The Princess and the Kaiser

by UnknownError

Part Eleven

Flurry Heart stood on the mountainside and watched the distant smoke clouds drift towards her. They were hard to make out in the snowstorm.

Today was her fifteenth birthday. There was no tour of the countryside. A few armed ponies stood below her, looking into binoculars and reporting into a stolen military radio. Flurry pulled her blue jacket tighter and tucked her wings in against the cold. The metal crown on her head stuck to her fur.

There was a shout from the sky, then a response lost in the wind. Barrel Roller landed heavily among another group of pegasi. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, sticky with dried blood and frost. Ponies gathered around him. Flurry trotted down to listen.

“The group taking the north trail is stuck behind another rockslide,” the pegasus said, wiping the blood from his orange eyes. “The south trail is still clear. There are two more groups of nearly three hundred ponies.”

“Are they being followed?” one of the militia ponies asked.

“The Changelings broke off before the mountains. There’re some fighters still in the air, but the snow is helping.”

“Radio Duskcrest to sweep the south trail and Dusty to send some earth ponies down the north trail to clear the rockslide,” the militia pony said to the radio pony. She turned away.

“I can clear it,” Flurry offered.

The ponies ignored her, and the mare lifted the receiver back up to whinny orders to the other groups. Barrel Roller didn’t even glance at the alicorn before lifting back off and drifting south. Flurry trudged back up the incline and squinted against the snow. She could form a shield, but that risked being spotted at long range. Besides, the thousands of ponies along the Crystal Mountains didn’t have the luxury of alicorn magic today.

Two months ago, Vinyl Scratch with Manehattan Radio announced that a large portion of the Changeling army was encircled around Canterlot, cut off by the expanded Everfree Forest. The city would be retaken in a matter of days. Flurry had excitedly begun packing her best outfit with Spike.

One month ago, Vinyl reported that Trixie was surrounded in Neigh Orleans and Starlight was retreating from Canterlot to form a defensive line at the Green Fork River outside Manehattan. Spike and the ponies left Flurry and traveled back by wing power, crossing the border illegally in the night.

Three weeks ago, Vinyl reported Neigh Orleans was destroyed in a counterattack and the defensive line had fallen. Starlight was missing.

Two weeks ago, Vinyl gave her last report as the Changeling fleet began to bombard Manehattan. Most of the Equestrian Liberation Front was encircled on the coast. A few stragglers had broken out to the north and were running for the Nova Griffonian border. Most of the ELF was committed to a last stand to buy time.

There had been no radio announcements from Manehattan for twelve days.

True to his statement of neutrality, Blackpeak had announced the southern border was closed. He allowed Kemerskai’s militias to guard it, on the watch for any changeling or pony intruders from either side of the border. After the Reich delegation finally left, the Republicans were looking for any sign of disloyalty from the pony minority. Flurry hadn’t even tried to travel to the southern border. Ponies lived there, but they were too closely watched. Her presence would start violence and justify a crackdown.

The southern border was the easiest to cross, but the Crystal Mountains ran north and west through the frontier. They weren’t impassable to a creature with wings, but the frigid winds and constant snow deterred even the hardiest flier. The Nova Griffonian government didn’t bother trying to shift more militias to watch them. There were a select few mountain trails, not on any map, for the smuggling of goods and ponies from the Crystal Protectorate. Thorax and Duskcrest used them, and passed their location to Spike in a worst-case scenario.

Ponies were fleeing to those passes in the Crystal Mountains. Many would not make it.

Under the pretext of her birthday tour, Flurry Heart had taken everypony she could into the frontier to prepare. Towns and villages gave up what little space they could for new refugees and reinforced their border defenses. The towns on the interior coordinated messenger systems in case the government tried to intervene. Any crossings were illegal. Most of the influential politicians for the frontier were already bought off, Thorax assured her, but they could try to crack down on the smuggling routes to win support with Kemerskai’s Republicans. Some of Thorax’s changelings were disguised at the border to check the refugees.

