Celestia's dawn graced the sky, gilding the mountain and touching the clouds with brush-strokes of orange and gold. Ponies all over the city stirred with the dawn. But, even as the first rays of Celestia's sun fell on them, their warming beams were scattered and divided. The Windy City weather factory was already long awake and churning with activity. The bowels of the cloud factory rumbled with faint thunder as construction clouds of every size and form rolled in a steady parade out the great double doors. They slowly spooled out around the twin peaks, then re-spooled in a great spiral cloud over the broad and fertile Lee Valley. Cloud construction pegasi swarmed, ants on a mountain slope, shaping columns, archways, and balconies out of cloudstuff, the Thunderdome swiftly taking shape under their hooves. The farmers living there looked up at the rumbling clouds, thanked the Maker for the relief of the shade, and looked forward in anticipation to the coming rain...

---

"Good afternoon, Princess!"

Dash started to look over her shoulder at the gryphon prince's greeting and caught herself. Right, 'Princess' meant HER, now. "How much longer am I gonna keep doing that?" she mumbled to herself.

"Probably not as long as I will," the gryphon prince chuckled. "I'll be looking over my shoulder for who just came in when someone says 'your Majesty' till I'm ninety, at least." He paced up to stand beside her, looking out over the Cloudiseum. "Ah, I am in time to watch your Wonderbolts practicing their routines," he said, pleased.

He was correct; the Wonderbolts were scattered out in the empty coliseum, taking advantage of the open airspace to warm up and rehearse. The first big show was less than 24 hours away, and the new routines were getting a last minute shakedown. "Yeah," Dash said. "just shakin' off the dust one last time. Feel free to sit in and watch if you like..."

"Don't mind if I do," Prince Ajax said, stepping out onto the balcony next to her. "Shall you be joining them, Highness?" he asked, waving a claw to indicate her garb. At the moment she was dressed in her training gear: a worn leotard, sweatband and goggles.

"In a few," she admitted. "but first I wanna see how everypony else is shaping up. Pull up a cloud." She patted the cloudtop next to her; he grinned and complied.

For once, Rainbow Dash had lucked out on the whole upper crust social-fu angle. She and Prince Ajax had hit it off almost from the start. They had a surprising amount in common, after all; both were athletic, adventurous types from unsophisticated backgrounds (Ajax and his father had been wilderness guides and explorers) who had been suddenly raised to heights of prominence that they truthfully weren't sure they were quite ready for.

It had taken one fancy formal banquet to figure it out, too; a half hour into the excruciating proceedings and they'd caught each other getting frantically whispered advice from their advisers on which fork to use. They'd looked each other in the eye, started laughing and couldn't stop. Rainbow Dash wondered if Harshwhinny would ever forgive her for throwing things off the rails and ordering pizza... "So, whaddya think?" she said, waving a hoof out at the cloudiseum.

Ajax "hmm"ed. "You seem to have made the show larger by quite a bit," he said. "And added a lot of... unique variety, for a military airshow." He cocked an eyebrow.

"Yeah, well," Rainbow Dash averred. "The Wonderbolts haven't strictly been a military division in a long time. Their role has been sorta... promotional. Morale, public relations, that sorta stuff." She fluffed her wings. "We were... sorta in a rut. Resting on our laurels. We're trying to change that, now."

"I can see," Ajax said. He nodded at a trio of cloud platforms floating in the near foreground. A silvery-white mare in a practice leotard was rehearsing there, running through a complex aerial ballet routine with two backup dancers and a partner. She leapt and floated between the three platforms, graceful as a swan, her tiny orange counterpart matching her move for move.

Rainbow Dash blinked and did a double take. Yes, there was Scootaloo, in a maroon leotard, doing an aerial routine with Velvet Slipper. She leapt, somersaulted and pirouetted, extending her leaps from platform to platform hanging air for the briefest of moments then fluttering down to land en pointe.

"-And a five, six, seven, eight!" Velvet called out. "Very good, Everypony. You too Scootaloo! Your hangtime is improving. Remember to spread your wings when you stick the landing... okay, let's call it for today. Don't want to over-rehearse before tomorrow..."

