The peace of the night was broken by a silent pop announcing a very important letter to Princess Celestia.
The rolled parchment smacked her sleeping snout gently, awaking her from the most pleasant part of the dream.
not a few minutes later, she was already up, fully attired and delegating her troops along with Shining and Chrysalis.
"Are you sure that is the best choice for now, Princess?" asked Shining.
"We still haven't got enough intel to be able to devise a tactical breakup of the enemy so for now all we can do is micromanage our troops for the best strategic standpoint for a possible battle scenario" replied Celestia.
Chrysalis got her strategic genius to work.
"The best move would be to place the troops by the entrance and exit of the caves, possibly put up a few traps within the vicinity, we cannot afford to let our troops retreat into the caves"
"I don't think a few traps will stop the army" replied Shining.
"It's not supposed to, we'll use the traps to move the enemy's army into the caves and use their own tactic against them... it's all in the element of surprise if what's included in the letter is true then we have no other choice, what about Mark, has he completed the machine?"
"I have, my Queen"
Mark trotted into the room, at this point it was clear that something had taken its toll on him.
"Mark! are you all right?" asked Celestia.
"Yes, it's just the stress, that is all"
Celestia had seen stress before and this wasn't stress but she had no time to ponder on such things now, they only had two weeks before the attack to come up with something better than going to war.
"The machine is ready to use at any moment given we meet the requirements"
"What are they?" questioned Celestia.
"It needs to be close to a large number of ponies, Princess"
"Have you tried it?"
"On a very small scale, yes, but this thing was designed to deal with the emotions of hundreds, even thousands of ponies at once"
Queen Chrysalis butted in.
"At least now we know what to use our army for"
Celestia thought about all this carefully.
"And how much of these emotions would this machine require?"
"No more than usual, it extracts emotions from the surrounding atmosphere, not from the ponies, it concentrates, multiplies it and spews it right out for the changelings to feed on, if we place it out in the open when the changelings strike, we can give them an active demonstration"
"But this would be providing we would partake in a war" Continued Celestia
"Or providing we tour it across Equestria, advertising its abilities and producing them on an industrial scale, I believe that would be the better choice from the two"
"I suppose you have prepared the blueprints for it?"
"Of course"
"In that case I will have them distributed across all the cities and towns at once"
"I'm sorry but I can't let you do that, this machine is very powerful and if somepony wishes to, they may find a way weaponize it, we can't take such a risk as the consequences would be more dire than the ones of going to war"
"What would you suggest then?"
"Open up a plant that would mass produce them, I have already included a protection system from tempering by a third party in the build, I will personally supervise the production"
"In that case I shall have one built at once, come with me Mark... Shining, Chrysalis, I entrust to you the army, also, set up a larger version of the machine we used during the first summit so that every changeling in the rebel army could see and hear us clearly when we demonstrate the machine should it come to that"
"Warm up time!"
the sound of two dented pans being continuously smashed against each other barged right through the sleepy brains of everypony in the tent, slapping their brain back into the uncomfortable reality of things and that supervisor's whippy tone wasn't making things any better.
This was going to be one hell of a day for Monty and Pacifica but they didn't know that yet... nopony knew what was about to happen.
The morning had risen and the golden canterlot army was making its way down into the caves, filling up the entranceway, the insides of the caves glowing with a beautiful multiplex of colours refracting what little light was within.
"All right! unit 1 go to sector 1, set up the traps and come back to report at once, unit 2, scout the area for anything out of the ordinary and unit 3, come with me, we have a machine to set up by the exit"
the units split out whilst the others stood in place, all they were supposed to do was now wait for the other units to come back from their missions.
barely a step had been taken into the caves by the third unit when the crystals started rumbling and violently and flew in every direction in the form of shards, instantly killing those closest to the blast and crippling those further up ahead.
The entire cave was booby trapped by somepony.
