Bittersweet Betrayal [ENDED]

[CherryRie]

Fillydelphia. Easy on the eye, I suppose, an innocent pony might even call it a haven before the wilds of the untamed desert. Unsuspecting, the city rests on the last jut of green plains before the grand expanse of the Leading Ocean, the last true marker of the Equestria's civilised lands.

Shame really, to ruin the illusion. But where ever you go, no matter how peaceful and wholesome things may seem, there's always a secret. There's always a crime. A pony's just got to know where to look.

A dark alley. Cliche but true.

This is the kind'a place. Sickly iridescence from guttering street lamps paints the scene in a tableau of deep shadows and greyscale walkways. An hour normally reserved for a 'special' kind of street life chimes on a distant clock tower, whose face looked down upon a city of both virtue and sin. Through this noir oil canvas drifts the scent of fresh rain, musty hay and rhubarb smoke. And the sound of shattering glass.

There's always a story. In some ways i's never stopped being told, but this is where we pick up from.

--

'Everypony has their price, what was yours?'

Betrayal. The words came back first, her words, deadened sound filtering through the fog in her head. Nothing felt right. Tingly needles ran down her legs and wings as the world swam in a pool of sluggish inebriety. Hot breath on the back of her neck laced with cooling tears falling through her mane. Rhythm akin to a pounding heartbeat filled the remaining space, leaving only the gradually crystallising moment.

Limbs numb from a hard sprung mattress, a swamping soft embrace of bed sheets filling her watery reality with an intrusive pressure. Congealed senses piled up in vivid strata, floating through her cotton wool thoughts.

Through the humid gloom a voice, familiar in nuance and passion, spoke an undeniable answer.

"...Cherry. I'm so sorry."

Instinct. A snap of hooves against flesh, the window filled her clouded vision. Prismatic shards fell with her tumbling form, wings unresponsive as livid pain cut through the hazy vale of drug addled existence. Adrenaline rushed in to fill the space left by the relieved pressure, the street below meeting her side on and shaking the breath from her burning lungs. Nothing felt right.

"WAIT! DON'T-"

Voices. Loud, angry voices from high above cut through the pain and revealed the darkened ally into which she had fallen. Light sprang into focus, spilling across the red brick that framed the bridleway beyond. Shaking and aching legs lifted the Pegasus up against the rough wall as she tride to make sense of her surroundings.

Someway behind her a door was flung open. From its arch a thin needle of brilliance lanced into the darkness, strobing briefly as winged figures stepped through the aperture. Operating on some lower level of consciousness, she broke into a haphazard gallop, heading into the street.

Breath catching in her dry throat and fog crawling across her panicked vision, Cherry ran, the wings of her pursuers beating close behind. Warm lights of business and late night venues flooded the street far ahead. But here only the dim lamp light lit the avenue, and the burst of strength that had propelled her thus far was slipping away with every laboured step.

The wings bore down upon her. A stifled shriek escaped the mulberry Pegasus as she felt the strike of hooves against her flank and keeled uncontrollably into the side of the street. Skittering away from the assailant, the young pony looked up at the two heavy set shapes that alighted on either side of her fallen form. Still she tried to escape, unable to stand and simply pulling herself away from the shadows.

“Come on kid, don't do this."

She couldn't do this.

"There ain't no where to run no more."

There was nowhere to run.

[Dio]

Fillydelphia.

The cobbled streets of the middling-sized Equestrian city gleamed in the pale glow of oil-wick street lamps, wet from a freshly concluded storm. In the distance, low thunder rumbled as the sky yawned in boredom at yet another late summer night. The passing storm had done little to dispel the humid haze that lingered at street level like a murky miasma, sticking to a passing stallion’s coat like so many hitchhiker seeds. Between the cracks of eroded cobbles and in the basins of uneven dips in the stone, water pooled, forming myriad liquid looking-glasses. The shallow pools reflected the dancing oil lamps above with their glass-like surface, a dim likeness of the night around and above it.

Calm reflections scattered into myriad ripples as the sedentary stones were set vibrating by something yet to be seen. The ripples dispersed, a flash of white the color of freshly cleaned bone revealing itself in short order. The weight of his hoof-falls reflected his training, but the measured rhythm of his steps and the faint jingling of metal on metal that punctuated the steady clip-clop marked his pedigree.

Virtue couldn’t sleep. Though reasonably furnished, the the inn had provided little in the way of fans or air conditioning. The room was stuffy, hot, and oppressive. Perhaps he would have been served better by taking his chances bivouacking that night. The burly Pegasus ambled along, no particular destination in mind, working his hooves mostly to clear his head and perhaps allow him to doze off when he returned.

There were few others about at this hour of night. Hustlers, cabbies, drunkards, the odd citizen simply making his or her way home after a night out. All was as it should have been. However, as Virtue continued down the street, a subtle change at the edge of his perception set his senses on heightened alert. The tempo of foot traffic changed. Their clip-clops were faster now, more agitated, as if yet another storm were rolling in. Virtue’s eyes narrowed as he continued undeterred. Something lurked in the darkness, something that the average citizenry wanted nothing to do with.

As if on cue, a BANG punctured the darkness, quickly followed by the sickly tinkling of shattered glass on stone. It was close, not farther away than around the next corner. Incoherent shouts broke the eerie silence that had descended upon the street, interspersed with the clattering of hooves scuttling along cobblestone. Finally, a scream rang out, a guttered feminine shriek that seemed to hang in the air like the thick miasma of watery haze.

Virtue had heard enough. He strode around the corner of the nearby brick structure, making his way into the alley. Virtue’s eyes smoldered with pale fire as his gaze fell upon two burly pegasi flanking a fallen form. The street lights at his end of the alleyway cast strange shadows on the aggressors, masking their faces and painting them with solidified darkness and sharp slivers of golden light.

“Come on kid, don’t do this.”

“There ain’t no where to run no more.”

Virtue lowered his head and flipping his wings open, both for their menacing profile and to prepare for rapid and violent action. “Let this blade be a shining beacon in the howling darkness, flashing steel against the sins of the wicked, and an ever vigilant guardian against the insidious powers of corruption and vice,” he mouthed as he approached. Though his blade Aequitas remained in its scabbard, it practically thrummed with eagerness at his side, impatiently awaiting its chance to sing in battle once more.

“That’s close enough,” Virtue growled. “Step. Away. NOW.”

[CherryRie]

From the jagged remnants of the window a panicked face stared down at the theatre below, dabbing at a blooded nose with a crimson soiled handkerchief. “Don’t hurt her! Just bring her back inside!”

Glancing up at the young stallion, the pursuers closed in, growling lowly at the pintsized Pegasus presumin to give them orders.

“I through you said she was under." Barked a shadow, stepping up to the fallen filly "This dosn’t look very under to me. We tried it your way, now we do it ours, so shut it and go clean yourself up.”

Ears pricked up at the sound of hoof beats approaching. Palpably the atmosphere thickened as two sets of grey eyes turned towards the silhouette of the newcomer. Through the gloom came a snort of arrogant amusement, followed closely by the spark of brass horseshoes against the worn cobbles.

“Keep walking, shorty.” Spoke the first shadow, stepping between the crawling figure and the unwelcome audience “This ain’t none of your concern.”

Behind the bulky winged shade, the second stranger pinned a heavy hoof upon the weekly struggling shape, pressing the drug addled victim down as a she flailed in a glut of slurred cusses.

[Dio]

Virtue bristled at the slight. It seemed the two hulking brutes failed to discern who they were dealing with. Their accents and choice of vocabulary marked them as hired muscle, all brawn and no brains. Certainly they were larger in stature than he was, but after taking down a manticore or hydra, taking on a mundane pony seemed like foal’s play to him. The pegasus’ eyes darted away from the glowering form in front of him to the mulberry filly pinned beneath the hoof of the other henchpony. She struggled and cursed, but her speech was slurred and her reflexes dulled, leaving her in no condition to break free.

“Wrong. This became my concern the moment you laid a hoof on her,” the knight said, his upper-class accent manifesting as he dropped the growl. “I will give you one more chance to step away.”

Oh how Aequitas longed for battle. Between the pounding of the pulses in his head and the surge of adrenaline in his veins, Virtue could almost feel the beating heart of steel in its scabbard. But no, not in this fight. There was no honor to be gained, no blood debt to be settled. This was a street crime with two thugs who thought themselves on top of the world. Aequitas could wait.

