Word started getting around. At first ponies out in the rest of Equestria were chattering in astonishment about the disappearance of "two minor yet notorious con artists" into thin air. Then the ponies in the back alleys and underground were chattering in astonishment when they heard word they'd reappeared--- making contact out of nowhere with their old friends: suppliers, bookies and brokers, grifters and shady creditors. They would pop out of the shadows, sometimes literally, paying off old debts, placing cryptic orders, arranging odd shipments, dropping an earworm or two about their new boss, then disappearing just as suddenly.  More than one loan shark or black market dealer found himself sitting alone in his office, muttering in confusion as the smoke cleared about offers made by the two vaudevillian hucksters before they'd disappeared... or standing alone in a dark alley, sweating as they recalled the subtle hints they'd been dropped about how they'd best let bygones be bygones when it came to old debts or old injuries. Either way, pondering what they'd been told about this new mover and shaker out there in the dark nooks and crannies of Equestria:

He had money.

He had power.

He had plans.

And he could make things happen for you... in exchange for certain considerations.

There weren't many ponies out there in happy sugar pony land who wanted what the princesses couldn't provide... but there were enough.

Ponies started looking out through the winter snow at the distant shadows of the Everfree, and thinking...

The five young pegasi huddled together in the prison cell, trying to draw comfort from one another. It had gone poorly from the moment they had crossed the boundary of the Everfree in pursuit of their friend. The wild, unending blizzard-- some said it was the product of the dark wizard who had taken up residence there--- had frozen their wings, sending them plummeting into the forest itself. They'd barely gotten out of the storm and under the dubious shelter of the trees before they'd found themselves surrounded by timberwolves. Huge timberwolves.

Ridden by diamond dogs.

They had been netted, and dragged back to... wherever this place was, somewhere underground, and thrown in a stone cell with an iron grate over the door. There they had waited for hours, shaking in terror, while the brute dogmen had gone to fetch whoever or whatever was in charge down in these catacombs. The only light was the dim glowing crystal out in the hall, that cast deep shadows across the barren cell. At least it was warm and dry.

They bickered together under their breath. Had they known how keen diamond dog ears were, they wouldn't have bothered; every word was audible throughout the dungeon. "Why did you follow me?" One of the fillies said to the others angrily. "I said I would do this alone!"

"Going into the Everfree? To look for a Dark Wizard? Alone?" a colt protested. "No freaking way, Eiderdown." Other voices raised in protest at the notion.

Eiderdown stamped in frustration. "It's not your responsibility!" she said angrily. "This whole mess, all of it, is my fault. I have to fix it..."

"No, Eiderdown." A filly, more of a young mare, spoke out. Her voice was sweet but sad. "We were all in this, together. Right from the start. Remember? 'Nopony goes it alone.' " She said the last like somepony reciting a slogan. Or a mantra. "We all started this together. We'll all... we'll all end it together."

Eiderdown's voice filled with tears. "I'm so sorry, Winky," she said, snuffling. "Especially for you-- If I had just... if only..." Further words were smothered as the group huddled in an embrace around their distraught leader.

The moment was interrupted by the squeal of the prison door. The five huddled against the back wall, out of the light. Two diamond dog guards came in. Right behind them swaggered... a unicorn colt? He was about their age, in his teens. There was something different about him, though; something about the way he carried himself. Eiderdown got a better look at him and gulped. Black mane and tail, white coat, a cutie mark of playing cards coming out of a top hat. He wore a velvet purple top hat perched on his head at a jaunty angle, with a gem in the hatband that looked disturbingly like an eye, and more disturbingly, seemed to track her no matter which way his head was turned. His eyes were slit like a cat's, and glowed in the torchlight. Could this be the Dark Wizard himself?

The colt swaggered into the middle of the room. His eyes fell on Eiderdown. He seemed surprised at first, almost gawping at her. Then he caught himself and wiped the expression off his face, replacing it with a slow leer as he eyed her up and down. "Well hello, ducklin'," he purred, waggling his eyebrows. "Wot brings a toothsome lil' thing like you to our humble home?"

