Shining Armor’s appearance in the Canterlot War Room wasn’t even noticed.
As the unicorn prince from the Crystal Empire burst through the twin doors underneath the city of Canterlot, all he noticed was complete pandemonium within the massive room. Staff ponies, both Earth and unicorn, ran wildly carrying papers, documents, and everything that looked important in their hooves or their magic. Pegasi acquired whatever space above them they could in order to fly about and retrieve, send, and acquire documents that the Royal Sister’s needed. It was a pattern that didn’t seem to end.
Shining Armor was accompanied by two well-trained and disciplined Crystal Guards back from the Crystal Empire, which was under command by Princess Cadance until Shining returned. The unicorn feared he might bring grave news back to the empire once he received Celestia’s urgent message, and his fears came true with the shouts picked up inside the War Room.
A pair of stairs led down to waves and waves of ponies clashing into each other, Pegasi filling the air above Shining’s head. To his sides, all Shining Armor could see were unicorn mares writing away several letters by the minute. He had no idea what they were writing, but from the beads of sweat dripping from their forehead and mixing with the ink then it didn’t seem too comforting.
It was fairly simple to get to the room where the princesses resided during times of crisis. It was the room located directly ahead, passed the ponies that didn’t even notice the prince walking swiftly past them. Shining Armor pressed his hoof roughly against the door with the seal of the Royal Sisters, and when he entered the dark room that’s when he realized how quiet it had gotten.
The two Crystal Guards stayed behind and closed the door from the outside, leaving their commander in the dark room. Shining Armor let his eyes adjust to the darkness, the massive chandelier hanging above the long, wooden table giving his eyes some light.
Princess Celestia stood up from her chair at the very end of the table, a great breath of relief escaping her dry throat.
“Thank goodness you’ve arrived Shining Armor, and in posthaste. We were beginning to fear that you weren’t going to make it,” Celestia addressed, catching the attention of any official in the Royal Guard who was beginning to doze off.
“From the letter you sent…I can only assume that our worst fears our confirmed,” Shining commented, taking a seat at the end of the table facing towards the princess. As he sat down, Shining Armor observed all that was around him.
Papers and documents were scattered across the table as if it just trash at the local dump. To Princess Celestia’s left was Princess Luna, her night-colored mane flowing over the table slower than normal. Lined across the chairs were high-ranking officers in the Royal Guard, all of whom Shining Armor knew before he left for the Crystal Empire. There was Commander Silver Wing, Lieutenant Broken Heart, Sergeant Echo, and… Wait.
Hiding behind Sergeant Echo, a heavily built brown Pegasus in golden armor was a smaller, more insignificant figure, one that was sitting quietly by Princess Celestia’s right side. Shining Armor didn’t even need to look twice to know who it was. How could he ever forget his own little sister, the Princess of Friendship?
Shining Armor was surprised to say the least. He didn’t expect Twilight to be here, then again she was a princess now, and as a princess the safety of Equestria rested not only on Celestia and Luna’s shoulders, but hers as well. Still, Twilight seemed to not even recognize Shining Armor’s presence, as if her eyes were simply lost.
The prince looked over and saw the bandages wrapped around her abdomen.
His jaw dropped only slightly. While his eyes continued to stare at Twilight’s condition, his attention was captured and brought together once more by the current leaders of the Royal Guard.
“Captain Armor,” Silver Wing began, his deep voice rattled with worry, “do you feel well?”
Forcing his gaze away from his sister, Shining Armor looked over to Commander Silver Wing, nodding once. “I’m fine. Now then…” once he scooted his chair in, Shining Armor placed both of his hooves on the wooden table harshly, rattling the cups of coffee by each pony.
His eyes grew ten times grimmer. He asked, “Just what exactly are we dealing with here?”
To his left, Shining turned to see Lieutenant Broken Heart, a unicorn with a pure white coat and no helmet covering his flowing purple mane, shaking his head. He pushed over a stack of papers towards Shining Armor.
He could only look once at what the piece of paper had to say.
“We’re sending this message out to all of Equestria,” Lieutenant Broken Heart said as Shining read the lines. “The Decepticons have officially returned, and in their terror campaign they’ve already attacked two major cities: Fillydelphia and Vanhoover. But recent news from Princess Twilight and the Elements of Harmony confirm that the attack in Ponyville was not just a simple act of terror, but a mission with a goal.”
“That goal was to capture the Autobot leader, and they’ve succeeded in doing just that,” Sergeant Echo added. Shining brought his off the papers in front of him and onto the brown Pegasi right as he began to speak again.