“It ain’t happenin’ buddy.”

“Then this will only end in blood,” Virtue replied, his voice cold with righteous indignation.

“Fine, we’ll just clobber ya both then!” the shadow retorted, clopping his front hooves together with a metallic PING that echoed loudly through the confines of the alley. The other henchpony pressed down harder on the mulberry filly, who choked between curses and coughs.

Every combat instinct learned from years of training and indoctrination came online in a sudden rush of awareness that allowed Virtue to pick up every last detail, including the sniffling, mewling voice of a stallion in a window above the alley. There was a wall between him and Virtue, however, so his actions were of little consequence in this confrontation. The two stallions were actually colored a dark blue and dark green, both noted by the knight for easy identification later.

Leaping into action, Virtue charged down the alley, barreling past the stallion in front with incredible speed. Blue made a clumsy attempt to grapple Virtue, but ended up falling flat on his face as the knight flew past him. The other pegasus looked up just in time to see the fire in Virtue’s eyes as the knight body-checked the larger stallion into the alley wall, impacting with enough force to dislodge bits of mortar and throw up a massive cloud of pulverized brick dust around them.

Blue had picked himself up just in time to see both Green and Virtue disappear in a roiling cloud of dust and mist. His jaw dropped at the scene. What kind of training did the white Pegasus have that allowed him to do THAT? He inched closer, unsure of who would emerge from the cloud in one piece.

“D-Did you get ‘im?” Blue asked hesitantly to the cloud.

“NOT A CHANCE!” Virtue snarled as he barreled forward, parting the dust cloud with sweeping wingbeats. His second charge impacted with the same force that took down Green, but Blue was somehow alert enough to keep his footing. Skidding backwards, but otherwise withstanding Virtue’s attack, Blue reared up on his hind legs and kicked out with brass-clad hooves, lashing at the knight with renewed ferocity.

Ninety percent of swordsmanship is footwork. That instruction was not lost on Virtue as he deftly slipped around the larger pegasus’ flailing hooves, getting in a few jabs of his own before swinging himself around and bucking Blue cleanly across the face. His target stumbled backwards unsteadily, blood streaming from a smashed nose and torn lips, eyes bleary from the concussive impact of Virtue’s hooves.

Virtue strode forward, cracking his neck as he prepared to finish his opponent. Suddenly, pain—blinding pain from the back of his head. Virtue stumbled at the blow, finding himself propped against the alley wall as both stallions closed on his position. Virtue burned with both embarrassment and righteous rage. There was no honor to be had here. Why did he assume that Green would stay out of the fight?

“Ya shouldn’ta come here, shorty. Ya shoulda just walked away.”

“Now we’re gonna have to have to chop you up and bury the pieces.”

“Boss wouldn’t be too happy to have someone like you knowin’ about the business.”

Virtue’s ears twitched at the keyword. Boss. That meant the two stallions had a higher authority guiding them. This crime was far from random—it was planned with malice and premeditation. The smoldering flames in Virtues eyes ignited, escalating into a roaring conflagration that seared away the pain, granting him renewed focus and charging his veins with holy strength. Virtue snapped his hooves to the ground, his stance defiant and the ringing in his ears doing little to interfere with his newfound vigor.

“Do not think I will grant either of you the luxury of an honorable death,” the knight said coldly. “What you do in the darkness WILL be brought to the light. I will make sure of it.”

“Get ‘im!” Blue shouted.

The blue stallion lunged forward, but his brass horseshoes found nothing but brick wall. Virtue side-slipped around his attack, using both his wings and hooves to flit between the two hulking stallions. He whirled around and with a mighty kick sent Green sprawling across the cobblestone. Blue dislodged himself from the wall only to face a series of quick jabs to the face and chest from Virtue. Over and over again, the Pegasus hammered his opponent, slipping through or shrugging off Blue’s feeble attempts to counterattack. A blow to his chest left Blue gasping for breath, giving Virtue enough time to buck him in the face, sending his limp form flopping in a pile on top of Green.

As the two stallions slowly came to, Virtue approached them, that same fire still burning in his eyes and holy menace in his voice. Despite being taller and more muscular than the white stallion, Blue and Green both quailed in his presence, having just gotten their rumps handed back to them by what they were now sure was a four-hooved, white-coated, winged demon.

“Run,” Virtue spat. “Run and tell your master that he will PAY for the evil that he has done this day!”

“C’mon, let’s get out of here! This guy is NUTS!” Blue said, scuttling backwards as he desperately tried to get back on his hooves. Green and Blue stumbled clumsily over each other, bumbling their way out of the alley and back into the street, where their frightened chatter slowly faded into the night.

Finally, all was quiet. Virtue exhaled deeply as his thundering pulse subsided to a dull roar. His head still throbbed from where Green had struck him. Bruises from hoof impacts and scratches from brick and mortar fragments covered his side and neck. His flight feathers were ruffled, dirty, and unpreened.

“Routine injuries,” Virtue snorted as he shook the mortar chunks and brick dust out of his mane and tail. All things considered, he was virtually unscathed. The knight had seen much worse back in the day. As he approached the crumpled mulberry filly in the alley, he only hoped the same could be said of the victim.

“Miss,” Virtue said as he knelt down next to her. “Are you all right?”

[CherryRie]

“-nuh really.” A pained voice slurred from under the tangles of purple mane. Watery eyes looked up from the coble roadside, their pupils unfocused as they gazed first at the face of her rescuer and then at her rash exit some two stories above. Glistening lines pocked her red coat, outlining the edges of cuts and shards of glass. Oblivious to her injuries the mare began to lift herself back onto all fours but stumbled heavily as her uncoordinated legs refused to propel her.

Momenterily defeated, the mare leaned against the red brick wall and tried to gather her scattered senses.

“Thanks,” She wheezed, turning to her unlikely saviour and offering him a groggy smile “Verah... Gentlecoltly of you. I... I aught ta’go. They’ll be back soon.”

Glancing at the empty window once more, a sorrowful grimace beset the filly’s features, as though something was hurting her more than the shards of glass. Stealing her addled thoughts, the young Pegasus pushed herself unsteadily towards the ally exit... and began to slowly keel over like a birch tree in a stiff wind.

[Dio]

“-nuh really.”

As Cherry rose, Virtue bit his lip, hesitating for a moment. The mulberry pegasus didn’t appear to be seriously injured. The cuts from glass were merely superficial and he’d managed to take the two brutes out of the fight before they could do serious harm. However, she was in no condition to be traveling on her own. If what the two stallions had said was correct, their patron would likely send additional “enforcers” after her.

Virtue followed her gaze to the broken window two stories above street level. The gangly stallion he’d caught a passing glance of was nowhere to be seen. Virtue growled in frustration. The small one was probably a runner, waiting to bring news back to the boss. He couldn’t stop the runner. He couldn’t be everywhere at once. He was just one pony...

Lost in his own thoughts, Virtue only noticed Cherry’s attempted departure when she’d already stumbled halfway down the alley.

“Thanks,” She wheezed, turning to her unlikely savior and offering him a groggy smile. “Verah... Gentlecoltly of you. I... I aught ta’go. They’ll be back soon.”

“Miss, you are in no condition to travel alone,” Virtue said, refocusing on the more pressing issue. “My name is Virtue. I can escort you home. Do you have a secure place to stay?”

Cherry said nothing, instead glancing at the empty window once more, a sorrowful frown crossing her face. For just a moment, Virtue caught a glimpse of her eyes. Sanguine eyes. Tired eyes. Hurt eyes. Cherry’s eyes closed for a moment—a moment too long. She began to sway, an awkward, unsubtle motion.

Virtue leaped forward, fluttering his wings to keep him airborne. Flashing across the gap between them, he alighted next to Cherry, gently propping her up as she stumbled. Her frame was delicate, barely registering a touch against Virtue’s burly musculature.

“Miss?” Virtue said, nudging Cherry gingerly. No response. She was out cold. “This complicates matters…”

[CherryRie]

She was falling. Clouds wrapped around her, enveloping the young filly in soft moist air. Butterflies fluttered around in her stomach as vertigo drew her onwards, hair was drawn out into long streamers behind and nightgown billowed with the rushing wind. The sensation was as real as anything she would experience in the waking world.

She had jumped so high. Up through the broken lines of a foal's painting. Out above the ruins of a forgotten world into an awaiting sky of rainbows and unending blue sea. Her hooves brushed the crest of a wave as it bore upon the sunset and watched as it broke against a sharp barricade of light, shattering into a thousand tiny white birds.

