//------------------------------// // Fight or Flight // Story: Friendship is Revolution // by ultiville //------------------------------// Twilight spins to face the scene in the alley, her phone forgotten. It nearly plummets to its doom on the pavement, before Rarity catches it in her magic. "Were they real?" Twilight mutters, eyes wide, sweeping the scene. "Twilight, dear, calm down..." Rarity starts. "I need to know if it was really them." Frantically she begins examining the alley. Drops of blood lift in her magic's grasp and she peers at them intently, then snorts and shakes her head. Now the magic is flowing all throughout the alley, rooting through the dumpster and sweeping underneath the stairs. Sirius walks to the mouth of the alleyway and stares; it looks as if the whole place is flooded with iridescent magenta mist. Then it rolls quickly towards Twilight and dissipates, leaving shards of polymer and other miscellaneous detritus hovering in front of her. With increasing desperation, eye beginning to twitch, she tosses aside litter and shards of armor until, with a cry of triumph, she lets all the flotsam fall leaving only the tip of a tiny needle rotating slowly in front of her. The glow returns, surrounding it, and a complicated chemical model appears in the same light, floating above it. "Carbon...hydrogen..." she mutters, and pulls the tablet from her saddlebag. Glancing back and forth between the model and the screen, she frantically moves her stylus. "Twi'," Rainbow Dash says softly, "does it even matter? Rarity wasn't 'real' when we got her back, then she was. Don't we need them either way?" "Of course it matters," Twilight says calmly, not looking up from the screen. "Either they took some machines that might someday be our friends, or they took our friends." Rainbow, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie exchange a look. "Wait, I don't get..." Mary starts, then Rarity nudges her and desperately whispers in her ear, and she stops. Twilight's stylus goes still. "Uses," she mutters, "veterinary medicine...veterinary medicine! It's a sedative! You can't sedate a machine!" She stuffs the tablet back in her bag then tears off into the hallway and up the stairs, her friends hurrying after her. When she reaches the old storeroom, she pulls the stuffed Rarity and Pinkie Pie to her, and practically tears the rest of the room apart looking for the others. "They're not here," she turns to the others, "they aren't here!" Rarity leans up against her. "I know, dear. We're all worried, but please calm down. We don't know where they are." Twilight ignores her. "I know you're listening, Mister Gray. You brought sedatives, so you've figured out we're not machines. You seem like someone who's done his research. You must have watched that stupid show. You must know what I'll do for my friends. I will never help anyone who hurts them. Never. Let them go now, and I won't try to find you." From Rarity's grip, Twilight's phone dings as it gets a new text message. Everyone clusters around it. You missed your chance to work for me. Now you just have to go away. Call off the rally, leave the city. Disappear. Then I'll let them go, unharmed. They stare at it, and another message pops up. There's no magic box this time, Princess. "I can't," Twilight says, miserable, "I can't call them off, I just told them not to do it for me! They won't listen to me." I have faith in you. You can make them believe. You'd better. Twilight looks near panic. Her wings are angrily taut, her stance low. Desperately her mind races, but she can't fully focus on the problem thinking of her friends alone, scared, new to the world, attacked before they saw a friendly face. She wishes she'd had time to research the listening devices more, see if there's some way to track the signal... "Twilight," Rarity says softly, "what are we going to do?" Desperately, Twilight shakes her head at her friend. She pulls out her tablet again and opens the drawing program, scrawling on the screen: they can hear us. Rarity nods and gulps. She thinks about just giving in. She did it with Tirek, after all, gave up Equestria to save her friends. Is this situation different? Well, in one way, certainly - Mr. Gray is right, there's no magic box here. If she gives up this time, she is giving up, no doubt, no little hope for that trump card. And she understood Tirek, for all his evil, knew what he wanted. When she gave up there, he was getting it all. If she gives up here, Mr. Gray isn't. She knows, after all, that once he wanted not only her neutrality, but her cooperation. She's read enough about the shady world he lives in here to know what he's offering here is a compromise. But in mentioning the box, he's proved he knows about Tirek, and about her choice there. So why is he offering a compromise, when he has all the cards? Her stomach feels like it's sinking into the floor when she realizes he can't be. It doesn't make any sense. She sees herself giving in, dispersing the crowd as best she can, retiring to the farm...and Fluttershy and Applejack never coming. She sees another text, giving her some mission, an endless string of requests while her friends - her friends - grow old in a cage. She'd been willing to give up magic for them, even freedom, to live her whole life empty of power, under Triek's hoof, but to live it together. And she'd still do that. But this...this is something else. Nearly screaming internally at that little ember of false hope, that tiny bit that tells her that her friends are worth any sacrifice, she lifts the stylus again. He's lying, she writes, somehow keeping the stylus steady, he'll never let them go, he'll just want more and more. I have to find them. I need to figure out what an earth pony and a pegasus have that humans don't. The whole crowd stares at the tablet for a moment, then Rarity gently takes the stylus from her grip and writes, body magic. Polaris doesn't consider her birth name much of a loss. She's never felt much like a Cindy. She's never felt much like an investment banker either, for that matter, but she hadn't felt much like anything else, and retirement before thirty at least sounded nice. She's also never felt much like a fighter, but her parents started her on martial arts years ago, and she enjoys it enough she's