Watching the Clouds
Applejack's jaw dropped as Thunderlane finished his tale*. Once, she might've doubted him, but ever since Twilight came to CHS that Fall Formal she'd found that what she considered believable had grown drastically, and aside from that, the unnatural body lying on the floor seemed to support his story.
"Tha's why you've been so quiet lately," she murmured, looking in horror at the corpse. "You've been waitin' for the other shoe to drop, for'm to stop just waitin' an' watchin'. An' now, now they have."
"And soon we'll drop with that other shoe," the governor cackled, a storm of humorless laughter. "You heard Thunderlane, bolts did nothing, and by the time we manage to get in range to use what worked, those nets and tridents of their's'll deal with us. Cloudsdale is doomed, and not all of Lord Skies' sunniness can change that. Soon, they'll strike, and for real, not just as a scouting mission or a raid. And when they do, all the 'valour' and 'courage' of the Stormlings will crumble and die, and fall screaming into their fools' tombs. But let those who want to fight; the end comes, and all should meet it as they think best. Let them die on the field if they wish; those who run won't be around long enough to care about their foolishness."
"Is all lost?" Fluttershy asked. "The battle Thunderlane described was a difficult one, yes, but not an impossible one. This," she gestured at the grey corpse. "is proof of that. If we mustered Cloudsdale, we might be able to-"
"Do you know how many of them there are?" Wind Rider cut her off. "If we mustered the state we could gather perhaps 50,000, but for all we know they have 100,000 or more. Even if they only had half as many as we did, it would still be a hard fight, and that's without taking the Men Thunderlane saw among them into account. And that's without the time it would take to muster, time we don't know if we can afford. We lack too much information to risk a fight, girl. We lack information, we lack numbers." A darker shadow fell across his face. "We lack hope."
"Not all hope," Soarin reassured him. "For all we know, the raiding party Thunderlane encountered was their army, or their reaction to his charge is something they all share. What we don't know is as much cause for hope as doubt, your lordship."
"A fool's hope," the governor snorted. "Only a fool puts trust in what he doesn't know."
"What I know is that there are 50,000 Stormlings waiting for you to give the order," Fluttershy said. "50,000 bravehearts ready to grab their spears and mount up if you tell them to, even if you tell them to ride to their deaths. Cloudsdale has faced threats before, your lordship, threats almost as great as this, and we didn't flinch before them. We held out hope, however slim it may have seemed, and fought on. Come," she stretched out a hand. "Let us do so again."
Wind Rider snarled. "I am Lord Rider of Storm's Deep," he spat, rising shakily to his feet. "chief of the great house House Rider, Warden of Storm's Pass, blood of Hurricane the Great, veteran of a hundred battles, decorated soldier of the Royal Guard, and I will not be lectured on the arts I have mastered by the likes of you."
"Now, hang on a minute," AJ said, stomping her foot on the ground. "Flutters' here's just tryna help."
"And she can help," Wind Rider seethed. "by minding her own business."
"She's tryna," AJ retorted. "Not her fault that business means she has to talk to you 'bout your's."
Wind Rider loomed taller, easily standing a good head taller than AJ. Though he wobbled, he still cast his shadow threateningly over her, face glowing with rage.
"I am the governor of Cloudsdale," he said in a cold, clipped voice. "My business is guiding the state, and it is no one's business but my own, certainly not that of every carrion-eater from here to Manehattan. Only one hand may wield the state's stamp, and I will not surrender what I fought so hard for to a teenage, Pansy girl from the soft city. Go, Applejack and company; I give you leave to fight, or whatever else you need. Arm yourselves, if you wish; grab your spears and shields and mount up. Ride out to death and glory. But rule of the state rests with me, and I will not order it to its collective death." He slammed his shaking fist on the desk. "Go," he ordered. "This audience is at an end. Clear Sky shall see to your rooms, if you wish to stay and die. Dismissed."
Soarin bowed, then tightly grasped AJ by the shoulder and led her and the others out of the office.
"Who does he think he is?" AJ fumed as the door shut behind them. "Flutters' was just tryna help and he almost bit'r head off."
"The governor is a proud man," Soarin sighed. "Proud, traditional, and drunk. I'm not excusing what he did, but I do understand it why he did it. I'm sorry about it, though, Fluttershy," he dipped his head. "Your heritage is something to be proud of, not ashamed."
