The sounds of heavy gunfire echoed all around. Sunny and her friends looked about themselves in despair as they saw the enemy close in.

"THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!" shouted a voice from a waiting armoured personnel carrier. "You are to surrender to Her Majesty Queen Opaline immediately!"

"SCREW YOU!" Zipp shouted back. "WE'D RATHER DIE THAN BE YOUR SLAVES!"

"Very well. OPEN FIRE!"

The last survivors of the resistance fought back as best they could, guns firing even as shell and bullet exploded all around them. Sunny was fighting on the front, trying to protect her friends from the enemy fire whilst firing back with her own energy blasts, but she was but one person against an entire army.

An explosion from a mortar shell blew both Pipp and Zipp up, scattering them over the ground. With them, the Duchy of Dorset was extinguished.

The tower in which Hitch was providing fire support was blown to rubble. Misty was shot clean in the head- she never would have known what hit her. By then, only Sunny and Izzy were left, fighting on even though all seemed hopeless.

In that moment, a flurry of bullets came their way- too late for Sunny to mount an effective defence. The world seemed to go into slow motion as they struck Izzy, causing her to fall backwards as blood began to pour from her wounds.

"IZZY!" Sunny screamed, and crouched over her friend's body to protect her. It was bad. Izzy's wounds were too severe for her to treat.

Izzy looked up, coughing as she did so. "Sunny..." she spluttered, blood coming out of her mouth as she did so. "R-run. Save yourself."

"No, I'm not leaving you!" Sunny replied. "You're the only person I have left in this world!"

Izzy tried to reach up to place a hand on Sunny's cheek. "I know this is all wrong, but know this, Sunny... meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me..."

With that, the light faded from Izzy's eyes, and her body slumped onto the floor.

It took Sunny a moment to register what had just happened.

Izzy Moonbow, her last surviving friend, was dead.

She truly was alone in the world.

Sunny looked up, sobbing, as she saw the enemy close in.

Opaline was leading them, smiling as she did so. "So, Sunny, this is where your little resistance ends. The strong always prevail over the weak, and your own actions brought you here. People only suffer when they follow you." She paused. "I look forward to hanging your corpse from the walls of the Tower of London, as a reminder of what happens to those who stand against me."

Her hand started to glow. Sunny had given up, and resigned herself to her fate. They had failed. Her parents were gone, and now her friends were too. The Starshine line had been wiped out.

"Many leaves, one tree, Sunny. And now the tree is dead. All that remains is to reduce the leaves to ash."

Sunny closed her eyes as she heard the energy build up. This was the end- this would be her final resting place.

"Any last words, Sunny?"

Sunny's eyes suddenly shot open, and she looked around her environment for clues. She first glanced to her alarm clock, which was showing the time was seven in the morning. Otherwise, all seemed normal.

Sunny slid herself out of bed, trying her best to sort out the massive mess that was her hair. This always happened when she woke up. It was a weekend, which meant she had no real commitments. She listened out for signs of life in the home.

As she opened the door, she saw her parents looking down the corridor. "Morning, Sunny," Argyle said, his smile dropping when he saw how unhappy she looked. "Is something wrong?"

"I had another bad dream," Sunny said. "Opaline had won, and we- I saw them dying around me! They were dead, and it was my fault!"

She collapsed, sobbing, as her parents pulled her into a hug. "Sunny, none of that was real," Goldie started to say.

"Opaline would never have hunted us if we hadn't put the crystals back together! It must be trying to tell me something! I put you all in danger!"

"Opaline can't hurt you now," Argyle said. "She's gotten what she deserved. Now then, let's have breakfast once we're fully showered and dressed, and hopefully that'll cheer you up."

Zipp listened to Sunny with the gentle ear of a good friend. "That sounds intense."

"I've been having variations on that theme for a bit now," Sunny said. "No matter which combination of events, I'm unable to save you guys- I always end up alone."

"I think that's a fear we all have, Sunny," Zipp said, trying to comfort her.

Sunny sighed. "But I think there's more to it. Opaline frequently appears in these nightmares. And she and I had one thing in common- we could both pony up." She looked at her hands. "And she did that interview with the Times-"

"You read that?"

"Mainly out of morbid curiosity to see what lies she'd try to spin as truth," Sunny replied. "And I noticed she states her aging has slowed down dramatically. I noticed my own injuries heal unnaturally fast. And this is where the fear comes in. What if I'm not really human anymore? What if, with Opaline gone, I really am the last of my kind? Am I cursed to keep on living for centuries whilst those I love die around me?"

Zipp looked at her. "All I know is that sometimes we have to confront our fears head on. I know it's not a nice thought, but perhaps there's a place where we can understand what's going on?"

"Where did you have in mind?"

