. The meaning was clear enough: cross at your own peril. He simply nodded slowly, considering her.
Skipper lunged with his spear, and the griffon caught it in a claw. He’d been expecting the move, and yanked back, pulling her across the line she’d drawn into range of a punch. He nailed her just below the beak, using his other hoof to spin his spear around and shove her backwards before she could counter with her own punch. “That’s once,” he said, flipping the spear to leave the point towards his opponent once again. He drew a line in the ground with it, mimicking her previous action.
Growling with rage, Gilda stepped back a bit. Charging wouldn’t work, and he was too fast to stop her from running, but maybe a bit of misdirection would help. It wasn’t how she’d learned to fight in the Reserve, but since when had she ever fought that way?
She picked up the lemon in one claw and threw it at the Pegasus. He caught it on the end of his spear, and the juice exploded all around, leaving everyone flinching away from it, including him. She took the opportunity to move in close, scratching at his face with her talons. All she got was the wood of his spear. She was surprised by the move, and his blue eyes met her gold. In that instant, seeing the sheer steel behind them, she knew she’d picked on the wrong pony. He headbutted her to knock her away, striking with the flat of the spear just below the beak in the same place he’d hit with his hoof before. “Twice,” he said, almost smiling. “There’s still time to come quietly.”
The one trick that had saved Skipper in a fight more times than any other was making his opponent angry, because angry opponents made mistakes. The griffon was no exception. The area around the beak was sensitive, and getting hit there twice had clearly made her too angry to think straight. She flew into the air, and he followed, holding his spear with both his forelegs and using his wings to balance. Yelling incoherently, she pushed her wings back and charged forward, talons extended.
What she got for her trouble was a spear in the shoulder, and she tried to pull out of the dive, but Skipper had pinned her wings again, driving her down into the stone from a much greater height. She was still barely conscious as she hit the ground, but Skipper pulling his spear out pushed her over the edge, and her eyes closed slowly. “Three strikes,” he quipped. “You’re out.” He flicked the blood off his weapon, almost laughing to himself as he heard the cheers of a crowd...
But none of the ponies around were moving. They were just staring at the spectacle, unable to comprehend it. If Skipper hadn’t already had a white coat, then they all would have seen him blanch at the realisation that he was having flashbacks to his past. He quickly stammered something out about moving along and pulled out his flare to get Shining Armor’s attention. The fight hadn’t gone on for long, but it was unlikely he’d be able to carry an unconscious griffon back to the palace anyway, and he needed to tell the only other pony he knew knew about Chikatetsu that it was coming back to him.
~
Cumulus turned away from the window, having seen all he needed to of the fight below. Cloud Skipper’s sudden panic was an interesting development, one he’d want to keep tabs on if he could. As for the griffon, she seemed slightly familiar... Something about the way she carried herself, and how she so blatantly disregarded the ponies around her, triggered something in his mind.
Of course. Junior Speedster Flight Camp. She’d come over for an exchange, and almost instantly befriended his daughter. From what he’d heard from the filly, she was the only pony she had any respect for. In that case, what was she doing back in Equestria?
Oh, his dear daughter... He’d have to make plans to see her soon. After leaving the Day Guard, he had so much more free time. And there was almost no way the day could go badly. If she didn’t remember him, they could spend time getting to know each other again. And if she still did, then that made things so much easier. He’d be able to get right back into their lessons... her preparation for the new world.
Before long, he’d even come up with a way to work it into his campaign against the Royal Guard. This would both teach her daughter a valuable lesson, with the help of someone who agreed, and make the guards continue to second-guess themselves. He even remembered seeing her in the news after the Nightmare Moon fiasco. Ponyville was only at the base of the mountain; not a long flight at all. He smiled to himself as he left the city, anticipating the events of the day to come.
~
Gilda was vaguely aware of two males speaking nearby as she woke up. She was still feeling the hits she’d taken from that guard, and she couldn’t see or hear anything clearly for about a minute after she could feel the rest of her body. Her shoulder had stopped bleeding, though it still hurt a lot. Focusing on that pain was what allowed her to fully return to consciousness. It was a trick she’d used before in the Reserve, when she had to wake up from passing out. She’d never admit to anyone that the Reserve had knocked her out before, though.
“For the last time, I’m not going to tell Midnight,” the guard from before said to the other stallion. “You saw how she reacted to the first time she killed another pony. I don’t think she could take hearing about my sordid past.”
