Arc 3- 4 (Vigilance Is Eternal)

Monte gingerly pushes an ice pack against his black eye while glaring resentfully at the bathroom door. The rushing water and frantic scrubbing is all he needs to hear to know what Trixie is doing. She's already taken an hour long shower and an all day bath, which he's sure she used up all the shampoo and soap to do so, and now she's scrubbing her mouth with one of the two dozen toothbrushes she bought, or possibly stolen in her case.

Monte has seen mares freak out when they wake up next to him after a little drunken party, and Celestia knows how vicious a freaked out mare can get, but Trixie has topped his list of "Biggest Freakout" by four longshots.

"You know, you didn't have to yell so loud," says Monte sorely, wincing slightly when he increases the pressure on his bruised eye.

oooOOOooo

In the bathroom, Trixie frantically scrubs her teeth and tongue with a destroyed toothbrush. When she spits out a glob toothpaste, she tosses the toothbrush in a garbage bin filled with more flayed toothbrushes and empty bottles of toothpaste. Then she yanks out another toothbrush from a grocery bag, brutally rips it out of its package and resumes her crusade to cleanse her mouth of Monte.

"Did you hear me?" asks Monte, his voice slightly muffled from the door.

Trixie spits another glob of foamy, white toothpaste in the sink and shudders in disgust for the unwanted pornographic image it gives her. She proceeds to scrub her tongue like how a desperate busboy would try to scrub off caked on grease. Monte repeats himself, and Trixie slams down her toothbrush and glares at the door, wanting to do nothing more than to fling it open and punch Monte is the jaw just so he would shut up.

"Yes, I heard you!” exclaims Trixie furiously. “I heard you the first time, and I heard you the hundredth time! I’m not deaf! Goddess!"

Monte mutters something that Trixie can’t understand, but she’s guessing that it was something quirky in nature. So to keep herself from putting Monte in a full body caste, she goes back to scrubbing her mouth clean of his taste. Admittedly she doesn’t taste him anymore, she tastes more mint than anything else, but she knows Monte. He’s a player, there’s no telling where he’s stuck himself, and she swears to Celestia and Luna, and even Discord, that if he gave her a disease, Canterlot will be short one magician.

Trixie scrubs her mouth so hard that she whimpers quietly from the pain the toothbrush’s bristles are giving her. And it doesn’t help that whenever she uses a toothbrush, images of her giving Monte a-

Trixie slams her toothbrush down with a frustrated scream while pressing the sides of her head with her hooves. Monte says something she can’t quite understand again because while she’s trying to not remember last night, her mind is too busy racing in trying to piece together what happened between her and the criminal postmaster to focus on anything else. That, and her whole body is sore, especially her lower parts, and she hates it. She feels funny when she walks and she’s certain that they were heard last night because her neighbors kept giving her odd looks when they were waiting for the elevator. Add in the fact that she can’t speak Bernesenese to save her life, and it made for a trying morning when she tried to get her large supply of much needed body and oral care products.

Trixie’s thoughts are interrupted when she hears Monte knock on the bathroom door. Casually, nonetheless.

“What!”

“I’m going to get something to eat,” replies Monte. “Do you want to come or stay here and think about the fantastic time we had last night?”

The sultry emphasis Monte puts on “fantastic” makes Trixie’s eye twitch, and she briefly wonders how hard Monte would cry if she castrated him with a bolt of lightning. To prevent herself from doing something as horrible as that, Trixie takes a very deep breath and exhales slowly while keeping her jaw locked good and tight. She does this a couple more times while reminding herself to breathe before she carefully pulls out a container of minty, oral cleaning leaves from her grocery bag.

“Why would I go out with you?” asks Trixie, anger rapidly returning in her voice as she clumsily opens the package. “You are a perverted, mare-inizing, egotistical snot that just wanted to drag me along just so you can fuck me!”

With the ending words, Trixie throws the container at the door, shattering it upon impact and leaving a horrible, splintered gash on the polished wood. She hears Monte jump back and swear like a teenager afraid to cuss, and then there is silence.

Trixie stares at the door, seething and trembling with her teeth grinding against each other, for a couple of seconds before she uses her magic to pick up some of the minty leaves. She chews on them with obnoxious smacks as she glares at her reflection. She can’t feel anything but disgusted rage at the moment.

“You’re an idiot, Trixie,” murmurs Trixie angrily. “A big, fat, fu-”

"Hey, Trixie, we’re going need to have a talk about your language,” says Monte suddenly, prompting her to stop talking to herself and stare at the door, wondering why Monte is still in the room. “Secondly, the whole thing was consensual, so stop being a drama queen and get over it."

Trixie practically rips the bathroom door off of its hinges, swallowing the leaves in the process, and glares daggers at Monte. He, in turn, returns the same stare as he backs up so she doesn’t punch him, or stab him with her horn.

"I was drunk and you took advantage of me!" claims Trixie accusingly.

Monte’s jaw drops. "Are you seriously going with that?” He shakes his head. “Wow, Trixie, just wow! I know you’re a little loopy and have problems admitting stuff, but... wow! Do you honestly think I will do that to-"

“I know you, Monte! I’ve seen guys like you, I’ve been with guys like you! All you care about is how many tails you can gunk up!”

Monte scoffs. “Okay, fine, you caught me. I am a pimp who scores the finest tail money can buy. How much do I owe you?”

Trixie gapes at Monte, and to add salt to the wound, Monte pulls out a few bits, mentioning something about giving her twenty for an “average night”. Trixie growls and swats the bag to the ground, spilling their money supply all over the carpet.

“I want an apology!” screams Trixie.

“Apology? Apology?” Monte points at his black eye, vein throbbing and face red. “You punched me, Trixie! Right in my good eye! And you want me to apologize to you, even though you pounced on me? Tell me, oh Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie, how on Celestia’s good, green Equus does that make sense?”

Trixie stomps the ground.

“I was drunk, that’s why it makes sense!”

“Oh really? Well, news flash for you, missy, I was drunk, too! And if I remember correctly, I tried to get you to stop-”

“Liar!”

“But you were so into me that you were like a magnet to metal!  Now if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Great and Powerful Trixie, I’m going to have a salad.”

Monte heads towards the door, but Trixie holds him fast with her magic, prompting him to grumble irritably and cast an even more annoyed glance at her. Trixie snorts hot air and stands mere inches away from him, glaring deep into his eyes. While most would be unnerved by her murderous glaring, Monte just gets more annoyed by it, which only makes Trixie all the more upset.

“We aren’t done yet,” says Trixie in a low growl through gritted teeth.

Monte’s horn glows and the azure mist holding him in place disappears with a small pop, making Trixie scoff in an angry, whiney disbelief of what had just happened. It’s like he didn’t even try to break free! She takes a step back, still holding her glare, and Monte doesn’t even look at her as he fixes his jacket with his magic.

“We are more than done, Trixie,” says Monte in a low tone. “You just need to get it through your thick skull that the whole thing was consensual and your idea since you pounced on me, and I said ‘Yes’. Consent, through and through.”

Monte tries to leave again, but Trixie runs in front of him and stops him by pressing her hoof against his chest and shoving him back. He stumbles a bit and glares at her out of the corner of his eye as he uses hard strokes of his hoof to brush the newly formed wrinkles away.

"Let's get something straight, Monte," sneers Trixie, "being drunk does not mean consent."

Monte stomps his hoof on the ground, and growls loudly as he cranes his neck to the ceiling, swearing to Celestia that he’s going to break something. Then he mumbles incoherently to himself for a moment before before taking a deep breath and putting his focus on Trixie. The whole time Trixie had watched him carefully, just waiting for another reason to smack him in the face.

"Alright, I’m going to put this as simply as I can,” begins Monte slowly with exaggerated hoof movements to emphasize his point. “If you -as in you, Trixie Lulamoon- held absolutely no attraction to me -which would be me, the Magnificent Monte Fountain-  then it wouldn't matter how many bottles -as in Wild Pegasus- you had, you still would not have pounced -as in, you would not have started it!” Trixie tries to protest, but Monte shushes her. “But guess what? You obviously were attracted to me in some way because when we drank, we -as in both of us- said ‘Yes!’. And two yeses means consent! END OF STORY!"

Trixie points at Monte, head ready to explode from all the anger boiling inside her. "Bullshit! I call bullshit!"

Monte covers his eyes with his hooves, cranes, his head back, and screams painfully to the heavens, his head turning red hot. Trixie takes a step back, ears folding down to her skull and cringing slightly from how loud he is screaming. Then Monte slams his hooves down and Trixie can only stare as he struggles to form a coherent sentence with sputters and agitated whines. Then he extends his trembling hooves to Trixie, eye twitching, chest visibly heaving and teeth barred. Trixie takes a defensive step back, also growling like a rabid dog while her horn sparks.

"You are-You stubborn-You-What is-!” Monte suddenly stops, like a switch went off, and he lowers his hooves, takes a deep breath, and briefly removes his hat to wipe his mane. “You know what, I quit. Go right ahead and blame me all you want, but that still won’t change what happened."

Trixie’s brain fries right at that precise moment, and she cocks her head slightly, wondering if Monte had blown a fuse of some sort. She remains stone still in her defensive position with confusion mixing with rage, and her eyes follow Monte as he coolly trots past her. When it gets to the point where she can’t see him, she turns around and watches in bewilderment as the zony hums to himself. With the way he is acting now, it is hard to believe he was ready to blow a gasket. The very idea of Monte going from a rage monster to a collected individual in a blink of an eye sends a small shiver up Trixie’s spin, and she silently hopes to Celestia that Monte isn’t another psycho. She’s already lived with one, and frankly she doesn’t want to be near another one ever again.

When Monte coolly pulls the door open he looks at Trixie over the shoulder.

“Do you want me to bring you leftovers?” he asks in a strangely calm voice.

“Only if there’s an apology with it,” replies Trixie in a heated, yet careful, tone.

“I don’t think they serve apologies, but I’ll ask.”

And with those words, Monte leaves without saying anything else, and right as his tail is outside, Trixie uses her magic to shut the door. She waits until Monte’s hoofsteps fade away before taking a deep breath and pacing around the room, mumbling to herself about how stupid, perverted, and all around rude Monte is. A minute later, she steps onto the balcony and closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, letting the smell of sea salt and the gentle breeze cool off her temper at a fraction’s level.

Trixie opens her eyes and looks at the metropolis spreading all over the white shores of the Bernese coast. The buildings seem like dwarfs compared to the Canterlot skyline, and the density is not nearly as intense, too. Although, Bernese has a heavy Germanic architecture to it that is mostly not spoiled by the modern world. In fact, they actually do a great job of incorporating their traditional styles into the modern, metal monoliths, unlike Canterlot which has a weird fetish of making their building look like metallic and stone hot-pockets. But alas, a small area of Buchtseite had unfortunately fallen for the hot-pocket look. Luckily they are concentrated in the distance and look as though the architects attempted to make them look presentable. Those ugly things, along with the hectic noise of city life, corrupt the view, though.

