Griffon the Heave-ho

by CrowMagnon

Part 16 - The Explosion

Gilda clenched her eyes shut and shook her head to clear it. The last thing she had seen was a flash of light, accompanied by a sense of vertigo. As her talons and paws shifted to steady herself, though, she could feel the grass and dirt beneath them and immediately realized that she wasn't inside Rainbow Dash's cottage anymore. She opened her eyes, and when the afterimage of the teleportation spell started to fade from her vision, she was able to see that she was in a meadow near the cottage with Lt. Sparkle glaring furiously at her and digging at the ground with her foreleg.

Smirking at the wrathful unicorn, Gilda tauntingly asked, "What? Was it something I said?"

Twilight ground her teeth, her anger so powerful that it seemed to form an aura around her that lit up the evening dim. "You weren't just being a jerk on accident. You targeted us, didn't you? You've spent the entire day, deliberately picking on Rainbow's friends, and I want to know why!"

Gilda snorted and replied, "Because her taste in friends sucks. The sooner she realizes that, the happier she'll be. What're you gonna do about it?"

Twilight responded by charging magic into her horn.

Iron Will looked around with everypony else in the wake of Twilight and Gilda's vanishing. After confirming that those two were the only ones missing, Rainbow Dash reared up on her hind legs in order to place her front hooves over her face. "No no no nononono!" She then rushed over to Grigori. "Why did you do that?! Don't you know what's going to happen?!"

"Yes," Grigori replied sternly. "Gilda is finally going to get what she's been asking for all these years. What you've been denying her this whole time."

Rarity stepped forward and asked, "I'm sorry, Greg, I don't really understand what's going on here. What is this 'singular address' Twilight asked for?"

"Redress, dear," Applejack interjected. The businessmare looked warily at Grigori. "Basically, it means that even though Gilda is a guest in our country, she has made such a nuisance of herself that Twilight has permission to settle matters one-on-one without causing an international incident. But the only one who should have the authority to grant that permission... is the highest-ranking griffon in the visiting party."

All eyes within the cottage immediately focused on Grigori, most of them wide with surprise. Rainbow Dash's weren't among those. Instead, she stared at him in a mix of disbelief and anguish. "She's your niece... she's hurt, and you let her pick a fight with a ticked-off Twilight Sparkle?!"

"Distant cousin, technically," he reminded her, tilting his head down as he loomed over the rainbow-maned pegasus, the lenses of his glasses shining down on her like blank, burning eyes. "But if you think that I'm allowing this because I don't care about Gilda, you could not be more wrong. It's simply past time to stop play-acting and face reality. You know why she's here, so if you are going to do something about it, then do something about it!"

Rainbow Dash's body tensed up. She pulled back a front hoof and seemed ready to strike Grigori with it. Instead, she let out a frustrated groan and spun around to rush out the door while the others instinctively followed after her. "Do we even know where Twilight teleported to?" Pinkamena asked as they galloped out the door.

It was a question that was quickly answered by a shockwave that almost knocked them off their hooves.

From within her reading room, Princess Celestia's voice called out, "Come in, Captain." Shining Armor stepped inside, giving a nod to the two guards stationed outside the door as he passed by. Once he was inside, Celestia shut the door behind him with her magic and asked, "So, what brings you over here, Captain Armor?"

Before answering, Shining glanced around the room and sniffed the air, the faint scent of sunflowers wafting to his nostrils from a steaming teacup held in Celestia's magic.

"Cadance came to see me, along with Gunther Snowheart," Shining said as he approached his ruler. "They were worried about your friend. And considering you save the sunflower tea for either celebrations or when you need a pick-me-up... I'm guessing you are, too."

Celestia smiled at his concern and took a long sip of her beverage. "I knew there was a reason I appointed you Captain of the Guard besides your ability to stand around looking pretty," she mused with a smirk that accentuated the laugh lines in her grandmotherly face. A smirk that faded as she set down her cup. "But you don't need to play the detective role here, Captain. I'm not so much worried for Gertrude's sake as I am angry at Grigori. He should know better."

