//------------------------------// // Chapter 25 - Tougher Ponies // Story: Fallen Stars // by Zachurra //------------------------------// Vice growled softly as he rubbed his cheek. He was unsure if he was more annoyed with the mare on top of him that just hit him or the fact that her slap actually hurt. This newer body was certainly going to take some getting used to… He gave the pale yellow pony a rather unamused glare. Her eyes were filled with anger and he didn’t need to see the hot tears pouring down from those eyes and staining the fur on her cheeks to notice the terrible sadness behind all that anger. “You ponies have an odd way of thanking someone for saving your life.” Despite his rather soft tone and the fact that the train was still flying by, her ears still flicked up at his words. The anger sparked and her teeth grit together. “I never asked you to do anything for me!” She raised her hoof to strike him once more, but he refused to be her punching bag any further. He deflected her hoof and pushed his other hoof into her chest. With her being off balance, he shoved her onto her back. Before she had a chance to fight back, he was already on top of her and pinning her hooves against her chest. She struggled desperately but, much to his relief, he still retained some of his strength despite his more fragile form. She screamed in frustration, a fresh flow of tears staining her coat. “Calm down and I will release you.” He said simply but his words didn’t reach her. Vice shook his head softly as he looked down at the pathetic scene under him. He sighed, figuring she would wear herself out eventually. “Why must women be so violent?” The train passed through the town without a care for their quarrel, leaving on its way and allowing a new member to join the conflict. Three metallic shinks broke the momentary silence. A dull grey blade stopped mere inches from Vice’s neck at speeds fast enough to astonish even him. His eyes followed the blade to find the same blue stallion from the platform now with the hilt of the sword in his mouth. His eyes were filled with malice and it flowed into his voice when he spoke. “Get off of her! Now!” The Demon, still surprised by how quickly the stallion moved, examined the odd sword the stranger wielded. The gray metal didn’t shine much, but it didn’t look like it was meant to. It was crafted for a specific purpose and be more than a simple weapon to swing or show off. “And if I refuse?” Vice replied, eyes still on the fascinating weapon. “You don’t look like the kind of stallion to murder a pony in the streets.” “I’m not, but I am the kind of stallion to kill a monster; especially when they’re holding a mare at their mercy.” A monster? He thought to himself, eyes now on the stallion. Surely some of these ponies saw me during the fight, but there hasn’t been any public declaration of what we are as far as I know. “For a monster, I look an awful lot like the rest of the ponies in the world.” “True, but you don’t move like the rest of us. There’s no way a normal Pegasus could hit that level of speed so quickly and leave the innocent bench he was sitting on as nothing more than firewood. Now I’ll say it again: get off of that mare before I cut your horrid little head off!” Vice’s eyes narrowed, almost daring the stallion to try. But he knew that this was not his world and that, at least for now, he would have to play by their rules. Leaving someone broken in the street likely would only leave himself worse off in the long run. He released her hooves and stepped back, allowing the mare to scramble to her feet to get behind the stallion as he followed Vice to keep him within swinging range. “You’re safe now,” he said, turning his head just slightly in the mare’s direction. “Go back to your home where it’s safe.” “Nowhere is safe for her.” Both sets of eyes returned to the Demon. He brushed the sword away, no longer amused or interested in this new development gave the stallion a glare as he brought it right back, slightly closer this time. “She’s just going to go home and probably hang herself. Or maybe she’ll drown herself in the river on the way home, or wander into the forest to satisfy the hunger of some creature.” The tip of the blade touched Vice’s throat. “I didn’t give you permission to-“ “You rush to the defense of this mare, telling her she’s safe from me when the one who truly wishes her harm is herself. There are few things that pass by my eyes that I do not notice but it does not take years of training to see her intentions. What mare stands at the edge of a train platform for over thirty minutes without so much as bothering to sit down, disinterested in the entire world around her until she hears the whistle of the coming train?” He put his hoof against the sword once more and pushed it away slowly this time before locking eyes with the mare and moving towards her. She backed away, memories of how he handled her still fresh in her mind. “I saw the conflict in your eyes when you turned your head. You must have made up your mind on the way to the station but when you heard that whistle, you thought to yourself, ‘do I want to do this?’ It was not until the very last moment that you threw away all reason and decided to step forward and welcome the sweet embrace of a freight train.” Her hoof slipped on a rock and she fell onto her haunches. No longer able to back away, he easily closed the distance until she couldn’t escape his eyes no matter where she looked. She raised her hoof to strike him once more. “You lost someone yesterday, didn’t you?” Her hoof froze in the air and he heard her gasp. For the first time since he had started moving towards her, she looked into his eyes rather than simply at him. She was expecting to see something cold, something condescending and looking down on her for what she tried to do but was shocked to see the calm and the sincerity. As she pulled herself away from those eyes and back into reality, she slowly nodded. Vice sat down in front of her, his eyes never leaving hers despite her not doing the same. “Tell me about them.” She opened her mouth but no words came at first. She took a deep breath, searching for her voice and when she found it, it was shaking. “I-I-I loved my sisters… So very, very much… We laughed together… We cried together… We couldn’t imagine living in a world without each other. Not a day would go by without Lily freaking out over something, be it big or small. If somepony so much as changed the color of their mane, she’d be ready to faint.” Her lips gave the tiniest of curls as she looked down at the ground, memories of her loved ones proving to lift her spirits even if only slightly. “One of us would always come to her rescue and we would laugh about it for the rest of the day. I think the only time she was ever truly calm was when she was tending to the lilies that she was named for. “Daisy was practically the opposite, never being able to sit still and decide on one thing to do. One day she would be gardening, the next day she would tell us she’s decided to be a saucepan salespony.” A quiet little laugh left her as she shook her head at her sister’s manic behavior. “One day she told us she was going down to Appleloosa and ten minutes later, Lily had a list of fifty things that could go wrong. But she wouldn’t be swayed and off she went the very next day. About a week later she came back and told us that it just wasn’t the same without waking up to the smell of lilies and roses.” She choked back a sob as she knew what was coming next. “A-and then… yesterday happened… and all of it was taken from me… When word got out about what was about to happen, I wasn’t at home with them and had to hide with others… If I had known I would never see my sisters again, I never would have left home…” They heard the same metallic sounds from before as the stallion’s sword folded in on itself to be a more compact size. He slid it in its sheath underneath his coat. “If you had stayed home, then the town would have only lost another of its citizens.” “I don’t care!” She cried but it seemed her tears had run dry after everything that had gone on to this point. “Nothing feels right without them here anymore… This aching pain will never go away…” “And so you decided to join them.” Vice said. He secretly wished he could have seen the sword retract, but he knew there were more important things at the moment. “I know the feeling you’re talking about. The despair, the hate, the pain… it’s all too familiar. Once upon a time, there was a girl that I loved with every bit of my being. She was my entire world and honestly felt like the only place I could be happy. She was killed right in front of my eyes. “This scarf,” He touched the crimson piece of clothing around his neck with his hoof. “was what she was wearing when they pushed a knife through the back of her neck. Her blood stained the white into red and I wear it every day as a constant reminder that she died because of me. I can never again see her smile when she sees me or hear her laugh at whatever jokes I make or be taken by the sound of her singing in the shower every morning because I wasn’t strong enough to protect her. Like you, I thought about taking my own life. I would throw myself off a cliff just so I could be reunited with her. But, as I stood there at the edge, I realized that if I ever killed myself just to see her again, she would beat the crap out of me the moment I got there for even considering such a thing. I can still imagine the things she would say. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you want to die? Dying sucks. Trust me, I would know.” He gave her a sad little smile. “The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes, the best way to honor the memory of someone else is to continue living and never let their memory disappear. Because the moment that their memory disappears, then they no longer exist.” He pulled himself up off the ground and stretched his wings. “Never frown, never mourn. When they look back at you, show them that happiness still exists back home.” He reached into his scarf and pulled out the ticket to Canterlot that he had been given. He held it out to her and she took it and was shocked to see the first class seating that it allowed. He turned to the stallion, glancing towards where the weapon resided, hidden under his coat. “Cool sword.” He took off into the air and shot off in the direction of the mountainside city in the distance.