Rainbow Dash was still a filly when she experienced her first starfall. She’d been playing at the park with her father, trying to outrace him and still too young to understand he was letting her win. Even now, she remembered those times fondly, the times before everything else. The park was a small, relatively flat stretch of clouds near the family’s villa. Play structures had been woven out of cloudstuff for the neighborhood foals, seesaws and merry-go-rounds and swingsets. Prism trees, the only sort of flora capable of growing on clouds, dotted the area and provided many a young pegasus a safe place to practice liftoff, the cottony clouds below catching them should they fall.

The trees began as a full column of rainbow at the trunk and split into seven branches of color further up, splitting into variations and shades and hues of color from then on out. Rainbow had loved them, using them as obstacles around which to weave in her make-believe adventures with her father, fighting imaginary sky pirates and fictional batpony scouts sent from the Moon. Even now, so many years later, she wondered if she would have preferred that the scouts had remained fictional.

She’d heard the stories for as long as she could remember. Everypony had. The variations were constant throughout Equestria, but the common thread was that almost a thousand years ago, Princess Celestia had banished the Goddess of Darkness and her tainted minions to the Moon, never to return. Although return may have been impossible, this did not stop the umbral deity from her eternal vengeance against the world that had rejected her.

That evening, though, the violets and auburns of dusk were fast approaching, and the shadows of the prism trees grew long in the park. Rainbow Dash pestered her father for one last race.

“I don’t know, champ,” he had wheezed, pretending to be out of breath from so many crushing defeats. “I don’t have your youthful energy.”

“Come on, daddy, just one more!” she had pleaded. “Please! Pretty please! Please times a million-zillion-forever!”

Her father had looked up to the blackening night sky, seeing the first stars sparkle out of the vanishing azure. He hadn’t seemed worried that night. She had later learned that the last starfall in this part of Equestria had happened when he was still a teenager. However, when he looked to the skies, simply to point out that it was dark and it was bedtime for his little rainbow, his eyes widened. His body went rigid.

“What’s wrong, daddy?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking up at the sky. “Wow! The stars are moving!”

It was then that the sirens began. All throughout the city, pegasus squads were taking giant, hollow dragon horns from royal guard stations and flying them up over the buildings, blowing into them. A slow rise and fall of countless somber, urgent notes permeated the cloud city.

“What’s that sound, daddy?” Rainbow Dash questioned, sounding worried that her father had yet to respond. “It makes my ears hurt.”

Wordlessly, her father grabbed her and spread his wings, dashing out into the open expanse of the park, breaking free of the miniature, artificially made forest of prism trees. Their villa was just a few blocks away. He could make it in time, the sirens had to have been blown in time. She’d never seen him fly so fast in her life.

She was crying. She held on tightly to her father, but she was terrified did not know why. The wind ripped away any questions of what was happening. Her father zoomed through the neighborhood far faster than he’d led her to believe he could do just a short while earlier.

Some shift, some jostle of her father readjusting his method of carrying her, had angled Rainbow Dash just enough to allow her to see the night sky. The moving stars had been thin, short streaks of light when she’d first spotted them. Now, they were longer, fatter, and she could make out faint details of flickering flames and tiny, shining satellites flying off of them like loose feathers from a rapidly beating wing.

The first starfall in decades had come to Cloudsdale. Pegasi wearing the golden armor of the Royal Guard flocked through the streets, calling for everypony to get inside as they checked alleyways and marketplaces and plazas for any stray soul unable to reach a shelter in time. Large cannons built of magically hardened rainbows swivelled and turned upwards at the edges of the city, firing bolts of lightning at the falling lights in the sky. The starspire, the tallest tower at the heart of the city, crackled with electricity as it pumped power into the city’s defenses. Lights were going out in the villa windows as Rainbow Dash and her father sped past them, all electricity reallocated to a much more pressing purpose.

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes tightly, her ears ringing with the sounds of the sirens, the thunderous booms of the cannons. The lightning bolts were so bright they shone through the backs of her eyelids. She took a hesitant peep just in time to see one connect with a falling light. It was so much closer than earlier, no longer a fat streak, but now a giant ball of flame like a miniature mockery of the sun. The thunderbolt skewered it through its heart, and it burst apart into countless shards. Rainbow Dash later remembered realizing for the first time that the falling objects weren’t stars at all, but rocks. Crystalline insides and dark, smoldering chunks spattered through the sky, as well as what looked like shells of metal.

There were far more falling rocks than cannons. Many of them missed the city entirely, it being such a small target on a huge map. Others did strike, shooting straight through the cloudstuff and hard light constructs or bursting on their own when they were within range.

Rainbow Dash had never been so terrified in her life, but she smiled through the tears when the family’s villa came in sight. They had almost made it when a rumble shook throughout their section of Cloudsdale, a blinding blast of light illuminating a district a short ways over. Rainbow Dash’s father stumbled, nearly dropping her, but managed to pull her tighter to him and keep going.