Now she fell, dragged down into unfeeling darkness. Once so gentle a wind stripped away both the clouds and her beautiful gown, leaving her venerable to crushing empathy. All around the figures of ponies rose through the air like counterweights to her decent, shedding their black fur and sailing into the vast blue of freedom. But it was not for her. She knew this. As the rhythmic pulsing of the dark threatened to overwhelm all, the world vanished and was replaced by the scent of oats.

An unfamiliar ceiling greeted Cherry’s open eyes. Awaking with barely more than a blink, she watched for some time as the stark shadow of a fan slowly crept across a featureless off white landscape. Somewhere in the entombing room of daylight shades and cotton blankets, the studious pendulum of an old clock cut the world into carefully measured moments. From deeper still wafted smell of cooking oats.

Rolling over onto her aching side, the filly regarded the decanter that stood on a bedside table, bending the curtains beyond into a strange warped fluidity. A bowl of water on the table proved a welcome relief to her parched throat. Despite the lack of gut rot or piercing headache, the young mare still felt horribly hung-over.

Vague recollections of the night before began to coalesce, events slotting themselves into place like a disorganised pack of playing cards. One thing she remember immediately was ‘his’ face, the sense of utter betrayal conveying most of what she needed to know in reassembling the other scattered bits of memory. Yet even with this revelation in hoof, panic still did not break through the depressingly heavy sanity pressing down on her mind.

Neither bound nor drugged, her wounds had been tended too and the door before her lay open into the room beyond. She was in a comfortable but not exquisite bedroom, its tasteless curtains billowing slightly from an open window they had been drawn across. All in all this was most unexpected.

Whad did she remember? What had happened last night? Where was Rich Tea?

She felt like a chariot had run her down, her mate was missing and she felt.... empty? Where she felt the righteous fury should have been, there was only an awful pit of numb nothingness. That much loathed part of her that was always watching proffered up several self analysis’, ranging from simple shock to ‘delayed traumatic displacement’. One grave burden of knowing the minds of other ponies is how horribly you got to know your own.

With a mind to make a swift exit the filly slid carefully out of bed and plodded her way to the open door.

Beyond she could see a small sitting space and simple kitchen, now mostly occupied by a well built Pegasus buck, definatly not Ritch Tea. A sofa nearby had a spare blanket thrown over the garishly outdated plaid cushions, clearly having surved as the stallion’s bed the night before. The only other furniture in the room was a small standing table, upon which a beautifully maintained sword and sheaf were reverentially laid. Not quite what she had been expecting, but significantly more welcome then the back of a stable wagon.

As if on cue the filly’s stomach gurgled in protest at the previous night’s meagre meal. Oh well. It wasn’t like she could sneak past her impromptu host and, truth be told, she was very hungry.

Stepping full length into the adjoining room, Cherry coughed politely to the stranger in front of the stove.

[Dio]

Virtue grunted as he carried Cherry’s limp form up the stairs, struggling not with her weight, but the awkwardness of balancing another pony between his wings and his combat harness on an incline. The knight silently cursed as he nearly stumbled, finally reaching the top of the stairs, a few feathers out of place, but otherwise none the worse for wear. It would have been comical had the situation been one of drunken mirth and not drug-addled repose.

The Destrier hoofed the door open, grimacing at the sudden wash of hot, muggy air from the interior of the inn room. A couch. A kitchenette. A coffee table. A bed tucked into what amounted to a large walk-in closet. The inn had probably been an apartment at some point, a small one bedroom rented to students at the local university or professionals looking for a cheap place to stay in the city. However long it had been there, the owner still had not managed to solve the ventilation problem.

Virtue grunted in exertion, wiping the sweat from his brow with a fetlock before gingerly stepping into the bedroom. Gently, as if handling a basket of dried flowers, Virtue rolled Cherry off his back, using wings and muzzle to nudge her into recovery position on her side. The room was still blisteringly hot; a blanket would be highly inappropriate. Out of the corner of his eye, Virtue caught the glint of light on a reflective surface on the ceiling.

A sigh of exasperation was all that escaped Virtue’s lips when he finally saw the skylight. There was ventilation after all, he was just too blind to see it. Fluttering up to ceiling level, the Pegasus opened up the window and peeked through, his mane billowing out at the sudden rush of outside air. It was noticeably cooler now, the mugginess of post-storm humidity steadily blowing away with the clearing sky. Stars twinkled above and a waxing moon framed itself in the skylight, casting a pillar of milky luminescence into the bedroom.

The knight floated down from the ceiling and made his rounds, opening all of the windows in the former apartment and breathing a sigh of relief as the humid miasma cleared itself in short order. Now a blanket would be appropriate. Virtue gripped the rumpled sheets with his teeth, gently settling them over Cherry’s sleeping form.

Now he was done. Finally beginning to feel the weight of his wounds and combat fatigue, Virtue unrolled his sleeping bag on the couch and unceremoniously flopped onto the improvised bedding. One breath and one flutter of heavy eyelids was all it took for the Pegasus to drift off into dreamless sleep.

------------------------------------

Daily life started early in Equestria. Even before the sun had risen, ponies were already milling about in the streets, shopping, chatting, and going about their daily routines. Outside, both foot and cart traffic could be heard, newscolts hocking their papers, street vendors peddling fresh fruit and fast food; everyone had places to be and ponies to see.

In spite of the late night shenanigans, Virtue’s biological clock was still right on schedule. Just as dawn broke over the Equestrian plains, the Destrier stirred, rolling off the couch on to all fours. The knight took the time to clean both himself and his room, going about his morning routine with nary a word.

Virtue’s idea of breakfast was very mechanically executed. Oatmeal, plain and simple, with perhaps a bit of brown sugar from his saddlebags to ease it down. Years of training had given Virtue a very simple outlook on life. As a Brother-Cavalier and later Brother-Captain, he had little use for finery or trinkets. His life was dedicated to the service of Equestria… or so it had been.

Virtue was never one to brood, but his journey had given him ample time for introspection. His thoughts perambulated about his mind like the wooden cooking spoon did about the pan; stirring, churning the mental slurry like so many loose flakes of now soppy oats, but never achieving any sort of definition. Was the Council right? Were his actions out of line?

Or perhaps the Council had lost sight of what was truly important. Virtue slowly scooped piping hot oats into a dull and cracked, but otherwise clean, bowl that he’d found in the kitchenette cupboard. The Librum was merely a set of guidelines, a framework upon which to build a greater Equestria. But the Council… the Council had turned it into a cage; a tomb in which to bury centuries of proud tradition and future generations of greater Equestrians under the weight of immobilism and conservative dogmatism.

Virtue snorted in contempt at the thought. Inside, the rage of betrayal still burned cold. The very ponies to whom he had devoted his life had done away with him, tossed him aside like a broken training sword. Equestria was changing. The forces which acted upon it were far greater than even the Council and all of their Destrier chapters. Virtue had foreseen change and in it had secured his own dishonor.

The faint clip-clop of hooves on hardwood flooring snapped Virtue out of his own thoughts. A polite cough, more to gain his attention than clear a throat, followed, prompting Virtue to turn around. Standing before him was the mulberry filly from the previous night, mane rumpled, flight feathers in disarray, and superficial cuts crusted in scabs, but otherwise healthy and alert.

“Good morning,” Virtue said, attempting to keep the edge out of his voice from his prior musings. “You are just in time for breakfast…”

[CherryRie]

Rustic. Not the most elegant description, but it was the only adequate word that came to the girl as she took in the stranger’s appearance. Built as though he had been hewn from a rock face, the Pegasus stallion sported a pelt of morbid bone white. Both his face and flank were framed by rust coloured hair that had been sapped of sheen by harsh weather, cut for practicality above appearance. Against probability he didn’t look a thug. Strong, yes, bur in consistant way, like an athlete or guard.

Tentatively the filly stepped deeper into the room, keeping her quizzical gaze on the stallion.

"Where-" she began, pausing after her sleepy brain waved a card comprising of all the clues she’d subconsciously noticed "- Actually lets start with; Who are you? And how did I end up in a motel?"

[Dio]

Virtue’s ear involuntarily twitched at Cherry’s question. Yes, it did look bad, did it not? Here they were, two perfect strangers waking up in an old inn with nary an introduction and only hazy memories of the previous night’s events. Virtue closed his eyes for a moment to recollect his thoughts.