kept with it. You have to get your exercise somehow, after all - as a woman in a competitive world, she couldn't get clients if she didn't look like society expected her to. Besides, she could always pretend her sparring partner was one of those clients. She also never expected to take that early retirement to follow a magical pony princess, but for the first time, she feels like she's doing what she wants to, instead of what someone else expects. So she leans, purple-clad, on her purple staff, and enjoys the breeze wafting over the shrine, the fluttering noise of the papers on the tree. She even enjoys the stares of passersby, that weightless feeling of, finally, just not giving a damn what they think of her. The men with her are distracted, clearly curious about the commotion in the alley, wondering what their Princess and her friends are up to. She is too, of course, but she's enjoying the single-minded discipline of guarding, and so she doesn't let it get to her. Besides, they're providing plenty of commentary all their own, even if nothing much is happening now that the ponies and their human have gone back into the bar. Then the lull is over. The Princess appears on ground next to them in a burst of light, the rush of displaced air pushing back against the breeze and setting the papers and medallions on the tree fluttering and clattering loudly. Her wings are spread in a way that even Polaris can read as angry, and her stance is low and looks nervous. Objectively, she's the size of a mid-sized dog, but even aside from her literally magical appearance, the air seems tense around her, full of power, and her presence feels massive. Polaris feels like, with the Princess so close, if she just knew how to move her body, what to think, she could feel the pinpricks of power herself, move objects with her mind, or take to the air. She feels like it's just a gesture or magic word away. She finds herself falling to her knees. Beside her, she's aware of the movement of the two men doing the same. The Princess looks over at them, frowning a bit, then smiles a tight smile. "Thank you," she whispers, closing her eyes and nuzzling each of them with her soft (admittedly adorable) cheek. Polaris thinks she can feel a tingling fire at the touch. Then the Princess steps back and opens her eyes, and they're glowing with pure, unquenchable white light, like the first two stars of evening against a purple sky. Polaris wills herself not to look away. The Princess sweeps the streets with that near-unbearable gaze, then with a single beat of her wings, a lavender-scented downdraft and a twinkle of magenta energy, she's in the air, sparkling with magic, leaving a trail like a comet as she soars into the blue. Polaris realizes she should be writing this down. She'll have to remember to bring a notepad tomorrow. "The Book of Twilight" has a ring to it that she rather fancies. She thinks she'll open it with the diary. After a moment, she decides to use her prerogative as this shift's lead guard. "You're in charge until I get back," she tells Sirius. "The others are going to want to know what happens." Grabbing her staff, she rushes into her car and does her best to chase the Princess's shooting star across the city. Applejack's head is even fuzzier than before, and her eyelids feel like they're carved from stone and just as immobile. Gradually her brain starts working, and her recent memory comes back. She still can't open her eyes, but she's aware of a little prickling in her foreleg, and of the sedative running in her veins, battling with her magic. Gotcha, she thinks, y'all still don't give us earth ponies enough credit. Ain't got the dosage right. Suppose I'm glad, means you prolly aren't tryin' to put me out forever. She winces at the thought. Even though I reckon those last two of you weren't so lucky. She can move her leg, barely, and focuses all her will on it. She feels metal pressed up against it, probably the bar of a cage, and after what feels like hours of trying just to move her hoof, she scrapes the IV against it, just lightly enough to dislodge the needle, letting it drip the liquid into her coat instead of her vein. She knows it'll be a while still before she can fight it off fully, and lies back to wait. She can hear voices, now, not far away. "I hope you know what you're doing, sir," one says. He sounds just barely older than a colt, or whatever humans call it, and nervous. "She's smart. Probably smarter than I am. I don't think she'll buy that you'll let them go if she gives in." "She gave in to Tirek," this sounds like a stallion, one full of confidence. Tirek..are they talking about Twi'? Applejack's heart soars at the thought that her friend might be here, and looking for her. "That wasn't the same. He was getting everything he wanted. We aren't." "You read her diary, too. They don't know how we do things here. She might be gullible." The stallion chuckles, a sound devoid of warmth. "But no, you're probably right. If I had to bet, my money is she comes looking for us, and finds us. I'm hoping for it, in fact." "Why are you hoping for that, sir? She's like fucking Gandalf or something! That sniper rifle didn't even touch her." Applejack's magic is surging through her now, and cautiously she manages to lift her eyelids just a bit. The room is dark, but the two humans stand next to a glowing screen, silhouetted by its bright light. The smaller one - probably the colt, she thinks - sits in a chair. The other is massive, and looms over him, leaning on a metal box sporting a large switch and a complicated nest of wires. He pats it with his paw before responding. "That's why we brought this, kid. Don't worry, just like Gandalf, without her spooky powers, she'll be as weak as an old man." Applejack takes a deep breath. Fluttershy's next to her, out cold, another IV running to her foreleg. Slowly, carefully, Applejack nudges her, trying to move her just far enough to knock it loose without letting the humans see her. Neither is facing her now, but she knows that in the quiet of the room, any major movement might be loud enough to draw attention. It's slower going even than getting her own needle out. She hopes she'll manage it in time for 'Shy to wake up before Twilight arrives. She's pretty sure they'll need all the help they can get.