"Thanks, Velvet Slipper," Scootaloo said, beaming. She followed the others and grabbed a bottled water and a towel from a nearby table. She trotted up the stadium steps, not even seeing Dash and Ajax or their retinue till she almost bumped into them. "Oh!" Uh, hi, Dash-" her eyes darted around and she looked away awkwardly. "...Y-you were watching?"

"Yeah! Looking pretty good out there, Squirt," Rainbow Dash enthused. " planning on taking a place in the airshow?"

"She certainly could, if she wished," Ajax interjected in a musing tone.

Scootaloo blushed at the praise, but looked away and gave her head a little negative shake. "Velvet Slipper says I could, but-"

"And she could," Velvet Slipper said, climbing the stairs behind her. "She's got a natural grace and body-awareness like I've never seen. You'd never know she isn't a full flier yet."

"It's just a... just a thing... I wanted to try..." Scootaloo protested, embarrassed at being caught doing 'frou frou ballerina stuff' by her idol.

Dash's response surprised the filly. "Well, keep on tryin' it," she encouraged. "You're really good at it!"

"Really?"

"Really. Hoofbump, c'mon, don't leave me hangin'." Scootaloo smiled and clapped her hoof against Dash's outstretched one. "So this is where you've been spending all your time? Learning ballet with Velvet Slipper?"

"Some of it," Scootaloo admitted. She hesitated. "That and hanging with some local kids... um... Dash? There's something I need-"

"Excuse me your Highness." The guards behind them parted and Commissioner Gold Star joined the group.

Dash rolled her eyes and stifled a groan. One of the joys of this Princess gig, she thought; you can't stand still in one place for more than a minute without it turning into a flipping meeting. "Hold on a few, kiddo," she said, pushing Scootaloo in the direction Velvet Slipper and the other dancers had headed. "Go on and shower up or somethin'... we'll talk later. Looks like more Princess biz for now." Scootaloo trotted off, rejoining Velvet slipper and joining the chatter about the rehearsal. Rainbow Dash went back to Gold Star."Good to see you, Gold Star. You got an update on the, ah, search?"

"Not as such," he said. "I'm more here to give you an update on the Crownbreakers investigation." He looked hesitantly at Prince Ajax. "Um, there are some sensitive matters involved, your majesty," he said to the gryphon prince. "If we could beg your pardon..."

Ajax held up a claw. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on hearing this myself," he said, his expression growing a bit stern. "I'm not totally naive, Commissioner; I know you want to put your city's best hoof forward, but my own security gryphons have been- keeping tabs on this situation with these political dissidents. You can either let my security officer winnow it out for herself later... or let me hear it, ah, straight from the horse's mouth." The corner of his mouth twitched upward in amusement.

Gold Star hesitated, then blew out a sigh. "Very well. As I was saying, we've been looking into the Crownbreakers, trying to get an angle on their leadership."

"And who are their leaders?" Ajax asked.

"That's the thing. We don't know. And that's unsettling; these student radical groups almost always have some leader with a big mouth and a big ego leading things, but we can't seem to get a straight answer on who's in charge. Not even the Crownbreakers seem to know for sure... Oh there's a couple of big mouths up front, like that Poindexter colt, but even he says he's not the leader. We've been rounding up and interrogating anypony we can lay hoof on- from ponies that show up at the demonstrations to ones just handing out fliers and wearing the buttons. But whoever's running this thing has managed to keep themselves completely incognito."

"That's... not good," Dash said, her voice flat. Ajax scowled in agreement.

Gold Star nodded, his expression cynical. "But that's less of a concern at the moment."

"You have unknown subversive elements agitating your college youth into political radicals and this isn't an immediate concern?" Ajax said, disbelieving.

"Oh, make no mistake, these stick-stirrers are going to get my FULL attention when I get around to them," Gold Star said grimly. "But something's happened recently that is a little more urgent. Somepony in the Crownbreaker rank and file has started issuing overt threats."

