Prologue: Cryptic Warning

Pain. And light. Bright light. It felt like Princess Celestia herself was bringing every last bit of her powerful magic to bear in order to smite me with the very fire of the sun itself.

…Hang on, that didn’t make any sense. Not only was Celestia no longer among us, but she was said to have been kind and benevolent—never malevolent and spiteful. Why then, was this insanely bright light feeling like it was trying to sear my eyeballs and making my head feel like it was caught in a vise? I groaned as my attempt to puzzle through the confusion caused the throbbing, blinding pain to increase and my stomach threatened to violently expel its contents.

Reluctantly, I peeled my sleep-crusted eyes open and held up a forehoof to shield them from the early morning sun pouring in through my window. Daylight. Right. Again, I groaned miserably and buried my face in the cool dark depths of my pillow. Oh, sweet relief at last.

“Mach!”

Oh, come on.

“Mach, breakfast!”

My stomach rumbled insistently despite my headache-induced nausea. Stupid indecisive, overdemanding body. Fine, I thought, You win. Food it is. Keeping my eyes pinched shut tightly, I slid carefully off of my bed, swaying unsteadily on my drowsy hooves as they sank a few centimeters into the cloud floor beneath me.

Heaving a massive yawn, I trudged forward blindly, using my lifelong memory of the house’s layout to navigate through my room and into the hallway before turning left to descend downstairs. I let my nose lead me from there, following the scent of fresh cooked food right into the kitchen like a busy little worker ant following a pheromone trail back to his colony.

Once I’d located the table with the foolproof method of bumping straight into it, I plopped my flank down into a chair and immediately let my forehead drop onto its surface with a sigh of relief. Well, that hadn’t been so hard. From bed to the kitchen with no mishaps along the way. I’d make it through the rest of the day yet. Baby steps.

“Good morning, sweetie!” the cheerful voice of a mare called out to me, and I sensed as much as heard a plate being set down by my head. “How’s my little stallion doing today?”

“Oh stars, Mom, not so loud,” I groaned painfully, each one of her syllables making my forehead feel like it was about to split open.

“I’m sorry, dear,” my mother apologized, lowering the volume of her voice considerably. “Here, this should make it a little better.”

She set something else down by me, and I finally perked up a bit when I gave an experimental whiff and identified the gloriously familiar scent. Coffee! I immediately picked my head up, expecting to see the ruby red coat and sunny smile of my mother, but soon felt hope turn to disappointment when I saw a silver-coated stallion with a light, bristly ice-blue mane sitting across from me.

“Oh,” I muttered glumly, feeling my ears droop as I cradled my mug between my forehooves and sipped carefully at the piping hot liquid within. “Hey, Dad. I thought you’d have left for work already.”

My father’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke considerably louder than was necessary. “I hope that hangover of yours is painful. Maybe the next time you decide to stay out until four-thirty in the morning drinking yourself so stupid you can’t fly straight, you’ll think twice about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you even make it into the house?” my father replied gruffly. “I didn’t hear you stumble in through the front door.”

“Flew in through my window.”

“Of course you did,” my father sighed, pressing a hoof tightly to his forehead. “Have you given any thought as to when you’re going to move out and find your own place to live? Aren’t you just the least bit ashamed that you’re a full grown stallion still living with your parents?”

I let my head fall back to the table. “Oh, sweet Cygnus, here we g—”

“Don’t take the spirits’ names in vain!” my mother chastised from over by the sink, turning to look reproachfully over her shoulder at me.

“—Go,” I finished stubbornly, picking my head back up to frown grumpily at my father. “And no, I haven’t,” I said, leaning forward to take a bite of what I’d only just now identified as a waffle sitting on my plate. Oats and chocolate chips. Not bad. Mom knew me like the back of her hoof. “Why bother moving out? We’re a military family, Dad. Our schedules and mission assignments are all so different that we’re rarely all in the house at the same time. It’s not like I’m intruding on your space, or you mine, so what’s the big deal? It’s a lot easier financially to just pay you guys a cut of the bills than it is to go out and get my own place.”

“Don’t you have any desire to purchase a house of your own?” my father scoffed incredulously. “Or find that perfect mare to spend the rest of your life with? I can guarantee you that no mare will want to marry a buck who still lives with his parents. What about a family? Don’t you ever want to settle down and have a foal of your own?”

“Not really.”

“So you’re perfectly content to spend the rest of your life sleeping with any mare who’ll have you and drinking yourself into a stupor whenever the opportunity presents itself?” my father said, the disappointment evident in his tone. “Is this really the path you’ve chosen? You come from one of the most well-respected pegasi backgrounds in history, and you’re going to choose the life of a… of a loser? Don’t you have any ambition at all?”

