"Can you hear that?" I asked Sol as we walked through one of the relatively unfrequented parks on the mountain side of Canterlot. I had caught the faint sound of a crying foal as we passed by an opening half the size of a fully grown pony in the side of the cliff we had been walking next to.

Mun and Sol had each recieved a Thestral avatar -- anatomically correct -- with their color schemes already in the manes and coats from Nono a few weeks after I bought them. They had adjusted to their new bodies (which were basically bio-tech that was compatable with their interfaces) and the feelings and needs over the last few months and had proven to be addicted to pranks and all around good fun.

"Barely," She replied. "And here I thought you were basically deaf."

"Selective hearing," I shot over my shoulder as I turned towards the opening and crawled in. The passage immediately opened into a bigger tunnel that you could drive a wagon in with plenty of room on either side to fit a fully armored Earth Pony.

"Same diff," Sol said back once she was standing beside me in the cave. "I don't need to point out where the crying's coming from, do I?"

"Nah, seems straight forward enough that even you would be able to find your way through," I joked back with a smirk as I started forward through the dark, pulling out a flashlight I had bought and turning it on.

"Once! Only once I got lost on the way to the bathroom because Mun deleted all my data on the castle," She huffed, folowing closely.

"You walked into an over-stuffed closet and ended up covered in tree sap someho-," I stopped as we entered a cavern, the grisly sight I was greeted with shattering my mirth. Strewn about the floor were bodies in different stages of decay. All of them had feathered wings. All of them were foals. And most had rainbow colored manes.

I was so shocked I didn't even notice I had dropped my flashlight and put my hands over my mouth.

"What kind of sick, twisted bastard would even think of doing this to even a single child," I managed to get out. I looked over to where the crying was coming from and saw a cyan coated filly barely six months old tied to a stalagmite with a coarse rope that had dried blood on it around her neck and even more blood stains running down her chest and face. Her wings had been cruelly plucked, leaving more stains on her coat.

When she caught sight of Sol, she shied away and tried to crawl behind the stalagmite. As she did so I saw that somep-... absolute monster had tried to use her before leaving her to die.

I rushed over and scooped her up, petting her mane and making soothing sounds. Slowly, the filly relaxed and stopped trying to squirm out of my gentle, yet firm grip.

A while later, she fell asleep to me humming and rocking her. Only then did I take out a small knife and cut the rope off of the filly.

"What will we do about the rest of them?" Sol finally asked.

"We bring Luna and Celestia here and try to find a way to track the fucking heartless asshole bastard-monsters that did this," I said coldly as I stood and turned to the entrance. "Then I'm going to kill them. Slowly.... Painfully. I think being covered with honey and staked out over a huge ant hill would be apropriate."

".... Why not termites, instead?" she asked.

"You wanna explain how they got in the castle grounds?"

"Good point."

Walking into the medical wing of the castle an hour later, I aproached the nearest doctor.

"Another training session gone wrong, Maxine?" he asked. He was an Earth pony that had a brown-ish orange coat with a teal mane and tail and emerald eyes behind a pair of small glasses. His cutie mark was a mortar and pestle.

"Worse, Remedy," I said as he turned to look at me.

"Dear Luna! what happened to the filly?" Home Remedy exclaimed as he took the foal from my arms.

My jaw tightened as I thought of the cave. "Don't know, but she was in a cave with at least eight others that were dead."

"We'll take care of her and get her back to good health," he said as he gently placed the foal on her stomach on a bed.

A few hours later Celestia cantered in, a worried look on her face. "Mun said I'd find you here."

"Ants are too good for them," I said. I was sitting in a chair cradling the abused filly to my chest.

"Oh, Poor thing! What happened to her?" Celestia gasped as she took in the casts and bandages.

"Two broken legs, fifteen ribs broken, the rest cracked, a fracture in her skull, multiple bruises, and her uterus was torn apart by something's dick. Not to mention what that rope did to her neck and being dehydrated and half-starved to death," I said, tears filling my eyes. "The worst p-part is that the doctors don't kn-know how to t-t-tell who's child she i-is."

I don't know how long I sat there crying but Celestia had come over and enveloped both the filly and I in her wings and hooves, trying to comfort me. "I'll find the bastards that would do this to a foal and I'll make their deaths stretch out for weeks," I said finally.

"And what about her? Are you just going to give her to someone else?" Celestia asked.

"No.... Never." I pulled the filly closer. "I don't care what my public image is, I'm taking care of her."

"She'll need a name, then." The pink mare said.

I don't care what this changes, I have to give her this name because of her colors. "Rainbow Dash."

Author's Notes:

Being eaten alive by fire ants: the worst torture Native Indians came up with in my opinion.

I promised Rainbow would be in here. Not what you expected, isn't it?