"Threats?" Dash bristled.

Gold Star nodded. He pulled a scroll out of his pannier and unrolled it for her to read. It was long and densely worded, and at the bottom in lieu of a signature was a stamp: a jester's cap... or maybe a crown... circled and barred. "Sent a manifesto to the mayor's office," he said. "Usual bla-de-blah, but it also makes reference to being 'driven to action' and 'grim necessity of violence'... and to the Thunderdome- the 'airborne symbol of Royal arrogance'- and a promise to take violent action on opening night... to, quote, "prove once and for all the impotence of the new aristocracy' and 'remove that monument to her arrogance from our sky.'"

"What?" Dash bristled in outrage.

Gold Star's lip curled. "As you can imagine, His Honor the Mayor is freaking. He's demanding I go out and arrest somepony, anypony..." He snorted. "And he's made it very clear he'd really really like it if I started by rounding up the Nobody's Fools."

"Why do you think it's THEM that did it?" Dash said. "I mean, it's obvious the Mayor's got a mad-on about these kids, but-"

Gold Star pointed to the seal at the bottom of the page. "This is their logo, isn't it?" he said rhetorically. Dash squinted at it. It sort've looked like the tag they'd seen when the Nobody's Fools had pranked the stadium. Close, anyway.

"It's too similar to be a coincidence," Gold Star said. "It's more than enough to round them up for questioning."

"And you haven't yet beeeee-cause...?" Dash prodded, her voice showing her growing annoyance.

Gold Star looked abashed. "Because we haven't-"

"Haven't figured out who any of them are yet," Dash finished the sentence with him, her eyebrows forming a flat line. "You know, chief, I don't wanna criticize the law but you're really batting a no-hitter with this..."

Gold Star huffed, but went on. "Like I said, they've been doing this for years," Gold Star said. "So they're really really good at it. They always wear disguises, they always cover their cutie marks, they never seem to use the same group of ponies to pull off a prank twice- in fact they've been around long enough for their entire membership to change out- they always have an escape route and they seem to know when the Guards are coming before the Guards even do..." he shook his head. "That, and... the few we do corner, or manage to recognize, they've never really done anything serious enough to justify an arrest warrant," he shrugged. "We're not dumb, we do recognize a few of them from time to time... but they're incredibly careful or incredibly lucky, and manage to keep just out of our reach."

"Young, skilled, rebellious; just the sort of group that a political troublemaker would like to get their talons on," Prince Ajax said somberly. He scowled.

"So what's your next move?" Dash asked Gold Star.

"That's up to you, Highness," Gold Star said.

Scootaloo stood in the shadows and listened. She had raced to the showers and back, practically running through the showers like a filly racing through a lawn sprinkler, grabbed her saddlebags and raced back. She now dawdled at the archway, just around the corner from the landing where Dash and the Sheriff-guy were holding their little meeting, and was eavesdropping for all she was worth. She'd never known what the phrase 'feeling torn' meant before. Now she did. It felt like she was being pulled apart, ripped down the middle between her mentor Rainbow Dash and The Nobody's Fools. The Fools would never be part of whatever those Crownbreakers were plotting!

Or would they? The Nobody's Fools were all... misfits. And while they weren't criminals or anything, they did sort of skirt on the edge of things an awful lot.

And there was certainly no love lost between them and City Hall, especially the mayor... she snorted in disgust. Not that anypony could ever blame them. She'd met the Mayor coming and going more than once; he'd treated her like she was a hoodlum in the making just because she was a kid... until he'd learned that she was 'flight disabled.' Then he'd treated her like she was mentally retarded. If there was a reporter nearby he'd throw some glurge about how she was such a brave little handicapped filly and how charitable the Princess of Loyalty was for letting her hang out with her...

Gag.

And Mach One...

One has to give poor Scootaloo some leeway here. Even at their best, the Crusaders often had the memory and attention spans of mayflies, and of the three Scootaloo was far from being the deepest or heaviest thinker. Like her idol she did have something of a gift for obliviousness...And, after all, she was still a child, with all the peter-pan like forgetfulness and inattentiveness that entails. She had a lifetime of forgotten chores, lectures and homework assignments behind her already.