“I suppose I would do well to start at the beginning,” he said before sliding two bowls of oatmeal down the counter to the seating area. Pony kitchens were designed for convenience, with one-piece counters running from a preparation area to an eating area. Quick meals were usually taken standing, though a lower-set table appropriate for kneeling and sitting was present in this particular kitchenette.

“My name is Virtue,” he said, noting Cherry’s occasional glances towards Aequitas. “I believe you already have some idea of my profession.”

The stallion paused for a moment in consideration before deliberately moving the bowls to the dining table. The young mare before him had a look of quiet perplexity in her eyes. That wasn’t to say she was confused or concussed. The glazed look of injury and the dumbstruck slackness of face were conspicuously absent. Instead, she seemed possessed by a genuine benign curiosity.

“Please, sit,” Virtue said, motioning with a hoof to a spot opposite him at the table. “I apologize for the meagerness of the meal. I tend to travel light and as a result, my tastes are quite simple.”

“I do not have to reiterate that last night was a complex situation,” he continued. “Suffice to say that I disrupted what I had assumed to be a mugging but turned out to be something much deeper than petty theft.”

“I was concerned for your safety after the attack. The chatter of the two thugs made it clear that this was premeditated. There was a determined group of attackers acting under the orders of a master.”

Virtue quietly took a bite of his oats, slowly chewing them over as he considered his next words. “I did not trust anypony else with your safety and triage suggested that your wounds were merely superficial, so I brought you here to recover instead.”

“I apologize if this seems frightening or foreign to you. I will admit that the circumstances seem a little strange,” he said locking eyes with Cherry. “But I swear on the Librum that I acted only with your best interest in heart.”

“But now that you have my name and my version of the story, I believe it would be simple etiquette to reciprocate, miss…?” Virtue, waited, hoping that his charge would be willing to fill in the blank.

[CherryRie]

“Cherry.” Replied the filly in a half whisper, looking up from the alluring oats to her apparent saviour “Cherry Dawn.”

Struggling to digest everything she had just heard, Cherry bit her lip and tried to recall the series of events that could have led to her arrival in the hooves of a ‘knight in shoddy armour’.

“I was mugged, you say? I-I’m not entirely... last night, it’s like this big ball of fog.” She stumbled, failing to find a suitable analogy and instead turning her attention back to the meagre but oh so comforting sugared oats.

“I remember meeting Rich Tea, my ahhh... Coltfriend” A brush fire couldn’t compare to the flaring blush across the filly’s face. “To be honest I haven’t seen him in a long time. Anyway, we were out to dinner, I think. Yeah, there was that saddle he bought me. Lime green thing, chafes something awful. Suppose that’s what I get for dating a colour blind Pegasus, but it makes him happy to see me wearing it though... I don’t suppose you saw him last night? Tan coat, waxy mane, eyes like fluffy grey clouds? Oh I hope he’s alright.”

Concentration wrinkling her brow, Cherry thought back over the events she could remember, gradually knitting together flashes into a cohesive timeline. Gradually her smile grew as details of the wonderful romantic evening came back into focus.

“Umm I think I remember going back to his hotel room. The door number keeps sticking in my head, eighteen, he thinks it’s his lucky number.”

Shrinking back a little the Pegasus began to recall the more intimate details about the previous night. Contriving to hide behind the small bowl of cereal, Cherry’s blush seemed to intensify and spread along her slender face and neck. They must have been through the whole book last night, she never knew Rich Tea was such a -

Clearing her throat, the filly pressed on with the last time she saw her fiancée “I reckon I fell asleep, the last thing I remember is Richie apologising for something. Something he had to-”

Halting mid sentence, Cherry’s grin abruptly melted into horrified rictus. Pupils shrinking to pinpoints in a sanguine ocean of pain, gaze shifted suddenly to her outstretched foreleg. Fixated on the hoof, the mulberry fur disguised the stinging wound where the needle had punctured her delicate skin.

“No...no, he wouldn’t... He-he wouldn’t!” Ragged breaths tore through her slack mouth as the initial panic was ousted by rising grief. Tear filled pleading eyes snapped back to her apparent saviour, words catching in her throat escaping as barely a croak.

Silence enveloped the room as the filly’s eyes fell back to the steadily cooling oats. She felt numb, sick and suddenly sapped of energy. Absorbed in the turbid depths of heartache, Cherry franticly searched for an island of hope to cling to. Anything, even the smallest scrap of evidence that could lead her away from the abhorrent truth as her vision blurred with tears. But the mind is a traitorous thing, and the only thing that came to her was the smell of sweet tobacco and the hearty laugh of her grandfather.

‘One of the most important things to remember, my girl, is that every stallion has his price.’

Shoulders heaving, Cherry set her jaw and choked back the lamenting woe that so desperately wanted to escape her lips. A moment passed as the hysterics were wrestled back down into the pits of her sole, allowing for a broken voice to once again address the errant knight. This time though its trill did not bounce or sing, instead remaining bass and devoid of life, as though crushed under the weight of her errant lovers betrayal.

“Th-The stallions who tried to-to take me? Was one a blue pegasus and the other a sickly green earthpony with steal shoes?”

[Dio]

Virtue’s ear twitched at the description of Rich Tea. Tan coat. Waxy mane. Gangly frame. It had to be him; that pushover of a stallion who had watched the whole ordeal from above and done nothing. If anything, he had been a willing accomplice. After all, did not Cherry fall from the very window he had occupied?

Cherry was smiling now, blissfully lost in her own reverie. Virtue carefully studied her face, perplexed at her very different recollection of the previous night’s events. She obviously knew an entirely different side of the same stallion; somepony more honest, perhaps even more loving. As she continued, her ever deepening blush implied a level intimacy inappropriate for polite conversation, but it really wasn’t Virtue’s place to say anything. After all, he had once been young himself…

But all at once, the reverie disintegrated, shattering like a dropped mirror on cold cobbles. Her bemused smile broke, leaving only horror in its wake as Cherry trembled, looking down at her hoof as if it had suddenly been cut off. Virtue’s hunch had been correct. Paradoxically, both stories were merely two sides of the same coin; each describing merely one face of this… Rich Tea. One the one hoof: a lover, a caring companion. On the other: a traitor, a crook.

“No...no, he wouldn’t... He-he wouldn’t!”

“He wouldn’t what?” Virtue said, albeit not as gently as he had intended.

Cherry was in visible pain, but Virtue had to know. How else would he combat this threat that they both had very suddenly become embroiled in? Not since leaving Solstice Heights had Virtue had to deal with any sort of conflict of this intensity. But not since Solstice Heights had the battle lines been so clear, the good and evil so sharply defined. Sure as the cutie mark on his flank, fighting this sort of injustice was what Virtue lived for, what he was destined to do.

The knight errant took a deep breath, keeping his eyes fixed on Cherry. Justice was indeed what he represented in life. But what was Justice if it could not bring merriment to this young mare’s life? As he slowly let the breath out, Virtue knew the answer: only cold, cruel Aequitas; a blade of sharpest steel that cut both just and unjust.

Sanguine eyes. Tired eyes. Hurt eyes. Cherry’s eyes betrayed all. The very color seemed to fade from her coat and mane as she choked back tears and struggled with her own doubts. Deep inside, Virtue felt a twinge of sadness, dutifully accented with the spark of concordance. He had been here once before.

The love of his life had been his profession, his very lifestyle. The noble Destriers, protectors of Equestria and unfailing servants to the Sun Princess had consumed every waking moment. Honor, Valor, Duty, Justice; all by the Librum, all for the Princess.

But then, betrayal—bittersweet betrayal. There was freedom. Freedom to act, freedom to roam, freedom to ensure that he could safeguard the future himself, not leaving it up to the likes of the Council. But with the freedom came grief, sorrow, heartache. The Order had turned its back on him, just like this Rich Tea had for Cherry.

“Th-The stallions who tried to-to take me?” Cherry said unsteadily, her voice quivering. “Was one a blue pegasus and the other a sickly green earth pony with steel shoes?”

“Yes,” Virtue said flatly, failing to inflect. The stirred emotions made him edgy, uneasy. “I sent them both crying back to their master, whoever that may be.”

But with practiced logic once again surfacing, the knight was quick to add, “I believe there is far more to this story than one night in the lamp-lit streets of Fillydelphia…”

[CherryRie]

Nodding vaguely, Cherry seemed to slip from her distress into an emotionless void.

