Flash's Demon

Chapters

Chapter 1 - Gone Wrong
Chapter 2 - Gone Very Wrong
Chapter 3 - Under her horn
Chapter 4 - Negotiations
Chapter 5 - Laplace, part 1
Chapter 6 - Laplace, part 2
Chapter 7 - The Judas Contract
Chapter 8 - When there’s smoke...
Chapter 10 - …people get hurt… (part 2 of 3)
Chapter 11 - ...And you lose what’s held dear. (part 3 of 3)
Chapter 12 - Cadance
Chapter 9 - ...you get burned... (part 1 of 3)
Chapter 13 - Flash's Everyday Life

Chapter 1 - Gone Wrong

The royal guard stood in the brightly lit and completely empty hallway. For all the nightmare that had been the past few days, for all the chaos, it all lead to this.

Absolute. Complete. Boredom.

He could feel the weight of the day's events finally taking their toll on him. He was alone now, thank Celestia for that. With the silent freedom he had, Flash Sentry tried to clear his head of the gunk inside it. He sat down and placed his spear at his side, yet within reach should he need it.

It had been a very eventful, very stressful evening. He prayed that dawn would soon come to end this miserable gloom. Flash lamented that he lacked a watch, yet he knew that he would have gone mad staring at a timepiece all night.

He stood still as a stone statue, silently cursing at his lot in life. This wasn't what he wanted. He enjoyed protecting others, but not this. He was protecting none but himself, against…

"Heyyy~ " From the set of iron bars behind Flash, came a voice. “Figured we'd finish what we started. How about you let us out now?”

It.

"We know you can hear us, Flashy..." the voice trailed on. "The barrier's not up."

Flash knew not to move. Not to make a single sound.

"Heyyyy..... heeeyyyy....come and talk to ussss, it'll help you pass the time."

He kept up the ruse. Talking to it was the last thing Flash wanted.

"Come on, Flashy, don't make us beg. This was funny for a couple minutes, but you can stop ignoring us now."

There was a moment of silence. No clatter of hooves behind him. Flash's mind raced that it might have left him alone. He dared not look back in case it was still there.

He remained still for what seemed like a tiny eternity, tense in his wait.

The voice broke the silence. "Flash..." The voice hardened.

"Stop ignoring us," It demanded. "You will talk to us."

Nothing.

"We know you hear us, Flash."

Flash paid it no attention. Eventually, it'll get frustrated and go away again. That, or…

“Oi! Turnkey!!" A heavy clang rocked the iron bars.

Flash winced at the terrible vibrations. His eyes went wide, his bluff was up. He heard a little giggle from the cell behind him and he knew his evening was about to get even worse

"Seeeeee~" the voice giggled. Her tone now childish once again. "We knew you could...you know just how much we like our little talks. Don’t you enjoy it too?"

Oh hay... he thought to himself.

“I don't,” Flash said, breaking his silence for the first time that night, still keeping his back to the bars. "I just want to go home."

“Well, that won't be happening anytime soon. You are here all night, aren't you?” the sly voice said. “You chose this, right?”

Nothing but a long silence was Flash’s response.

A low growl rose from behind the iron bars. Annoyance, that was wasn’t getting her way.

Knowing he wasn't going to reply to her, the prisoner decided to go on.

"Just you and us, in this unfortunate little situation we're in,” she began “I sit here, in our gilded cage and you sit there guarding us for... whatever reason. Truth is guarding me is a fool's errand but that's not the point. You see Flashy, We're both prisoners here, both forced to do something we don't want to do. So why not make the best of it together? Like we've told you a thousand times, you learn to enjoy your-” the voice paused. " 'Situation'."

Flash refused to turn around and face his prisoner. "And like I've said a thousand times and more, I never will. You're the one who's caused all of this. You're why I'm here. You're the reason for all of the hell I've been through this past week. And all I need to do is wait until the next guard comes to relieve me of this, and then I'm done with you for good. I can move on with my life and forget a monster like you even existed."

Flash heard a the prisoner chuckle behind him, "Oh Flash," She gleefully said "Thanks for the compliment, but don't you know we're never done. We don't want to be done with you. You're so much fun, why would we ever want to let you go? This is only the beginning, Flashy..."

"That's why I'm ending this as soon as I'm done here. I’m telling them everything.” He refused to budge or move. ”Once they know what you’ve done to me, they'll break your hold over me."

The voice only laughed in response. “Oh, keep saying that, Flashy. Keep deluding yourself that she means well. Do you really expect that bitch and her pawns will break our beautiful bond and just let you walk away? You know they won't. They'll destroy you too. That liar will never hold true to anything she says. You see, we have your best interests at heart she does not. Oh we wish we could see the look on their faces when they discovers all the things we've been telling you... because we know for a fact she won't let you return to your old life... you know way too much now.”

“They’ll fix the barrier, and she will hold true to her word.” Flash said hotly. “And once I'm done with all of this, I can finally go home.”

“Well, if that's so important to you then, then we know a fast way you could go home,” said the voice in a cutesy tone.

Flash gave nothing, so she could take nothing. He knew she stood there, right on the other side of the bars waiting for him to open his mouth. Waiting for him to give her something. Flash fought with himself not to speak. He tried to find something else to keep his attention. His eyes scanned his surroundings for the one-hundredth time that night and found everything exactly the way it was. Nothing but a pedestal, a rack for a coat, a place to put his spear securely, and the mural in front of him depicting Flash's very own goddess Celestia, and her younger sister Luna, doing as goddesses do, moving the sun and the moon.

“Flash, we want you to know that we know a fast way you could go home,” repeated the voice in her cutesy tone.

"Oh Celestia, how do I get out of this?" Flash began to lament in his head, until he heard that cutesy voice from behind him speak again.

"Don't you wanna hear it? Don't you want to go home? We know how you could go home now." the prisoner said.

Flash thought, sighed, and gave in to entertaining his prisoner. “Really....” he deadpanned.

“Yes really,” she said. “It involves you opening those bars and letting us out. Clearly, that's the fastest way to get out of your boring job. No prisoner to guard? You’re done!”

A red hoof with a purple coat extended from the shadows of the cell. “Come on. You know we’re harmless, Flash. We wouldn't even hurt a parasprite. Let me out, Flash. We're sure we could go somewhere. Get something to eat, it'll be on us. We hear the flowers of the Canterlot gardens are beautiful this time of year, we so wish we could-”

“It's winter,” Flash interrupted.

The hoof retracted itself.

“Oh...is that so?” said the pony in the cell. A red horn lit up in the darkness “Well, that's a pity. We wanted to see Canterlot's gardens. It's been sooooo long since we have. We suppose it makes sense you know the seasons and we don't. We’ve been in here so long...so lon-”

“Shut up,” Flash said.

In addition to the horn, a pair of eyes lit up from the cell. Both illuminated with a bloody red.

“Now that's just plain rude,” said the imprisoned pony. “Did your mother ever teach you manners?”

Flash Sentry grimaced. “That and a whole lot more. Like to know not to talk to monsters.”

The coy voice continued. “But Flaaaash. We’re not a monster. We're friends, you and us. And as a friend, you should help a friend out-”

Flash stomped his hoof on the ground. “We are not friends,” he said to the convict.

The illuminated lights of horn and eyes ceased.

“Then what are we, Flash? We thought we were friends? Oh, could that mean we're something more?”

Two hooves, now pure red in hoof and coat emerged out of the darkness of the cell and came behind Flash. “You did say we were pretty...”

Flash felt her hooves touch his tail, and made no reaction. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

“I mean... we are a single mare. A very lonely single mare, who would be more than happy to see a handsome stallion like you by our side... we mean... if you came in here... we wouldn't say no.”

He refused to act... until he felt her hooves touch his rear. Acting out of instinct his tail swatted away the hooves, the mare's hooves hitting the bars as she retracted.

“Ow!” said a echoed voice.

The hooves retreated inside the cell. Flash turned around to see what his instincts had wrought.

The twisted face of a mare came from the shadows. Slit yellow eyes bulged with a blood red mane, cracks of pulsing yellow extended from her eyes and spread along her face. A bleeding, twisted unicorn horn on her forehead, as two draconic claws gripped against the cell bars that trapped her inside her cage.

“THAT. HURT!” cried the demon.

The demon huffed against the wall, her burning anger as she stared down at the lone guard. Flash could hear her heavy breath, and and knew the anger that was teeming from her eyes. “These bars can't hold us, Flash, they can't hold us forever!” said the demon, her voice sounding like a vile mash of distorted mares speaking as one. "You're gonna have to choose which side of these bars you're gonna support. Cause one of them is gonna kill the other.”

“I've made my choice,” Flash Sentry said, firm and unmoving, glaring into the demon's slit, cracked yellow eyes, meeting it stare for stare…

The showdown continued for a moment or two, before the the demon relented and retreated back into the darkness of the jail cell.

The demon poked its head back out of the shadows, this time as a unicorn mare with a snow white coat and a sweet face that poked her head from the shadows.

The demon's voice returned to that of a young mare. “Flassshhh...” it whined. “Leeet meee ouuuuutt..."

He didn’t answer back. The demon continued talking.

“We'll go see the world, you and I. Together out there in that crazy amazing world that we both want to see. Oh, Flash, it's gonna be amazing.”

He turned around.

Flash Sentry knew it was going to be a long night, and he couldn't be more miserable.

Flash's Demon
By Nicktendonick

Chapter 1 – Gone Wrong
-One Week ago: Canterlot castle-

Flash Sentry woke up, and immediately pretended he was still asleep.

You're not supposed to be sleeping, he thought to himself, sighing. Do you want someone to catch you?

His eyes darted around to survey the room to see if he was caught. When the coast was clear the stallion resumed his casual stance, leaning against the enormous stone pillar he had been resting by. Being a royal guard of Canterlot Castle meant a lot of things. Not sleeping on the job was one of them. Even if he had to sit here for hours. Still, motionless, and unmoving he—"

Flash heard the clip-clop of pair of hooves.

Oh no.

A pony turned a corner and came into Flash’s view. Another guard, his friend June, an orange unicorn mare decked in an similar armor, a mare whom he was more than familiar with. She sent a smile as she passed by. As June left his vision Flash closed his eyes and let out a sigh of relief. June of all people would have tattled on him, or worse. He was glad for that. “At least she didn’t notice.”

It was at that moment he realized June’s hoofsteps had stopped.

“Is that so?” June whispered into Flash’s ear.

“Gagh!” Flash shoot up from his lax position, all composure gone as he, literally shooting up into the air as his spear hit the ground. Flapping his wings as about as fast as his heart was beating, he turned around to see June giggling.

Flash crossed his forehooves, glaring at the mare. “Not funny, June! What if Captain Armor saw that?”

“Well, I guess he’d see his star pupil sleeping, then screaming like a filly,” she said, causing Flash’s wings to stop mid-flight in shock.

He quickly landed and in hushed tones asked “You saw?”

“How could I not? You’ve been sleeping for over an hour, Flashy. That's reeeal bad behavior for a new guard,” June said with that smirk still on her face.

She had him. Flash knew he had be got. The stallion sighed, resigning himself to his fate. “What do you want, June?”

June pouted. “Oh come on. Don’t give me that look. You were the one who broke up with me, remember? We’ve always been friends, you and I. Just, you know, maybe you and I just aren't a good couple.”

Maybe we might have been if you didn't split your legs for every other stallion while we dated... Flash again wanted to say, but his better judgment won out. Before he could say anything, June took the advantage and placed a hoof on Flash’s shoulder.

“Flashy, if there's anyone I can trust I know it's you. That, and I know you can totally do what I have in mind,” June said.

Flash sighed as every alarm in Flash's head went off. He should have known. Scratch that, he already did. At least a guard or a paladin would just scold him or report him to Captain Armor. But her? No... his gut told him whatever June wanted, it would be worse than getting in trouble. It'd be worse than raiding the royal chambers and putting on their majestys’ undergarments and parading around in them during the middle of the Grand Galloping Gala.

How'd she have this power over him? Flash lamented in his head that still, he still couldn't say no to her pretty face.

The pair of orange royal guards trotted down the halls. Flash was a little disappointed in that nopony had stopped them. Maybe June was right everyone was pretty much on vacation. Heck, even the throne room was empty.

“...And it's crap that they leave us to guard an empty wing while everyone else gets free food on the other side of the castle. I mean, where's the sense in that?” finished June.

Flash had to agree. “Well, true. I suppose on the bright side us having to work the lunch shift does have a perk.”

“And what's that, Flashy?”

“We lose a few pounds.” Flash said back.

June stopped. Flash took notice and turned around at her. “Are you saying I'm fat?”
DO NOT SAY YES DO NOT SAY YES. Flash froze realizing what he said. June scrunched her face, staring at Flash... before the unicorn mare broke into a little giggle, the fake tension all gone.

“See? So much fun. That's why I love ya, Flashy, ” June said before giving him a pat on the back with her hoof and then trotting to the center of the big room. “Besides, I know you love a girl with a little meat on her.” she said, leaving Flash flustered as they entered into big open room.

Shaking it off in a flash, Flash Sentry took in his surroundings. Three other royal guards were in the room, Two alien faces, a brown earth pony he didn't know and red unicorn mare he'd never seen before. Steel Wings was the only familiar face, a pony he’d be able to recognize from anywhere. He was perched on a small pillar in the room observing and playing lookout. The two he didn’t know where on edges of a spell circle chalked out on the marble of the castle floor. Next to the circle was a children's set of chalk and a bucket of water with soap.

“A teleport spell?” Flash asked. “With chalk?”

“Yeee-ep, quick to make the runes and easy to clean up,” June said with a smile. “Who says they get to have all the good food? My brother's got a rune on the other side of the castle near the party. Once we open this warp up, you four travel back and play lookout while I swap places with my brother and grab some food for us and warp back, then we clean up the chalk before anypony notices.”

“Jun’s over there? Couldn't Jun just bring us stuff?” questioned Flash. He turned up to his friend perched above. “Steel, buddy, help me out here before June gets us all thrown in the brig.”

“Sorry dude, but June’s right. I’m with the twins on this one.”

Flash felt like an arrow struck him. “Oh Celestia, seriously Steel, not you too.”

“And how cold would you like your pizza then? Our only break is in four hours, there’s gonna be nothing left but scraps for us. I'd rather get at least something decent,” said Steel Wings.

Flash facehoofed. “How did you survive Instructor Fury’s starvation training?” Flash muttered. Steel Wings, of course, overheard and frowned.

“Hey, dude, that was then, this is now. I spent all night studying for that test I aced this morning. Haven't eaten since sundown last night and you know they don’t care if one guard sneaks us some food. Besides, I think I deserve this. You probably do too. By the way, how'd you do?”

Failure was the answer. “I'm still waiting for my results,” was what Flash said.

“Come on, you ponies, let's get this working,” said the earth pony he didn't recognize. “If we don't do this soon I'm going to the nearest paladin.”

“Castle Crest, hold your gears, okay?” June said. “We only have a little bit before someone notices us missing. Do this, and I won't tell anyone what I caught you doing in the royal chambers.”

Before any more details could be told, the red mare spoke up. “Good. Let's get this over with. Oh Celestia, I hope we don't get in trouble.”

June immediately wrapped a hoof around the introverted mare, making her face light a bright pink. “Come-on, we’re not. Once we get the portal, I grab us a bunch of food, warp back and clean up this portal. In and out in five minutes. Nopony’s gonna notice.”

“Um...if you say so,” Said the red mare.

“Dang straight, private.” June smiled, triumphant. With that settled, June got to barking her orders. “All right, Flash, Steel, you boys take a place on the runes. Most of the spell is so nopony can detect it, but I need you four to give it a little more juice to make sure this spell works. We only got one chance to get this right, okay?” June said, trotting to the center of the spell circle.

“I can't believe I'm doing this...” muttered Flash as he placed his hooves where June motioned to.

It took the ponies a minute for the five royal guards to get in position. Each began letting magic flow into the runes as June commanded. The chalk started to glow as June raised her horn and initiated her spell.

“Alright! Free food, here we come!” She exclaimed in joy.

The spell continued to gather power. Flash began to feel relieved. Maybe this might work out. Maybe he could work things out with June. Maybe this wouldn't go horribly wrong.

“WHAT IN CELESTIA'S NAME ARE YOU DOING!?”

Flash mentally scratched that last one off the list.

He cocked his head and saw another pony, one wearing a very different armor. Flash's jaw dropped as his mind turned to horror.

A paladin.

A Solar Paladin. A Celestia-damned paladin had spotted them. Captain Armor's strongest soldiers, Equestria’s top elite, and the ponies that usually have the largest stick up their plots. Especially the one that was running over to them. Especially the paladin named Sterling Conduct.

Sterling Conduct shouted to the young guards. “What in Tartarus are you doing!? Stop that this moment!” He shouted as he was making his mad dash to the five young guards and right towards the spell circle.

“Can’t stop!” June yelled over the swirling torrent, “The spell’s been cast!”

Flash noticed the chalk getting smudged by Paladin Conduct's hooves as he entered the circle.

“Wait! NO! Don't step in and mess up the r-!” was all June could say before a aura of white magic enveloped them all.

Before the light of a messed up warp spell enveloped Flash, he had one single thought.

Buck...

Flash Sentry felt his head hit the floor. His body landing in a heap on a carpet.

“...me...” he muttered to himself.

Flash Sentry began to get up on his hooves and in a flash, the sentry had a good idea of where he was spirited away to. He was in a library: one of the grand royal libraries of Canterlot Castle. They contained a near endless amount of scrolls and tomes all brimming with information. Something was off, though. Too much dust hung in the air. Looking to his side he saw a bookshelf cart, and beyond that the indented shelves that made up the walls of this library. The amount of books the the walls contained seemed endless, towering high into a darkness that the dim light around him couldn't pierce. This was a library he had never seen before.

And that worried him.

To a normal pony, being in a library one had never been in before would not be anything new. But to a royal guard it was cause of alarm. Flash had seen the castle, he knew the castle inside and out, memorizing every single nook and cranny. Nothing less would be acceptable for one who wanted to join the royal guard. Flash had to know every part of the castle, and he knew this library wasn't a part of it. An interrupted warp spell would have sent him somewhere between point A and B somewhere in this castle. Somewhere in this castle was a dimly lit library that he knew nothing about.

Concern growing, Flash flapped his wings and took to the air for a better view. He saw small light spell-lamps littered across the seemingly endless area, giving the faintest of illuminations inside the pitch black library. All except for one strong light that pierced the darkness.

A few feet from where he had landed, there was a brightly glowing lamp. If anybody could tell him where he was, that would be the best place to start. The royal guard flew to the light and landed, folding up his wings and beginning to inspect the area.

Flash was half-right. Someone was there.

Was.

Inside this much more lit area, there was a tray with what seemed like a half-finished sandwich. A sniff identified it as still fresh. It seemed to have been abandoned, along with the open book which to Flash's trained eye, was sheet music. A beginners’ book. Flash lit up a bit as his eyes picked a guitar to the side, gently resting against a bookshelf.

“Hmm, I guess somepony was learning how to play the guitar,” he mused.
Taking the instrument in his hooves, he gave it a look over. “Hmmm, not bad. Great condition too, if not a bit dusty” he muttered to himself. “Bet I could play something nice on this. I wonder if it's in tune...”

The thought to strum it instantly came to mind. Play it. The thought swirled from left to right as Flash thought about it to himself, before “Where the heck am I?” returned to him. If he played it maybe he could get the attention of somepony else in here. Only question was, did he want whatever was in here to know he was there. Flash smiled, and was about to strum when a hoofstep in front of him caught his attention.

Paladin Sterling Conduct was in front of him. Apparently, Flash had been found before he even began to search.

“Sir? Do you know where we are? What's goin-” Flash found his answer in the form of a hoof gauntlet pressed against his mouth. Paladin Conduct's hoof silenced Flash as Conduct gave a “shhhhh” to him. Conduct's eyes were wide.

Something was wrong.

“Don’t speak. Follow me.” he quietly ordered.

Flash obeyed.

Flash noticed that his fellow guards were with Conduct. As soon as Conduct gave the signal, they all came into the brightly lit area.

Seems like I'm the last of the party to be found, Flash thought to himself.

With the gang all back together, June smiled and began to speak. "Good. Everyone's here. Let me make the runes so I can teleport us out of-" June immediately found her mouth also silenced by Castle Crest's hoof.

"Shhh. Again." Castle Crest hissed "He said be quiet, and no magic."

With the brown hoof on her mouth, June could only give a cute little glare... until Paladin Conduct interrupted them both.

"I said, ‘no speaking’. Follow me, and keep quiet."

With the rookie guards all forming a line they silently walked through the library. June in the back, Flash behind her, followed by Steel, the other two guards, and ending with Sterling Conduct leading them. He cautiously watching every shadow, waiting for one of the shadowing to be more than just a trick on his mind.

June, on the other hand, instead of keeping formation moved a bit forward to Flash’s side, and gave him another one of her irresistible smiles.

“Flash... got any clue what spooked him? Conduct doesn't scare like this easy," she quietly said to Flash.

Flash winced. The paladin who clearly knew what the hell was going on had told them to be quiet, but... Flash internally sighed. June would be June, and she wasn't the type who could be controlled so easily.

“No,” he curtly said.
“Well, at the least I know I'm in your capable hooves, Flash,” June said, giving him a warm smile.

Flash looked away from June and in front of him. They saw bars. Bars and light! On the other side of the bars was a hallway Flash wasn't familiar with, with what he assumed was an alcove for light to fall in. Flash smiled. Finally! A way out. Let’s get the heck out of here!

“Wait... bars... that means...” Castle Crest muttered. “They're keeping something in here.”

“And that's exactly why I said stay quiet. Now hurry before we're noticed,” Paladin Conduct said.

“Good,” June said, putting her hoof down. “I can't wait to get out of this stupid library.”

“Is that so?”

Everypony froze.

“The buck was that?” Steel wings said.

A distorted voice answered back. “You really don't like our library?”

As if on cue, all the lights in the library went out.

“Too bad.” boomed the voice, it seeming to come from everywhere.

An unnatural pitch blackness surrounded the ponies, Flash’s instincts told him exactly what this was. This was a darkness spell, A simple and basic spell used frequently by Luna worshipers and by thieves in the night to escape their pursuers. He'd seen it before in training, and so had Steel and June. . speaking of, Flash had expected June to say something back and light the room up. He of all stallions knew she was a talkative mare, so why wasn't June saying anything? Instead of June, it was the red mare among them who lit up her horn, creating a small little orb of light to illuminate the six ponies. A shining light which only revealed five.

Flash turned around and froze. Nopony was behind him.

June was gone.

“June!” Shouted Steel and Flash. Their eyes darted around in the darkness, trying to find their disappeared friend.

"June! Where are you? Come back to the light!" Steel shouted, his vision looking where Flash’s wasn’t in the hopes of seeing where June had vanished to.

“Too bad. You get to stay,” The voice boomed.

The five remaining ponies looked up, and dodged the incoming falling object. A stone object fell between them, smashing the ground upon impact. The royal guards were shaken, but alright… that was until they looked closer at what had been dropped on them.

A realistic stone statue of a pony with eyes wide of fear, a mouth open in a gasp.

“June! HOLY CRAP!”

Between them, was June's petrified body.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” the red mare said, backing up to the wall. “June's dead oh Celestia June's dead.”

The blackness that had consumed them began to laugh.

“You get to stay. You all get to stay! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

Chapter 1: Gone wrong – End.

Author's Note

And so, the story begins. This story takes place within Saint Absol’s The Necromantic Adventures of Lyra Heartstrings. And as such, it’s an Alternate universe tale. Some things you may remember, but others you will not.

This is going to be one heck of a ride, and I can tell you, Flash’s troubles have only begun. And I hope you all stay on for the ride.

I have a lot of people to thank. Saint Absol, KwirkyJ, GC13, FrontStevens, R5h… Heck, practically everyone in the #FimTWG chat. Seriously, everyone, thank you for all of your help. I really have to say, this looks better then a lot of what I’ve written in my past.

Thanks for your grammar and writing lessons, tips, advice and motivation. None of it would have happened if it wasn't for you guys.

Edit 12-5-2014: Made first batch of edits and a little extension of the prolouge. I also made a retcon. Jane is now June.
Edit: 12-9 and 10-2014: Made second batch of edits and rewrote parts of the chapter.
Edit: 8-25-2016: Updated and re-edited the chapter

Chapter 2 - Gone Very Wrong

Chapter 2: Gone very wrong

Flash stared at the stone statue that was his ex-marefriend.

June is dead.
June is dead.
You could have sav-

-No! She's just petrified don’t think that way! Flash shook off those fatal thoughts. We just have to get her out of here and undo the spell. She'll be ok as long as she’s in one piece.

Flash tried to get control over his breath. Get a hold of yourself. You’re a royal guard. You’ve prepared for this.

He repeated his mantra. Do not let fear take over. You do and you’re dead. You can save June. You can get out of here. Just keep your head together.

His breath began to slow. Rule one of crisis management, the first thing he was taught in the royal guard: Calm heads stay on their bodies, manic heads lose theirs.

It seemed Castle had done the same as Flash. The earth pony was not showing any signs of panic. Flash and Castle had remembered this lesson well. The red mare, on the other hand did not. Her eyes were wide with fear as she hyperventilated. Castle Crest was quick to move and calm his ally down.

“Hey, keep it together. Take a deep breath. She’s gonna be fine.” Castle said to her, his hoof on her shoulder

Flash turned to Steel and saw a different emotion. Anger.

Steel Wings’s wings, true to his name began to shine with a silver light. “Turn her back!” he shouted as the silver Pegasus took to the air. He slammed his front gauntlets together and a pair of steel claws emerged from them. The claws glowing the same color as his wings.

“Now!” He demanded, pointing at the shadows.

From the darkness, a voice responded. “Hmmm... let us think about that.... NO!”

A gray beam pierced through the shadow terrain surrounding them. Steel gracefully dodged the beam. Flash would have dodged, but the beam was not in his direction.

It was in Castle's.

Castle didn't even have the time to notice as the gray beam struck him, grayness spreading like wildfire all over him transforming into stone right in front of the eyes of the red mare he was helping a moment ago.

“Shit!” Steel shouted.

The red mare screamed again, fell on her back and pushed herself away. Her eyes wide with terror and her brain started to shut down.

It was Conduct who broke the silence of the newfound horror in the room.“Stop this!” He shouted to the darkness.

The darkness scoffed at his plea. “We don’t take kindly to threats. You threaten us, we turn one of you into stone. We'd say we're even now.” The demon shouted back.

What type of logic is that? Flash thought to himself.

Steel on the other hand, had other words. “Like hell we are!” Steel shouted “Turn them back now before I personally sever your-”

“Stand down!”Before Steel could continue his threat, Paladin Conduct bit down on Steel's tail and yanked him down to the ground.

“Stopping getting angry and think!” Conduct said. Steel turned to the paladin with a fierce glare, but instead, he met a stare that surpassed his own.

“Rush into this and you're going to die.” He told the silver pegasus as the two stared at eachother. Steel blinked first, then relented.

“Yes, Sir.” The gleam of Steel’s wings ceased. Steel clacked his gauntlets together again, the claws retracted back.

“Oooohhh...you thinking about what you're saying now?” Said the shadowy voice.

A dark silhouette in the shape of a mare walked out of the shadows.

“Good choice taking that advice, it's always smart to think about your actions. We suppose you've learned from Leeroy's mistakes after all.” She said, following up with a little sinister chuckle. “Oh, how your face lit up when we broke your brother in front of you, you really did take that lesson to heart huh?”

Sterling Conduct stared at the sinister shadow of a mare. Glowing lights lit up where the shadowy mare's eyes should be, along with an illusion of teeth that grinned.

“Demon.” Sterling Conduct said.

“Condi...” The shadow mare said back.

Wait what?! Flash thought, A demon!

“Di-did, you just say demon?!” Flash exclaimed.

“Yes! Haven't you seen one before?” She said as if she was asked her most favorite question in the world. Within a moment, the shadowy illusion jumped right into Flash's face, it's illusionary teeth smiling wide.

“N-No.” Flash said, hesitant. “You're... really a demon?”

“Like they say, if the horseshoe fits, nail it.” She chucked. The shadow mare placed a phantom hoof on his armor and floated around him like a dial.

“I'm quite a sight aren't I?” She asked as she spun around him “All the darkest terror of the underworld... brought from the shadows to wreck havoc on you and all your kind, free of charge.” The demon mare dramatically said, as if she had rehearsed it many times before.

The illusion broke into a shadow cloud and hopped to Steel Wings, it taking her equine form once again. Her hooves wrapped around his body before he could swat the black form away.

“You know, death, destruction, mayhem, jaywalking... rape. You know, the fun stuff.” She said with a sinister smile.

“To be in the presence of a demon...” The shadow demon glared at the remaining mare of the group. A small little trail of shadows stretched from the shadow mare heading towards the terrified red royal guard, who was now backed up against a bookshelf. With a toothy grin, the demon smiled at Steel as she put her a hoof on Steel's chest “...You should be....”

The demon dashed thought the small shadow to the red mare, stretching wide her hooves for her.

“-HAPPY!”

“AHHH!” The red mare screamed, jumping up on her hindlegs pressed against her wall, her little heart barely keeping her going.

The demon just laughed.

“Ahahahahah! Now that is a scream, girl! ” exclaimed the shadow demon holding her sides, laughing her tail off at her own handiwork. She turned to ponies that surrounded her, floating back into the center of the room. “Oh, did you see that? That was Priceless! Ahahaha!”

She laughed as if someone would join in the laughter. None did.

“Leave them alone, demon!” Paladin Conduct demanded.

Immediately, The shadow demon shifted from joy to annoyance. Whatever fun she had, Conduct had cut in two with his tone. It was at this time, Flash went to the red mare, calming her down back from the edge of a heart attack.

“Sheesh” she bemoaned, crossing her forehooves “You are such a spoilsport Condi. We're just trying to have some fun. You know what they say, you gotta make your own fun. This is the most fun we’ve had since we broke your brother.”
Sterling Conduct stared at the demon mare.

“Oh Condi, are you that mad that we forget to say hi? So nice to see you again by the way.”

Conduct said nothing.

“You smashed us up reeeaaal good last time. And that blade to the stomach, we were pretty sure that was gonna scar, bbuuut it didn't. We'd show you the real me to prove it but you'd kinda stab it again so that's out of the question. We're a very smart girl you know.”

Moving like a cloud, the shadow mare swirled around Sterling Conduct, her eyes beating down on him, slowly getting closer. Sterling Conduct gave her no quarter. He did not move, sweat, or even blink at the demon's attempts to get a reaction out of him, not even when she flew into his face and locked eyes with him. The two stared at eachother for a full minute, but Sterling Conduct still gave nothing. Seventy seconds in she groaned like a little filly in frustration and broke off the staring contest.

“God Damn you're boring. Can't even have fun with you,” She said, floating backwards away from him.

“Fine fine, let's move on blah blah small talk blah blah whatever, blah blah you're our hostages now so blah blah you do what we want.”

The demon just shrugged. “That better for ya, ya prick?”

“Hostages?!” The red mare asked.

The shadow demon jumped towards the reaction. “Yes! Yes you are!” She pointed to the red mare “You're in our domain, so you're... you're... ” The shadow demon pulled back, the shadow stroking it's chin “How'd he say it those prison novels...” She mumbled to herself until the answer came to her.

“...Right!” She said under her breath, the shadow demon growing a wide grin. She floated into the face of the red royal guard. “You're my bitch now. So be a good little filly, or I’ll make you squeal like one,” She quoted, snickering and inching closer to the red mare's fear.

Flash and Steel looked to Paladin Conduct for direction, yet all they found was him standing still, unmoving with his eyes closed. Steel spoke first “Sir, what do we do? You said stand down, what the hell do we-”

Conduct's eyes smashed opened, he leaned back standing on his hind legs and tapped his right gauntlet with his left. From it, a small stick of sorts extended out of his right gauntlet. Conduct's eyes remain straight as he positioned his small stick behind him. A shining white blade magically formed, coming out of the hilt and extending right into the shadows.

It then hit something.

“AHHHHHHH!!!!!”

The demon mare froze in place and screamed. But it did not come from the shadow mare. From the darkness beyond their vision they heard a young mare scream. It was infact the same voice as the demon’s, but without her demonic echo. A young mare screeched in pain, followed by a hollow thud on the floor.

“Did you hit her though the shadows?” Steel asked.

“Of course. I weakened her. Now get ready to fight,” spoke Sterling Conduct.

The Paladin’s words were confirmed when the shadows surrounding them began to lighten up and fade away. The demon’s darkening spell was beginning to fade. Paladin Conduct’s white ethereal blade pulled from the shadows and back into itself. When the tip emerged from the fading darkness it was stained red, dripping the demon’s blood all over her own carpet. The blade had shrunk to a fraction of what it used to be. With a swipe, the constructed blade was dispelled splattering the blood onto the carpet below.

Enough light had entered to allow a faint, but undeniable silhouette of a pony to be seen. It moaned in pain, the figure struggling to get back on it’s hooves from the pool of blood it had collapsed in. Just as the figure began to become visible, The red light of a unicorn horn flashed as the silhouette became covered in shadows once again.

“YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!” yelled the silhouetted pony. It was not a projected voice like before, but coming from the genuine article this time. From the shadows a massive dark imitation of an dragon's claw emerged to crush Sterling Conduct for his insolence.

Still standing on his two hind legs, he swung his hilt and his sword reformed, cleaving the shadow claw in half with a blade as long as a pony’s body. More magic gathered into his claymore, and with another swing released a blast of white energy toward the darkness where the demon mare stood. Flash could see a silhouette of the demon mare reel back, rose to her hind legs and caught the blast of light tossing it upward, exploding with a thunderous bang. Flash looked, getting another brief glimmer of the demon's true form as streams of light streaked down onto the carpet.

Paladin Conduct called to the remaining royal guards. “You three! Stand and fight!”

“Are you crazy?! We don't stand a chance against that thing!” The red mare shouted

Fighting... Flash thought. My weapon, I left it behind when... oh crap.

“How do we beat her?” Steel Wings shouted, already airborne and claws drawn.

“I’ve fought her before!” Paladin Conduct said. “Stay up close and keep pressure on her so she can't cast her high-level magic. She lacks physical strength but augments it with magic, so don’t let her hit you. Use her books as cover and shields, she'll hesitate if they're in the way!”

“Not a chance in Tartarus!” The demon mare shouted from inside her shadows.

"Winds of the world, to me thou attend!” As she began to speak, Flash felt the wind picking up between his wings “To the corners of the earth, my enemies to send!"

The wind picked up and doubled, Flash soon found himself struggling to stay on the ground.

“WHIRLWIND!”

The second she finished her speedy incantation a powerful gust of wind blew up to sweep each of the ponies off their hooves. Steel Wings jammed his gauntlet's claws into the upper walls of the library. Paladin Conduct embedded his blade into the ground to keep himself still.

The red mare lit up her horn to try to use something to save herself. Both Flash and the red mare quickly lost their fights, along with their helms flying off their heads the two were swept up in the whirlwind created by the demon. The flying red mare quickly fell out of Flash's vision when the spell released a burst of green light, sending Flash flying across the dark library like a cannonball.

“Ahhhhh!!!!” He shouted, flailing and trying to right himself.

This wasn't the first time a strong wind had sent him astray. His father had made sure of that. It was just a matter of-

“Oh crap! A Chandi-”

The first thing Flash felt was his throbbing head. The pegasus slowly awoke, his vision returning to him as he regained consciousness. Raising his head from the ground he tried to take in his surroundings. Only a dim lantern nearby illuminated his world. He was surrounded by broken glass and metal.

“I must have hit that damned chandelier head on. I need to take to the air. Find them.” Flash panted. He outstretched his-

“-AHHH!”

Flash Sentry screamed as his mind exploded in pain.

“AHHHHH!!! FUCK!!!”

Flash clenched his teeth. His left wing extended all the way out as far as it could, his limbs stretching out across a stained red carpet below him as an insane pain overloaded his thoughts. Shards of broken glass cut into him as he spasmed on the floor, all failing to get any attention.