Trixie huffs and folds her hooves over the railing and continues watching the peaceful scenery, trying desperately to take her mind off of what happened between her and Monte. The more Trixie tries to clear her mind, the more stubborn the memory becomes until it becomes the only thing on her mind.

Trixie groans and goes back inside, closing the balcony door on her way in, and continues her anxious pacing around the room. During her mindless pacing, she finds a bottle of Wild Pegasus with some of its contents still left leaning against the couch, and she picks it up and swirls it in her grip, watching the brownish liquid with some disgust. But then she thinks about how much she needs a drink to suppress the madness in her mind, and Wild Pegasus did make things better before Monte was an idiot.

“And me, too,” mumbles Trixie glumly in response to her thinking about how much of an idiot the zony was. Then her ears perk as she scowls and shakes her head. “No, it was his fault.... But he’s right. No he’s not. Yes he is. No he’s not. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes he is! At the very least, both of you are in the wrong!” Trixie groans and slumps to the floor. “Goddess, I need a drink.”

She brings the bottle to her lips and is about to enjoy the warm contents of the bottle, but-

“Ya know, I wonder why ya continue to be so easy when yer supposedly so desperate not to be a victim,” says Sunshine shrewdly from thin air.

Trixie drops the bottle and her heart stops for a moment, and she feels her hair stand as a cold dread wash over her from Sunshine’s voice echoing in the room. Trixie slowly rises to her hooves, swallowing her spit and ignoring the alcohol staining the carpet. Sunshine’s cackle echoes in the room, and with that, various suggestive phrases and taunts that make Trixie feel dirty just by hearing them. Every word that leaves Sunshine’s lips slowly warms Trixie’s blood with anger and heart beat all the faster, and soon her steps turn to heavy stomps and her eyes and ears become focused with deadly precision. Her ears and eyes snapping to every noise that dares to make a presence, and when she hears Sunshine’s one wing flap and his hooves scrape against the carpet nearby, but no shadow to mark him, she growls and stomps the ground as her horn releases a painful burst of energy.

“Show yourself!” demands Trixie.

“Sure thing, darlin’,” purrs Sunshine right into Trixie’s ear.

Trixie snarls and swings her hoof where Sunshine is with bone breaking power, but he jumps back with a cackle while flapping his one wing tauntingly. She screams and charges him head on, tackling him in the chest, and they roll end over end of each other like a ball and stop with Trixie on top, growling. Sunshine laughs and raises his eyebrows provocatively.

“I always took ya for a top-girl,” he says loudly, licking his lips suggestively.

Trixie screams with bloodthirsty rage and brings her hoof down on the specter’s face. Her hoof goes through him like he’s nothing, and she feels the floor crack under the carpet followed by a surge of pain in her hoof. But she doesn’t stop. She continues screaming and pounding, determined to beat Sunshine to death. Each slam she screams at him, calling him a pervert, completely ignoring the pain in her hoof from the cracks she leaves underneath her powerful strikes.

After Trixie’s fourth or fifth slam, Sunshine’s shape melts away and he slides out from under her and goes along the floor until he is by a mirror. His shadowy form materializes to his full form and grins lustfully at her, his reflection right above hers. Trixie jumps to her feet, panting and sweating, and her once curly mane is now a frazzled mess with many strands hanging limp in front of her eyes.

“You hit hard, and from what I saw last night, ya like it rough, like an animal! Ya would’ve had a lot of fun with me,” says Sunshine. “But rather than staying and bein’ happy with me and mah sister, ya decided to fight what was meant to be and, well, look at ya now.”

Trixie’s horn shoots out a bolt of lightning that destroys the mirror in an instant and sends shards of glass flying towards her. She ignores the small cuts from the glass shards, and while her horn may be hurting, she still charges Sunshine, who has yet to move, and tries bucking him in the chest. He coolly slides out of the way and lets her hoof breach the wall, and when she yanks it out and goes for a swing, he repeats the motion. Trixie continues swinging and trying to buck, shash and zap him, and he continues with his smug evasion, only  stopping when he is just barely out of her reach. And every time he dodges Trixie, he throws in a vulgar taunt of some kind. This goes on for nearly five minutes, and eventually, Trixie slumps to the floor, panting and covered in sweat and tears. The room is now destroyed with scorches along the wall, floor, as well as the furniture being smashed with holes in the walls and doors. The smell of thin smoke lingers in the air and the tip of her horn dims as the burning feeling mixed with the emotional trauma becomes too much for her. She was perfectly fine when she took the pills, and when Pinkie Pie flushed them, Sunshine had become a part of her life again. A part that she hates and fears at the same time.

She wants those pills back.

She needs those pills back.

“Why are you doing this?” whimpers Trixie; she takes a deep breath and wipes her nose before she lifts her jaded, teary eyes up. “Why are-why can’t you just leave me alone!”

Sunshine sighs in mock annoyance. “This again.”

He sits down in front of Trixie and cups her head in his hooves and forces her to look in his eyes. Her body shivers from his icy touch, and she sees nothing but an endless void of darkness in his eyes, and when he grins broadly, she wants to hide somewhere and curl up into a ball. She starts shaking and whimpering when his hoof caress her cheeks, and she swears she can feel her coat, tears and snot freezing with his touch. He leans closer to her until their noses nearly touch, and despite her best efforts to pull away, he holds her fast and keeps her still in an iron grip.

“Trixie, you are a dog without master. You need somepony who cares about you,” he says in an eerie, soft voice. He closes his eyes and takes a sniff of Trixie’s mane, making her shrink back and release a horrified whine. “You need somepony who loves his dog, and-” he opens his eyes and grins at her “-makes sure that they are taken care of. You are not taken care of, my precious. You live in a fantasy where ya think ya can become a hero because ya thought of yerself as a villain.”

Sunshine releases Trixie and she slumps to the floor, staring off into space and wanting the day to end. She wants to go to sleep under a warm blanket with a soft pillow to rest her head and forget about everyone and everything. Sunshine and Barnville; Monte and the griffin enclave; Brisk Wind and the safety deposit box; the League of Justice and Ponyville.

Pinkie Pie and Mare-Do-Well.

Trixie barely has the courage to look up at Sunshine when she hears him speaking again, but when she does, she sees him staring down at her, looking solemn.

"Ya need end this desire to redeem yerself. Ya can’t be redeemed, no matter how hard ya try. Besides, you ain't a hero, murderer's ain't heroes, so stop trying to be who you can’t be."

“I’m no murderer,” whispers Trixie, her voice cracking as fresh tears run down her cheeks.

Sunshine scoffs. “Yeah, and I was a pharmacist. Keep lyin’ to yerself, and see how far ya go.”

Then he leans down and gives Trixie a quick kiss on her lips. She jolts from the motion and stares at him, horrified by what had just happened and with the way her heart is racing, she’s sure it will explode at any second. It also feels like there is a frost flower growing where she was kissed and when she brings her hoof up to feel it, Sunshine chuckles and expands his wing.

“That was for good luck, darlin’. I’ll be in touch.”

He then disappears in a cloud of black mist, leaving Trixie alone in the hotel room. She stares at where Sunshine was standing for a second or two before she frantically wipes her lips. She sputters and gags, and soon finds herself mumbling incoherently and becoming completely oblivious to what is going on around her. She hears something, but her brain doesn’t register what it is, and when a sandy colored ibex wearing light barding steps in front of her and asks her something, she stops and stares at him with a brain dead look. The ibex repeats himself, and this time Trixie regains some of her senses and realizes that he’s hotel security. She looks to her side and that the door had been opened and now three other guards were searching the room with small weapons on their battle saddles.

“Miss, are you okay?” asks the ibex in a thick Bernese accent.

Trixie silently stares at the sandy ibex until one of the security officers asks him a question. He looks at the guard, then at Trixie, then back at the guard and gives his reply. The guard nods and leaves the room and the sandy ibex kneels in front of her. She doesn’t pay much attention to him, though, since she is back to looking at where Sunshine was standing moments before, trembling and trying to suppress whatever tears haven’t escaped.

“Miss, can you come with me, please? I just need to ask you some questions about what happened here,” says the ibex gently.

Trixie nods, and the ibex helps her up and leads her out of the room. As she walks down the hall with the sandy colored ibex, she ignores the inquiring eyes and silently thanks him when he orders the guests back in their rooms. The elevator opens up and a few more guards come out and head towards her room, and when they go inside, she closes her eyes and slumps to the ground. She listens to the whirring of the gears, the cables guiding the elevator, and the gentle hums and obnoxious dings. When the elevator opens, she is led through the lobby, using the backmost wall as a guide. Trixie lazily watches everything and everyone, but then her gaze falls outside and she spots four unicorn mares wearing light saddles stepping out from two dark colored motorized wagons and walk directly towards the front desk, looking a little too serious to be on vacation. She continues watching them out of the corner of her eye until she could no longer see them.

A few minutes later, Trixie finds herself sitting on a comfortable cushion in a windowless room painted in warm colors. She scans the room and sees family photos of the sandy ibex, books, one of which is The Lunar Republic, and various nicknacks and puzzle books. She leans closer to his desk when she sees that one of the nicknacks is a cube with two ibex soldiers touching hooves elegantly engraved on it, and below them is an engraving that she can’t read.

       “‘Epagrýpni̱si̱ Eína Aió̱nia’. ‘Vigilance Is Eternal’,” recites the ibex, noting her curiosity. “It has been the motto for our guards ever since five-oh-five, pre-banishment.” Trixie remains silent as he flips through a folder that he had pulled out of his saddle. “I am Officer Ufer, I run the hotel security, and you, Mrs. Fountain, are here for vacation, yes?”

Trixie swallows some spit and barely makes a nod, which prompts Ufer to look up from the folder and stare at her quizzically. He asks if she is alright, but she doesn’t answer, and when he asks her if she wants something to drink, she shakes her head. He stares at her for a moment, but looks down at his papers when Trixie stares back at him without blinking or shifting. He mumbles something in his native tongue, and Trixie contemplates whether or not she should tell him about the four mares she saw. The more she thinks about them, the more uneasy she becomes; she doesn’t know if it’s due to paranoia or if her gut instinct is getting better, but something tells her that the four mares from the lobby are not at the hotel for vacation.

“Mrs. Fountain-”

“You need to find Monte,” interrupts Trixie.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Four mares, unicorns, came in your hotel and I think they are after Monte. You need to find him before they do.” Ufer stares at Trixie and she furrows her brow. “Trust me, I-”

The door opens up and a security officer pokes his head in and says something that Trixie doesn’t understand for obvious reasons. Ufer nods and replies with an order, and once the guard leaves, he apologizes and slides out a sheet of paper and rolls a pen towards himself.  He tells Trixie to describe the “suspicious figures” before sticking the pen in his mouth. Trixie takes a moment to collect her thoughts, and when she does, she describes the four mares down to the finest details. From coat color to cutie mark, and mane style to what their saddlebags looked like, nothing was missed, and frankly it appeared that Ufer had some difficulty keeping up with the massive wave of information.