"I know," she murmured, brows furrowing. "What worries we is why he said it. The way he put it wasn't just meant to deny my help, it was meant to deny my ability to help, to deny Cloudsdale the hope that I might be able to help. Combined with some of the other things he said, it felt almost like he didn't want hope. But why?"
"I don't know," Soarin replied. "I can't say I felt the same way, either; to me, it seemed more like he was protecting his authority and the decisions he'd made with it than rejecting hope like you said. But wordplay like this has never been my strong suit, I might have missed something you picked up on. There's another thing we need to consider, though; your mission."
"By the time we let Sunset know what's happenin'," AJ said. "it might be too late. She sent us to find out what was goin' on here, an' now't we know I ain't just gonna let y'all face it alone. I'm stayin' an' fightin', no matter what."
"It would be wise to let Sunset know what's going on, though," Fluttershy frowned. "If we don't and we fall, whatever's attacking Cloudsdale will be able to take Homestria by surprise."
"Maybe send a messenger?" Platinum offered. "Or a few, like Thunderlane did, make them harder to catch? We don't have to be the ones to tell her, after all; so long as we give them some way of letting Sunset know that we sent them, they should be good."
"That's a good idea," Soarin nodded. "It should be easy to find a willing rider, especially if it's for the princess or one of her ministers. Yeah," he smiled. "Yeah, that would work really well. I'll see if I can't find anyone soon. One question, though; do any of you want to join them?"
"I'm stayin' here," AJ replied.
"So am I," Platinum nodded.
"Cloudsdale needs me, as do my friends," Fluttershy asked. "How could I abandon them?"
Soarin nodded in acceptance, then said, "In that case, follow me. While I scrounge up some messengers, you'll need to scrounge up some armor." His face fell a bit. "Lord Rider was right about one thing, at least; magic alone won't be enough to win the day. I don't even know how much of a difference it will end up making, or if it will at all."
"Maybe not," AJ offered. "But we can hope that it will."
* A full account of which is given in Who Guards the Guards?
Soarin led them at a steady pace back the way they came, towards Windy Hill's armory. The creaking halls they marched through were almost empty, devoid of people, except for one.
AJ saw her out of the corner of her eye, a blur of movement curling around a corner. Frowning, she tapped Soarin on the shoulder and pointed down the passage. "Thought I saw some'n movin' 'round the corner there," she whispered to him. "You have any idea what it is?"
He nodded, then put a finger to his lips for quiet. Gesturing for the others to stay still, he began creeping down the corridor, boots barely making a sound as he softly treaded over to the corner. Leaning up against the wall, he crept the last few hairs over to the edge of his cover and waited, listening. After a few seconds, he gave a short nod, leapt out of cover, and wrapped his arms around the other corner-lurker.
"Thought you could hide from me, eh?" he growled at them. "What have I told you about spying on me, on anyone?"
"No fair!" the child wrapped in his embrace laughed. "How'd you see me, I was being careful!"
"Not careful enough," Soarin replied, grinning. "And you know what happens to spies who aren't careful enough." Lifting up one of his knuckles, he rubbed it fiercely into her hair, inviting squeals of mixed irritation and delight from his captive.
Eventually, the girl managed to wiggle out of Soarin's grasp and glared at him with a stony face, though her eyes showed her true joy at the meeting. "I'm gonna sneak up on you one of these days," she said. "And when I do, I'm gonna get you good. You'll need a hundred combs by the time I'm through with you."
"We shall see," Soarin replied, smirking. After a few moments, that smirk turned into a true grin as he clapped the girl on the shoulder. "It's good to see you, Sprint," he said.
"Good to see you too, Mr. Skies," she smiled back. Then, a wary look coming over her face, she turned to look at Applejack and the others. "Who're your friends?" she asked cautiously. "I know your guards, but who are the other three?"
"Allow me to introduce you," Soarin smiled as he began walking her over.
