Six Races, Six artifacts. Each given as a protector. The Loyal Dragons, willing to die for their honor. The Honest Griffons, fair and just. The Kind Changelings, caring for their own, no matter the cost. The Generous Breezies, giving their lives to assist the others. The Serious Minotaur, balancing the good nature of others. The Magical Ponies, controllers of the very land they live on. One cannot survive without the others, once the races were united. However, the Discord Wars tore into the lands of many. The Changelings' land was destroyed, the Dragons' land became inhospitable to the other races, the Griffons, forced from their mountain homes. The Breezies' land was sealed away, inaccessible by the others.
The final blows came when the Centaurs were forced into a joining with the Draconoquis, The Dragons were left to fight the Centaurs inside of the Burning Fiords, until the creature was sealed away by the Celestial sisters. The Dragons used the residual energy from the Tyrant to seal away the Centaurs. Keeping them in a separate realm to ensure they could not continue their rampage.
The Elements, guarding the land of Equestria, the other races have long since abandoned the powers, preferring to keep their own devices. We know little about their races since the separation. Traces have been found of their existence…but nothing since the power of the Elements was first used.
“The Dream walker…”
Later…The Elements were used to seal the moon tyrant, but not before her power stretched to the Dragon domain, the new threat emerged, nightmares, forcing the Dragons to adapt to Dream Walking. Allowing them to combat within their own dreams, allowing them to battle back the powers of the Night Mare. Until it was defeated.
“The Dream walker approaches… You must awaken!”
The sudden jolt made Sunstreak straighten up.
Where am I? He thought, his mind clouded. Oh right…I was flying through the storm. I must have been hit by something.
At that moment, the door shot open and Tornado Dust ran in. “Oh thank Chrysalis, you’re awake!” Tornado Dust said running over to where Sunstreak was laying. Chrysalis? “Meadow has gone missing!”
“Who went missing?” Sunstreak asked.
Tornado Dust stared at him in shock. “Meadow. The little filly you saved in Canterlot." Tornado looked at the blank stare Sunstreak gave him before saying, "Anything?”
“Did you hit your head on something? Why are you acting so weird? I’ve never been to Canterlot.” Sunstreak replied, climbing out of the bed and looking at his wings. One of which had a rather large singe mark on it. “So that’s where the lightning hit…”
“Lightning?” Tornado Dust replied completely confused. “But your horn exploded! That’s what caused the…” He stopped after seeing Sunstreak’s confused expression.
“You must have hit your head, because I’ve never had a horn. I was born a Pegasus through and through. You should know this by now.”
Tornado Dust just looked dumbfounded. ”Can you…wait here for a minute…” He quickly dashed out the door closing it behind him.
“That Pegasus…” Sunstreak said rolling his eyes, “always up to something…”
“No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” Tornado Dust said while he propped a chair against the door to stop Sunstreak from getting out while he figured something out. “What in Tartarus happened? Why can he remember me but not that I’m a Changeling? Why does he not remember Meadow? What the Hive is going on?”
A knock on the front door made him jolt up, almost hitting the roof. When he adjusted his mane to make it seem he wasn’t just freaking out, he flew down to the door “Who is it?”
“It’s the Muffin Mare now open up, Dusty.” That is definitely Rainbow Dash.
“Sorry, Rainbow… I’m…having a personal problem here.”
“Is this the same problem you’ve been having for three days now?” Rainbow replied. “Come on, Dusty… You haven’t come out in days, ever since the thunderstorm. What’s going on?”
She is never going to believe me. “What if I told you that Meadow was missing, Sunstreak is a Changeling, and I’ve been protecting him from all of you and your friends?”
There was a pause. Hopefully Rainbow Dash was not planning on bashing down the door. “Then I would say that you should let me in there before I bust down your door!”
Of course
“Hey, Rainbow. What are you doing outside?” Sunstreak said from the other side of the door. NO! No! No!
“Tornado Dust thinks you’re a Changeling.” Rainbow said.
“Are you serious? Dusty open the door. I didn’t climb out the window for nothing.”
Not what I needed… “Fine…” Tornado Dust opened the door, and both Rainbow Dash and Sunstreak flew in.
“So where have you been, Sunny?” Rainbow asked. “You were supposed to help me practice yesterday.”