The agony slowly began to pass as the pain began to subside. And as the pain began to lessen, his thoughts slowly returned to him. Including the thought that he knew some part of him was hurt. Badly. Time was against him, he needed to identify what was wrong.

One by one, he checked his limbs.

Right forehoof, up.
Left forehoof, up.
Left hindleg, up.
Right hindleg, up.

With none of those hurting, he pushed himself on his hooves.

“Ahhh. Shit...shit...” his face wincing in pain as his body movements triggered and told him the source of the massive pain.

His right wing.

Flash grimaced, and turned to see how bad it was. “...Oh Celestia, my wing...”

His right wing was broken. Bent the other way at the carpal joint. The broken wing was covered in scratches from the broken glass, His orange feathers stained with reddish-brown dry blood as well. Flash could feel the broken bones in a wing that no longer responded to his mind's commands. It hung limp, like if it was a cheap stage prop glued onto him.

While the throbbing pain in his right wing dominated most of his pain, Flash knew the rest of him hadn't gotten off the hook. He took a nasty hit into steel and glass and then crashed. He could feel the scrapes from the broken glass had cut him and the bruises from the metal had injured him. The carpet he stood on was stained brown with reddish-brown dry blood.

Wait, dry blood?

The blood on his coat and the floor was all dry. It had been there for a while. He had been there for a while. Flash wondered how long he had been there...for all he knew it might have been hours. Noone had come for him. “Why?” Flash asked himself.

After a moment, the grim answer came. Whatever had happened after he was crashed did not end well. They lost. His friend, that red mare guard and the paladin had lost. That demon beat them all. And the only reason why Flash Sentry was still alive was because he got launched and knocked out. The moment he processed that thought he knew the demon might be… no, he knew she wascoming for him next, coming for him right now.

And then he felt something was behind him.

In a panic Flash turned around to see nothing, ignoring the pain as his broken wing shook. He scanned and scanned the darkness looking for the predator hunting him in this alien library, but found nopony.

“Don’t jump at shadows, you need to keep your head together,” he muttered to himself.

Flash knew was alone. Because if the demon was in fact there he knew he’d be dead the very next second. He knew as soon as he processed the thought of her hunting him, his mind began to play tricks on him.

His father taught him better than that. His father's mentorship and raising him, as a graduate of Cloudsdale's flight academy, and as a member of the royal guard, Flash Sentry was accustomed to working with an injured, beaten, and battered body.

But he knew a broken wing changes everything. No more flight. No more evasion. No ability to stop the demon and no ability to defeat it. And worse, no allies left to fight with him.

“Shit...” He said, “This is bad.”

His right wing was broken. Badly.
His stronger allies had failed in their attack.
His own failing strength would lack any power to stop his enemy.
And he was where no help would ever come to save him.

Logic entered Flash's pained mind. What two royal guards and a holy paladin could not defeat in good condition, Flash knew he wouldn't stand a chance with a broken body and no wingpower.

In summary, Flash thought to himself. Start writing your will. You're going to die.

Fear began to take him.

“No!” He said to himself.

He immediately shook his head, he knew exactly where these thoughts lead.

I'm going to die in here…

“Calm heads keep their heads, manic heads lose theirs.”

I'm going to leave mom and Firsty all alone…

“Calm heads keep their heads, manic heads lose theirs.”

You’re abandoning them, just like-

“NO!” He shouted to himself.

“Stay in control. Stay. In. Control.” He told himself against the dangerous thoughts of his mind. Flash continued speaking to himself, nearly growling at the comparison.

“I will not die here.” He said.

He began to gain control over his breathing.

“I will not abandon my family.”

He felt more in control, his breathing no longer in a panic.

“I will save June!”

The manic forces within had been quelled.

“I will not wind up like him!”

It was replaced with a wind of righteous indignation.

“I am getting out of here.” He declared.

Flash Sentry opened his eyes.

“I will live.”

Flash soon realized he was lost. In the darkness, he managed to find a wall covered in bookcases. The lights on the bookcase walls were much more dim than before, Flash could barely see a few feet ahead of him. As he kept on walking, he felt his stomach grumble.

“Hungry...” Flash thought to himself. He was now noticing that he was getting hungry. What he didn't notice was a figure running into him. Flash and the figure noticed right at the same time, and the figure jammed on her hooves and averted collision at the last second. Flash double-blinked. It was the red mare. His eyes scanned his target. She was decked in an armor that barely fit her with a helmet a size too big, with a small streak of white in her mane and tail he failed to notice before. Her eyes were lavender.

“It's you...” Flash said.

“Oh thank the sun and stars,” she said. “I thought we lost you too...”

Flash leaned in and started asking his questions. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

The red mare sighed and turned a little down. “We got our flanks kicked. The other two...I don't know what happened to them, but I don't think they're... they're...” Her eyes darted away from Flash.

Them too... Flash's mind told him. More than June and that earth pony, but them too.

“I don't know what she did to them... but I managed to get away and she's looking for me." With the mare, he noticed she had something in a telekinetic glow. Something familiar to Flash. "I um...kinda got this as protection...I know, I know, but it's better than nothing, right?”
“Hey, it's the guitar from before,” Flash said.

The red mare was curious. “Ye-Wait we need to get out of here. Come on, follow me. If we make it to the gates maybe we can sneak out.”

Flash grudgingly agreed “Well we’re gonna die if we stay here, so we don't really have any other good choices, do we?”

“We'd say you do.”The red mare and the orange stallion looked at each other.

“Oh crap!” He muttered.

Shadows jumped from nowhere and Flash saw dark tendrils ensnare himself and the mare's back hooves, a magic telekinetic aura of red covering them both. Suddenly, they both felt themselves being dragged away into the darkness. The red mare screamed and Flash and the mare were consumed by darkness as a demonic force pulled them elsewhere.

Eventually, the pair heard a set of double doors open with something launching them in the direction of the sounds. The sensation of telekinetic magic disappeared as Flash found himself tossed. Like passing through an illusion, he and the red mare popped out of the shadows and fell chest first onto the floor. The mare landed with a “oomph!” The guitar she was holding was tossed onto her backside landing unscathed. Flash, on the other hand, landed with a painful “Ahh!”, kicking up the bruises on his body and a short pain from his broken right wing.

The red mare got up first and helped Flash up to his hooves and they both turned to face the direction they had been tossed from. In front of them was two open double doors, and behind that was nothing but darkness… a magical wall of shadows. The shadow wall was slowly encroaching on the rest of the room. Small tendrils of darkness stemmed from it, and from the shadows a pair of glowing demonic eyes emerged. The two royal guards readied themselves for a futile last stand.

“Your choice? I'd say you stay a while...” They both heard a sinister voice say. “Consider yourself my guest.”
“Guests, where we like it or not!” The red mare said.

“Exactly my dear!” She chuckled before the demonic mare's voice broke out into wild laughter.

Tendrils gripped the double doors and began to pull. The double doors slammed shut, then locked itself all on it's own.

“The demon of Canterlot welcomes you to her library!”

The shadows in the room receded, but a voice remained.

“Enjoy your stay. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!”

Chapter 2 – Gone Very Wrong - End

Author's Note

Special thanks to “A Dragon Dreaming” on Canternet’s IRC for help with the spell invocation. As well as Sunset Shimmer (on the same channel), everyone’s favorite bacon pony for her help too.

And thanks to Mark KB for help editing the early version of this chapter, and for helping me put the nail in the coffin of my habit of .” instead of ,”
Some grammar may be weird, but your help isn’t. I really appreciate it!

Update: 8/25/2016: Chapter update

Chapter 3 - Under her horn

Chapter 3 – Under her horn

The doors shut.

The demon spoke.

And the two were now alone.

The two eyed the wall, keeping their gazes on it waiting for something to happen. Waiting for something that never came.

“I...think she’s gone…” the red mare spoke. “I actually think she’s gone.”

Flash agreed.“Well...that’s just then…then...”Flash Sentry’s eyes closed on him. With the danger passed his adrenaline began to drain out of him. Soon, without Dr. Adrenaline keeping him going his body recalled the mess of physical pain and mental exhaustion that he was in. It was a fight lost before it ever started.

His hooves shook and his body give way. Exhaustion, hunger, blood loss and injury had finally taken its toll. His body succumbed. Flash fell to the ground, unconscious.

His he faded, all he could hear was the red mare’s shout.

“Flash? FLASH!”

He saw a familiar red telekinetic aura around his own body. His eyes shot open. He tried to shoot himself up to all fours and spread both his-

Snap

“AHHHHHHHH!” Flash screamed in pain as the bone in his right wing snapped in half.

“AHH!! AHHHHHH!!!” Flash Sentry screamed as he fell on his belly and reeled in pain.

“Oh no-no-no!” a voice said. “What do we do!?”

Flash screamed again in pain.

“Uhhh... uhh... go back to sleep!”

Flash felt something strike him. Unknown magic he was too far gone to recognize. His eyes widened before growing heavy. Confusion filled Flash’s face as the pain in his body subsided and his awareness left him drifting into unconscious.

“Ok...let’s try this again. Come on Laplace, you can do this...we can do this girl...just gotta do it right... yeah...”

Flash’s eyes blinked open, his mind slowly coming to. A familiar red telekinetic glow was covering his body. Fearing the worst his eyes opened in shock and tried to get to his hooves, but his limbs didn’t budge. Flash couldn’t move an inch. He was helpless.

A shout caught him as he struggled. “Wait! Flash! Don’t move! You’re gonna break the cast again!”

His head turned. Flash looked up and noticed the purple eyed red mare in front of him.

“Stay still ok?” She said to him. “I’ll let you go as soon as I know it's safe to.”

“W-what?” Flash was reasonably confused. “Wh... what’s going on?!”

“I’m healing you. That’s what,” the red mare said back. “You passed out from your injuries earlier. So I’ve kinda been spending time healing your wounds.”

Flash looked up to her. “I see…” He said, looking to his broken wing and seeing it plastered. “You...did this?”

The red mare wore a great smile as she nodded in glee.

“...thank you…” He said.

The red mare smiled even more. If flash didn’t know any better, she also had a slight blush.

“Oh um… d-don’t mention it,” Said the cute red mare, her purple eyes dodging contact with Flash’s. “We’re royal guards, we gotta stick together after all. Service to the crown and all that jazz. Anyway, you woke up a little bit ago, freaked and re-broke your wing so I kinda cast a sleep spell on you until I well... kinda bound you with my magic.”

“Huh?” Flash said back.

“You don’t remember? Maybe you weren’t all awake, or may-oh nevermind. That’s what happened.” The red mare said. “I made a cast for your wing before I started healing it again. I’ve managed to mend the bones but if you try to use it it’s gonna snap again. Pegasus wings can be fragile you know. After that I kinda focused on the rest of your injuries, they’re mostly gone by now.”

Flash just took the information in. With enough, he asked his first real question. “How long was I out?” Flash asked her.

“You’ve been out for most of the day. Four and a half hours, ” She answered. “Thank the sun and stars there’s a clock in here.”

Flash nodded to what she said.

“So… no one came for us…” He said.

The red mare shook her head. “Nopony. They kinda abandoned us in here, at least for now. I think we’re gonna be stuck here for a while.” The red mare trotted around Flash and out of his vision.

“I tried to find some way to get out of here,” She began while out of his vision.“But I couldn’t find anything. Heck, there’s not even flowing air or power in here. It’s all done via magic, which I assume is powered by this demon. This place is completely closed off from the rest of the castle.”

“I see,” Flash replied. “So how are we gonna get out?”

Flash heard the red mare stopped trotting. “We’re not.”

“What?” Flash said back. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. I can’t find any way to get out of this bloody room anymore. Everything is sealed up. Those double doors are the only way in or out. We’re stuck in a dank room filled with old equestrian tax laws inside a secret library in canterlot castle that nopony told us about! And even if we could get out of this room and into the library area, it only means we’d have to deal with that demon that trapped us in here.”

“She can’t be guarding the doors forever. While she’s distracted or sleeping, maybe we could-”

“I already tried that. I cast a bunch of illusion spells and even a spell to make people not to want or need anything from me and ignore my presence, and she saw right through it. It was like I wasn’t even trying and she... look I don’t want to talk about it ok? We’re not getting out of here. We just need to sit and wait for rescue. We're under her horn until then. There’s nothing more we can do.”

Flash disagreed. “There's got to be something.”

Her voice became defensive. “No, there isn't something at all.”

Flash could tell the red mare did not like the turn in the conversation, but he pressed non-the-less. “How can you give up like that?”

“W-when I tried,” she said “she threatened to kill me. I can’t fight that... that monster. We don’t stand a chance.”

It sounded like her composure was fading fast, Flash noted. Though the mare did have a point, their options were very limited. “Well, maybe you have a-” Flash began to say before the shout of the red mare cut him off.

“Fine! I cut a deal with her ok?!” Flash heard her shout, her voice breaking the further she spoke.

“I begged her not to kill us! I got on my knees like a damn little filly and begged her to spare us! Told her that we’d be worth more alive than dead okay? I promised I wouldn't try anything and if I'd keep you in line that she'd take good care of us and not harm us. What choice did I have?!” It sounded like she was about to cry.

“If I tried anything or if I had said no... if I did anything she didn't want me to do she would have killed us both on the spot! I did what I have to do to survive! I’m not going to die in here, Flash! Whatever it takes I'm getting out of this hell-hole one way or another!”

She sniffled, he wished he could see her, but she was behind her and he couldn’t. His mentally felt his own gut punching himself for pushing the girl the way he did. He could feel her telekentic aura around him tighten with her magic and emotions flowing out of her like a torrent. Flash played what she had said it through his mind.

The red mare, on her knees, as a shadowy demon stood in front of her, begging for life to a monster that had just beat the life out of her earlier. After doing Celestia-knows-what to her, forcing her to surrender and... then him calling her out for making the decision that didn't result in death. Guilt overtook him, and he spoke before his thought.

“I’m sorry.”

Laplace was standing still behind him as he tried to look at her again with no avail. He felt his gut squeeze as her magic intensified once more, her spell flowing into him. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I… I understand.”

“Huh?” She muttered.

“You're right. You made a good choice.” He said. “I'm sorry.”

Flash wasn't a hundred percent certain about those words, but he knew whose side he should be on. Deep down, he felt he wanted to help her, he needed to make sure she was ok. He wasn't sure why he had those subtle feelings, but he knew he did. Flash lamented he couldn't see her facial reaction to, all he could only see the double doors in front of him.

“Would you have done the same?” She asked him, abit randomly. Her voice no longer broken up.

Flash looked down. “N-” Flash silenced himself.

No was the pre-programmed answer. A royal guard does not submit. He does not surrender, even when outnumbered. He retains his honor and never sheds it. To protect Equestria no matter the cost, to defend the crown to the bitter end.

But Flash knew that was a total pile of manure. There was no crown here, no country. This did not endanger kingdom, and nobody but them was in danger. Just a mere pony against an unstoppable force and nothing more. Would he dive into death and abandon his little brother, abandon his mother just like that for no reason but honor? Would he toss away any dignity he had managed to scratch together, toss away any chance at having a respected life, just to get out of one situation?

Flash lowered his head. “I… I don’t know…”

The mare saw his confusion, and got her answer.

“Look, If I can heal your wings, maybe we can do something to get us out of here if the opportunity presents itself. She wasn’t smart enough to suppress my magic or disable your wings. We just have to heal up, recover our strength and tough it out for a while. And maybe if we're lucky, tomorrow she'll let us go if Shining Armor does what she wants.”

“Huh?” Flash responded.

“Oh, umm... well,” she began. “She muttered it when she was bringing me back here after I tried to get out. We’re apparently her… bargaining chips for Captain Armor. She was thinking out loud what she was going to get for trading us. Since we're in ‘good condition’ she thinks she'll get something nice for us. It seems like she's made these trades before with Captain Armor.”

What?! Flash's mind went.

Equestria does not negotiate with demons. Give an inch, and a demon will steal ten miles. Flash did not know the holy captain of Equestria's paladins well. But Flash knew that out of all people, Shining Armor, for all the heroics, the speeches, and public appearances, would not be cutting any deals with demons. But then again, there shouldn’t be a demon in Canterlot Castle in the first place.

She trotted around Flash's body, coming back into view to face him.

“So...Flash. If I let you out, you promise you won’t go getting us killed or break your wing on me?” She asked him.

Like there was much choice. Flash knew they were prisoners, and like it or not under the horn of this demon. “Yeah, I promise,” Flash said nodding.

The red mare smiled. “Alright! A promise is a promise!”

Flash felt a telekinetic aura surrounding him vanish. His body’s movement returned to him. Flash unlike before, decided not to to move his right wing. Looking, he saw the red mare’s hoof extended to help him up. She had a nice, shiny red coat. Flash would guess she just prettied herself up just to meet him, but he knew that couldn't be the case. She must have before going on her guard shift to look nice.

“My name’s Laplace,” she said.

“Flash Sentry,” he said back. With a smile, he took her hoof and helped Flash back up on his hooves.

“Nice to meet you,” Laplace said to him with a genuine smile, before the red mare ran a hoof through her slightly darker red mane. Flash noticed there were little accents of white and purple in the middle of her mane. Flash liked the look.

“I’d say the same if it wasn’t for our situation,” Flash told Laplace.

She frowned. “Right...”

Flash took in his surroundings. What Laplace said rung true. The room seemed to be nothing but a collection of bookshelves. Upon inspecting them, once again she was right.

“Equestria tax code of... wow that book's older than me,” Flash said to himself.

“Yeah, me too,” Laplace chuckled.

Flash continued to inspect the room. Nothing but a bunch of boring books. Flash then looked deeper. The ceiling had climate charms planted all over it, meant to keep the books in good condition. Magical light bulbs were strewn across the ceiling. He recognized this as the handiwork of a librarian. Most of the royal library had very similar setups. Instead of relying on other methods magic was used to keep the books safe, and provide light when they desire.

All in all, librarians were weird. Some were really really cute, but still weird.

If what Laplace said earlier was true Flash pondered, It would explain why the lights were so dim back in the main library area. The demon wasn't lighting them because she didn't need them. Flash looked and noticed the guitar again.

“This is bad-oh hey a guitar."
“Hmm, I guess somepony was learning how to play the guitar.”

Flash's continued this train of thought. The demon must have been trying to play the guitar before we arrived, that's why where I initially landed was lit up more than the rest of the place. If that's where she was... then... that means....

“She knew we were here from the start... she was toying with us the entire time,” Flash said out loud.

This got Laplace's attention “Huh? She only noticed us when we got to the exit.”

“No. She was where I landed after the botched teleport. She was watching us the entire time,” Flash told her.

There was a moment of silence between the two. “So we never stood a chance of getting out of here,” She said.

“For now. We just need to be patient,” Flash replied. There wasn't much else to say before a yawn broke their silence.

“Come on Flash, let's get some rest. I'm exhausted, and I know you're tired too. We're both hurt, and I need to recover my strength if I want to heal us.”

Flash closed his eyes and lazily agreed. “Okay.”

“I can continue healing your wing in the morning. And if we're lucky, tomorrow this nightmare will be all over.”

“Yeah... let's hope.”

After all, when under the horn of evil, hope is all one has left.
.

Chapter 3 – Under her horn – end

Chapter 4 - Negotiations

Author's Note

Want more Paladin Bonbon goodness?
Go check her out in "The Necromantic Adventures of Lyra Heartstrings"!

Chapter 4 - Negotiations

Chapter 4 – Negotiations

Flash placed a second book on the stack.

Flash knew it wasn't much, but at least it'd mark how long they've been here. The day was almost over, and he had almost forgotten to start it. Something to mark the time. Yesterday was the day they were put in here, and today was the second day.

True to her word, the demon hadn't harmed them at all. Flash knew it wouldn't last, that the demon would stop keeping true to her word the moment she felt like it. After all, a demon was a demon, and demons were never to be trusted. Flash knew he had to be ready for when she would betray their deal.

Laplace had been a good pony to be stuck with. He quite enjoyed her company, and she was easy on the eyes. Flash made an effort to avoid gazing too long at Laplace’s figure. Aside from getting scared and possibly treasonous at first, she seemed more accustomed and level-headed than he initially thought, and smarter than he initially thought as well. He supposed she earned that red star of a cutie mark for a reason. As long as she didn't break into a panic like she did yesterday they might just stand a chance at escaping.

But until then, there wasn't much else to do. Wait, heal, talk.

“I suppose we should be grateful that she gave us food,” Flash said sarcastically.

And eat.

It was actually quite a lot of food. It was large tray filled with dandelion sandwiches. More than enough for two ponies, more than enough for 6, actually.

Laplace had a hollow laugh. “Eeyuup!” she said back, taking one of the dandelion sandwiches, falling on her flank and gobbling it up without any manners whatsoever. “These sandwiches are pretty good,” she said with her mouth full.

Flash on the other hoof, had a bit of curiosity as the gears in his brain turned. “Laplace, can you lift up the tray for me? I wanna see something.”

Laplace tilted her head. “Hmm? Why?”

“I want to see if the tray's from the castle kitchen,” Flash said back.

“Oh, I know that. It is,” Laplace answered.

Flash exhaled. “Then it means they know we're here. Unless she's able to make food all on her own.”

“I doubt that,” Laplace replied “If she wants to bargain with Shining, I'd expect she'd try to let them know first chance she got. That seems to be her M.O. Anyway.”

“Yeah...” Flash said, trotting over to the tray and taking a sandwich for himself.

Curiosity struck Flash. “Laplace,” he began. “I haven't seen you around the castle before. What part of the castle are you stationed in? I know I'm a little new to the afternoon guard shift, but I thought I met most of the guards.”

Laplace stopped eating for a moment and asked Flash a question. “You meet most of the guards?” She asked curiously.

Flash nodded. “Yea, most of them. I didn't meet the Earth Stallion that was with us, though.”

“I see, I see,” Laplace said. “Castle Cless, that's what his name was, the brown stallion. He's nice.” Laplace smiled. “He's a friend of mine, I've known him for a couple of years now. Anyway you first, then I'll go. What parts do you guard? I'm more curious about that honestly.” Laplace said.

And so, the two began to talk. While Laplace slowly applied her magic to Flash's right wing, the two talked about things big and small, compared tastes in music and even for a kick, took a look at “Repealed bylaws of ponyville”, another book here in the collection of tax laws.

“-And also it's legal for you to own alligators?” Laplace commented, reading the massive tome. “Wow, this one's actually pretty recent, like, like a few years ago recent. Someone must have really loved their pet alligator to get it repealed.”

“What were they thinking? Those things are ferocious! Especially a feral one!” Flash said back. “Have you ever seen those things? On a family vacation I almost got eaten by one of those! Who in their right mind would keep one as a pet?”

Laplace disagreed. “I don't know, I think a little alligator could be really cute.”

Flash gave her a disbelieving look. “I bet you five bits there's no such thing as a cute little alligator. Anyway, my turn,” Flash said, taking the book and flipping pages until he randomly stopped on one.

“Here's another. Apparently you can park your chariot inside someone else's tree home. But if it stays there for more the 48 hours it can be fined for illegal parking. And the owner of the home can charge rent if it's been there for more than 96 hours. But now, even if the tree is on fire the owner of the tree home can still charge rent. Unless you're a paladin... for some reason.”

Laplace had a little laugh to that. “My father used to be a Paladin,”

“He was?” Flash started to say.

My father's- Flash was about to say next, before he cut himself off. He didn't want to go down that road. Instead, Flash just stayed silent, and Laplace joyfully continued on.

“Um, yea. My father was one of the Paladins here some time ago. He wasn't the strongest, but he was really magically gifted, and he knew the captain, long before Shining Armor took over a few years ago.”

“And your mom?” Flash then asked.

“Oh...” Laplace said, her voice growing a little weaker. “Umm... she's complicated. It's a long story.”

“Complicated?”

Laplace slightly sighed. “Well...”

To Flash, it looked like Laplace was weighing if she should or shouldn't. It drew a mental red flag.

“Well, we got the time if you wanna tell it,” Flash said.

Laplace continued to think about it. “Well...um...if I tell you, you won't think any less of me? Right?”

That was a odd question, Flash thought. And another red flag.

And now that he felt the itch, Flash knew he had to scratch it. “Of course Laplace.”

Laplace shrugged and resided herself “Well If we think it's a good idea, I guess we're gonna- huh? Is that the door?”

They heard an unlocking sound. Turning, the saw the double doors unlock and slowly open on their own with a loud creak. The lights outside the tax room were on. But only for a small part of the demon's library. It was an illuminated path of lights. Natural curiosity took control of them both, Flash got to his hooves and helped Laplace up and together they walked towards the now opened doors.

“Flash, what is it?” Laplace asked.

“Um...” Flash knew the answer. And that answer was trouble.

Maybe we should go take a look.

No duh, that's exactly what you need to do.

Double duh, that's exactly what that demon wants you to do.

Whatever it is, it's not going to be good. The moment we step out there something terrible is gonna happen to me.

Flash looked at Laplace. Despite moving first, she was a step behind and keeping one step behind Flash... despite him slowing his pace.

She's... not going to...is she?

…

...Celestia damn it.

“Let me take a look,” Flash said, not a single hint of his mental process showing.

“Thank you!” Laplace replied. Stopping to let Flash take the lead into the unknown.

Flash sighed. ...Damn chivalry. Why do girls keep doing this to me?

Flash trotted through the doors into the library, a set of lights illuminating a path for him, leaving darkness to both sides of him. After trotting a few cautious feet, a massive dark imitation of a dragon's claw came out of nowhere.

“Perfect! I needed one of you for this! So nice of you to volunteer!”

“Son of a bit-” was all Flash had time to say before he was snatched by the claw.

“Flash!” Laplace shouted as the double doors closed in front of her.

“I knew iiiiiiiitttttt!!!” was all he could yell as he was pulled into a darkness unknown.

After two minutes of travel inside the darkness, Flash was plopped out landing softly with an “omph!” Immediately, Sunlight hit his eyes. “Ahhh, so bright,” Flash muttered as he shielded his slowly adjusting eyes. “Couldn't they just turn it-Wait?! Sun?!”

He was close to the cell bars he noticed earlier, and behind those, the cell bars was a mural from which the setting sunlight shone through.

“The sun! Sweet Celestia's sun!” he said with a joy in his heart.

Looking at the figures behind the bars, he immediately stopped his youthful act. In front of him stood a unicorn stallion of strong stature wearing a unique decorated armor for both show and battle. His coat was a strong white, his mane blue like an ocean with a steak of the sky's color.

Flash knew this unicorn well. Almost all of Equestria did. Shining Armor. Hero of the crown, captain of the guard, the strongest and highest ranked of all paladins; if he’s around, something serious was going down.

Flash gulped.

To his left was another pony. A mare with a cream colored coat and a dual mane of blue and pink, on her back was a warhammer that was far too big for her to wield. Flash noticed the armor she wore indicated she was a paladin of the Solar Guard, the division of paladins Shining Armor's personally led.

“Captain Armor!” Flash shouted.

“Don't worry, we're gonna get you out of there.” Shining Armor said to Flash.

“See? There's your proof of life. Flash Sentry is fine, not harmed at all,” A shadowy mare began to trot from the darkness of the cell, “Perfectly fine, so are the others. They're just... kinda not available at the moment. I assure you, none of my prisoners are hurt.”

All their eyes went on Flash's bandaged wing. Shining Armor's glare moved from it, and back to the shadow mare.

“Oh...heh-heh...um that was an accident. He did that to himself. We're not an idiot who goes flying into a chandelier at full speed. Those damn things hurt. We remember last time when one of you sent us sent flying into one... so actually, we'd say it's your fault, cause you're the guys who put those bloody things there in the first place.”

She was not paid any attention.

“Soldier, state your name,” Shining ordered.

Flash hesitated.

“Oh come on, we told you it was Flash Sentry,” bemoaned the demon.

He glared at the demon before turning to Flash. “Soldier, state your name, rank, and unit.” He commanded again.

Flash obeyed. “Flash Sentry Junior sir.” He said. “Private, Royal guard, recruit division B.”

After a quick check of a paper, the cream colored paladin had, Shining nodded and asked his next question. “Good. Soldier, how's your condition? Has she coached or told you to say anything at all?”

Flash looked at the shadow mare.

“Ignore her. She's not going to lay a hoof on you.” Shining said. “If she wants anything, she won't be doing anything to you. So ignore her and please answer my question.”

“Hey! Don't ignore us!”

“Ignore her and tell me the truth,” Shining said once again.

The shadow demon's face scrunched like a filly as Flash answered.

“She hasn't said a thing about this. She hurt my friends, I saw her turn one of the guards with me into stone, but she hasn't told me what happened afterward to him or what she did to the rest of them,” he began “I only know about me and another guard, Laplace. We were captured and she hasn't hurt either of us.”

“Laplace?” Captain Armor said curiously.

Flash replied. “Yes, she was one of the guards that was with us.”

“When did you meet her?” questioned Shining. “When did she tell you her name? Do you know her rank or division?”

“Uhhh...” Flash was a confused by why he'd ask that, but he answered none-the-less. “Well, no. I well, met her yesterday when this all happened, and I found out after she captured us.”

Flash mentally shrugged it off and got to the thing he wanted to say. “Can you tell our families that we're ok? I don't want my little brother or my mom to worry. I know Laplace doesn't want her family to worry either. We're being held inside one of her rooms, it's a room filled with old equestrian laws.”

Shining Armor closed his eyes. When it came time for a rescue, he knew where that was.

“Alright. I'll let your mother know, as well as Laplace's family,” Shining Armor Said.

The shadow mare had a chuckle. “It's a pity that you're lying to him, that's a very good idea if that was true. We're sure Laplace's family and Flashy's family would love to know how their little ponies are doing, maybe you should let us out, that way they can be face to face again? Let them have a hug maybe?”

Shining Armor winced, so did the cream colored paladin. “We're not letting you out of here, demon,” spoke the defiant solar guard paladin.

“Ouch. So harsh, so harsh,” The shadow mare responded. “You know you catch more flies with honey than vinegar right? We're hurt, really hurt.”

The shadow mare trotted over to Flash.

“Seriously, Flashy here would be screwed if we treated him the way you treat us. But unlike you monsters,” Said the monster “We're treating our prisoner really well. He's been quite cozy in our library, just waiting for his boss to do the smart thing and give us what we want. We have been a very, very gracious host. In-faaaact...”

With a light of the shadow mare's horn, she materialized a sandwich... one of the sandwiches from the room he'd guess.

“We even share our food with our guests! See? Watch him eat it.”

Flash looked and had no idea what to do with the telekinetic sandwich floating in front of him.

The shadow mare leaned towards Flash “Eat it, You're gonna make us all look bad,” she whispered

Flash had no response. He wasn't sure if to be confused, to be hungry, or what. Just a “uuuhhhh...”

“What? You think we've enchanted it or something?” The shadow mare said, “Like we slipped a spell inside that sandwich to release hydrochloric acid so when you eat it the acid will dissolve your insides in a heinous, crazy painful and gory death?”

Flash just looked at her. “...well … now that you're being really specific about it...”

The shadow mare groaned, and with a telekinetic snatch and teleport it vanished out of view. The shadow immediately faded away as Flash heard the sounds of chewing.

“You're an idiot,” said a singular voice from above. “Seriously, the castle chef is great. He even makes a basic sandwich taste fine. Worth missing reading a book.”

Flash felt something hit his head. Looking up, bread crumbs tumbling out of the mouth of a mare high above him, standing on the ceiling as easily as one would stand on the floor.

While perplexed by her defiance of the laws of physics, Flash recognized the mare’s voice: that other mare’s voice when Paladin Conduct hurt the demon. After finishing what was left of the sandwich in a single bite, she hopped off the ceiling and spun, landing on the floor without missing a beat

“Seriously, we don't know how he does it,” said the mare “Shining, what was his name again? Please give this guy a raise, you seriously need to keep him from getting snatched up by some company. That month where he took a vacation, oh that substitute chef didn’t even come close.”

Flash examined her character. Her curvy silver tail was very long, almost going all the way down to her hooves. Her mane glistened like a river of molten silver, flowing across the side of her face. Her hooves were a dark black, her coat was a snow white. She lacked a cutie mark, but it only showed off her flank even more.

So this is my captor's true form? She's... Flash found her hot. Very, very hot. She's someth-

Woah.

But it changed the moment she finished chewing and opened her eyes and looked at him. Her pupils were slit like a dragon, but that was not what make Flash step back. The demon's eyes were cracked, as if her eyeballs were made of glass. Her open, drake eyes had cracks and lines stretching from the iris and extending all the way out. And they were slowly growing.

She really is a demon, Flash thought.

The demon had a smile on her face as she placed a hoof on Flash's shoulder. “Really, why would you think we'd kill you Flashy? We told her to tell you we're keeping you in good condition for a trade."

The demon skipped back like a filly. "And besides all that, why hurt you when is so much fun to keep you alive anyway? You've been so much fun to watch. We haven't had this much amusement in years."

Turning her attention now to Shining Armor, She began pacing, trotting left and right.

“And to you, Shining, if you kill a prisoner they aren't worth stuff anymore, and we really want stuff. Plus their corpse rots, it makes a nasty smell, goddamn flies start bugging me and getting in our books it's so not worth it.” she bemoaned “Save as a undead of course, but eh...they're stupid, and we'd rather not become a filthy necromancer anyway.”

The cream colored Paladin frowned at that.

“You two assholes should believe really believe us. If we wanted to do something to him we would have already done it. I mean, we could douse him in some potion that causes physical deformities, poison his food and water and watch him waste away...” she said to everypony's dismay. “We don’t even want to buck him in the face, despite what he’s done against us.”

“If anyone deserves to be bucked, it’s you.” Said the cream colored paladin.

The demon mare smiled acting as if she didn't get the cream paladin's meaning. “So true! Everyone deserves to be bucked by their one true love!” The demon giggled before fixated her eyes back on Shining. “So, Shiny, why don't we get started?”

“I couldn't agree more,” Shining Armor said sternly. This was Flash's cue to stay silent. He knew better than to ruin the best chance to get out without incident. He mentally zipped his lip.

And so, negotiations began. “I gave the night watch my list of demands. We hope to see you've filled them all out already.”

Shining said nothing as he turned to the cream colored paladin. “Bonbon, can you bring out the float?”

“Yes sir,” said the cream colored paladin, walking out of sight.

The demon watched the paladin walk away. “Bon Bon huh? Very cute mare, is she the one you’re mounting on the side when that whore of yours isn’t looking?"

Shining didn't give into the bait. “Bon Bon and her girlfriend are very happy together.”

The demon's ears lowered. “Really? Oh poo. You take all the fun out of our insults Shiny.”

Sharply, Shining shot back. "Dealing with you is never fun,"

The demon pouted. "Well... is to me. I love it when you come to visit, Shiny."
"You're so much fun to be around, Shining," she said, smiling.

The two looked as the solar paladin returned, pulling a large float by her teeth. On the float was a box that was nearly the size of a large stallion.

"We're also so happy you listened to reason and gave us what we wanted, you're a real keeper, Shiny, you know that?" the demon said.

With what he needed to have this quagmire dealt with, Shining Armor went straight to business. “I saw your demands. I'll give you this for all of them.” Shining told the demon.

“And an increase in food? We want what you fancy pants are eating. We want fancier food, cooked fresh for us and whenever we want food you'll have the chefs make them.”

“No, the chefs don't work that way. They don't make food to your order, or ours. We eat when they want to make the food, not the other way around.”

“They would for the crown, so that's what we want and what you're gonna give us.”

“I'll talk to the chefs to see what I can do, but no promises,” Shining said.

Hah! Like you actually would. Another dead end. The demon sighed, knowing what that meant. “Of course.”

“Anyway, what you'll get for them is in here,” Captain Armor said. “We’ve weakened the barrier a little. You should be able to extend your search magic and explore it yourself.”

“Good to know at least something is reliable then,” the demon said as Flash watched a trail of red aura extended from the demon's horn and traveled to the float. The paladins opened up the case for the red magic to slid inside and search the float's contents.

“Oooh, oh so glad you got that... oh that too, yes, We've been looking for one of thos-OH!” She gasped in excitement, “There's a novel in there! Is that the newest Daring Doo novel?!”

“Yes, a brand new copy just like you asked,” answered Shining.