After he finished down writing the last of the details, Ufer spits out his pen and calls in another guard. Once the guard shows up, he gives him the sheet of paper that has the description of the four mares and after the guard leaves he turns his focus back to Trixie. The whole time Trixie was watching the guard carefully, but now that she has the guard looking for those mares she needs to find Monte before something happens to him; there is no telling when the guards will capture the four mares, after all.

“I have to find Monte,” says Trixie urgently.

She stands up to leave, but Ufer holds up his hoof and orders her to sit down. Trixie freezes in her spot and stares at the sandy ibex, completely braindead about why he is ordering her to sit. It takes Ufer repeating his order to get Trixie to reluctantly sit down, and when she does, she visibly tenses up and demands to be released so she can find Monte.

“Your husband is fine,” assures Ufer calmly. “He was brought in and is being questioned about what happened to you.”

A radiopack on the floor crackles to life and when someone on the other line speaks, Ufer frantically turns it off, nearly breaking it in the process and spiking Trixie’s suspicions. She watches him intently as he looks back at her; he tries to play it cool, but Trixie can tell that he’s hiding something by the way he’s sweating and how his breathing suddenly became irregular.

“Tenants reported a lot of disturbance from your room, earlier. I need to know what happened,” says Ufer while he clumsily wipes some sweat from his face.

Trixie’s eyes focus on him and she doesn’t see a weapon on him, but she’s been around long enough to know never to take anything at face value. As Trixie studies him, she notices something underneath a small stack of papers on Ufer’s desk out of the corner of her eye. At the bottom of the stack is a sheet of paper with some numbers and a formal introduction, and on the paper is a paper clip with something underneath. It is normal to have a formal document in a room of someone of a high rank, but what isn’t normal is having a formal document from a foreign government agency. An agency like the Equestrian Investigation Bureau.

Trixie’s heart starts racing as soon as she sees the EIB seal on the corner of the paper, and she looks at Ufer with a mix of rage and fear. She now knows she needs to escape and find Monte immediately. She knew Brisk Wind would go after him and use every resource she could, but she hadn’t realized that the EIB had this much influence in Bernese! She figured that they would have spies here and there, but not an entire hotel, if, in fact, the whole hotel is in on it. Now that she is in a room, without any protection against an unknown amount of armed hotel security guards, she knows she can’t bull rush her way out. But she knows that she can’t low-crawl her way out either.

Ufer cocks his head slightly and repeats his request.

“Picture a bald, one winged pegasus with rotten teeth and colored like puke. Now, tell me where Monte is. Now.”

Ufer tries to repeat her description, although with his tone he sounds very skeptical of the attacker while simultaneously sounding nervous, but Trixie interrupts him by repeating her demand, this time much more threatening. She can see Ufer tense up, and his eyes also narrow slightly; but the difference between the two is that Trixie is obviously ticked off and ready for a fight while Ufer is pretending, through and through.

“He is safe,” assures Ufer, putting a lot of effort into keeping his tone in check. “My guards have apprehended him and is about to be questioned.”

Trixie’s eyes narrow and her lips curl to a frown while her muscles tense to their limit. She’s ready to charge her horn, too.

“‘Apprehended’?” she repeats dangerously.

“Yes. We have to cover all ends of this incident.”

“I just told you who attacked me, and you’re still going after Monte?”

“It is procedure.”

Trixie is using every bit of willpower she has to stop herself jumping over the table and doing a crude interrogation. She knows that Ufer found Monte and gave him up to the four mares, and she’s stuck in a hotel with no apparent easy way out. Her mind races as she tries to think of a way out of her predicament, and the whole time she and Ufer are staring at each other with noticeably different levels of intensity.

===

Trixie gasps for air as a black bag and gag is forcefully removed from her head. She sputtered and her eyes darted around the room she was taken to. It was dark, dingy, and had only a single flickering light bulb hanging down. providing only the most minimal of lighting. She looked around some more and found that she was not only bound, but she also had a horn cuff on with four masked figures standing above her.

Trixie started to whimper and shake violently in her bondage as thoughts of what they would do to her race through her mind. She knew two of her captors were stallions, judging by their large build, and she can only think about the time she was helpless against Sunshine. When one of the masked stallions stepped forward, Trixie ordered him to stay back; she tried to sound brave, but her voice was quivering and her eyes were glistening with tears. The stallion continued his approach, and she swore she could hear one of the mares chuckling. It sounded like Terra.

“I mean it! Stay back!” cried Trixie.

“Stay calm,” said Gray Muffin suddenly, his presence hidden by the shadows, and his normally gruff, humorless voice was strangely calm and reassuring. “Look at your targets. What do you see?”

===

Trixie hears the door open and two extra sets of hooves walk in, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off of Ufer.

“Three,” murmurs Trixie.

Ufer arches an eyebrow and Trixie glances at one of the photos, not for seeing how cute a baby ibex looks, but for the reflection that the glass is giving her.

“What are they armed with?”

Trixie focuses on the reflection and sees that there are two unicorn mares from the lobby behind her, levitating pistols that have enormous mufflers on their barrels next to them. She moves her focus back to Ufer, and he shifts uneasily in his seat, and she can hear the floorboards creak slightly as the mares step closer.

“Two silenced.”

Trixie can feel the mares’ eyes on her, but she doesn’t care. Her mind is focused on escaping and getting Monte back, and she’s ready to cheat death again to do so.

“What are your disadvantages?”

Trixie chuckles to herself as she knows that she’s in one heck of a pickle, but her chuckling is enough to make Ufer swallow nervously and make the other two aim their weapons at her. Granted, she doesn’t like having guns being pointed at her, but she still likes the idea of striking fear in her opponents. Nothing quite like scaring your enemy when you are supposed to be a prisoner.

“How can you turn them into an advantage?”

Trixie, without moving her head, looks around the room and sees that she is at a huge disadvantage. The majority of her targets are armed and the only thing in the room, besides an abundance of books and nicknacks, is the desk and filing cabinet. Trixie lets out another chuckle and buries her face in her hoof.

“Wow, this sucks,” she says, letting out another heavy chuckle, this time filled with anger, and it makes everyone inch back. “Nothing is ever easy! I’m always getting tricked!”

Ufer tries to play it cool by relaxing in his seat, but when he realizes that a certain piece of paper is carelessly poking out, he pales.

“You know, don’t you?” he says with obvious feigned calmness.

Trixie slowly lowers her hoof, and glares at Ufer with the fires of Tartarus in her eyes, and his eyes widen and he leans back in his seat slightly while the mares take another step back.

“How much?”

“More than I make in a year.” He gulps. “Too bad your husband dragged you into this mess.” Then to the two mares behind Trixie. “You can take her now.”

The mares cautiously move forward, and Trixie takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, and she thinks about her time as a traveling showmare, specifically how she would dazzle her audience with a spectacle of lights and flashy tricks.

“Oh boy, here it comes,” says Sunshine eagerly.

Trixie’s eyes snap open and her horn releases a burst of blinding light as well as a small shockwave. All the papers, nicknacks, photos and other loose items are blasted into the air and everyone, save for Trixie, screams and falls to the ground with their hooves over their eyes. When the light disappears, Trixie’s horn feels like its on fire and she’s sweating and panting slightly from pain as summoned thorns clatter to the ground from thin air. She walks towards Ufer, who is cowering in the corner and blinking madly while holding up his hoof defensively, and she ignores the surge of pain as her horn charges up again.

“Where’s Monte!” screams Trixie.

“Luna verzeih mir,” whimpers Ufer.

Trixie lifts up the desk with her telekinesis and she repeats her demand, but Ufer is too shocked to speak. Then she hears a gun click and she whirls around and smashes the desk against one of the mares without a moment’s pause. The desk hits the mare square in the chest and shatters as she’s crushed into the wall. She slumps to the floor, bloody and motionless, and covered with drywall, plaster and splinters. The other mare scrambles to her feet and aims her pistol at Trixie, but before she can pull the trigger, she’s covered in an azure mist and launched into the ceiling. She almost goes through, but, just like her partner, she doesn’t go all the way through and falls to the floor, her head bent at an unnatural angle.

Ufer swears in his native tongue, and Trixie walks over to the mare she rammed into the ceiling and takes her pistol. As she checks the pistol, she can hear Ufer sobbing and begging, and when she aims it him, the ibex’s forehooves shoot up and he begs her not to shoot. His begging gets more frantic when she presses the pistol against his head.

“Where. Is. Monte!” screams Trixie.

“I-I don’t know!” sobs Ulfer.

“You got three seconds to know!”

“But I-!”

“One!”

“Please, I have a son!”

Trixie flips off the safety and presses it harder against his skull, and he shrinks down further until he’s practically a ball.

“Two!”

“I don’t know! All I know is that a mare named Dusty Swirl wanted him! I-I don’t know where she took him! Please, you have to believe me!”

Trixie studies him for a couple of seconds, and when she determines that he’s telling her the truth, she growls and throws Ufer out of the room. Luckily for him, he goes through the doorway and only bonks his head against the wall after skidding across the floor. Before Trixie leaves his office, she takes a map of the hotel and the paper sent by the EIB, and when she turns it over, she finds a picture of Monte and a copy of his travel information clipped behind the sheet.

Trixie checks the pistol and finds that she has a full clip. Satisfied, she continues to the break lounge, and isn’t too surprised to find that it is empty. She marches her way towards the exit, and when the two other mares she saw from earlier come in there is a moment of hesitation on both sides. However, once both of their horns glow and silenced pistols come out from their saddle bags, Trixie raises her weapon and shoots at them sporadically. She shoots at them until they drop, and then just to be safe, she empties the rest of her ammo into them.

Trixie carefully avoids the blood as she inspects the bodies and saddles. At first she doesn’t find anything of value, but then she finds a couple of EIB badges and some Bernese currency.

“Ooh, nice shots,” says Sunshine proudly.

Trixie sees Sunshine out of the corner of her eye, grinning and clapping his hooves, but she ignores him. She continues her search and finds a map of the city, and upon finding it she sees the bank and the hotel she and Monte are in circled in red. Trixie mentally kicks herself for forgetting about the bank. Of course they were going to use Monte to get into Gilda’s safety deposit box! He was her postmaster after all!

Trixie grabs the unused weapon and speed walks out of the lounge, after strapping one of the saddles to herself and putting in the badges and the documents she collected. She keeps the bloody side of the saddle to the wall, which makes for an uncomfortable feel since she had to put the saddle on backwards, and tries to look calm as she treks through the lobby. Although, in spite of her best efforts, Trixie knows that she is being watched, she can feel wandering eyes locking on to her, and when a security guard walks past her, she gives her a strange look but continues her walk. Trixie looks over her shoulder as she passes and sees the guard walk into the security lounge.

Trixie’s heart races and she swallows spit as she picks up the pace. Then the alarm sounds. Trixie swears under her breath and hurries towards the stairwell. The intercom sounds in both Bernsenes and Equestrian, but being able to understand what is being said over the chaotic clamoring and noises made from the sudden stampede would be a miracle for most. After entering the stairwell, Trixie throws out the idea of speed walking and goes on to a full gallop towards the parking garage. She runs as fast as she can, and even skips a few steps, which inadvertently leads to her slipping and falling a couple of times, but she still manages to reach her destination without any interference from hotel security.