“They’re my father’s Colts.” She said at last, still not looking at the Pegasus across the table from her “My old bodyguards. Now they have come to collect me, to take me back to him. And he helped them.”

For a moment Cherry remained silent, only the slow ticking of the ageing wooden clock cutting seconds away from an undefined stretch time.

“it’s all over” Whispered the colour drained Pegasus, “just like that, over, gone…”

With barely a glance at Virtue, the filly stood from the table and started back towards the bedroom “I-I need some space. Just to think.”

Gently the door closed behind her, shutting with barely more than a dull click.

Alone once more the fog that had descended over Cherry’s thoughts solidified into a thick miasma of loathing. Part of her felt like breaking something, maybe plow her forehooves into a wall over and over until the plaster was as dust and the running pain drew out her inner agony. But the majority hated herself for being so naïve, so easily lured into the hooves of some pony she knew was under her father’s heal. The wonderful, romantic evening they had shared beneath Luna’s gaze melted in a boiling pot of peculating stomach acid.

Had he ever loved her at all? She felt sick, filthy, used.

Worse still, now this stranger had been dragged into her mess of a life. Buxer and Bolt were easy enough to handle, they weren’t the quickest pigs in the pen, but there were far worse beings on her father’s payroll and she could bet they would be on her tail.

But that was just an excuse, a solid motivation to eye the open window, the inviting sky laying just beyond a softly billowing floral curtain. The mind of a pony is that of a herding animal, to stay close to one another for the safety of numbers. Yet now, every bone in her body, every sinew of her diminutive being wanted to be as far away from this place as phisicaly possible.

Her wings stretched.

The curtain, blown breifly aside, hung lazily outside the empty room.

Two miles up and half a mile outside the city limits, Cherry paused, no longer able to see past the burred colours of a tear dashed world. Her wings were turning to beating lances of pain from the sudden demands that had been layed upon them. Yet even as she alighted upon a thin cirrus cloud they remained unfurled, begging for her to take to the air once more to out run the burning in her chest.

Looking back to the soulless mass that was the city of shattered dreams, the filly checked her surroundings and screamed her tortured anguish into the empty sky.

[Dio]

“They’re my father’s Colts.” She said at last, still not looking at the Pegasus across the table from her “My old bodyguards. Now they have come to collect me, to take me back to him. And he helped them.”

Rage threatened to consume Virtue. This betrayal was total. Families always looked out for their own. Fathers guided sons. Sons guarded daughters. Daughters made their families healthy and strong. What family would treat one of their own like the enemy, to be trapped and dragged away like a criminal… no… a dog? The henchponies… that mewling, sorry excuse for a stallion… he should have killed them all when he’d had the chance.

Cold logic and discipline tempered the Destrier’s anger. Wholesale slaughter would solve nothing. He certainly had the determination and sources to find and… eliminate… the boss, but what good would that do either him or Cherry? Virtue was no assassin; it went against everything he was taught and everything he strove to protect. And what of Cherry? Regardless of his moral deficit, the boss was still her father. Who was Virtue to decide whether he lived or died?

“It’s all over,” whispered the colour-drained Pegasus, “Just like that. Over… gone…”

Cherry’s words were barely audible, but the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner did little to mask the hurt in them. The ticks ran together as seconds stretched into a minute, maybe more. What could he say to her? Here was a filly who sat before him had just lost the one thing most dear to her.

“Cherry…”

With barely a glance at Virtue, the filly stood from the table and started back towards the bedroom. “I-I need some space. Just to think.”

The door closed with a dull click, shutting Virtue out entirely. For a moment, the Destrier merely sat at the table, dumbstruck. Virtue had missed his window. He had missed his opportunity to make a difference. All because he’d wanted to draw his sword to slay demons that could not be killed with steel rather than show the slightest bit of compassion for somepony who had just suffered the fate he had been dealing with for these past months.

The rage from earlier returned with a vengeance, surging in his chest until he thought he would surely explode, taking the inn with him. In his anger, Virtue snarled furiously, sweeping the bowl of oats off the table and flinging it against the wall with such force that it shattered with a resounding crash, leaving broken ceramic fragments embedded in the tacky wood paneling. The stallion took a look at his handiwork and hung his head. Again, his hubris had gotten the better of him. Who was he to think that he could solve all Equestria’s problems with his sword and horseshoes?

Virtue sighed. He needed to rectify the situation—immediately. The Destrier trotted to the door of the bedroom, gently rapping on the door with a hoof. No response. Perhaps she was asleep.

“Cherry?” He asked, knocking again, louder this time. Again, no response.

Virtue nosed the door open, finding it unlocked. A cool breeze flowed in from the open window, making the curtains billow out like ghostly wisps of aether. The mulberry filly was nowhere to be found.

“Cherry!” Virtue’s gut turned over on itself. Had she been snatched? Had they come while he was caught in his own personal struggles? No. They couldn’t have. Virtue had been trained and drilled to be exceptionally aware, regardless of his mental state. It wasn’t just a conscious skill he exercised while awake, it was a part of who he was. There was no sign of struggle, no blood, no broken furniture, no feathers or fur about. Cherry had left of her own volition.

Virtue sluggishly walked to the couch in the living area and slumped over, falling into the cushions with a dull thud. All his life, he had trained to make a difference in Equestria, fighting evil with the holy might of the knightly virtues. But in less than a day, Cherry had proven to Virtue that Equestria was defined by its inhabitants as well as its principles. If you preserved the Librum and yet damned every pony in the land, then what was the point?

Virtue mulled over his revelation as he lay idle, staring blankly at the ceiling.

[CherryRie]

Outside, beyond the gloomy interior of Virtue’s motel dorm of solitude, Fillidelphia was enjoying a rare sunny day. For the first time in what felt like months the sky was devoid of water laden clouds, replaced by a vast ocean of the most spectacular blue. Wisps of high cirrus formations gave the impression of waves barring across the cityscape, dotted with the occasional colourful Pegasi revelling in the excellent flying conditions. Across the city ponies pranced about their day’s work or relaxed in the warming light. Foals played games in the gravel lined streets, dancing among thin rivulets of evaporating steam from the previous nights storm.

And for the second time in as many minuets, a pastry coloured hoof paused barely a breath from the unblemished wood of the motel door. Reluctantly it withdrew as its owner turned to face the city beyond with an irritated flutter of his dishevelled wings. Pacing the decking that ran the length of the motel rooms, the stallion wrestled once more with the weight of his conscience. He looked young, barely out of his colt years, with a thin complexion and a figure that suggested he hadn’t seen a day of hard labour in his life. That being said, this didn’t look like any high society tof. Far from superficial factors, such as his submissive posture or the tendency to mutter to himself, what self respecting business pony would be seen in such a scruffy state? His silky feathers were unpreened, a pale bleach mane hung ruffled and damp from the night’s storm. Dirt around his hooves and his puffy blood shot eyes lent ever greater evidence to his sleepless night on the streets.

Mumbling under his breath as though vocalising some heated inner debate, he finally arrived back at the door to the for bodeing room. In all likelihood he would regret doing this, at least for a little while. But that would be nothing to living with the guilt of not knowing. He’d stick to his cover story, just make sure, and then be gone before she knew he was even there.

With a steadying breath, Rich Tea confidently lifted a hoof to the half clasp door... and froze one again. Clenching his teeth, the colt silently cussed his own weakness as his head fell forward to bump against the woodwork. Why couldn’t he do this?

Sounds from within the dorm broke the colt’s melancholy. Indubitably the soft head butt had been a little louder then he thought.

Rich Tea had just enough time to right his posture before the door was pulled aside, revealing a more detailed version of the stranger whom had tackled both bodyguards the night before. There was a brief moment of confusion across the older Pegasus’ features, as though a series of dots were rapidly joining up in his mind and was just about to take a step back to look at the unpleasant picture before him. At first it looked as though Tea would launch into some rehearsed story, perhaps try and pass himself off as a member of motel staff coming to check on the late night lodgers. But the elegant lie caught in his rapidly drying throat. Trying again, the Pegasus was rewarded with a strained croak before the crude façade crumbled like so much dust.

Through the wreckage, those powerful judging eyes bore into him, blowing away the dust and leaving bare thoughts exposed.

“Is she... is she alright?”