AJ had to bite her lip as the newcomer approached; they couldn't have been any older than Apple Bloom, and the way she'd tried to sound tough earlier but now almost hid behind Soarin, watching her and her friends warily, was so similar to the way her little sister had behaved in the past that she had to force herself not to race over, scoop the girl up, and tell her everything was gonna be fine, Big Sis was here. A hollow pang struck her gut as she looked into the eyes of that girl, purple instead of the orange she yearned for; she hadn't realized how much she'd missed her sister until then. She hoped she was doing okay, her and her little friends.
The newcomer came to a halt a few arm-lengths away from them, and Soarin did his best to fill some of those lengths with his arm. "Wind Sprint," he said, gesturing to each of the Rainbooms in turn. "meet Applejack, Fluttershy, and Platinum Brilliance."
"Howdy, Wind Sprint," AJ said, wiping a few stray tears from her eyes as she did so. "Pleasure to meetcha. Sorry for spoilin' your little game of hide'n'seek with Soarin."
"It wasn't hide and seek," Wind Sprint's cheeks puffed up in annoyance. "I was practicing my stealth. I need to be stealthy if I wanna get into the Guard."
"You want to join the Guard?" Platinum asked.
Wind Sprint nodded enthusiastically. "My dad was in it," she boasted. "Mom says he was the best Guard they'd ever seen, even better than Shining Armor. That's gonna change once I grow up, though; I'm gonna be the best Guard in the world, even better than Dad was. There aren't gonna be any bullies within a million miles of wherever I'm stationed, 'cause they'll be too scared of me. Burglars are gonna break in to put lost stuff back instead of stealing, and nobody's gonna hurt anyone else. Nobody's gonna lose their dad to an unlucky stab wound once I'm a Guard."
Platinum winced, and AJ followed her, even her mind being able to read the subtext in what Wind Sprint had said. AJ said nothing, though; she knew all too well how prickly the subject of loss could make someone, especially someone so young.
"You might do all that," Soarin teased. "if you learn to be sneakier than a cloud on a clear morning. There's more to the Guard-"
"-than wanting to beat people up," Wind Sprint rolled her eyes. "I know, I know, you've told me a million times, Mr. Skies. And I know what you're gonna say next; 'If it's worth saying once,'" she and Soarin echoed. "'it's worth saying a million times.'"
"Sorry, Sprint," he shrugged. "I know you've heard it before, but it does bear repeating. You don't learn how to do one of the Guard's special moves in one try, right? It's no different for this."
Wind Sprint pouted and turned away, clearly annoyed at her lack of a counterargument to Soarin. After a few moments, he sighed, clapped her on the shoulder, and said, "Anyway, if you're interested I'm taking them to the armory. They're planning to help with the... situation."
She gasped, then started jumping up and down in excitement. "Can I come?" she pleaded. "Can I, can I, can I? I promise I'll be good, I won't even touch anything!"
"Hmm," Soarin exaggeratedly hummed, over-dramatically rubbing his chin in thought. "I don't know..."
"Please, Mr. Skies," Wind Sprint pleaded, looking up at him with the dreaded watery eyes. "Mom's on another of her writing kicks. There's a whole three pages of it waiting for me on my desk, and she wants me to edit all of it, all three pages. I can't proofread all that, I'll die of boredom. Can I come with you instead, please?"
AJ watched Soarin waver before the heart-wrenching display, clearly struggling with whether to bow to her demands or tell her to listen to her mother. Between what he knew to be right and what would make Wind Sprint happy he wavered, until he found himself suddenly shored up, unexpectedly by Platinum.
"So," she asked Wind Sprint in a casual voice. "you think the Guard's for lazy people?"
"No way!" Wind Sprint shook her head. "The Guard's only for the best of the best of the best, not lazybones!"
"What about people who don't like following orders?" Platinum asked. "Do you think the Guard lets them join?"
"A Guard who doesn't obey orders," Wind Sprint replied, sounding as if she was quoting someone. "is just a bully in fancy clothes."
"What about if they don't want to do those orders?" Platinum asked, kneeling down to Wind Sprint's level. "What if they think they're boring? Would that be the behavior of a Guard?"
"No," Wind Sprint mumbled, hanging her head. She raised it again as Platinum put her hand on her shoulder, gently smiling.