As soon as Trixie bursts into the valet parking garage, she quickly scans the area for anyone or anything that can possibly pose as a threat. She doesn’t see anyone around, but that doesn’t stop her from looking over her shoulder and sweeping her stolen weapon around as she runs through the seemingly endless rows of parked vehicles.

The parking garage is well lit, but it still makes finding someone or something difficult since everything looks the same, save for giant numbers painted on the concrete walls. And after a few minutes of crazy exploring, and evasion of panicking staff and alerted guards, she comes across a rack full of keys. Before making a move on the keys, Trixie looks around to make sure no one is approaching, during which she spots a line of neatly parked bees not too far from her. It doesn’t take her long to find the one she likes; a blue bee with metallic racing stripes and a large, tinted windshield on the front. She stares at the chosen bee and the number it is under, and she turns back to the key rack and immediately spots the appropriate key. She looks at the key, then at the bee again, then she gets a devilish smirk and pulls the respective key off of its hook and gallops towards her chosen vehicle.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trixie veers around the corner of the back parking lot of the Bank of Bernese, her stolen bee now covered in dents and thick gashes of scratched paint. She has a few fresh bruises and scratches herself, too.

It took her a little while to reach the Bank of Bernese, though. She had to not only give herself quick, and very painful, driving lessons, but she also had to avoid the swarm of guards that were converging on the hotel. Luckily for her, she got out easily since the path out was a clear shot, and the alley she escaped to was basically empty. But once she reached the bank, she was both relieved and terrified. There were no guards in sight, though their sirens can still be heard, but she pulled up right as Monte was being led out by a dark colored unicorn with golden eyes carrying a metal box. His hat is missing, too.

Once Trixie parks the vehicle, she hops off and gallops towards the two, ignoring the burning pain in her bruised legs. When she gets close, it takes her a couple of seconds to recognizes the unicorn to be Andromeda, an EIB hotshot who has quite the dedication to her career; knowledge courtesy of an article she read from a newspaper about the raid on the griffins when she was crashing at Fancypants’ place.

Trixie draws her stolen weapon and aims it Andromeda, with every intention of blowing her brains out all over the wall.

When Monte sees Trixie, Andromeda sees her a half second after, and when they both see her weapon drawn, they both have very different reactions. Monte gapes at her and the blood from his face drains, all while a pistol shimmers into view next to his head.

“Trixie, what the heck are you doing!” cries Monte.

“Not another step closer!” barks Andromeda.

Trixie stops and Andromeda keeps her weapon aimed at Monte’s skull. Trixie growls and mentally swears about how unfair it is that Andromeda summoned a pistol so easily. Sure she can summon things, but she had only been able to summon little plants and make cheap light show gimmicks. But she digresses, she pushes aside the unfairness of the situation and carefully approaches the two.

“So, you must be ‘Dust Swirl’,” comments Trixie snidely. “That fake name would work better if you didn’t have your face in the newspapers.”

“And you’re looking pretty good for somepony who should’ve bled to death in the sewers,” remarks Andromeda.

Trixie is about to dish out a snappy comeback, but that notion is replaced with a sudden crawling sensation in her mane when a dozen ponies come out from hiding, all armed with a ballistic weapon of some kind. As Trixie eyes each of them, one word comes to mind: Shit.

Some have mini-gatling guns in their mouths, which Trixie is not sure why anyone would want to do that, given what she had seen with Pinkie Pie, and others are levitating shotguns and pistols or wearing battle saddles. The more Trixie watches them steadily approach her, using the parked vehicles for cover, the more she curses herself for her stupidity. Gray Muffin would fail her on the spot for something like this!

Trixie shakes Gray Muffin of her head, his organization backstabbed her, and he’s dead anyway, so as far as she’s concerned, thinking about him wastes precious time. She looks back at Monte and can see the fear and worry all over his face. He nudges his head to the side, like he is telling her to go, but he is quickly stopped when Andromeda hisses for him to stop. Trixie carefully approaches the group, minding the weapons and hostile eyes trained on her. Especially Andromeda’s freakishly bright, gold eyes.

“Unless you want to die again, I’d suggest you move out of the way,” says Andromeda.

Trixie takes a couple of steps forward, and Andromeda tugs Monte closer to her and her small army tightens up and aim their weapons at Trixie. Trixie stops and aims her weapon at Andromeda, even though she doubts she’ll be able to hit her. In fact, she’s worried she might accidently hit Monte, but she does a great job of hiding her nervousness.

“Let him go,” orders Trixie, now wondering why there are no guards showing up. Surely a standoff like this would draw attention from the authorities.

The small army before her snickers, minus Andromeda. The dark colored unicorn aims her pistol at Trixie, and Trixie swears she sees reluctance. In fact, Andromeda seems to be struggling with containing her surprised about what she’s seeing, now that Trixie thinks about it.

“Trixie, move out of the way. This is not your fight,” says Andromeda.

“This has been my fight ever since the EIB backstabbed me,” growls Trixie.

“Yeah, you guys kinda screwed yourselves on both ends when you did that,” chuckles Monte anxiously.

“Shut up!” yell Trixie and Andromeda in unison.

Monte’s ears droop and he tries to shrink down, but he’s held fast by Andromeda’s magic.

“I’m still mad at you,” adds Trixie, and when Monte rolls her eyes and mutters something, she snarls and briefly aims her pistol at him. “Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“Hey, who’s the one being held hostage by government agents? Oh yeah, it’s me!” exclaims Monte.

Andromeda presses the barrel of her pistol against Monte’s head, making him wince, and she glares at Trixie. Trixie brings her glare to Andromeda while simultaneously trying to keep an eye  on her goons. They are all on a hair trigger and Trixie knows that one wrong move and she’ll be dead before she can blink, and she knows that they know this. They are just waiting for her to screw up.

“This is your last chance, Trixie. Move,” orders Andromeda, forcing herself to be sinister.

Trixie blinks sweat out of her eyes. “If I move, you’ll just kill me and Monte anyway.”

Andromeda shakes her head as she adjusts her pistol’s position. “I have no intention of killing you or Monte.” Andromeda’s goons look at her curiously, and when she realizes what is going on, she quickly adds: “But I will, if you force my hoof!”

Monte chuckles uneasily and looks at Andromeda out of the corner of his eye. “But we haven’t forced your hoof, so-”

“Last chance. Give me Monte and the box, or else you’ll be sorry,” warns Trixie.

Monte glares at Trixie. “Did you just seriously say that!”

Trixie returns the glare. “Hey, I’m working here!”

“‘You’ll be sorry’? Who says that!?”

“I do!”

“Enough!” snaps Andromeda. “Holy sun, I swear, you two bicker like a married couple!”

Monte forces himself to laugh. “Ha! Joke’s on you, missy! We aren’t married. We just like to argue.”

He immediately gets a pistol whip to the side of the head that leaves him on the ground with a gash. He swears not very colorful words as he presses his hoof against his injury, and while Trixie thinks he deserves it for pushing his luck, she still takes another threatening step forward and clicks the safety off while growling loudly. She doesn’t know why she forgot to turn off her safety, and curses herself for being so stupid since it seems like everyone heard the click. Her heart starts racing when she hears a bunch of clicks and a few taunts, begging her to shoot. She knows beyond a doubt that if this were a test, she would be recycled for stupidity, and then chewed out by Gray Muffin. And she once again pushes that name out of her mind to focus on the situation.

“Do you want to die?” shouts Andromeda viciously. She uses her magic to hoist Monte off the ground, ignoring his whimpers and presses her pistol against his gash, glaring at Trixie. “Do you want him to die? Because I will kill him, right here, right now, in front of your face if you do not move!”

Trixie is about counter Andromeda, but her train of thought is interrupted when she hears tires squealing against the asphalt, and out of her peripheral vision, she sees a mini-train speeding through the parking lot straight for her. Trixie’s eyes widen and even Andromeda gets a look of confusion and anger as the vehicle carelessly plows through the parking lot, nearly running over some of Andromeda’s agents in the process.

“What the hay are they doing!” yells Andromeda to nobody in particular after she pulls Monte into cover with her

The mini-train swerves towards Trixie, and she is barely able jump out of the way in time as the vehicle carelessly smashes through more parked vehicles. She rolls for cover behind a motorized wagon, but gets knocked to the ground as the vehicle is pushed aside by the massive vehicle, showering her with shards of broken glass, and leaving a bruise on her side with no air in her lungs. Pushing aside the pain and better judgement, Trixie pokes her head from her cover and sees the mini-train had stopped, and now the target of a familiar pegasus mare wielding a mini-gatling gun in her mouth. Trixie ducks down and covers her head with her hooves when the said pony starts shooting at her with the high powered weapon. Trixie swears and scrunches up tighter as more shards of glass and splinters rain down around her. Then everybody else starts shooting at her with a complete lack of care for ammo conservation.

Trixie can hear Andromeda shouting something, but with all the bullets whizzing by and destroying everything in their path, she can barely understand a word said. She can’t tell if she’s saying “Cease fire!” or “Keep fire!”, but judging by the way the field is being leveled with bullets, it has to be choice two.

Trixie raises her pistol with her magic and blindly fires at the mini-train, which prompts Monte’s captives to fire at a seemingly quicker rate, and for them to adjust their positions. Andromeda shouts again, too, but again, Trixie barely hears the words and has a hard time figuring out what she’s saying. During the whole ordeal, Trixie barely sees one of Andromeda’s partners round the vehicle she is hiding behind with her weapon raised. Trixie brings her pistol to bear and shoots her soon-to-be attacker in the chest a couple of times, making her stumble into a vehicle and slide to the ground with a trail of blood on the door. Another hired gun, a unicorn carrying a shotgun, comes by and Trixie tries to shoot her, too, but her weapon clicks and the clip falls out.

The pony fires off a shot, which blows a gaping hole in the door next to Trixie’s head, and in response, Trixie shrieks and throws the weapon at the shotgun pony’s face as she scrambles for cover. The weapon hits her target in the nose, and the unicorn yelps and stumbles while accidentally dropping her weapon. Once the shotgun hits the ground, it fires off a round, barely missing Trixie.

Trixie high tails it out of the kill zone, swearing and trying not to whimper as the hired guns mercilessly fill the air around her with lead. Miraculously, Trixie can still hear Andromeda shouting over the innumerable pop and cracks of gunfire, and this time she is guessing that it is an order to leave since the kidnappers jumping in vehicles and driving off. The shooter in the mini-train, on the other hand, is still shooting at Trixie, only this time she is actually aiming.

Trixie curls up in a small ball and covers her head with her hooves, thus poorly shielding herself from the rain of glass shards and splinters. When the firing comes to a sudden stop, Trixie does not dare poke her head out directly, so she crawls on the ground and peeks at the situation from under a motorized wagon, wincing as the glass shards and splinters cut into her skin. She barely sees Monte getting shoved into a motorized wagon with Andromeda, and another pony shouting for the mini-train to hurry it up.