“If you’d just let me apply for transfer to the Wonderb—”

“NO!” my father roared, standing up so fast his chair went toppling over behind him, and slamming his forehooves on the table in outrage. “No son of mine will be a Wonderbolt, do you hear me? You will not disgrace the family by joining their ranks!”

“How would that disgrace us? The Wonderbolts are one of the most prestigious—”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times—we’re done speaking about this,” my father growled, bringing the conversation to a close. I glared at him as he pulled on the jacket to his uniform and seated his impressive peaked cap carefully between his ears, the three silver stars inlaid above its brim glinting in the light. “I shall see the both of you later, I need to be going before I’m late for duty.”

I glared moodily at my waffle as my father departed, its perfectly square shape marred by the one big bite I’d taken earlier. That years-old depression was starting to sink in, and I sighed sadly as my old buck’s words echoed over and over in my mind. I’d tried to make something of myself. I had! Why wouldn’t he let me transfer into the Wonderbolts’ squadron? They were the elite—the best of the best. Surely being among their numbers would bring us honor, not disgrace? I just didn’t get it. I never had. All these years, and he still stubbornly refused to let me fly with them.

“Don’t let him get you down, dear,” my mother crooned as she took a seat beside me at the table. “He loves you just as much as I do. You know it’s just his way.”

“His way is what’s causing the problem he’s been complaining about for all these years,” I mumbled sullenly. “I want to fly, Mom. To my absolute limits. I don’t have the kind of freedom to push myself where I am right now. If I were flying with the Wonderbolts, I could do that, but…”

“I know, sweetie, I know,” my mother said, gently wrapping her forelegs around my shoulders and curling a wing around me comfortingly. “I wish there was something I could do for you, but your father outranks me. He outranks a lot of ponies. He has too much pull in the military for anypony short of the Enclave High Council itself to supersede his authority.”

“Don’t I know it,” I sighed again. I leaned forward to take another big bite of waffle while I chewed over the situation at hoof. “Be nice if Dad cared a little less about his skewed notion of honor and a little more about what I could be doing with my life if he let me be. Instead, he’d rather just shame me about my choices at every turn.”

“It’s okay, Mach. Whatever you decide to do in the future, I just want you know that I’ll always support you. You’ll always be my little colt, sweetie, and I’ll love you no matter what.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, smiling warmly as she gave me a little peck on the cheek and stood to trot over to the sink and busily wash the dishes.

“So, what are you up to on your day off, Mach?” my mother called over her shoulder while I dutifully attacked my waffle. “You were going out to lunch with your sister, weren’t you?”

“Schedule conflict,” I mumbled through a mouthful of food, chasing it with a gulp of steaming hot coffee to wash it down. “Turned out she had to work today, so we had to put it off until a later day. That’s why I came home drunk last night. I didn’t need to be up early, so I figured I’d sleep in and then just hang around all day. Wasn’t expecting to be woken up for breakfast.”

“Sorry, dear.”

“’S all right,” I shrugged. “It was the sun that woke me up, anyway. I was in the middle of rolling over when you called me down.”

“The sun?” my mother said curiously, leaning over to get a good look out of the window over the sink. “It is sunny, how odd. I could’ve sworn they’d scheduled rain for today.”

“I think they did,” I said before scooping my empty plate up with my teeth and trotting over to the sink to clean it. My mother wouldn’t accept such a notion, and quickly yanked the plate away from me with her own teeth before dropping it into the wash basin. “Mom, I can clean my own plate,” I said sheepishly. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m already feeling like a huge asshole thanks to Dad. The least you can let me do is wash my dish.”

“Nonsense,” my mother said dismissively, planting a forehoof on my chest and pushing me gently away, her nose held in the air haughtily. “You’re terrible at doing the dishes anyway, sweetie.”

“All right, fine,” I conceded, stepping back to let her work. “I think I’m gonna grab some aspirin for this headache and go for a walk. I need a little fresh air to clear my head and think some things over.”

I turned and made my way out of the kitchen and into the house’s main hallway. Framed pictures lined the walls on either side, effectively creating a timeline of my family’s life from the beginning to the present day. Pictures of colt me and my little sister playing, photos from flight school and various field trips, pictures of my sister and I at our respective basic training graduation ceremonies and a lot more besides.

Not all of the pictures were happy memories. Anypony who took a stroll through our little gallery would soon find one constant after perusing the photos. As I grew older, my expression in the pictures changed from happy and carefree, to angry and rebellious, and then lastly to completely and utterly resigned.

One guess as to why.

I nickered in frustration, breaking my gaze away from the pictureframes and trotting my way down the hall to the bathroom. I fumbled my way through the medicine cabinet, knocking bottles of ancient pharmaceuticals retrieved from Equestria’s surface aside in my search for pain relief. I didn’t trust any of this stuff, really. How much faith could you put in a bottle of two-hundred year old cough syrup that had been tainted by the radioactive aftereffect of a balefire holocaust? Not much, that’s for sure.