“Optimus Prime has officially gone dark,” Echo said, earning a few nods from his fellow guards and a grumble from Shining Armor. “The ship that captured him, we now know is called the ‘Nemesis,’ is constantly moving. It also appears to have some sort of…cloaking mechanism that allows the entire ship to disappear. Our spies will be blind if they even try to find that warship, so a nation-wide hunt is out of the question.”
“What about Vanhoover?” Shining suggested. “Wouldn’t the Decepticons go right back to the place that they’re currently residing? If so, then we need to strike hard with the Rainbow Power and an army of Royal and Crystal Guard to take that city back!”
Both princesses shook their heads.
“We’ve discussed this long before you arrived, Shining Armor,” Princess Celestia began, bringing Shining’s eyes into her own. “The Decepticons have already made a clear statement that they’ll start executing civilians by the thousands if any outside force tries to attack in any way, shape, or form.”
“This is why we’ve turned down the offers from the griffons and minotaurs to send in their own troops to fight the Decepticons,” Broken Heart added to Celestia’s statement, a little sigh making its way through. “Though they don’t really care for the lives of our nation’s citizens, all it seems they want is to get rid of the Decepticons as quick as possible, not that I have anything wrong with that…except the safety of everypony we’re bound to protect under Princess Celestia.”
Shining Armor sat back into his chair, both of his hooves reaching up to rub his eyes. He looked back down at the table to see Silver Wing slide over a cup of coffee. Shining grabbed it with silent thanks and placed the cup onto his lips, letting the dark brown liquid flow down his throat.
He brought the cup down, wiped his mouth with a foreleg, and asked, “What other choice do we have here? The Decepticons and the Alliance have pushed us into a corner with only one way out: Retaliation. How can we expect to protect our world from aliens when we allow them to strike on our own soil?”
It was a full ten seconds of silence before Sergeant Echo spoke up, finally spilling out an answer.
“The Alliance of Alien Activity is terminated. Our standing army has pushed AAA forces out of every city in Equestria and back to Vanhoover without trouble.”
Shining Armor smirked. “Without trouble, huh?”
The Pegasus was about to nod before Shining Armor slammed his hoof into the table, surprising everypony in the compact room.
“This is the Alliance of Alien Activity we’re talking about, okay? They hold the most advanced military fighting force in all of Equestria, and if you think we made them retreat with magic and swords in our arsenal then I’m very disappointed to have left each and every one of you in charge of the Royal Guard!” the prince shouted.
Princess Celestia was about to intervene, her hooves already touching the ground before Shining Armor continued.
“They’re regrouping all of their forces together!” the enraged stallion bellowed. “I’ve seen this before. First, we’ll fight off the enemy with no problem whatsoever and push them back from whence they came. Then, when we rest up and prepare ourselves for the phony war to continue, the enemy surprises us with their forces joined together in an army we did not expect, with an attack we couldn’t defend against!”
His eyes grew wild, the pure instinct of a leader taking hold of his emotions and feeling. “Don’t you all see?! We’re going to get slaughtered unless we go into Vanhoover now and finish this! Losses are to be expected, I know, but if we don’t attack now then the aftermath will be far worse than any of us could comprehend.”
Shining Armor looked to Celestia, his eyes cooling down but still holding the stone-hard stare of a leader in crisis. He needed but one request.
“Princess…please…let me lead our armies into Vanhoover.”
For the longest time, Princess Celestia couldn’t answer. All she did was stare at her former Captain of the Royal Guard, his chest heaving and his hopes breaking. Celestia’s eyes closed, and her head turned to the left. Slowly, her eyelids opened, her gaze locked with the weary commander.
Silver Wing stretched his aching wings. He looked towards the young prince. So young, so full of potential…but with much more to learn.
“Listen…Shining,” Commander Silver Wing muttered. None of the guards ever called Shining Armor by his first name. It was certainly a new experience to the prince. The old Pegasus with withering gray feathers looked Shining Armor dead in the eye, his own eyes narrowing.
“I have a sister in Vanhoover, Shining Armor. She has an amazing husband and two foals, and those foals are going to start their first year of school in less than two weeks. I haven’t seen my sister in over seven years, the only assurance I have of knowing her would be the letters she sends me every month. The last letter I received was of my sister explaining how the Alliance stormed the city, pulled ponies out of their homes, and ordered them to pledge their allegiance to the Decepticons.