"I know you don't like it," Platinum said. "I know it's boring. But you want to be a Guard, and a Guard doesn't not do something because they don't like it or it's boring. Sometimes, you need to do the boring stuff, like patrolling or training or proofreading, just like you need to eat stuff you may not like to make sure you stay healthy. A Guard doesn't run from that kinda stuff, they run towards it so that other people won't have to. What's waiting for you on your desk isn't three pages of writing, Wind Sprint; it's a test, a test of whether you really want to be a Guard or not. If you don't, you can leave it and come with us. But if you do want to be a Guard, if you do want to follow in your dad's footsteps, then you need to do what he did and obey your orders, even if they're boring. So what'll it be?"
Wind Sprint bit her lip, looking around in search of an answer. Then, closing her eyes, she found it and sighed. Mumbling "I'll see you later, Mr. Skies," she began trudging away back the way she came, trudging towards her duty. She was stopped, though, by a call from Platinum, who smiled at her.
"Your dad would be proud of you, Wind Sprint," she said. "Good luck with your Guard training, especially that test in your room."
Wind Sprint smiled back, a gap in her teeth faintly visible, then left at a decidedly faster and happier clip, almost bouncing like Pinkie Pie.
"Wow," Soarin whistled appreciatively. "Nice job handling that, Miss Brilliance. I'll be sure to tell her mom, she'll want to thank you for that."
"She's a good kid," Platinum replied as she stood back up. "Just needed a bit of advice, like I did after I got to CHS. Who is her mom, though, and her dad?"
Soarin's face fell. "Her mom's Clear Sky," he replied. "Her dad was a member of the Guard, riding a circuit through a few of the outlying villages back near the border. He died when she was five. I don't know his name; he worked in Showers territory, too far from Skyspear for me to have run into him, Wind Sprint barely remembers him, and it's too painful for Clear to talk about."
"Was he," AJ hesitantly asked. "was he the hero Sprint said he was?"
Soarin shrugged. "I don't know. Clear might have been trying to build him up in Sprint's eyes, or she might have been telling the truth, I don't know which it is. All I know is that Sprint idolizes him, and saying or even implying that he wasn't really the hero she thinks he is will almost certainly end badly." His eyes were locked in a glare at AJ as he finished, clearly trying to remind her of the disaster with Platinum on the journey there.
She winced at the reminder and nodded; she knew she needed to be more careful about uncovering the truth, the mission had taught her that sharply. Besides, she'd been in Sprint's position before, she knew that talking to her about it would need to be done carefully if she didn't want to cause an explosion.
"But just as Sprint has her duties to see to," Soarin said, drawing her out of her thoughts. "we have our's, and just like she met her's, we must meet our's. We should pick up the pace, we don't know how long we have to prepare. Follow me."
He began leading them again, this time at a faster pace, though AJ was still easily able to match it. They passed through the rest of the building quickly, reaching the shut entryway within moments. Soarin knocked on it, and the door guards outside shortly opened it. The opened doors showed a different scene than the one AJ'd seen when she'd arrived, though; it was much darker, too dark for the afternoon it should have been.
"Why's it so dark?" she asked the guards, squinting to try to pierce the gloom. "Is it nighttime already?"
"The time is about 4:30, so it is not night by the clocks," one of them, Quarter if AJ remembered correctly, shook his head. "But shortly after you arrived, a heavy cloudbank came covering the Sun and sky, and it's remained there since."
Soarin ushered the guards aside and walked out, looking up at the sky. AJ followed him and saw that the Guards spoke the truth; great billowing rainclouds loomed overhead, swallowing up whatever sunlight remained in the day. The sky was a storm-grey night, devoid of stars and threatening rain.
"It is not night by the clocks," Quarter repeated himself. "but my heart tells me that the clocks are wrong, that it is night under these clouds, and that we won't see day again until they pass."
"Some'n' tells me," AJ murmured back, an unknown fear fluttering at the back of her mind. "that your heart's right."
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Someone needs to smack Discount Denethor upside the head before he makes a bigger mess of things.
Wait, Clear Sky and Wind Sprint? PLEASE tell me we get to meet Quibble Pants. You have NO IDEA how much I need this.
10885957
I wasn't planning for Quibble to show up, just like I wasn't planning for Tein to be so pleasant, or for the Castellot riot to go as it did. We shall have to see whether he decides to show up or not, both readers and author.