The vehicles start leaving, and Trixie shrinks as far as she can go while keeping her mental crosshairs locked on to Andromeda’s vehicle. When the convoy of seven vehicles speed out of the parking lot, Trixie dares to poke her head out and freezes at the sight of the carnage. As expected, the asphalt is covered with a layer of bullet casings and water from the punctured engines, and the vehicles in the parking lot are riddled with bullet holes as well as the wall to the bank. And the bank wall also has blood splatter and four dead bank guards lying near the door. The only good she can see from the situation is that her stolen bee remains relatively unscathed, minus the scratches and dents from her quick, self-taught bee lessons.

Trixie’s blood boils and her vision turns red as she marches towards her bee. She mutters threatening nonsense to herself along the way, too, and she fantasizes about how she will just blow through the convoy, save Monte, and then set some things straight between them. When she woke up and saw. and felt, the extremely unpleasant surprise, she knew that they had leapt clean over the line, and probably a fence or two. And now she has to set the record straight and convince Monte that what happened should not have happened and they are not a couple, no matter what kind of “fun” they had last night. And she still wants him to apologize for how rude he was to her during their argument.

There’s also the box, too.

Trixie hops on the bee and speeds away from the carnage, barely catching sight of the convoy. She mutters a series of prayers to Celestia, begging her to keep her steady, when the bee tips dangerously close to falling over as she swerves around the corner, into passing traffic. She whimpers and and braces herself for the worst when she feels her coat brushing against the asphalt, but lo and behold, Celestia answered a prayer for once. Trixie is able to righten the bee and she cheers with relief, and feels as though she can catch up, break some skulls, and save Monte... and his box. However, her flash of giddiness coming from her near death experience comes to an end when she spots a guard vehicle speeding towards her, siren blaring and light flashing, through her mirror.

Trixie scoffs and increases her speed, thinking nothing of the guards. They are just clunky vehicles she’ll have to outdrive, which will be easy since she is using a nimble bee. She weaves through the traffic in a less than graceful manner, occasionally coming close to hitting someone or their vehicle, and sometimes driving on the sidewalk or road barriers that have plants in them. Each of her small screw ups makes her yelp and fear for her life, and when she dares to peek in her mirror to see where the guard is, she finds four. And another vehicle slides into view from behind each of the four.

Trixie curses under her breath and swears loudly when she drives through a line of garbage cans blocking off an alley. She spits and shakes her head to get the garbage out of her face and mane, and shrieks and pulls her vehicle to a stop when she almost hits a grungy brick wall head on. The vehicle lurches to a stop and Trixie is almost flung off, but the steering sleeves keep her in at the price of leaving horrible bruises. When the bee thumps back to the ground, Trixie gulps and is about to take a breather to sooth her panicking heart, but alas she doesn’t get the chance to. The same guard vehicle from earlier rounds the corner like a skilled driver would and speeds towards Trixie.

Trixie groans and quickly puts the bee in gear and drives down the alley. She hears the guard shouting at her with his megaphone in his native tongue, but she has no intention of surrendering. Not when Monte and her only chance of exposing the EIB is in the possession of a bunch of Brisk Wind’s troops.

She looks in the mirror again and sees that the lone guard wagon has reinforcements. The only good she sees from the situation is that they are having trouble maneuvering through the alleys. All except for the lead one. The leading guard is matching each of her moves with far more grace than she has, and guards inside also have the advantage of not having garbage flying in their faces.

When they get enough space, the guard vehicle drives next to Trixie and the passenger rolls down his window and motions her to pull over. What she does instead of listening, is she charges her horn and sets off a bright shower of fireworks, causing a few of her chasers to slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into each other. Trixie laughs as she turns into a main road, ignoring the urge to cringe when she hears quite a bit of the guard vehicles crash. However, she does look over her shoulder for a moment and sees a couple of the guard vehicles have piled up onto each other.

She turns her head back to the road and finds a moment of peace as she weaves through the traffic, and is filled with relief when she sees a sign pointing towards the airport. She takes a deep breath and follows the sign, which leads into a tunnel. She thinks nothing of it since the signs are pretty straight forward and she’s following traffic, but the moment of peace is not meant to last. As she drives, she hears faint sirens that are steadily getting louder, and when she peeks at her mirror, her eyes widen and she gets an unusual mix of anger, confusion, and fear. The same guard vehicle that has been chasing her since the bank is heading straight towards her. Granted the vehicle is covered in scratches, dents, and is now missing the windshield, but it is still going strong. And picking up speed.

“This guy just doesn’t know when to quit!” growls Trixie.

Trixie picks up her speed and concentrates on not getting killed from her increasingly dangerous driving. She weaves in and out through the traffic, occasionally looking through the mirror to see where the guard is, and tries to pull fast ones to lose him. None of her tricks work, though, and they really were not tricks since all she really did was do more sporadic driving and tried a round about. The round about was the worst idea she had at the moment since as soon as she turned, the guard fired on her mini gatling gun.

Trixie screams and lays as low as she can on her vehicle, whimpering and trying not to lose control as the bullets ricochet off of the plating. When Trixie passes the guard, the armored vehicle does a tight donut and continues their pursuit, guns blazing and leaving a trail of grounded rubber and thin, white smoke on the road. Trixie’s heart thumps violently in her chest and the adrenaline rushing through her veins is insane as she tries to avoid getting killed by the persistent guard. When Trixie tries to turn around again, she uses the passing vehicles as a cover, knowing that the guard wouldn’t shoot at her if civilians were in the way. Her suspicions proved correct, but the driver also once again proved how skilled he was. The driver narrowly avoids crashing as he drives between two passing vehicles to get to her. Trixie looks in the mirror and realizes that the guard is practically touching the back wheel!

Once the passenger pokes his head and weapon out again, Trixie does a sharp turn and cuts across the lanes, swearing up a storm as she narrowly avoids a constant stream of rapidly advancing commuters. The guard vehicle also turns, but with all the friction it comes to an unwanted stop and Trixie barely notices the passenger jump out before the vehicle is t-boned by a civilian trying to stop. Trixie watches from the corner of her eye in the mirror as the guard vehicle from Hell spirals into the tunnel wall, leaving parts of itself in its wake. She momentarily feels sorry for the driver of the vehicle, but thoughts of sympathy are replaced fear and frantic begs of Celestia keeping her alive in an instant when she accidentally goes off of a ramp made up of an unfinished sidewalk that leads to another open intersection.

Trixie shrieks when her stolen bee gets some air, and as soon as she lands, she skips quite a few heartbeats due to bouncing around, almost falling over and nearly getting hit by oncoming traffic. She rapidly flicks her hooves to whichever side will spare her of death, and the bee jerks painfully with every turn. She swears and swerves to the side again, almost falling over in the process, when one of her turns leads her into a lane being dominated by a mini-train dragging a cargo trailer. She barely has enough room and time to turn, and in doing so, she almost hits the guardrail. The driver of the mini-train honks their horn, ruining Trixie’s hearing for just a moment, and it also makes her lose control of her steering, too. After a couple of seconds of terrifying attempts to straighten herself out and not get killed in the process, Trixie manages to get a clear path down the side of the road generally left open for giving unruly drivers speeding tickets or replacing popped tires.

Trixie whoops at her narrow escapes, and laughs like a filly from the rush she’s getting from the wind pushing against her face and rippling through her mane. She thought it was fun riding on a bee with Vinyl Scratch, but now that she is actually driving one and speeding down the highway, without a helmet nonetheless, the exhilaration is incomparable to anything she has ever done before!

Then a bug flies in her mouth.

Trixie coughs and sputters, and tries desperately to get the bug out, but it was swallowed whole and is now facing the wrath of pony stomach acid. The incident makes Trixie lose control for a few seconds, and she once again almost swerves into traffic. She manages to do a sharp turn, which, luckily for her, leads to an off ramp and, unluckily, brings her towards regular two lane roads. But she is going too fast to stop, so she weaves in and out of traffic, too terrified of crashing and burning to care about the angry honks, and eventually pulls to a stop in an alley by a dumpster. After coming to a stop, she puts her hoof over her racing heart and her head slams on her dashboard on its own accord, trying to get her to rest. But she can’t rest, she has too much adrenaline in her body to rest. Her whole body is shaking, and she feels like she’s going to puke.

Trixie pulls her hooves out of the bee’s steering sleeves and rests one on the dashboard while the other one brushes her mane back, which would be sweaty if it wasn’t air dried by her little adventure.

As Trixie sits by the dumpster, a thought crosses her mind. She had lost Andromeda and Monte. She had been too busy trying not to get captured by the guards or get squashed that she completely lost the pony she was supposed to protect!

“No,” groans Trixie as she squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “No, no, no, no, no!”

She says “No!” one last time before she slams her hooves on the dashboard, creating a small electric shockwave that and leaves a burnt ring on the bee. She closes her eyes and cries angrily into the dashboard. She can’t believe she that she failed again!

“Goddess-damn it!” sobs Trixie.

“Oh, don’t cry, darlin’,” coos Sunshine, now standing next to her and putting his once wing over her, making her shiver and lift up her head so she can look at him. “Once he’s dead, you won’t have to worry about him anymore. You can move on to Brisk Wind and Roar Shock, and even that Shining Armor fellow.”

Trixie sniffles and wipes her nose, and is about to say something to Sunshine, but she catches something very important out of the corner of her eye. She barely sees it passing, but she sees the mini-train from the bank drive by, and following it is the rest of the convoy. Trixie’s eyes narrow like a predator spotting its prey, and she slips one of her hooves in the sleeve while keeping the other one out to start the ignition. Sunshine frowns when Trixie starts the vehicle and slides her hoof in the open sleeve.

“What are you doing?” asks Sunshine.

“Getting Monte back,” replies Trixie determinedly, then a couple of seconds later she adds: “And his box, too.”

“Sure you are. This is just another one of your-”

Trixie zooms off before Sunshine could finish his statement, and she does a large turn into the road that nearly makes her drive onto the sidewalk, thus making passing civilians shriek and dive for cover. As soon as her bee is straightened out, Trixie speeds towards the convoy with predatory focus. The closer she gets, the more her horn sparks and the harder she grits her teeth. She feels a surge of energy go through her, starting from her horn and slithering through her veins and spreading all over her body. She feels her fur and mane and tail stand from the power surging through her, and she doesn’t even feel the wind rushing past her or hear the ambient noises of city life. It is just her and the convoy. And she wants nothing more than to send the convoy to Tartarus in a mouth basket.

“Hang on, Monte, I’m coming.”

She increases the throttle and gracefully weaves her way through the traffic as a storm cloud appears above her head. The lightning pillars come soon after and form a protective barrier around her, and when she sees the backmost vehicle rounding a corner, she does another sharp turn without caring that she almost fell over or hit a wall for that matter. The civilians on the sidewalk dive for cover and she continues her pursuit with unquenchable determination.When she is a nearly a hundred feet or so away from the rear vehicle, an earth pony pokes her head out with a pistol in her mouth and shoots at Trixie.

Big mistake.

