Desperate Measures

Deciding to take a break from all of the exploring of the world that just kept on amazing him, Sanguis just made himself comfortable on his favorite branch and began humming a cheerful tune to himself... Luckily for the ponies, this made him easy to find, thus his enjoyable moment was soon interrupted by a very sudden visit... If you can even call it that. Without so much as a "Hello" or any kind of other introductions, Rainbow Dash just flew up to him and punched him in the face as hard as she could.

Slowly turning his head back towards her and smiling at her, Sanguis asked politely, "Forgive me, was I being too loud?"

"Cut the polite talk, shadow!" Rainbow impolitely retorted. "Put em up!" She readied her hooves for a fight.

"Oh?" he uttered, surprised by such an offer. "You want me to return the favor?"

"Yeah!" she boldly confirmed. "Come on! Give it all you've got!"

"Oh, don't be silly, Rainbow... I'd never hit a lady."

"Who you calling a lady!? You... You gentle...shadow?" That sounded better in my head... she said to herself and fell silent whilst doing her best to hide her self-embarrassment.

Sanguis kept staring at her for another few seconds before cracking up. "My, my... how offensive... Does this mean you don't want to be friends with me?" he asked with a fake frown on his face.

I need a new plan... she told herself and went with the first thing she could come up with. "Tag! You're it!" she exclaimed and nudged him, afterwards rocketing herself out of the vicinity.

Letting out another short round of laughter, Sanguis flew right after her. "He he he... I don't know what's going on here, but color me intrigued." Quickly catching up to Rainbow Dash, he asked her while she kept flying. "Oh, and by the way. Do you need a short or a long head start?"

"Aaah!" Rainbow exclaimed and started flying even faster.

The shadow merely shrugged at such a response. "Eeh, I suppose a short one will just have to do... One, two, three..." He counted to twenty before continuing the chase. Swiftly catching up to her again, he readied his hand to grab her by her tail. "Too slo--" He was suddenly stopped by a surprise magical blast to his face.

"Leave her alone!" Twilight shouted after catching the shadow's attention

"Huh? But we were just playing," he insisted and instantly got blasted again. "Just go ask her yourself!" he said and caught the next magical bolt with his hand. "Am I going to have to put an ice cream cone on that horn of yours to get you to stop blasting me?" he asked in a friendly tone, yearning for a positive reply.

"You're welcome to try!"

"Well, in that case..." He approached her slowly, but just before he got to grab her, she teleported away. "And here I was thinking that she would just make it easy for me... He he. Pleased she didn't," he told himself and bolted after her. Following her trail, he caught up with her after a short while and jumped right towards her. "Ha! Got you!" Alas, she managed to teleport away again in the nick of time. "So close..."

"Wee!" Pinkie Pie uttered as she bounced over Sanguis. "Ooh! Ooh! My turn!" she shouted and kept bouncing forward.

"Hah! I should have known you wouldn't be far behind on all the fun!" Readying himself for a delightful jog, Sanguis started bouncing after Pinkie, but in a much quicker pace. "Huh... This seems too easy," he said as he neared the bouncing pony. "Gotcha!" he exclaimed and grabbed her by her tail, but to his utter confusion, she just kept on bouncing forward with her tail still in its rightful place... and at the same time also in his hand... "Uuuhh..." Baffled by the sight, he pulled the tail closer to his face and sniffed it. "Is that... cotton candy?"

"Yoohoo!" Rarity called out to him from a distance and waved. "Over here, darling." She started trotting away at a very ladylike pace.

"You have got to be kidding me..." Keeping his eyebrow raised and his gaze fixed on the fashionista, he just couldn't figure out whether she was part of the ensemble or was she simply trying to get his attention. Shrugging in confusion, he decided to just find that out by himself and started following her at a pace slightly quicker than her own. "This is the weirdest game of tag I've ever played... And I've played a lot of em." Eventually catching up with her, he slowly uttered, "Uuhh..."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, pretending to be surprised. "Seems like you've caught me... Very well, I suppose now I'm it." Waiting a few seconds before acting, she tagged Sanguis and started nonchalantly trotting away from him in the same pace as before. "Tag."