"The Emperor? What makes you say that, Princess?" Shining Armor moved toward a cushion sitting opposite from Celestia, but didn't sit down until she nodded her permission.

Celestia let out a soft sigh and took another sip of tea as she stared off into the distance, reaching back into her memories. "When he was younger, Grigori actually spent a few years attending university here in Canterlot. And you probably wouldn't think it, as timid as my little ponies can be sometimes, but he had an extraordinary talent for fitting in and making himself at home everywhere.

"Far from engaging in the sort of chest-thumping that young griffons tend to do, he put ponies at ease and made friends almost instantly. I was so impressed by his insight and ability to understand other creatures that I even took him under my wing for a while, thinking that he might have been one of Gertrude's successors." Celestia laughed softly and shook her head. "He wasn't, as it turned out. A little too ambitious and manipulative, by his own admission, but he did take a great interest in Gertrude and those very few griffons who have since been born with her... affinities. I can remember spending many evenings discussing culture, and how unjust it is that griffons like Gretel Preystalker and Glacier are honored as heroes in Equestria, but ignored or even vilified by Imperial historians."

Shining Armor considered this with a small, thoughtful frown. "You don't say? And what about now?"

Celestia looked down into her teacup. "Now, I'm starting to think that maybe he learned a little too much from me about keeping one's cards hidden. I was so, so certain that of all the griffons in the Empire, he would find a way to accept my friend and her clan. I suppose it was simply more politically expedient to make that 'offer' instead."

Shining Armor looked at his princess, who raised and lowered the sun on a daily basis and had ruled with wisdom and patience for almost as long as Equestria had existed. He knew that there were precious few ponies in all of that history who had ever been given the opportunity to see her so vulnerable. Rather than feeling honored to be shown Celestia's most guarded feelings, however, Shining merely saw it as a call to perform his duty as protector of the royal family. "Princess, there's something you should know. Cadance told me that during the meeting--"

Whatever his next words were, they were drowned out by a powerful rumbling that shook the windows. It was a loud, sustained crash like thunder, even though the Canterlot weather schedule said nothing but scattered clouds and morning mist was planned for. As a result, his very first thought was that some of the Imperial soldiers might have been showing off their storm-shaping prowess or getting into a scrap with some of the Snowheart griffons, but as he rushed toward the windows to see what was going on, he realized that there was a voice within the explosion of noise that sounded incredibly familiar.

Furrowing his brow, Shining Armor opened up the reading room's window and looked out through the evening dim toward a certain cozy little town. "Twily...?"

"STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! AND THOUGHTLESS! AND VERY STUPID!" Twilight clenched her eyes shut as she shouted her frustrations at the top of her lungs. Her vocal chords, already well-trained in the art of shouting orders clearly and loudly, were further boosted by the amplification spell she had learned from Vinyl Scratch after the DJ used rock music to break the shell of ice that Gertrude had used to entrap the occupants of Sugarcube Corner just a week ago.

Whatever worries or reservations she would normally have to prevent her from directing what was essentially a sonic siege engine toward a single griffoness, they were utterly negated by the sheer anger she felt over Gilda's betrayal of her friendship with Rainbow Dash.

"HOW COULD YOU?! RAINBOW ALREADY WELCOMED YOU INTO HER HOME! SHE MADE EXCUSE AFTER EXCUSE FOR YOU! AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY HER FRIENDSHIP?! EXPLAIN YOURSELF! DON'T YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH HER FRIENDS MEAN TO HER?! TELL ME HOW YOU CAN JUSTIFY MAKING HER SUFFER LIKE THAT! EXPLAIN!"

Twilight let the spell fizzle out as she caught her breath. Still, the echoes of her furious ranting rumbled like distant thunder.

"I understand your frustration, Lt. Sparkle, but I think you forgot your own strength there," said a voice that Twilight immediately recognized. Not the griffoness that she had been browbeating, but...