She had already partially figured all this out, but this little bit of eavesdropping was sealing the deal. She was getting one of those awful, early Monday morning I-forgot-to-do-my-homework-this-weekend-didn't-I epiphanies she was so familiar with. Promises of secrecy or no, Rainbow Dash might have several very important reasons to speak to her one-winged friend. She felt so, so stupid for not connecting all the bits earlier. And now it sounded like him and all the other Fools were gonna be in trouble with the Law... if she didn't jump in and do something first.

Scootaloo bit her lip, undecided. Then she decided to do what she always did; dive in headfirst. She galloped out and up to Rainbow Dash, skidding to a halt. "Rainbow Dash, there's something important I gotta tell you!" she blurted out. She nearly lost her nerve when everypony and griffon turned to stare at her.

"I... I think I can get you the Nobody's Fools." She took a deep breath. "And the one-winged stallion."

The grownups all stared at her. "You know who they are?" Gold Star said, his tone growing agitated. "You know where they are?"

The filly gulped and nodded. "I know them," she said. "I- I have for a while."

Gold Star's expression darkened. He opened his mouth and was obviously about to say something, but Rainbow Dash pushed him aside. She seized Scootaloo by the shoulders, grinning. "That's great!" she beamed. "Where are they? Tell us quick, kid!"

Scootaloo looked distressed. She bit her lower lip. "I... I can't," she said. "Not yet."

"Not yet, what do you mean not yet?" Gold Star said, his voice starting to rise. "Young filly, they are wanted by the law-"

"For what?" Scootaloo shot back. "They haven't done anything! Sure, they don't like the Mayor or the Watch very much... but they'd never have NOTHING to do with the Crownbreakers either. They think PEARS are a bunch of plotheads!" She pointed a hoof at Gold Star. "And you said it yourself, the most they've ever done is pull some pranks. You can't just drag them off to jail for THAT. They're not bad ponies!"

"Now, nopony's getting dragged off to jail," Gold Star said, trying to temporize things.

"Yeah, well, tell THEM that," Scootaloo said. "You and your Watch are always hassling them. Whaddya think they're gonna think if I show up on their doorstep with a bunch of city guards? They'll think I ratted them out!"

"Doorstep? What, they have a hideout someplace?"

"Like I'm telling YOU-" Scootaloo said, flaring her wings angrily.

"Scootaloo-!" Dash groaned and rubbed her aching forehead, just under her aching horn... she realized what she was doing, and what she was feeling. She focused on the feeling, squinting at Scootaloo with unusual scrutiny.

"C'mon, look-" Scootaloo suddenly started fishing around in her saddlebags. She pulled out a plushy; a little panda bear dressed as a ballerina. "One of them made THIS for me," she said, blushing a bit. "He makes 'em for foals at the orphanage and the hospital. Does that sound like a bunch of terrorists to you?

"I'm supposed to be meeting them later today," she confessed. "I'll talk to Mach One and the others. Get them to talk to you. They're not bad ponies." She shuffled. "If I tell them the coolest Princess wants to talk to them, they'll come around. Please. Let me try, at least?"

Rainbow Dash stared for a long minute at her protege' and her plushy. "Okay, Scootaloo," Dash said suddenly. "We'll let you handle it."

"What do you mean-" Gold Star started to say.

"What I just said, Commissioner," she said sharply. "We'll let Scootaloo go meet with them. Scoots, just talk with them, tell them they're not in any trouble—tell 'em I just wanna speak with them. Once you've talked them into it, call me on your compact. We'll negotiate a meetup from there. Think you can talk them into meeting me?"

"The coolest Princess in Equestria? Definitely," Scootaloo said.

"Flattery'll get ya everywhere," Dash smirked, pushing the bill of Scootaloo's winged cap down over the filly's eyes. "Go on. I'll be waiting for you to ring me on my compact."