If Flash didn't know any better, the demon was getting giddy like a fangirl. She floated up to the cell bars in and smiled at Shining Armor.

“Oh, it's so perfect,” she exclaimed in joy “oh how we love yo-...”

The demon's expression instantly changed.

“-what?”

She landed, and Flash watched her red magic glow brighter inside the package. Her breath was picking up as her magic searching the contents with double intensity.

Oh crap... Flash thought. The yellow veins grew in size across her eyes. Whatever it was, he knew this was bad.

“Prison Break, you only have the books 4 and 5 here. We already have the first three and there's six total. We said the rest of the books, you only gave us two. And... and...”

Flash watched the demon's red aura grow brighter inside the contents, the float shaking violently now.

“What the heck!” The demon exclaimed, her angry was growing “this isn't all the things we asked for! There's books missing, magazines missing, there's no bromine. There’s not even one bit of it! Assholes! Not even the bromine! Liquid. Bromine! It was on the top of the list! We would have taken it in any form but why didn't you at least get that?”

Shining was steadfast and did not flinch “Bromine is dangerous, we are not giving you that. We've had this discussion before. Not bromine, not gunpower, not methane, not Heart's Desire, not Poison Joke. We are not giving you any of those or any any other dangerous substances.”

“We had a deal!” The demon stomped her hoof twice for emphasis and glared at Shining, the cracks inside her eyes burning bright with each ounce of swelling anger. “We give you a list, you give us what we ask for, then we release your idiots. That was the deal! This isn't everything! We told you to give us ALL of it! There's no choose this or that, but everything! We're not skimping out on our part of the deal Shining! We give you everything you want and in return you give us everything we want.”

“You're not getting everything. This is all we can afford to give you.”

The demon called Shining out on his bullshit. “Horseshit. And spare us that bitching that you can't do without your bosses knowing or money or any other secrecy horseshit.”

“Fine. What I gave you is all you're gonna get. Good behavior will get you more things, including those novels, later.”

The demon was motionless, but Flash could tell anger was brewing in her broken eyes, growing wilder with every passing second.

“You're trying to cut us huh?” She accused Shining.

"I'm making a fair trade," Shining responed.

She growled at him.

“You're trying to cut us!” She shouted. “We gave you my list of demands and you're gonna deliver on all of them! We valued for what each of your people are worth. And that value increases with each day as you're having to call extra aid and expend more bits as well as pay the salaries of each of our captives as to keep the cover of your standard excuse, ‘special military exercises outside of Canterlot. We've done the math, we know what each of these guards are worth and you're gonna give us every bit they're worth. Or maybe we should start taking off their limbs? Oh, that'd be a great expenditure, paying for their disabilities, paying their families to keep silent. Given standard life expectancy of the current past ten years and the sheer new-ness of each of these youthful guards, you're going to be shelling out a lot of bit for the most foolish of reasons. And that amount? You're going to have to trust us on that amount. We've done the math, you don't want to hear the math.”

She hurled what appeared to be a phone book at the paladins. Inches before the book hit the iron bars it bounced off what appeared to be thin air. For an instant one could see a glowing interlocked hexagonal pattern shining at the point of impact, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. The book bounced off the inner wall of the barrier. The book fell open, revealing a mess of equations that most tenured professors, or even the most brilliant university janitors couldn’t solve.

“There’s the math; peruse at it your leisure, but your jarhead’s probably too empty to understand it.”

She walked up to the bars and stared down the leader of Equestria's top paladin.

“...And that's aside from the fact that your stupidity will be ruining the lives of ponies who don't deserve any of this. We honestly skimped on what they're worth, we're not asking for their full value. We're actually giving you a great deal Shiny, and it's best you start taking that deal before lives become ruined forever. You're giving us all of this.”

“You're not getting all of that.” Shining Armor stared into the demon's eyes, both parties refusing to back down.

“You really want these ponies to die, huh? We seriously can't believe you, Shining. Why in the world do you want these ponies to die? We thought Equestria doesn't leave a pony behind, and you personally pride yourself on doing everything you can to save a life. So why aren't you doing everything you can to save them?”

Shining said nothing and continued his glare.

“What, did these ponies do anything to piss you off? Is that why you want them dead? Were you having an affair with those girls and need to silence them before your whore found out? Uh...maybe you were mounting Flashy instead? You really want him to die huh, Shining? Dead ponies tell no tales, eh?”

Flash knew this was getting bad. Instinctively he slowly began to back up away from the two colliding forces. And then, to keep with his act of stealth, Flash sneezed. Nabbing the attention of both colliding forces.

Looking at Flash and smiling, the demon mare spoke. “Oh don't worry we won't kill you, Flashy, we like you. we won't ever do that... we just won't ever let you leave, that's what. In fact, we'll strip away your mind and twist it into somepony who won't ever want to leave. We'll be spending the rest of our lives here together in my cage, thanks to stupid Shiny's stupidness,” she said childishly. “We will be killing the rest of your friends, though, but you won't even remember them after we're done feng-shui-ing your brain.”

The demon's smile did not leave her. “What do yo think about that Shi-AH!”

When she turned to face Shining Armor, it seemed his heavy stare had not relented. The shock of turning into his face and the closeness made the demon flinch, moving back and falling on her flank with an “Woah, woah, way too close...” and a hoof on a rushing heartbeat.

With the advantage and the demon now on the defensive, Shining took the offensive. “Where are the rest of them? Where are my guards? No more games. Where are they?!”

The demonic unicorn rolled her fractured eyes as she got up off her flank. “If you need to know, aside from Flash and his gal-pal, the rest have been turned into stone. They fought back, we didn't feel like they deserved to have fun with us. Well, except for Condi. We didn't turn him into stone...”

“She means Paladin Conduct.” Flash quickly added.

“Right, Sterling Conduct, that asshole who put his big long thing inside us last year. We really wish we meant sex, but no. he got blood all over our carpet, again. And those stains aren't coming out you know. Including the ones, he gave to us yesterday. We spent all last night making sure he paid for what he did to us.”

The demon unicorn leaned in towards Shining Armor. “Let us show you...” With the light of her horn, she brought out a float her own, with...

“Sterling!” The paladins shouted together.

Sterling Conduct was unmoving and unconscious. His coat was covered in blood, all of his armor was dented and bruised. And his front left leg was bent in the opposite direction.

Flash could smell the blood off him. Conduct had been bleeding, badly. “No, scratch that. He's still bleeding! She was beating him this whole time?”

“He ended up breaking his left leg earlier.” The demon nonchalantly said before moving to what she was really focused about. “Did you know that after we beat him, he still spat in our face! It was so gross! After we told him he lost, told him he was our hostage and we wouldn't hurt him any further, we ceased beating him, floated over to him and try to help him off his ass, and what do we get for that, he literally spits in our eye and then stabbed us right in the throat! Right when we're trying to be the better pony and show him some mercy nonetheless! And well, since he didn't want my mercy we metaphorically took him to the woodshed and proceeded to show him none. He deserved what he got... But don't worry, he's not dead, I’m not that merciful to give him an escape. He just got what was coming to him. Though him breaking his leg was a wonderful accident, we wouldn't do that to a pony on purpose... though... granted, when we realized it was broken we made sure to have some... extra fun with it. We suppose now we know how much one can make a broken leg twist, heh-heh.”

A red glow formed around the unconscious paladin, a force picking him up by his broken leg and lifting him in the air.

“Anyway, we're done playing with him, so you can have him back now.” The demon said, staring at Shining Armor. With the flash of the demon's horn, Sterling Conduct was whisked away in a flash of light and reappeared on the other side of the bars, crashing on the floor. “So, care to change your mind on trying to rip us off like a dirty little rat? If you get everything we ask, we'll look the other way on your insolence.”

Shining Armor said not a single word.

“Still ‘no’?” She asked him.

She got nothing in return.

“Still ‘no’, eh?”

“Always ‘no’, demon,” was all Shining said to her.

The demon softly growled under her breath, then barked at Shining. “We know your exploits, Shiny! You know ours. You know how strong Paladin Conduct is... so tell us, if we can do this to him, just imagine what we'll do to a bunch of rookies when we're pissed off.”

The demon mare poked her head through the gates and got nearly face to face with Shining Armor, her glowing, cracked eyes stared into Flash.

"Oh, wait, we forgot, you don't have to! Remember when you first locked us up in here? How long did it take for those burns on to heal? Or for your fur to grow back? Or for all those guards we hurt? You do remember what we can do right... or do we have to remind you what I'm capable of?”

The demon mare's horn slowly lit up before she was covered in a light, coming out as a pink unicorn. A badly hurt pink unicorn, covered in gashes, red blood that tainted a purple mane that had red and yellow streaks... all with a broken horn.

Shining Armor's eyes went wide with terror.

“Shining...” the pink unicorn muttered weakly in another voice.

The pink unicorn struggled to stay on her hooves before her left leg snapped in the other direction and she fell to the ground.

“Shiiningggg!” The pink unicorn howled in pain as she fell to the floor. “Shininnnnng! Help me!” she continued to shout in agony, extending one hoof out as if trying to goad him into grabbing it.

At first, he didn't realize what she was doing. Flash Sentry looked at Shining Armor, and didn't like a single thing he saw. Bad memories, bad memories rose to the surface of Shining Armor's mind. It then dawned on Flash Sentry like a lighting bolt... or more appropriately, like an explosion.

“What the hell was that?!” A young orange colt as he laid on the floor, his ears still ringing and his mind trying to process what the heck was the loud sound was that knocked him to his floor and blew out his window. What had just happened to him?

Flash Sentry slowly got back on his hooves after, after whatever that shook him off his feet. As he looked to his bedroom window, he noticed that his window frame was just as broken apart as the window glass. The young colt flapped his wings and hovered above the broken glass and poked his head outside the river.

He saw fire and smoke. Canterlot was burning. Out in the distance, he to another part of the city was up in smoke, a nearby clock tower burning with a hole in it. What was more, he saw half of a building in the middle of his street only feet from his front door, as if it was torn from its foundation and tossed around like a foal's toy. He saw three royal guards sprawled out in little craters on the city walkways. None were responding, none of them were moving.

“What in the world?” He said to himself. “What's going on?”

Before he could say anything else, there was another massive explosion roared in the distance, Flash Sentry saw a large mushroom cloud rise up as he felt the sonic wave of the explosion. His ears popped and he fell back on his bed, barely missing the broken glass below him as he bounced off his bed and onto the hard floor. Flash got himself back up and prepared to see what this explosion had done to his hometown. But before he could, he heard the door to his bedroom slam open.

“FLASH!” He heard. Turning around, Flash saw his mother and his baby brother in her hooves, his brother crying non-stop.

“Mom!? What's going on!?” Flash asked his mom.

“Basement! Now!” She said.

“But mo-”

Another explosion rocked their home.

“Into the basement now! It's the safest room in the house!” She shouted “NOW!”

“...yesterday afternoon, our peaceful city of Canterlot was attacked by a malicious, dark force. A powerful demon had broken through our defenses and entered our precious city. This demon, after being discovered made an attempt on the life of our dear Princess, princess Mi Amore Cadenza.”

“I am here to inform you that Princess Cadance is still with us. Her injuries are severe, and she has not woken, but she is alive. It is thanks to a young cadet that I can say that neither our beloved Princess, nor any other souls were lost yesterday. Our attacker, this demon, has been slain by our faithful paladins. My citizens, please do not worry, the danger that has threatened our home has been vanquished and shall never hurt another soul...”

“...that was her?” Flash Sentry's mind thought. “She...”

“The demon of Canterlot welcomes you to her library!”

Oh shit she really is the demon of Canterlot! She's the demon who attacked the Canterlot school for gifted unicorns and almost killed Princess Cadance all those years ago! Why isn't she dead! They said they killed her!

The intimation of princess Cadance curled up on the floor writhing in pain. She gave a pained whimper, a whimper which soon broke out into a chuckle, and then a full blown laugh. Princess Cadance howled hysterically as the imitation's broken horn it up, and with another flash, she transformed into another pony.

“Do you remember yet B.B.B.F.F?” said a child's voice.

A young female unicorn, to be more precise. She had a lavender coat with a darker hair, Flash noting that she was the same age as Flash's little brother. Purple eyes and with a cutie mark with that of a star. Flash looked to Shining Armor and at first saw nothing. Flash knew the last form, Princess Cadance, Shining Armor's marefriend. But this new girl, Flash was curious. Why did she choose it? Looking deeper at Shining Armor, he saw cracks in the knight's steel demeanor. He didn't like what he saw. Behind Shining's mask there was a pain, what seemed like memories recalling themselves and impaling him with javelins. But despite it all, he stood tall.

The cream-colored paladin also didn't show any reaction, but Flash could tell she didn't know this filly. It made Flash wonder, who was this child, how did she Shining Armor and this demon both know he... Flash's immediately stopped as the answer hit him like a freight train, demolishing every fragment of his brain's thought process as the image of the purple filly imprinted itself in him. He knew exactly what she was getting at.

The demon, on the other hand, was paying no attention to anyone but Shining Armor. Like the little child she was pretending to be, the purple demon rolled onto her back and continued to speak in the voice of a little filly.

“Do you want me to remind you what I'm capable of, or do you finally remember? I would love to go into more detail, but I only will if you don't remember B.B.B.F.F.”

Shining Armor said nothing. He wanted to speak, a thousand words he wanted to speak, but he knew he couldn't give in. Just let her “game” pass.

“I'm not going to stop until you answer me,” The demon said, in the mocking form of a little purple child speaking in a mocking but cutesy tone “You've been giving me the cold shoulder all day, and I don't like it one bit. You're such a terrible big-”

“That's enough!” The cream-colored Paladin had enough of this game, stomping both hooves and getting everyone's attention. “We get your point!”

To the paladin, the demon filly just glared. “I wasn't asking you, you stupid mud-born whore! I was asking the best-est big brother in the whole wide world if he remembers what I did to his-”

“I get it,” Shining Armor interrupted. If words could kill, his would have.

That was enough for the demon. Still masquerading as a little filly, she flipped back up on her hooves and floated in the air. From the filly's body spoke the demon's regular voice as she floated close to Shining Armor. “You remember? Good, that's very good. We're glad you're well aware of what we can do. For your insolence, We'll be giving you a second list of demands. Wasn't gonna at first, but your stupidity has forced our hoof. We suggest you think very, VERY carefully before you fucking try to cheat us again. The next time you do, you won't be getting any ponies back, just limbs."

The lavender little filly landed, kicked up her tail, turning around and walked towards the darkness. Flash saw her eyes cracked with yellow lines. Her trotting form slowly gaining white stripes running down her body as she slowly began to shift back into her original form. With a laugh, she spoke in the voice of a little filly. "We'll talk again soon, B.B.B.F.F.”

Laughing like a little filly, the demon jumped into the darkness of the library, a red telekinetic aura consuming a motionless Flash and bringing him into the darkness too. The last thing Flash saw of the outside world was the cream-colored pony shaking Shining out of his trance. Just before the darkness consumed him entirely, he heard Shining Armor shout to him.

“I will get you out of there! I promise!”

Chapter 4 – Negotiations – End

Chapter 5 - Laplace, part 1

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 6 - Laplace, part 2

Shit shit shit shit!

Bon Bon flailed as she fell into the darkness.

I have to break this illusion!

She clasped her hooves to gather her magic.

Come-on Bon Bon! Right now!

Sparks of magic began to form between the pony’s hooves. “Dispel!” Bon Bon shouted.

The sparks died, and nothing happened. Failure and fear struck her at the same time.

“Dispel!”

Nothing happened. Oh no.

“D-dispel Illusion!”

Nothing again. What if I can’t - no! I can’t give up! Try again!

“Celestia, grant us clarity, remove the lies so that our eyes may see! Dispel Illusion!”

Still, nothing happened. Shit! Come-on!

“Celestia, grant us clarity, eternal-

“Celestia this, Celestia that. Your god’s not here, Bonny.”

A red claw shot out of the darkness and snatched Bon Bon by the throat, dragging her into the inky void; her descent into the darkness jerked to a halt. The claw squeezed her throat.

“Just you… just us. Ahahahahahaha.”

Bon Bon began to grow dizzy as she flailed, her eyes glued to the pair of red eyes shining from the darkness.

The demon chuckled. “Yes. we can tell what you’re thinking, Bonny!” said the demon.

“‘This is bad. Really, really, bad!’ is what you’re currently thinking right now. And yes, we really can trap you that fast. You see Bonny, when you’re trapped in a cage like a rat for YEARS, you have a lot of time to practice and hone your technique… but you wouldn’t know that, would you?! You’re out there, enjoying Luna’s moon and that worthless sun. How does it feel to have sunlight grace your coat? Warm? We’ve pretty much forgotten how it feels. But you wouldn’t know that, WOULD YOU?!”

The claw wound up and threw Bon Bon like a living baseball. Bon Bon gasped, air returning to her lungs. After regaining her breath, she saw where she was headed.

A large bed of spikes.

“No no no!”

Bon Bon needed to escape. Now. With the threat of death imminent, she redoubled her effort to cast the dispel illusion spell she needed to escape what was coming her way. But like every other time, nothing happened.

“Oh yes, a dispel illusions spell, it didn’t work the last time but you’re doing it again thinking it’d work this time! And they call us insane.”

She closed her eyes as she hit the spikes, and phased right through them and found herself flailing back through more darkness.

All she could hear was the laugh of a demon.

“See how it feels when it happens to you! Oh my, you really looked like a fool!”

The demon just laughed. “You see Bonny, you’re not in an illusion, you’re stuck in hypnosis, our hypnosis. We’re in absolute control here Bonny, and you’re just stuck in our fake little world until we see fit to let you go... which is until you pay for making a fool of us, of course.”

Bon Bon saw four chains emerge from the darkness coming down on her. She tried to move, but to no avail. Her eyes widened as the descending chains formed into blades and impaled each of her legs.

Bon Bon screamed as she felt cold steel pierce her flesh. Bloody chains broke through her limbs, the chains then tightened and bound Bon Bon in place. From the darkness, a white figure emerged. A demon unicorn of white with lavender eyes, a lion’s tail, and draconic wings approached Bon Bon, grinning ear to ear. Literally. The edges of her mouth curled up to barely touch her optic cavities.

“Oh, don’t worry Bonny,” The demon-winged unicorn began “We’re not really impaling you. We’re actually just standing at our cell doors, our eyes locking, our daywatch doesn’t even realize we’re doing anything to you at all! He could end this in a second if he noticed… but we all know he won’t... heh-heh…”

”Sucks you ponies didn’t give me a more interesting dayguard. Maybe he’d notice me. Your loss. hHow do they say it? Hmmm...yes… “ the demon floated in close to her, and whispered in her ear “...between you and me Bonny, we think you’re gonna be here for a while.”

The demon watched Bon Bon’s attempts to escape the chains that bound her. “My my, you really are regretting dropping your guard around us, eh? Now you’re stuck here, just a rat in a cage.”

She laughed, the demon gently touched her cheek with her hoof.

“Such an unfortunate turn of events for you. But, it doesn’t have to be bad...if you did give us an apology we might be willing to show mercy and let you go...but believe us, you really should. We mean if we were friends…”

Behind the demon, a white stallion poofed into existence. His hooves slipped around the demon’s neck.

“Captain?” Bon Bon questioned.

Shining Armor nuzzled the demon and gently planted a kiss on the demon’s cheek.

“We could have so much fun… don’t forget, we can do whatever we desire… or should we say, whomever?”

The imitation Shining Armor walked past the demon and walked up to Bon Bon. Bound by the chains, she had little choice as the fake violated her personal space. She reeled her head back in disgust as it slid its hooves across Bon Bon’s face.

“A mare like you...haven’t you ever wondered, what it’d be to-” Bon Bon abruptly shot her head forward.

The demon winced as the imitation’s head cracked against Bon Bon’s skull bash. He stood there, motionless as she pulled her head back. The impact on his cranium left a massive crack on the fake’s form as if it were glass.

“That, that hurt…” The fake shattered into pieces. His shards evaporated into specks of sickly light as they hit the floor.

The demon ran her hoof over the dissipating remains and let out a sigh. “You broke my favorite toy… well, his illusion anyway. We-”

The demon stopped, something wet had hit the side of her face.

...Spit...

“I’m not playing your bucking games.”

Muscles tightened. The Demon snarled under her breath. Bon Bon heard the clatter of chains, then felt them as a new set of chains wrapped around her head like a tiara, pulling her head back as the chains transformed into a bridle, sliding right into her mouth.

Bon Bon could no longer speak. She was now completely bound.

“Fine! If you’re not gonna play ball, then we might as well mine your brain for all it’s worth while we got ya. Maybe we’ll find something useful, or maybe we won’t. Maybe it’ll put you in a coma, or maybe it’ll kill ya. Don’t know, and you know what, we don’t really care anymore. So be a dear and try not to bore me.”

Bon Bon could only watch as the demon placed her left hoof on the paladin’s forehead.

“So let’s start with the basics, shall we?”

It was like a nail, hammered in by Mjolnir itself.

The hoof of the demon slowly sank inside her brain. Bon Bon could feel each press of the demon trying to seep into her mind. Bon Bon wanted to scream but fought the feeling. She would not let the demon in. Her eyes shut from distractions, every ounce of her brainpower channeled to fight off the invasion.

“Tell me, who’s your first favorite whore? eh?”

Bon Bon instinctively came to anger, her mind snapping to exactly who the demon had called such a name... before realizing that it was exactly what the vile demon wanted.

“No…”

The hoof retreated. The pain went away. She felt the soft coat of a pony against her sides. She knew exactly who this was, and it struck fear into her heart.

“Honey, relax. It’s been so long since we last had a good snuggle.”

When Bon Bon’s eyes reopened, she was no longer chained in darkness, she was no longer in pain. She was on a bed, in a bright room with Celestia’s sun shining through. A mint green unicorn was cuddling up beside her.

Bon Bon’s eyes went wide with fear. The demon was getting in.

“Did you have a nightmare? Don’t be scared, Bonny.” Spoke the imitation of Bon Bon’s marefriend, “Just try to relax for me, ok?”

This isn’t real. This isn’t Lyra.

Bon Bon felt the imitation peck her on the cheek. It felt nothing like her marefriend’s. She kissed her cheek a second time, and it felt exactly like her marefriend’s...

“You’re not here...” Bon Bon said.

“Why would you think that? I’m your one true girl. I love you Sweetie Drops… tell me you-”

Before she could even finish her sentence, Bon Bon pushed the mint green imitation off the bed. It didn’t make a sound hitting the ground below them. Bon Bon looked to see where the fake mare went, and saw nothing below. There was nothing but an abyss below the bed.

“That wasn’t very nice…” The voice came from above.

Fear was the first thing that appeared in her mind as she saw a new form of her marefriend. Or rather, a twisted version of her. Coated around her forehooves was what looked like a pair of dragon’s claws, made from solid blood, claws that pinned Bon Bon down on the bed, her horn was distorted, smooth, curved, and red. But it was her lover’s eyes that disturbed Bon Bon the most. Her eyes shone like rubies, blood dripping from them, and onto her.

This isn’t real! This isn’t Lyra! It’s just a fake! Bon Bon screamed in her own head as she tried to overpower and push the monster off her. Bon Bon pushed her front half free for a single moment. The mint green monster re-pinned the paladin again, laughing as both mares struggled for control.

“So this is it… this is what you fear… your head’s an interesting place Bon Bon, or should we call you, Sweetie Drops?”

Get out.

The monster leaned in, getting closer to the paladin. Nearly face to face, the monster chuckled.

“You’re scared! You’re not scared for your own well being, you’re scared about her… what is it about this image that terrifies you to your core?”

This is not my Lyra! She’s better than that!

“I see… you fear what she will become…”

“Get out…”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you Sweetie-”

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” Bon Bon screamed as she finally overpowered the fake. With the force of five stallions, Bon Bon pushed the mockery off her. Bon Bon pulled her hind legs free and coiled, with a mighty grunt she bucked the imposter at full force in the stomach, knocking her off the bed and into a wooden wall that shattered like glass.

The fake, monstrous Lyra screamed as the fake world around Bon Bon fell apart. Within a single blink, Bon Bon found herself back in darkness, her limbs all tied up in chains, instead of being impaled like before.

The white demon mare with bat wings reappeared, floating close to the bound paladin.

“We have to commend you,” She a familiar demonic voice. “You put up quite a fight paladin. We’re able to keep your mind locked in hypnosis, but we can’t break into that juicy mind of yours. Either we’re slipping or you solar paladins are much tougher than we give you credit for. It’s not everyday you meet ponies who can fight off violations of the mind so well. We barely scratched the surface of your noggin, Sweetie Drops. I mean, pretty much what you saw is all we got. The names of you and your lover, what she looks like, and what you fear the most... But we can’t take the credit for that, no sir. You’re the one to thank for letting us see that, you did a wonderful job of letting your mind wander as we poked it, you really can learn so much when one pushes the right buttons and let the instinctive mind tell you the rest...”

Bon Bon said nothing. Not a single thought of hers flooded into the demon.

“Oh please, quit with the quiet act. We’re in no mood to deal with a mime. Granted, we’ve never seen one before, but that’s not the point.”

She’s getting better at pushing me out. Thought the demon. Go back to her marefriend, that’s where she’s vulnerable.

“But we must say, having a girl like her as a marefriend, you picked yourself one fine screw-up.”

The thoughts returned. Intentional or not, it worked.

“Oh, ‘Don’t you dare call her that?!’” Isn’t that what you’re thinking? See, this is exactly how we figured out everything else about you.

That worked perfectly. Success.
Yes, let’s dive into that weakness of yours…

“We normally don’t pry, but we’re quite curious why you chose her out of all the ponies out there in the world. Out of all the mares in the world, a dark, filthy necromancer. Why Sweetie Drops, what made you choose her?”

"...I knew her, as a child. I've seen the good in her; there is a kindness within her that the dark magic she uses can't hope to taint. She is wonderful and kind and as good a pony as I could ever hope to meet. Something YOU would never understand, Demon."

“Oh, but we do understand Sweetie Drops, much more than you think. ‘Oh, the darkness won’t corrupt me.’ We’ve heard it a thousand times, and we’ve seen what happens to the ponies who use the darkness... and let us tell you: they all fall. Every. Last. One. If you truly believe that the darkness won’t corrupt her, then why do you fear it? Why do you fear it so badly? More than any other phobia, more than any other threat. If you're so confident in her, why do you fear her falling so much?"

Bon Bon said nothing.

“‘I’ll always worry for her well being, I love her,’ you’re thinking right now. ‘Asshole, stop listening into my head you piece of diamond do-’ oh...wow, that’s just crude Sweetie Drops, what would the children think?”

The demon flapped her wings and hovered closer to her.

“Your cute little insults aside, you still haven’t answered our question, Sweetie Drops. What makes your Lyra so different, that unlike every other soul who's touched dark magic, that it won't corrupt her? What makes her so different?"

It flapped around the imprisoned paladin as it talked.

“I see, you don’t have an answer. You don’t have one at all.”
“Yes, I can’t hear a single thought, simply because there isn’t one.”
“Lyra will fall to the darkness, and nothing will-.”

“I don’t need to think about it. I know it. Lyra will never fall. She will rise above it. She rises above it now. Ponies greater than us have fallen to half the darkness that she’s been exposed too. No matter the temptations she always comes out, each time stronger than before. My Lyra won't fall. Not now, not ever. ”

The demon scoffed.

“That's such a deluded answer! I thought you were smart!”
“You should know that will change, why do you think that won't change? Tell us, why?”

The answer had gotten her attention, more than Bon Bon thought it would.

“Faith.”

“Faith? How is faith an answer? That’s not proof!”

“You’re right I don’t have any logic or proof. I suppose, in the end, it’s as simple as that.”

The demon lowered her head and closed her eyes. Her hold unable to be broken, the demon scoured through the paladin's heart and found the answer that brought fear to her own heart.

Bon Bon wasn't lying. She was telling the truth.

“You… you really do...”

She sounded, like him...

“There’s your answer, though I don’t think you’ll ever understand it. You don’t have faith in anything.”

...and it terrified her.

“Faith… huh…” The twisted, demonic echo was gone. Her bluster and bravado no more. When Bon Bon looked in her eyes they were not the fierce eyes of a demon, but the dull eyes of a weary mare. “I do understand it… more than you will ever know.”

“You really do believe in Celestia, don’t you? Yes... You could have left and abandoned the royal guard, you had the chance, you made the plan… but you didn’t. You have faith, faith that the great sun Celestia will see you through the tough times, faith in the virtues of the paladins is true, and faith that you and your Lyra will be happy together for all of your days. To fight for what princess Celestia fought for, for a better Equestria. It’s genuine, completely genuine...just like...”

The demon broke eye contact. She turned away, shook off the thoughts in her head, and then turned back around.

“Sweetie Drops, let me be honest with you for a minute. I know things you do not, things you could not possibly fathom. Do not ask me how. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all of your faith in her, all your faith in that worthless sun Celestia, is misguided. She is not your god, not your ally, and not your friend. And when it comes down to it, when it comes down to that single moment where you need her the most when you extend your hoof pleading for her to take it, she will say “no” and abandon you, like she did to me. What she did to me, she will to you… it’s just… how long will you suffer until you realize that? Until you liberate yourself from such notions like trust, fellowships, and faith.”

The demon closed her eyes again and thought more.

“I see… and yet your conviction stands, I can hear your thoughts, Sweetie Drops,” the demon’s ears drooped “You believe in her, as I once did. You put her on that pedestal and treat her as a goddess. It is a mistake that will cost you dearly.”

Bon Bon watched as the demon faintly cracked a smile.

“I remember when I used to. Those were good times. Great times, perfect times. But… but I was ignorant to the truth. I was young and foolish and I greatly suffered for it, a fate which you will suffer too. I know you don’t believe me. I wish you would. I’m really not lying to you here. I’m telling you the honest truth. Faith is worthless, Sweetie Drops. Faith in family, faith in friends, faith in those you love… it’s all worthless. They all will betray you in the end, you can only trust yourself. Your precious Lyra, it’s only a matter of time before she betrays you and becomes exactly what you fear. You fear it because you know it’s true. They betrayed us, they all betrayed us, and they will betray you too. Spare yourself what I went through, what we went through, and break these worthless bonds before they break you.”

There was a minute of silence before Bon Bon spoke. “Is that so?” Bon Bon asked. “I really have a tough time believing that. If you think everypony will betray you, tell me, did they betray you? Or is it because you betrayed them first?”

There was an audible stomp in the darkness.

“I didn’t betray anyone, Sweetie Drops! I was the one betrayed! I’m the victim here!”

“Of course you are. Everyone else is the bad guy, and you’re the only good person in this whole world. You’re so pure that all the bad ponies had to lock you-”

“Don’t mock me! I’m trying to help you!”

The help was unwanted. “Demons only hold true to themselves. They are selfish creatures who forsake all others for their own gain. To be frank, you got it the other way around. ”

The memories were coming back.

“No! Stop! Please don’t do this! Stop, I beg you!”

“You’re not a victim, you’re anything but a victim. They turned on you, because you, like all demons, turned on us first.”

“Don’t make me do this!”

Those memories were coming back.

“Please! I can’t do this!”

“Am I right?”

“… don’t make me… please…”

“Who did you betray, demon?”

“...I’m sorry… forgive me…”

Those cursed, celestia-forsaken memories returned.

“...Shut up...”

“Tell me, demon. Who?”

And with them, came rage.

“I SAID SHUT UP!”

The demon roared, rushing Bon Bon and swung her hoof.

“YOU BITCH! YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW ANYTHING!”

Every ounce of restraint came undone, the demon screamed as she slugged the Paladin with all her erupting rage, over and over.

“HE LIED TO YOU!”

Punch.

“SHE LIED TO YOU!”

Punch.

“YOU PAWN!”

Punch.

“YOU KNOW NOTHING!”

As the next punch came, the paladin flinched, and as she reopened her eyes she saw the hoof in front of her face had stopped. The empty demon pulled her hoof back, the anger and rage in her eyes replaced with despair.

“This is pointless. Nothing I can say can save you. We’re wasting our time...”

Bon Bon blinked and found herself back next to the demon’s cell. She felt the steel of her armor against her coat, the weight of her hammer on her back.

Bon Bon was free.

The moment she regained control of her own devices, she pulled away from the demon and broke eye contact. Bon Bon wondered how much time had she been there? Hours, Minutes, seconds?

She looked to the demon. All she looked like was a simple white mare with dull red eyes of defeat, sinking lower and lower.

“We were forgetting just fine until you made us remember why I hate her so much. Take your list, fill it out, and then shove it up your ass.” She told Bon Bon.

With a flash of her horn, the list was thrown in Bon Bon’s face as the demon unicorn turned around. “We’re going back to Flash. He’s fun to be around, you’re not.”

Before the demon walked back into the darkness, she turned her head around.

“And one last thing Sweetie Drops... for what you did to me, it hurt us, it hurt us a lot. And for what you did to us, I make you a promise, If we get out of here, I will hunt down and find your Lyra, and I will make your Lyra scream… and when I am done with her, I will twist her into the very monster you fear. And I will see to it that it is you who will have to kill your own beloved. Pray to your worthless Celestia that we never leave our cage… because the day we get out Sweetie Drops… you and I will find out together if your faith means anything… ”

“So, how was that?”

“Fantastic,” Flash said back.

Laplace smiled, which made Flash smile in turn. “Thanks, Flash. I really needed this.”

“You and me both,” he replied. “I’d rather focus on this than being hungry. Anyway, you’re definitely getting better. You’re really picking this up fast.”

Laplace’s tail swished in happiness. “Well, I did say I have a little practice. Although, my hoof hurts a bit.yes”

“It is?” replied Flash. “Well, let’s take a break for now, then. That was a lot for one session. Give your hoof some rest.”

And so, Flash and Laplace finished another music session. As Flash put the guitar against the corner wall Laplace sprung up behind Flash, and asked “So… Flash… do you have a marefriend?”

Flash nearly choked on his own breath. Out of the things to expect, Flash was not ready for that question.

“I uh… “ Honestly, the question had a simple answer, ‘no’. A little over a month ago Flash broke up with his marefriend, June. The only actual marefriend he’d ever had. Granted, this wasn’t the first time they had broken up, and it happened for the same reason as before as well.

June’s brother and Flash’s mother both described it as an “on again off again” relationship.

But currently, as it seemed, their relationship was for the moment off on a, very solid note. Being turned into stone can do that. Part of Flash was wondering what June was going to do the first thing she got out. Part of it hoped it’d be her ‘thanking’ him, which in turn would probably mean they’d get back together again as soon as they get out of this situation. Maybe.

Maybe the answer was a little more complicated than a yes or no. But for now, he answered quickly.

Flash cleared his throat to cover his delay before answering “I uh, No. I’m single. I broke up with my marefriend a month ago.” You’re saying too much! What are you thinking, Flash? That’s too much information, she’ll-

“What? She dumped you?”

Flash felt Laplace right behind him. Laplace crossed her arms and started to poke more with that unicorn horn of hers… metaphorically. Not actually with her horn… though he wouldn’t mind if she- No no no. Don’t you dare finish that thought. Sure she’s a tease but she’s still a guard, a co-worker, and… and... Stop thinking this way right now about that you pervert!

And so, he told more of the truth. “I well, dumped her.”

“It’s… um… complicated,” lied Flash. Yes I was busy that night, and yes those two stallions really didn’t mean anything but that’s not the point. June, I know you talked me into agreeing to an open relationship, but I thought this time that... damn it, I shouldn’t even be thinking about...aw crap. Laplace wants to know.

Laplace looked at him eagerly for Flash to open up and explain every single intimate and private detail about him and his previous (and only) marefriend.

For Laplace’s efforts, she got a “No, not at all. I’m not telling.”

“Aww, come on, why?” Laplace whined back.

Flash’s head turned to the side, “Be-because it’s very personal between us and I don’t like talking about it, ” Flash spoke, then finished in his own safe thoughts and I don’t want to have to explain anything either…

“Come on, Flashy,” whined Laplace, “We’re gonna be stuck here for a long time, we might as well...”

Flash Sentry responded by shaking his head no. It only made Laplace want to know even more.