Anywhere else that performance would have gotten a roll of Eiderdown's eyes. Here, in a dungeon far below the Everfree, far from the safety of home, it sent chills like caterpillar legs jiggering down her spine. She steeled herself and curtseyed. "Are you the Dark Wizard, Lord Vulcan?" she asked. She was proud of herself; she actually managed to keep the quaver out of her voice.

To her surprise one of the guards snorted in amusement. The top-hatted colt shot him a dirty look and then replied to Eiderdown. "Sorry, ducklin'. I'm not him. I am his right-hoof stallion, though." He smirked. "My name's Artful Dodger, and I'm yer go-to pony for gettin' in the front door. I'm guessin' you want a little parlay with his Grim and Darkness, then?"

Eiderdown nodded and stood up straight. The others clustered behind her. "I... we heard he does... deals." She swallowed.

"Indeed he does, pretty lil' ducklin," Dodger said. "So..." he leaned against the doorframe. "Tell us yer story, then?"

Eiderdown licked her lips, and began at the beginning.

As she told her and her friends' story, the change that came over him was startling. He barely moved, but his face spoke volumes; first amusement, then surprise, then blatant disbelief... then surprisingly a flash of outrage. His face slipped instantly into a mask, a complete poker face.... but a slow, cold, glittering something settled behind his eyes. "...and now, here we are," she finished lamely." She looked him in the eye. "Will... do you think your master will help us? CAN he help us?"

Dodger's eyes flickered, and he grinned in cold amusement. "Oh, he can," he said. "And I'd bet a bag of bits that he will. This sort of thing is just right up his alley." To her surprise he stepped up, doffing his flamboyant hat in a deep bow. "Come with me, pretty ducklin'; I'll see to it." He looked to the guards. "They're comin' with me. We're off to see a man about a horse."

Things were fairly boring that day. I was in the middle of taking reports from my underlings in the throne room when Artful Dodger came swaggering in with about a half-dozen ponies right behind him. He left his charges standing with the guards, staring wide-eyed around the treasure room, and stepped up to the foot of the throne with a flamboyant bow. "Yer Dread and Dark Awfulness... I got some petitioners for you."

The cluster of ponies flinched and huddled together. Ah, time to play the Great and Powerful Oz. What the hell, I was bored and it'd be fun. "Are they even worthy of my time?" I rumbled, turning the glowing eyes of my helmet on them. Dodger looked behind him without leaving his bow and gave them his best Sleazy Grand Vizier smirk.

"I'm sure we can find SOME use for 'em," he said. The mares cringed back into the colts. He looked back to me. "But you were sayin' earlier that you were bored..."

"And?"

"And the little favor they want to ask sounded to me like it was just to your taste," Dodger said. His smile was half leer and all teeth. I would have cocked an eyebrow at him if he would have seen it under my helmet.

"Well? Let them speak on their behalf." The group stumbled forward, one of the fillies in the lead. They were of varying ages, none of them more than barely adults and the youngest, the leader, still in her teens. They were all pegasi. What was most surprising was that they were all crippled.

The leader was a young pegasus filly about Dodger's age with a blonde mane and tail, a blue coat, and a fluffy feather cutie mark. Her wing feathers were malformed; all of them, even the primaries, looked soft and fluffy like down feathers, so wispy her wings looked like feather dusters. I didn't have to be an expert in aerodynamics to figure out what this meant to her ability to fly. Another was a brown-on-orange filly with wings nearly twice the size of normal and a funnel-cloud cutie mark. Next to her stood, by way of ironic contrast, an enormous brown colt with wings the size of a foal's and a dumbbell on his flank. On his other side huddled a white-maned, pale blue-green mare with three dandelion seeds on her flank. She seemed entirely hale... save for one blind, milky white eye. The sorrow in those eyes, and the bags under them, hinted that there was more to this story... next to her stood another colt, with a steel grey coat, black mane and a cutie mark of a mask, half comedy, half tragedy. He had one feathered wing, and one wing webbed like a bat's...

"A team of crippled pegasi?" I said aloud. Several of them flinched; a sensitive issue for them, then? "I hope you did not come here hoping for some miraculous cure. I am anything but that sort of Warlock."