Flurry had busied herself by reading over a tome of healing spells with Far Sight. She had been forbidden from traveling to the border, so she prepared to help the injured. Spike had arrived with the first group of ponies seven days ago, and Flurry sat in the makeshift medical tent while they were searched. They were frostbitten and malnourished, but otherwise healthy.

She realized that night the injured Ponies didn’t try to make the journey. They stayed behind.

Flurry instead helped serve the lackluster soup at the makeshift sorting center just past the border. Ponies would be checked and processed, then sent along the frontier to villages with room for them. If they had a useful special talent, they would be sent to where they were needed most. The intention was for ponies to wait and reunite with family, but nopony had any family to wait for. Most of the ponies she poured soup for were freed slaves from the plantations and mines that barely saw combat. Many were young, some younger than herself. When they saw an alicorn passing out bowls, they barely reacted.

She would rather they be angry at her. She wanted them to call her a failure and a fake princess, just like the others. She wanted to be slapped. She wanted to be spat on. She couldn’t offer words of encouragement; she didn’t fight beside them and had no idea what they lost. Instead, they looked at her with dull eyes and thanked her for the runny soup. Most called her Princess on reflex.

Flurry Heart had enough after a colt with a white coat and black splotches coughed out, “Thank you, Princess Cadance.”

Flurry Heart dropped the ladle into the soup pot. “What?”

The colt blinked his one good eye; his other was covered by an eyepatch. “I’m sorry, I thought you were Princess Cadance. Who are you?”

“My name is Flurry Heart,” the alicorn said.

“Oh,” the earth pony answered. “My name’s Sweetdrop.”

“Princess Cadance was my mother,” Flurry supplied.

Sweetdrop nodded, but clearly didn’t remember her. He lifted the soup bowl with his hooves and slurped from it. “It’s better than the mines,” he complimented. Flurry gave him an extra ladle. When he turned to find a place to sit in the tent, Flurry stared at the scar tissue on his back.

Flurry finished her shift at three in the morning, then teleported to a secluded spot and vomited.

All her life, Flurry Heart thought she was suffering beside her Ponies in her tiny room in the ghetto. She couldn’t have been farther away from them. Soup and spells couldn’t fix Equestria. All her magic couldn’t fix it. Flurry was useless to her ponies, so she watched the smoke clouds in the distance on her birthday. She watched her home burn again through the snowflakes and let the crown stick to her head.

Thorax appeared below her, shedding the disguise of a pegasus and approaching up the mountain. “I heard you were up here,” he shouted over the snow. Flurry didn’t shout back. He stopped a few hooves beside her and looked south with her.

“The soup kitchen’s being setup in Shortstop for the night,” he said. He adjusted his ugly brown winter coat. It was too long in the body, but short on the legs. His boots squelched in the snow.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” she asked. She looked at her bare flank, covered by her puffy jacket. “Maybe my talent is naming things,” she laughed, but there was no joy in it.

“Happy Birthday, Flurry,” Thorax offered with a forced smile.

“If you got me a stupid present, I will scream.” Flurry shook her head. She grew her curls out and they stuck to her crown. “How many ponies so far?”

“Around four thousand, but Dusty has the count,” Thorax said.

“How many more?”

“Another thousand?” Thorax guessed.

Flurry closed her eyes and listened to the wind. So few. “Do we know how many tried to make it?” she asked. Her hooves were bare. Snow rarely bothered her, but standing in the snow all day was still uncomfortable. It might be the name, Flurry thought.

“No, Princess,” Thorax lied. Flurry let it go.

“I’ll be down later,” she promised.

“You’ve been here since dawn.” Thorax shuffled his boots.

“I’ll be down at dusk,” she replied.

Thorax watched the distant smoke. “This doesn’t help, Princess. Don’t torture yourself.”