Once the bullet whizzes past her, a ball of electricity forms at the tip of Trixie’s horn, and she launches a devastating beam directly at the vehicle. The electric beam rips apart the asphalt and scorches the sides of vehicles unfortunate enough to be next to it, and when the beam hits the boiler engine of the target there is instant death. The beam rips through the engine and a fireball rolls out of all the windows of the vehicle, sending burning bodies and pieces of the interior flying in every direction they could go. The burning skeleton of the motorized wagon swerves to the side, flips, and rolls down the road, leaving a trail of burning debris and sparks in its wake, coming to a stop when it is bounces into a playground.

Trixie speeds past the wreckage and keeps her focus on the convoy. They are picking up speed, and she can just picture the panic her targets are suffering from seeing one of their vehicles suddenly explode.

An evil smile crosses Trixie’s lips and she puts more pressure on the throttle, easily catching up to Monte’s kidnappers. When she is close to the next vehicle, she is forced to slam on the breaks to put some distance between her and vehicle since the unicorn Trixie bruised with an empty pistol had poked her head out with a shotgun levitating next to her head. The unicorn tries to shoots at Trixie, but the former magician is not going to allow herself to get shot. She has been shot plenty of times and the last thing she needs is a buckshot to the face!

To prevent the unicorn from shooting, Trixie wrestles for control of the shotgun through a telekinetic duel. The shotgun fires a couple of times, one shot tearing apart the road and the other firing off into the sky. Trixie gets closer, and finally yanks the shotgun out of the unicorn’s magical grip and turns the weapon to the occupants. Everyone inside the motorized wagon eyes widen, and one of the passengers, an earth pony, reaches for her pistol, but it is too late. Trixie unloads the shotgun; first to the unicorn that tried to shoot her, then the earth pony, then another panicking passenger trying to unjam her mini-gatling gun, and finally, the driver. The inside of the vehicle is now splattered with gore, and Trixie pulls away, carelessly tossing the now empty shotgun away in the process, and she zooms off towards her next target.

“That’ll teach you to mess with the Great and Powerful Trixie!” yells Trixie in bloodthirsty rage as the bloody motorized wagon crashes into a bridge pillar head on, turning it into a nasty pancake of bodies, wood and metal.

Trixie drives after the convoy with unrelenting fury, and the civilians caught in the exchange between Trixie’s bolts and the convoy’s weapons swerve out of the way. Many of the swerves cause horrible crashes, and Trixie can barely hear the sirens over the sounds of screams and colliding vehicles. But she doesn’t care. She’s putting all of her focus on getting Monte back and making Andromeda pay for what she’s done, and she doesn’t care what it takes! She speeds through the thick, burning smoke caused from her blasting obstacles into burning shrapnel with complete disregard to everyone’s safety, even her own. She refuses to slow down for anyone or anything for this mission!

Trixie can practically taste the fear from everyone around her, especially the ponies in the convoy she’s pursuing, and it makes her smile. She’s glad they are fearing the Great and Powerful Trixie. Everyone should fear her because she knows that she is the greatest unicorn that has ever lived, not that studious brat, Twilight Sparkle.

When Trixie gets close to the third vehicle, she can barely feel the fatigue trickling through her body as her damaged horn nears its limit. Trixie growls because of this and speeds next to the vehicle. The passengers inside pale, and the last thing they see before Trixie shoots at them is her furious, pale eyes and the storm protecting her. Trixie launches an azure shockwave from her horn that sends the motorized wagon flying off of its wheels and flipping in the air, crashing to a stop when it impacts the fourth floor of the office building. The vehicle doesn’t go all the way through, though, and falls to the concrete below, splattering and smashing a picnic table on impact while glass cascades around it. Luckily no civilians were hurt.

The fourth vehicle has its passengers poke their heads out and shoot at Trixie with a mixed armament. The bullets whizz by her, and some bounce off of the bee or leave burning, bloody scratches on her, which only fuels her anger. And when a slug tears into her shoulder, Trixie howls in rage and pain and grits her teeth as blood seeps down from the wound. Within seconds, the wound becomes cauterized from the intense heat that the lightning is surrounding her with, but it doesn’t change the fact that someone got a good shot. Something which Trixie will not let happen again.

“YOU DARE SHOOT THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!” screams Trixie.

Her horn glows and a ball of crackling, chaotic energy appears at the tip. The storm cloud around her releases a rumble, and it and the lightning swirl around at the ball, like matter getting sucked into a blackhole. Trixie focuses on the vehicle in front of and lets it loose. The widening, electric beam emits a shriek that shatters all the glass near it, and it rips apart the asphalt and anything else unfortunate enough to be caught in its destructive path. As the burning remains of kicked up asphalt and vehicles rain down, the EIB vehicles try to evade it, but they are too slow. The beam impacts the boiler engine of the targeted vehicle, and it is vaporized in a flash of electric fire and burning debris that was lifted from the ground by the force of the impact. The earth shaking explosion creates a small mushroom cloud and another shock wave that pushes just about everything that isn’t nailed down away from it into buildings or more vehicles and lamp posts.

Trixie expertly turns to the side while all this is happening, to avoid the jagged gash and small crater left by her attack. But now she is panting and coated in sweat that makes the dust and ash cling on to her all the easier. She ignores the terrified and agonizing cries of the victims and the choking stench of burning death from her assault, and jerks her motions to dodge the burning chunks of rubble falling around or bouncing past her. Even the EIB vehicle that was in front of her target lands next to her in a mess of twisted metal and shattered wood, and she had to make a large curve lest she wanted its burning tire to hit her.

Trixie drives through the suffocating, burning smoke and is greeted by a different scenery. There is no destruction, just a peaceful city full of fleeing civilians. The fire and smoke of her destructive path is behind her, and now she can clearly see the mini-train and Andromeda’s getaway vehicle speeding off in the setting sun in desperation to escape.

“Oh no you don’t!” growls Trixie.

She lays down as low as she can go on the bee and increases the pressure on the throttle. She is forced to squint her eyes as the rushing wind dries them out and blows against her at incredible speeds. However, in spite of the discomfort, she is too focused on getting Monte back to care about such frivolous things.

Trixie’s eyes focus on the mini-train as her mind races on trying to figure out how to destroy it. The passenger seemed to have an endless supply of weapons, given the fact that she kept poking her head out with a different weapon in her mouth every time. First, it is a pistol, then she switches to a shotgun, she switches to a mini gatling gun after that, and finally, another pistol. And she shoots at Trixie until the weapon ran out of ammo before switching out, too. Luckily for Trixie, the shooter is a bad shot, but then again, when someone is firing from the mouth in a moving vehicle, poor accuracy is much expected.

Due to the much expected poor shots, Trixie is able to sort of gracefully dodge the shots; some managed to hit her bee or graze her body, but they are not enough to do any real damage, only leave small scratches. However, Trixie had spent quite a bit of her energy when she annihilated the other escorts, and she can feel heavy fatigue ruthlessly washing over her, and the pain from the tiny scratches all over her body start building up. The storm cloud around her also starts thinning out and the lightning around her becomes noticeably weaker in strength and numbers.

The closer Trixie gets to the mini-train, the more she figures that the walking armory ran out of ammunition. But her hopes of the pony having no ammunition is tossed into a river to drown when she sees the same pony poke her head out with something in her hooves. It is a black ball with a series of grooves all over it and a pony skull painted on. Then the said pony kisses it and then tosses it towards Trixie, not even caring about the half a dozen civilian vehicles between her and her target.

Trixie’s eyes widen and time seems to slow to a crawl when the black ball bounces towards her and cracks open to let sparkling red sticks roll all over the road. One of which rolls right in front of her. She pulls back on the throttle and veers to the side in an attempt to slow down, but it is not enough to save her. The sparkling stick detonates when she is mid turn, and the last thing she sees before squeezing her eyes shut is a fireball kicking up asphalt and ripping apart the front of her stolen vehicle. She can barely hear herself screaming over the explosion, breaking road and wood, and twisting metal, and when she opens her eyes for just the briefest of seconds she sees the pieces of her vehicle burning and twirling in the air. Next, she feels her bones crack and skin shred against the road, as well as pieces of debris landing or bouncing off of her. She blacks out.

Trixie manages to opens her eyes again, and this time she is surrounded by twisted metal, burning debris, and parts of the bee, and she can barely make out the remaining vehicles in the convoy driving off. She extends her hoof and screams for Monte, but she can’t hear or feel anything. Not her scream, not the crackling fire, not even her heartbeats or the multitude of injuries all over her body. All she can really hear is a ringing noise in her bloodied ears.

Trixie’s hoof falls to the ground and her eyes close for what seems like a second, but when she gasps awake and cries agonizingly when the full force of pain surges through her body. She can feel every breach in her skin, every crack in her bone, and the wet layer of her blood coating her. She coughs blood and crawls across the asphalt, trying without success to get to her feet. Her ears are ringing, her world is warped and faded, and she can hear her heartbeats thumping like thunder in her chest. When she extends her hoof to grab on to what’s left of her bee, she sees the shredded skin and thick streams of blood trickle down and splatter on the road. Trixie keels over, puking blood and sobbing as a sharp pain pierces her side, and is barely able to look up to watch the mini-train do a u-turn to face her.

Trixie grits her teeth and pushes herself away from her destroyed vehicle, swearing and choking back tears when she falls to the ground. Once the mini-train’s engine starts revving, Trixie uses all of her strength to stand up and take a couple of defiant steps towards the vehicle. Each step nearly makes her collapse from how wobbly her legs are, but after a pace, she spits another glob of blood on the ground and screams “Come on!” at the top of her lungs while charging her horn to its limit. Trixie holds back her body’s attempt to shut down her horn since the charge is causing a massive, head splitting pain to erupt from it and go all over her skull and brain.

The vehicle’s tires grind against the road, creating a nasty cloud of white and adding burnt rubber to the stench of destruction around her. Then the vehicle launches towards her like a missile and Trixie’s horn sputters pathetic sparks as she aims it at the oncoming menace. But her legs give out and all concentration is lost; she collapses on the ground and her vision quickly fades as she helplessly watches the mammoth sized vehicle charge her. As much as she wants to close her eyes so she can think of something peaceful before being crushed under the mini-train, her tear soaked and bloodshot eyes remain open.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Trixie weakly.

The vehicle comes closer and closer, and Trixie can picture the driver smiling viciously as the vehicle’s speed increases. Then everything gets an unexpected rosy tint, and the mini-train jerks upwards at a crooked angel and flies out of her line of sight. Moment’s later, the muffled sounds of wood shattering and metal scraping against the pavement fill the air. Trixie shifts in her spot, grunting painfully in the process, and sees a trail of parts leading up to the mini-train, mangled beyond repair. The metal is twisted, the wood is shattered, and one of it’s boiler engines had fallen loose and is now covering the road with scorching water and hot coal. The other engine is also loose, but it hasn’t fallen off, rather it is hanging from a few bolts and is spilling the boiling water and hot coal all over the passengers.

Trixie jolts in her spot when she feels a hoof on her shoulder, but when she hears a familiar voice telling her to hold still, she relaxes just enough not to zap him.

“Captain... what are... what are you doing here?” asks Trixie, her voice now barely audible.