The downy-winged filly shook her head. "Didn't think you were," she said, only faintly disappointed. "We are what we are. We came to deal with that years ago. Our problem is bigger than that."

Bigger than being a pegasus unable to fly properly? A pegasus' entire identity revolved around their wings, the way a prep's identity revolved around the fancy car his daddy bought him or a high school chick's revolved around the brand name on her clothes. Hell, their whole culture revolved around it. They were an epic culture of shallow, body-obsessed jocks. For a bunch of them to think something was more important than that....Now I was really curious.

"Boss." To my surprise Dodger stepped up to my side and spoke to me under his breath. He looked up at me. Then he looked over at the filly. Then back up at me. "Boss... even if you don't, I want this one."

"Indeed?"

"Trust me, Boss. You'll understand when you hear it. I want this one." His seriousness was almost alarming. I saw him dart another glance at the filly. She gave him a look that was confused, apprehensive... and faintly grateful?

Oho.

I waved my hand to the filly. "Then... I would hear this."

The filly took a deep breath. "My name is Eiderdown," she said. "This is Gale Wings, Welter Weight, Halfsies, and Winky. We're from the twin towns of Hilltop and Cirrus... a little Earth pony/Pegasus community. We are-- we were--- the Cirrus Academy's remedial flight class..."

"Remedial?" Chrysalis said. The little group of ponies nearly jumped out of their skins. They hadn't seen my sorceress-on-a-leash lurking at the shoulder of my throne. We really needed better lighting in here; not much point having a slinky female draped over your throne if noone saw her.

"C-Chrysalis??" Eiderdown gulped, eyes round.

"The one and the same," Chrysalis said, amused. "Bipedal or not." Yes, dearie, that's right, the former Queen of the Changelings is now the flunky of Darth Vulcan. My my my, aren't you in further over your head than you thought. "Explain. Remedial?"

"The dumping ground for the failures and washouts," the burly stallion behind her said. "Delinquent, dropout, or just handicapped like us." He flapped his undersize wings by way of demonstration.

"Ah," Chrysalis said, understanding. Clever of her, giving me cover for my own ignorance. Yeah, that sounded familiar. Back on Earth schools played that game too. The 'remedial' classes for my high school were supposed to help kids with learning challenges; they ended up being a dumping ground for all the students the teachers didn't want to give a crap about. If that was right, these guys had been half-screwed right from the start. I thought I could see where this was going.

It went downhill faster than I imagined.

Eiderdown went on. "We were all signed up at the same time, with a few others," she said. The aforementioned delinquents and troublemakers, I guessed. "We were lucky. We got a teacher who had gone through remedial flying herself. She was a good teacher. Before long she had us all up and flying." She smiled at the others. "We sure weren't going to be in the Wonderbolts, but we could finally fly like regular pegasi. We had a shot at-- a shot at regular pegasus lives..." Her smile faded. "Then one day, we took a field trip to the local weather control offices. While we were there, a wild storm blew up out of the Everfree. Every weather pony in Cirrus had to scramble to Ponyville to tackle it. We were left there alone.

"So there was nopony there, nopony at all but us, when a cyclone broke free of the storm front and headed straight for Hilltop..."

There had been no time for them to send a message or even a warning to the town. So apparently the group of students, at Eiderdown's desperate urging, had improvised. They had dropped some bottled lightning into a barrel of expired rainbow juice, flown it out over the cyclone, and dropped it down the center of the funnel from above. It had worked; the explosion had blown the tornado apart, saving the earth pony town below from being ripped a new one. Parades and medals all around, right?

Nope. I couldn't believe my ears when she told me how the two towns had utterly screwed them over. Seems the blast wave from the explosion had reached the upper-crust neighborhoods of Cirrus, shattered a few windows, mussed a few flowerbeds and scared the crap out of a bunch of rich pegasi. The city council, looking for some scapegoats to sacrifice, had the entire class arrested, charged with and convicted of a laundry list of crimes-- vandalism, property destruction, unlicensed weather manipulation, underage use of etcetera, disruption of so on and so on...