When my search turned up nothing, I slogged back out into the hallway, calling out to my mother on my way back upstairs. “Mom! Mom, we’re out of aspirin! There wasn’t any in the medicine cabinet!”

My head throbbed painfully, and I sighed again before dragging my hooves up the stairs towards my room. Now that I was considerably more awake than I had been when I’d crawled out of bed, I could see what a disaster zone my room really was. Clothes and old uniforms were strewn all over the place, and various posters featuring the Wonderbolts—both new and old—were hung up anywhere that I could find wall space. A bunch of little action figures of a pre-war Wonderbolts team were displayed prominently up on a shelf, and my most treasured possession was placed out of the way in a corner of the room.

I made my way over to the mannequin, admiring the article of clothing it was displaying just as eagerly as I had the first time I’d set eyes on it. A genuine Wonderbolts’ captain uniform, passed down through my family for generations and treasured more than anything else I owned. Reaching up to the mannequin’s head, I removed the pair of goggles perched there and wrapped the bright yellow band around my own head, seating them carefully upon my forehead, just beneath my mane. Ruffling through a pile of clothes turned up my flight jacket, and I carefully fed my forelegs and wings through the holes before heading back downstairs.

A sudden noise up ahead caused me to halt as my hoof hit the last step, and I looked up to see a small pile of envelopes being pushed through the mail slot in the front door. Ordinarily I’d have ignored it, but one of the envelopes had caught my eye, and I made my way over to the pile curiously.

Reaching a hoof out, I spread and separated the letters out on the floor, my eyes immediately drawn to the pitch black envelope with my name printed above the address.

I got mail all the time, so receiving a letter wasn’t all that strange. What was strange about it was the superimposition of the Grand Pegasus Enclave’s emblem on the envelope—a pair of eyes glaring out from beneath an arch atop billowing clouds. That fact alone meant it had come straight from the government—which, being a military pony, wasn’t exactly strange—but there was no stamp or return address. Taking that into consideration, the fact that it had reached my doorstep at all meant somepony had pulled strings to get it here. What the hell could it be about?

Grasping the envelope between my forehooves and tearing it open with my teeth, I flipped open a single folded shred of paper and read its meager two lines.

What the hell was this all about? A letter bearing the official seal of the Enclave with no stamp or return address, and its only contents were these cryptic instructions? Just reading it made me feel like I was party to a ransom or hostage situation. Shit, what time was it? Did I even have time to make it to Anemoi Park to conduct this meeting?

“Mom!” I bellowed, jamming the piece of paper into my jacket pocket. “Mom, what time is it!?”

“It’s a quarter to twelve, why?”

Shit, I had to move.

“I’ll explain later, Mom! I gotta jet!”

I bolted forward with all due haste, wrenching the front door open and giving it a forceful tug behind me, leaving the momentum to shut it for me while I concentrated on my takeoff. Kicking off from the springy cloud cover beneath my hooves, I unfurled my wings to full span and launched myself skyward with one great flap.

Anemoi Park was at the center of town, so getting there would take about five or ten minutes at a healthy clip. Plenty of time to get there for this strange summons.

Neighborhoods sprawled out in every direction beneath me, military ponies taking up residence with their families at a location that was more convenient to them. It was a lot easier to own property and raise a family a stone’s throw away from the Enclave’s biggest military base than it was to commute from one of the bigger cities further away, like Cyclonus or New Zephyr. As a result, a burgeoning little community had sprouted up on Neighvarro’s outskirts, and it tended to attract ponies with both families and money—those that were usually very high in the chain of command.

My thoughts shifted from the scenery back to the letter as I neared my destination. Was following through on this wise? What if it was somepony with an axe to grind setting me up to slit my throat? Then again, on the other hoof, the envelope couldn’t get any more official than the Enclave’s personal watermark, so there was an equally as likely chance that I’d wind up in deep shit if I didn’t show my face at the park.

No, for good or ill, I had to show up for this meeting. I couldn’t afford any more strikes against my record. I really couldn’t.

I neared Anemoi Park with about six or seven minutes to spare, and quickly made my descent. I chose the center of the small park as my landing site, drifting down to hover by a statue erected at its center before dropping back to the ground with a soft fwoomp. The statue beside me depicted the physical manifestation of a series of winds—north and south, east and west, crafted from pure cloud and shaped to exemplify the artist’s rendition of breezes, gusts and gale force winds.

Personally, I thought the statue was a load of horseapples. Now, a statue of a famous pegasus like Commander Hurricane, or Daring Do, or even one of the many Wonderbolt captains would’ve looked a damn sight more impressive than some wispy little clouds meant to mimic winds. Sure would’ve spiced this boring little park up a great deal.