“You can’t shelter her forever!” the other replied, raising his voice. “Besides, she deserves to know the truth, and if what you’ve told me is true, then she’s seen the important part anyway!”
Gilda yawned loudly, and any further argument was cut off by the guard’s statement of “Oh, look who’s awake.” She shook out her head, taking in the new stallion, a Unicorn wearing a red jacket. Since she was seeing him through the bars of the cell, she assumed he had to be another Guard, possibly a superior if he was wearing something decorative rather than armour.
That was something she’d never understand about ponies. Why did they have their commanders not do any actual work with the troops? Why did they always have to remain separate, until the leaders lost touch with their underlings and grew fat and lazy? Maybe it was different with magic, but the question remained of why they kept them so separate.
Then again, this one seemed to be directly interested in the lower soldier. There were exceptions to every rule, and she knew that all too well by then. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any other guards around until the Pegasus surprised her, and this was supposed to be the capital. She’d have to keep an eye on that. Maybe they were the only two guards left, and so they had to stay together despite a senior/junior relationship...
“Anyone in there?” the Pegasus asked, derailing her train of thought. “You seemed pretty talkative just a few hours ago.” She didn’t respond, not wanting to talk to him. She was still reeling from the beating he’d given her, and her pride hadn’t recovered yet. “Suit yourself. How long do I have to watch her for?” he asked the Unicorn.
“Should only be about half an hour until moonrise,” the Unicorn replied, and Gilda noticed for the first time the waning shadows from the cell’s window, surprised at how long she’d been out. “Luna’s not holding court tonight, so Midnight will probably take over for you, and I can handle any incidents. You deserve the rest, anyway, or what little you can get.” The Pegasus scowled at the statement, but didn’t respond beyond a noncommittal grunt, sitting down nearby as his senior disappeared in a flash of light.
He didn’t look at her, sitting so he was facing to her right and never turning his head to either side. It wasn’t long before he spoke, though, his words partly muted by the direction he was speaking in. “You’re self-taught, aren’t you?” he asked. “I’ve never encountered that style before. And from how you were throwing your weight around without much control, you probably never had a teacher.”
“You had a weapon,” Gilda replied, her anger clearly rising. “It wasn’t much of a fair fight.”
“And I gave you a chance to back off. You decided to fight anyway, even though it wasn’t fair,” he countered, still not looking at her. She backed off slightly, forced to concede the point. “Besides, if it was a fair fight, I’d still have beaten you.”
She had to restrain herself from immediately shouting back at him. “How do you figure?” she asked. “I’m stronger than you.”
“I’ll admit that. I remember how close you came to getting my spear off me. But strength alone won’t win you every battle. That’s the other reason I could tell you were self-taught: you only have one strategy, and that’s to rush in blindly, hoping your brute strength will carry you through. And maybe it works against most ponies, but that wasn’t the first time I’ve been in a scrap with a griffon. You were predictable, and that’s the last thing you want to be.”
When she didn’t reply, he continued, “You can’t just throw your weight forward all the time. You can’t do any one thing all the time at all. Most of all, don’t double down on something you know doesn’t work. If charging in gets you pushed back, find another approach. Sweeping attacks, dive bombing, feints, counters... You can’t just trust that you’ll get the initiative. You need to be able to take it by force.”
“Where did you learn all that?” Gilda finally asked. “From what I’ve seen of you ponies’ military, you don’t really train in fighting, and certainly not at that level.”
“I wasn’t trained by the military. I spent several years doing nothing but fight, and I’ve gotten better at it than anypony has a right to be.”
“I thought you said that self-taught fighters weren’t that good?”
“No, I never said that. Nor did I say I was self-taught.”
“What do you mean?”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds before turning to make eye contact, showing an intensity that she hadn’t expected. “My past is my affair, and I don’t appreciate some common criminal trying to delve into it. We’re done here.” He stood up and started walking away, nodding to another pony who was just walking into her field of view.
Gilda failed to contain her surprise when she saw who the new pony was. She’d heard rumours about ponies that had wings like a bat, eyes like a dragon and teeth like a predator, that ate meat, sometimes pony meat, and lived entirely under the moonlight, shunning the sun. The first time she’d heard it, she told Rainbow Dash that it was a story meant to make her behave. Seeing one in the flesh surprised her a lot, and the guard noticed her expression.
“You’re not the first to give me that look,” she said wistfully. “Most ponies didn’t even know that my kind existed for the longest time. And everypony still assumes that I’ll eat them if they step out of line.” She laughed to herself. “Makes it a lot easier.”