Scratching his head from confusion, Sanguis just started looking around to see if he could find a different pony... This one seemed to be a bit confused about the point of the game. "Aha!" he suddenly shouted and caught an apple that was flying fast in his direction.

"Come and get me, ya goon!" Applejack shouted from afar and bucked another apple towards Sanguis before running off.

"Hmm... Seems a bit stale," the shadow said to himself after taking a bite from the apple that had already started to rot from the lack of sunlight. "Oh, right!" He dashed after the pony, again catching up to her in no time. "Aha!" he exclaimed as he managed to corner her. "Nowhere left to run!"

"Wasn't planning on it, ya goofball!"

"Hmm? What do you--"

"Now!" Applejack bawled, and at her mark, a set of sheets fell off from all sides of the room that Sanguis thought he had gotten her trapped in, revealing itself to actually be a hexagon of mirrors.

Just mere seconds after the mirrors were revealed, Applejack jumped out of the center just as the sun came up. Looking to the sky, Sanguis saw the sun reaching its highest point, and before he could even get to react, its rays hit all of the mirrors around him, redirecting all of the excess sunlight directly towards him.

Instantly falling on his back and covering his face with his hands, Sanguis started screaming in agony as his entire body became engulfed in sunlight. Rolling around in a pointless attempt to preserve his life, he created a real light show as the shadow kept fighting the light.

Gathering around him, the ponies looked upon him with both shame and remorse eating away at their hearts... Even though their plan was a success and victory was theirs, they still simply could not celebrate the moment... As they had just ended the life of the very same creature that had recently saved their entire race from extinction... The longer he screamed, the more painful it became for both sides.

"Gaaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaaaaaaatchaaaa! Aha ha ha ha ha!" Just like that, his rolling around and screaming in agony turned into lying on his stomach and pounding the ground from laughter.

For the ponies, however, sadness turned into confusion... confusion that started slowly turning into fear. Fear of what will become of them once Sanguis stops laughing.

A creature of shadows, seemingly immune to both magic and the touch of sunlight, not to mention, able to come back from his own ashes after getting pulverized... Is there anything out there that could even come close to stopping something like that? This the ponies did not know... What they did now know, however, was that they had just made a grave error...

As Sanguis kept on laughing without end, they started nervously backing away, and after what seemed like a whole afternoon of laughter, the illuminated shadow finally stood up. Taking a breath and calming himself, he suddenly just smashed all of the mirrors with a motion so swift the ponies couldn't even trace it.

Covering themselves to avoid getting glass in their eyes, the ponies flinched away from the mirror explosion. Opening their eyes again, they watched and trembled as Sanguis started slowly walking towards them. The way he kept on crushing the glass beneath his feet with each step only made the moment seem even more dramatic. Reaching Twilight, he knelt down on one knee before her without losing his cocky smile.

"I... take it apologies won't do us much good at this point," Twilight nervously whispered.

Chuckling as a response to that remark, Sanguis replied in a friendly tone, "Apologize? Why, what ever would you want to apologize to me for?"

"Please..." Twilight breathed out heavily and broke eye contact. "Just... Do what you have to... As far as I'm concerned, we deserve it."

And thus the air around them fell silent. Everypony watched the sight with frightened expressions, but their fear soon left themselves as they considered Twilight's words... For despite the sinister look of the demon before them, they were the only real monsters here.

Chuckling again in a barely audible voice, Sanguis gently placed his hand under Twilight's chin and lifted her head up to face him. "Do you honestly think I'm mad at you?" He stood up and laughed. "You ponies are, without a doubt, the most amusing creatures I've ever laid eyes upon," he gladly admitted.

"Huh?" the crowd uttered.