“I think I was unconscious, I got hit by a lightning bolt during the thunderstorm and woke up today.”
“Well, whatever happened it fixed your eye.” WAIT! WHAT?
Tornado Dust flew up to be eye level with Sunstreak. Sure enough, his right eye was…normal, a rounded pupil, not even a little slit. Okay…this may be worse than I thought.
“Umm…Rainbow…could you do me a…huge favor?”
“Only if Sunny here promises to race me.”
“Oh, you are so on.” Sunstreak relied. The two of them looked like they were going to race right now... That is the last thing I need right now.
“Later you two.” Tornado Dust said flying up to their height. “I need you to get Twilight and bring her here.”
“Why would you need Twilight?” Rainbow asked she was clearly confused. “I could help just as much as Egghead.”
“Well we need an egghead, Rainbow…” Tornado said placing his hoof in his face. “So please just get Twilight…”
“Why?”
“Because…I just…need to talk to her about something…and I would prefer it to be here…”
“You’re acting really strange, Dusty…” Rainbow said giving him a suspicious look. “Are you sure that you aren’t the Changeling?” You have no idea, Rainbow…
“Please…just get Twilight…I’ll cover for you for the next week.” Tornado replied.
“Fine…but only because you owe me for me having to pull your weight around here.” Rainbow flew out to get Twilight and Tornado pinned Sunstreak to a wall.
“What did you do with Snake Eye?” He hissed.
“What are you talking about, Dusty?” Sunstreak replied. “I’ve known you for years…”
“No, you haven’t.” Tornado replied. “You’ve only known me for a week or so. Ever since the invasion.”
“What invasion?” Sunstreak asked blinking. “Oh you mean Canterlot. Wish I could have been there. Crack some Changeling chitin.”
“Listen to me you shape shifting Nymph.” Tornado Dust said, reverting to his Changeling form and slamming the door closed with his magic, “You have twelve seconds to tell me what you did with Snake Eye before I show the Elements of Harmony what you really are. Then they’ll handle this.”
Sunstreak looked at him surprised. “Tornado…You’re a Changeling?” He looked genuinely surprised, but Darkblaze wasn’t going to back down. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’ve been a Changeling this whole time you backwards laid egg!” Darkblaze was losing his patience. “Show me what you really are!”
“Tornado…I…You were a Changeling this whole time…”
“You stupid shape shifter. Yes! Ever since you got to Ponyville. I took you in because you wanted to learn to control that magic of yours and…” Darkblaze stopped. Wait…his memories… “Where are you from?”
“Tornado…I think the real question is…”
“Just answer the question!” Darkblaze said slamming his hoof into the wall.
“The Burning Fiords!” Sunstreak replied.
“When did we meet?”
“We met in the academy, I went on to study magical artifacts, and you became a weather pony.” Sunstreak replied.
What is the one thing that Snake Eye never told anypony… “What does your Cutie Mark mean?”
Sunstreak opened his mouth as if to reply, but paused as he looked back at his flank, his mouth hung open as he looked for an answer. “I…I don’t…” he looked down at the mark, as if it was foreign to him. “I…don’t know… Why don’t I know?”
Darkblaze sighed. “For once…your lack of knowledge on ponies actually saved you.” Darkblaze let the confused Pegasus go, turning back into Tornado Dust.
“Why can’t I remember…?” Sunstreak said landing on the ground and putting his hooves on his head, trying to remember. “Why can’t I remember!”
“It’s alright, Snake Eye…” Tornado Dust said, landing next to the Pegasus. “Here let me put you back in your room… You can think about it there.”
Sunstreak put up little resistance, mostly because he was dumbfounded by the realization he had no idea what his Cutie Mark meant, it was their identifying mark, and he didn’t know what it meant.
After Tornado Dust placed Sunstreak in the room, and made sure all the windows were locked with his magic, he closed the door and replaced the chair, before going through all the possible reasons this would happen.
“He could have been hit by lightning on the way down…but then that doesn’t explain Meadow’s disappearance… Maybe he knocked himself out on the ground… but again…Meadow was nowhere around when I found him…So what could have possibly…” A knock on the door broke him out of his trance, he was going over every detail of the scene where he found Shade earlier, he had skid across the ground, he had a burn mark on his wing. Nothing else was out of the ordinary.