“So you don’t actually eat other ponies?”
“Not even suck their blood. Though, these teeth aren’t just for show.” She smiled broadly, showing off her pointed fangs. “They’re for eating griffons.” With a noise like a hissing cat, she dived towards the bars of the cell, and Gilda stepped back a bit, only to find her guard laughing on the floor. “I can’t believe you actually fell for that!” She banged the floor a few times with her foreleg before finally calming down and standing back up.
Gilda laughed as well, trying to hide her own actual surprise and fear. “Mostly small things then, like rabbits or whatnot?”
“Pretty much,” the guard replied. “But I also eat fruit, grain and sometimes hay like any other pony. Most ponies don’t see that, though.” She stretched out her wings, silently making her point. “So don’t worry about being rude. I get it from so many ponies that I’m not surprised a griffon does too.” She paused for a while, then added, “What I don’t get is why you act like that to everypony else.”
That threw Gilda off-balance. She stuttered for a response, but didn’t get time to form it before the guard spoke again. “Would you act like that in your own country? Do you treat other griffons the way that you treat ponies? You’re a petty thief, a belligerent bully, and you act like everypony is beneath you.” Gilda seemed surprised. All she’d done was steal a lemon, and somewhat try to defend herself when she was attacked. “You made a few waves in Ponyville. I’m almost glad that Skipper found you before I did. You’re better off in here,” she growled.
“Send me back to Griffhala, then,” Gilda retorted. “They’d probably treat me better than you.”
“Really? Why did you leave in the first place? Was it because they didn’t want you around, either?”
“You have no right to be asking me about...”
“There had to have been some reason. Why don’t you just tell me before I...”
“Keep out of my life, spawn of Tartarus!”
Midnight would have retorted, but suddenly stopped in shock, and not at the statement. She’d heard it a thousand times before, like she’d said. What stopped her was a feeling of malice coming from the direction of the guard barracks. She couldn’t explain it, but she had to go right then, and left Gilda wondering what she’d said to break her so badly.
“I thought that would never come into effect,” a stallion’s voice proclaimed from the shadows. Gilda was immediately unnerved, as though he had heard of emotions second-hand and never quite learned how to display them himself. “And here I thought that the zebras never managed anything useful. Wouldn’t you also just love the ability to make others angry as a distraction, Gilda?” He laughed mirthlessly at her surprised gasp. “I was an instructor at Junior Speedster Flight Camp, all those years ago. I believe you and my daughter got along quite well...”
The grey-on-grey Pegasus stepped into the moonlight, pushing in another pony with his leg. Again, Gilda gasped in surprise to see who it was. “You met again just recently, didn’t you?” he asked, in the same fake-emotional tone. “But there were too many other ponies in the way for you to really get along. Don’t worry. I’ve arranged this meeting so that you two can catch up as friends. My daughter needs to have some contact with a stronger being, after all. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite see it that way. She needed some... persuasion in order to come here.” He laughed again before unlocking the cell.
Gilda immediately charged at him, completely overcome with anger, but he simply caught her charge on his shoulder, throwing her against the far wall. The impact left her dazed and unable to see clearly as he dragged her back into the cell by her tail, throwing the other Pegasus in as well. “I see that Cloud Skipper was right,” he mused. “You are too reliant on simply exerting your strength. Then again, that’s better than never exerting at all. Perhaps you could help teach my daughter about that? I’ve already laid the groundwork; I leave it to you to build upon her lessons.” Chuckling to himself, as if at some private joke, he walked off into the shadows again, leaving the griffon alone in the cell with the battered remains of another pony.
The bruises and blood covering her body, some still coming from open wounds, made it nearly impossible to tell what colour her mane and coat actually were. Gilda thought that it couldn’t possibly be true, and wanted to see anything that proved it was just someone else, but as she opened her eyes, the truth struck like a freight train. The battered pony in her cell was, until recently, her best and only friend, Rainbow Dash.
Gilda wasn’t thinking about the trouble they’d had in Ponyville, though. Both of them had changed, and that meant they didn’t fit as friends anymore. But there was something more important on her mind. Even if they weren’t currently friends, and Gilda didn’t want to get involved with her other pony friends, she still felt a surge of anger that wasn’t from some invisible powder. The look in Dash’s eyes, even though they were still mostly closed, was something she never thought the Pegasus was capable of showing: genuine fear.
The sight of her former friend afraid of her own father triggered something in Gilda’s mind. The reason she’d left Griffhala rushed into her mind unbidden, and the memory she’d been hoping the guard wouldn’t dig up forced its way to the surface.