“Please? Pretty pretty pleeeeeee-”

She kept saying "please", even resorting to poking Flash until he budged. She hadn’t heard these sorts of stories in forever. So as she said before, strike while the Iron’s hot. The only problem with that…

“NO!”

...is that sometimes you get burned.

Laplace recoiled back in shock, the mare landing on her flank. Flash turned after his outburst, and saw her face. She looked like a terrified child.

“Look, uh, Laplace…”

He extended his hoof towards her.

Damn it, you idiot. You messed it up again. Fix this, Flash told himself.

He wasn’t sure what he could to do undo the damage, but he had to try.

“Laplace, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to startle you… It’s… just, just a really touchy subject, ok? I… really liked her and… it really hurt. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Laplace still looked at Flash, her nerves finally calming down. Flash extended his hoof to Laplace to help her back up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Laplace took the hoof, and Flash pulled her back up.

“Apology accepted, Flash.”

“...”

It was at that moment Flash’s stomach decided to grumble.

Flash clutched at his stomach as it rumbled. “I’m starved… Forgot I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Don’t we have any sandwiches left?” Laplace asked. “I thought we had at least something.”

Flash shook his head. “There wasn’t any left from yesterday.”

The hungry royal guard looked around the room. “What else do we have here?” he muttered to himself, in the stray chance of any leftover food.

Books, the guitar, a plate, empty save for a few food crumbs, and Laplace’s helmet. With nothing else to do, Flash scooped up the helmet with his one unbroken wing, and grabbed it in his hooves. If anything, the helmet might buy him a few minutes of distraction from his hunger.

Laplace noticed, and with a grin said, “As much as I’d let you, I don’t think we can eat my helmet.”

They both laughed.

“I don’t think I’d like the metallic aftertaste,” Flash said with a chuckle.

“True,” Laplace said, “Plus, I don’t think Shining would want us eating his helmets. Besides, I owe it for saving me. That was a nasty landing on my head I had, it sucked up the whole impact. Thank goodness I didn’t lose it.”

Sucked up? Weird way of putting it. Flash replied with, “Yeah, thank...”

...wait...

Winds of the world, to me thou attend!
To the corners of earth, my enemies to send!
Whirlwind!

Flash flapped his wings to try to counter or stop the wind, but it was to no avail. The wind swept up Flash, as well as his red comrade. In the corner of his eyes, he saw her helm falling off her head as she spun in the air helplessly. She screamed, and she left his view, as Flash felt himself launched by the spell.

“...Hey, how’d you still have it? I swore I saw you lose it when she blew us all away.”

“Oh, that.” Laplace chuckled it off, her eyes looking to her helmet. “It almost did. Just before it did, I grabbed it and kept the thing on my noggin as I went flying. And boy am I glad I did. If I didn’t my head would have splattered all over.”

As much as he did believe her, the itch remained in Flash’s head, and refused to leave him. How in the world was the helmet undented, if she landed on her head? This was an itch he knew he had to scratch. He had to look inside the helmet. Maybe she fixed it with magic?

Flash examined the helmet. It didn’t seem very damaged, a scratch or two, and a whole thing looked like it hadn’t been polished in a while. No massive dent on it, as Flash would assume would come from landing on your head. He looked inside the helmet, and-

S.W.

The initials ‘S.W.’ were engraved into the inside of the helmet.

He knew this helmet. The rune engravings around the inside base of the helmet, with the initials SW made on the very top. It was Steel Wing’s, and only his.

Flash turned away from Laplace. “And you said this is yours, right?”

“Of course it’s mine,” She replied.

“But that’s a lie…”

Flash turned around, holding a straight face as he asked her. “You didn’t lose track of it at all, right?”

“Yea, um... I just said that, didn’t I?” Laplace sighed, having to repeat herself “Don’t think too hard about it Junior, it’s just a helmet.”

“Junior?” Flash stopped again. “I stopped telling people that years ago. I didn’t think I told you I was.”

Laplace double blinked, and replied. “Yeah... yeah you did.”

“I did? When?”

Flash wasn’t sure what to expect. Another lie? Maybe he did say it. He searched his brain as he heard Laplace’s answer.

“Uh, yeah,” said Laplace. “Yea, you did earlier. You muttered it in your sleep earlier, so I, um, took a lucky guess.”

A lucky guess huh? I know I didn’t. The last time I said that it was in front of the…

Flash went silent. His face dropped, he turned around, away from Laplace’s eyes.

It made sense. He didn’t want it to make sense. He had to know and make sure.

“Say, Laplace,” Flash asked ‘innocently’, “What division did you say you were a part of?”

Laplace retracted her hoof, “Oh? Um…” Flash heard her mutter as she began to think of an answer.

Before she could answer, Flash answered the question for her. “Oh I know, E-Division, isn’t it? It’d explain why I haven’t really met you before this.”

Laplace nodded in response. “Right, that was it! Division ‘E’! Sorry, just got in, didn’t memorize it, heh.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Flash turned back around to Laplace “I have one more question to ask you.”

Laplace smiled. “Sure Flash, shoot. What do you want to know?”

Flash steeled his gaze on Laplace, his eyes locking with her own. He then spoke.

“Where’s Laplace?”

“Uh...what?” She asked.

“Where’s the real Laplace? Because you’re not her.”

Flash heard a few nervous hoofsteps, the mare fidgeted.

“Of course I’m me!” She said to Flash “I told you exactly who I am. Private, Royal guard, recruit division E”

Flash showed no expression. “E, right. That’s funny, because there’s no such thing as division E.”

“But you said-” Laplace was cut off by Flash.

“All graduates are assigned to one of four divisions,” He interrupted. “A through D where they do roles from all of the other divisions and after a year transferred to the division that suits them the best. Anypony who’s part of the guard would know that. Laplace would have known that. You didn’t.”

When Laplace stood back, Flash stepped forward and spoke again.

“So, Demon, answer me again. Where is the real Laplace?”

“Wh-what? Me? The demon? I’m not the demon! Don’t accuse me of things like that! You could be the demon for all I know, you could...” Laplace’s stopped talked when she saw that Flash’s menacing glare did not sway.

Laplace sighed, closing her eyes. She pondered and tried to think of another way, but couldn’t. There was no way out but this.

Laplace’s eyes opened. They were glowing red.

“...Shiny was right, we really couldn’t hide this from you after all…”

The mare’s coat began to lose its color, its velvet red fading into a snowy white, she crossed her forelegs and began to float into the air.

Flash cursed under his breath.

He was right. She was the demon. For once, his usual luck of being wrong failed him. Sometime when he wasn’t taking notice, the demon had replaced herself with Laplace. The question was, to Flash, where was Laplace now?

“… you know, we really wanted to keep this up for a few more days… we really were enjoying our time around you. You’re fun to be around”

Flash stood still. He closed his eyes, and thought of what was going to happen next. He knew, he’d have a few minutes left. She’d boast, she’d say some things, and when she was finished, he would be dead. But even knowing, anger swelled inside him. He had been lied to, used, hurt, and manipulated by the mare that stood in front of him. He wanted to lash out. His hoof scraped against the carpet as he knew he couldn’t. He knew, this entire situation was out of his hand. He had no power.

All he had was Steel’s helmet. Enchanted yes, but still not something he could win a fight with. Flash closed his eyes, there was nothing he could do. Just sit there, and let whatever happen, happen. But he wouldn’t go down like a coward. Whatever she wanted, he wasn’t going to just give it to her.

“What? No reaction? Is our voice scaring you?” said the demon, unaware of Flash’s inner thoughts.

The demon landed on all hooves and spoke once more, but this time without her demonic echo.

“We don’t have to use that. It’s a nice trick, really easy spell. You’d be surprised how many ponies quiver in fear and obey just at the sound of it.” The demon chuckled at her own words.

Flash on the other hand, would have none of it. If there was something he could do, he could learn something.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“Come again?” The demon said back.

“Where’s Laplace? What did you do with her?”

The demon chuckled, her hoof to her mouth.

“Oh, that, that’s silly.”
“Quite silly. You mean that red guardmare, huh?”

“You know exactly who. What did you do to her?” Flash asked again.

“Oh. That answer is simple. Heh-heh.”

Steel Wings collapsed on the floor, his helmet fell off his head and bounced across the ground. Bruises across his body, his armor tattered and ruined, his body finally succumbed to the punishment, and he collapsed on the carpet below, falling almost inches from the red velvet pony that had fought alongside him.

The white demon mare, to this just looked flatly at him. None of that was necessary. He lost, his final ally passed out from fear, yet he didn’t give up. She could never understand why they always did that. It was a bother. She trotted up to the ponies, and with the single zap from her horn, Steel Wings turned into stone. With a second zap, the red velvet pony joined him.

She looked around to scout the room and see if anyone had broken her petrification hex. Looking and seeing that the Five stone ponies that surrounded her weren’t shaking, she smiled.

Darkness formed around the demon, and a shadow imitation of a mare came out from it. The shadow gave a grin that equaled the demon’s. The shadow and the demon raised their forehooves, and their hooves met.

The demon high-hoofed herself at a job well done.

“Great job!” The shadow said, the demon’s voice coming out of it.
“Thank you me.” Said the demon said back to her shadow puppet.

The shadow turned around, grabbing the helmet of the fallen pegasus guard to place it on the demon’s head.

“For protecting the library and giving Condi the asskicking he deserves, I dub thee, the queen of asskickery!” The demon said through her shadow. “Take this with honor and respect, as you so deserve!”

The demon’s eyes were closed and her smiled wide as she finished sliding on Steel Wing’s helmet, fitting the little too big helmet on her smaller noggin. After basking in her victory for a few minutes, she turned towards the ceiling and knew her job was not done. The shadow mare dissipated and returned to the darkness from whence she came.

“Alright, enough playing around. Time to find that hot guitar guy.” The white demon mare elevated herself off the floor and above the incredibly large bookshelves, to scan for her final target. A loud scream twenty minutes later narrowed down the location, and the broken chandelier a short distance away became a great starting point for her search. While it was still fresh in her mind, she made a mental note to put a new chandelier on the list of demands she was going to make.

The orange pegasus was found in short order, and she took to staying out of his line of vision. floating down to ground level and hiding between bookshelves, the demon sent out another shadow to be her eyes, scanning Flash as he walked around aimlessly.

She pondered what to do with him. The moment they made contact a fight would ensue. While she expected to win that fight easily, unknown ponies were always an unknown variable. For all she knew, he had some sort of ability that’d make her life a living hell. Or he’d do as Conduct tried to do earlier and set fire or bleed on her glorious library. No book casualties would be tolerated. She needed a way around this. A tinge of guilt passed over her. She was about to attack this pony for no reason but he was there. The others had attacked her, been rude to her, or in the case of Condi, set fire to her romantic novels.

The thought “Maybe he could be friendly if she wasn’t mean first,” passed through her head. She lavished the thought. That maybe, just maybe she could make a friend, they could do friend stuff, and heck, maybe he could help her escape.

“Yeah right,” she said to herself, “ Like that could ever hap-...”

In that moment, her mind lit up.

“...or maybe…”

A plan was now in her head. Halfway, incomplete, almost by the seat of her pants, but the thought was there, and the idea was golden.

“Why should we fight this guy?”
“There’s so many more things he could do for us…”
“But we can’t do it as us, not yet…”

She rubbed her forehooves together as her smile grew a mile wide.

“This… is going to be just perfect…”

Her horn lit up, and a guitar came into view gripped in a red telekinetic aura. The mare closed her eyes, and soon her coat began to change. Her white coat and mane began to change, slowly shifting from snow to a crimson color.

She darted in front of the bookshelf in front of the orange pegasus, just out of his line of sight.
She then ruffled up her hair, stepped into the path of the oncoming orange pegasus...

“What happened to her?” said the demon. “We turned her into stone just like the rest of those ponies that attacked us. That pony you knew, It was us, the entire time.”

“Honestly, we don’t even know the girl’s name.” She rose up on her hindlegs, pointing a forehoof at herself. “My name is my own, my appearance was not.”

“We are Laplace, or as Equestria calls us, the Demon of Canterlot.” Spoke Laplace the demon.

It made sense.
Celestia-damn it.

“You’ve been lying to me from the start, then?” Flash sighed. “So all this time you’ve been tricking me into being a better prisoner. To stay put, to be your little guitar instructor, you probably haven't even healed my wing, haven't you?”

“W-what? No!” Exclaimed Laplace. “That's not true at all. Well, we didn't tell you a lot of the truth, but we weren’t lying to you.”

Flash just glared at her.

“Look, we weren’t lying to you. We were....speaking around things… like the fact that we’re not a pony anymore. But we said, we use to be a pony. Those things we told you about ourselves were the truth. My father actually was a paladin,” She said. She took a step forward, and continued.

“And my mother actually did start my training in the ways of magic,” Laplace said to flash. “We really were healing your wing, And we actually do think that you are a very nice stallion, Flash. Every stallion except for Shiny has been a jerk to us. You on the other hoof have been nothing but an absolute gentlecolt to us.”

“So please, why don't we actually try to be friendly towards each other? I mean, eventually Shiny is going to take you away, so we ought to have as much fun as we can in the time that we have. We don’t want to fight and hurt you. We want to have fun with our friend!”

“Seriously?”

The sarcasm was lost on Laplace.

“You know what, yeah!” Laplace said to herself as she floated in a circle in joy. “We so could have fun together!”

Laplace giggled as she made a twirl as she floated just off the carpet.

“I mean, now that you know who we are, we don’t need to keep this disguise anymore and pretend that we’re still stuck in this room with nothing to do. We have tons of things we can do, board games, cards, you name it! The library is all ours! We’re going to have so much fun!”

Flash did not move. Is she? Serious?

“Come-on, let’s have fun, we can spend the night together, play games and oh! We could turn it into a whole slumber party! We even have a book about slumber parties we can use!”

Oh Celestia, she really is serious.

“Uh..um, Flash?”

“No.”

“Come on, it sounds like fun. You know what they say, ‘Once you get to know me, we’re not that bad’. You totally know me, you know we’re not that bad.”

“Know that you’re not bad? You’re not bad, you’re a monster!”

“I am not a monster!” The demon slammed her hoof on the floor. “You take that back!”

“You’ve hurt my fellow soldiers, you hurt the people I cared about, you’ve lied and deceived me doing Celestia knows what to me with your magic, then act like we’re friends? No Laplace, we are not going to be friends.”

“What? What’s so different? There’s no difference between who I am right now and who I was pretending to be ten minutes ago. Was Laplace the guardmare a monster? She isn’t, and neither are we! She was your friend, and so are we! There is absolutely no change.”

“There is absolutely a whole world of change! You’re the demon who’s kept me locked in this tiny little room, you broke my wing, you’ve done Celestia knows what to my friends, and you’ve been manipulating me from the very moment you ran into me, so I do what you want me to do. This isn’t friendship! This is enslavement!”

“You’re wrong! This is friendship! I am an expert in friendship!” She declared. “Let me tell you all about friendship. You see friendship works when two people have something that pulls them together, be it attraction, be it situation, be it ideology, be it whatever. Then, eventually, they will find something different in common they stop being friends, and when the time comes right you break them in half to achieve your goal works and crush theirs. That is how friendship works, it is something temporary, something that doesn’t last. And Flash, I want this to last longer than my previous friendships, we’ve only just gotten to known eachother! Don’t you want to know more about me?”

“No.” Flash’s answer was sharp as it was quick.

Laplace leaned back on her hindlegs, floating back into the air just an inch. She crossed her forehooves again and turned to her side, in frustration and thought.

She was expecting a yes.

She leaned in towards Flash and spoke.“You’ve been friendly to me this whole time, unlike all those other assholes, I don’t see any reason why we should break our friendship now. We should break it when we have something that’s actually worth breaking it over, not something like this.”

Laplace extended her hoof to Flash, confident he would agree with her logic and take her hoof. He did not.

“If you intend to break a friendship from the moment you meet somepony,” said Flash “Then you’re never really their friend. You’re a viper, taking advantage of someone until they’re no longer of use. That’s not friendship, it’s anything but friendship. You and I were never friends.”

“Yes we were, we were friends. You were friends with that guardmare, so be friends with me too.” Laplace held out hope, keeping her hoof out for Flash, she knew when he saw the light, he’d take it, and all would be forgiven, just like before.

Flash did not reach out.

“No. No, we weren’t friends back then, and we aren’t friends now.”

Still nothing.

“Really, you and I were never friends? You were never friends with that guardmare? Never at all?”

He took her hoof. Laplace became ecstatic… until he spoke.

“I was friends with her, until she told me that she wasn’t anything that she said she was.”

He brought their hooves down, and pulled away.

“We, Laplace, are not friends.”

“...Flash…” her ears drooped. She looked at him. He stared at her.

He meant it.

He really meant it.

Her head dropped. She ran her hoof through her hair, consoling her head. She knew, there was nothing that she could say to sway him.

Silently, the Demon of Canterlot walked past Flash. The demon said nothing, hollow steps across the carpet. She walked up until she reached the door. She stood there for a minute, before she opened the door with her hoof.

“You know what…” she said. “Fine.”

Flash said nothing as he watched her turn around towards him.

“Fine, whatever, you may not want to be my friend now, but you’ll get to know me in some time and then you’ll change your mind. You’re just grumpy. Yes, yes, you’re just being grumpy because you haven’t eaten in a while. I’ve gone hungry down here a lot too, I completely understand why you’re like this. I’ll go get you some more sandwiches tomorrow, we actually had a bunch more, but we’ve been eating them all” Laplace had a little chuckle. “Yeah, sorry about that. You just need something to eat, then you’ll be all better and then you’ll see things my way and we’ll become friends again.”

Flash shook his head no. “That’s not going to happen. We’re not going to be friends.”

Laplace brought her hoof to her mouth and chuckled.

“Oh Flash, we are going to be friends. Because deep down, you want us to be your friend. Because we can do things to you that’d you never believe... things that’d you kill for. Just, when we start showing you, you’ll soon learn to love us, for exactly the mare that we are.”

The Demon of Canterlot walked out of the room, she turned around and gripped the door with her magic. She had one more thing to say before she closed the door.

“So, why don’t you go get some sleep, and we think we’re going to get some sleep too. We think we’re going to have a very good night tonight, Flash. And in the morning, something tells us that we’re going to be the best of friends.”

Chapter 6 - Laplace, part 2 - end

Author's Note

And that concludes the first big reveal chapter. Did you figure out Laplace’s true nature before i revealed it?

Tell me what you think of the chapter. C and C, and all that jazz.

Chapter 7 - The Judas Contract

Chapter 7- The Judas Contract

Flash hovered just above the ground, protecting his baby brother from in the rain. A smooth gentle trip to their destination to make sure he didn’t cry. Flash kept the foal under the wraps of his blanket, turning around to the sound of grunts behind him.

“I said I’m fine,” Flash heard an adult stallion, his father, say some distance behind the boy.

“Honey, just let me push you out. We’re gonna be late.”

“I can do this myself,” Flash heard his father declare, before hearing another series of grunts.

It came from the large orange Pegasus with a mane that resembled Flash’s blue, or at least resembled what was left of that adult’s mane. An eyepatch over his right eye, most of himself in a body cast, Flash Sentry Senior was bound to a wheelchair that was stuck in the mud. Unlike every other pony around, he was not dressed in black. It wouldn’t fit over the body cast.

Through painful struggle, he tried to unstick himself from the mud. He could not. The tan female pegasus with the orange mane hovered behind him to try to lift up his wheelchair for him.

“Honey, just let me—”

“I said I can do this!”

His brother almost began to cry on instinct from their father’s growl.

“I know…I know” Flash muttered to his little brother, pulling out a binky in his pockets and placing it in the foal’s mouth. “Hey, it’s gonna be alright little bro. Dad’s just mad he’s gotta be in a wheelchair, he’s not mad at mom.”

“Honey, let me push you.” Flash heard his mother say, her wings flapping her behind her wheelchair-bound husband. The moment she tried, he protested.

“No, Ember! I don’t need your help!”

“We’re gonna be late to the funeral! I can’t go there without you Flash. I’m not even sure if they’ll let us in without you there.”

“I’m not going to be wheeled in like some cripple.”

Ember’s hoof met her forehead. “Flash, don’t do this, not here.” Ember pleaded to her stubborn husband “This is a funeral, nobody’s going to care about us here.”

“That’s not the point! I care! That fucking she-demon is not going to win! These casts are temporary, these burns are temporary, this wheelchair is temporary. I am not disabled, I don’t need to retire, and I don’t need anyone to help me! I am pushing myself Ember, end of story. If you’re so worried about—”

A thought popped into young Flash’s head. Shuffling his brother into one hoof, he turned around and called to his parents.

“Mom! Dad!” He shouted, interrupting his parent’s ‘conversation’. “Mom can hold Firsty and I’ll push if you two are having trouble. I’ve been training really hard, I know I can push it, Dad.”

Flash’s parents gave each other a silent look.

“No son, that won’t be necessary,” said Flash Sentry Senior

“Yes honey, everything’s fine,” said Ember Glow.

The boy saw them now whisper, no longer speaking to each other. Flash saw his mother’s wings flap faster and faster. He could make out whispering, but not what they were speaking about.

Flash’s baby brother began to cry once more. When Flash wondered why he sighed. The binky had fallen into the mud below.

Oh horseapples Flash thought to himself. At least mom has another.

Before he could turn around, he felt a hoof on his shoulder. He turned, and his mother was there, her glowing smile shining at her sons.

“Come on honey, let’s get going. There’s going to be some more rain later today, we need to find a spot with some cover before they’re all taken.

“I thought you said Daddy had to be there so the soldiers would let us in? I want daddy to be here.”

She fidgeted.

“Yes, um... “ Ember stumbled on her words. It took a moment, but she showed her sons a smile. “It’ll be ok honey. Daddy’s going to be catching up with us.” She said to her son. Mother and son looking at each other, Flash gave his baby brother back to his mother

As soon as she held the foal in her hooves, First Base stopped his crying. He just needed his mother’s touch. Flash thought, smiling.

“It’ll be ok. Your father will be meeting up with us soon, I promise. Now come-on Flash before we’re late for the funeral.”

“A funeral for whom?” an alien voice beamed into his skull.

Lighting flashed.

Flash now stood side by side around many ponies in the cold rain. Soldiers dressed in their armor, mares all wearing black. His mother held his brother as he wailed, her wing making an improvised umbrella for her baby boy.

Three tombstones stood in front of him.

“Who are these ponies?”

Flash heard the alien voice again.

I don’t want to think about it.

“There’s one more headstone next to them now, isn’t there?”

I...I don’t want to see it.

“But I do.”

Flash felt a soft hoof across his face, pulling his face, and making him see.

‘Here lies Captain Night Light, beloved father, loving husband, brave paladin, hero of the crown.’

‘Here lies Velvet Twilight. Beloved mother, blessed wife, respected author.’

The orange child buried his head in the mud.

I don’t want to see it I don’t want to see it.

A white mare grabbed his head and turned it up. The child tried to struggle her control away, but she gave nothing. The boy closed his eyes, holding them as long as he could to avoid seeing it.

“See it. Show me. I need to see it.”

No! I don’t want to! Please! Don’t make—

It was too late. Flash saw the name on the third tombstone.

‘Here lies Twilight Sparkle. Gone too soon, before her light could shine for all of Equestria.’

Twilight.

Gone were the crowds, gone were the instruments, gone was Flash’s family. The only thing in the world was an adult orange stallion, collapsed in front of a child’s grave.

“Really, Twilight?! You live in Canterlot too? I go to the school near the big bell tower. What school do you go?”

“The Canterlot school for gifted unicorns! Well, I will soon! My big entrance exam is tomorrow!”

I’m sorry Twilight.

I wish I could have helped.
I wanted to help.
I know I couldn’t have helped. It was out of my control.
But I never forgot.
I wanted to be strong.
I never really had a reason for joining the paladins, I just... always wanted to be like my father. But after what happened to you… I then… I did.

I wanted to become strong, strong enough to affect the world around me, and I would use that strength to never let a tragedy like yours from ever happening again.

But look at me now. I’m in a prison of bastards. I have to follow that bastard of a father’s path, just so I could step out of his shadow, lorded over by bastard professors whose classes I can’t pass, and I’m imprisoned by a bastard demon. I don’t affect my world at all. I just ride the wave, worthless as a log floating in the ocean.

...Twilight... I’m sorry. If you were here to see this...what would you say...

“It’s ok, Flash.”

The orange stallion felt a hoof on his back. He turned to see the pony who did. Every part of him froze.

A lavender pony with a dark purple mane, a single red streak in the middle of her mane and tail. Her flank had a red star as her cutie mark. Flash trembled as he stared at the ghost of what could have been.

“Twi...light?”

An adult version of the purple filly he knew was by his side.

“I know how it feels to be powerless,” Said Twilight Sparkle “What happened to me, was neither of our faults.”

She reached out to slide her hoof across him and pulled him into a long overdue hug.

“It’s ok, it’s ok.”

Twilight held the hug, keeping herself up while still holding onto the poor stallion.

“I know how it feels to be weak, to have no power as the world turns around you. I felt it for so long. It’s a feeling nopony should feel.”

Flash said nothing, but she could tell by his reaction, that he fully agreed. She released him.

“I don’t want you to be weak. Take my hoof Flash.”

Within a blink, she was no longer by his side, but in front of him, extending her hoof to him.

“Come with me Flash… I will make you strong. All you need to do, is to take my hoof…”

There was no way Flash could disobey this mare. Flash reached out and grabbed her hoof.

His soul went up.

----=

Flash impulsively stretched his legs and yawned, as he opened his eyes and saw nothing below. He tried to understand what had just happened to him. He felt like he was thrown up, but instead of hitting a ceiling, he landed on the ground. And a strange ground it was. It felt like he was on solid glass, despite the abyss below. He turned his gaze skyward and saw chaos.

What looked like colors of every shade of red swirled around like a bad drug trip.

“Where am I?” He asked himself.

“You are in the astral plane, a world of spirits.” Answered a booming voice, catching Flash off guard.

“It is a place beyond the knowledge of mortals, as wide and chaotic as Equestria itself, as it does exist right over it. Now, as to where in that place, well, it’s in our little world.”

Four mares surrounded him. A tan pegasus, a white unicorn, an orange unicorn, and a lavender unicorn.

His mother, his captor, his crush, his friend.

“Come on Flash.”
“We need to go”
“Follow us”
“Let us help you.” They said to him.

Flash tried to resist, but he soon found it impossible to. The four mares dragged him across the twisted landscape that surrounded them. Within a moment, they led him to a long red carpet. His eyes watched the carpet before it reached its end. There was a throne.

“Thank you, girls, we’ll handle it from here.”

He heard two voices, looked up and saw one mare. Laplace was sitting on a silver throne. Her eyes bearing a purple tint. Laplace’s pure white coat remained, but her hooves had become a blood red, the same red that colored strands within the center of her white mane.

Flash saw one more thing. A red scar in the middle of her forehead, just below her twisted horn.

“You…”

“Yes, Flash—us,” Laplace replied.

If this was some part of his dream, he really couldn’t understand why she was here. And why she was talking to him. So, he did the easiest thing possible: ask.

“Why am I here? Especially if you’re in this, is a really weird dream.”

Laplace chuckled on her throne. “Yes yes, a dream,” She said with a smug smile. “Call this a dream, but it’s our dreams that lead us to forge our reality.”

“So what does this dream mean then?” Flash asked back.

“It means great things are going to happen to you.” She leaned back and swept her right forehoof outward, inviting him closer “Come closer Flash. We have business to discuss. A… proposition, between you and us.”

“Huh?”

Laplace chuckled to herself. “We’ll make this easy for you. Flash Sentry Junior, We want to make a deal with you. A simple little deal, between just you, and us.”

He said nothing. He stood there, looking up at her. She grinned. Without a protest from Flash, she continued to speak.

“We want to help you. You’re a pony who’s been burdened with a great deal. Much of it not your fault. We understand. Much of our own fate, like yours, was not our own creation but that of others who conspired against us. Truly, we are kindred spirits, Flash.”

I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, Flash would have said, but the royal guard instead silenced himself and kept it in his thoughts.

“So, simply,” continued Laplace, “We want to give you power, to overcome your burdens. We want you Flash, to be the greatest you that you could possibly be.”

It took Flash less than a second to answer. “No thanks. I learned better than to make deals with demons.”

“Oh, Flash, you haven’t let us finish. Don’t say no just now, it’s quite rude.”

“I’ll pass,” Flash answered before he turned his head to the sky.

“I’d like to wake up now, if you can hear me, uhh... me,” he tried to command to his subconscious. He wasn’t sure how being aware in dreams worked, but with a demon in said dream, he considered it a question he’d ponder another night.

Laplace pouted, placing her hooves on her sides “A mare is pouring her soul out to you, and you just walk away?”

Flash’s answer was to turn around and walk away. But Laplace would not let that stand.

Seems so, eh Flash?
Seems like we need to change that.

A shadowy figure jumped in front of Flash. The shadow took the form of Twilight Sparkle, her horn lit up and gripped Flash in a purple magic, turning him around and sending him back to Laplace. Her job done, Twilight faded away.

“At least let us finish before you say no.”

Flash shook his head. “I’ll pass on whatever three wishes you have for me. Besides, these problems of mine aren’t things you can just wish away or blow up.”

Laplace’s smile stayed. “Oh Flash, We know that. It’s more than that. Those types of problems, that’s actually what we’re good at. It’s anything you want we will provide. We’re not one of those genies you read about in books, we don’t have a limit or a sinister drawback. We’ll use our magic and help you however you can, and as many times as the way you desire it.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes indeed!” Laplace exclaimed. “All of it, Flash, will be about making you the glorious stallion you were destined to be.”

“You want to to do all these things for me, huh? Out of the goodness of your ice cold heart, you want to grant me my every wish and whim?”

Laplace ignored the insult. “Of course.” She said nodding to him. “That’s how demon contracts work after all.”

“A demon contract?!” Flash stepped back.

When Flash stepped back, she leaned in. “Yes! A demon contract! A magical contract forged so strong that not even Tartarus could break it.”

“Yea, no.” Flash deadpanned. “I am not becoming your servant.”

Laplace chuckled. “You wouldn’t. We would.”

“...what?”

“We…” Laplace began, pointing her own hoof at herself. “...are pledging all our unique talent as the infamous Demon of Canterlot, to you Flash Sentry Junior. As your servant, everything we can do will be at your disposal, and we shall be there to serve at your every whim for as long as our contract holds. That is the nature of a contract, to obey one’s master. And we are more than willing to do all of this, for a single, simple thing in exchange.”

Flash knew what she wanted. “So you’ll do everything I want and give me all my deepest desires if I sell my soul to you, huh? Sorry, but I’m quite attached to—”

“Oh no no,” Interrupted Laplace. “That’s not a part of the deal. We have no interest in devouring your soul. If we did we would have munched on it first chance we got. Between you and us, we think pony souls taste terrible anyway.”

“Then what do you want?” Flash asked. “What simple, single, easy little thing are you trying to con me into doing for you? If I know one thing, it’s not worth the price.”

“Oh, Flash, you make it sound like a bad thing,” Laplace said back. “It’s a something quite dear to us. It’s the only thing we’ve ever wanted: Our freedom. We want to be free.”

“You want me to free you from your cell, back in the library?”

Laplace nodded. “Yes.”

“You want me to betray the kingdom I vowed I’d give my life for?”

Sitting upright on her throne Laplace pouted, her head tilting a bit to the side. She crossed her forelegs and replied to Flash. “Letting an unjustly held prisoner go isn’t betrayal. When we tried to kill Cadance all those years ago and nopony died. We’ve served our time. Our wonderful ruler and Shiny will never let us out, especially when that bitch Cadance has Shiny wrapped around her hoof. We will spend all our days in this cage, thanks to them.”

She levitated off her throne and landed near Flash. “We’re going to give you everything you want, all of your commands we shall do. And in exchange, you get us out of this cell. No fine print, no nothing, just that.”

She trotted in a circle around Flash.

“One needs to be brave. They need to take that single leap of faith to accomplish that dream that burns within their soul. As someone once said many times, “courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.”

“So Flash, we ask you... do you have what it takes to make your dreams into reality?”

Flash opened his mouth. Flash was almost going to say yes.

The thought simmered in his brain.

Flash realized part of him wanted to say yes.
Flash realized, a good part of him liked the deal: A deal with a demon. A vile, murderous, demon.

Flash panicked, and instinctively fled skyward.

Like a lightning bolt, he shot into the air, flying as high as he could, the strange, distorted streams of colors above him got closer. He readied to break through the strange cloudline...until he realized it wasn’t a cloudline. It was a barrier.

Instinct kicked in and he jammed on the proverbial air brakes, just inches from crashing into the barrier. He closed his eyes as he tried to stop at full speed. Flash indeed did hit the invisible ceiling but the impact was nothing more than a little love tap. Not flattened against a barrier in the sky, he opened his eyes and stared through the barrier.

What was on the other side of the barrier, stared back.

From Flash’s point of view, blurred entries stared back at him. Only a few looked like ponies, the rest took strange forms of equines, entities with tentacles spreading out all their forms, and bipedal creatures with leather wings.

“What the hell…” Flash watched the distorted entities. He could make mouths on some, speaking to each other, while others watched him like he was a beast in a zoo. The entities were filled, from what he saw, with a child-like wonder, each examining him from top to bottom, discussing to their fellow creatures what they were looking at.

Flash flapped a little away from the crowd of whatever it was that was watching him. He looked across his ‘audience’ again, looking for something familiar in this line-up of the bizarre. He did, finding a particular, a pink, pony-like blur among the ‘crowd’ watching him. When it noticed Flash was paying attention to it, the pony began shaking its head rapidly, before pulling, what seemed from nowhere, a small white sign for Flash.

Where it pulled it from, he’d never know. From this realm of chaos, he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know. But his soul wouldn’t disobey the temptation it provided. He flapped closed to the barrier, moving closer to make sense of the two red letters on the sign.

But before he could the tell what it was trying to tell him, another entity, a bright gray phantom-like entity with only half a body and a pointy hat ripped the sign away from the pink pony, before grabbing the pink blur by what seemed the mane to rip it away from the crowd. The pink entity gripped the barrier trying not to be pulled away, struggling to keep its spot. When it made eye contact with Flash once more, it mouthed words. Or more accurately, tried to, before it was finally yanked away, and the pink mass was thrown away from the barrier. More faces filled took the free spot to get a glimpse at Flash. That was until the gray half-pony slammed its face against the barrier, its phantasm form stretching across a part of the barrier, its red ruby eyes glowing, bearing down at Flash. He retreated a foot, his instincts set off an alarm, one too late for him. He began to turn around only to feel familiar shadows wrapping themselves around his wings, and eventually encasing his whole body. The shadow of the Demon of Canterlot appeared from the shadow blinding Flash.

“You all go away!” Laplace’s shadow shouted “He’s inside our barrier! He belongs to us! Shoo, vermin!”

To defend him against the staring eyes of those beasts, Flash felt Laplace’s binding shadows drag him back to the astral ‘ground’. “Please excuse those worthless spirits,” Laplace said, speaking again through the shadows, “They’re nothing more than moths to a flame, attracted to our brilliance, a brilliance that they could never achieve.”

When they reached the bottom, the darkness released the pegasus back, safely on the ‘floor’, with the demon Laplace.

“The same force that binds me here within this barrier, keeps those entities out. There is no freedom in here, nothing but this. This cage, this bubble, this little world of ours. We’re tired of it Flash. We’ve been here for so long, too long. We want out. Whatever it takes, we shall be free once again. And that is why we are here for you. We desire our freedom, you desire your success. Our goals intertwine, and we can help the other achieve what they desire the most.”

Flash once again turned away, the righteous side of his brain taking control once again. “I’m fine on my own. I am a soldier of Equestria, demons like you are my enemy.”

Laplace frowned. “There is no Equestria here. When was there ever an Equestria here? There’s just you and us, no crown or country, no right or wrong. What you say is an excuse and you know that, Flash.”

Flash stopped. “No. Thanks. Laplace.”

“Are you going to walk away from it? We’re giving you the perfect chance to get all you desire. And you, being here, is the perfect chance to reclaim our stolen freedom. We can save each other Flash. We just need to be good to each other.”

