Stronghooves groaned quietly as he opened his eyes, blinking as the daylight filtered through a gap in his curtains. The thin strip of light fell over his muzzle and the mane of another pony that lay in front of him, all tucked up in his hooves. His ears flicked and swivelled a little as he tried to recollect the events of last night.

Daybreak snored quietly as she unconsciously snuggled closer to the giant stallion, letting out the quietest of soft sighs. There was a tiny smile on her face, her mane a complete mess as she lay there with him. Her dress lay forgotten on the floor nearby, cast thoughtlessly aside in the throes of whatever carnal acts had transpired the night before. Stronghooves rolled onto his back, staring up at his ceiling in the half-light, and smiled a smile of his own. This was the best he’d felt in ages.

There came a knock at his bedroom door, and the captain’s ears perked. It was most curious. He didn’t know anypony else with access to his house. Whoever was knocking at the door must surely have broken in. It couldn’t be…?

“Sky?” He mumbled hopefully.

The door opened, and Shield pushed his head through the crack. There was a pair of coffee cups bolted to his helmet again.

“No such luck, but we’ve gotten the file on Rat Racer from the Manehattan cops.” The Inspector smiled. “I think you’re going to find this kind of interesting.”

Stronghooves glanced down at his marefriend, who was still sound asleep in his hooves, and sighed heavily. “How interesting are we talking?”

“You’ll see.” Shield frowned seriously. “Come on, I brought his dossier with me. Let the lady sleep.”

Stronghooves sighed again, slowly and carefully extricating himself from Daybreak’s grasp. She had a strong grip for a comparatively small pony, but then again, she was a super-soldier. In time, Stronghooves managed to break free, trotting over to his new friend while the mare cuddled a pillow.

“This had better be good.” Stronghooves stretched.

“Hey, you get to wake me up in the middle of the night for work, I get to wake you up at midday.” Shield shrugged.

“Midday? Really? I was out for that long?” Stronghooves rubbed his head, trotting out into the hallway and closing the door as quietly as he could.

“Yeah, believe it. You guys must’ve had one hell of a party.” Shield chuckled, slurping on his coffee. “So...how’d it go, anyway?”

“What, the date?”

“No, Twilight Sparkle’s coronation. Of course I mean the date.” Shield rolled his eyes patiently. “Come on, details!”

“Um...well…” Stronghooves chuckled uneasily, scratching the back of his head. “It was...erm...good...we...er…”

“Your bedframe’s broken.” Shield observed.

“Yeah...it...is…” The captain giggled stupidly, half-galloping down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Look, it kind of didn’t hold up, and...and we’re…”

“Super-soldiers who can punch a carriage into splinters and stuff like that. Yeah, I know.” Shield snickered. “Just don’t crash at my house with her and I think this friendship’s gonna work out.”

“I’m going to go through a lot of beds at this rate.” Stronghooves sighed, closing his eyes as he boiled the kettle by magic. “So you said you’ve got Rat’s dossier?”

“Damn right. Got it this morning. Apparently he’s a lot like your sister. Unicorn, twenty-four years old, red coat with a white mane, used to run with a buddy.” Shield nodded, holding the folder up for inspection. Stronghooves took it, levitating it over and opening it up.

“Hmm...that’s interesting.” He said quietly. “What happened to his running partner?”

“His younger sibling, Fox Chaser.” Shield sat down at the kitchen table, pulling his helmet off of his head. “Killed in a three-carriage pile-up when the two of them were running from the scene of a bank heist gone bad. Nopony saw anything of Rat for months after that.”

“How long ago was this?” Stronghooves asked, sitting down at the table across from the Inspector. He lazily stirred the mug behind him, adding milk, coffee powder and sugar without looking.

“Six years. Looks like Fox was fourteen when it happened. Reports say that Racer pulled him from the wreckage and ran for it. Kid got pretty badly mangled.”

“That’s what you get when you run out into heavy traffic, I suppose.” The Captain sighed. “This isn’t good. It sounds like Rat’s closer to Sky than either of them realise. If she’s not careful, she’s going to be sucked into another messed-up situation. I don’t want that for my little sister, Shield. I want her to come home.”

“I know, and we’re working on it. It’s just that Rat’s proving pretty difficult to track, especially working together with Sky. With all due respect, she’s good.” Shield frowned, as if reluctant to admit it. “Hell, they’re both good. All we know for sure is that they’re in Manehattan.”