"And trust me, I've seen plenty, and if I had not shown mercy to all those that managed to even slightly get on my nerves, then your nomad problem would have most likely already been solved before it even occurred," Sanguis explained and let the crowd keep staring in awe, yet again.

"You... you..." Twilight, in particular, was baffled beyond words.

"Do you take me for blind?" he asked, almost as confused about all this as were the ponies. "I've been exploring every inch of your lands over these last few months. Did you honestly think that I wouldn't notice how miserable you had become?" he asked out to everyone present, but there was no answer. "Even if one of you hadn't tipped me off earlier, I saw something like this coming from miles away. And even though I had secretly hoped that all of you would be wise enough to just come and talk to me before doing anything stupid, I am ever so glad that you didn't! Aha ha ha ha!" he laughed, still as amused by all this as ever. "Seriously? You pinned every last piece of hope you had on a vague statement by me, saying that I abhor the sunlight?" He shook his head in disapproval.

The ponies instantly put on rather sheepish frowns and began rubbing the backs of their necks after that... Rainbow Dash, more than anypony, felt like crawling under a rock after Twilight glared fiercely at her.

"Wait!" Rainbow Dash suddenly called out. "Did you just say that somepony tipped you off?" she asked, intriguing everyone around her and making them perk up their ears as they looked to the shadow for answers.

Nodding solemnly, Sanguis stepped aside to let the crowd gaze in utter shock at the very last pony they expected to see.

"F-F-Fluttershy!?" Rainbow Dash uttered, her confusion quickly turning into frustration that had a scent of anger to it. "How could you!?" she bawled at the same timid pegasus who was already too ashamed of herself to even look her in the eye.

"Hold your tongue!" Sanguis commanded. "You have no idea just how much this pony loves each and every one of you... By the gods, you should have seen her when she trotted up to me. Her heart broken from sheer emotional pain and her face wet from prolonged crying," he explained, making a large portion of the crowd drop their unfriendly expressions while looking at Fluttershy. "How she begged. How insisted... How she cried." Sanguis hung his head. "For so long she cried in my arms that I had to sing her a lullaby just to get her to stop. And all the while she kept on begging me to not hurt her friends, insisting that you're just not yourselves, that the long night has made you all bitter and that you only want to see your sun again..."

Aside from just one last pony, every other expression had softened up and was welcoming towards Fluttershy as she made her way closer to them... Everypony, except Rainbow Dash.

"She really is the only smart one out of all of you," Sanguis added.

"I... I can't believe..." Rainbow Dash tried to say something, but the sorrow and anger eating away at her from the inside kept her from it.

"I'm sorry..." Fluttershy apologized and hung her head as soon as she reached her friends. Her expression being painful to even look at.

"No," Twilight replied and stepped forward, immediately throwing her hooves around her yellow-coated friend in a warm embrace. "We're sorry, Fluttershy... We're so sorry..." she whispered as her tears started raining on Fluttershy's back.

"We should have listened to you from the very beginning," Rarity added and joined in on the hug.

"Yeah. I can't believe you guys talked me into this!" Pinkie also joined in.

"That's the second time you've been right from the start when it came down to a vampire problem!" Applejack added.

As the hug dissipated, everypony stepped away from Fluttershy and looked upon the one pony who had yet to apologize.

"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight addressed her. "Is there something you would like to say?" she asked and kept looking upon her friend whose head was still hanging ever-so-low.

"I... I..."

"It's okay, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy insisted as she walked closer to her, offering a comforting hoof on the shoulder.

"No!" Rainbow Dash shouted and hugged Fluttershy as tightly as she could, immediately bursting into tears. "It's not okay! *sob* I... I..." She started shaking from her own cries.

"You're... hurting... me..." Fluttershy barely breathed out.

"Sorry..." Rainbow apologized and loosened her grip, letting Fluttershy inhale loudly. "I'm... really sorry... To all of you! I..."

"It's okay," Fluttershy repeated.

"We forgive you," Twilight added as she and the others also joined in on the hug.