“Nothing I do really helps, uncle,” Flurry snapped. “Half of those ponies don’t even know who I am. I can’t remove memories or scars.”

“Does that bother you?” Thorax asked.

Flurry sensed the disapproval and groaned. “Chrysalis is destroying our knowledge, our culture, everything about Equestria. In ten years, Ponies won’t know anything other than a Changeling hoof pressing down on their necks. It has to stop. I want to help.”

“You can help by being there. Show them a Princess that cares,” Thorax implored.

“Did Spike ever hear anything from Celestia?” Flurry changed the topic.

“He didn’t tell me if he did,” Thorax muttered.

Flurry heard a faint roar of a plane engine over the snow. She whipped her head back to the south and strained her ears. Thorax noticed her intensity and listened as well.

Another engine joined the first. Flurry squinted through the snow, trying to make out shapes in the sky. She flapped her wings and dropped down to the other militia ponies. Thorax followed her, buzzing his wings hard to keep up.

“Planes,” she warned in the Royal Voice. “At least two.” The pony with the radio began to speak rapidly into it. The others scanned the sky.

“We need to fall back, Princess,” Thorax said. “This could be the start of an invasion.”

“Over the Crystal Mountains?” Flurry snorted. “No, they’re looking for the mountain passes if anything.”

The engines were louder. There was a patter of machinegun fire in the distance to the south. One of the militia ponies pointed southeast, lowering her binoculars. “There!” she cried. “Low, just over the hills!”

Flurry squinted and spotted two approaching black dots. They circled each other several times, punctuated by bursts of gunfire. At this distance, they looked like little birds in a dance.

They got closer, then flew over the border, still weaving around each other. Finally, one banked hard and flew low towards the mountain they were on. Flurry summoned a shield over the group of dozen ponies on the mountain and studied the plane as it buzzed past them. It didn’t seem to realize they were there.

It was a Changeling fighter plane, messily repainted with the red, blue and white colors of the ELF along the wings, over the trident crown that Chrysalis used as her symbol. The nose was painted sloppily with every color of the rainbow. The left wing was pockmarked and trailing smoke. She couldn’t see the cockpit.

The other fighter pursued, screaming past a moment later. It didn’t bother with the group, clearly focused on its prey. The second plane was pristine, but looked like the same model. Flurry saw the unmarred black crown on the wings. There was another burst of machinegun fire that the first plane barely swerved to the right to avoid. Her ears pinned back at the intensity of the sound.

“The ELF must still have some fighters in the air providing cover,” Thorax assumed.

“They crossed over into Nova Griffonia,” one of the militia ponies stated.

“Will there be a response?” Flurry asked.

Thorax shrugged. “They’re turning back, but radar picked them up.”

“It’ll be over by the time any of the Nova Griffonian planes get here,” one pony commented. Some nodded and shuffled back to their positions.

“If they bother,” another snorted.

Flurry dispelled the shield. The first plane was slowing down, struggling to twist away. It used the mountains as cover, flying low and around them, but the wing dragged. The second fighter nimbly followed from above, waiting to line up the kill. The first plane headed back over the border, following the mountain range.

They’re going to die. Flurry pressed a forehoof against her crown. It was stuck by frost.

The first plane continued dodging sluggishly. "They must be outta ammo," one of the militia ponies commented. He turned back to the trails with his binoculars.

Flurry Heart took off her jacket and stretched her wings.

Only Thorax noticed. She glanced over at him. Thorax solid blue eyes locked onto Flurry’s icy stare.

“No,” he whispered. It was lost in the wind.

Flurry didn’t reply. She began to trot down the mountain, towards the south.

“No!” Thorax screamed.

Flurry galloped past the other ponies and flapped her wings.

“Stop her!” Thorax chased her, insect wings buzzing.

Flurry’s hooves left the ground and her wings flapped hard, away from Thorax’s desperate screams. She lit her horn and vanished in a crack. She reappeared further south, chasing the planes. She banked upwards, using her oversized wings to catch an updraft in the storm. Flurry leveled off above the planes, but deep into the storm.