“She won’t be able to stay away from Canterlot for long.” Stronghooves said, levitating the kettle over and stirring in the hot water. “She’s too attached to this city for that. Besides, she was travelling light when I last saw her.”

“So you reckon she’ll be back, then.” Shield nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Increase security around the train terminals and gates. Plain-clothes officers only. I want eyes and ears, not arrests. Sky can outrun everypony else in this city, but she can’t outrun Daybreak or myself. We’re faster than her, and we’re immune to sleep darts.” Stronghooves raised his head, sipping his own drink.

“So what do you want the rest of the guard doing, then?” Shield cocked his head.

“Get a contingent together and make sure you have eyes on Rolling Thunder’s facility. I don’t want to move against him until I’m certain that we can take him and Silver Tongue in one go. Stay discreet, but keep a lookout twenty-four hours a day, monitor all correspondence to and from the facility, and let me know the second either of them makes a move. Got it?”

“You’re the boss.” Shield chuckled. “What are you two gonna be up to? Don’t tell me that you and Daybreak have another date planned already?”

“Not yet, no.” Stronghooves shook his head. “We’re going to be focussing on taking down the remaining Operatives and securing control over the city again. When Silver Tongue’s appropriately spooked, he ought to call on his father to come and help him, which will draw Thunder back to Canterlot.”

“Huh...did you just think this up on the spot, or what?” Shield cocked his head, impressed.

“Well, I had to have my coffee first.” Stronghooves grinned. “Now, Sky and Rat. When they return to the city, track them but don’t engage them. I want guard runners sending me regular reports on their location. Daybreak and I ought to be able to catch them both if we work together.”

“What if you two run into trouble? I mean, some of our reports from Manehattan are saying that Sky and Rat have been able to evade Operatives without somepony else bailing their asses.”

“Daybreak seems to know what she’s doing, and she’s an excellent soldier.” Stronghooves said stoically. “I know all of my sister’s tricks and I’m faster than she is.”

“You’re sure she’s going to run, then?”

“Definitely. See, she doesn’t like me for a variety of reasons, the foremost of which is her feeling of betrayal from when she was a kid.” He shrugged. “I can’t blame her, exactly. I abandoned her, but…”

“Your dad lied to you.” Shield frowned. “Stronghooves, if you keep beating yourself up about that I’m personally going to smack you upside the head. You’re not responsible for your sister hating you. Now look, I may not know everything that’s gone on between you guys, but you seem to be a nice stallion and a dedicated big brother, and that’s probably what she needs right now.”

“I thought you said that you weren’t that good at these sorts of speeches?” Stronghooves smiled softly, meeting his friend’s gaze.

“Yeah, well you’re blaming yourself for a fucked situation that never had anything to do with you in the first place. You’re a good big brother who got fucked over by his mum and dad, and that’s bad enough.”

“Shield, the things that happened when she was out on the street...the way she must have felt with nopony to care for her. Can you imagine the things she must’ve had to have done to survive? No wonder she turned into...well...that…”

“And what were you supposed to do, magically work out that your dad was full of shit and run out to save your sister?”

Stronghooves cringed, looking down at the floor and avoiding Shield’s gaze.

The Inspector sat back in his seat, brow furrowing as he looked Stronghooves over. He’d overseen enough interrogations to know what was going through the Captain’s mind.

“There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there?” He asked simply, sipping his coffee again.

“Ye...well...erm...yes…” Stronghooves said uneasily. “Look, what you have to understand is that my mum and dad...had...a lot of control over the household. They were...intimidating and...and convincing...and…”

“And you knew she was alive, but they scared you into not going out after her.” Shield finished for him. “Is that what happened?”

“You...have to...understand…” Stronghooves began.

“Yeah, I know. He scared you.” Shield nodded. “Look, again, I don’t know what the hell went on in that house of yours, or what I’d do if I was in your horseshoes. So what did happen?”

“Well...she got kicked out at five, and I found out pretty quickly that my dad was lying...about a week?” Stronghooves’s ears splayed back as he struggled to remember. “I had difficulty, but I tracked her down and found her living in a cardboard box down on Stable Street.”

“That’s a rough part of town.” Shield whistled. “Did you take her in?”

“There was no way I was going to be able to sneak her past the servants back into the house, but I did have one thing going for me.” Stronghooves smirked. “I was thirteen at the time, and so everypony expected food to go missing. Every time I stole a snack or took a second helping of dinner off to my room with my, my parents chalked it up to me being a growing stallion. I...brought her the food, kept her as safe as I could.”