“Saving Equestria and you,” replies Shining Armor sternly as he levitates Trixie on his back; he is keeping his shield up as well as levitating a rifle.

“We have to... we have to save Monte.”

Trixie’s eyes close for a second, but they snap open when a gunshot goes off practically next to her ear. She’s hoping that no one was shot; or at least not her or Shining Armor. But when she sees Shining Armor’s rifle smoking and him ejecting a spent shell she breathes a weak sigh of relief. The rocking, wave like motions of Shining Armor’s body and the mixing of his clops as he walks is a soothing experience to her, despite bleeding to death and in the middle of a warzone on a highway in a foreign country. However, in spite of everything working against her, she still manages to keep her eyes open, albeit heavy and half lidded.

Trixie watches as Shining Armor approaches a unicorn mare, coughing and bleeding from a smoking hole in her chest. When her horn glows and the revolver next to her shimmers, Shining Armor fires another round that makes her head jerk back and splatter the wreckage with her blood and brain matter. After popping in a fresh clip, Shining Armor cautiously approaches the driver’s side of the vehicle with his weapon trained towards the driver’s seat. Trixie watches carefully, fighting more than ever to keep her eyes focused on her faded world, and her eyes widen when she sees a pegasus mare without a cutie mark crawl out of the wreckage. Her wings flap weakly and she cries softly while attempting to stop blood from gushing out of a mortal injury. When she crawled a good ten feet or so from the wreckage, leaving a thick trail of blood in her wake, she leans against the highway railing and looks at the two, her face covered in blood and tears. The pegasus moves her head down and she whimpers, and that is when Trixie realizes that there is a jagged piece of wood impaled in her abdomen.

“Scarlet?” whispers Trixie in disbelief, although with her state, all she can do is mouth her words.

Scarlet looks at Trixie and opens her mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a pained whimper and more tears roll down her cheek, cleaning a small trail of bloody grime from her. Then she she bows her head and her wings droop down as her blood seeps out from under her in a gory pool. Her eyes close and her chest stops moving seconds later. Soon after, Trixie’s vision fades to darkness with the last thing she sees being the sun setting over Scarlet’s corpse.

oooOOOooo

“Holy crap, is she dead!” cries Colt as Shining Armor gently, yet hastily, puts Trixie’s limp body in the back seat.

“We need to move. The guards are coming,” informs L. Roy casually while keeping his eyes locked on the oncoming guard vehicles speeding towards them.

Colt wastes no time in putting the vehicle in full throttle and speeds towards an onramp, away from Andromeda’s vehicle. Shining Armor is in the middle of trying to stop Trixie’s bleeding using fabric from his disguise and the interior of the vehicle when he realizes what Colt is doing.

“What are you doing? Go after Andromeda!” orders Shining Armor angrily.

Colt looks over his shoulder for a split second. “Are you crazy! We need to get her to a hospital or she’ll die!”

“If we lose Andromeda then she will die for nothing! Now do it!”

“Look, I-”

Shining Armor awkwardly presses the barrel of his rifle against Colt’s head, and the earth pony swears and momentarily loses control of the vehicle while L. Roy aims his shotgun at Shining Armor.

“Trail her!”

“Put down your weapon!” barks L. Roy.

A police vehicle suddenly comes out from the side and practically t-bone’s their vehicle. However, Colt’s reaction time proved to be barely adequate to dodge it. During their drift, everyone in the motorized wagon, save for Trixie, screams, and Shining Armor and L. Roy slide towards the doors, grunting upon impact. After hitting the door, L. Roy’s shotgun goes off and blows a gaping hole on the windshield in front of Colt’s face. Colt shrieks and momentarily loses control and swerves into the railguard. The other two get tossed around a bit more before Shining Armor manages to get some control of himself. After regaining his composure, Shining Armor dives on top of Trixie and tries to hold her in place, he hears her moan and mutter something weakly, and when he looks down he sees her eyes struggling to stay open.

“Trixie, can you- Son of a bitch!”

Shining Armor presses himself on top of her protectively when bullets rip through the wooden frame and bounce off the boiler engine. More bullets go through and L. Roy swears in such a way that Shining Armor has never heard before. He looks up and sees L. Roy’s part of the windshield is splattered with blood and he is pressing his hoof against his shoulder. L. Roy clenches his teeth and squeezes tears out of his eyes, and ignores Colt’s frantic babbling and Shining Armor’s attempt to see if he’s okay.

“Put up a shield, Sparkle!” screams L. Roy painfully.

Shining Armor’s horn glows and the whole vehicle is surrounded by a rosy bubble that muffles the outside noise. They can hear the bullets firing and ricocheting off of the shield, with small flashes of light to show where the bullets hit, and they can also hear the guards shouting at them. But since everything sounds like it is under water, and the fact that it is in a foreign language, they can’t understand a single word being said.

With each bullet that bounces off, Shining Armor can see Colt jump slightly, and even L. Roy, as stoic and seemingly emotionless as he is, has a bit of fear showing. Especially when one of the armored police vehicles pulls up next to them and a guard shoots at them with a shotgun. The incident actually makes L. Roy jump, which would be hilarious if they weren’t in a life threatening situation.

Shining Armor watches his shield for a couple of seconds, and swears he can see the scowl through the masks of the guards attacking them. Once his short observation period ends, he turns his attention to Trixie. He sees that she has stopped moving, and when he puts his hoof on her neck, he can barely feel a pulse. Shining Armor swears and his mind races as he tries to figure out a way to keep her from expiring on the car seat.

“Hey, Sparkle, we have a problem,” says Colt uneasily.

Shining Armor ignores Colt, figuring that his statement is stupid. Of course they have a problem. Since when is being chased by foreign police with a key witness bleeding to death in the backseat of a rental not a problem?

He hears L. Roy ordering Colt to turn, and when the vehicle jerks to the right, Shining Armor barely keeps Trixie still, and is in too much of a panic to care that her blood is all over him. He presses his hoof on one of her gashes and urges himself to think harder, which proves to be more difficult than he thought with the combination of him trying to keep his shield up, the bouncing vehicle, and trying to ignore the fact that Colt drove through a diner, judging by the shattered tables and dishes bouncing off of his shield.

Shining Armor is now mentally beating himself up for not thinking of a way to stop Trixie’s bleeding. He can feel his aggravation getting the best of him as he tightens the cheap strips of cloth around her injuries. He uses more magic to harden her blood to make a large, nasty scab in hopes that the improvisation will stop the bleeding. Now his horn is hurting. It feels as though his cracks are splitting and burning, and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to ignore the pain by thinking about something else. Something like seeing the look on Brisk Wind’s face when he drags her away to Singsong after he shows the evidence of her crimes to Celestia.

“Sparkle,” says Colt in a long, drawn out, panicky tone, “I don’t know if you heard me last time, but we have a problem!”

Trixie’s body now looks like a gory, crimson candy with parts of pony poking out, and Shining Armor makes sure the scabs are really hard before glaring at Colt.

“Yes, I know we have a problem!” he says, snarling. “We have a big problem, so shut up and drive!”

“I don’t think you know how big the problem is,” states L. Roy as he cranes his neck towards the sky.

“Maybe if you showed some emotion from time to time I might believe you about how big the problem is!”

L. Roy scowls and he points towards what is ahead of them, and Shining Armor’s jaw drops for just a fraction of a moment before he screams furiously and bangs his hoof against the door, leaving a nasty hoofprint in it.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!” exclaims Shining Armor, his throbbing vein close to popping.

Blocking their path to the exit is a flying vehicle with a cylindrical design and two rotators on the top. The back is spewing steam from four different exhaust pipes and it has a gatling gun on each side being manned by a Bernese guard. It has a thick layer of armor and is painted white with a green band, with the seal of the Bernese Local Guard painted on what appears to be its door. And to make matters worse, Andromeda’s vehicle is nowhere to be seen.

The gatling guns whir to life, and within a couple of seconds, two streams of bullets impact the shield and create a series of explosive flashes of light that forces everyone to shield their eyes And since no one can see anything, Colt is literally driving blind, and from the sounds of unknown objects bouncing off and the shield’s crackling, it appears that he is hitting everything under the sun. The vehicle jerks and bounces and scrapes against everything, then they hear something that no one wanted to hear. The sound of one of the tires popping.

“Oh no, not good! Not good!” cries Colt.

“Keep it steady!” barks L. Roy.

Shining Armor’s eyes snap to the front window and pales when he sees a blockade of guard vehicles with a whole line of guards aiming their battle saddles at them. And right behind the blockade is the wide open road, free from the guards, and a strong chance for them to escape and catch up to Andromeda.

“Hang on to something!” orders Shining Armor.

Colt looks at Shining Armor worryingly while L. Roy wraps his hoof around his seat belt, grunting painfully from his wound in the process. Shining Armor hears Colt ask him what he plans on doing, but he ignores him and orders L. Roy to keep Trixie as still as possible and for Colt to keep driving straight.

“But there’s-”

“Do you want me to point a gun at you again?”

Colt’s mouth clamps shut and drives straight towards the blockade while increasing the speed. Shining Armor takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and thinks about everything that has happened to him over the past few months. It all plays like a movie stuck on fast forward, from him watching his soldiers getting slaughtered at Ponyville to allowing Trixie to get tortured for information. And how Brisk Wind gave him bad files, made him look bad in the press, tricked Celestia into creating a police state and turning her against him, and framing him for murder. Now he can just picture Brisk Wind laughing in her office at her victory with her endless supply of fancy liquor, a giant picture of her looking smug, and her face replacing the sun on the Equestrian flag.

Shining Armor’s jaw and shut eyes tightens as he feels the cracks in his horn reopen with burning results. Then his eyes snap open, and they glow bright, rosy hue that looks menacing with the fiery cloud of the same color wrapped around his horn, with his cracks being the brightest part. Small sparks slither around the cloud and move towards the shield, which is now retracting rather quickly. When their vehicle is almost at the blockade,  the shield is at the edge of the vehicle and is sparking violently. The crackles of electricity are painful to the ears, and the sparks are searing everything they touch. Shining Armor takes another deep breath as time seems to slow down around him, and right as they are about to hit a guard vehicle, he stomps his hoof and the shield explodes outwards with a sonic boom that shatters all the glass within a few hundred feet.

The shockwave blows away all the vehicles and guards next to them like they are nothing but burning dolls. The vehicles land around them in a tangle of burning wood and twisted metal, and they crumble and explode upon impact. The guards land at awkward angles, and those who were not carried away dive for cover, using whatever they could to do so. And Shining Armor doesn’t see what happens next because he collapses on top of Trixie, eyes squeezed shut from pain, and dripping with sweating and panting heavily from the amount of energy he spent. Aside from his horn feeling like it is breaking apart at the cracks, it also feels empty, and his muscles are so weak he can barely lift his head. He manages to smile, though, when he hears Colt cheer and L. Roy say something proudly. His eyes drift shut and he welcomes the coming darkness of nap time.

But his peace does not last.

What seems like only a few seconds of precious rest ends when he is jolted awake. The vehicle had been rammed and now Colt is struggling to keep it in control as a damaged guard wagon speeds past them. Shining Armor blacks out again.