They were inside the house, going into the basement hidden within the cloudy heart of the city. Their standard issue panic box was sitting in a corner, and not until then had Rainbow Dash ever known its purpose. Old toys she had grown out of and countless bric-a-brac from throughout her father’s life littered the basement, much of it covering or in the way of the box. He had shoved it away as quickly as he could and stuffed them both inside. It was cramped inside the hard-light box, all composed of a bright, discomforting red, but with the door closed and her father holding her close, Rainbow Dash felt safe for the first time since she’d seen her father start to panic.

“It’ll be alright, champ,” her father had whispered to her. “We’re safe in here, don’t worry.”

She was still crying, but she hugged him tightly, and he whispered soft reassurances to her until she drifted off to sleep.

She woke up to a sharp, unnatural tearing sound. Bleary-eyed but instantly frightened once more, she was jostled to the ground when something roughly pulled her father from the panic box. Tumbling to the ground, she looked up to see her father grappling with a figure from nightmare.

Vaguely pony-shaped, it had a shining shell as dark as night, punctuated by curves and spikes. Bat-like wings were tipped with metallic blades, as were its hooves. Even its head was encased in metal, a black visor in place of its eyes. That was far from the worst thing about it, though. The very shadows on the wall seemed to writhe in time with its movements, rearing back when Rainbow Dash’s father pushed it away.

It stumbled to the floor, heavier and less coordinated in its metal casing. It was speaking something, barking in an alien tongue that stung Rainbow’s ears to hear.

“Get out!” her father had shouted. “Leave us alone!”

He picked up an old bat, leftover from his days as a college athlete, and brandished it menacingly at the intruder. The metal-shelled, pony-shaped thing held its front  hooves in the air and moved them in gentle, slow circles, as if in a sign of supplication. It backed away carefully, but did not leave. In fact, it stood between them and the staircase leading upstairs.

Its voice crackled again, a sharp, unnatural whining sound permeating its harsh syllables. It punctuated its words very forcefully, but fumbled, uncertain.

“Give,” it said in highly accented Equestrian. “Low. All. Teeth.”

Rainbow Dash’s father looked more confused than ever, but he did not let his eyes waver from the creature for an instant, his bat still at the ready.

“What do you want?” he demanded. “What are you trying to say?”

“Low-All-Tee,” it said. “Give.”

“Get back!” her father threatened once more, clearly uncertain what to do. He would strike if it got too close, but it didn’t advance, nor did it leave.

“Give,” it repeated. “Loyalty.”

“I’ll never be loyal to you,” Rainbow’s father snarled.

“No,” it insisted. “I not need you. Need loyalty. Give loyalty!”

It turned its head, metallic horns gleaming in the paltry light from the lone bolt-bulb in the basement. Its eyeless visor gave nothing away, but it was pointed directly at Rainbow Dash, showing herself her own terrified, tear-streaked face.

“Loyalty!” the monster shouted gruffly, pointing a bladed hoof at her. “Give!”

Rainbow’s father glanced back at his daughter. In the fraction of a second he let his focus waver, the thing was upon him, striking forward with lightning speed it hadn’t portrayed earlier, crackles of dark-blue electricity dancing across its form. It left a blur behind it, a three-dimensional shadow.

Her father’s eyes widened as he saw his filly, realizing at last what it was the invader wanted. By the time he was turning his head back to the monster, it was too late. It was upon him, slicing into his throat with those bladed hooves. Her father’s body spasmed as the electrical discharge flooded into him, steaming blood spraying, splattering the floor of the basement, the metal shell of the attacker, the horrified face of Rainbow Dash.

Her father fell to the ground, still alive, but quickly becoming less so every moment.

“Stay... Away...” he wheezed.

“Daddy!” Rainbow Dash screamed.

“Loyalty,” said the monster. It had turned its attention to her, and was addressing her directly.

It advanced on her next. It rose its bladed hoof, already crackling with electricity once more. It brought its hoof down, and she closed her eyes.

The basement lit up like lightning and boomed like thunder. The only dark spot in it all was the form of the monster, a Lunar eclipse in front of the Sun. Rainbow Dash was howling, sobbing as she never had in her life. Her body felt only searing agony, but her soul was far, far worse.

“It’s okay, it’s over, you’re safe,” whispered a gruff voice that was clearly trying very hard to be soft. A strong foreleg scooped up the weeping filly. Though she no longer cared, she felt the soft fur of a stallion rather than the metal of whatever that pony-shaped darkness had been. “I’m taking you to a doctor. Don’t worry, you’ll make it. You’re strong, I can tell.”

Rainbow Dash curled up into a ball, not caring if whoever had her dropped her. He didn’t.