[Dio]

It was a rare moment to find Virtue completely idle. The Pegasus stallion was always doing something, be it training, stretching, or cleaning. Even his quiet moments were occupied with either meditation or the awareness exercises he had been taught to constantly perform in order to keep his senses honed to a fine point. There was never time for doing nothing. And yet here he was, lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, his head seemingly in a fog.

But even in his idle listlessness was the awareness of his surroundings sharp and in focus. A gentle thump upon the door instantly brought Virtue to his hooves. Images flashed through his head of the outside of the building, where the trees were located, if there were any mailboxes or well-traveled routes where someone could routinely bump against the door or its frame. There were none. Someone was here very deliberately.

The rational part of Virtue told him to reach for his sword first. But a nagging thought in the back of his head kept him from doing so. Perhaps Cherry had merely gone for a quick flight and thought it more proper to reenter through the door rather than the window? Virtue gently hoofed the door open, expecting to see a tired pair of sanguine eyes.

Instead, Rich Tea’s grey orbs met his gaze, though the smaller stallion quickly averted his eyes, seeming to shrink in the Destrier’s presence. The pastry-colored Pegasus cleared his throat and opened his mouth, motioning with a hoof as if about to say something, but no words came out. Virtue stopped and stared for a moment, at first confused. But suddenly, the shock of recognition struck him like a hammer blow.

Virtue took a large step backwards, away from the door. This was the stallion from the night before, the one who had been in the window as Virtue had fought the bodyguards. This… this… piece of underworld filth… Virtue could no longer refer to him as a stallion. His right to be called that had been stripped of him with Cherry’s revelation of the night before.

Rich Tea had unfortunately misinterpreted Virtue’s step backwards as an invitation to enter. As he obliviously trotted inside, he made the second mistake of even bothering to speak. “Is she... is she all right?”

That question was Rich Tea’s third and final mistake. Virtue snapped. Using his well-muscled legs and powerful wings, the white stallion moved impossibly fast, flashing through the space between. The impact seemed to shake the entire apartment as Virtue slammed Rich Tea into the nearest wall with the force of a thousand falling hammers.

In the space of a heartbeat, Rich Tea found himself covered in splinters from the wood paneling; his wings and limbs dangling limp and helpless as a massive fetlock suspended him above the ground. His head ached from whiplash and his breaths came labored as Virtue’s hoof simultaneously pinned him against the wall and applied choking pressure to his throat.

Virtue’s baleful glare fell upon Rich Tea as the smaller stallion struggled in vain to free himself. The pale Pegasus was terrified; every last bit of his body language gave it away, from his feeble attempts to beat down Virtue’s hoof to his uncoordinated flailing and flapping to the way his eyes darted around the room, as if looking for a savior that would surely never come. Rich Tea honestly thought he was going to die.

Stony-faced, Virtue continued to bore holes in Rich Tea’s soul with his emerald-eyed gaze. He wasn’t going to kill him. It was messy, unnecessary… immoral. Certainly he was a cad, but who was Virtue to decide who lived or died in Equestria? Finally deciding that the pale stallion had had enough, Virtue released him, leaving him to slump to the floor in a tattered heap, alive, if barely.

The Destrier took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. If he had retrieved his sword earlier, Rich Tea’s blood would surely be staining the walls right now. Again, the doubts nagged at Virtue, clawing at his resolve, but again he suppressed them with careful thought. Killing Rich Tea solved nothing. Killing him in anger would create even more problems. Whatever problems he was now involved in, endless bloodshed was not the solution.

“You have the gall to come here calling for her after what you did to her?” Virtue spat, his upper-class accent doing little to conceal the venom in his voice. The Destrier stepped closer, lowering his head so his eyes were level with Rich Tea’s. “SPEAK! Explain yourself!”

[CherryRie]

Rubbing a fetlock against his sore throat, Rich Tea fearfully met the stranger’s unforgiving gaze. Wrestling for control over his panicking senses, the slight stallion found himself unable to brake eye contact with the livid behemoth at whose mercy he was thrown.

“I just-” he began, interrupted by rasping choughs as his bruised airway protested “- had to be sure she was alright. I saw you carry her here last night, after you saved her. I – I was scared that the fall...”

For a moment the shaking stallion tried to stand, but the faiding surge of adrenalin had left his exhausted body unwilling cooperate.

“Please. You can do what you want to me, just please tell me she’s okay.”

"She is NOT." Virtue spoke, his inflection seeming to chill the air between them. The room seemed to darken, the shadows around him lengthening as Virtue clawed at Rich Tea's psyche with icy talons. "This is not a trial. You are unredeemably guilty. You cannot sway my judgement with pleas for mercy so I suggest you choose your next words carefully."

“I didn’t mean- It wasn’t meant to -” Rich bleated plaintively, floundering under the absurdity of his own excuses. Searching desperately for some manner of escape, the floor bound Pegasus found himself looking towards the door at the far side of the room, undoubtedly leading into the sweet’s meagre bedroom.

At once his panicked words faded, leaving a void in the chilly air where the excuses had been. She could be in there, right now, listening to this whole exchange. Deep within his rotten soul, the thoughts that were holding up his will finally broke. Lifting himself to sitting, the defeated Colt stared past his tormentor’s left ear, eyes never leaving the door.

In barely a whisper he let slip the truth and damned the consequence.

“It was the only way I could protect her.”

Silence met his words in both weight and measure, Virtue unchanging demeanour drawing the guilt from him.

“Things weren’t meant to get so out of control. When I heard that Cherry was in Filidelphia, I found out through one of her father’s contacts, somepony who suggested he was hiring Talon mercinaries to ‘retreive’ her. Gryphons! They’d have killed her if she resisted, and he knew as much! I went to try and find out what he knew, see if the rumours were true, but the guards caught me snooping. They were right in the meeting with the Gryphon, so I got offered an ultimatum. Either I brought her back, or he would send Talons after her.”

Rich Tea shuddered at the memory of the grizzled half bird’s furious response to this change of plans.

“If I could bring her home, she wouldn’t be harmed. He said I’d have stay with her, her warden and... partner. Azure’s sick idea of poetic justice; Cherry would hate me forever, but neither of us would be allowed to leave alive.”

“Buxer and Bolt were sent to watch me, make sure I did things right by Azure. Origionally I was just meant to meet up with her, slip something into her drink and get her home while she was out. But when I finally got here... when we met in the bar, I realised how much I’d missed her. A drink ended up as a day out, then an evening date and then... Cherry, never said good bye when she left Manehatten. I lost myself in the moment, I-I forgot about everything when I was with her, nothing mattered because I was so happy just to be with her again. And then those two caught up with us at the hotel, and so did everything else.”

Hanging his head, the errant Pegasus took a steadying breath as his downcast gaze examined the dreadfully cheap carpet.

“I bucked up, totally bucked the whole darn thing up. First I get myself sucked into betraying her trust, then I go make it worse by reminding her about what we had. I could have just told her to run, but with those two hoofers following me Azure would have known in minuets. The mercinarys would have caught up and used me to get to her. If I’d just stuck to the plan we could have been home by now, safe. Cherry would still hate me, she’d have every right to. But at least she’d be safe. I could have explained myself to her. She might see I hadn’t much of a choice, maybe one day she could have even forgiven me. But now?”

Looking back to the bedroom door, Tea’s signed solemnly. There was nothing else he could do here.

“Celestia banish me.” He muttered, returning his pleading eyes to Virtues emotionless gaze “Listen, when Buxer ran outside last night he left the sending-scroll that’d tell her father things had gone wrong. With that gone it’s a full day’s flight to Manehatten. I know I’m not in any position to be asking favours from you, but please take Cherry away from here while there’s time. Help her hide. Get her somewhere safe were Azure can never find her. Please.”

[Dio]

“It was the only way I could protect her.”

Virtue visibly bristled at the statement. Protect? Protect? Rich Tea was either lying or daft, or both. The knight held is temper in check, however, only replying with silence and a piercing gaze that dissected the blackest of souls. Rich Tea’s tale continued-- a tale of mercenaries, of angry mob bosses, and Rich Tea’s part in an unsavory plot to trap Cherry Dawn.

“I lost myself in the moment, I-I forgot about everything when I was with her, nothing mattered because I was so happy just to be with her again. And then those two caught up with us at the hotel, and so did everything else.”