I was named after a storm.

She took a breath of frosty air and cleared her mind. The plane engines were louder to the west. She teleported in that direction, then again to the south. She finally saw the planes weaving between the valleys in the lower mountains. She dived down and pursued. A pegasus would have to be exceptional to catch up to a fighter plane, but Flurry Heart was an alicorn. Let my stupid wings be worth something.

A laser would travel slowly, so she would need to lead her shot. Telekinesis was slippery on fast moving objects. Teleporting too close to the plane was too risky; it could bank suddenly and hit her before she could react. If she got close enough to land on it, she could probably just punch through the metal with her alicorn strength, but that risked injury if the fighter came apart.

Get in close, fire blast through the cockpit, Flurry decided. She lit her horn and extended her magic.

She was mildly surprised she could sense the planes like a weapon.

Of course, they are weapons. Just bigger.

That made them easier to track. She dared not try to discern more about the fighters and she caught the draft left by the pursuant Changeling fighter. There was another burst of gunfire ahead of her. She flapped harder and skimmed over the tree tops in a valley between two mountains.

Her mother was born a pegasus before ascending. Her aunt Twilight had been born a unicorn and was a horrible flyer. Flurry hoped she balanced out.

Flurry Heart spotted the tail of the Changeling fighter ahead and above her. She primed her horn and fired a bolt, trying to lead her shot. Her horn hummed with a spell, trailing blue fire through the falling snow.

The bolt passed between the right wing and the tail. It superheated the air enough to create a burst of water out of the snowflakes. The fighter began to climb and spin. Flurry fired again blindly. It was a clear miss.

The first plane banked low out of the valley and turned toward Nova Griffonia. Its left wing shuddered.

Flurry followed the Changeling fighter upwards, snarling and flapping her wings. She shook her head at the snowflakes and summoned a small shield in front of her muzzle to cover her eyes from the wind. She followed the sound of the engine up as it grew louder.

The fighter burst out of the snowstorm above, heading straight for her. It must have climbed and then turned into a dive. Flurry made out a changeling in the cockpit. She snapped away just as the machineguns fired.

She appeared behind and above the plane, then dove after it again. The plane spun and leveled off. Flurry didn’t see a tail gunner, but the fighter must have realized she was behind it, because it began to twist and fly low through the valley to throw her off.

Flurry snarled and fired another laser that the plane dodged. The blast hit the ground, uprooting several trees and kicking up a cloud of snow. The fighter began to climb again, seeking her pursuit. Flurry bit her lip.

She thinks I’m a foal that’ll fall for the same trick twice.

Flurry pursued upwards, giving chase. She noticed the engine fade, then grow louder as the plane dove again. She sensed the plane coming. It was diving straight towards her.

Flurry Heart flew up to meet it head-on.

A pilot would die attempting to ram their plane. A pegasus would splatter against the metal. Once Flurry saw the shadow in the snow, she lit her horn.

Flurry Heart summoned a bubble shield around herself and kept flying.

A burst of machinegun fire bounced off her shield, and Flurry adjusted her aim to hit it head on. Her horn glowed bright blue as she poured magic into her shield. Flurry grinned when she saw the pilot’s open, fanged-filled mouth through the cockpit glass. The changeling tried to veer away, but Flurry moved left to counter.

It wasn’t a clean collision; Flurry’s bubble crunched through the right wing and part of the tail. She felt a brief twinge of pain in her horn, but shook it off. She stopped mid-air and flapped her wings to stay level. Plane debris fell to the ground below her. Flecks of oil slid off her shield and mixed with the snowflakes. She took a deep breath and exhaled.

Flurry looked down from her bubble to watch the one-winged plane spiral into the valley below. It slammed into the trees in a fireball. There was no parachute or escaping figure; there wasn’t enough time.