She opened her eyes and gasped when she saw Gertrude Snowheart looming protectively over Gilda, her wings encased in frozen armor as they wrapped around the smaller griffoness. Surrounding the two griffons, the ground was shaken up and littered with the shattered and slowly-melting shards of an icy shell that the Warden of Winter must have erected to shield them from the brunt of her magically-amplified shout.

Shocked out of her righteous anger by the sudden intervention and the sight of the harm she had nearly done, Twilight staggered back. "G-Gertrude?! I..." Looking down at the flattened grass and ruptured earth around her, she felt her guts twist. "Oh, sweet Luna...! I... I didn't mean..."

"Grahhh! Get off of me, ice queen! What're you even doing here?" Gilda growled at Gertrude, letting out a hiss of pain when she tried to use her wings to shove the larger griffoness away, only to exacerbate her injury again.

Gertrude responded by doing so, then touching a talon to the base of Gilda's wings. Almost immediately, the pain was numbed to almost nothing as ice spread from the point of contact and encased the sprained muscles. "If I hadn't been, you might be deaf right now. Something you should consider before you try to pick a fight while injured and unarmed."

Gilda ground her teeth together and snapped, "You think I'm gonna be grateful? Stick your beak where it belongs! This fight's between me and her," she proclaimed, pointing a talon at Twilight, snapping the unicorn out of her dazed state.

"Wait... fight?"

"Gilda! Twilight!" Twilight, Gilda and Gertrude all turned toward the sound of Rainbow Dash's voice as the pegasus raced across the grassy meadow with her friends and Grigori not far behind. Completely ignoring the Warden of Winter's presence, Rainbow Dash hurried over toward Gilda and immediately started looking her over. "G! Thank Celestia... are you okay? You didn't blow out your eardrums or anything, did you?"

Startled by Dash's attention, Gilda just blinked in surprise before pushing Dash back with a talon and snarling, "I'm fine! This fight's between me and Captain Bullhorn here, so stay out of it!"

"I'm not going to fight you, Gilda."

Somehow, this statement struck Gilda even harder than the verbal explosion that preceded it, and the gobsmacked griffon turned back toward Twilight. "What?! That's what you teleported us out her for isn't it? So we could settle this! Flaming tornados, you asked Uncle Greg for singular bucking redress!"

Twilight surveyed the destruction around her and replied, "Well, yeah, I... I went overboard, but I just wanted to get it through your thick skull that the stuff you've been pulling today was out of line, and I wasn't going to yell at the Emperor's relative without permission." Regaining her footing, both physically and verbally, Twilight narrowed her eyes at Gilda. "Don't get me wrong, you've got a lot of apologizing to do, but I wasn't going to actually hurt you over it. Just explain. What is this all about?"

Gilda's eye twitched. She reared back to let loose a shriek of raw anger and frustration that rivalled Twilight's own, even without magical assistance, before dropping back down to all fours.

"I can explain..." Dash said, stepping in between Twilight and Gilda. "I'm sorry, a lot of this is my fault. I knew what Gilda wanted when she came here, but I hoped I could get away with just ignoring it." She gave the griffoness a hard glare that was equal parts anger and sadness as she explained to the others, "She wants me to make a choice between you and her. I hoped that my old friend wouldn't treat my new friends this way, and you could all just get along. I hoped that I wouldn't have to abandon any of my friends. But I do. If this is gonna stop, I've gotta take a stand."

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and took a long, heavy sigh. "With a clear mind and silent, serene heart... it's time I do what I should have done at the start. Gilda, this whole time you've been causing the best mares I know pain and strife."

Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and looked straight into Gilda's own, her rosy eyes boring the conviction behind her stare directly into Gilda's soul. "But if I have to choose one over the other, then I'll stick by you for the rest of my life."

Everypony's jaw dropped to the ground.

The quiet hush, silent but for the faint breeze rustling the grass, was only broken when Gilda exclaimed, "What?!"