When he wakes up again for the briefest of seconds, he sees L. Roy reloading his weapon and a guard vehicle with blood splatter on the windshield careening off of the side of the road and crashing into concrete ravine. The same air vehicle he saw from earlier also makes an appearance and Shining Armor tries to put up a shield, but his horn feels empty, and he immediately passes out when a small shield form around his head.

When he wakes up again, his world is dark and blurry, and there is a loud ringing in his ears. He groggily crawls his way out of the vehicle, which is now upside down and easy to leave since the door is gone. As soon as Shining Armor steps outside, though, the light from the flying vehicle shines down on him. He holds up his hoof to shield his eyes from it, but his legs give out a couple of seconds later and he collapses to the ground, grunting.

After a great, agonizing struggle, Shining Armor is able to push himself to his feet, panting with blood and sweat dripping off of him. Everything is a haze; his vision is shifting from blurry to clear, and the ringing noise in his ears mixes with his breathing and heartbeats and the muffled shouts of the guards rushing him. He sluggishly turns his head when he hears gunshots, and sees L. Roy dropping to the ground with his weapon and Trixie by his side, and blood creeping out from under both of them. Shining Armor hears Colt shouting something, and when he turns to him, he helplessly watches the earth pony get brutally tackled to the ground, despite him showing that he has surrendered. Shining Armor’s gaze moves to Trixie, whether or not she is dead is hard to decide, but he’s determined not to leave her. He limps towards her, ignoring the shouts of the guards and the excruciating pain all over his body, and when his horn glows, there is a single crack, and immediately afterwards he feels a powerful punch that makes him stop walking. He looks down and sees a rapidly growing blotch of blood on his shoulder. His horn charges again as he attempts to put up a shield, but a second shot sends him crumbling to the ground.

Each cough Shining Armor makes feels like a burning knife wound, he and strains his muscles in his struggle to stand up as the small army of guards converge on him, but he doesn’t get far. An ibex reaches him when he is halfway up and headbutts him against his destroyed vehicle. He immediately blacks out.

=**********=

Monte jolts awake when the motorized wagon comes to a sudden stop. He blinks and scans his surroundings as his eyes gradually adjust to the darkness. He wipes caked on blood from his face, wincing when his hoof brushes against the black eye Trixie gave him in the morning, and peers out the window when Andromeda hop out. Monte tries to sneak out, too, but stops and goes on to a casual whistling when he realizes that his hind legs are cuffed to the seat, and he is being watched by an armored EIB earth pony that is wearing a dual shotgun battle saddle.

Monte’s ears swivel when he hears a loud hum, and he holds up his hoof to protect his eyes when a show of bright lights suddenly turn on. Once his vision is cleared from the colorful blotches, he sees a zeppelin with Fancy Entertainment’s logo on it, surrounded by more armed ponies. He also notices Andromeda talking to someone, and that talking soon turns into indistinct yelling. The pony she was talking to, or yelling at, in this case, backs down and shouts an order that springs the armed guards into action. Monte is impressed at how well coordinated they are as they bolt to and fro, from one spot to another, each doing their duty to prepare for liftoff.

Then he sees Andromeda stomping towards him.

Monte whimpers quietly and pushes himself up against the door, trying to get as far away from her as possible, and when she yanks open the door, he yelps and jumps in his seat. Andromeda’s horn glows and the cuffs on Monte’s back hooves fall off like dead leaves, then she yanks him out of the vehicle and throws him to the ground. Monte coughs and gasps for air when the force of impact pushes the air out of his lungs, and fills his mouth with gravel. He sputters and brushes his tongue against his hoof, hoping that it will get the tiny specks of rock off. He tries to stand up, but freezes and nearly wets himself when he hears the safety click off and Andromeda breathe heavily.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” growls Andromeda.

“That... that is a bit cold don’tcha think?” says Monte, his voice trembling and body shivering with fright. “I mean, I did help you get Gilda’s box.”

“After stalling us.”

“Hey, I genuinely forgot the -Okay, okay...” Monte leans forward, soon to collapse on his stomach as Andromeda presses her pistol against the back of his head. “Why not just pull the trigger then?” He sniffles and blinks tears out of his eyes, and takes a deep breath to break the bubble in his throat. “There really is no point in making this dramatic.”

Monte looks at the night sky, marveling at how pretty it is and thinking that the soothing scenery is strangely appropriate. He only wishes that he could see the moon to complete it, though, since there is a huge, blank spot due to the new moon. He sniffles again and wipes tears and snot away from his face.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” says Monte, his voice cracking as he blinks tears out of his eyes. “Aren’t you going to pull the trigger?”

He jumps in his spot when the metal box containing all of Brisk Wind’s dirty little secrets lands in front of him. He stares at the box, mind blank as to why Andromeda tossed it in front of him, or why she is now standing in front of him.

“I want answers. About that box,” says Andromeda, using her pistol to point at the box and further enforce her point.

Monte stares at the box, then back at Andromeda, now thoroughly confused about what is going on. Monte’s eyes drift back towards the box and his mind struggles to form a coherent thought when Andromeda demands to know what the box contains. Nearly ten seconds pass before Monte looks at Andromeda’s murderous eyes pleadingly.

“Wha-what are you talking about?” stammers Monte.

“Don’t play dumb with me!”

Monte yelps, and Andromeda lifts up the box and aims her weapon at him. Monte backpedals awkwardly as Andromeda stomps closer to him, and when he trips over himself and lands on his back, Andromeda stomps on his chest and keeps him still, ignoring his cries and begs.

“What is so important that I lost nearly all of my guys and had only Celestia knows how many innocent people hurt! Tell me why Brisk Wind sent me through all this trouble for me to destroy this and kill you!” screams Andromeda as she waves the metal box in front of Monte.

Monte gulps back tears, and when Andromeda screams “Tell me!”, he yelps and holds up his hoof in a feeble attempt to protect himself while scrunching up as tight as he can.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you... I’ll tell you,” whimpers Monte quietly, still holding up his shaky hoof. “But can you please lower your weapon?”

Andromeda lowers her weapon. “Talk. Right now.”

Monte wipes tears out of his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You’ve been played... In that box is something that.... something that will end Brisk Wind. Gilda kept everyone’s dirty little secret as leverage, and that box -what is in that box will put Brisk Wind in Singsong for life, and expose every skeleton in the EIB’s closet.”

Andromeda steps off of Monte and he rolls into the sitting position, gasping and gingerly rubbing his chest with his hoof. Monte takes another gulp of air and notices the key to the box hanging around Andromeda’s neck. He looks at her and she stares back at him, and when his horn glows she cocks her pistol and presses it against his head, making him freeze and stop his magic.

“What are you doing?” demands Andromeda threateningly.

Monte gulps and gradually lifts his hoof up to try to calm her down.

“I’m going to grab the key, and show you what your ponies died for,” he says in a quiet, careful tone.

“I’ll do it myself.”

Andromeda lifts the necklace off of her neck and sticks it in the box. Monte watches her, and realizes that she is hesitant to look inside.

“Do you-”

“I’ll do it!” snaps Andromeda, bringing her pistol back to Monte’s head, making him reel back slightly and shake in his spot.

There is a moment of tense silence between the two, and Monte’s eyes break contact with Andromeda’s for just a moment when the zeppelin’s engines roar to life. He swallows and looks back at Andromeda, she has her eyes locked on the box, and the key is in the lock. He can see her swallowing nervously and he doesn’t know if she’s shaking from nerves or if his eyes are just playing tricks with him. He watches her for a few more seconds before his horn glows and he gently turns the key in the lock. The lock clicks and he keeps his magic trained on the box as he lifts it up so Andromeda can see the contents better.

“This is what they died for,” says Monte solemnly as Andromeda grabs the list of witnesses against the EIB.

Andromeda’s brow furrows and she looks at Monte in angry disbelief, like she doesn’t want to believe what she is looking at. But the more documents she flips through, the more payroll receipts and audio transcripts she sees, the more intense her scowl, and the heavier her breathing, becomes. Soon her jaw is so tight and her breathing is so burdened with fiery hate Monte is worried she might explode and kill everyone around her. He jumps back and almost scrambles away into the night when Andromeda screams in rage loud enough to be heard over the engines, and she throws the box down, and with it, all of the documents.

Andromeda slumps to the ground, seething with angry tears streaking down her cheeks, and swears as she stomps the ground with an audible thump over the whining engines. Monte swallows nervously before extending a hoof to pat her on the shoulder. He gets rejected with a hard swat that makes him wince and take a step back. A moment later, Andromeda  glares at Monte and slowly stands up. His heart thumps in his chest and he lets out a terrified whimper as he inches away from her, but he soon finds himself frozen in fear and helplessly staring into the eyes of the scorned mare.

“Get on the zeppelin,” orders Andromeda.

=**********=

With only the stars to guide them on a clear night sky, two large, armored mini-trains with the Bernese Local Guard seal speed towards a large house with a covered balcony circling the whole structure. Their headlights briefly shine on the carnage they will soon be exploring, and it does nothing but work up their nerves. There are also gazebos and placed in the center of its lush lawn is a fountain with a statue of Iron Will striking a cool pose on the top. One of the vehicles drives towards the back while the other skids to a stop next to a couple of abandoned motorized wagons. Once the vehicle stops, the back opens and heavily armed and armored ibex guards jump out and move towards the house. They do this quickly and professionally, and they check the vehicles, too, and when they find that they are empty, they continue on. They take up positions outside of the front entrance, which has the front door completely destroyed, and keep low so that they aren’t seen from the windows, which are riddled with bullet holes, just like the rest of the wall.

The Lead Guard pokes his head in and sees that the house is dark and has a thick atmosphere of dust, but he can make out bodies all over the floor and more bullet holes, as well as a giant slab of stone sticking out of the ground at an angle. He gives the order to move in, and he and his team rush inside and spread out while being sure to keep each other covered. As they move through the destroyed house, most keep their eyes out for any hostiles, but there are a few that stare at the horrifying mess made up of mutilated corpses, broken furniture, and blood splatter. One particular thing that the Lead Guard finds disturbing is a grotesque cyborg unicorn lying in a thick pool of blood from a neck injury, her eye wide open and stricken with horror.

He doesn’t stay long, though. He orders his team to move upstairs while the ones that went out back secured the rest of the floor. So, they move upstairs, and one of the guards does a quick inspection of the bathroom that had its door mutilated. While that is being done, the Lead Guard moves on down the hallway, coming to a stop when he hears quiet sobbing coming from a guest room. He does hoof motions aimed at his partners to signal where the noise is coming from and they carefully approach the room. The Lead Guard swallows some spit and cautiously pushes open, and when he enters the room, his jaw drops. Huddled in the corner, pale, bloodied and bruised and wearing an lavender armored suit no one has ever seen before, is Pinkie Pie. Her hoof is tightly wrapped in a sheet that is dripping with blood, and she’s rocking herself back and forth, eyes squeezed shut and sobbing.

“I can’t beat her,” she whimpers quietly. “I can’t beat her... I can’t beat her... I can’t beat her...”