"Not like the rest of us are exactly all innocent either," Applejack reminded.

"I know I am!" Pinkie declared.

The hug ended rather abruptly as the ponies looked over their shoulders and saw Sanguis just nonchalantly walking away. Not intent on just letting him leave like that, they quickly caught up with him.

"Oh, by all means, don't let me stop you," Sanguis said right as the ponies surrounded him. "The six of you look absolutely adorable when you're hugging one another like that."

Twilight giggled. "Then how come you were walking away from us?"

"I feel too exposed in the sun," he confessed. "Feels like the word "shadow" just doesn't apply to me anymore when I'm stuck in the sun... Also, it kinda makes me itch," he admitted and started scratching.

The ponies laughed, and as their laughter ended, the two parties smiled at one another as the time to say "goodbye" seemed at hand.

"So is that really all there is to it?" Twilight inquired, still a bit baffled by how well Sanguis had reacted to an attempt to murder him. "You're just going to let us get away with this without any sort of repercussions?"

"I never said that," Sanguis replied in a not-so-friendly tone. "See, I can't drive myself to punish those who were merely talked into doing something stupid..." His tone turned even more serious than before. "But the instigator, however..." He paused for a moment. Suddenly turning around swiftly, he glared right into Rainbow's eyes with demonic rage. "Has to die!" he roared right into her face and gritted his teeth.

"Yaaaaaggh!" Rainbow Dash yelped from sheer fear and her face instantly turned pale. Jumping up into the air, she just rocketed away with enough speed to single-hoofedly deliver water to Cloudsdale.

"Bwaha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Sanguis dropped on his back from laughter and began rolling around.

Realizing that she had been played, Rainbow Dash turned around and landed near Sanguis and her friends.

"That's... pfft... Not funn--pfff ha ha ha!" Applejack tried her best to keep a straight face but simply couldn't hold back her laughter anymore after seeing Rainbow Dash getting pranked so badly.

"Yes it is! Aha ha ha!" Pinkie exclaimed and joined in on the laughter, as did the rest of the ponies that weren't Rainbow Dash.

"Gee... Thanks for the moral support, you guys," grumbled Rainbow Dash.

"Aww, don't be so blue, Rainbow Dash," Sanguis replied.

"Yeah! White suits you much better! Aha ha ha ha!" Pinkie added, creating another round of unbridled laughter as a result.

"Yeah... Real funny," Rainbow muttered.

"Ehh... But in all seriousness..." Sanguis began once the laughing ceased. "You ponies have made it rather clear that you no longer wish to have me as an ally." He started slowly walking away from the ponies. "If that's really the case, then so be it." He looked back at them over his shoulder before vanishing back into the forest. "Should you ever find yourselves facing a threat you can't handle by yourselves, I'm afraid you'll have to look for help elsewhere."

"Wait!" Twilight exclaimed, but yet again, she was too late.

"Let it go, Twilight." Applejack stepped closer to Twilight and placed her hoof on her shoulder. "This is probably for the best, anyways."

"I guess you're right," Twilight sighed and admitted. Lingering near the edge of the forest for a while longer, the ponies soon turned around and started heading back to their homes.

"I still can't believe he sang you a lullaby," Rainbow Dash said while looking at Fluttershy. "Not the kind of thing I'd expect from someone like Sanguis."

"I told you he's not a bad vampire," Fluttershy replied, afterwards letting out a sad sigh. "I just wish we didn't have to part ways like this... We didn't even get to say goodbye."

"Don't think it was necessary, sugarcube," Applejack replied.

"How so?"

"Given Sanguis' lust for entertainment, I doubt he'll stay stuck in that dark corner of his forever... Something tells me we'll be seeing him again real soon."

Despite not even putting much effort into hiding his presence, Sanguis remained unnoticed as he stayed near the fringes of the Everfree forest and listened in on every word the ponies were saying.

"Sooner than you think, Applejack. He he he." Sanguis chuckled. "Sooner than you think..."