“No, it’d be me committing treason against my own kingdom and unleashing a demon upon Equestria. I don’t want your ‘good’, I don’t think anypony does.” Flash spoke. It doesn’t matter how great it is, I’m not taking your bait.

“You don’t want to be good? You want to be pathetic? Aren’t you tired of watching the mare you love sleep around with everypony but you? Aren’t you tired of flunking every class you take? Aren’t you tired of all these things that are binding you to this fate just because you’re the son of a-”

“Stop it!” Flash shouted, interrupting the demon mare.

Flash rubbed his temple with his hoof. “Look, you’re right, things aren’t going too well for me, but it doesn’t matter. Things will get better, I will make them better by myself. I don’t need your help. I’m doing things the right way, and the right way works. I’m not taking the easy way out. I’m not selling my soul, and I’m not giving in. Leave me alone, Laplace.”

Flash turned around and once again, began to walk away.

“Fine then.”

A door came into being in front of Flash, light glistening from the hinges. “This is a door back to our library,” Laplace said, walking up to the stallion’s side. “You take it, this will be the end of things. We’ll keep you fed and taken care of until Shining Armor negotiates your release, he’ll have your memory wiped of this entire incident, and not only will you forget our encounter, you will never hear, or see of us again as long as you live.”

Flash walked up to the door. Laplace followed like a predator.

“But before we let you open that door, we want you to ask you one last thing.”

Flash closed his eyes in annoyance. “Shoot.”

“Are you happy with your life? This path you take right now. The one you said before you’re taking. Is it working?”

“Yes, it is.” Flash reached for the door.

“Is it really working Flash, or are you just trying to justify passing up your best hope for fixing it?”

There was a moment of silence as before Flash grabbed the doorknob. “…mostly,” Flash said before he turned the doorknob. “It’s mostly working.”

Flash stared at Laplace for a solid minute. He turned his attention away from the mare and back to the door.

“So,” asked Laplace “That’s it? We’re done? Not even a goodbye?”

Flash didn’t look back as he said “Yea, that’s it. We’re done.” He opened the door.

A small grin came from Laplace’s mouth. “Stubborn,” she said “Like father, like son. Pity.”

Flash stopped in his tracks. His hoof rested on the half-opened door.

“What did you say?” It was dead cold, Laplace didn’t need to know what she did to understand she stepped on a landmine. She could hear the anger building in his breath, a lit fuse primed to explode.

Instead of walking away, thrown into the landmines, there can’t be any mistakes.
Perfect words need to be said, this is our last chance.

“You heard us. You’re just like that stallion. You need to change, Flash, because before you know it, Flash, you’ll soon become him.”

“I am not my father…” The angry stallion held it in. Unlike his father, he not would explode, Flash told himself.

“Yet can’t see you’re following the very same path as he did?” Laplace said calmly.

”I am not him.” he fumed, shutting his eyes tight. I do not explode. “I’m taking my own path, and it’s going to lead to great things.” Flash opened his eyes.

“It doesn’t look like that to me. It looks like you’re making the exact mistakes he did. How does it feel Flash, really, how does it feel to trick yourself into doing exactly what he did thinking you’re not? You’re going to wind up exactly like-

“I AM NOT MY FATHER!”

Flash’s anger exploded in front of Laplace. The furious pegasus’ wings beat like a storm, the anger that had been bound, unleashed itself.

“I don’t abandon my family! I don’t fuck up like he did! I don’t throw everything away for fucking nothing! I’ll never do what that goddess-damned fuck did! I am not him and I never will be!”

Before Laplace knew it, Flash was close enough to bite her face off. Laplace bit her lip.

You better know what you’re doing girl, we only got one shot here...
...it just has to be done right…

“Can’t see you’re following the very same path as he did?” Laplace said calmly.

“I am not! I’m doing things my way, and I won’t make his mistakes!”

“You’re doing exactly what he did. You’re him!”

“I AM NOT THAT BASTARD!” Flash howled, eyes shut as he reared his hooves in anger.

When Flash opened his eyes, he did not see the lighting rod for his anger. He saw a mirror, showing another pony. He saw an older pegasus decorated in a paladin’s armor, a stallion with a blue mane and orange coat.

Where there was anger, there was now fear.

“I’m not him...I’m not him…”

In the mirror, he saw his father reflected back to him.

Flash’s wings gave out, he fell on his flank. The Mirror image of Flash Sentry Senior mimicked Flash Sentry Junior as he hit the ground and stared at the mirror in horror, unable to look away.

“Oh Celestia, I’m not him…” Flash muttered to himself, pushing himself by the hooves away from the mirror, and away from Laplace.

“It’s what you fear the most… you becoming him… don’t you know Flash… you’re almost there?”

“I want to wake up now…please, Celestia, I want to wake up now...”

Flash’s eyes desperately looked all around him for a way to wake himself up, to exit the nightmare he was in.

“You can’t run from this forever, Flash. What makes you think you can avoid this fate?” the demon trotted closer to the fear-filled foal, “You need help. Our help. We’re the only one who can save you.”

“I need to get out of here, I need to get—” The door!

Flash’s eyes caught the door. It would take him away from this nightmare. Flash clamored onto his hooves and made a mad dash for the door, and away from the Demon of Canterlot.

Before he could reach for the doorknob, she re-appeared and blocked his path.

“You’re going to become just like him if you don’t change. If you reject my offer, you won’t have any other alternative.”

Flash said nothing to the demon blocking his escape. He was thinking. In his head, the choices fought in his brain.

“Flash, stop and think about this,” she told him. “We’re on your side, Flash. We want to save you. But in order to do that, you need to be sure. Absolutely sure.”

Flash knew saying no be the ‘good’ thing, but what good was there in leading a miserable existence? Did that wasted life even have any value? He knew what one path would offer him. But the other, the other offered him a chance, if nothing more.

“You… you still have doubts. We can’t have that. We need you to be absolute in your decision. To make a contract with us, and save your soul, or to reject our offer and become your father, rotting in his shadow.”

It could lead to risk... or something great. He remembered what he was once told by a very wise mare.

“Flashy, you can’t just play it safe and listen to what everyone thinks is best. I know what your mom said, and she is right. But sometimes, you can’t always play things safe and follow what other people tell you. Sometimes you need to break away and choose your own path. To take a leap of faith to get what you want. It’s a risk, it’s always a risk, but sometimes, you need to just go all in, and put your faith to the test. How bad do you want this, Flash?”

“In order to forge a contract, we need a willing partner,” Laplace said “Somepony who will go all in. If you’re not willing to put everything on the line, like we are, then this is all for naught.”

How bad do I want this? To break away...

Laplace stepped aside. “The choice is yours, Flash.” The path to the door was there, the glistening light half-open, Flash could see the library through the brightness. “I won’t stop you, I won’t say anything more. If you take that door, then there’s nothing more we can do for you.”

Upon instinct, Flash reached for the door.

“But remember, the one question I have for you. Are you happy with your life?”

He did not answer. Words tried to come, thoughts tried to be a devil’s advocate to the demon, but none would form.

“We know you’re not. No matter what you tell yourself, you know the truth: You know you’ll never step out of that shadow your father cursed you with. You’re never going to have the mare you love, and these classes you’re failing are not going to get you anywhere. You’re going to grow old in that uniform you hate. You will be stuck, miserable, imprisoned, and alone... and you know it.”

“Flash… are you happy with your life?”

…

...

“...I hate it. I hate my fucking life.”

Flash slammed the door shut.

“What do I need to do?” The stallion turned around to the demon.

Laplace’s smile became a mile wide. “What you just did.” Slowly, she walked up to the stallion, a purple glint in her eye as she spoke.

“Despite everything I saw and heard, I knew, from the very first moment I laid eyes you, Flash, that you’d be my knight in shining armor. I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that you’d be the one to set us free.”

She floated in front of him, she grabbed his forehooves, a perfect smile on the mare’s face. Her crimson eyes locking with his blue eyes.

“You’ve made an excellent decision Flash.”

A massive magical rune revealed itself underneath the two as the demon’s horn lit up. Her magic slowly flowing into the center of the rune, spreading out, a dim light soon spreading to the entire spell circle.

“Just let the magic flow into you, Flash. Can you feel our magic?”

Flash closed his eyes and nodded.

“Good. Are you ready Flash? Once we begin, there is no going back.”

“I don’t want to go back. Someone once said, ‘Sometimes you need to break away and choose your own path. To take a leap of faith to get what you want.’”

Laplace smiled. “Good. Then let us begin…”

Laplace’s horn lit up, charging a magnificent white, and she began to speak.

A master found, now servant we

Do pledge ourself to only thee.”

Flash felt Laplace’s magic flow all around him. The moment her magic seeped inside his coat, the words not of his own came upon him effortlessly.

“For deeds, I’ll grant you freedom’s wings

To break you from your binding chains.”

“And we shall grant thy spirit strength

To steer thee from thy dreadful fate.”

The runes below them lit up, glowing even more intensely. A slow stream of purple magic wrapped around Flash’s body, while Flash’s yellow magic swirled around Laplace. The two streams brushed, and Flash felt the nature of the words change within him. With the magic guiding them,

“THIS IS THE CHOICE WE MAKE:

LET NO FORCE SEVER THIS BOND—

ONLY BY DEATH’S HAND WILL IT END.

WE PLEDGE OUR LIVES TO THIS ETERNAL COMMITMENT—

YE WHO BREAKS IT WILL LIVE NO MORE.”

Flash’s eyes shone like rubies as the demon’s magic filled his soul.

“To this do I now pledge to you—”

“And we to thee, bonded true…”

Laplace’s eyes turned golden, as Flash’s magic penetrated her very being.

"NOW AND FOREVERMORE!”

The two stood on their hindlegs, their hooves pressed against each other.

“I am your master!”

“And we, your servant!”

“OURSELVES TO THIS ENDURING DEAL—

TO BINDING OATH—OUR WILLS ENSEAL!”

Chapter 7 - The Judas Contract - End

Author's Note

“Alea iacta est”

There are points in life where you make a decision that cannot be undone. Flash has crossed this line.

Lots of things happened in this chapter, and well, it’s a really important one. I only hope I did it well. If you got any questions, let me know. If you like it, write it in the comments, if you got a question or want me to elaborate, or ask what the heck something was, go ahead. As long as it’s not a spoiler, I’d love to answer.

I also wanted to thank Saint Absol again for his help with thinking and the brainstorming of this chapter. Thanks a ton man.
And also a thanks to this video - "Vying for Attention" for one, introducing me that awesome song, and two for the song for kinda inspiring the rest of this chapter.

And I want to thank Kwirky J (again) for his awesome help. Thanks for your help, and for making that spell at the end sounding a whole lot better then it was.

(By the way, did you get the chapter title's reference? Heh. That title just perfectly works, I think.)

The next chapter shouldn’t take this long. See you guys next chapter!

Chapter 8 - When there’s smoke...

Flash awoke. The stallion’s wings spread out wide as his body stirred awake with the force of a lighting bolt. He nearly shouted as his mind came to.

The stallion rolled on his haunches, now awake and of mind, and took a deep breath. He stretched his legs and gave out a yawn.

Flash felt good.

“I needed that,” he muttered to himself as he stretched. Forelegs, hindlegs, and then wings. Everything felt fine. In fact, Flash better than he had in weeks. He felt like he could fly higher than the——

“Wait, wings?”

He looked at his right wing, and saw the case to hold the previously broken wing was gone. Because the wing wasn’t broken anymore.

“...did she really heal my wings?”

He stretched his wings out and inspected them. There wasn’t a single scratch on them; not a bruise, not anything.

She did…I guess, she really wasn’t lying to me after all, he thought.

His mind then responded to that. Well, yea... for that, she was telling the truth, but you know, it’s just that. Come on, we know she probably lied about everything else. She’s a demon—screw that, she’s been holding us hostage and been messing with us since we came here. Flash, do you really expect to a girl like that is trustworthy? No, no you don’t.

Flash folded up his wings. “You don’t believe a girl like that, even if she’s a looker.”

Especially if she’s a looker. They’re the most deceptive ones...

Flash would have kept the conversation running in his head going, but a new voice in the room put an end to that.

“Oh, you think I’m a looker? Oh Flash, you’re making me blush.”

Oh crap it’s her, he thought to himself.

“I’m so happy to see you’re awake!”

“You’re early,” Flash responded.

She giggled. “Oh Flash, don’t you know what time it is? It’s about sunset. You Flash, have been sleeping all day.”

“What?”

Flash looked at the clock, and saw the truth for himself. The hour hand of the clock was pretty far.

“Well, our healing magic can do a number on a pony,” she said. "Stupid shiny won’t give us any magical tomes on how to properly heal wounds with magic. He claims we’ll pervert them or something. So, we had to make do with a home-school job, which really tires out all parties involved. We do hope you sleep well.”

“I might have, but why does a centuries-old demon who prides herself on her magic not know how to heal herself?”

She giggled again. “We knew you’d see right through that. Good job. We were halfway afraid that you’d just accept that. It’s always important to question the things you know as true,” said the deceptive demon. With that, she then explained the actual reason. “Anyway to tell you what really happened, we kept you asleep while we finished fixing your wing. We could have healed you perfectly at any time, but if we did, you would have suspected that we weren’t the mare you thought we were. Figuring you knew now, we decided to keep you asleep while we finished mending your broken bones. We do hope you enjoyed your lazy sunday afternoon.”

Flash sighed. He knew, he knew he had to say it. He spoke, “Laplace, thank you for healing my wing.” Granted, you were the reason why it broke, but I can’t really complain to my captor about that now can I?

Laplace seized the moment and hugged Flash. His cheeks flushed as she hugged him tight. “Oh Flash! Thank you!”

Sniff.

The hug suddenly went rigid.

Sniff sniff.

“You smell.”

Flash indeed did.

“That’s what happens when you keep somepony locked in a room for a few days.”

The mare backed off. Flash noticed Laplace’s instinctive sniff on her own coat, seeing if the ‘contagion’ spread to her own. A frown told him that she would be reaching for the soap first chance she got.

Embarrassed, she squeaked. “Heh-heh… oops.”

Flash, though, took it in stride. “I’ve been in worse.”

“Worse?”

The demon’s mind went pondering what it could be.

“You say it like that, now we feel like we want to know.”

Flash shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

Laplace chuckled a little bit. “Come on, how bad could it be?”

“Hey, Flash, about time you clocked in kid. Listen, the manager needs you to clean the bathroom.”

“What’s the urgency? Didn’t we just open?”

“We did, and you’re the only pegasus on shift this morning.”

“Why do you need a pegasus, shouldn’t it be clean already? All I saw was one guy in there. He seemed to be in quite a rush to get out.”

“——And also to get in.”

“What?”

“Na, nothing.... just get something on your hooves, or um, just don’t land.”

The teenage grocery store clerk grabbed a what he needed and proceed into the restroom, unaware of what awaited…

“Alright, let’s see what’s the—— OH SWEET CELESTIA!”

“Really,” Flash deadpanned, “you don’t wanna know.”

The mare pouted, her way not got. She took a step ahead of Flash, her instincts driving her to learn this forbidden knowledge.

“Oh come—” Until she remembered what happened the last time she did. She silenced herself and stepped back. She knew pressing was a bad idea. The mare sighed. “If you say so…”

Laplace quickly moved to change the subject. “Anyway, let me change that uncleanness. You can use my shower!” she said like an excited filly. “Then you can get all nice and squeaky clean.”

“You have a shower?” Well, I suppose she has to. She actually hasn’t smelled at all this whole time…in fact… she smells like lavender. It’s really, really nice—Flash’s train of thought skidded to a hault.

“Yes ,we do,” said the lavender-smelling demon, nodding cheerfully. “It’s in the master bedroom.”

“You have a master bedroom?”

“Where the heck do you think we sleep? In our lab? We have our own bedroom here.”

“You have a lab?”

She sighed.

“Wait, no,” Flash corrected himself. “You mentioned that before. Last place I’d expect one though.”

“What, we don’t look like the learning type?” said the demonic equine.

Flash looked, and shook his head. “I can’t really see you in a lab jacket.”

“That’s because we don’t have one. Stupid Shiny won’t let us have one.”

With that, Laplace pushed open the double doors. “We’re dilly-dallying, the day’s almost over. Follow me, let me show you…”

“...my master bedroom!” Laplace pushed opened the double doors, revealing to Flash a extravagant room. Unlike the floor in the main library, this floor was all carpeted, and very plush at that. And unlike his ‘holding cell’ Laplace’s master bedroom was not another room full of books, but an actual room. She had a dresser, with makeup that seemed to have been recently used and a drawer open. There was one chair with a light, Flash couldn’t tell what it was, but the pentagram on the book and the scroll next to it, he’d guess it was something magic. The bed was large and extravagant, filled with large puffy pillows, a comforter, and a bedsheet, all the color of most other things in the bedroom, lavender.

Flash saw a single bookshelf, his eyes scanned the titles. They were a random collection of books, ranging from ‘A History of Equestrian Prehistory’, a Daring Doo novel, ‘The Nightmare War and The Great Sun’, a political thriller, an erotic hippogriff novel, ‘Advanced Linear Algebra: Eighth Edition by Brain Masters and Smarty Glasses’, and—

A college textbook? He wondered. She has a college book? Flash looked next to it, there was more educational textbooks, all subjects of a skill level that dwarfed his own. Economics, Advanced Magical theory 3, Advanced Physics 2... Wow, she’s got a lot of advanced textbooks...wait, is that… my book?

Despite the genius of those books, it was the next book that caught his eye the most, the book with its authors’ names scribbled out. It was a book he couldn’t have not recognized, the names burned into his brain by the sheer amount of times he had to read it.

‘No Need For Fear: The Life and Biology Of The Equestrian Changeling by Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Seymour Guise.’

She has that book? Seems like she wanted to know about changelings. Pity for her that Equestria’s greatest expert on changelings is the mare she hates the most. How could she hate Princess Cadance though? She’s… she’s wonderful, beautiful, how could you not love her?

Flash sounded a click as the answer easily came to him.

Answer: she’s a demon. Demons don’t love. They’re just psychos.

He turned to see said demon.

Really, really hot psychos. Why can’t you be ugly? It’d make this so much easier. Just be polite, be calm, and don’t piss her off, and whatever you do don’t bring up Cadance.

“Enjoying our reading list?” she said with a flirtatious smile. “Just to let you know, we have more. If you’re interested...”

“I’ll. uh… pass.”

“Pity, we would have loved for you to spread our books wide open.” The smile grew wide

The innuendo struck Flash like a arrow. It’s not her, it’s not her, it’s just you being a pervert, Flash tried to tell himself, mentally swatting his indecent thoughts away.

“Let us show you our bathroom, you can get all squeaky clean in there.” Flash watched as Laplace then happily walked away from him towards the single door in the room, her sexy tail swinging side by side and her lovely flanks—Flash turned away, he could feel the blood pumping into his wings. Finding refuge in a bathroom couldn’t come fast enough.

“Uh, just a shower, would be great right now, thanks,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, nodding too slowly, “you do. Go stop being smelly. We won’t disturb you.”

Flash looked at her, and instead of saying anything, decided to take his leave. Laplace wrapped her magic around the bathroom door and opened it.

“Now go get clean, and then you can use my bed. As they say, ‘mi casa es su casa’. Should be nicer than sleeping on the floor, right?”

“Really?” There’s probably some sort of trap, or something, but I get to sleep in this girl’s bed… and that looks like a really nice bed.

“Yea,” Laplace continued. “We figure you ought to be comfortable. It’s a really nice bed after all. Heck, we might join ya if we’re feeling tired, ourselves.” Laplace giggled. “We wonder how’d that go...”

Flash lay snug in the bed of the Demon of Canterlot.

“Hmm… She was right, this is a really nice bed.”

The stallion closed his eyes, sleep starting to take him.

“Hello, handsome.”

Flash felt soft hooves land on him, and he knew without looking that a mare’s hooves pinned his legs down. The pressure against his back rose as she rolled on top of him, her full body weight bearing down across his back. A nip at his ears sent his wings struggling. His eyes opened and he turned to Laplace, her smoldering eyes fixed on him.

“You’re not as soft as the mattress anymore,” she said. “I demand a refund.”

With a move from training, he pulled a foreleg free, hooked it around her soft neck, and in a whorl of limbs came out on top of her, positions reversed. She struggled against his mass with delightful, strained moans to no avail.

“But you like me more than the mattress, don’t you?” Flash said back. “You know, there’s a lot I can do from up here…” He leaned in and their lips met. He could smell her lavender scent, her fresh breath against his muzzle. They pulled away and she kissed his neck, he kissed hers back. Kisses became nibbles, nibbles turned back into kisses…

“Make a mare out of me Flash… make me yours...”

Flash mentally slapped himself back to reality and darted inside the bathroom, turning sideways to slide his expanding wingspan inside the restroom. The rest of Flash’s body followed, and the pony was out sight.

All Laplace could do was giggle at the amusing—and alluring—sight.

Oh, we got him good… that was funny.
He has some pretty wings...
...And don’t forget how big they are too...

From the other side of the bathroom door, “Um, uh, thank you Laplace. I’ll be taking my bath now.”

“You’re welcome…”

Laplace chuckled as she turned to leave the bedroom, a smile on her face all the way out.

“...master.”

As soon as the double doors to her room closed, Laplace skipped with joy.

“Yes!” she said to herself.

Everything had gone according to plan. The spell had worked perfectly. He didn’t know!

He didn’t even have a clue about what happened last night! He didn’t even realize we forged a contract, and with how we erased his memory. When they check him out, Stupid Shiny won’t even notice, either… until Flash frees us, that is.

With that, Laplace’s horn lit up and her eyes shined red. The demon sunk her forehooves into the ground below her, seeping into the floor. Phasing through the library, she made her way to her destination.

“I think we ought to reward ourselves.”

Laplace pulled herself out of the ground at her destination.

“Yes, yes we should,” Laplace said, pushing open the doors to her lab.

Tables with glass tubs, substances, and boxed materials all were scattered around. In the right corner was a long mobile blackboard, filled with complex scribblings of science and magical theories. On the left corner, were four stone statues of ponies. One of them had a apron sloppily thrown on it, another goggles dangling from an extended hoof, and a pair of stone statues lying on the ground with a smaller blackboard on it. All four statues bore the armor of the equestrian royal guards.

Levitating it with her magic, she pulled a apron off the stone statue, one of a unicorn mare in, with a look of fear or shock on her face.

“Hey, thanks again June,” she said to the statue. “And thanks for letting us borrow your ex-boyfriend. We know you don’t mind. Well, it’s not like you had a choice... you’re a statue,.”

She reached out and stretched her forehooves, “What do we say we get some science done, eh?”

“Damn it…” Laplace told herself, staring at the beaker, nothing bubbling as she expected. Her magic settled the beaker down, jotting down the results of her experiment.

“Another half-assed corrosive acid…” she muttered to herself, picking up the beaker with her magic again, and disposing of the acid inside.

Her experiment done, she took off her gear, and placed it all back on the petrified royal guards she had captured, and plopped backside on a small cot in the room in defeat.

“Still can’t make anything good enough to melt those damn bars…” She lamented. “Oh well, don’t worry about it. We’ll be getting out of here soon enough. Flash will do it for us. We won’t need any plan Bs when Flash does what we say.”

She scratched her head with a hoof. When it wasn’t effective enough, Laplace’s forehoof became red, and with a flash of magic, changed from a pony’s hoof to a dragon-like claw. Much better for scratching. Much, much better.

Oooh, my claw feels so good...

She closed her eyes enjoying the scratching. For a whole minute, her brain went numb as she scratched her coat all over her body with her transformed leg.

Yea, Flash would love this. We should surprise him and do this to him, after a shower, this would be heaven... Where is he by the way?

Taking a moment to stop scratching, she focused, slowly feeling the connection between master and servant, and within a moment, she could feel how far away she was to him.

So we can tell where our master is. That sounds, useful. Could he...? Nah, if he doesn’t even know of the contract, then he couldn’t.

Laplace bit her lip and thought.

He’s still in the bedroom. Suppose he must be really taking up that offer of our bed. At least he hasn’t realized we didn’t lock it. Whatever, it’s not like it matters. As long as that barrier’s up, neither one of us are getting out of here. Plus, we’ll catch him before the guards notice he’s outside the barrier screaming for help. That, or he’s still in our bathroom. But he’s a soldier, and soldiers take quick showers. That and I mean what the heck could be be doing in my bathroom that’d take so long?

She looked at the clock in the room, and saw how long she had left her captive alone. She sighed.

We need to go see him...
We’ve left him alone too long. We should check and make sure everything’s fine.

Scratching done, Laplace’s left forehoof turned back to normal with another flicker of light.

We can have some fun with him when we see him again. We could flirt with him some more? He gets so flustered so easily.
It’s so much fun to watch.
And he, himself… quite easy on the eyes. He’s no Shining Armor, though. That’s a stallion that can’t be beat.
No sir, not at all!

“Hmmm…” she said. “Alright, so we need to get up then.”

We could, or we could just teleport right there to him. Ohh… heh, that’d be a really cool surprise. He’d find it really cool, being surprised by my random appearance. Also it’d make him think we can appear anywhere. That would help, especially if he starts thinking bad about us again.

You know what... screw it. Teleport it is.

Laplace gathered the magic around her with her horn. “Teleport!” she shouted, before vanishing from her lab in a great white flash, whisking herself away to her bedroom.

Or at least, she thought she was.

All things being equal, the teleportation spell would have sent Laplace to her master bedroom, if, and only if, Flash had indeed been in her bedroom… settled onto the bed, sleeping, for instance. As fate would have it, Flash was not on the mattress, sleeping or otherwise, and quite fully somewhere else entirely.

If one were, however, resting within the bedroom and whose eyes were not fully closed and perchance within viewing angle of the door to the bathroom, they would have noticed a flash of light from within.

Immediately thereafter, they would have been roused fully to wakefulness by the shouts that followed.

“Hello Flash—OHMYGOSH!”

“HOLY-CRAP!”

The sound of something large falling into the filled bathtub joined the raised voices.

“Crapcrapcrap—”

“Wow, you’re—”

“GET OUT!”

There was the sound of grunts, scuffling, mayhem, and a sliding shower door, followed by the bathroom door bursting open and a soaked white mare flush with embarrassment dashing out and slamming the door shut behind her

Laplace leaned against the wall, panting.

Big, she thought. So big….

Her mind processed the situation slowly, punctuated with the occasional guilty splashes of water. It took a moment before words occurred to her again.

“What, uh… W-what the heck were you doing in my bathroom?!”

“I...I um, I don’t want to talk about it! I thought you were giving me some privacy?”

“I did! I thought you were done! How were you in there for that long? Were you doing that the whole time?”

“Na-No! Of course not! I was I - I was preening! It’s been awhile since I have.”

“Preening?”

“Cleaning my feathers. I haven’t preened my wings in a while.”

Didn’t look like you were cleaning your feathers to us...

“Why the heck did you teleport right on me? Couldn't you have walked here? Or knocked?"

“We uhh… um...

Um...maybe we shouldn’t sleep with him.
This… probably will happen again…
Yea...yea…

“Hey, um, Flash? Well, you can uh, have the room um, to yourself… you can go and well, sleep in my bed tonight. I have a cot in my lab, I’ll uh, sleep uh… there and we promise we won’t disturb you until morning. You uh, have-a-good-night-bye.”

She didn’t even wait for an answer.

As soon as the doors to her bedroom closed and locked, Laplace shook her head, turned back, and realized what she had just done.

“What were you thinking?!” She shouted to herself.

She had just done the opposite of what she wanted. Tonight was suppose the first night of master and servant, of her getting a chance to be herself and spend the night with a good-looking stallion. Shining Armor would definitely be ready with his list of demands any time now, if he wasn’t there already. She realized her time with Flash was nearing it’s end, and that she had just instinctively lost a good chunk of the time she did have left with him.

“We gotta go back!” She told herself.
“But we promised Flash we’d leave him alone.”

She groaned in frustration as she ran her hooves through her mane.

“Damn it…”
“Do we really need to keep our promises with him?”
“Well, if we want him to free us, he needs to think we’ll keep our word…”
“I can’t believe this…”
“We screwed up...”
“...Big time.”

Laplace stood on her forelegs, and sighed again, leaning back floating into the air, as if she was sitting in a recliner.

“Ok...think, girl, think. Shining should be here any moment with the demands, clearly he’s not here and something’s keeping him, but that’s not a problem. We want to spend more time with Flash, and we kinda made that a problem, too. Ok…think…”

“Oh, that is a good plan. Ok, put a sign next to the cell saying we’ll have to postpone. He usually gets things much faster than this, and if Shining’s clearly having trouble, this is win-win.”

Laplace smiled, and hopped off her imaginary recliner, landing back on all four hooves.

She yawned. “Ok, that sounds like a plan. Then we can get some sleep, and maybe another experiment before we go to bed… that… doesn’t sound too bad. Not as good as snuggling with Flash… but good enough.”

She turned to her master bedroom’s double doors.

“We know you’ll be sleeping well tonight Flash. Tomorrow's gonna be a great day for us, we’ll see you then.
“Sweet Dreams.”

And indeed, Flash did.

Flash slept peacefully in the bed of a demon, his mind aflutter with dreams… until...

Sniff.

Flash’s eyes bolted open.

Sniff sniff.

Flash could smell something, something his brain was trying to wake him to remember.

“Is that…”

Sniff sniff.

Smoke!

Flash got out of the bed immediately, and saw the smoke seeping through the cracks. His ears swiveled, and he could hear the crackles of fire.

The Demon’s library was in flames.

There was only one thought, and only one action to take. Flash flipped the locks and heaved the double doors open.

It was time to go.

Chapter 8 - When there’s smoke… - End

Author's Note

Hey there! I Wanted to give a shoutout to Kwirky J, FrontStevens, and Calico for all the help for this chapter. Couldn't have gotten this stuff done without you guys there to help me out and make this even better.

See you guys next update!

PS- The bathroom thing, true story, and you don't wanna know. Luckily, my bosses kinda understood what they were sending me into, and gave me a free sub after I finished (took me over an hour to clean), so all's well that ends well. Sometimes, real life gives us the craziest stories to tell.

Chapter 10 - …people get hurt… (part 2 of 3)

Chains rustled. A metal claw shot out of the darkness and latched itself to the back of Laplace’s head.

“LAPLACE! WE ARE FAR FROM DONE!”

The chain tightened on the demon’s skull.

“GET OVER HERE!”

Laplace was dragged through the darkness head-first. Before she could try to work up any magic, another cold metal claw pierced into her back. She screamed in pain as the metal claw broke through her ribcage.

“Remember what I told you?”

The claw inside tightened around Laplace’s most vital organ.

“Yours…”

The claw ripped out of Laplace’s back, releasing a torrent of the demon’s blood and sending Laplace to the floor.

Zircon held her bloody claw, Laplace’s heart still beating. “…for mine.”

An immediate eruption of Zircon’s black magic sent Laplace flying. She hit the ground face-first, skidding across the floor.

A solid beat pulsed in Laplace’s veins once again as she pulled her head from the carpet.

She just stole our heart!
That bitch!

Zircon stood tall, her eyes now tainted green, sinister with purple magic streaming from her eyes, and a black light sealing up the cut along her chest. She stamped her hoof and the magic dispersed, revealing her body in full.

“Much better!” shouted Zircon. “I told you what would happen!”

Laplace’s strength, heart, and anger returning to her, the demon rose to her hooves and yelled with blind rage “You little, son of a-”

Zircon shot out one of her metallic claws, the magically charged limb soared through the air and grabbed the mare’s snout.

“Boop,” Zircon quickly said.

Black crystals jutted out of Laplace’s body. Hundreds of tiny little black spears shot out of her body. The demon’s eyes went wide with pain. She tried to scream, but Zircon’s grasp would not break.

“And this is the part I didn’t tell you that would happen.”

Zircon’s dark magic flowed into Laplace through her claw. Black crystals sprouted from the claw, spreading like a plague all across Laplace within seconds. Laplace only managed a single muffled shout before the crystals consumed her entire body from head to hoof.

Zircon waited for several deep breaths, all the while watching Laplace for a sign of escape from her crystal tomb. A sign that never came.

“And that’s how you skin a demon cat,” Zircon smiled. She straightened, and like the flip of a switch the dark magic pulsating around her instantly vanished. Her eyes and the hue of her horn returned to their natural colors. Zircon let go of the demon and the missing limb returned, clicking into place. The metal claws retracted, becoming four hooves once again.

“You know, part of me wanted to fight you going all out. Really, I did. I wanted to beat you into the ground for what you did to Night Light. But this will do.”

Confident with her success, she walked up to the crystallized pony and smiled. “You know, Nighty was a friend. Knew him since he was a foal. Good guy. So was his father, and his father before him. Such an impressive family.”

With a flash of her horn, Zircon summoned a crystal by her hooves. It grew two feet in length before breaking off from its base, making an impromptu lance.

“Pity you had to ruin all that."

Zircon grabbed the lance in her hooves and jammed it into the midsection of the crystallized Laplace.

“And now, we’re done. With my anti-magic, all that power seeping into you goes as soon as it comes. And without that power to heal yourself, you’re as mortal as anyone else… so when you die this time, we won’t be having a repeat the last time I killed you.”

A thought occurred to her and she began to chuckle to herself.

“You know, it’s funny. You brought this upon yourself. You really did. When you attacked me and my sister when we were just fillies, you drove me to learn how to counter magic-users like yourself. When you destroyed my eye, I got a new enchanted one which helped me see that power source in your forehead. And then when you ripped my heart out, I turned your own magic against you I took yours and it showed me exactly what you really were.”

“If you didn’t do this to me, I never would have figured out how to kill you. But then again, this is me we’re talking about, so of course this was going to be the result one way or another.” She tapped Laplace’s crystal tomb, smiling before walking away.

“I would say see you in hell, but I’m never going there. Goodbye Laplace, and good riddance.”

A job well done, she began to walk to a fallen, broken bookshelf. Alright, that’s done. I suppose all that’s left now is to see if Leeroy’s completely dead, or only mostly dead. Sancty would be grateful if I saved him, and then he’ll have to let me examine that so-called demon’s corpse—

Zircon stopped in her tracks.

Wow, I just made myself sound totally whipped. Bah, it’s for Sancty. He’s totally worth it. Zircon smiled, thinking about Sanctus as she reached the broken bookshelf. With her magic, she threw the ruined piece of furniture to reveal the crushed form of Leeroy sprawled out on the blood-soaked carpet.

Zircon’s horn glowed brighter and purple magic began to bubble and spark from her horn. She set one of her metallic hooves on the hippogriff, allowing her dark magic to seep into the paladin’s body.

“Oh goodie, you’re only mostly dead,” Zircon said as she stood up on her hind legs and rubbed her forehooves together, black magic sparking like electricity from them.

“Alright, Sancty,” she muttered, “let’s make sure you don’t lose one of your paladins.” A black aura surged all around Zircon, amplified by traces of yellow magic, the spell reaching its zenith. “Iron Fist! Dark Resurrection!” she shouted, bringing her mechanical fist down upon Leeroy’s exposed chest.

Black magic emanated all around them as it began to transfer into the paladin. Zircon held her punch against his chest, seeing the visible impact she made undoing itself as the spell did its work.

Heh-heh. I wonder what they’re gonna say when I tell them about this. The expressions on their faces alone will be worth it.

The spell ended, and Zircon retracted her metallic hoof from the ex-corpse. The second she did, Leeroy’s body instinctively gasped for air, coughing to free his airway.

Zircon smiled as she went from bipedal back to four hooves. Her green glowing eyes vanished, leaving pulsating yellow in their place. With a little grin, the elder witch began examining the young paladin’s body. As much as she enjoyed the view, there was something that perplexed her.

“How are his wounds healed? That wasn’t supposed to heal him. How much magic did I put into that—” Zircon felt a boulder falling on top of her heart. “Fuck!” She clenched her chest, falling over to her knees. Every fibre of her being screamed in pain. Her eyes, tainted yellow, bulged from her skull. The witch’s body shut down. Any and all ability to concentrate or think was now gone.

Which was exactly what Laplace had intended.