When he opened the door, he found not only Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but also Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to throw Sunny’s “Welcome Back” Party. He did say that I could throw him another party later this week. And it is later.”
“Uhh… he’s having a…nervous breakdown right now…” Tornado Dust replied. As if on cue, there was a smashing sound from upstairs, which sounded a lot like a pony ramming into a wall, very hard.
“Well…why did you want me here?” Twilight asked, standing in the door way and looking rather confused. “Rainbow Dash said you had ‘an Egghead problem.’” She raised her eyebrows. “I hope that isn’t a direct quote.”
Tornado Dust sighed. “Come in…” He moved out of the doorway to allow all three mares into the house. Pinkie was bouncing around everywhere, as if looking for something, Rainbow Dash was flying a little off the ground, and Twilight was also looking around the room.
“So what was the big emergency you needed me for?” Twilight asked, looking at Tornado Dust.
Tornado Dust sighed. “It is more like…a rather large collection of problems…” Tornado Dust rubbed the back of his neck.
“Okay…then what would be the most prominent of these problems?” Twilight asked.
“Meadow is missing…”
“What!” Twilight shouted looking directly at him. “What do you mean she is missing?”
“I can’t find her…ever since the storm…she just sort of…vanished.”
“How do two…fully grown Pegasi lose one Unicorn filly?”
“There was a lot happening on that day okay!” Tornado Dust was finding it very difficult to explain this without revealing that either of them were changelings. “Not to mention the fact that now Sunstreak is having memory problems and the fact that I’ve been stressed out to my breaking point for nearly two days.”
“So what do you need my help with?” Twilight asked. “I mean…not to sound rude but I can’t really help unless you have some kind of clue.”
“I was hoping you had some kind of…memory spell. Nothing powerful…I just need to know if Sunstreak saw anything that could help me find out where Meadow is.”
“What makes you even think Sunstreak saw anything?”
“Yeah. Maybe he was just flying in the clouds. And got hit by that storm we had.”
Tornado Dust sighed. “Listen…I am trying to find Meadow…I don’t care how I do it…Sunstreak has been the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in quite a while. I’m trying to help him. If you won’t at least try…then I’ll find somepony who will.” He was being serious. Meadow put her faith in Shade, and he didn’t want to be the one who ruins it. “So are you going to help me or not?”
“Well…I’m just saying that I’m not sure how much help we can be…” Twilight replied. “I’m just trying to-“
“If you can help in anyway, that would be great…because as it stands right now, I have nothing to go on.” Tornado Dust dropped down onto the floor, looking towards the three mares.
“Oh cheer up, Dusty.” Came Pinkie’s high-pitched voice. “If there is anyway to find Meadow We’ll find it. Then we can throw a party!” One-track mind that one…
“Pinkie, plan the party later. We need to try and help. Everything else can wait.” Twilight said, calming down the bouncing pink pony “So where is Sunstreak right now?”
Another rather loud crash occurred upstairs. “Up there…”
After Tornado Dust managed to calm Sunstreak down, involving about five minutes of death threats and another three of actually talking, the three mares came into the room. It was a mess, some of the furniture was overturned, there were scratch marks on the walls, and two rather prominent dents in the walls. Aside from that the room looked fine.
“Hi, Sunstreak…” Twilight said looking towards the pegasi. “How are you feeling?”
“I can’t remember my family…” Sunstreak replied. “Why can’t I remember them?” Sunstreak was beginning to freak out again, before Tornado Dust slapped him.
“Just hurry up before he freaks out again. I don’t think slapping him is going to work for much longer.”
Twilight nodded, her horn began to glow with a purple light, as she got closer, Sunstreak’s eyes began to widen. When she tapped her horn to Sunstreak’s head. His eyes snapped open.
But instead of what was expected, Twilight’s horn began to slowly glow green, Rainbow and Pinkie didn’t notice it, but Tornado did. As soon as it began, he took off and rushed over to Twilight, quickly flicking her horn before it fully engulfed her normal purple magic.
“I’m sorry about that…” He said looking at the Unicorn who was currently glaring at him. “But I may have just saved your sanity…”
“By interrupting me?” Twilight said looking at him with a bit of annoyance.
“Well…let’s see if that spell of yours worked.” Tornado Dust replied, looking towards Sunstreak, whose eyes were currently closed. “Snake Eye? Can you hear me?”