John, the leader of The Blood of the Innocent, was in the middle of his shower in the cave when he felt a jolt come across his body... somepony had activated the alarm systems that they had set up in the caves.
Perhaps a small animal had wandered in...
Minutes later, another jolt had crossed his body, this time when he was drying.
and another.
and another.
this wasn't a coincidence, somepony or some ponies were taking down their traps one by one.
"Shit!"
There was only one explanation to this, somepony had infiltrated and was hiding among their ranks.
It was time for some spring cleaning among his ranks.
The Mane 6 got to Canterlot as soon as they could, they knew that they would have time would come but they had no idea it would be so soon.
"Princess Celestia! we have come here as soon as we could!"
"Have you brought the Elements?"
"Yes"
"Good, we might need them... Now, I want you to listen to me carefully..."
John was outside, everypony stood displayed in front of him to see, Mark and Pacifica had no idea what this was about, they assumed this was just another part of the murderous training, they had already been out galloping, climbing, flying and crawling but they haven't been taught any battle tactics yet so this was probably it.
"I don't see the point of waffling on so I'll just get straight to it, just a few hours ago I had found out that there is a traitor among us, and it seems strange to me that some information had been leaked on the exact same day when the group from Maretropolis have arrived... maybe I'm wrong... but I doubt it... but don't worry, I'll find him or her and I will punish them accordingly... speaking of punishments, here is today's group!"
To pacifica's horror she noticed something she had been pressing down into the deepest bowels of her mind for a while now and at this moment it was regurgitating itself back to the surface.
In that very group, among the ponies, stood Monty's father, Percy.
Pacifica's sanity broke apart and stripped itself layer by layer, there was no way she will be able to keep the secret away from Monty anymore and once he'll find out that she'd been keeping it from him all this time he'll leave her and she'll be all alone, she had already lost most of her link with Mark and Uncle Discord wasn't even her uncle yet.
A vein popping aria of screams had gashed out of her mouth as she fell to the floor curled up, covering her ears.
The perfect rows broke up instantly, forming a circle of bare soil with Pacifica and Monty in it, Monty trying to desperately calm her down, thinking she couldn't take the pressure of John finding out about them, how wrong he was.
"I'll make a wild stab in the dark that you are the one behind it all" began John as he entered the ring.
Monty had to come up with something.
"Sir! please help I don't know why but my sister just got this attack, she has... epilepsy!"
But John rammed his left hoofswing into Monty's jaw throwing him on the other side of the ring.
"You seriously expect me to believe that crap? Dear god, canterlot must be desperate to send you two here"
"I... I swear, we have never been to Canterlot before, Me and my sister have-"
But john had already began his rampage on Pacifica.
"NOT THIS TIME!" shouted Monty, he tried grabbing his pendant, ready to annihilate this entire damn world if he had to but was held back by somepony... Monty looked up at the adult to discover that it was none other than his own father.
"Dad?..."
What was his dad doing here? Monty was momentarily surprised but he had no time to be surprised as Pacifica was in grave danger
"let go, he's hurting Pacifica"
But Monty's dad had other plans
"And you're going to watch"
The father grabbed and locked his son's head in place, it was time for Monty to man up and start showing some balls, this was going to do the trick, besides, Percy never was one for family ties, as far as he was concerned, Pacifica was a bitch that had it coming and Monty should also be punished for taking her side.
"NOOO! LET ME GO! LEAVE HER ALONE! DON'T YOU DARE HURT HER!"
But everypony was oblivious to Monty's screams and shouts, he could do nothing and the fear of John kept everypony else at bay, they all knew that this time he wasn't going to stop.
Pacifica kept taking all those hits, sure, she could use her rumble suit but what's the point? if Monty will leave her she might as well die here and now and who knows, if she takes all these kicks and punches he just might forgive her in the end.
"PACIFICA! USE IT! COME ON! WHY DON'T YOU USE IT! WHYYY! DAD! LET ME GO! OR I TELL MUM!"
"YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD!"
The penny dropped.