"Got it," Scootaloo said, pushing her hat back. She tucked Pandarina Ballerina back in her pannier and galloped off, a filly on a mission.

"And tell 'em I ESPECIALLY want to meet with the one-winged guy!" Dash called after her urgently.

"Got it!"

Gold Star glared after the filly. He turned his glower on the Princess. "Would you care to explain, Highness," he said, "Why I'm going to be sitting around twiddling my hooves waiting for a little filly to give the go-ahead on rounding up these suspects?"

"Are you kidding? The instant you nabbed one of them, the rest would scatter like scalded cats, " Dash snorted. " Her horn glowed briefly, just a brief flicker. "Besides if that one-winged stallion doesn't want you to find him you never will anyway," she added in an undertone.

"What was that?"

"Forget it," she said. "Look, she's right; They're just a bunch of pranksters, no matter how bad Mayor Tubby doesn't like them. And from what I hear, they already get hassled by the Watch, so they already don't like you. You start strong-arming them, and none of them would ever speak to us again. We're better off trying to get them in a cooperative mood first."

Gold Star sighed, his shoulders slumping. "You're right, Princess," he said reluctantly. "But I can't help wanting to grab them all, drag them downtown and box their ears for all the shenanigans they've gotten up to in my town." He sighed again and met her gaze. "All right, we'll do it your way. I'll hold off, let you handle this so that we don't spook them into rabbiting." He gave Rainbow Dash a cursory bow. "Till later, your Highness," he said, and left.

In the momentary lull Prince Ajax regarded Dash skeptically. "What exactly did I just witness here?" he said. "Is it common for the rulers of Equestria to put so much trust in a fledgeling?"

Instead of answering, Dash sat down at the edge of the landing and resumed watching the Wonderbolts training. "Tell me, Ajax," she said. "What do you know about the Elements of Harmony?"

Ajax rubbed a claw under his beak. "A little," he confessed. "That there are six of them: Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, um..."

"Generosity, Laughter, Loyalty and Magic," Dash finished. "Well- Magic is really Friendship, but... you get the idea." She shrugged her wings. "My Element is Loyalty. And yeah, we used to bear the Elements, but now that we've become alicorns we, well we sort of ARE the Elements." She looked over at him. "I know you don't get what that means but- well, since becoming the Alicorn of Loyalty, I've been learning a lot about it."

"Like?" Ajax asked.

"Like how many kinds there are," she said. "There's all sorts of little kinds: family, friends, your team, your home town, your favorite hoofball team... but they really all fit into three groups: loyalty to people, loyalty to a group and loyalty to causes. And I can see them. Or feel them. All the loyalties that ponies have to others, like... invisible threads, sort of, reaching out from them. If I work at it, I can tell what they are, and how strong they are. Which ones clash and which ones make each other stronger. I can even look at a pony and see if somepony is loyal to them, whether they know it or not.

"And the thing is, I can tell if the loyalty goes both ways."

"And your apprentice..." Ajax guessed.

Dash nodded. Even now she could see the bond in her memory; wispy thin threads of lavender trailing away from Scootaloo's heart off into invisibility, a hooffull of wispy thin bonds to unnamed people, braided loosely into a cord of loyalty to a group and threaded through, surprisingly with a hair-thin cord attached to a cause. When they had been talking, Dash had seen it pulse with vigor- healthy, clean loyalty, not the sickly colors of loyalty misplaced. What's more, she had peered closely and had seen that not all the pulses traveling down the loyalty thread had been one way. "She's got a strong connection to the Nobody's Fools," she said. She chuckled. "It happened fast, but the Squirt has always been like that; once something's got her loyalty, she's loyal for life. But what's important is that they already have a strong connection to her.

"They trust her; they consider her one of their own. In fact I'd make a bet that if she needed their help, they'd be in her corner on the spot." She set her hoof firmly down and stared off into the middle distance. "Scootaloo is right. Bad ponies wouldn't take up with her like this, and she sure wouldn't take up with them."

"Part of Loyalty is trust. I'm going to trust Scootaloo."