"Remember the tunnel network we found in that book?" Zipp said. "If Opaline was able to use it to move her troops about, then I reckon they lead right back to her base."

In another section of Falmouth Manor, Misty was calmly reading a book. Her eyes were glued to the page as she saw how the valiant knight was trying to escape, when suddenly she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. "Huh? What was that?"

She put the book down and followed the odd light through the door, and noticed it was floating at the end of the corridor. "Well, that's something you don't see every day." She continued to follow it down the stairs, until it reached a large door near the bottom of the building.

The light went through it, and Misty was surprised. "It wants me to go in there? That's just the basement we've stuffed full of random junk."

But the light remained in position, and Misty stepped inside the room. As she indeed had recalled the room was stuffed full of junk, the sort of accumulated items a landed family acquires over the centuries. According to what Lady Haven had told her, the family had once had an entire building for storing paintings- when most of the art gallery was sold off to help pay off debts, the building had been sold to the National Trust and was now a storage space for them.

Just then, her eyes were drawn to a succession of stained glass windows lining one set of walls. Each showed a group of engines sitting next to one another, each group in full steam. Two of the groups Misty recognised pretty quickly- one was Thomas and his friends, whom they hadn't seen in nearly a year. Another group was their engines, Salty et al- notably, the only grouping to have any diesels in it.

Misty pushed some items out of the way to try and get a closer look, not noticing the objects glowing. Upstairs, Lord Haven was very confused when the water from the taps stopped running. "Elizabeth? Is the water still working for you?"

Misty knew she had to keep digging for the pieces and get a clearer view, completely unaware of the chaos happening upstairs. However, she spotted something glowing next to a book, and walked over to flip it open.

"Never thought I'd be in Opaline's bunker," Sunny said. "I'm surprised they didn't dynamite the place."

"They were considering it, apparently," Zipp replied, "but doing so would have caused large scale ground subsidence. Come on. I'm certain the answers we need are in here."

They gradually looked through the rooms, finding numerous ruined structures inside. As the structure had been abandoned for some time, cobwebs and dust was starting to build up. Zipp removed some dust from a computer terminal. "Huh. CRT monitors. I saw one of these in a museum once."

Sunny pulled something out of a draw. "Why did she have small replicas of us in her drawers?"

"Voodoo dolls, maybe?" Zipp suggested. "Given what we know about her I wouldn't be surprised if she was into that. And see those pictures on the walls with bullet holes in them?"

"Opaline sure wasn't right in the head," Sunny said. "But what if I go the same way?"

"I know you won't," Zipp said. "This device is taking FOREVER to start up- seriously, did they not invest in SSDs down here? Sunny, could you check some other rooms whilst we wait?"

"Sure thing," Sunny replied, and left the room, not sure what she'd find next.

Misty studied the text closely, and noticed something. "Wait a moment. Those are the engines of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. I saw this in one of Lord Haven's books."

She glanced from the book to the first stained glass window, and noticed something odd. She picked the book up, walked over, and compared the two images. The stained glass window appeared to show them in battle with an ominous figure, whose face was not visible.

"It's the same engines!" she said. She then looked to the next stained glass window along, with another group of engines from a much later time period. The third group appeared to be mostly Great Western locomotives, and then the aforementioned groupings of Thomas and Salty and their friends.

Misty was beginning to sense that there was some sort of connection between these various groups. Were teams of six always fated to come together?

"I see you have come to learn, young one," said a voice. Misty suddenly swung round to see a ghost standing there.

"Wh- who are you?"

The ghost, a man with a distinct Northumbrian accent, smiled. "I am George Stephenson. My son and I built several of the engines shown in that image, even if they insisted on putting a few Hackworth engines in there for some reason. But I digress. As you can see, my son and I changed the world in ways that could never have been imagined. Railways shrunk the globe and brought all of us together, connected our peoples, and changed the world forever."

"What about the stained glass windows?" Misty asked.

George smiled again. "I cannot simply tell you the answers. But I can give you clues to guide you to the answers. When the world is in danger, it has ways of finding heroes to stand against the darkness. And many have answered the call. This space shall always remain as a space for you to learn more, Mary Blossomforth."

"I tend to go by Misty," Misty replied.

"Very well, Misty. I trust time shall bring you to this place once more in the future."

Sunny stepped into another room, this one with a large command terminal in the centre. But sitting there was the last person she'd been expecting to see.

Opaline looked up from the command terminal, a cruel smile on her face. "Fancy seeing you here," she said. "I figured you'd follow in my footsteps eventually."

Sunny looked at her coldly. "Me and you are nothing alike, Opaline!"

"You and I," Opaline corrected, rolling her eyes as she did so. "No wonder you can't speak proper English when both your parents are Yanks."