The only way they got out of being sent to juvie hall or even jail, they were offered a deal. A complete BS deal. They were signed over as wards of a local cop, one of the cops that had arrested them, no less--- to be supervised while they did community service.

Who was, it seems, a complete raging prick. He ran their lives like a boot camp, sending them out to do their 'public service' in the nastiest, most grueling jobs he could find. His rules were absolute, his punishments draconian. While other kids their age were going on dates, going to the prom, spending the holidays with their families, he had them picking litter in Cirrus and shoveling cow crap in Hilltop. And this went on for five years. Their entire childhoods, literally, spent on punishment detail.

"You would have been better off," I remarked in disbelief, "taking the prison sentence."

"The deal was better," Eiderdown said. "Barely. By taking it as a group, our punishment would end when the oldest of us-- Welter Weight-- was a legal adult. And our records would be wiped clean, all at the same time..." her teeth ground together.  "And... that's what happened. Technically."

"Except." I let the word hang in the air. I picked up a few gold coins and toyed with them.

"Except Lieutenant Sprinkles screwed us one last time," Halfsies spat bitterly.

"Our punishment ended last month," Eiderdown said. Her breath was catching and her eyes were watering but her voice was steady. "Because of that we were allowed to attend graduation. We stood up as a class together in Cloudsdale, accepted our diplomas... and Lieutenant Sprinkles stood up and gave a speech. Congratulating us, and informing the crowd..."

"Every pegasus in Equestria..." Welter Weight added.

"...That we had passed together, and now our criminal records were being purged of our involvement the tornado explosion incident."

It took a moment for me to get it. Why that sonuvabitch, I thought.

"Then he announced his retirement. Our records were cleared... and it didn't make a lick of difference, because he'd made sure every single pony on the planet knew we were the "violent juvenile delinquents" who set off that explosion. Our reputations are ruined--- there isn't a school, or business, or even a charity group that will touch someone with our record, expunged or not. And since he retired, we can't even get him fired for it."

"So this brings you to me?" I said. At this point I was practically wallowing in smug satisfaction. Celestia and Luna's perfect little fairy-tale world was turning out to be just as rotten as I'd expected. It was bloody amusing. I faintly noticed that the coins I had been toying with had been crushed into a ball in my fist.

Eiderdown's voice started to shake. "It gets worse," she said. She looked over her shoulder at Winky, who was crying freely now. "There... used to be more of us in our little group." Hold up, had one of them died saving their town? "Winky's special somepony, Jetstream. He was kind of rough around the edges, but he adored Winky--" she took a breath. "He and she were... intimate." Oh. Even worse. She looked down. "They... were gonna get married this year, when the program ended. But when the Lieutenant found out Winky was pregnant-- the Lieutenant threw them both out of the program." Behind her, Winky buried her face in Welter Weight's shoulder. "The program was Jetstream's last chance. He got shipped off to some military academy in the frozen North... none of us have seen him or heard word of him since..."

"And Winky?"

"They were lenient with her because of her... condition," Eiderdown said. "She got out of juvie early, got a job, even a little apartment of her own... she took good care of Twinkle. She's a good mommy! But when Sprinkles let the cat out of the bag-- word got back to Hilltop. Even there, they blame us. Her boss fired her. And now ponies who are still mad about the tornado explosion called Foal Welfare on her... yesterday they came and took Twinkle away." Her cheeks were streaked with tears. Her eyes had gone wide and desperate. She took a step toward me. "This is it. This is too much.

"It's my fault. All of it. I was the youngest, but I talked everypony into trying to save the day. I led the way. And now-- I could put up with the cruelty and the hateful treatment and the endless work and only seeing my family one day a week and... I could even live with the truth coming out and going back to school and being called a criminal and a terrorist myself but-- Jetstream got shipped off to military academy and Halfsies got disowned and Welter Weight lost his scholarship and now they're taking little Twinkle away from her mommy and it's just too much--"

My vision went white. I was vaguely aware of standing up. I felt Chrysalis pull away from my shoulder; they told me she backed away from me with a look of absolute terror on her face. I could feel the Alicorn Amulet, cold as ice and burning like a red hot iron at the same time as something inside it rejoiced...  