Sunstreak waved his hoof in a dismissive manner. “Ugh…I feel like that bug you run into when flying…” He managed to raise his hoof up to his head, covering his eye. “Where am I?”
“In the house…” Tornado replied, “You took quite a fall, and you lost some of your memory.”
Sunstreak moved his hoof; his eye was back to a slit. “I didn’t lose my memory.”
“What?” Tornado Dust replied.
“It was taken from me.” Sunstreak replied.
“What pony would want to take your memories?” Twilight asked, looking over at him.
“They weren’t ponies… They were Changelings. But they weren’t…normal.”
“How so?” Tornado asked, flying above Sunstreak, looking right at him. “Snake Eye… How were they different?”
“I can’t remember…” Sunstreak replied. “They…made sure I wouldn’t…” He looked around the room. “Where’s Meadow?”
Tornado Dust rubbed the back of his neck. “I…have to tell you something…”
Sunstreak burst out of the door. Flying off towards Everfree.
Tornado Dust and Rainbow Dash quickly flew off after him, trying to catch up with him.
“Remind me not to get him mad before a race.” Rainbow said to Tornado Dust, looking ahead to see the red Pegasus ahead of them.
“Just don’t get him mad at all and you’ll be fine.” They had just managed to catch up to him, as he was not quite used to flying quickly and had just woken up an hour or so ago.
“Hey, Sunny! What are you planning on finding?” Rainbow said over the wind.
“Anything, Maybe something I can track… I don’t know exactly what. Anything.”
“Don’t you think you should rest a little…?” Tornado began before looking at Sunstreak and getting a death glare.
“You just told me I was asleep for three days. The last thing I need is more rest.”
“But…” Tornado tried to talk to him, however Sunstreak had already begun to descend.
The three of them landed by a large skid mark ground into the dirt, where Shade had crashed earlier that week. The ground itself seemed upturned, up until the crater where Shade had stopped.
“So this is where you landed, huh?” Rainbow Dash said, looking at the small trench dug into the ground. “Must have been a pretty bad crash.”
“I’m surprised he was alright after that. The only real damage he got was a singe on his wing. Probably from the electrical spears.”
“That was you?” Rainbow said shocked, looking at Sunstreak, who was currently looking around the crash site.
“Sadly…” Sunstreak replied. “I may or may not have been involved in it.” He was looking around the crater, hovering above the ground, trying not to mess with the scene. “How many ponies have come out here?”
“Aside from a few Guards…not many.” Rainbow replied. “I kept my eye on it.”
Sunstreak looked over at her, raising an eyebrow. “Kept an eye on it?”
“Alright. So maybe I was curious about that crash that happened. So I staked it out.”
Sunstreak continued to hover around the crater, looking it over again and again. He was having trouble finding any sort of clue as to where those Changelings went… Unless….
Sunstreak turned to look at it with his left eye. There was something he didn’t see before. “Tornado Dust, get over here.” When the gray Pegasus flew over being just as careful not to touch anything. “Take a look at this… From a…special…point of view.”
Tornado Dust looked at the ground beside the crater. At first he saw nothing, but he did notice a small flicker of emotional energy remaining. If he weren’t told by Sunstreak to look closer, he would have missed it.
“What is it?” Sunstreak asked.
“Looks like residue from a highly powerful spell…” Tornado Dust whispered. “I’ve never seen it like this before… It seems to be…” His eyes widened. “Made out of love…”
“Made out of love? How is that even possible?” Sunstreak asked. “I mean…we got blown out of Canterlot by it…but I didn’t think that Changelings could use it in their spells.”
“We normally can’t…” Tornado Dust replied. “We normally just use it for energy…this must be some pretty special Changeling…”
“So what should we do about this?” Sunstreak asked, careful to keep his voice down.
“Well…if you really want results…we should let them handle it…” Motioning to Rainbow Dash. “I’ve seen them do some pretty impressive stuff in the time I’ve been here.”
“Fine…” Sunstreak replied. “Hey, Rainbow! Can you get the rest of your friends here.” Then remembering something. “And tell AJ to grab that knife belt of mine. I keep forgetting to pick that up.”
“No problem, Sunny.” Rainbow replied flying off into the sky.
“You sure this is a good idea?” Sunstreak asked Tornado Dust.
“It might not be, but it is all we have.”