Half-opening her eyes, she saw a pony wearing the golden armor of the Royal Guard, his wings the feathery pegasus variety rather than leathery like those of a bat. He was carrying her up the stairs, out of the basement. Another pegasus guard was still down there, setting down what looked like a smoking thunder gun, still crackling with yellow electricity. He and the guard holding her must have barged into the basement right as that thing had come for her.

But not soon enough.

The pony-shaped monstrosity lay crumpled on the floor, dark smoke seeping from between cracks in its dark armor. Rainbow Dash could see burnt fur underneath. Beyond him was her father, still lying in a pool of his own blood. His eyes were open, but they did not move.

She closed her eyes again, shut them so tight she hoped they would never again open.

The guard handed her off to somepony else outside. She could hear the voices of lots of ponies, some of which she recognized as those of neighbors, some of which she didn’t. She didn’t look to be sure.

“Celestia’s Mane,” she heard the new pony curse as he set her down on what felt like an extra-fluffy cloud. Rainbow’s father would have bit his tongue to hear such language in her vicinity. “What happened to her?”

“One of the Fallen got to her,” she heard the guard telling the new pony. “He probably wanted to do worse, but my partner got him first. Not soon enough, though. The Fallen took out her father.”

“Celestia’s Mane,” the new pony repeated, albeit it more softly this time. What he said next was closer, sounding directed at her. “I am so sorry, child. Nopony should have to go through what you’ve just experienced. My name is Doctor Rain, and I’m getting you to the hospital as soon as possible.”

Hospital? Whatever for? Her father was dead. She felt horrible, but that thing had killed him. Like the guard said, it had probably wanted to do the same to her, but it hadn’t had the chance.

“You’re going to be fine,” Doctor Rain promised. She felt movement, as if he was pushing the cloud on which she was lying. “You’re going to live. I just wish that... I wish so many things.”

She blinked open her eyes, tentatively.

He smiled down at her sadly, but looked back up, and didn’t make eye contact for the rest of the trip. She closed her eyes again.

The cloud was the most comfortable thing Rainbow Dash had ever felt. After what she’d just experienced, she never thought she’d sleep again, but she was suddenly feeling so very, very tired, past the point of all exhaustion any race in the park could have caused, and soon darkness took hold.

By the time she woke up, she was lying on a new extra-fluffy cloud in a stark room. A nurse was sitting by her bedside, and seemed rather relieved that she had woken up. She explained as carefully as she could that Rainbow Dash had been taken to the hospital. A lot of ponies had been hurt that night, but the Royal Guard had everything under control again. Princess Celestia herself was already on her way to assess the damage done to Cloudsdale. The nurse assured Rainbow Dash that another starfall would never hurt her or the city like this ever again. The mayor had sent messenger hawks all throughout Cloudsdale, declaring a state of emergency and martial law—whatever that meant—so that the city could build itself back up and make its defenses even bigger and better. They hadn’t been used in decades, after all, but he had assured everypony that they were never be lacking again.

Rainbow said nothing the whole time. She didn’t have the heart to so much as move her head. All she did was blink.

The nurse wound down her explanation when it became clear that Rainbow Dash wasn’t responding.

“You poor dear,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

They kept apologizing. Why? No amount of apologies could bring her father back.

“We were able to save your life from the blood loss,” the nurse spoke at last after a few tense moments of silence. “But I’m afraid we couldn’t save your wing.”

What...?

Rainbow Dash had hardly the strength to form cognizant thought. As far as she was concerned, life was some sort of strange, surreal dream, and she was caught between sleeping and waking. What did it matter if... But even so, it couldn’t...

She turned her head. Where one of her wings had been, there was now only a bandaged stump.

. . .

TEN YEARS LATER

. . .

Rainbow Dash looked over the belongings she decided were worth taking with her. There weren’t many. An old photograph of her and Dad, the frame cracked slightly. The small sack full of bits she’d managed to swipe from her mother’s dresser when she was in another one of her drunken binges. And, finally, the bat.

She lifted it in her hooves, feeling its heft and weight. It was decades old, made of genuine Everfree wood rather than the synthetic stuff they used now, not that she’d ever played in any school sports. She’d attended enough games, though, and though the new bats may have sent the balls flying further, they didn’t have the same satisfying thwack sound when the Everfree bat made forceful contact with something hard. She’d hit enough bottles, cans, fence posts, and trees to know.

The bat wouldn’t fit in the sack, an old tablecloth she’d also swiped when her mother wasn’t looking, but it would make the perfect stick on which to hang the wrapped cloth. Rainbow Dash stuffed the bits and picture into the center of the cloth and haphazardly did her best to wrap and tie it around the end of the bat, double-knotting it so it wouldn’t slip.