“I have no idea if my sister is alive or dead, if she’s fighting for her right or giving in to the fear. All I know is that her two little foals will go on to die without ever meeting their uncle if we follow through with your plan, Shining Armor. If we do, the Decepticons won’t hesitate to slaughter every innocent pony in that city. The Alliance won’t hesitate to betray their own kind in a heartbeat to satisfy their leader’s lust for power.”
Commander Silver Wing, in his ageing prowess, observed the young prince before him. Shining Armor’s eyes were wide with realization, his jaw open but no words being formed. His eyes opened and closed, leaving the past thoughts and opening his mind to what was right. He was wrong. Shining Armor was wrong.
Silver Wing leaned in closer to the young unicorn, his eyes narrowing. He said, “We can’t take that kind of risk, Shining Armor, no matter what the stakes are.”
With that left open for all to hear, Shining Armor leaned back and sat down in his chair, all the fire in his heart suddenly frozen by fear. A frozen heart was not what a leader was meant to have, a leader…a leader like Celestia was meant to care for everyone, spare as much as one can, and save the suffering. How can he save the suffering without losing so much more in the process?
Shining Armor truly didn’t know, and he finally admitted it.
“So…what do we do now?”
It was finally time for the princesses to shed their knowledge of the situation.
“What we know of now is that the Decepticons have taken the Crystal Heart,” Princess Luna began, already causing Shining Armor to groan, “…and they’ve conquered Vanhoover. Their recent attack has done more than leave Ponyville in flames, it has given a message.”
“That message is faint at best, but if the Decepticons have Optimus Prime then we are left with five Autobots without a leader. The best we can assume is that the Decepticons have taken Optimus to beat us down morally, that they can take whatever they want from us without consequences, but they are gravely mistaken,” Celestia muttered, her eyes sharpening.
“Our next move is going to be a defense,” Princess Luna added in to finish Celestia’s statement. “Since we’ve warned our neighboring nations of a Decepticon threat, all we have left to do is protect ourselves. We have Royal Guard stationed in every major settlement and city within Equestria’s borders, and they’ll warn us within minutes if Decepticons or Alliance troops are threatening to invade. Before those cowards can hope to run, we’ll be there to show them who we truly are, and that we are not going to be stomped on so easily.”
Shining Armor nodded, finally agreeing to these terms of defense. Something clicked inside of his head rather quickly, the strings finally attaching to one another to get the big picture.
The unicorn’s eyes went wide. He nearly erupted from his chair when he asked, “You said we have five Autobots on Equestrian soil, correct?”
All three Royal Guard leaders turned to face the princesses. Princess Celestia and Luna looked at each other before nodding together. Shining Armor clapped his hooves together, his smile finally returning.
“Perfect! The Autobots can help us just like they did during the Darkest Hour, and even better now that we’ll be working together instead of by themselves. Okay, first, we need to figure out where the Autobots are, and then we can-”
“The Autobots are in Ponyville.”
The silence was so thick that Shining could slice it with his sword hidden inside his holster. Shining Armor turned towards the direction of the voice he knew by heart. He figured out he wasn’t the only one to follow him. Commander Silver Wing and Lieutenant Broken Heart both turned their heads to the end of the table, towards the area of the room that was almost enveloped in darkness.
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna brought their dreadfully tired eyes together; Luna’s being straight forward while Celestia’s were directed to the right. Sergeant Echo leaned back so Shining Armor could see who was sitting right next to him, the Alicorn that was barely visible.
His sister.
Twilight Sparkle, with her wings and body basically wrapped in white bandages with slight splotches of red here and there, turned her head away from the papers littered across the table and into her brother’s eyes for the first time in a long time. She didn’t smile, she didn’t blink. She just stared at him, all the hope and happiness in her eyes drained like an empty tub.
Shining Armor kept these observations close to his heart, but he nodded nonetheless.
“Alright, the Autobots are in Ponyville, which is good because it’s not too far of a journey away,” he said, turning his attention back to the Royal Guard’s leaders. “Okay, what I was thinking was that with every attack the Decepticons plan on doing, we can have a surprise attack of our own and have the Autobots go head-first into the-”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
Shining’s sentence fell flat. He looked up from the three commanding guards and brought his eyes into Twilight’s once again. Silver Wing, Echo, and Broken Heart all turned to face Princess Twilight, their suspicions aroused and their eyes focused. Princess Celestia and Luna stared at the young Alicorn. They both knew the inevitable was coming, be it a connection between sister’s or just great assumptions, the two could already feel the cold spike with Twilight’s choice of words tear into their souls…
“I was going to say that they’re in Ponyville…and they're completely inexperienced. They won’t be able to stand a chance against the Decepticons.”