Flurry dispelled her bubble shield and drifted down lazily into the valley. She didn’t hear any other plane engines. The alicorn landed in a small clearing a little bit away from the crash, then proceeded on hoof until she got to the wreck. There wasn’t much left of the plane, just mangled scraps of metal and burning fuel among broken trees. She didn’t see the body. She levitated a broken shard of cockpit glass towards her and tried to sense anything.

Nothing. She dropped the glass into the snow.

Flurry sighed and oriented herself north. She flapped her wings idly to shake snow free from her feathers. The alicorn stopped after a moment. She was south of the border, in the Crystal Mountains. She was in the Crystal Empire.

I’m home.

Flurry dug her hooves into the snow and extended her wings, letting the snowflakes land. She closed her eyes and listened to the swaying of the trees and the crackling of the fire. She smelled pine and burning fuel. She heard the hissing bits of burning and broken metal as they settled into the snow, where they would be buried by the snow flurries.

Princess Flurry Heart smiled, then flapped her wings again and flew north to find the other plane.

Comments

[JustFalcon]

And so Flurry has her first true combat experience. Hopefully there will be no consequences- I’m just kidding this is going to go off the rails isn’t it?

[UnknownError]

11290782
Good observations! It shouldn't be a surprise that Flurry puts family below duty. Her aunt, mother and father did the same. The nature of leadership is meant to be one of the central themes of the story.

I won't go into too much detail because it will be discussed later, but Flurry values the title 'Princess of Ponies' greater than 'Princess of the Sun.' Why even bother claiming to lead Ponies if you're always going to prioritize a giant ball of gas? (Yes, it's meant to be a twisted values system, but understandable for her to have.)

For Celestia as well as for Flurry, Ponies are most important to them.

Eh, mild pushback on that. It's intended to be ambiguous if Celestia doesn't want to risk her life or her sister, or if she is prioritizing their jobs to raise the sun and moon. In either case, one of them could have stayed behind with Twilight or join the rebellion. In-game, Luna is a Field Marshal. Celestia had done her job before, so her capture or death wouldn't cripple the world. Flurry's biased against them, but she did have some good points. She didn't deny Spike's point that they're essential; she questioned why they call themselves Princesses.

I haven't prioritized Chrysalis attempting to kidnap Flurry beyond the earlier chapters, but I tried to leave hints that Thorax and her Ponies are constantly on the lookout and running security that Flurry sort-of ignores. Besides, the Changelings aren't in the best shape to run expansive counter-intelligence after conquering Equestria and the Crystal Empire.

She could have used Twilight's doctrine as a path to get these two to agree

Bronzetail's point wasn't meant as a dig at friendship, but a harsh acknowledgement about her situation. Flurry doesn't really have friends; she has people trying to keep her safe. The problem is she's an insanely powerful alicorn that can overpower all of them and go do what she wants, unlike Grover. She's definitely reckless, and her group tries to reign her in.

[KV2 king of the derp]

Great chapter

[Nova Whirl]

I wonder who was in that ELF fighter plane, I'm guessing either Trixie or Starlight because I don't want them to die

[UnknownError]

11292302
Would you like a hint?

The nose was painted sloppily with every color of the rainbow.

Stay tuned.

[Victor07]

11292347
my guess
Rainbow Dash, ELF ace, veteran of the great war and wielder of the element of loyalty

[AlsoSprachOdin]

A laser would travel slowly

And isn't that funny.

[M4Tiger4014]

TFW “lasers” don’t travel at the speed of light

[ThePeer]

Welp, there is Flurry's first murder.

They were trying to kill her, but still.

[Sylica telca]

It was a Changeling fighter plane, messily repainted with the red, blue and white colors of the ELF along the wings, over the trident crown that Chrysalis used as her symbol. The nose was painted sloppily with every color of the rainbow. The left wing was pockmarked and trailing smoke. She couldn’t see the cockpit.

I'm impressed they managed to nab a plane