A moment of weakness ruined a villainous plot. Virtue didn’t know if he should have been ecstatic or disgusted. There was something to be said about dedication to duty, even if the plan was outright detestable. The pale stallion had the dubious dishonor of foiling a kidnapping with his own wretched vices. Rich Tea hung his head in shame, sighing deeply before making one last pleading request.

“I know I’m not in any position to be asking favours from you, but please take Cherry away from here while there’s time. Help her hide. Get her somewhere safe were Azure can never find her... please...”

Virtue had every reason to knock Rich Tea senseless. He had brought this upon Virtue. He had brought this upon himself. Last but not least of all, he had brought this upon Cherry Dawn. A coward. A cad. A mewling, worthless individual without respect for self or others. Rich Tea was all of these, but somehow, his final plea struck a resonating chord with Virtue.

There was a strange earnestness in his request, an honest resolve that wasn’t there before. For once in his life, Rich Tea wanted to set things right; as far as Virtue could tell anyways. The Destrier cocked his head in quiet curiosity. For the moment, his wrath had been stayed. But even as Rich Tea hung in proverbial limbo, Virtue began breaking down the situation into its constituent parts. Cherry was still very much at risk. The mulberry filly must have meant something to Azure, whoever he was.

A ward, a child, a witness, something... less benign? Virtue suppressed a burst of rage at the thought. Why else would he go through the trouble of attempting to recover her by force? Whatever this was, it ran much deeper than the thugs in the alleyway had even begun to suggest.

“You have stayed my hoof for now,” Virtue said, his fiery rage fading momentarily to detached quiescence. “As miserable an excuse for a stallion as you are, Cherry’s life still depends on you. I need everything you know about Azure... and I need it now.”

[CherryRie]

Briefly, Rich Tea considered the door way that probably housed Cherry’s still sleeping form. In a way it was yet another betrayal, it should be her place to say these things and not his. But no, this stranger was about all the hope his once lover had to escape the following wroth. The more information he was armed with, the better. While Azure’s name and affiliations were not widely known, the media scandal some weeks past had kicked up a nasty cloud of suspicion in the business pony’s direction. Casting the image of the distraught filly from his mind, the cream Pegasus turned back to regard the pony who loomed before him.

Drawing a long steadying breath, Rich Tea began to paint the portrait of the cold hoof behind Cherry’s near abduction.

“His full name might mean a little more to you, though I doubt it. Azure Skies is the head of the Mainhatten ‘Godfeather’ family. The godfeaters? They’re the hooves behind virtually every form of 'colourful substance' and vice in Cloudsdale, they’re the reason that sky city has no crime, they made it unprofitable. Don’t get me wrong though, they’re not all ‘bad ponies’. I haven’t heard much about where Azure came from, Cherry might be able to explain that better.”

Pausing for breath the tan Pegasus plowed onward with not more then a glance at the bedroom door “What I can tell you is this. About twenty years ago he married into the Cloudsdale side of the Family, did a lot of good business and strengthened them no end. But even then his methods were questionable sometimes. From what I hear he got the patriarchs blessing to start his own business in Manehatten, selling whatever she saw fit to the populous. And that's where everything started to go sour."

"Ya see, Azure isn’t like normal ponies. He’s cold as ice and ruthless. He saw the most efficient way to make money was to take something no pony wanted, and make it something Everypony needed. Rhubarb leaf’s never been banned cus there’s no need too. Everypony knows how it can mess you up. By the time the guards realised that there was a problem, half of Manehatten’s Earth ponies were hooked on the stuff."

"That’s when the crime rate started to sough. Every pony fighting over what Azure’s goons could provide. Making a false market, they set up organised gangs to act as sellers, funnelled resources through fake businesses and laundered the bits coming back through casino’s and other large establishments. He created Vice from virtue, made friends into gangland enemies, turned the entire city against itself, all to come out on top with a profit.”

By now Rich Tea was visibly shaking, clearly terrified at even the mention of such things as had occurred within the house of Azure.

“Azure is just... wrong. You can see it in his eyes when you speak to him, like he’s hollow inside. More importantly, he’s poison. A pony can go to him as a perfectly model citizen, innocent as a flower, and Azure will take everything good about them and twist it. The longer you stay around him, the more like him you become, cold heartless and brutal. Ponies who ain’t never hurt a fly will do the most terrible things just cus he tells them its a good idea. What’s worse, they won’t see that it’s wrong, they can’t. I know this sounds crazy but it’s like he won’t let them know black from white. And-”

He broke off, as though the words he wanted to utter were too painful to pass through his lips.

“-He’s Cherry’s father.”

[Dio]

Rich Tea’s furtive glances did not go unnoticed. Frightened as he was, Virtue could tell that Cherry was still very much on his mind. The pale stallion suppressed a shiver as he barely mustered the strength to look up at Virtue from the miserable heap of his body on the floor.

Azure Skies. Not a common name. Though Virtue had never heard it, he would be sure to remember. The Godfeathers, on the other hand, struck closer to home. Shortly before being transferred to Stalliongrad, Virtue had dealt with a short mission involving the Godfeathers. While the mission itself had been a very open and shut case, he was well aware of the shady business underhoof and the corruption that ran rampant in the Equestrian underground. The Destriers strived to stamp this out, but there vice was so simple and cavaliers so few.

Rhubarb deals. A history of crime. An entire empire built under the shadow of Manehattan’s skyscrapers. The Destriers did not have a strong presence in Manehattan. Their ways were too old-fashioned, too conservative for the urban elite of that great city. Virtue was not so vain as to assume the Destriers could have single-handedly stopped the ruin of an entire city strata, but perhaps there might have been a difference.

Suddenly, Rich Tea paused. His ears drooped, his eyes darted back and forth in paranoia, and his legs quaked. The lines on his face and the look in his eyes spoke of fear, of abject terror. This was far beyond the intimidation that Virtue had instilled. Rich Tea feared bodily harm from Virtue. Whoever had instilled this fear seemed to hold sway over his very soul. Virtue’s ear twitched. He had a feeling that he would not like what he was about to hear.

“Azure... h-he’s poison...” Rich sputtered. That much was to be assumed. For a minor member of the family to ascend to such heights so quickly, it made perfect sense for him to be anathema to anything that the Destriers stood for. Yet another evil that needed to be stamped out. Was it not merely routine? But Rich Tea’s next words struck Virtue like a thunderbolt.

“-He’s Cherry’s father.”

Though Virtue’s visage remained static, unchanging, something within him snapped. There was hope. There was despair. There was logic. There was rage. This was dichotomy. Virtue was thusly divided. Azure could be painted as the greatest evil to taint Equestria’s shadow realm. But Azure was Cherry’s father. Azure was family. This enigmatic, faceless, evil was family.

Family meant something. Camaraderie meant something. Even the basest of base individuals took care of their own. Azure deserved only death if all that Rich Tea had said was true, but as much as he did, slaying him would surely harm Cherry to her very core. There would be no decisive battle. There would be no clean, elegant solution.

“The heiress to the empire,” Virtue muttered, more to himself than anypony else. Expelling a blast a breath from his nostrils, Virtue paced around Rich Tea, continuing to look down at the tattered heap of a stallion. “Enough with this history lesson! Tell me something useful! Safehouses, names, contacts!”

[CherryRie]

Wincing under Virtue’s intensity, the Pegasus straightened his posture and recouped some of his scattered composure.

“You’re not going to like this, but I honestly don’t know much about that anymore. Four months ago I could have told you the names and addresses of every one of his lieutenants. Now all I know is that most of them are either in the royal dungeon, insain or at the bottom of the river. Azure himself isn’t hard to find either, he’s a powerful stallion in the community and well known though out the city. It was a pyramid scheme, a city wide economy with Azure at the top.”

“And I do mean ‘was’,” The stallion stressed, hoping that his openness would at satisfy the interrogators demands. “See I'm not exactly in the loop, the only insight I really had was through Cherry herself. From what I was able to find out, about a week after she disappeared everything just imploded. Dozens of crooked business owners and goons turned themselves over to the watch. Officers that’d been on the take for years suddenly rejected their payments and started arresting their bribers.”

“What ever had happened, its effects got worse the higher up the chain. Grey Slate, Blueberry Mirth and Silver Tung, dons who ran protection rackets in the city, handed themselves in with boxes of incriminating documents. Hay Bale and Blinkers, Azure’s own lieutenants, developed crushing depression over night along with the sixteen other enforcers. Most of them ended up in the Rosebud Sanatorium.”