Laplace’s crystallized tomb shook. A vile yellow light shone through growing cracks in the black crystals With scream and a final burst of strength, Laplace broke free, stretching out her wings and forehooves, the crystal tomb meant to hold her shattered into a thousand pieces.

“THERE!” shouted the demon of canterlot, her coat a glimmering white, with clean draconic wings and not a single injury on her being. Spotless, all except for the single jewel in her forehead.

She turned to Zircon and trotted over to the fallen witch, who was struggling simply to look at her. Laplace grinned with the widest smile on her face she got close and leaned in, Zircon’s and Laplace’s beaming yellow eyes meeting.

“That hurt, you know,” Laplace said. “That hurt a whole lot. It felt kinda like THIS!” Laplace gave her a vicious kick. Before Zircon had stopped rolling, Laplace’s horn was already bright with magic.

The witch quivered as the yellow magic flooded her body. It beamed from her eyes and shone from inside her prosthetic hooves.

“Aww, am I putting too much of my power into you?” taunted Laplace. “I’m glad you liked taking the magic from my heart. I have a lot of magic to share, and through your—well, my old heart, I can share as much as I like. So much that it’ll make you… pop.

For a split second, Zircon’s face was covered in shock.

“So,” Laplace said, lowering her head, “how does it feel, bitch? All that power coursing through your veins? We bet it hurts. It hurt when I first felt it, too. It only took me a few centuries before I got used to it." Zircon let out a shout of pain as an even stronger pulse surged through her. Laplace closed her eyes and licked her lips at the other mare’s agony.

“We thought you said you could handle us?”

Another wave of energy shot through Zircon, bolts of pure magic arcing over her body, light shining from her metal limbs. She thrashed, rolling and screaming in pain as she tried to think of something, anything to save herself.

It only earned Zircon a swift kick to her stomach.

“How much of that power do you think you can take?” Laplace laughed. “I can promise you, it won’t be enough!” Zircon’s limbs crackled with magical energy, sparking like a thundercloud.

Laplace just chuckled, watching her for a moment longer as her spasms intensified. When the glow reached blinding levels, she leaned down again to whisper in the witch’s ear.

“This is the part where you go boom.”

The explosion that followed was deafening.

The library shook.

Flash fell to his knees as the entire library rattled, books fell out of their bookshelves all around him, and the chandeliers above rattled. Looking up, he saw what had been an explosion yellow, rising high into the air above the bookcases, scorching that part of the library’s majestic ceiling.

The hell was that? he thought. On second thought, scratch that, I don’t want to know. I need to get out of—!

An alien hoof wrapped around Flash’s neck, throwing him to the floor. Said set of smaller, but vastly stronger hooves pinned him to the ground.

“Now!”

He recognized the voice. That mare who was with Shining Armor earlier. Bon Bon, he thought her name was. Yea, that’s got to be it—

“Sweetie Drops, he’s him,” said another voice. A unicorn stallion with a dark gray coat and a even darker mane.

Or maybe not.

“She’s fooled you before!” Sweetie Drops shouted back.

Before she could say more, the stallion interrupted her. “I know my stuff, Miss Drops. It’s him and not her.”

Then from the corner of his vision, he another figure, a familiar white and blue stallion joining them. “Seymour, Bon Bon, that’s enough,” said Shining Armor. “He’s not Laplace.”

Ok, is it Bon Bon or is it Sweetie Drops? Couldn’t she just pick one name and go with that? For a paladin she sure does smell really nice—

It was at this moment Flash pondered if he actually enjoyed being horse-handled by a mare like that, and whether he should continue his train of thought. He wisely chose ‘no’ to both of those.

“You might wanna let him go before he starts to enjoy that, Miss Drops,” Seymour Guise said.

Sweetie Drops rolled her eyes and let go of Flash. The paladin and the slightly embarrassed stallion both got to their hooves quickly.

Seymour walked up to Flash, eyeing him from head to hoof. “Hmmm, strapping. Glad to see you’re alive, Mr. Sentry. I’ll be blunt, it’s time to go.”

Flash hesitated as deception crawled into his mind. Was this them? For all the tricks Laplace had pulled on him before, this could be another elaborate ruse.

“Don’t be scared, Mr. Sentry, we’re not an illusion. I promised you I’d be getting you out of here,” Shining Armor said. “And I don’t break my promises.”

Regardless if it was or wasn’t, it wasn’t like it’d make things any worse than they were already.

“I appreciate that, Captain Armor, sir. Do you know where everyone else was taken?”

“From past experiences, most likely they’re in her lab,” said Shining Armor.

“She’s gonna be mad at you guys setting fire to her library. We need to get them before she does,” Flash said. “How are we gonna get them back?”

“We are. You aren’t.”

“Seymour,” Shining turned to the gray stallion, “take Flash out of here. I know the library’s layout, Bon Bon and I will gather the hostages and bring them out and we’ll meet you at the entrance.”

Seymour raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

Flash knew he had to do three things: First, escape. Second, get help like Captain Armor. Finally, get his friends back. Shining Armor, on the other hoof, only wanted that first part. For that, he could send Flash, the weaker solder back outside where he would be safe.

Flash knew nopony would blame him for not going back for his friends. He was in a horrible situation with a demon he stood no chance against. Laplace was unstable, and for all he knew they were already dead and she didn’t tell him. There were a thousand reasons why he should just get out as soon as he could.

Celestia damn it.

He supposed he was stubborn like that. Chivalry and loyalty. He wouldn’t leave his friends behind. Unlike his father, he wouldn’t abandon those close to him.

Flash turned back towards Shining Armor. “Sir, let me help.”

“Denied, soldier,” answered Captain Armor. “I’m not risking anyone else.”

“She’s got my friends. We don’t leave ponies behind, and I’m not leaving my friends behind. Sir, let me help. She’s got four hostages, there’s four of us and the trip out would be—”

“I can use my magic to pull them," interrupted Shining Armor. "I made a promise I’d get you out. I am not going to tell your parents how I failed to protect you."

“Look, sir, I’ve been in this nightmare for days now, and I am not leaving empty hoofed or with my tail between my legs. She’s been messing with me for all this time. I’m not gonna let that she-demon win.”

Shining Armor closed his eyes.

Seymour spoke up. “Take the help, Shiny. He knows what he’s getting into. You know I’m not a fighter, and right about now any help is good help.”

Shining Armor looked at Flash, the solder he said he would save. Like father, like son, I suppose. The paladin captain sighed.

“Fine,” Shining Armor said, rubbing off any insecurities before assuming his normal tone. “Okay, here’s what we do. Seymour, keep your senses out for her. Bon Bon, stay in the middle. Sentry, you take the rear, I take point. You all understand?”

“Yes sir!”

When Laplace opened her eyes, she felt cold concrete against her face.

It wasn’t something she should feel, as last she could remember she was standing right next to Zircon, who had just exploded.

It took her a moment to remember how explosions work, and a second moment to realize that her head was deeply embedded inside a concrete wall. The shadow mare’s head rose out of Laplace’s back to survey the damage.

Note to self: Do not stand next to a ticking time bomb. Even if it means we can’t gloat.
We’re not that invulnerable, you know.
What? I like to think we are.
If that hit the source, we might have been hurt.
Bah, if a sword can’t hurt us, why would an explosion?
Not the point. We can’t take a risk like—
Wait, What is that?
Oh no…

Laplace pushed against the wall, her head making an audible ‘pop’ as it came out. Floating in the air, Laplace turned around, and gaped.

“Oh, stars damn it!”

Zircon lay in a crumpled heap, her body partially charred but intact. Her prosthetic limbs, on the other hoof, were now scattered across the library in tiny broken pieces, leaving Zircon as nothing more than a torso, a head, and the little nubs of what was left of her legs.

“Oh, come on!” Laplace landed back on solid ground and ran up to Zircon’s body to examine her.

“What the crap?” Laplace shouted. “How is she still in one piece?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said back to herself. “There’s supposed to be body parts and blood everywhere! Mr. Fury was supposed to find her torn to shreds! Not buriable!”
“Exactly!” replied Laplace to herself, staring deep at the witch’s body. “Seriously, what the hell? We blew her up. How did it kill her but not explode her?”

Laplace sighed.

“At least we managed to kill her.”

Zircon coughed smoke into Laplace’s face.

Laplace cried out as smoke wafted into her eyes, instinctively backing away and brushing at her now bloodshot eyes.

Laplace heard a chuckle.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh…”

Laplace’s eyes turned yellow. “What the hell!? You exploded! How did you not die? I blew you up!”

“No,” Zircon said, “you blew my legs up. Which hurt like a bitch, by the way. Do you have any idea how much those things cost me?”

Laplace scowled at her. “What do I care? An arm and a leg?”

Zircon snorted in a sardonic laugh.

“Hey!” Laplace growled through her teeth. “Stop laughing! Don’t you mock me!”

“But you’re so funny when you’re so angry!”

“We won!” Laplace shouted, towering over her and stomping her hoof. “We won, you lost, it’s over! You’re about to die, stop laughing!”

The limbless pony on the ground gave her a flat expression. “Don’t talk down to me, kid,”

The irony only enraged her further. Laplace yelled an incoherent scream, picking up Zircon with her magic and throwing her down in a tantrum.

Despite the pain, Zircon laughed. “Oh you’re cute! No wonder Shining likes to keep you around. You’re like a pathetic little pet. But that’s what you’d want to be, right? Shining’s little sugar bowl? No wonder he denies—”

Laplace stomped her hoof. “That’s it!” Her eyes became pure gold from the magic seeping through them. She rose to her hind legs and pointed a foreleg at Zircon’s laughing, legless body. “I’ve had it with you!”

Magic channeled into her outstretched limb, gathering in a pulsating orb.

“JUST DIE, GOD DAMN—!”

“Caelum Scintilla,” a new voice said, right behind Laplace.

A sphere of sparking, holy energy collided with Laplace’s backside, sending her screaming into the unlit reaches of the library. The sphere was the only source of light until it made impact with the far off wall on the other side of the library, where it burst into a luminous display of magnificent power.

A stallion’s silhouette trotted through the dust towards the fallen witch.

“Ah! About time, Sancty!” Zircon said. “Have a good nap?”

Sanctus Fury walked up to Zircon with a scowl. “I see you let this situation get out of hoof.”

Zircon smiled but spared the laugh. Never the funny type, that sour oaf.

“I really thought you would be able to take her,” Sanctus said.

Zircon eyed her old friend, concerned with what she saw. “And I thought I set my spell to un-stone you completely,” she said, pointing at Sanctus' petrified left hind leg.

“You did. I cut off the spell before it could turn an advantage back into a liability.” He stomped his formerly crippled stone hoof. “Feels good to walk on it halfway decently again.”

Zircon shrugged. “You oughta just do what I did: hack it off and just get a prosthetic—”

“They’re not reliable. You know I’d break every one of them.”

Normally, Zircon would extol the benefits of prosthetics and how they could help Sanctus, but, seeing how her own were scattered all across the room, she did not have the high ground in the argument, literally and figuratively.

More important, she didn’t have the time.

“Thanks for the save, but it won’t keep her down. We've got about a minute before she comes back," Zircon said.

"Go teleport out, grab your backup legs—”

“-Which you were totally right about bringing.”

“Of course I was. You get the kid out of here, get healed up, put those legs back on, and get back here. Understood? ”

Zircon sighed. So blunt, Sancty.

“Yeah, but before I do,” she began, “turns out Clover the Clever's forbidden journals about Laplace were right on the money. Laplace is as mortal as you and me. Same thing with the gem in her forehead — it’s been feeding her all that power we saw and keeping her alive.”

“I see…. So Laplace is mortal after all.”

“More or less. She’s just a thousand-year-old traitor who has a corrupting relic of untold power embedded in her skull.

“Still, that means we can kill it.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you told me last time before everything went to shit when we tried to kill her the first time? Back when Nighty was alive, I had two eyes, and you had four good legs?”

Sanctus let out a hollow laugh. “I suppose so, Zirc-” his smile vanished as the Library shook.

“Zircon, she’s coming. Get going before she can stop you.”

Zircon sighed. “Yeah...”

With the flash of her horn, Zircon teleported from her spot on the floor and on top of Leeroy’s unconscious body and grabbed him with what little she had left of her legs.

“Listen, Sanctus... Don’t get yourself killed, ok? I know you. Just keep her busy until we get back. I can stop her, but I need your power to kill her. Don't waste it before I get back."

“I’ll be fine.”

Zircon glared at the eager old warrior. Worried eyes met his determined gaze.

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, stamping his hoof. “Go.”

Damn it, Sanctus. Zircon vanished in a flash of light, taking Leeroy with her.

Things are different this time, Zircon. There are no elements of surprise, no princesses to sacrifice one’s self for, and no reason to hold back. I will do what Starswirl and Clover the Clever could not do.

Sanctus heard footsteps and turned to see an angry, burned Laplace walking out of the shadows and into the light, her eyes fixed on him.

Zircon, I will kill this monster.

The pair silently eyed each other from across the room.

"Well, hello, Mister Fury, and—"

A blade came down to take Sanctus’ head.

Sanctus spun around, his right foreleg brimming with energy reaching out and blocking Sterling Conduct's claymore wielded by the shadow mare.

Sanctus held his dulled expression as the magic blade strained against the stallion’s enchanted hoof.

No might was enough, for no matter how much force was applied he would not allow the magic blade to cut into him.

"Child, that's not a sneak attack…."

Sanctus rose up to his hind legs, reached behind him and grabbed Laplace’s incoming punch.

"That's just pathetic."

He brought both of his hooves together, swinging Laplace into the sword, the shadow holding the sword vanishing upon impact.

Sanctus winded his stone foot back before kicking Laplace in the snout with the solid rock hoof, Laplace’s skull cracked loudly as she was sent across the library floor once again, crashing face first.

"Did you truly believe that something as blatantly telegraphed as that could work?"

Sanctus went back down to four hooves and began to walk to his target.

“Even a peon could have stopped that."

Sanctus could hear Laplace’s growl as she neared him, the mare’s magic once again surging like a storm about to be born.

“It’s just like everything else about you… weak.”

“Shut up!”

From Laplace’s horn came a blinding light, Sanctus turned away to spare his eyes. The loss of vision wasn’t enough though to allow a beam of magical energy to slip past his senses. Gathering some of his own magic in his right hoof, Sanctus deftly deflected the beam with a swift backhoof.

As soon as the light faded and Sanctus regained his vision, he caught a glimpse of a feral unicorn rushing toward him. Laplace’s twisted horn was brimming with magic and aiming to impale Sanctus’ heart.

“Predictable,” Sanctus said as he lazily waved his right forehoof, casting a string of Lancea bolts that pierced the air and impaled Laplace, pinning her against a bookshelf.

“Again, weak.”

“FUCK YOU!”

“All that power, wielded by a miserable child unable to realize their potential. You have a power nobody can compare to, yet you have no ability to use it. It is just… weak.”

“I SAID—” Laplace lit up her twisted horn and dispelled the magical spears pinning her “—FUCK —”

Only for three more bolts to take their place, impaling Laplace right back to the bookshelf once more.

“You should have seen that coming,” he scolded. “That was right in front of you. You claim to be a fearsome demon, but you’re anything but. You are a petulant child blinded by her own stupidity who has no idea what strength truly is. ”

Sanctus stomped his forehooves into the ground. The floor began to light up, large trails of light snaking around both Laplace and Sanctus. The lines began running up the nearby bookshelves and then into the air. The lines of light then began to take form, bending inward until they made four runes. One on the floor below them, two to their sides in the air, and one directly above them. From all four, what looked like large spears began to protrude from their centers.

“Let me show you what true strength looks like. It will be the last thing you ever see.”

Shining Armor turned to Seymour.

“Seymour, is she here?”

The gray stallion shook his head. “No, Shiny, she’s far away from here .”

“Good. Those three are doing their part then.”

“And if they do it too well?” Seymour asked.

Shining broke eye contact and moved forward. “We can deal with it after.” Shining walked over destroyed bookshelves, half-charred pages floated in the air around them. “This should be her lab. Over these bookshelves, the entrance is down here.”

Bon Bon went next, walking over the rubble. “She left the doors open? You’d think she’d at least barricade it before she left.”

“When she’s panicing or under pressure, she stops thinking straight. Setting her precious library on fire will do the trick.”

Shining stopped at the bottom of the little mountain of rubble. “Outside of the few times one of us talked to her at her cell door, these books we’ve given her are the only other form of respite she’s had since we put her in here. Years of isolation has made her cling to those books. It works in our favor.”

As Flash climbed over the fallen bookcases, the word ‘isolation’ stuck to him. Or more importantly the question of, why isolate the problem. You’re the hero who defeated her back then, Captain Armor. Why didn’t you kill her? Why did you seal a demon of all things away like some madmare in an attic?

You told everyone it was you who killed her and saved Princess Cadance’s life. It made you a national hero overnight and propelled you to the top of our military in a matter of years.

Did you build your entire military career on a lie?

“Captain, if I may,” began Flash. “Why is Laplace here? If she really is the Demon of Canterlot, didn’t you kill her?”

“That’s not a question I’m going to answer,” immediately came out of Shining Armor’s mouth.

“Sir, please, I'd like to—”

“No.” Shining Armor turned around and glared at Flash, his eyes as sharp and serious as his tone. “We’re here. Keep moving and hurry inside.”

Flash flinched and took a step back, holding his tongue.

He must have had a good reason for not killing her… right?

“Yes, sir. I’m coming right—"

Flash looked behind him and saw a great light in the dark distance. A shockwave of air and magic rushed through the library kicking up the loose papers destroyed in the battle. It passed by them like a mighty wind, nearly knocking Flash off his hooves.

"Is everyone alright?" Seymour was the first to speak.

Flash was next. “What the hell was that?!” He exclaimed looking to his captain. The anguish and frustration on Shining Armor's face told Flash he knew exactly what it was. And whatever it was, it wasn't good.

“Is that what I think it is?” Bon Bon asked.

“It’s Sanctus all right, and it seems like he's going all out,” chimed in Shining Armor.

“Wait,” said Flash. “Sanctus… as in Instructor Sanctus Fury? I mean, I know he use to be one of the strongest paladins back in his day, but didn't instructor Fury retire and get out of the guard years ago?”

“More like forced out. My predecessor, Captain Platinum, forced him to retire after the Demon of Canterlot incident crippled him. He told me that he already lost my father, and didn't want to lose another friend. Becoming a training instructor was the only comprise that stubborn ass would accept."

"So then why did you let him come here now?" asked Flash.

"I didn't have much of a choice," the captain answered. "He was here the second he got wind of what happened. No force in Equestria was gonna keep him away from getting his rematch with Laplace.”

“At least he brought that witch with him,” Bon Bon said. “If what I heard was true, she kinda just dropped everything for him."

“Ponies seem to do that when Sanctus calls on them,” Shining said to that. I swear, that asshole has more control over my soldiers than me.

"Look out!" Seymour shouted, pointing his hoof to the air.

The trio looked and saw a flaming chandelier heading right for Flash.

"Oh damnit, not again!" Flash shouted. Refusing to collide with a second chandelier, he bolted out of the way… and stopped seconds from crashing into a second magic wall.

The chandelier crashed into the Shining Armor's impromptu barrier, it shattering into burning pieces of debris.

Then came three flying bookcases, each in a different degree of burn into they too shattered against the barrier.

Flash, Bon Bon and Seymour held their breath. Shining maintained his magic shield for another minute, all of them on guard for more incoming objects. When the coast was clear, Shining dropped the shield.

"Was... that them?" Flash asked.

"Yeah, and they're both pissed," Seymour said. “just teeming with hatred. We oughta hurry before their rage blows this whole library up.”

Flash was the last to enter into the dimly lit room.

He saw Shining Armor head off into the darkness, sliding between objects, then watched the captain reach for a small switch on the wall with his magic.

With a click, the magic lights above them turned on and Laplace's laboratory was illuminated in full. The place was filled with glass vials and boxes, loose paperwork scattered about.

The tables were covered a plethora of scientific instruments and apparati. A hot plate was still burning thanks to a self-sustaining magic spell, beakers bubbled with various substances, and an apron was lazily draped on a fallen statue. In the far corner were paper notes and a chalkboard filled with notes and complex equations that were way beyond Flash’s comprehension, complete with an open filing cabinet, the source of the loose paperwork.

"Oh wow, she wasn’t kidding when she said she had a lab. How long has she had this? How did she even get this?"

Seymour sighed. "For a while. She tricked us into giving her the materials before we realized what she was aiming for. Like all that sand."

"Sand?" asked Bon Bon.

"Yeah, that’s where all this glass came from." Seymour answered.

Bon Bon scratched her head. “What does sand have to do with making glass?”

Flash jumped at the chance to answer. “Glass is made by superheating sand. My mom’s done that before. I use to help her and my grandmother with glassmaking when I was a colt.”

Bon Bon stared blankly as she contemplated glassmaking for a good ten seconds. “Huh. You learn something new every day.”

“Hey, Seymour,” said Shining Armor, “you said you wanted to see her notes. I found them. We may not have a second chance. Hurry over here with your camera, I'm sure there's something Cadance wants to see here."

Seymour rushed over, smiling. "So glad I brought it today.”

“Bon Bon, Flash,” Shining Armor directed, “grab Laplace’s hostages and make some space.”

Flash saluted. “Yes, sir!” He turned to Bon Bon. “Ok Miss Drops, where do we start searching?”

“Searching?” Bon Bon said. “We passed them on the way in.”

Flash was greatly confused as Bon Bon headed back toward the mess they passed coming in.

“Huh? What are you—” Flash’s jaw dropped when he realized what the fallen statues truly were. He ran back to the stone figure and tore the apron off to reveal the face of his former marefriend.

“June!” Flash shouted. His eyes darted all over her petrified body, scanning for damage, cracks, anything. Oh thank Celestia, she’s okay. Looking to her side, he saw his best friend on the floor next to her. Luckily, the stone body of Steel Wings was also intact. Both stallion and mare were in equally good condition.

Flash turned to the sound of glass breaking and saw Bon Bon flipping one of the long tables and pushing another out of the way.

“Drag any unbroken statues over here,” she ordered. “We need to make some room for the spell circle. Then grab Seymour so he can draw the runes.”

The library was covered in a cloud of smoke from Laplace’s attack.

“So Mister Fury, how’d you like that one? Did you enjoy eating your own words, or has death left you speechless?” Laplace chuckled. “It was fun while it lasted, you old bag of bones, but it doesn’t matter if you’re protecting someone or just going all out—we beat you all the—”

A glowing lance tore through Laplace’s chest. The twisted mare gritted her teeth and ripped it out, tossing the magical construct aside. She looked down at where the smoke had been but saw nothing but the burning chandelier she had thrown earlier.

“You should focus more on making sure your opponent is dead instead of gloating.” Sanctus said with clear disapproval, standing on a bookcase behind Laplace.

“Then allow us to change that!” She hurled the smoldering chandelier with her magic.

The old paladin leaped sideways, dodging the chandelier as it went flying off into the distance. His hooves shone with ethereal light as they held him fast against the wall.

Laplace growled and slung a fireball at Sanctus’ position. He jumped off the wall and onto the nearest bookshelf. He jumped again onto another bookshelf as another ball of fire hit and consumed the one he had landed upon.

“Impressive attack. It might have actually hit me if you knew how to aim.”

“Shut up!” Laplace screamed as Sanctus jumped away from the third fireball. Once again, the demon’s flames engulfed only a bookshelf and not her intended target.

“Continuing the same plan isn’t a very intelligent idea. Surrounded by books yet you seem to have learned nothing."

Damnit! I can’t hit him! The bastard keeps moving! Why can’t we hit him!

Laplace gritted her teeth as she continued her failed assault. “Stand still!”

About what he was saying, he did have a point. We should change tactics.
Whatever, let’s just make him eat his words.

“I said stand still, you miserable bastard!”

The bookshelves all around Sanctus lit up. Sanctus dodged again, out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the shadow mare behind him gathering magic about her horn. He spun his hooves around and blocked incoming blast, it knocking him back on the bookshelf.

His hooves caught the bookshelf, the spell on his hooves ensuring he wouldn’t fall. Looking back at Laplace he saw her channeling up her own magical blast, all while her shadow copied her exact movements. Both mares fired streams of magic out of their horns at Sanctus. The stallion reared up onto his hind legs and extended his forehooves to block.

“Clipeus!” Sanctus shouted, two large magic constructs in the form of bucklers appeared at Sanctus' sides blocking both of Laplace’s beams.

The bookcase he stood on rumbled. He looked up and saw the ceiling coming closer as he rose.

“PANCAKE TIME!” Laplace shouted as she threw the bookcase Sanctus was standing on into the ceiling. With the mare’s twin assault unrelenting Sanctus only had a moment to react.

“Let your shield grace us!” Sanctus crashed into the ceiling, the bookcase he was standing on smashing into him. All of it crashed against a shining, white barrier.

The shadow mare vanished and Laplace’s eyes twitched as she saw Sanctus' barrier, blazing with the sigil of Celestia.

THAT MOTHER FU-
Wait, he’s hurt...

Laplace chuckled. Sanctus Fury was standing on the ceiling, little spell circles tethering his hooves from falling. The unicorn crossed her hooves and floated up to him.

“It seems not even your worthless goddess can truly protect you against me!”
“How’s that splinter feeling jackass!?”

Sanctus noticed he was bleeding. Broken pieces of wood were embedded in his flesh. The biggest stuck in his neck. Not deep enough.

“It’s just like every other attack of yours.” Sanctus pulled the wood out of his neck. “Weak.” Sanctus then crushed it in his hooves. “Hope destroying all those books was worth that minor scratch.”

Laplace gritted her teeth. “Well then, how about this!” She hurled another bookshelf at the paladin.

“Magna Clypeus!” A giant magical shield materialized around Sanctus’ right forehoof. With a swipe the shield crashed into the bookshelf, backhoofing the thrown object and sending it flying away.

“Tisk tisk, just wood? Still weak!” Sanctus sighed “Can’t you think of anything better?”

“Of course we can! The things we can do far outdo anything you could do back in your prime! It’s kinda obvious that we’re stronger than you, you old piece of shit! ”

“I’m waiting for you to prove it, child! Cause everything you’ve thrown at me is just... weak—”

“STOP USING THAT FUCKING WORD!” Laplace blared. She grabbed another bookshelf in her magic, within seconds it ignited in unholy flames.

“We are not weak!”

She threw it at him.

“We are powerful! All powerful!”

With his oversized magic shield, Sanctus knocked the burning bookshelf aside just like the other, sending it flying far away. Just in time to see another heading towards him.

“We’re stronger than a piece of crap asshole like you!”

Sanctus rose his shield and met the attack head on, both bookshelf and shield broke against each other scattering into pieces. More wooden splinters cut into his flesh as Sanctus held his ground on the ceiling.

“We destroyed you once!”

Sanctus saw the next blazing bookshelf incoming. With no means to stop it, he dropped from the ceiling and began to fall. The heat of the bookshelf cauterized his open wounds as it flew over his head.

“AND WE WILL AGAIN, ASSHOLE!”

That voice came from below. He looked down below him and saw the shadow mare, brimming with purple eyes, transforming into a giant dragon, countless rows of jagged teeth opened wide as the dragon’s head rose from the ground to consume Sanctus whole.

Sanctus closed his eyes, sparks of magic forming in his right hoof. “Málleum Dei!” A radiant holy energy engulfed from his hoof, the hairs on his coat stood on end.

“And I will put you back in your place!”

Sanctus reeled his sparking hoof back and thrusted it into the shadow dragon’s maw. Light and shadow clashed.

“Take this!”

“Ok everyone, stand back,” Seymour said. Each of Laplace’s four stone hostages stood in the center of a great spell circle.

Light began to emanate from the lines etched in the floor as Shining, Bon Bon, and Flash watched the spell activate. The rescue party held their breath as the light traveled from the lines and into the four petrified soldiers. The light increased in intensity, becoming even brighter until the magic exploded in a blinding sunburst.

When their eyes readjusted, they did not see four statues, but four ponies.

In a flash, Flash dashed to them. “June! Steel!” Flash cried out, relieved to see his friends alive…or would have if Shining Armor hadn’t grabbed Flash’s tail with his magic.

“Hold it,” he said. “Give them a moment first.”

Flash relented. Instead of rushing to his friends he approached them slowly.

On the floor, Flash saw the red mare Laplace had impersonated lying next to Steel Wings decked in his tattered armor. The other two groggily got to their feet, flexing stiff muscles as their worlds returned to them. June was standing, clutching her head as she came to, the brown stallion Castle Crest was doing the same, just faster.

“Celestia, what was the number on that train?” June muttered to herself as she stretched her neck, awakening from her stone slumber.

“June?”

“Flash?” June asked. Flash stood in front of her. “What the shit is going on?” was June’s first question. “What was that thing? Where are we?”

“It’s a long story, soldier,” Shining Armor said over Flash. “Right now this is a rescue mission and it’s time to get going.”

“Steel!” June was the first to notice, seeing the injured pegasus at her feet. She looked back to Flash. Before she could voice her question, Seymour answered it for her.

“It’s ok, they’re not dead. But they’re both hurt and we need to get out of here,” Seymour said.

“Yeah, I get that,” June replied.

As the stallions approached them, Shining nodded towards Flash to help June while he walked up towards the brown stallion.

“This way,” Flash said, giving June his hoof and walked her away from the circle.

“You’re Castle Crest?” Shining Armor asked the brown stallion. “Don’t worry, we’re here to help.”

“Thank you, sir.” Castle Crest saluted. “Thought we were gonna be petrified forever.”

“Petrified? That’s what happened?” June asked. “Who Cockatrice’d us?”

“Remember how Conduct told us to be quiet?” Flash said.

“Ahh, that was why,” June said. “So, when are we getting payback on the bastard who did that?”

“We’re not. Captain Armor wants us out of here right now.”

“Captain Armor?” June exclaimed. She immediately looked around, and saw said captain talking to the brown stallion from before, her brain suddening registering his flank as the one and only Shining Armor’s. June leaned into whisper to Flash, “When did sexy shield get here?”

“About a day after you got turned to stone. I’ll tell you the story when we get out, ok?”

“Sounds good to me.” June smiled. “Let’s get out of here.”

Flash turned around, but before he could walk to the exit he felt June’s tug on his tail.

“By the way, Flash...”

Flash turned his head around. Without warning, she grabbed him and pressed her lips to his. At that moment, the Flash’s whole universe ceased to be—his mind went blank as she moved deep into the kiss, teasing out his tongue for just a moment.

Abruptly, she broke the kiss. “Consider that a little preview for tonight~” she said, cheeks brushing. “Now let’s get out of—”

Everything shook.

What felt like a great earthquake knocked everypony off their hooves. Books fell from their shelves, and beakers bounced off the tables and shattered on the ceiling as they hit the floor in pieces.

“Is everyone alright?” shouted Castle Crest.

“What the hell was that!” Seymour exclaimed.

Shining Armor rose to his hooves, his head in the air, horror in his eyes.

“Sir?” Flash asked.

Shining Armor ignored him.

“Shining?” Seymour turned to his captain, only to receive a blank stare.

Shining Armor’s gaze turned to Bon Bon. “Paladin Drops?”

“Your orders, sir?”

Chapter 10- people get hurt - End

Chapter 11 - ...And you lose what’s held dear. (part 3 of 3)

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 12 - Cadance

Flash’s eyes blinked open.

A yawn and a groan, Flash roused awake. And then immediately pretended he didn't.

You’re not suppose to be dozing off. Flash sighed. You’re suppose to be a soldier, loyal to the crown and doing whatever they tell you to... no matter what they’re going to do back to you.

His wings twitched with eagerness to spread free.Instead of giving in, he reached for his coffee cup and took another sip. At least they gave me something to drink. I feel so jittery right now, this coffee must be really strong, and it's already gone cold.

After all the isolation he had been through, waiting a little more to be discharged was not too much of an issue. He had finished telling his interrogators everything he knew and there was nothing more Canterlot could gain from Flash.

The third interrogator had said he was the last, and that Flash would be sent home soon. Whether or not he was telling the truth, was anypony’s guess.

He placed his drink back down on the table. Flash made a hollow chuckle. At least they made the promise of letting him go. Kinda like Laplace, now that he thought about it.

There was a knock at the door.

“Hello? Flash, are you in there?” spoke the voice of a goddess.

The door opened, and out walked a unicorn mare. Her coat was salmon pink, her tail and long mane tripartite in coloration of a gentle peach, a deep pink, and a royal lavender. A sleek mare, she stood taller than most unicorns, and walked into the room as if she owned it.

And, as the crown princess of Equestria, Princess Cadance did own it.

“It’s so good to see you again, Flash. It’s been forever, hasn’t it?” said Princess Cadance, walking into the small room levitating by her side a quill and manilla folder.

“It has, Your Majesty,” Flash replied.

“Flash, as your old foalsitter, you don’t need to call me ‘Your Majesty’. Okay, Flashy? Like I told you back then, just call me Cadance.”

“Yes, your—yes, Cadance,” Flash said.

“Good,” Cadance giggled. “Nice to see I instilled some good manners in you.”

“What can I say? I had a great foalsitter.”

Cadance returned the smile. “You always were a sweetheart, Flash. How are you doing? I hope my girls didn’t give you too much of a hassle when they were examining you.”

A bunch of beautiful mares poking and prodding him with hooves, magic, and medical equipment? “Not at all.”

“Good. I had to take no chances that Laplace had done something to you,” said the unicorn princess. “Good news is that you checked out just fine on your physical evaluation.”

“That’s a relief,” Flash said.

“Indeed. I’d like to thank you again for cooperating with our interrogators. We had to make sure we had a thorough account of what had happened. Figuring you had the most contact with that demon, there was a lot to go over.”

Like them reminding me exactly what treason is.

“Oh yes, everything went fine,” Flash answered. “Nothing to worry about.” Except that my career and hide were on the line.

Cadance smiled.

“Good, what happens now?” Flash asked.

“I wanted to talk to you a bit.”

“I thought I was going to be dismissed?” Flash asked.

“You will be, but before we do I wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

That’s what the last guy said.

“I hope you don’t mind, Flashy”

“Oh, of course not,” Flash said. “That’s not an issue.” Except that nopony’s telling me what’s going on or if I’ll be going home.”

Cadance smiled and clasped her forehooves together. “Wonderful,” she said. Her horn lit up and the unicorn princess pulled the nearby empty chair for her to sit on. She pulled the coffee table between us, and placed her folder on top of it, looking at it’s contents before laying it down and looking back at Flash.

“I’d like to ask how you’re doing. How are you holding up?” She began.

“I’m… doing okay,” I’m feeling like shit, I want to go home before. He grabbed his cup and took another drink.

“Do you need anything?” Cadance asked. “I can grab you something to eat.”

Flash shook his head. “Aside from the coffee being cold, I’m good. I’ll eat when I go home. I’ll be going home soon, right?”

“Yeah, after we’re finished here you’ll be dismissed,” she said.

“Wonderful,” he replied, smiling insincerely.”How are my friends? Are June and Steel alright?”

“Yeah,” Cadance said nodding. “They’re doing just fine. I finished talking to them both before I came here. June wasn’t hurt and she’s in high spirits. Steel’s injuries have been patched up by my medics and they discharged him with a clean bill of health. But…”

There’s always a ‘but’, Flash thought.

“As much as I want to dismiss you three home so you can get some rest, my duties to our kingdom come first,” said Cadance. “I want to find out a few things about what happened with Laplace.”

“Didn’t the three ponies who talked to me before ask me enough? They asked me everything from what happened to the books she had on her bookshelf."

“Speaking of which they told me one of my books were on Laplace’s personal bookshelf.”

“Yes, your ‘No need to fear’ book, it’s required reading for my ‘Intro to Changelings 101’ class. It’s actually been an interesting read.”

Pride filled Cadance and she giggled a little. “I’m glad you’re learning from it. Seymour and I wrote that book to help ponies understand Changelings. They’ve been misunderstood by our kind for so long, who better than equestria’s very own princess to show everyone who and what they really are.”

“On that note, Flash, I’d like to thank you for everything you have told us already. We’ve learned quite a lot of valuable intelligence on Laplace, all thanks to you.”