“Any trouble with the locals?”

“Some. A few rather...dangerous ponies live there. Nothing more dangerous than the sort of thing she’s dealing with now, but for a filly I could only imagine what she was up against.” Stronghooves shook his head, sighing. “I kept her safe from them, too. The rest of the time, she hid. She would only come out when she heard me call for her.”

“So something changed later on down the line. What was that, exactly?” Shield asked curiously. He wasn’t looking to get dragged into whatever family drama had erupted between Sky and the Captain, but if it meant catching the city’s most talented burglar, then he was willing to listen to anything.

“Well...my parents found out.”

“That didn’t stop you before.”

“I know. They knew, too. Instead of outright forbidding me, they told me all about how messed up my sister was, all about how she was a scummy little liar, how she’d done all of these horrible things behind my back and hadn’t told me.”

“I’d have told them to go and eat a diamond dog’s dick, with all due respect.” Shield put in.

“Yeah...I…I should’ve, too...but they were holding a lot over my head. A home, a guard academy scholarship, safety...and by then I was fifteen. I was getting confused by so many things, feeling angry...I...struck out at her instead.”

Shield paid close attention to Stronghooves’s body language, looking for the truth in his words. It was there, all right. As the Captain spoke, his hoof grasped the handle of his mug a little tighter.

“So you hit her.”

“I was angry, and a stupid teenager. Yes, I hit her. I shouted at her, then I told the ponies around the neighbourhood where she was hiding. Then...I went back home and didn’t look back.”

“You seem to have been convinced pretty easily, considering they lied to you about her before.” Shield cocked his head.

“They talked to me for two years about how horrible she was. It was subtle, insidious...it took them some time, but they managed to break me. I never thought to ask Sky whether any of it was true until the end, and by then...I suppose I didn’t believe a word she said anymore.”

“Well, whatever happened, she survived it.” Shield shrugged. “Your parents are to blame for this whole mess, Stronghooves. You’re not as bad as you think you are, and Sky...just needs to understand why you did what you did. She knows that your parents were manipulative assholes, too.”

“Of course.” Stronghooves nodded. “It’s just not right. I don’t know what happened to her, and since then everything’s just spiralled out of control. She became what she is today, and I...well, I turned into something that she’s learned to fear.”

“You need to get her back, Stronghooves.” Shield frowned. “Once you’re able to capture her and talk it out with her, she’ll forgive you, I promise.”

Stronghooves’s ear twitched. “It’s advanced beyond that, now.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that she doesn’t just need a hug and some kind words from her big brother, though she’ll certainly have them. She’ll always have them.” Stronghooves smiled weakly. “I love my sister, though I suppose we’ve been enemies for most of our lives, now. I care about her and want her to be okay, but that’s just it.”

“What’s “it?” You’re not making sense, Stronghooves. You said just yesterday that you wanted to talk things out with her.”

“Yes, but in the past few years, Sky’s become deluded. Sick, even. She’s an incredibly damaged pony, and a family-minded one at that. Rat needs help and so does she. They’re both very messed-up ponies, those two.”

“So you’re saying you have a plan to fix that, too?” Shield asked.

The Captain nodded, getting to his hooves. He steeled himself, regaining all of the cool confidence that came with his station. In an instant, any hint that he’d been talking about something so deep and personal to him was completely gone, and he had his friendly authoritative smile back.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do.” He grinned. “Now, you have your orders, Shield. Get out there and make this happen. We’ve probably wasted enough time as it is.”

“As you wish, Captain.” Shield chuckled, putting his helmet back on. “You know, you’re one hell of a piece of work once ponies get to know you.”

“You have no idea.” Stronghooves smiled back, patting his friend on the shoulder. “Now come on. I’ll go and wake Daybreak up and we’ll join you at the barracks. Get everything ready.”

“You’ve got it, boss.” Shield nodded, pulling himself out of his chair and trotting to the door. “And hey, Hoovesie?”

Stronghooves, who was already halfway to the stairs, stopped in his tracks, closing his eyes and growling at the nickname. “Ye…yeeeeees?”

“Stop blaming yourself.” The Inspector snickered. “You’re a good brother. Focus on your marefriend and your job right now. You’ll have your sister back soon, I promise.”

As Shield trotted out into the sunlight, groaning at it as he slurped away at his dual coffee cups, Stronghooves sighed. He watched the Inspector go with a heavy heart before climbing the stairs to go and wake Daybreak.

“I really hope that you’re right…” he muttered.