“And that’s all she wrote I guess. Needless to say, the empire Azure once had is crippled and it won’t recover without his direct intervention. With guard looking over his shoulder though that isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Turned out the one consistent thing the doc’s found was that Cherry had visited all of the patients right before their collective breakdown. From what I heard Azure went ballistic. He thought she was somehow responsible, that she hadn’t just runaway from him, but set the fuses that burned away half his legacy in less than a week. ”

For a moment Rich Tea seemed to consider his next words carefully, unsure how to proceed. Repeating what he knew out loud reminded him exactly how ludicrous the accusation was to anypony who wasn’t utterly insane.

“I’ve... seen Cherry do things. Amazing things. She's always putting other ponies first, even if it dose harm to her in the prosess. She’s just not capable of manipulation like that, never mind on such a huge scale, but he was still willing to see her brutalised or killed by mercenaries. If I thought it could have change a thing, I'd have face down those tallons there and then. It wouldn't have done any good though. I know it sounds hollow after everything that's happened but I do love her, I'd lie for her, I thought I could die to save her. But come the crunch it turns out I'm just as bad as her father..."

Shrugging his wings in a defeated manner, the Pegasus idly regarded the ground.

"I wish I had more to give you, but that's all I've got... Do you think it'll be enough? To help you protect her, I meen?"

[Dio]

It was a ludicrous tale to be sure. Virtue was unsure of what embellishments Rich Tea had undertaken in his recounting of Cherry’s tale. How could all leads possibly point back to Cherry Dawn? Indeed he had heard of the recent rumblings in the Equestrian underground, but most Virtue had dismissed as urban legend and wanton exaggeration. However, here Rich Tea was, reiterating those same stories as if it were the gods-honest truth.

The Destrier paused for a moment to consider the ramifications. Cherry was not just a fugitive from a mob boss father and heiress to a crime empire, she was the weapon that had crippled his empire. Her words were sharper than any sword and more crippling than any hammer blow. Last night was not a job to retrieve a wayward heiress. Last night was just the tip of the iceberg in a brutal revenge scheme.

"I wish I had more to give you, but that's all I've got... Do you think it'll be enough? To help you protect her, I mean?"

It was hardly enough. Rich Tea’s exposition was merely that; a history lesson, a summary, a rehash of material Virtue could have acquired from any two-bit criminal scum he picked up off the streets, or in some cases even a newspaper. Useless.

But Rich Tea had revealed more in his speech than mere words would suggest. The consistency in his logic matched that of the fall of his voice. Rich Tea was telling the truth, Virtue was certain of it. For someone who had dealt with the Godfeathers so extensively to spill the absolute truth to a complete stranger without the finer bits of... enhanced interrogation... was virtually unheard of.

Virtue didn’t want to believe him. It was all too easy to dismiss any of Rich Tea’s claim on the basis of the babbling coward eager to save his own skin in exchange for anything, even if it was complete and utter nonsense. But once again, a glimmer of honesty shone through Rich Tea’s cowardly facade, an uncommon glint in his eyes and edge on his voice. He was telling what he believed to be the absolute truth. It was enough to draw actionable suspicion, but Virtue would have to track down the leads himself if he wished to make anything of it.

"I know enough to know that Cherry Dawn is worth protecting. But I must know if you understand." The Destrier lowered his head to Rich Tea’s eye level looking him right in the eye. There was no anger or malice in his voice, only cold, deadly calm. “Do you understand what you have done?”

Rich Tea visibly shrank even more, if such a thing was even possible. The pale stallion wasn’t so much intimidated as convicted. Virtue was no longer threatening him with physical harm. The dread creeping along his spine instead came from within. As much as he denied it, Rich Tea knew exactly what he had done.

“You have doomed us all,” Virtue said, his voice chillingly even and strangely tranquil, even as the weight of his words fell firmly on Rich Tea’s shoulders. “By coming to me, you have doomed yourself. Azure will find you and he will surely kill you when he realizes you have betrayed him.

“By bringing Cherry here, you have doomed me. I am bound by duty and honor to see this through to the end, even if it brings me to the very gates of Tartarus.

“But finally, and perhaps most telling of all, you have doomed Cherry. Azure will stop at nothing to bring her home and enact his own twisted sense of justice.

“This disgusting comedy of errors began with you; surely by now you must realize this?”

“I tried!” Rich Tea cried in an uncharacteristic burst of defiance. “I tried to--”

“You FAILED!” Virtue countered. “You allowed your own vice to consume you and shape you into Azure’s instrument! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION?”

Rich Tea physically recoiled at Virtue’s intensity, but continued undaunted. “I understand. I’ve done wrong and I know it. I just want to make things right!”

“I know I can’t beat Azure. I know Cherry will never forgive me,” the pale stallion said, impassioned, tears streaming down his cheeks. “But I have to do something! Anything to atone for what I’ve done!”

Virtue paused at Rich Tea’s sudden outburst. Something had fundamentally changed within the pale stallion. There was fear to be certain, but everypony had to deal with fear. The surprise was the lack of cowardice. As resigned to his fate as he was, Rich Tea had finally resolved to go down fighting. The two sat in silence for a time, Virtue contemplating the newest development and Rich Tea gingerly swiping at tears with a fetlock.

“Very well then,” Virtue said slowly. “What will you do?”

“I can return to Manehattan,” Rich said. “Leave red herrings, stir up trouble for Azure. If I can’t show that I love Cherry by being there for her, I can at least ensure that you have every possible chance to find her and get her to safety.”

“I will accept what help I can find.”

Rich Tea looked up at Virtue, a distant sadness filling his bleary eyes and glistening on his tear-stained cheeks. “You don’t suppose I could… see her… one last time… before you take her away?”

“Do not test me!” Virtue growled, though he quickly softened his tone. “She is gone. She fled, likely in an effort to prevent me from being tangled up in this mess. Yet here we are.”

Rich Tea was crestfallen. “Fled? B-but—”

“Rich,” Virtue asked firmly. “Do you have any idea where she could have gone? If we have any hope of stopping this, I will need to find her before Azure’s henchponies do. As much as I hate to say it, you know her far better than I do and I will need your help to keep her safe.”

“She’ll go north,” Rich Tea said flatly. “She’s a city girl. It’s in her blood. She won’t be away from civilization for long. Your best bet is probably Canterlot. I’m certain she wants to get as far away from Manehattan and Fillydelphia as she can.”

“Are there safehouses she could possibly rest in?”

“A few,” Rich said as he withdrew a pen and a small notebook from his jacket pocket and began scribbling furiously. “Most were busted during the Fall. I have a few addresses you might be able to try.”

“That will have to do,” Virtue said, trotting back over to the couch and tucking the notes in his saddlebags. The knight began stowing his gear, packing the blanket and his sundry utility items into his saddlebags.

“Sir…”

“Virtue,” the Destrier said without turning around. Finally stowing his gear, Virtue deliberately trotted to the main door and hoofed it open, giving the bright new day in Fillydelphia a once over before solemnly turning back to Rich Tea. “You are free to go, Rich Tea. I have no more reason to hold you.”

“Virtue.” Rich Tea seemed to chew on the name, as if it had some palatable flavor, one that would drown out the acrid vitriol of guilt and shame. Strange that he had been here all this time and not even thought to ask his name. Rich Tea slowly picked himself up off the floor, wobbling as if his legs would break if he applied pressure to them, but finally steadying himself on four hooves. The world outside was a bleak one, an uncaring one, but there were wrongs to right and absolution to be sought.

“For what it’s worth, Virtue…” the pale stallion said as he trudged out the door. “I’m sorry... for everything.”

“As am I,” Virtue whispered as he shut the door behind him.

As the clip-clops of Rich Tea’s hooves on concrete faded into the distance, Virtue took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he mentally reviewed everything that had happened. The journey would be long. The battles would be tough. But there was a glimmer of hope just beyond the storm clouds. Out of betrayal came redemption; out of chill, warmth; out of expatriation, kinship.

Virtue had purpose now. The fire to excel had been rekindled, the will to protect had been reforged, and his adherence to honor and duty had been vindicated. For the first time since his exile, he had a mission that just felt right. He could pursue it with all his heart and not be held back by pseudoreligious dogma or vengeful karma. He was finally free.

******

Every city has its stories. The Equestrian sun and the blessings of Her Solar Majesty shine on the both righteous and the corrupt. In the place where shadow meets light, vice meets virtue, honor meets treachery, life happens. This is life in Equestria.