And what happens when I’m no longer useful? What happens when that information in my head becomes a liability?

“While you have already told us a lot, after speaking to your interrogators I wanted to talk to you personally before we cut you loose. Flashy, As your princess, as your foalsitter, and as your friend you have complete permission to speak freely. All I want is the truth, no matter how ugly it is. There will be no consequences for anything you say to me in here, you have my word. There are no wrong answers. The only wrong answer is you lying to me. All I want is the truth.”

Flash looked up to Cadance, and then back down to his drink. “Okay,” he said.

Cadance’s horn lit up pink, and Flash felt a constructed hoof patting his cheek.

“Cheer up, Flash, ok?” Cadance said. “I know you have questions. I’ll be happy to answer them as long as you answer mine back. You can start.” Her optimism was almost contagious.

“You said you talked to my friends? What did June and Steel say?” Flash asked.

“They told me about what happened to them. Figuring all of them were petrified a few minutes after you all fell in there, they didn’t know too much. I learned the most from June. After she fell in, she found two of your group and was exploring the library until she was found by Sir Conduct. She said she had almost mapped out the library in her head. Comparing the old schematics to the one she tried to draw for me, she nearly did map it out.”

“June and Jun have really good memories,” Flash said.

“Indeed they do.”

Cadance rocked her office chair left and right.

“Oh,” Cadance popped out of her thoughts. “Before I forget, Flash, you need to sign this.”

Let’s me guess…Flash thought as he pondered twisted potential contractual obligations. Waiving of basic equine rights so I can be locked away in a dungeon, yadda yadda yadda… movie rights reserved for Metro-Goldwyn-Mare studios...kidney harvest...firstborn shall be sacrificed on the summer sun celebration…and while we’re at it, we’re swiping your ranch dip at lunch break every other thursday.

She pulled a paper from her folder and placed it in front of him. On it bore Cadance’s signature already as well as many others: June, Steel, Instructor Fury, Paladin Drops and Conduct he recognized. There was a small section whited out, Flash could envision his signature right there. Perfect place to sign at least.

“It’s a standard non-disclosure agreement. Under penalty of law you cannot speak publically or privately about your ordeal these past few days, including everything you’ve said in this room.”

“And I don’t really have a say, do I?” Flash grabbed the pen with his hoof.

“I’m sorry, Flash. Knowledge of Laplace’s existence is among the kingdom’s highest secrets. I hope you understand why we need to maintain complete discretion about all of this. She almost tore your head off: you know exactly what she’s capable of. The public cannot know about this.”

“Yeah, I know that all too well,” Flash muttered as he hoofed the already signed paper back to Cadance.

Cadance pouted. “Flash, why didn’t you read it? Your father read every agreement he signed, you ought to be like him and make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Flash flinched. Don’t talk about that asshole. Don’t.

“I’ll be signing it one way or another. Besides, I’d rather know why you’re doing this. ” Flash asked.

Cadance frowned. “Because Flash, the moment the public knows that a nigh unstoppable demon is sealed away under Canterlot our enemies will also know that. People then will come for her. Our enemies, Laplace’s enemies, and people who think they can use her and eventually one of them will free her and doom us all. Only a small amount of ponies even knows she exists, and we intend to keep it that way.”

So how will you be silencing five young ponies then? Because we both know that paper won’t promise anything. A secret like this is too important to risk.

“Why didn’t you destroy her instead? We were all told she was killed. Why didn’t we kill her instead of just locking her away?”

“Because we couldn’t. Shining would have loved to kill Laplace, but.... nopony could. The best we could do was entrap her. I only have a second hoof account from Shining Armor and Blueblood, figuring Laplace put me in a coma that day and all. They didn’t manage to kill her, only temporarily incapacitate her. They knew once she returned to her senses they wouldn’t be able to stop her again, so they needed someplace to put her until they could. So, with Shining Armor, our best spellcasters, and the ancient magic of one Starswirl’s unnamed pupils, they sealed her away inside one of the outdated storage library wings under the castle. An impromptu cell you could say.”

“But then you found out you couldn’t kill her.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Cadance sighed. “Honestly, it surprised us most that you got inside her library in the first place. From what the others told me, it was a mishap with a teleportation spell. You guys should be lucky you didn’t wind up inside some rocks.”

“I wouldn’t call it luck figuring where we wound up and all.” Flash said.

“Point well taken.”

“In addition to having to deal with her,” added Flash.

“Yes, dealing with Laplace is an ordeal within itself. Mind if I ask you about her?”

“It’s fine, but what else is there to say? I told them everything, there’s not much else to add.”

Cadance nodded. “True true. Well, let me ask something different then.” Cadance clasped her forehooves together. “So tell me, what did you think of Laplace?”

“Umm, that she was evil?”

“Just evil?” Cadance replied. “Nothing else?”

Flash sighed and his mind ran. That she was a sad and lonely child who feels she was wronged by all of you? Yeah, not gonna get court-marshaled for saying that.

“She was a demon,” Flash answered. “What else is there to say about her kind? They try to hurt ponies in everything they do, or try to turn us against each other. They’ve been doing this from the beginning, what would make her different?”

“Then why did she heal your wing? You told them that you she did heal your wing, almost immediately after it had broken. That’s pretty generous for a vile demon as you say she is.”

Because she wanted to be my friend.

“No clue.” Flash said, wingshrugging. “I’m guessing it would make me a more valuable hostage. That, or to re-break my wings to torture me.”

“If she was going to torture you, she wouldn’t have done anything to help you at all, like what she did to Sir Conduct, or what she did to your father all those years ago.”

Flash stopped moving, grabbing the back of his head with his right hoof. The tense stallion closed eyes closed shut as he purged his father from his brain before he spoke. He hoped Cadance assumed it was him thinking.

“I’d chalk it up to her being a demon then. It’s not like we can understand her motives,” Flash replied. “Demons aren’t ponies.” Yet she acts a heck of a lot like one.

“...right,” was all Cadance muttered.

“So what else did you do with her? I’m sure she wouldn’t have just left you in that room all alone for those days you were in there. What did you two do all alone?”

She pretended to be somepony she wasn’t and tried to be my friend. Even if it was nothing but a lie, she finally had that friend she dearly wanted.

“Well, like I said before, she did interact with me a few times. Mostly to give me food to keep me alive and then to try to tempt me.”

Stick to the story, Flash. You didn’t come all this way for some hot demon mare to ruin everything. The truth is going to get me hurt. Sorry, Princess.

“She tried to promise me a few things during the time she held me. She promised me things such as unlimited power, wealth, and all that jazz at the cost of her eating my soul.”

“Flash, Laplace doesn’t eat souls.”

“What?” Flash looked away. She couldn’t see his surprised face, the gear in his head nearly falling off. “She doesn’t?” Wait, oh crap...

“Yes, she would have eaten mine if she could. Laplace even confessed to us that she doesn’t even know how. She’s a omnivore like us ponies, but with her self-healing abilities she doesn’t even need to consume anything. Starvation was one of the first methods Blueblood tried to have her killed by. After almost two months I convinced him that it, as well as freezing her to death at the same time wasn’t going to work.”

“I can see why something would hold a grudge about that. That’s a pretty” -horrible way to try to kill someone.

Flash’s mind broke a gear. He panicked inside. No no no no- shit shit.

“B-But well, she’s a demon, and as our enemy she’d find any reason to hold a grudge against us. And she did hurt my friends, I’d say she deserved it.”

“I see.” Cadance said, narrowing her eyes. “Flash, is there anything else you want to tell us about her?”

Flash shook his head. “That’s all I know.”

“Are you sure?” Cadance asked.

Flash nodded. “Yes, I can’t recall anything else.”

“Really? Are you sure she didn’t mess with your memory whatsoever? There’s no gaps of lost time at all? Are you able to account for every moment you were there?” Cadance asked.

“As far as I can remember,” Flash said, closing his eyes. But now that I think about it…

“Um, good. I was just double-checking.” Cadance replied. “Going into someone’s head and messing with their memories can cause some deep psychological damage to someone if you don’t know what you’re doing. I had to dive a little into Paladin Drops’ mind a few hours ago, Laplace had gotten into her head earlier, and Paladin Drops was growing paranoid that she was still under Laplace’s mind control."

Something clicked.

“I see,” Flash said. “I can’t quite explain it, but…” I had this weird sense of deja-vu one night.

“But what, Flash?” Cadance asked. “Is everything alright?”

“How long have we been talking?” Flash asked.

Cadance answered immediately “Fifteen minutes. Not too long.”

It’s the same kind of deja-vu I’m feeling right now. That’s not true, Princess.

“Princess,” Flash stared at his drink. “How long have we really been talking?”

Cadance went silent.

“It’s been longer than fifteen minutes, hasn’t it?” Flash said to his princess. “I can tell.”

“What are you talking about, Flash?”

Flash stared up at Cadence. “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?” He accused.

Cadance’s head lowered. She clasped her forehooves with a weak, hollow clap, Cadance’s decision made.

“Good work, Flash.” Cadance leaned back into her chair and took a long, deep exhale.

“You know, you truly are your father’s son. Out of all the ponies I’ve met, your father was the only pony who could tell when I tampered with his memories. He taught you well.”

“Do not compare me to him. How long have we actually been talking?”

Cadance answered him. “We’ve been having the same conversation for about 90 minutes now. When we finish talking I wipe your mind of the conversation, walk out, and then come back in to restart the conversation."

“Why do this? What were you trying to find out?”

“The truth, Flash, the truth. I’ve been waiting for you to stop lying to me. I’ve been in your head at least three times today, I know most of what happened. I don’t want to violate your mind any further, but I need to know the truth.”

“Why? You already went into my head, haven’t you gotten what you wanted?”

“What I want, Flash, is your cooperation. Because unless you’re willing to cooperate, I won’t be able to help you, Flash.”

“Help me with what?”

“I can’t tell you that. I’m not going to force anything on you. I want don’t to invade your mind, I want to work with you. I need a partner in all of this. Flash, I understand why you didn’t want to talk. I don’t need to be in your head to tell that you’re scared.”

Flash went silent.

“Am I right?”

After a pause, he meekly nodded.

“I’d like to hear it from you. Why? What are you so scared of that you're just saying only what you think we want to hear?"

Flash looked up at Cadance, and then back down to his drink.

“You know, all my life I’ve been taught to be selfless towards my kingdom. To royalty like you, and to Celestia herself. Instructor Fury, my father and everyone else beat that into me... but... how loyal are you to me, princess? How loyal is the kingdom to a simple, disposal soldier? I already know there’s no way I’m leaving this room without you erasing my memories. I’ve made peace with that. I’m worried about what you guys are going to be doing to me after. With the stroke of a hoof I could have my entire life and future taken from me, if not worse. Canterlot would ruin me, and for what? Telling all of you something of no value that I shouldn’t have?”

“Flash, I’d never let that happen,” Cadance said. “I am the crown princess of this country. I have a sacred duty to watch over my subjects and ensure the best for them all. Your father knew that. I know you know that-”

“-Stop talking about him.” The pleasantries were over. “I’m here, and he’s gone because of you. Stop bringing him up.”

“Your father understood. He was a close friend of-”

“Then why the hell did you banish my father when I needed him the most? Why did you do that to my mother? Or my little brother! You ripped that asshole out of our lives, and for what, Princess?”

“We had to make a hard choice, Flash. I wish there was a better way. It was banishment, or death-”

“BULLSHIT! YOU MADE THE EASY CHOICE!” Flash pounded the table, his coffee cup fell to the floor shattering into wet mess of porcelain shards. “YOU TOOK MY FATHER FROM ME!”

He looked at his hooves on the table, color fading from his face as he realized just who he had shouted at. Flash immediately recoiled back.

“So that’s why you never wrote back…” Cadance looked down. There was no anger, only sadness in her eyes.

“Flash... Your father was my first bodyguard when I became a princess. He meant more to me then you know and I… I didn’t want to do what we did to him. The griffons were barreling down our necks, screaming for blood and promising ours if we didn’t give them his. You know how weak we were after the war’s end Flash. We knew it, and so did they. They were petitioning our allies to turn against us and towards them. The revolutionaries who overthrew the griffon king were now threatening to scrap the peace treaty we had made with the old king if we didn’t do what they wanted. A lot of people had already gotten hurt and ponies were going to start dying if we didn’t do something. Banishment was the only solution we had that didn't involve sending him to his death. I did what I had to do to save everyone. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do.. I… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Flash stared at Cadance, his anger slowly subsided as he collected himself while Cadance used her magic to clean up the broken cup on the floor.

“I know you are…I’m sorry for my outburst...” Flash apologize.

“Did you really hold it against me for all these years?” Asked Cadance. “When I looked in your memories, I… wanted to know what happened to you after you broke contact with me. There was so much anger in you back then.”

“Yeah,” Flash sighed. “A lot of anger and betrayal. I didn’t want to believe what my father did he did on his own, that you were the monster who made him do that. It took me too long to realize it wasn’t you. It was him, and you just did what was best for your kingdom. But by then, I felt too ashamed to contact you back, especially after all the things I said to you the last time we talked in person. I honestly thought you just moved on.”

“As did I,” Cadance replied. “After what I did to him, I couldn’t face you or your mother. I knew you hated me and I… just accepted that I made an enemy out of you and your mother a widower. Fate has a funny way of bringing people together again, and fixing old mistakes. We should have had this conversation a long time ago, Flash.”

“Well, I’m just a peasant and you’re a princess. For a little bit our lives intersected long ago but we have different lives now.”

Cadance got up from her seat. “Flash, you mean a whole lot more to me then that,” She pulled Flash off his chair and into a soft embrace. “You’ve always meant more than that to me.”

“I know,” Flash held her tight.

“I’m sorry about your father, Flash. I wish it didn’t have to be like that.”

The two broke their hug and sat back in their seats.

“I’m sorry for my outburst. I just let my anger get the best of me. It’s not you, it was him who left me in this mess that I’m in…”.

Flash felt Cadance’s hoof on his own. “You can’t live in the past Flash. Let it be. Your father made his choice, and his burdens aren’t yours to bear. ”

“Not when you’re reminded how much of a cur you are because what that he did. The son of the idiot who almost destroyed Equestria. There’s a reason why I don’t live in the barracks. I'm not welcome there among the guard, and they don't want me.”

“Then why are you even there? Why join them in the first place? Please don’t tell me it really just for the tuition bits to attend Canterlot Community College?”

Flash shook his head. “Because I have to get out of my father’s shadow. Princess, I am the son of a national disgrace. I have to, somehow, by any means necessary get out of that shadow if I wish to have a life I can call my own. That bastard screwed me, my family, and his people over, and for what? Nothing.”

Cadance disagreed. She was ready to open her mouth and defend her greatest knight, but stayed silent. That conversation was not today. Today she helped his son.

“Maybe if I didn’t look like him, maybe if I didn’t bare his name, maybe then I could say I’m someone else or at least make a first impression before they find out… but no. The moment someone new sees me, every stigma of that villain is stuck to me and I’m fucking tired of it. That’s why I joined the guard, Princess. Yes, I need the money but that’s not the real reason why. I did it so I can rise up in the ranks, make a name for myself, and quit with an honorable discharge. Give up ten years of my life so I can be known as something other than my father’s son, and get my damn life back from him.”

“So, yeah, that’s why I lied and kept my mouth shut,” Flash said.

Silence filled the air and Flash leaned back in his chair. Gears beginning to click, and fearful thoughts of the future filled him. “Oh geeze, I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” Flash rubbed his forehead with his hoof. “Lying to official investigators, impeding an official royal investigation…”

Cadance shook her head, and smiled. “I actually would have to disagree. From peering inside your head, I learned more then enough from you to say that you cooperated with us. If you wish, Flash, right now, you can take that door and go home, no further questions asked. If you do, this will be the end of this adventure and you can continue your life as you have. It’s not what I’d want, but it’s an clean out from all of this and I won’t think less of you if you took it.

His gut told him he had heard words like that before, but he shrugged them off. “So what do you want then, Princess?” Flash asked.

“I’d want you to stay, and tell me everything. I’d like you to come with me down this road, Flash, together. And that begins with you telling me everything that happened.”

“And you trust that I’ll tell you the truth?”

“Do you remember that little pep speech I gave you all those years ago? It was on the day Laplace attacked. ‘If you want something really badly sometimes you need to go all in, and put your faith to the test’. I’m putting my faith in you, Flash Sentry Junior, that if you wish to stay here with me, that you’d tell me the truth. I don’t want a subject, Celestia knows how many ass-kissers surround me. What I want is an partner. In this endeavor and more.”

“So Flash… what do you say?”

“She’s been in there for how long? Is it almost two hours now? I’ve been so busy I’m losing track of time,” asked Shining Armor to Seymour. The gray unicorn, decorated in a dark pink armor, turned to see Shining Armor come from around the corner.

“Close to that,” Seymour replied. “She’s been in there talking to Flash Sentry Junior. Longer than the previous times too, might I add.”

“So she’s still trying to get him to talk?” Shining Armor sighed. “More coffee?” Shining asked, two cups of coffee levitating from behind him.

Seymour smiled. “Of course Shiny.” Seymour’s magic overtook one of the two cups, and the unicorn took a sip.

“You know why she’s doing this. He’s an old friend of hers. You know she’s not gonna toss him to Blueblood’s prosecutors and leave him to dry. Especially considering that it’s Paladin Sentry’s son of all ponies. She’s not gonna let that happen to his son.”

“Yeah…” Shining Armor muttered. “How’d Blueblood take it?”

“He was annoyed, not much else. After I told him it was at his sister’s behest he pretty much gave me free reign to alter Flash’s interrogation report and scrub the arrest order.”

“Those guys who did talk to him might be mad you wasted their time.”

“That’s not my problem. I serve my lady, not her brother or his people.”

“I just hope she’s not the one wasting her time. When she gets out I need to speak to her about Flash first chance I get,” Shining ended.

The two looked at again at the door.

“My medics said you talked to Laplace before we let her loose. How’d your little reunion with her go?”

“As horrible as always. Her heart kinda broke when she saw her little lab empty. After that she just kinda did whatever I told her to. Also, Seymour, I wouldn’t recommend you talking to her anytime soon. I know she’s good for translating any old Pre-Celestian relics we dig up, but she’s gonna be mad at you for threatening her bedroom when she comes to her senses.”

“Well, the bitch already hates me, so no love lost there.”

“Don’t forget what she did to Sweetie Drops or Leeroy.”

“Your paladins, right. I’ll wear shades and keep my distance. Speaking of your paladins, I cleared her and the hippogriff for release. Paladin Leeroy’s gonna be okay, but that boy is gonna be tender like fried chicken for a couple of weeks. As for Paladin Drops she wasn’t really hurt, but I’m still a tad worried about her mental state. I’d like to keep an eye on their recovery, so if you don’t mind keep them around the castle for a week or so, okay?”

“Consider it done.”

“Wonderful. If anything comes up about them you’ll be the first to know. Any other questions?”

“I dare to ask about Sanctus.”

“Mr. Fury, unfortunately, is still with us. That old stallion’s like a cockroach.”

“Tell me about it,” Shining sighed, and took another sip of his drink. “Can’t kick him out, he refuses to retire, and has so much clout among the old guard I feel like I’m the one serving him sometimes. Just be happy the pink guard never has to deal with him.”

“Yes indeed being Cadence’s right hoof has its perks. At the least we’ll be free of him for this year’s Gala friday. I played the doctor card and told him he needs to rest for a month. Hopefully, he follows those orders. At least that’s all I was able to do before his little girlfriend came back in and shooed me out.

“You mean Zircon? Please tell me you didn’t actually call her that.”

“I’m not suicidal, Shield-butt. I’m a doctor, not a fighter,” Seymour scoffed. “How the hell did a zealot like him even make friends with a dark bitch like that instead of burning her at the stake? Shit like that is what his clan's known for isn't it?”

“It’s a very long story, Seymour. I honestly thought you knew it. And don’t call me Shield-butt.”

“I can call you whatever I want Shield-butt.”

“Maybe I should tell Cadance then.”

Seymour chuckled “And my lady would agree with me how great that flank of yours is. Second only to my lady’s derrière, of course.”

Shining Armor glared.

The door handle to interrogation room turned. The conversation between the stallions immediately stopped as they turned to see the door open wide.

The stallions looked onward to see who exited the room.

“After you, Princess,” they heard. A majestic unicorn, beautiful beyond comparison walked out. Princess Cadance beamed a wide smile on her face.

“Always the polite boy. Your mother taught you well.”

Flash Sentry walked out with after she did. “You helped,” he said. Cadance giggled.

“Cadance!” Shining Armor acted first. The moment he and Cadance locked eyes, they walked up to eachother and nuzzled the other. Flash could see Shining’s happy smile and heard Cadance sighing euphorically. “Shining…” she muttered.

“I missed you too, Cadance.”

“Likewise, honey. Missed my daily dose of your love.” Cadance giggled, before she and Shining pecked each other on the lips. “I take it everything went well?”

“As well as it can,” Shining said back, the sting of Cadence’s kiss on his mind. As much as he wanted to end this night it wasn’t finished yet. He shook off their nightly plans and began to speak to his princess.

“Princess!” That is, if Seymour didn’t interrupt.

“I’m glad you’re all finished with Mr. Sentry, my lady.” Seymour hopped off the bench he sat on, leaving his coffee cup behind and joined the conversation.

“More like just getting started, actually.” Cadance grinned.

“Wait, what?” Shining asked.

Cadance’s wide grin grew. “I’d like to introduce you to my newest hire.” Cadance stepped to the side and motioned a hoof to Flash. “Meet Flash Sentry, the newest member of the Pink Guard.”

The spinning record in Shining’s head scratched. “Wait...what!”

Seymour too gave a look of disbelief. “You’re serious?”

“Very serious! ” The princess of Equestria said not so seriously. “As of this moment, Flash is now the newest member of my personal guard, the Pink Guard.”

“My lady, are you sure?” Seymour asked. “And here I thought we’d be sending him to-”

“-Seymour,” Cadance cut him off, her eyes squared on him. After a moment, she continued. “Well, I had a while to think about where we’d be sending Flash, as he is part of the recruit division, and as he’s bound to go somewhere I decided he’ll fit in best alongside us, Seymour.”

Shining Armor stepped in front of Seymour. Flash saw his eyes dart on him, then to his princess.

“Honey, if you don’t mind I’d like to talk to you.”

“Do you mind if we get the ball rolling on the transfer first? You know how slow those transfer papers can go when-”

“No, Cadance.” Shining Armor cut his love off. “We need to talk. Now.”

Serious Shining is not a very happy Shining. She pouted. He must have his reasons. “If you say so, Honey.”

“Should I get started on that transfer then?” Seymour asked.

“Sounds good,” Cadance said to Shining’s dismay. “Take the new recruit out of here and start drafting the papers we need, okay? He luckily won’t need barracks, so we’ll deal with that later. I want Flash to start his duties tomorrow night.”

Seymour bowed. “As you wish, lady Cadance.” Afterwards, Seymour turned to Flash and pointed him in the direction leading out. “Come on Mr. Sentry, let’s leave the lovebirds to talk while we take care of things.”

“Good, you two should spend some time getting to know eachother. You two have a good night.”

“Thank you Princess,” Seymour and Flash said back.

“And Flash?” Cadance said.

Flash turned around to her. “Yes?”

“Welcome aboard.”

Chapter 12 - Cadance - End

Chapter 9 - ...you get burned... (part 1 of 3)

Author's Note

I want to thank KwirkyJ once again for his amazing help, amazing prose, and ability to keep the whip on me (not like that) and make my chaos work.
I also want to thank Calico for him coming over and going over, editing, and all his help (even if we spent half the time watching youtube).

You guys and everyone else. thank you so much for all your help!
Enjoy the show!

Chapter 9 - ...you get burned... (part 1 of 3)

Chapter 9 - ...you get burned... (part 1)

Sniff…

Laplace tossed in her sleep.

...sniff sniff...

The pony’s eyes bolted open.

Smoke!

Laplace shot up from her tiny cot.

The Lab’s on fire again?
Damnit, we left something running again!
Hurry! Before we lose anything, put it out!

Laplace threw the bedsheets aside and got to work, summoning her magic to vanquish the flames...only to look around and see nothing ablaze. Her eyes widened in horror.

Her lab was not on fire; it was the library.

Hundreds of books, the fruits of bargains, negotiations, and begging… the things that kept her sane now burned.

Laplace rushed to the lab’s doors and tried to push them open.

“Ahh!” she howled. The handle was red hot.

“Bastard door!”

Gripping the double doors with telekinesis, she flung them off their hinges. A hellish backdraft of fire unleashed itself in front of her, fire and smoke invading her nostrils. Behind the wall of flame she saw her nearest bookshelf, burning to cinders.

A crack formed in Laplace’s pupils, a pulsing yellow light radiating behind it.

“You will not take what is MINE!” she challenged the encroaching blaze in front of her. The demon unleashed a wave of purple energy from her horn, the magical shockwave snuffing the nearby flames.

Growing a pair of wings, she took to the air above the bookshelves and into the smoke, her eyes twisting into draconic slits as she surveyed the damage.

“Bastard fire…” she cursed in a twisted voice. If there was someone who did this to her, they would pay. The fire would die first, then whoever started it. Be it experiment, be it pony, it was going to die. “You’re going to pay for this…”

She heard a burst and crackle. In the distance, a tower of flame erupted, consuming more of her precious, beloved books. But, most importantly, the fire now had a source.

It was time to cut the head off the snake.

“Are you sure this is going to draw her attention?” a young voice said.

Talons gripped a torch, and with a spark of magic from the other talon the torch ignited, illuminating the figure. A pony’s face on a griffon’s body, decorated in a light blue armor. The Hippogriff tossed the torch into a nearby bookshelf, the hybrid fading back into darkness.

“I told you, it will. Light another and toss it,” rasped an older voice as the speaker sparked a fire and lit his own torch. He was a terracotta colored earth stallion, decorated in a red military uniform, badges on his jacket, a yellow sash across his chest. His left hind leg was in a metal brace.

“Yes, Sir Fury,” replied the young hippogriff.

“More torches?” scoffed a mare. “C’mon Sanctus! You two are taking forever!”

“What can I say, Zircon, I prefer the old fashioned methods,” replied Sanctus Fury. “They work.”

Zircon laughed. “Old fashioned is old for a reason, Sanctus! As someone who was around when old was new, I can tell you…” An orb of flames gathered around a steel hoof, illuminating a viridian unicorn. Four prosthetic metal limbs glinted in the firelight. She wore nothing but a cloak that draped around her deceptively youthful body. “It’s a new era, Santy, get with the times.”

Zircon shot off her orb of fire, igniting another bookshelf in a gout of flame.

Leery whistled. “Yeeeeeaaaa… I’d say that’s gonna get her attention.”

“Exactly, Leeroy. Now get your ass ready, both of you boys,” Zircon said as she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. “The bitch is heading our way.”

Draconic wings flapped. Laplace gathered her magic as she landed on the floor, unleashing another shockwave of magical energy, snuffing the flames that surrounded her.

Stop the fire: Check.
Find the source of the fire: Source of the fires found, person not. Sorta-check.
Murder the shit out of whoever’s behind this: check pending.

“Light of Celestia!” boomed a stallion’s voice, “Make the darkness tremble with your mighty awe!”

A rune with the mark of Celestia appeared at Laplace’s feet. A circle of light shot out of it, entrapping the demon in the spell circle.

Laplace chuckled. “Heh-heh-heh… I’d recognize that magic anywhere.”

Her horn lit up, channeling red magic into her hooves as she smashed them into the rune below her.

“Mister Fury… it’s been a long time.”

Red magic spread like a wild vine across the sunburst rune, strangling it.

“Sad to see you haven’t learned any new tricks.”

The sigil of Celestial shattered beneath her. The holy light faded away sending the room back into darkness.

“Out of all the ponies,” Laplace mused, “out of all the bastards to come and fight us, it’s you. Wonderful, just wonderful.”

“So you still remember me, after all these years?” said the old stallion.

“Oh, how could I not?” Small magical flares lit the ruined section of the library. The elder pony was revealed, dressed in his military uniform, his salt and pepper mane slicked back.

“Sir Sanctus Fury of the Solar Guard, patriarch of the Fury clan, right hoof of the Crown, second in command under Captain Light, the self-proclaimed Hammer of Celestia…” Laplace smirked. “Tell me, how much of that is former, now?”

Sanctus Fury’s scowl deepened.

“We mean, after all I did to you, there’s no way you can still be all of those. We did quite a number to you when last we met. Do you remember?” she said with a devilish chuckle. “How is that leg by the way? You know, the one I crunched extra hard?”

Sanctus scoffed. “Nothing a weak pony like yourself can do will ever stop me.”

“Weak? You think I’m weak?! What am I, an old bag of bones? That’s you.” Laplace laughed. “You know, Shining told us that I had broken literally every bone in your body all those years ago. We never got a chance to follow up on that, did we?”

Sanctus just watched, his gaze unflinching.

“Well?”

The stare continued.

“Come on, answer us.”

He did not.

Laplace facehoofed. “Of course. Why did we think this wouldn’t happen.”
“You’re a dick,” she muttered to herself. “You’d never actually answer us.”

“Are you done, weakling?” Sanctus asked.

The demon winced at that word again: ‘weakling.’ He would not get the better of her. She had destroyed him once. He was the weak one, never her. I am not weak. We are strong.

“We suppose we are done. We’ve been hoping we did manage to break every bone in your body… It doesn’t matter, we suppose, because we will this time. And then we’re going to kill you.”

Sanctus chuckled, the sound joined by that from a mare behind Laplace.

“I highly doubt that, kid.”

Zircon stepped out of the shadows, pulling back her hood. Her messy mane spilled down her withers, a shining silver ponytail bound with a gold ring. “Even if you had the power to kill us, you’re too much of a pussy to do it. You’ve always lacked that killer instinct, Laplace.”

“You realize they call me the Demon of Canterlot for a reason, right?” Laplace said as she turned to face the mare.

“Demon of Canterlot my ass. You don’t even remember my ass, do you?”

“What, are we suppose to—” Recognition hit.

“…Didn’t we kill you?” the demon asked. “We distinctly remember driving a metal rod through your eye.”

The snickering witch tapped her left eye, eliciting a hollow clink. “It’s going to take a lot more a metal rod through my head to kill me. Kid, you don't get to be as old as I am by dying. I really ought to thank you. This new eye of mine’s been a real boon for me.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll get your heart next.”

Zircon was overtaken by a laugh. “Heh-heh-heh-heh….Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Laplace scowled. “What’s so funny?!”

“That tells me sooo much! A dragon beat you to that sixty years ago! I told you that last time we met! You’re still free to take his heart,” Zircon gave her chest a pat with a hoof, “but I’ll be snatching yours if you try!”

“Take my heart? I’d like to see you try! Shining Armor’s the only one my heart belongs to.”

Zircon’s mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Said so well by the mare he’s not rutting every night.”

“Fuck you!” the demon snarled, her eyes and horn both turning yellow.

To match, Zircon lit up her own horn, its aura as black as night. “I’d like to see you try, kid! You couldn’t handle a mare like me. Not in battle, nor in the bed.” Zircon chuckled. “Laplace, demon, or whatever you’re calling yourself this century, you might have a lot of power now, more than a witch like me, but you’ve always been a weak pussy when it comes to using it. You lack that fighting spirit… that’s why we captured you in the first place! Nighty just made the mistake of not destroying you on the spot.”

“It is a mistake we won’t be making twice,” said by a third, youthful voice. “There will be no mercy this time, Laplace.”

Laplace lit up more magical lights around the new voice and illuminated a hippogriff in full. Despite the sword pointed straight at her, she smiled seeing those violet eyes of his. Beneath that sky-blue paladin armor she knew lay a pristine silver coat. But most importantly, she knew he was her oasis between the assholes. “Leeroy! How have you been? It’s been so long since we last saw you! We see your back’s healed. Hopefully you can give your brother Conduct some tips after he wakes up.”

“I ought to hack you to pieces for what you did to my brother!”

She gave a childish harumph turning away from him, giving her tail a wave, knowing Leeroy’s eyes wouldn’t leave her. “Condi deserved what we did to him.” She smirked. “We would have done to him what we did to you, but he decided to be a jerk. You’re such a nice pony, so much unlike your brother. Honestly, Leeroy, how could both of you come from the same mother, that we’ll never understand.”

With a flap of wings he jumped off the bookshelf, the three now surrounding the demonic mare.

“Demon, we give you one chance to surrender,” Leeroy demanded. “Submit and release your hostages to us, and your life and home shall be spared. If you wish to keep your magic, your library, and your life, do as we say and surrender.”

Laplace and Zircon both snickered.

“And here I thought you wanted a piece of her too, Leeroy,” the viridian witch said. “You can drop the formalities, kiddo, we’re not here to make a deal with her, heaven and hell knows that’s not gonna happen. We all know why we’re here.”

Leeroy stomped in frustration. “That is not the way Canterlot operates. We don’t just go execute our enemies, e-even if...” He looked at the demon, then to the witch. “We are the good guys. We have a code, and we stick to it.” One that seems to be falling on deaf ears right now…

“You sound like Nighty,” replied Zircon. “Keep sounding like that and you’re gonna die like he did.”

“If she’s going to surrender, like she did before, she will be spared, again.” Leeroy glared at the witch, thinking. Zircon, you know what Shining Armor told us to do. I want my revenge too, for me and my brother, but I will not let my emotions taint my mission. Stop tempting me.

To all this, Zircon gave a raised eyebrow. “Hmmm. I suppose that’s the difference between us, then: you work for the government, I’m paid by the government. I would say I really don’t care if she lives or dies, but this pain in the ass has had this coming for a long time.”

Sanctus stomped, getting the attention of the others. Laplace’s white lights around him flickered. “That’s enough talking! There is no more debate. This weakling wants a fight, and deserves worse. We shall give her both.”

“You three really think you can take me out?” Laplace said, taunting. “Is all that Shiny sends at me? A hot little hippogriff, half of a witch, and a bag of old bones?”

The trio readied themselves. Leeroy’s claws tightened around his saber, Zircon’s black aura seethed through her prostheses, and sparks of electricity rippled across Sanctus’ coat.

“Then bring it!” Laplace stomped on the ground, a purple and red aura circling around her horn, the mare’s eyes beaming yellow like the sun. “All of you! Bring it on!”

At the unspoken signal, it began.

The mare and the hippogriff charged Laplace and closed the gap between them. When the armed pair were a limb’s length away, Sanctus slung a bolt of lightning towards Laplace, forcing her to dodge, jumping into the air as the bolt scorched where she had been standing.

Leeroy immediately gave chase, his wings launching him after her, his sword ready to strike.

Laplace saw the glint of Leeroy’s blade closing in. The blade barely grazed her head as it swept under. Without missing a beat, Leeroy changed his angle and swung again, determined not to miss.

As his steel came down, Laplace’s horn flashed, creating a ward that blocked the impact, the blade bouncing off the impromptu-shield. With the paladin over-extended, the demon gave a wicked grin as she lit her horn and blasted the hippogriff, Leeroy crashing back from whence he came.

Before Laplace had any time to pat her own back, another bolt of lightning tore through the air towards her. She plunged beneath the lightning blast, right into the path of Zircon.

Touching the floor as the half-mechanical Zircon charged in swinging her magically charged metal hoof, Laplace did not land but dove right into the ground below. Laplace let her body sink into the floor, the punch hitting nothing but air as Laplace vanished completely into the ground. Before Zircon could regain her balance, black hooves popped up from the floor, wrapped around Zircon’s neck, and pulled, slamming her head right into the hard floor.

Laplace sprung out of the ground, leaving the shadow to hold Zircon in place. Laplace raised a single hoof charged with her own magical energy.

“GRAVITY!” Laplace shouted.

The charged purple fist come down on her skull.

At the moment of impact, Zircon’s body felt like it gained ten thousand pounds. She felt her whole body being crushed into the hard floor by the invisible magic of the spell. Zircon summoned as much strength as she could into her own horn, trying to break the spell before the spell broke her.

The demon stood over the viridian witch who grunted in her struggles. Confident, the demon set her yellow eyes against the elder stallion and smiled. “You’re sure you want to do this, old bones?”