Also, yes, someone please give the unholy homunculus of the "You have no power here" meme and John Noble's most notable fruit-consuming role a good-sized thwack.
10885967
One richly-deserved thwacking, coming right up.
i.pinimg.com/originals/a0/cb/d6/a0cbd652e879d2401f0a6703ea87b845.gif
Be honest, you either laughed or squealed in delight when you first saw that.
10886009
Tbh, my first thought was, "I don't remember that," shortly followed by, "Wow, Gandalf's got some moves."
But, yes, fully deserved.
So those things only use nets and tridents? One of the sides need to upgrade their arsenal.
You also lack the fire power.
Fluttershy, I know that you’re the element of kindness, but can you think about what you just said?
Is it bad that I would accept that offer? If I have magic all I need is some armor and weapons and I’m all good to go.
What does her heritage have to do with what he said?
Is he working for the enemy? If this is wind rider’s human counterpart then it may make sense.
I just realized, do any of them know how to fight?
What is this for?
Alien intelligence?
How does she know shining armor?
Special moves?
How old is she?
That is so weird to read.
What advice did she get?
Those are territories?
So you mean to tell me no one knows?
Honestly, I can’t really blame her, but I can blame her for not being more sneaky.
10929611
At least the Men among them also use whips, and I don't think Cloudsdale needs anything worse to worry about right now.
Cloudsdale is famous for its militancy; if Wind Rider gave the order to fight, a tenth of the state, at least, would answer him.
Nah, it's perfectly understandable. I mean, you'd be overwhelmed pretty quickly, but it's better to keep hope, however slim, and fight than give up all hope and simply let tyranny win.
It might be a bit hard to tell, but he was referring to Fluttershy here.
It is, and we shall have to see.
AJ can throw a punch, Platinum's picked up a few tricks from all her sports, and Fluttershy knows some self-defense, but none of them are trained fighters, no.
Near the beginning, there's an asterisk, which this is a footnote for.
"Alien" in the sense of other, unknown, not extraterrestrial. I'll try to clarify that, thanks for pointing it out.
In this continuity, Shining is Captain of the Royal Guard, basically the equivalent of the United States' Secretary of Defense. While the Royal Guard is more of a police force than an army (hence why they seem incompetent against most of the threats the Mane 6 face), that does still give Shining the occasional opportunity to prove his valor and skill. He's a minor celebrity, basically, especially to someone as interested in the Guard as Wind Sprint.
Nothing fancy or flashy, just the techniques they're trained to use in their line of work, like disarming strikes.
About Apple Bloom's age (~12-13).
Any particular reason why?
Quite a bit, but the gist of it was "keep an eye on your teammates, not just yourself." (The My Little Pony Annual 2013.)
What Soarin's saying is that Wind Sprint's dad worked in the area under the jurisdiction of House Showers, while he stayed near the city of Skyspear, the ancestral home of House Skies, his family's house. Because Skyspear's in the northern half of the state and House Showers' lands are in the southern half, Soarin was too far away from Wind Sprint's dad's workplace to have encountered him.
Only Clear Sky knows Wind Sprint's dad's name, and like Soarin said, it's too painful for her to talk about.
I can't blame her either, but I would personally say that your conclusion is the exact opposite of the one that the debacle on the journey to Windy Hill should have taught you. AJ tried to be sneaky by eavesdropping on Platinum's and Fluttershy's conversation, and by talking with Soarin, but in the end it backfired; it took Platinum gathering up the courage to come clean for AJ to learn everything, her attempts at investigating secretly coming back to haunt her. This isn't to say shout whatever you're doing at the top of your lungs, but it is to say that secrecy isn't a cure-all; if you need to, investigate in secret, but first try being honest with the person you're investigating. Trying to sneak out the information you're looking for first might allow you to circumvent your quarry entirely, or it might end up harming you a lot more than simply talking to them would. Yes, AJ could've been more sneaky, but in the end...
Honesty's not just an Element because it's morally better than lying, but because it actually works better. Being completely honest with Platinum and Fluttershy might have avoided the crisis in their friendship, or at least help mitigate it; being sneakier would've just made the betrayal that much worse when (not if, when; someone always makes a mistakes, someone always tells) Platinum and Fluttershy learned what she was doing.