Monty forgot about every single thing, the only thing in his head right now was what he had just heard.
"No..."
"Yes"
"No..."
"Are you deaf?"
Percy threw his son onto the ground who was shaking his head repeatedly like a broken animatronic, eyes glassy with tears.
"Nonononononononononononooooo..."
"Shut up"
"Nonononononononono..."
"Shut up!"
"Nonononono..."
"SHUT UP! SHE'S DEAD! I KILLED HER!"
Monty interrupted his mantra at once and looked at his father.
"D-dad?"
"I killed her..."
Percy was always a harsh stallion but he loved his wife, he never would have done something like that but that night things just got... out of hand.
"Why..."
A second of silence made itself present with the sound of Pacifica being beaten to death in the background as Percy thought of what to say.
"She wa-"
"WHY!"
Monty pierced his Percy with his bloodshot eyes
"She was going to let us all die! see all this around you? she was against that! she just wanted to sit idly by as they came to kill us!"
"How..."
"In the kitchen, just before I left... I'm sorry"
Things were ticking in Monty's head, that time Pacifica kissed him, how she'd never talk about anything...
"Sorry? are you fucking with me?"
Monty was now laughing mildly at the bullshit level of that statement
"I know that you're furious but-"
"I'm not furious dad, I'm not even mad, I'm just offended that you'd say something like that after what happened... fuck you dad"
That truly hurt Percy.
"This is why I always tried to teach you to be strong, son"
"You want me to be strong? then how's this for strong, dad.. I promise you, I'll tear apart everything that's important to you, I'll bring you down, and then, I'll help you back up only to beat you down again and again, over and over until the day you die and I'll make sure you'll live as long as possible, I'll do whatever it takes and even if I die before you, I'll make sure that others will fulfill my promise"
Percy roared, his life just fell apart, he lost his wife and he wasn't going to lose his son, even if that meant tying him up and keeping him in the basement for the rest of his life.
The father threw himself onto the son who was ready for what was coming.
Experience and age won with anger and rage.
Monty was being pinned down by his father in no time, but the fury was putting up a fight and Percy was barely able to hold him down, meanwhile, Pacifica's body was going numb, the kicks and punches weren't even hurting that much anymore... it's funny how easy this is once you haven't got any fight left in you.
This was it, a dead end for Pacifica and Monty, nothing was going to save them at this point.
"JOHN! JOHN!"
John averted his attention at his comrade who had just arrived.
"WHAT!"
"THE CANTERLOT ARMY! THEY HAVE BLOCKED THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVES! WE HAVE TO STRIKE NOW!"
"FUCK!"
John released a nearly dead Pacifica who at this point didn't even care if she lived or not.
"Ey! you there! gimme that kid!"
But Percy wasn't listening, Monty was more important than some stupid John.
"Somepony bring me the kid, some rope and two chairs!"
Not a minute had passed and all the ingredients were at John's hooves.
"Shouldn't we just kill them now?"
John began to explain as he was tying Pacifica and Monty to chairs, back to back.
"No, we'll leave them here and if they're still alive when we come back we can use them as hostages"
"OI! FUCK OFF FROM MY SON!"
But Percy's body was held back at an instant by a dozen of changelings, all around.
"You're his father aren't you?"
"And why the fuck I'd tell you that?"
"Tell you what, we need changelings like you in the fight so let's make a deal, You come and fight with us and we let them go, how does that sound? after all, isn't that why you came here in the first place? to fight for a better world? one your son could live in?"
Percy slowed down, his rage subsiding.
"..."
"Well what's it going to be?"
Percy began to think... there was just so much in his life that he wasn't even sure what to do now... he killed his wife, his own son disowned him and will probably hate him till the end times... the least he could do for his son is to save him and fight for a better future for him... if he dies, oh well, the only bridge he ever had left was already burned so he had nothing left to lose.
Percy looked at his son one last time and then to John, he had made his decision.
"All right, deal"