I suppose this was what they meant by the phrase "beside yourself." I hate bullies and I hate cops, and I hate bully cops worse than anything in life. City hall skidmarks ...judges and lawyers and elected officials, too cowardly to put on a badge and go out and beat homeless minorities with a nightstick themselves, standing behind the bully cops, pulling their strings from their nice safe offices...

I stood there in the white hot center of my rage in a sort of insane calm. Let's review, I thought. A bunch of crippled kids save their home town from a killer tornado. By way of thanks, they're put on a juvie chain gang, handed over to a sadistic martinet, treated like slaves for five years, and then after keeping their noses clean for all that time, have their futures destroyed in one fell swoop by the same sadistic little crotch stain that helped frame them in the first place. Do we have all that down?

Oh yes. And for a final twist, let's steal a baby from its mother and ship its father off to dig latrines in the frozen north for Princess Sparklefart's illustrious Golden Army.

Oh yeah. Someone was gonna be screaming before this was all done.

My vision cleared. I looked down on the terrified pony in front of me. First things first. "What," I rasped, "do you all have to offer me?"

Her shaking stilled, even if her tears still flowed. "Nothing," she said. "Forget them. It's my bargain, it's all on me. I caused all this, I'll pay the price--"

The others started to raise a hue and cry, protesting. I drew my sword and jabbed the tip down into the stone floor. The resounding CLANG silenced them. "Well then?" I said. Purple-black light bled down my cheeks.

She swallowed and closed her eyes. "I'm a nopony," she said. "I lost everything. All I've got left is me. I'll serve you, and do anything you say." She shivered. "Anything."

"Anything?" Dodger blurted out. His voice rose in an unnatural squeak. Several males around the room chuckled. I didn't even move; I just sent streamers of purple lightning out from me in a halo, crackling around the room. That shut them up. We were going to have words later.

"So be it," I said. "Now... name your price."

She looked up at me, hope flickering in her eyes. She wet her lips. "I-- I want you to get Twinkle back," she said. "And-- and Jetstream--"

There was a throaty chuckle behind me. Chrysalis slid around me, hands trailing over my arm. Very slink-adelic. "She's lying," she said, never taking her eyes off Eiderdown.

"What? No, I--"

"Oh dear, don't get me wrong. That's what you thought you wanted." Chrysalis said. "But I am an emotivore, dear. I can taste what you're really feeling like you can taste the salt of tears on your cheeks." She leaned over, hands on her knees, her fang-filled leer inches from Eiderdown's nose. "Is that ALL you want? Really? From a Dark Lord? Is that all you hunger for, after all this? After five years of injustice heaped upon injustice, by the very same ponies whose homes and lives you SAVED?"

Eiderdown started trembling. Chrysalis leered. "You know what I speak of," she said. "It's boiling in your heart, sitting like scalding bile on the tip of your tongue. Oh you want what you asked for already, but you want MORE."

I stood still and watched, mesmerized. Chrysalis put on a hell of a show. Eiderdown bit her lip, whimpering. "I... no... it's--"

Chrysalis leaned forward till her lips were an inch from Eiderdown's ear. "Wrong? Wrong to ask for a balancing of the scales? Why? Because Celestia, whose justice FAILED you, said so?

"The pact is already sealed; put my Dark master to the test and see what he cannot accomplish. Stop lying to yourself. Say it. You want it. For your friends. For your lost future. For yourself." Eiderdown was panting like a steam engine.  "Ask for what those weak, simpering ponies-- those same ponies who betrayed you-- say you should never ask. More than your freedom back, your names back, your lives back. Claim it and more. Say it. Tell the world what it is that they would never give you. Say what you want!"

I don't know if Chrysalis was manipulating Eiderdown's emotions, but it was like a switch was thrown. I could almost see a light go on behind Eiderdown's eyes. Her expression of guilt and denial melted away to one of seething, un-repressed rage; she shook with fury. She put her head down, flared her wings and screamed.

"I-- WANT-- REVENGE!!"

"Whoa," Runt said from his hiding place behind the throne. "Mood swing."