~
A year ago
Gilda knew that her father was drunk before she even entered the tavern where they lived. The smell of cheap alcohol was overwhelming, and since it was well past closing time, it was clear that he’d been hitting the bottle himself. She sighed to herself, knowing that the night was unlikely to have much sleep, if any at all.
She pushed the door open quietly, looking around for her father. He was snoring in a chair, slumped with a bottle of Zebrican whiskey. The bottle was nearly empty, and he’d probably drunk it all himself. That worked out well enough for her; if he was already drunk to the point of sleep, then she wouldn’t draw his attention on her way back to her bedroom.
A creaking sound made her stop suddenly, but it was just the chair. She knew where the creaky floorboards were, of course. Since her father couldn’t be bothered paying to fix them, she had to know where they were to keep customers from tripping on them, or herself from waking her father out of his drunken stupors. Sighing with relief, she kept moving towards the stairs. The chair creaked again, but she ignored it until she heard the crash and shout.
She gulped to herself, knowing that her father had definitely been woken up by falling off the chair, and started running for the stairs. Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite fast enough. Even drunk and just barely awake, her father was surprisingly fast, able to tackle her to the ground. “What’re you doin’ so late home?” he asked, the smell of alcohol overpowering Gilda and making her want to throw up. “You brought money, right?”
She knew it was pointless to argue that he brought in money with the tavern, but wasted it on drinking his own alcohol. He was both drunk and angry, and that guaranteed that he would listen even less than he normally did. He suddenly punched her while she was trying to get away. “Don’t you go turning your back on me like your whore of a mother!” he shouted.
The smell of alcohol and her father’s continued abuse had finally snapped something in Gilda’s head, and she reached for a bottle behind the counter she was pressed against, smashing it over her father’s beak. He screamed with an incoherent rage and resumed pounding against her, but she hardly felt the blows, having fallen under the red haze herself. As he reached back for another punch to her chest, she lunged forward with the broken bottle, shoving it into his left eye. He screamed loudly, and his blood sprayed over her as he fell to the ground. With a loud grunt, she shoved the bottle in even further, forcing it into his brain and killing him.
With the fight suddenly over, the adrenaline drained away and Gilda realised what she’d done. She’d never killed another griffon before, and even if it was her father, she still felt sick about it. She threw up over his corpse, and out of the corner of her eye, noticed a neighbour coming in, concerned. It was only a matter of time before she was arrested and executed for murder, even if she thought she was justified in killing her abusive father.
Unless she left, and never came back. She hadn’t gone on an exchange to the Junior Speedsters Flight Camp for no reason, after all. There was no way they’d catch her, and once she left Griffhala, she was outside their jurisdiction.
Where would she go? Again, the answer came from her past. Equestria had always seemed like a utopia of peace and paradise compared to her home, and surely she could find some way of living there, even if they didn’t want a griffon around. With her mind made up, she pulled herself together as best she could and flew out the open door, never once looking back.
~
Her time in Equestria had made it seem like the ponies were weakened by their peaceful lifestyle, and she’d taken advantage of it. But the day had forced two revelations on her. The first was that there were strong ponies, even if Rainbow Dash had somewhat contradicted that thought. The other was that they had come from a culture that, below the surface, wasn’t much better than the one she’d come from.
Seeing a pony that was like her father snapped something in Gilda’s brain. In a way, he was possibly worse than her father, because Gilbert was always completely drunk when he abused her, and could hardly be said to be consciously knowing. The grey Pegasus knew exactly what he was doing. He was perfectly sober and sane, and that just made his actions even more despicable.
Rainbow Dash was looking at her fearfully, wondering if she was going to actually beat her as her father had. But even if she didn’t approve of the company that her friend kept, Gilda could never, in good conscience, allow the stallion to go unpunished. Abusive parents were the worst kinds of beings, whether they were equine, leonine or what have you.
Gilda walked up to her friend, and the Pegasus shied away, fearing retribution. Instead, what she got was a shoulder to cry into and a comforting wing around her back. That was all she could offer for the time being, but when the guards came back, she’d explain everything.
She didn’t care about their mission of keeping order, or that she was technically a criminal herself. She didn’t know if she could keep herself on the straight and narrow, having been a thief for so long, or if Rainbow Dash would forgive her for what she had done, both to her friends and to herself. The only thing she knew was that whoever thought that they could get away with beating their child and being proud of the fact was going to pay with their blood, if it was the last thing she ever did.