"SHUT UP!" Sunny snapped. This woman insulting her parents for having American ancestry had touched a rather raw nerve.

Opaline snorted. "Or what? You're going to run crying to mommy? You've certainly inherited her temper if nothing else." She looked coldly into Sunny's eyes. "Admit it, Sunny. You're a daddy's girl, desperate for their approval and craving companionship."

Sunny returned with an equally cold look of her own, although Opaline didn't seem intimidated. "They made me who I am, and showed nothing but compassion and love-two emotions you cannot understand. You've lost. You tried to mess with my head and you failed!"

Opaline laughed. "Tried? I'm practically living rent free in your head. You have nightmares of me. You're scared you'll become me. I will be with you until the day you die!"

Something in Sunny snapped, and before she knew what was happening she was blasting the room with energy beams. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!"

"Sunny, who are you talking to?"

Sunny swung round to see Zipp standing there. She looked down, panting heavily, and realised the energy sheen was surrounding her. She powered down, sighing. "Opaline was in here. It must have been my mind playing tricks on me, or is she finding a way to mess with my head again?"

"We'll be here for you, no matter what," Zipp said. "I found something interesting on the terminal. There's a painting in here showing a very old steam loco, and according to the records an object is being kept in one of the other rooms. Let's go check it out."

Sure enough, they walked into another room- and their jaws dropped.

"Is that what I think it is?" Zipp asked. "Is that the engine we saw in Trevithick's workshop?"

"No, it's the one after," Sunny said. "It's the Penydarren Locomotive! But I thought it hadn't survived!"

"Not according to this inscription," Zipp said. "The message at the bottom implies it's out there, somewhere."

"This is the find of the century if so," Sunny said. "Let's get this painting out of here and to a safe place."

"That might be a challenge, Sunny. Look how tall it is!"

Carrying the tall painting was a bit of a tall order, if you'll excuse the pun. Its awkward shape and heavy weight made it hard to carry. But soon they got it to a lift, and soon they were on the surface.

When they returned home, moving the painting on a trolley, Misty showed them what she had found (although George Stephenson was curiously absent). Zipp looked at the stained glass windows in amazement. "There were others before us," she said. "Thomas and his friends were just among them."

"Since the dawn of the steam age, engines have come together as heroes," Sunny said. "This changes everything!"

Zipp smiled. "Then they are still out there. And we are going to find them, together."

Neither of them noticed the painting they had recovered shimmering out of view.

Author's Note

This chapter combines the plotlines of The Lone Alicorn and Mysterious New Room, both episodes of the second season of Tell your Tale. The original stories both tap into themes of existential dread, and as such it seemed like a fitting way to set up the next major arc.

The opening nightmare sequence is loosely based on The Last Tiger, the final story of the video game Battlefield V. This segment tells the story of a group of disillusioned German soldiers in the final days of WW2 and does an excellent job of capturing the sheer hopelessness of the dying days of the war for Germany- not to mention the heartwrenching ending (which I will not spoil if you haven't played it).

Opaline's wall of bullet hole pictures is a reference to the antics of Chris Chan. Back in 2007, Sony of America held a competition to promote the video game PaRappa the Rapper, which required contestants to perform one of the songs from the game and submit it to a board of judges; whomever won would get an all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle to visit the Penny Arcade Game Expo. Chris, who was wanting to push his friendship with a girl called Megan Schroeder in a more romantic direction, entered in the hope of winning, believing that a trip to Seattle would finally convince Megan to be his girlfriend. Chris' entry was, put bluntly, terrible:

Not surprisingly, he didn't win. Because Chris is an incredibly bad loser, he responded by plastering the internet in angry rants, including a video where he shot a photo of the contest winner with a pellet gun. In the nearly two decades since, he still hasn't sorted out his anger issues, if his reaction to MLP G5 is anything to go by.

Although not as famous as his son Robert, George Stephenson is often described as 'the father of the railways.' Although he did not invent the steam locomotive he was an early advocate of their use instead of horses, and he helped to develop many elements of railways we know today. These innovations include standard gauge (selected based on the average width of cart axles), ballast (utilised to help the Liverpool & Manchester cross Chat Moss), and even the modern layout of the steam locomotive! His son would go on to develop many of his ideas, and his creations did indeed change the world.

And last, but not least, the very first commercially utilised steam engine itself. The Penydarren locomotive was built in 1804 to work a tramway in South Wales, succesfully pulling twelve tons of coal and five wagons along the length of the line at the somewhat pedestrian speed of 2.5 mph. Trevithick didn't know it at the time, but his creation had forever changed the course of history. The original no longer exists, but many replicas have been built; the one shown above can be found in the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, Wales.

And so, we shall take a bit of a break for a while, but fear not-this isn't the last we've seen of these characters!