Up above me, I watched with some irritation as weatherponies dutifully placed stormy grey clouds swelling with rainwater into their designated areas. I guess rain was scheduled for today, after all. If I wound up drenched because of this stupid meeting, I was not going to be happy.

“Where the hell is this guy?” I whispered to myself, spinning in a slow circle to see if I could find somepony waiting to meet me, but the park was vacant. It was just me. “I swear to Polaris, if this is a joke I’m going to prank whoever did it so hard they’ll have lasting trauma.”

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” a voice said from behind me, and I immediately felt my mane crawl uncomfortably. His voice was modulated. Disguised. I spun to face the speaker, but found only blank space behind me. What the hell? “My apologies,” the unseen pony said, and my jaw dropped as a figure materialized before me. “You’ll have to forgive me, I do so live for theatrics.”

Being visible made the anonymous pony no less concealed, if you can believe that. Standing in front of me was a pony shrouded in a dark grey cloak, its hood pulled up over his head so that the only thing visible was his armored snout and the glint of orange eye lenses. He was wearing power armor, but like none I’d ever seen before. His snout was covered by a breather mask when it should’ve been exposed, and the telltale sign of a bladed scorpion tail sheath was completely absent.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was suddenly feeling very uneasy. Who the hell was this guy?

“I understand that it’s your day off, so I’ll be brief as a courtesy to you,” the armored pony said, his modulated voice ringing like cold steel. “This is a very simple matter in any event, so it shouldn’t take more than a moment.”

“What the hell do you want from me?” I said, my voice wavering and betraying my nerves. Great, show fear in front of the mysterious badass. Terrific job, Mach. “Who are you?”

“Who I am is irrelevant. This meeting concerns you, not me.”

“What do you want?” I repeated, though this time my voice had gained significant strength and confidence, bolstered through my irritation. Don’t let anypony tell you that a bad temper is a weakness.

“I have one question for you, Lieutenant, and one question only.” The armored pony’s tone grew forceful and demanding at this point. “I want you to think very carefully before you answer. It is not in your best interests to lie to me, and if you do, I will find out. Please believe me when I say that lying to me would be a very bad idea for you.”

“Cut the shit and get to the point,” I growled angrily. I hated being pushed around. Hated it. The fact that this guy was openly threatening me mere minutes after we’d met was winding me up like a clock. “Ask your stars-damned question.”

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Lieutenant?”

And the award for most vague question of the century goes to…

“Apart from telling you to fly headfirst into a brick wall, you mean?” I snapped.

“Was I too vague? Allow me to rephrase. Are there any… secrets… you may be keeping, that you’d like to get off your chest? Anything at all?”

My heart began to pound in my chest. Impossible. There was no way they’d found out. No way. Dad and I had been careful, we’d taken every precaution, we’d put so much planning into it in order to ensure we wouldn’t be caught. We’d been left alone for years, why would they be poking their noses into matters now? No, this had to be something else. They had to suspect me of something I hadn’t actually done, this was way beyond coincidence.

“No,” I said firmly and confidently, glaring right into the armored pony’s visor. My mysterious caller seemed taken aback by my answer, recoiling as if I'd struck him.

"Are... are you sure? There's nothing at all you'd like to tell me about before I go?" His tone seemed pleading, almost as if he was desperate to give me an out. But why...?

"We're done here," I stated, a tone of finality to my voice. "This seems an awful lot like an accusation. I don't appreciate being bullied while I'm off duty, least of all by a pony with no visible rank. If it happens again I'm going over your head. My dad is going to hear about this regardless, so you better hope you have some friends in high places."

He stood there silent for a long time, and we glared at each other for what felt like an eternity before he spoke again. “…Very well. You may hear from me again soon, or you may never see me again for as long as you live. I hope for both of our sakes that it is the latter.”

Without another word the pony flickered out of view, and I saw the clouds where he’d been standing rebound back into shape—physical evidence of his departure. I remained there in the center of the park for quite some time, sweating over the conversation I’d just had, even though it had been hilariously brief. By the time I managed to snap out of my daze, the first drops of rain were beginning to fall, and I shook my head to clear my glazed-over vision as one such drop landed right on my snout.

I didn’t know who that guy was, or what his agenda had been, but one thing was for certain—he scared the living piss out of me. I didn’t know why he was poking into my affairs, or if my concerns were even valid, but I was seriously hoping I hadn’t just fucked up big time by lying straight to his face.

“It can’t be that bad if he left without doing anything,” I muttered to myself as I turned to head home. “If I was in deep shit, I’d damn well know it.”

It only made sense, right?

...Right?

Author's Notes:

New readers, welcome! Re-readers, welcome back! I've decided to go ahead and un-publish the story until the rewrites are complete. I'll be publishing chapters as they're finished, but anyone who desires to read on instead of waiting, can do so by visiting my GDoc archive of the story, found here.

I hope you all enjoy the revised story!