She took a final look around her room. An unmade bed, a desk covered in homework papers marked up in red, a chair with a backpack that was falling apart, and a closet full of clothes that hadn’t been washed in who knew how long, not that she ever wore them anyway. They were all hand-me-downs from her mother.

Rainbow Dash thought of saying something spiteful to the place, but couldn’t think of anything she deemed worthily clever, so simply turned off the light and left. She creeped downstairs, thankful that the cloud-villa she shared with her mother didn’t creak like so many wooden structures did in Ponyville.

As predicted, Firefly was still snoring loudly on the couch, two or three bottles knocked over on the floor. The crystal-vision was turned on, but tuned to a dead channel. Nothing but white noise and static snow blared from the old set.

Rainbow also almost considered waking her mother. Not to say goodbye, but to tell her... Well, she didn’t really know. Good riddance? That she hated her guts? Thank you for putting up with me, even though you never seemed to care and did a horrible job?

Once again, Rainbow Dash thought better of it and said nothing. She opened the door to the front of the cloud villa and stepped outside, spreading her wings.

One was still the feathery, flesh-and-blood wing with which she had been born, sky-blue like the rest of her. The light of the setting sun shone through the paper-thin lenses of the other, a series of imitation feathers woven of hardened rainbow light. They were all attached to a lightweight metal frame, which itself was grafted to the muscles beneath her skin, specially enchanted so as not to cause irritation.

The faux-wing had been a gift from an anonymous benefactor, and it was the latest model of several. She’d been receiving new models every time she had a growth spurt, but this last one had come with the notice that it’d be the last she’d ever need.

Rainbow stepped off the edge of the villa and drifted slowly down to ground level, alighting on the dusty pathway that wound out of the outskirts of Ponyville and towards a larger, main road just a short trot beyond.

She turned towards Ponyville. There was an old inn there where she might spend the night for a single bit, but her mother might call the police, and that’s likely the first place they’d look. Besides, she didn’t want to stay in Ponyville a moment longer than was necessary. Like her home on its outskirts, the town held too many bitter memories. The high school, where the other ponies had avoided her like the plague—not that she’d tried to associate with them much after the first few times—calling her things like ‘Fake Wing’ and ‘Jinx.’ A few of them honestly believed she had been tainted by her encounter with the batpony soldier during the starfall, the moment that had irrevocably ruined her life forever, taking her father away and shoving her into the life of a mother who didn’t want her and who she didn’t want in return.

There had been a few sympathetic souls, but they were few and far between, and Rainbow could never tell if they were being genuine or just setting her up for another prank. Either that or, worse, they saw her as an object of pity.

No, she would not go into Ponyville. Not now, not ever again.

Instead, Rainbow Dash turned towards the open road and set off at a brisk trot, her bat and paltry sack of possessions slung across her back. She thought of flying, but decided against it. The magical panels that allowed it movement were mostly solar-powered, so she’d only get a few dozen yards in before the sun set and grounded her again.

. . .

Firefly didn’t realize her daughter had left until the following evening, having woken late and assumed Rainbow Dash had gone to school and then stayed late afterwards, or perhaps wandered about Ponyville as she sometimes did. When Rainbow Dash didn’t return, even several hours after sunset, Firefly began to panic. She’d sent the family messenger hawk to fetch the police, but by the time they arrived, there wasn’t much they could do. They left as quickly as they could, telling Firefly that her daughter was probably spending the night at a friend or family member’s and that she must have let it slip her mind.

She had yelled at them that Rainbow Dash had no friends and no local relatives, but they had left anyway.

Firefly had rifled through her daughter’s room, through her own room, and through the mail. Rainbow Dash’s room was much the same as ever: sparse and unkempt. Firefly’s own room was about the same, albeit far more unkempt. Her secret hiding place had been untouched, still full of what precious few bits had come in this month that she hadn’t already spent on alcohol.

The mail was where she received her first clue. Firefly thought that her daughter might have left a note, but found nothing of the sort. Instead, though, she found an extra note attached to a new shipment of bits from the government, a shipment she hadn’t been expecting for a few weeks more.

The notes was even more curious. It read,

Dear Mrs. Firefly,

Please find enclosed an advance on your usual funds. This amount should be more than sufficient to cover the costs of travel for two by train to Canterlot. You and your daughter are required immediately at the behest of Her Majesty Princess Celestia herself. Accommodations have been prepared for you both at the Fancy Pants Luxury Hotel & Suites, where our agents shall expect the two of you in three day’s time. Once the proper procedures have been completed and assessments made, you and Rainbow Dash shall receive an audience with the Princess.

Failure to comply will result in an immediate visit from our agents and termination of our monthly fund transfers. Furthermore, should you not attend, Rainbow Dash shall be removed from your care and placed under the protection of the Crown.

We cannot overstate the importance of this meeting. The very fate of Equestria may depend on it.

Sincerely and urgently,

Her Majesty’s Secret Service