Sanctus simply growled, gathering more energy around himself.

Laplace chuckled. “Good. Let’s break you all over again.”

“Fulgur!”

Bolts of lightning shot from his hooves, Laplace tilted to the left, to the right, dodging both bolts as she summoned the magic from her horn and unleashed her counter-attack.

“Lancea!” she shouted, as a lance of light formed just in time to shatter against Sanctus’ incoming thunderbolt. Several more vollies of electricity were hurled, each countered the same way, matching Sanctus move for move.

Light from the corner of Laplace’s vision caught her attention. The shadow rose from her back, catching the last seconds of Leeroy swinging his sword and unleashing a large blue shockwave at her.

A purple light from the shadow’s horn lit, forming a ward of defensive magic as the wave made impact. Soon, a second, then a third shockwave stacked against the shield spell, compounding and cracking, but not destroying the spell as the they exhausted themselves. With the shadow sustaining the defensive shield and the demon occupied with hurling her lances, it wasn’t long before the witch Laplace was standing on broke her gravity spell.

Without missing a beat, Laplace snatched Zircon’s tail with her telekinesis, lifted her off the ground and threw her into Leeroy just as he was about to unleash another sword wave.

“Magna fulgur!”

Laplace’s attention snapped back to the elder paladin. Violet lighting, far greater than what he had previous cast, was coming right at her. Laplace crafted another ward of magic to protect herself, the magic clashing against the magical bolt and cracking her new shield.

By the time she opened her eyes and dissolved the ward, it was too late to see the magic wall speeding her way. Laplace felt ribs crack as the wall smashed into her, shoving her towards Leeroy and Zircon, both whom were already running towards her.

We have to stop it! Laplace gathered her strength and smashed her hoof into the wall, sending her own magic into it, seeping inside becoming wedge against the magic that held it together. She punched the wall again and shattered it into nothing.

Laplace hit the floor rolling. On instinct, the demon rolled to the right, just in time to miss the massive shockwave Leeroy sent her way. She immediately reversed her roll to the left, dodging Zircon’s crushing hoof.

She hopped back up on her hooves, turned, and raised her forehooves to catch Zircon’s incoming hooves. The impact, powered by Zircon’s magic, pushed against Laplace, but the demon managed to hold her ground. With the two hooflocked, Leeroy and Sanctus approached from her sides.

Laplace’s eyes glowed yellow and power instantly filled the demon’s horn, unleashed as a yellow shockwave of magic.

It was Zircon’s turn to hold her ground, her black magic fighting against the blast. Lacking such recourse, Leeroy was sent flying into the air and Sanctus was sent crashing into a bookshelf.

Laplace raised an eyebrow, surprised that Zircon remained unmoved. “Impressive trick,.”

Zircon smirked. “Here’s a better one.”

Zircon’s metal hooves changed. Three iron claws extended out from the sides of her hooves and turned inwards to tear into Laplace’s flesh.

Laplace’s eyes went wide with pain.

“Now let me top that.”

With impossible strength, she pulled back onto her hind legs and lifted Laplace right off her hooves, spinning her like a discus. The gears inside Zircon’s metal limbs shifted and a chain released. Laplace, with Zircon’s hooves still embedded in her, flew. The chain turned the demon into a pony-like flail, crashing her into the bookshelves that surrounded them, finally stopping inside the third bookshelf, its books all falling on top of the demon.

Before Laplace could pull herself out of the books, she felt Zircon’s metals claws pull. The chains attached to Zircon’s hooves retracted, yanking the demon off her knees and towards her.

“LEEROY! SWORD! NOW!”

Zircon stood tall on her hind legs, black magic pouring into them. Zircon’s claws let go of Laplace as she jumped like an ape into the path of the incoming demon, and drop-kicked her right in the head. Laplace’s cranium caved in and her horn shattered as the enchanted steel crushed her skull, sending the demon flying away.

Laplace tried to regain her bearings as she flew, but it was too late. Leeroy was directly in her path. His blade was blazing with energy, and all of it now swung at her.

“Take this!”

Sputtering magic from a broken horn was the only thing keeping Laplace from being cut in twain. The sword cut into the demon’s hide, its blazing magic sawing into Laplace’s gut, clashing with her magic desperately trying to keep her body whole.

Her torn body slid free of Leeroy’s blade, crashing into the ground behind him, leaving a bloody trail as she skidded to a stop on the carpet below. Leeroy readied his blade to swing again, and turned to meet a blast of yellow magic in his face that sent him flying right past Sanctus and Zircon, narrowly hitting the pair.

The demon clutched her open gut with a hoof, desperately trying to keep her insides from spilling out onto the bloody, tattered carpet. She attempted to flee, sinking her demonic form into the ground.

“You are not getting away from me!” shouted Sanctus. Magic channeled into the old soldier’s left forehoof and he slammed it into the ground, A white shockwave spread out and traveled across the floor. The holy magic shoved Laplace out of the floor, her broken body flopping against the ground like a bloody fish. She landed with a wet thud as her half-healed gut was smeared across the carpet.

Zircon took aim. A small circle in the center of her hoof opened up and fired a trio of large black magic bullets, two striking the demon in the back until a red barrier blocked the last shot.

An instant later, a magical lance embedded itself into the barrier, stopping a mere inch away from Laplace’s head. She scowled and flicked the pierced barrier and lance in the air, shattering both into pieces.

"Nice try... old bones!"

She noticed Sanctus' hoof was still stretched outright. Looking up, she saw the fragments of the lance had not fallen to the ground, but instead scattered all around her, holding their position.

"Sparget Lancea!"

Before Laplace could react, each of the broken fragments of the magical lance formed into lances in their own right and rocketed downward, skewering the demon.

Zircon winced at the impact. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.

Holy lances perforated the demon, jutting out of her in virtually every direction.

For Zircon, pondering if she was down or not, a low gurgle emanating from Laplace was answer enough.

Blood dripped from the lances as Laplace’s eyes continued to glow yellow. "That's… that's not going to stop me..." the demon hacked up blood. “You… can’t stop me.”

"How about this, then?" Sanctus retorted. He brought his hoof down. On cue, each of the lances inside Laplace began to glow.

"Aww fu—" The lances exploded, consuming the demon in a ball of fire and magic.

"Did you get her?" Leeroy asked, finally rejoining the other two.

Zircon snorted. "Of course not."

"What? You blew her up? At least that would knock her—"

All three froze as a magical light surged inside the cloud and knew exactly who it belonged to.

"THAT'S IT!" it roared.

The cloud dispersed to reveal a demonic unicorn, feral with rage. She stomped the ground with blood-red cloven hooves, whipping her lionesque tail. A long twisted horn on her brow shone yellow, the magic encasing her whole form, intact once again.

Cracked yellow draconic eyes narrowed. A pair of leathery wings sprouted from her back, propelling her like a lighting bolt into the trio.

“I’VE HAD IT!”

Zircon jumped to the left, Leeroy jumped to the right. The slowest to respond, Sanctus was snared mid-jump by draconic claws. A glance back revealed a shadowy mare form, eyes burning purple above a broad, cruel smile.

“WITH!”

The demon leapt forward, colliding with Sanctus. Wings wrapped around him as the demon spun upwards, her prey in her clutches. Yellow magic sunk into Sanctus’ struggling form.

“YOU!”

Reaching the apex of her rise, Laplace shot Sanctus out like a bullet at the witch.
Zircon rose to her hind legs, her metal foreclaws catching a petrified Sanctus, the sheer momentum sending her skidding backwards. When she stopped, she placed Sanctus’ petrified body on the ground.

“CAPTAIN!” Leeroy shouted. He tried to rush over to them, but the demon descended and blocked his path.

“Don’t worry, kid, I got him!” Zircon shouted back to him. “He’s just having a hard time right now. Buy me a minute, ok?”

Leery didn’t hesitate to follow the order, turning to attack the demon with his sword raised. Laplace was forced to dodge strike after strike, always away from the witch. It was enough for Zircon.

The mare focused magic into her horn, black magic bubbled around her horn, until a single ball of energy formed on the tip of her horn, which she took with her claws and placed it on Sanctus’ head. Upon touching his muzzle, the stone cracked.

“Ahhh, you always tell me how terrible it is that I like to get stoned, and here you are, even more stoned than me.” The witch giggled. With a second flash of black magic from her horn, dark crystals rose and formed a shield encasing Sanctus.

“Take a breather, Sancty. I’ll have this wrapped up before you’re even free.” She turned to rejoin the fight, now much farther away. “Dang it, why do you two kids have to go so far away from me. Oh well.”

She paused to cast a final glance back to the crystal barrier holding Sanctus. “Well, she’ll be mostly dead by the time you get free...”

Leeroy slashed at the demon, hitting nothing but air. Again.

“Come on, Leeroy,” the demon jeered. “We thought you liked being close to—”

Laplace ducked, Leeroy’s sword almost cleaving off her head. Some of her mane were not as fortunate as the rest of her.

Ok, less taunting, more keeping your head.
Decapitation hurts, please dodge.

Laplace saw an opening. She turned around, reeled in her hooves and bucked Leeroy in the chest and sent him speeding towards the ground, skidding into the nearby wall.

Or that… that works too.

“Shit…” Leeroy muttered, pulled himself back up, only to find Laplace’s hooves firing a massive ball of fire.

“Crystal clod!” shouted a new voice.

A crystal hand emerged from the floor, shielding Leeroy from the fiery blast. Laplace looked to in search of the new voice but found the giant hand opening up as if to grab her.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

Slow enough to be insulting, it stretched out towards her with all the searing rapidity of poured molasses.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Laplace said with a laugh. “That’s just pathet—”

Laplace felt her spine crack as a familiar pair of metal hooves drop-kicked her right into the giant crystal hand, which closed on her like a vice. Its five fingers held her tight, her head the only free part of her.

The witch floated near, landing on the clenched fist holding the demon.

“You were saying?” Zircon’s smile was a mile wide.

A shadow tried to jump out of Laplace’s body but, no matter how hard it tried, it couldn’t, and fell back into the demon’s body.

“Those crystals are anti-magic. Good luck trying to phase through that.” Zircon rose to a bipedal stance. Her metal foreclaws began to shine for a moment before black magic consumed them. Laplace could feel the crystal hand holding her, growing in it’s power and beginning to drain her own.

Laplace struggled, the shadow trying once again to jump out of her. The shadow’s horn lit up purple, then red, then yellow trying to separate itself, but it was to no avail. It was at that point that Laplace realized she was in a bind.

“Yeah, good luck trying to break anti-magic with magic, kid,” said Zircon. “My hand won’t let you cast anything.”

And we can’t Break free!
We need something to pry us free.
Yes yes, let’s just ask them for a crobar. It’s not like we have something that…
Wait!

The mare’s horn lit up yellow, a surge of magic fading out as soon as the spell began.

Yes! Lazy! Thank you! It’s still there! we didn’t clean it up!
Let’s make good use of it!

The shadow tried to jump out of Laplace’s body once again, casting a surge of yellow magic before the hand’s anti-magic snuffed out her spell.

Zircon just laughed. “You’re gonna have to try better than that to get out of that—”

A white, magical claymore impaled Zircon from behind. Zircon felt her heart split in two as the she saw the bloody white construct through her chest. “...shit…”

“You were saying?” the demon said, smirking.

The sword, held in the demon’s telekinetic grip, pulled out of the witch. A single slash sent the heartless witch off the crystal hand and into a bookshelf. The bloody books fell out, tumbling over her. She did not climb out.

Without its master, the crystal fist crumbled, each shard of crystal breaking off to dissolve into raw magic as they hit the floor.

“YOU BASTARD!” Leroy shouted.

Freed from the crystal hand, Laplace took the the air once again, Sterling Conduct’s sword held in her telekinesis. “We really ought thank your brother… he dropped his sword,” she said, tracing a hoof along the Paladin’s blade. “Quite a life-saver… Or should I say, life-taker? Heh-heh—”

Once again, Laplace’s voice was cut short. She registered a sudden cold numbness in her left wing as the world began to pitch sideways. She fell down to to the earth, Conduct’s sword forgotten, transfixed by the bloody stump where her wing used to be. Only then did pain find her.

She turned and looked to where she had been and saw Leeroy holding a radiating sword, covered in her blood and burning with his magic.

The air was burning. Everything was around the paladin was burning. A bloodthirsty, vermillion aura encased the hippogriff.

Leeroy was out for blood.

Hers.

“I’ll KILL YOU!”

With a mighty flap, the enraged paladin dropped like a meteor. Leeroy brought his blazing sword down into her gut, crashing the two of them into the ground below. A shockwave of air bellowed out as they slammed into the floor.

Leeroy pulled the sword out of Laplace’s gut, and then raging beast began hacking away at the demon. Every slash chopped off another piece of Laplace, tore another wound open, or broke another part of her being. The magic to repair herself lost under the onslaught as she torn apart alive. A trio of vicious hacks cut her head free, which, despite lacking of lungs or vocal cords, howled in coherently as it fell.

Leeroy raised his bloody blade to the sky, the aura beaming off his sword igniting into a smoldering blaze growing more intense every second.

“IMMOLATION!”

Leeroy slammed his sword down on the dismembered demon. Fire magic erupted like a volcano, consuming Laplace inside the blaze.

A mess of a blazing body parts only visible as burning silhouettes flew into a stone wall.

Leeroy fell to his knees, the heat taking its toll on his body. He forced himself back to standing. No! Not yet! Lay down and you’re done! I have to finish her!

He couldn’t rest, he wouldn’t rest. He had to keep pushing himself with whatever strength he had left. But he couldn’t keep this level of power going forever. This had to end, now.

He turned to his target, and his heart sank. Laplace’s silhouette shown through the pyre. She was not a collection of severed limbs as she had been a moment ago, but was whole once again.

She’s already healing? How is she back in one piece so quickly? Damn it! That power has to be coming from somewhere...

From within the flaming body struggling to stand and heal itself, Leeroy saw a bright, purple light emanating from the demon.

There! Her forehead! That’s the spot!

He pulled his sword back, taking aim at the demon’s forehead. All of his strength, his power, and magic became focused in his sword. He had only one chance to make this work. His sword ablaze, he charged.

A burst of magic snuffed out the fire consuming Laplace, revealing her as she struggled to stand. Her body was pristine, except for a small purple crystal lodged soundly in her skull which bled freely. Her eyes beamed a sickly yellow as purple magic swirled around her horn.

Her yellow eyes caught the flash of his blade aimed right for the shining crystal. The blade hit dead on.

The impact’s shockwave blew out the surviving flames. Leeroy lost the grip of his sword as both were sent flying back.

Leeroy tumbled backwards, landing on his chest. His strength started to leave him, exhaustion telling him to rest. His gut told him to act; to move. He had to know if his final gambit had paid off. Push… get up, Leeroy. Do at least enough… to...

Leeroy saw his sword… at least, what was left of it, scattered around him in smouldering fragments. “No…”

The demon, Laplace, pulled herself to standing.

He had failed. He slumped to the ground, spirit and strength utterly spent.

“You…”

The shattered fragments of his sword begin to glow a sickly yellow, floating off the ground and surrounding him.

He knew what came next.

Every broken shard turned on their master. The shrapnel mauled Leeroy.

“You Bastard!”

Leeroy used his forelegs as shields against the shrapnel, saving his life, he knew, for at most another minute. He collapsed in a pool of his own blood.

The demon, however, was unsatisfied with her victory; she needed more . Her yellow magic lifted him off the blood-soaked floor.

“YOU DARE HURT US!”

A twisted horn of purple and white, bathed in yellow magic, pulled Leeroy towards the demon’s face. Leeroy saw her eyes: her eyes were completely consumed by a yellow light, the shard embedded in her forehead beaming with magic.

“WE WERE TOO MERCIFUL ON YOU!”

She threw the beaten paladin into a bookshelf. It toppled over on top of him and his world fell into darkness. He teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, hurt, bleeding, and barely able to think; victory or even escape was beyond impossible.

The weight compounded as a pair of hooves began pressing down. He knew Laplace was gathering her magic: he could see a yellow shine from beyond the bookcase.

He closed his eyes.

“GRAVITY!!”

A loud, sick combination of wood and bone crunched under Laplace’s hooves.

She had won.

The adrenaline slowly drained from Laplace’s body, She stood on top of the broken bookshelf, breathing deeply as her rage diminished. In and out, she breathed… in and out, and her body began to calm.

Leather wings vanished. A beast’s tail became a pony’s once again. Cloven trotters closed into a solid hoof. All the red from Laplace’s mane turned white. She turned away from the bookshelf, her forehead showed no scars from the now-vanished crystal.

“I didn’t wanna do that to you. You were the nice one… you shouldn’t have gotten me angry. I wonder if they’ll save you in time…. maybe we should turn you into stone. You’ll stay alive longer that way…”
“Oh, forget him—he tried to kill us. This is what he deserves. ”

Mad eyes flashed yellow.

“Yea, forget him. He wronged us. He needs to pay. We should, in fact, kill his brother. Then we’d be even.”
“Yes… then we’d be done.”

Chains rustled. A metal claw shot out of the darkness and latched itself to the back of Laplace’s head.

“LAPLACE! WE ARE FAR FROM DONE!”

Chapter 9 - … you get burned (part 1) - end

Chapter 13 - Flash's Everyday Life

Flash’s Demon 13 - Flash’s everyday life

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Flash turned and tossed as his alarm blared. It took a stray hoof to turn off the alarm. The stallion groaned, as he slowly awoke..

“Flash? You up?”

Flash quickly realized that his hoof had not turned off the alarm.

“Big Bro?”

First Base did.

“You’re awake! Good morning!” exclaimed Flash’s little brother as he hugged Flash tight.

Flash chuckled. “Good morning to you too you, little squirt,” he said, hugging his brother back.

“Welcome back home, Big Bro,” First Base said. “I really missed you on your trip! Why didn’t you tell us you were going somewhere?”

It confused Flash for a moment. “Trip?” Oh, right. Cover story. “Sorry bro, things kinda happened last minute and I was hoping mom was gonna tell you.”

“It’s fine. I had a bunch of fun anyway,”

“Fun without me? Awwww.” Flash feigned insult.

“Yep! Aunt Dust came by and Mom said I could spend the whole weekend in Cloudsdale. I had to wear that cloudwalking amulet the whole time, but it wasn’t a problem and I had a ton of fun!”

Flash chuckled. “That’s cool of mom.”

“Oh! Mom said that she’s got breakfast ready for you.”

“Cool. You gonna join us today, little bro?”

First Base tried to nod, but yawned instead. “I don’t know how you do this. The sun’s not even up.”

“You get used to it,” Flash answered. He nuzzled his brother. “Come-on, let’s go get some grub.”

Ember Glow wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead.

“Mom! Flash is up!” her youngest shouted.

“Just in time—” Ember muttered to herself, as she set the last dish on the kitchen table, and just in time to watch her sons walk through the doorway.

“Good morning dears!” Ember Glow greeted her children with a big hug.

“Good morning mom!” The boys each said to their mother.

“Oh, I’m so happy to see both my darling little angels again,” Ember said.

Flash chuckled. “Mom, you have no idea how happy I am too.”

First Base squeezed himself out of his mother’s iron-clad embrace. “We weren’t gone that long mom, just a weekend!”

Ember let go of her oldest and giggled. First was first to hop into his seat. “Come on, let’s eat!”

Flash and his mother then slid into their own seats. After his ordeal yesterday, any sense of normalcy was a welcome change.

Plain oat cereal, same as always.

“Oat cereal,” Flash muttered and began to munch the bland wad of sticky oats.

Flash shifted a glob of oats from one cheek to the other before swallowing. Health, his mother had told him, was why she always had that for breakfast. Figuring he had been eating nothing but sandwiches for the past few days, for once it actually tasted mediocre.

“You ate something else?”

“Well, pretty much all the food I had until then was a few sandwiches. Then we ran out. It... was ‘fun’.”

First spoke up and said “really-ohh.” and then realized the tone.

“Um, how much fun?” First Base asked.

“It was an experience you’ll never be able to forget…” no matter how much you try.

“Oh my,” Ember muttered. “Well, you’re done with that now, right?”

“Um…”

I wish, thought Flash.

“Well big bro got promoted or something? Right! Of course he is!” First exclaimed, nearly jumping off his seat.

Good timing, little bro. “Yep!” Flash borrowed his enthusiasm. “I’ll be running night shifts from here on out, but it’ll be a welcome change.”

“You’ll be sleeping when I get home from school through,” First Base said.

In a flash, Flash was first to turn and answer First, first. “You’re normally doing homework anyway, right? Don’t worry, you and I will still have our brother time, okay little bro? I promise.”

First smiled as wide as he could.

“In a matter of fact, we can today before you have to go to school. You got school in a couple of hours, right?”

First nodded, then asked, “But I thought you had your school today?”

“Not today, the guard told me I could take the day off.” Flash leaned back in his chair and stretched his wings. “I can stretch my wings while we go out and play a game or two. Then I’ll bring you to school.” Flash scratched his chin, thinking ahead after that. “And after that I can nap before that college music band tryout, so I’m all ready for it. Then I’ll have to take a straight shot to work though, and I should be home just in time to wake you up before you go to school and I got my classes. Yeah, that sounds like that’ll work.”

First smiled, which led Flash to smile as well… until he saw his mother’s look of disapproval. “You’re... not going to college today?” Ember was looking square at her oldest child.

“The guard said I should rest up today for tonight, and contacted the college to let them know that I wouldn’t be there.”

“But you could.”

“Mom I’m-”

“-Dear, you need to go to school.”

Flash turned away. “I’m not twelve mom. It’ll be okay if I miss a day. And I really, really want to get some sleep for the other stuff going on today. Besides, I’m gonna be spending a few hours with First before school.”

Ember frowned and looked at her youngest. “First, dear, would you be okay with postponing your brother time to another day?”

“Well, only if we get a chance later,” First said.

“Perfect,” Ember smiled. “I’ll help make some time for you two, and you can go to your classes today, Flash.”

Displeasure was an understatement for how Flash felt.
Flash felt so upset.

“Mom, I don’t want to go to school today.”

Ember wagged her hoof. “Nonsense, Flash, you’ll fall behind if you skip. I’m sure you’ll be fine-”

“-fine number two pencil, make sure you pull it out, and mark in each answer. Keep your sheets face down until the test begins.”

The horn of Flash’s professor lit up and he closed the classroom door. He then walked behind his desk, levitating a stack of papers. The professor walked down the rows of desks passing out tests to each student. He spoke to Flash when he passed by the young pegasus.

“I’m surprised you’re here, Mis-ter Sentry. I was told by the guard you needed time to prepare for today’s test; an error, I suppose. I assume your time away has given you some time to study.”

Flash told him “Well, I had a change of heart.”

The professor smiled. “Very well, let’s hope you made a good choice,” he said as he gave Flash his test.

When he was done, the professor walked back to his chair, sat, magically took hold of the test sheets, and flipped them all upright.

“Remember now students, this test is multiple choice. Match the specimens and species names using the images and descriptions provided.”

Yes! Flash smiled. His memories of the subject matter were sketchy, but multiple choice was his favorite type of test.

“On the first sheet are all the choices you have. A, B, C, D and E.”

A one in five chance. Well, at least this might not be too…

“AB, AC, AD, AE, BC, BD, BE CD, CE, DE, ABC, ABD, and ABE. Each segment of the test will have a new set of what each of the choices means.”

Flash’s coat went pale.

“Remember, not all answers may be used, and some answers may be used multiple times. There are 100 questions overall, 10 points of extra credit, and you have until the end of class. I hope you’ve spent the past few days studying. Good luck to you all.”

Flash headdesked.

“Celestia damn it ….”

Before the test had even begun, Flash knew he had failed. Again.

Flash groggily lifted his head from the desk as the rest of his classmates were filing out of the hall.

Well, the shit show’s finally over, I guess. Flash thought to himself. Time to bail

“See you all tomorrow, class. I’ll have your grades ready for you as soon as you come. We’ll move onto the next chapter then.”

Flash gazed at the stack of test papers, and that the professor was already starting to grade them. It only reminded him of his own impending failure… again. He grabbed his book bag and tried to slip out as fast as possible.

“Oh well, at least I can slip out of here before—”

“Mis-ter Sentry,” called the professor. Flash winced and stopped short. “Could I speak to you for a minute?”

Oh crap.

Flash spun around. His fellow students were leaving the room quickly. The last one took a glance of pity at him and shut the door behind him, leaving Flash alone with his teacher.

“Mis-ter. Sentry,” Flash hated how he said that. “Have a seat, please.”

Flash held his tongue and obeyed Like a dog...

“While you were resting your head after completing my exam I did you the favor…” the professor began to say as he turned around and grabbed a sheet off his desk.

Favor my ass.

“The favor of grading your test while you slept in my class, a fact which I will overlook for more pressing matters,” the professor said as he lay the sheet down on Flash’s desk.

It was an F after all. Twenty-one out of one hundred.

The F was drawn in red, accompanied by a cross on each wrong answer. The correct ones, that Flash had missed, were circled, too. Nearly the entire sheet was daubed with red marker. The more Flash looked at it the more he begged his mind to pull away.

You fucked up. Again.

“You failed, again, Mis-ter Sentry. Do you enjoy flunking my class?” the professor asked.

“No sir,” Flash couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact.

“Then why did you only manage a grade of twenty-one percent? That's rather low on the ‘F’ spectrum, Mis-ter Sentry.”

“Because I…” It’s not like I can actually tell you why, right? But that wouldn’t be right anyway. If I stayed home, maybe I could have studied… but...but I did anyway...and even if I did, could I have even done it? Probably n...

Flash did not look at his professor. His eyes locked on the map of the continent. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Why did you do this to yourself again? Look at me, boy! Stop gazing elsewhere!” With a simple command, he forced Flash to face him. “You’re tormenting and making a fool of yourself. Why do you persist in this Sisyphussery?”

“Because I have to pass the biology prerequisite, sir.” Don't know why it’s required, I’ll never use this knowledge outside of this box of a classroom.

“And you are quite far from that goal, from where you are standing.” Flash’s wings folded in tightly against his back.

Unaware, the unicorn professor continued on. “The path you are on Mis-ter Sentry, is in fact one of absolute failure, and you are on the verge of crossing the point of no return.”

I know that...

“Do you understand what will happen if you fail again, Mis-ter Sentry?” The professor looked inquisitively at Flash. “Your GPA is currently at 1.35. I have talked with the dean about this. You and I both know you are about to flunk out of this college. One more F, Mis-ter Sentry, and this college will no longer waste its time or your…well, Canterlot’s money on you. Not only will you be booted from this college, but you will be mandated to pay back the government the money you wasted.”

I’m trying! You’re acting like I want this! I don’t fucking want this! I just want to god-damn play music, but I have to take your damn class first!

“As a matter of fact, you have passed this line of failure with today's test. If I wished, I could go to the dean and this would be the end of your petty college venture.”

Flash closed his eyes. Flash would not explode.

“Do you wish for me to do that? Do you want to fail, boy?”

And that was it.

Flash’s eyes cracked open like shattered glass, his pupils burning yellow. With a hoof he swatted away his desk like if it was straw. Flash rushed to the professor, grabbing his head with a hoof. With a flap of his wings, he drove his head into a wall.

“I’M ONLY FAILING BECAUSE OF YOU!”

He lifted his head from the wall, only to slam it back in deeper.

“YOU BASTARD! YOU HATE ME BECAUSE YOU HATE HIM!”

“That’s it! You fail! You’re out!” The professor screamed. It only drove Flash to continue to pound his head against the wall.

“DON’T YOU DARE TAKE MY FUTURE FROM ME!”

“You did that to yourself!”

“SHUT UP!”

Flash’s hooves became draconic claws. One claw grabbed the professor’s snout, the other his horn. Flash hovered behind and jammed his hind legs into the professor’s back, who screamed in agony screeching “Failure! You’re nothing but a failure!”

Claws gripped the professor’s horn as the demon pulled with all his might, the professor screamed as blood dripped from the horn’s base.

Flash closed his eyes, smiling as if all that existed in the world was the professor’s scream. Then a sickening snap resounded.

“Are you listening to me?” The professor tapped his hoof on the desk.

Flash opened his eyes. His professor was right where he was, untouched and unharmed. The pegasus fidgeted in his seat as his mind returned to the real world.

“Dear Celestia, boy, please tell me you wish to continue,” asked his professor.

Flash would not explode.

“I wish to continue,” Flash calmly said.

“Just the response I was hoping for!” the professor smiled and turned around, levitating a small set of stapled papers off his desk and to Flash’s desk.

“This is the practice test you missed when you were out on royal service. 50 questions. Multiple choice, just as the one you took today. Mis-ter Sentry, you were not the only one who was supposed to have missed this test. I will be holding a make-up exam this Thursday. Come and take it, and I will substitute the test you just failed with the make-up test.”

“What?” Flash questioned.

“You are lucky I am a merciful instructor, Mis-ter Sentry, or this would have been a very bad day for you.”

“Thank you sir…” Flash felt small. His fantasies of a moment earlier dragged him down.

“The military life is not an easy one, but I am always willing to do my part to help those who serve our Goddess, especially when one of them makes a poor decision. You are young, you need to learn from your mistakes before you make one that cannot be undone. This is going to be your last chance, Mis-ter Sentry.” The professor turned and levitated his briefcase and papers. “Now, I need to be heading to my next class, and you to your duties.”

“Yes sir,” was all Flash could bring himself to say.

“Also, I heard you were going to the college music tryouts later in the afternoon. I would advise you to study instead. This is your final chance to turn this grade of yours, as well as your future, around. I retain optimism that you can. Have a good day Mis-ter Flash.”

Flash slung his bag over his shoulder and opened the door to leave.

Flash closed the door behind him.

Home… finally. He thought to himself.

He saw his guitar next to the doorway, exactly where he had left it before. Untouched by his mother, ready for him to pluck and head out the door for the music tryouts.

“Flash? First? Is that you?” a voice called from deeper inside.

Mom.

“It’s me mom.” Flash called out. “I’m back from my classes.”

“Oh, perfect timing,” Flash’s mom shouted back “Can you help me move the couch? These bones of mine aren’t what they used to be.”

“Um, just give me a minute, mom,” Flash replied. “I need to set my stuff down first,” the stallion said as he stayed airborne, putting his bags at the bottom of staircase next to where he had left his guitar case.

“That’s fine, honey,” Ember said from across the living room. “How was school?”

Flash landed gently on the floor. “Uh, it went well. Have some studying to do,” he told her. Technically, it was good luck...

“That’s great, honey! I told you things would be okay if you did.”

Flash couldn’t burst her bubble, especially without telling her the full story of his failures.

Flash walked through the kitchen and into the living room, giving his mom and wave and a quick hug.

“Good to see you in good spirits, honey,” Ember told her son.

“Thanks mom,” Flash said back.

“So, where do you want this couch?”

“On the side, just near the loveseat, I wanna see if it looks good. I’ll be fast so you can still make it to your music thingy you told me about before. I glad you’re able to juggle your hobbies with your school and work. I was so worried you’d be having trouble.”

Flash was glad his head was pushing the couch, so his mother couldn’t see his face.

"Thanks mom,” Flash lied.

There was no way that could ever be true.

“So, honey, when are you going to be going to your music thing?”

If there was one thing he could do…
“Actually, I’m not going tonight.”

“Aww, you seemed so eager to go. Did something happen? Wasn’t the school band trying to find a new guitarist? I thought you wanted to try out?”

Yes but..."It’s fine, it’s not a big thing at all. It’s okay mom. I need to study tonight before work anyway. It’s more important.”

“I see. well, if you say so, son.”

“Thanks. Alright, let’s make this quick. As soon as we finish moving this stuff around, I’ll give my guitar a quick retune, and then I’ll study…”

“-while I’m on duty tonight. I didn’t get much studying done today,” Flash said to Steel Wings. The two pegasi decorated in royal armor walked through canterlot castle’s courtyard.

“Why?” Steel asked, despite knowing the answer.

A million little distractions. Well…“Mom needed some help and I kinda got sidetracked from there.“ You know, the usual...

“Really?” Steel had known enough to read between the lines when it came to Flash. “That so?”

Flash replied, “I thought the guards weren’t suppose to give people sass.”

Steel chuckled. “I think childhood friends are the exception. If you do get any studying in, make sure you don’t neglect your job. Just because you’re on a salary now doesn’t mean you can slack off.”

“Yes mom,” Flash rolled his eyes. “Speaking of work, why are you here? I thought we used to work the same shifts.”

“We did, One of the night shift guards caught the flu. It was bad enough they sent him home, and then they asked if I could cover his shift. Unlike you, I don’t have stupid early school hours, so I took the extra money. You did get some rest in before you left, right?”

Up, then down, Steel didn’t need that to be answered. “Course you didn’t. Just ride out tonight okay? I know your stuff is top secret and all, but if I can help just send for me, okay?”

“Thanks, you’re a real bro, Steel.”

“Hey, what are friends for? Besides, I owe you for the whole petrification thing. Still can’t believe we teleported into a cockatrice cage. If it wasn’t for you not getting petrified as soon as we dropped in there and you sending for help, it would have been forever before they found us.”

Oh right, the cover story...

“I’m sorry Flash, but like I said, nobody can know about the demon of Canterlot. Unfortunately, we can’t let your friends remember what actually happened in there. Just stick to the cover story, okay”

“Yeah, I sure lucked out not getting turned to stone, huh? By the way, where are June and Jun? I kinda thought they’d be here?” Flash quickly changed topics.

“The Twins? What am I, their keeper?”

If was Flash’s turn to return Steel’s glare at him.

“Well, they thought you were gonna be at the tryouts you’d been telling us about since last month. June left the moment she realized you weren’t gonna show, and Jun and I stayed till halfway. Couldn’t stay in that shitshow any longer. You really missed a big opportunity, Flash- woulda been a cakewalk for you.”

Don’t remind me, Steel.

“Nah, I’m sure I would have been beat,” Flash tried to assure himself.

“Believe what you want, but you would have probably won if you went.” Steel changed the subject; “The twins would have showed, but I think they’re either busy studying or they each found somepony to bring home, you can never tell with them. Tomorrow before you head out let’s meet up for some drinks, okay? They and I wanna know what this special job of yours is now, Mister Pink Guard.”

Flash chuckled. “It feels weird wearing pink.”

“It actually looks good on you, somehow.”

“I look like a overpriced beach cocktail.”

“If you went to the beach like that, I’m sure you’d pick up a girl or two. Mares love strawberry-mango coltladas.”

“I’m not Jun.”

“I’m not either, but If Jun’s taught us anything, girls love colorful fruit drinks and stallions in uniform. You should try going out there and see what happens, you might find someone nice.”

“Maybe later...”

“We’ll go to the twin’s usual spot tomorrow. Like said, we wanna share some drinks and find out what you’re about to do today, okay?”

A pony yelling from a guard tower above put an end to their conversation.

“Halt!” a guard shouted. A second guard began to shout “Who goes there,”, until a third unicorn pushed between the pair and shouted down to Flash. “Good! Glad to see you’re on time!” The unicorn turned to the two guards and said, “Don’t worry boys, he’s with me.”

They heard a faint “oh,” before the unicorn in the tower leaped down to greet Flash and Steel. To cover the drop distance, the unicorn shrouded himself in a gray aura, gently floating down to the ground. It was Seymour.

“It figures the captain ought to be the one who greets the recruit,” Said Captain Seymour.

“And this is as far as I can take you it seems,” Steel said to Flash, as Flash’s new boss walked up to them.

“I’ll take it from here, thanks for bringing him to this wing, as well as filling in on such short notice. the Night Guard captain also fell sick, so I’m running double duty tonight. I appreciate you doing the same.”

Steel bowed his head. “No problem, it’s what I do,” Steel said.

“Come now, it’s time we get inside. I’ve already shown you our barracks, so it’s time to get to your new post,” Seymour said, signaling the stallion to follow.

“Good luck Flash,” Steel said as he gave one final goodbye, taking to the air.

“Thanks Steel! See ya later!” Flash and Steel waved to each other before the stallion took off.

Seymour wrapped a hoof around Flash.

“You ready, Flashy boy? It’s time for your first night at Laplace’s.”

Chapter 13 - end