Search for the Truth

by RangerOfRhudaur

The Reeling - Silver Spoon II

Spacey and the psycho made them six again, though if the pipsqueak kept pushing the psycho's buttons she wouldn't be surprised if they went back down to five.

At a mumbled word from the psycho, the body of their short-lived seventh went up in blood-red flames, the drops on her knife jumping into the blaze like oil. The fire licked them up greedily, and then turned to its main course, quickly devouring the corpse. Within minutes, all that was left was ash and rapidly-dissipating smoke.

"Consumed by fire," the psycho muttered. "A fate fit for a warrior."

"How do you know he was one?" the pipsqueak groused. "I could barely understand anything he said before you murdered him."

"His body said that he was," the psycho replied, not taking the bait. "Starved, wasted away, tormented, and still he lived. Anyone other than a warrior would have broken under Starlight's 'care.'"

"How can the Unmarked follow her?" Di shook her head in shock. "How can they justify following a tyrant, a-a monster?"

The psycho's face darkened. "The same way you justified following Shimmer," she retorted. "Admit it, none of you supported her because you liked her, you followed her because you were afraid, either of the other monsters knocking at your door, the other tyrants jockeying for her place, or of what she would do if you didn't follow her. Reward your friends, punish your enemies, and make your enemies your friends' enemies, and you'd be surprised what they're willing to ignore. People are scared of monsters, but there's something stronger than fear; greed. Everyone knows about an anglerfish's light, but they're still willing to chase a deep-sea spark."

"We can't trust her, Silver. As soon as we stop looking over her shoulder, she's gonna stab us in the back."

"But do we need to do this? If we just keep an eye on her-"

"We'll take our eyes off the threat to the north. The Games are coming, and we can't risk facing Crystal Prep divided."

"Then why do something that risks dividing the school? You remember what it was like when she did it, what's to stop that from happening again?"

A pause. "Better to break it now than wait for her to do it later."

"Or a Siren's song," spacey giggled.

The psycho grinned like a shark again as she nodded.

"The Unmarked have heard that song, I'm guessing?" the loser whispered.

The grin vanished. "Monsters have," came the curt reply.

"That's why you're out here, isn't it?" the loser pressed. "Monster hunting. You... you've been following Starlight since she kidnapped your sister, haven't you?"

The dagger glinted. "Our business is our own," the psycho growled. "All that you need to care about is staying alive until we can find someone to negotiate with."

The loser flinched and nodded, then, shockingly, laughed. As the psycho's knife hand jerked, the loser raised one of his and chuckled, "No, wait, I promise I'm not laughing at you. It's just, I never expected to be used as a hostage, at least not while the rest of my family's still alive."

"Why?" the psycho snorted. "Because you thought they'd protect you?"

"Because I'm as worthless as a hostage as I am at everything else," he chuckled. "I'm the second heir, the spare mother and father keep around in case the first child turns out poorly."

"Heir?" Silver frowned. "Heir to what?"

"Posey Pond, in Rainbow Vale," he replied. "One of the most beautiful places in Cloudsdale, in my opinion. Of course," he blushed. "I spent most of my time there inside, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I was sickly when I was younger, and when I wasn't sick... well," he gestured at himself. "I'm not the most athletic person now, and it was even worse back then. Fluttershy, she used to call me Taettacnicht, her doll, because of how bad of a shape I was in: I was as strong as a ragdoll and as sturdy as porcelain."

"If you're trying to whine or pity your way out of this, it's not gonna work," the psycho rolled her eyes. "None of you are going anywhere until we get a good deal."

Di snapped her fingers, beaming. "I think I can help you with that," she smiled at the psycho, who looked back at her unimpressed. "Right now, Captain Armor's too busy to negotiate with you; he's gotta take care of the Unmarked, first. Once he's done with that, then he might see about negotiating with the people holding four high-schoolers hostage. But what if, instead, he finds himself running into unexpected reinforcements who help him defeat the Unmarked and who prevented four innocents from blundering into them along the way? He wouldn't be speaking with hostage-takers, then, he'd be speaking with allies, sisters in arms, heroes of the kingdom. And all you'd have to do," she smirked, face falling into shadow. "is fight the people who made you murder your sister."

While she gaped at Di, spacey turned to the psycho. "You sure she isn't a Siren, Ari? That was a really, really Siren-y speech."

"For the last time," the psycho rolled her eyes. "making good speeches isn't limited to Circenicans."

"And apparently neither," the pipsqueak spat. "is being a monster."

"Would you still call me a monster if they'd treated Rainbow Dash like they treated Adagio?" Di countered. "Would you still call me one if the guy we found was one of your aunts?"

The pipsqueak pointed accusingly at the Sirens. "I would if you were still working with those two! They tried to take over CHS, Tiara, did you forget about that? 'Oh, but that's in the past!' Well, in the present, Aria killed Guilden! 'That guy we found' had a name, one you would've probably learned if Aria hadn't murdered him! How can you work with monsters like them?!"

"Sometimes, you need monsters," Di replied. "to stop monsters. I'm not saying everything they did was okay, I'm just saying that fighting our common enemy would be a better idea than tearing ourselves apart because not all of us are perfect. Daddy said-"

"Everything comes back to your daddy, doesn't it, Tiara?" the pipsqueak snapped. "The world, the kingdom, and especially this mission all come back to your daddy, to how you hate being in his shadow. That's all this is, you playing reporter to try to get out of your dad's shadow, to make yourself be seen as something other than 'the Rich brat.'"

She was too stunned to stop Di from turning on the pipsqueak in anger. "Shut up," she growled.

"Or what?" the pipsqueak mocked. "You'll go crying to daddy? Pay someone else to fight your battles for you? Ask your fellow monsters," she jerked a thumb at the Sirens. "to make me stop?"

"Scootaloo, please," the loser pleaded. "Would Rainbow Dash be proud of what you're doing?"

"Standing up to a bully?" she shot back. "Yeah, I think she would be."

"By becoming a bully yourself?" Di retorted. "Yeah, she'd be real proud of you, Scootaloo."

The pipsqueak's face darkened. "As proud as all your 'friends' are of you," she spat. "Proud of their friend, Filthy Rich's spoiled brat."

The pipsqueak had crossed the line.

And pushed Di over her's.

"At least I," she calmly, too calmly, replied. "know the parents I'm the brat of."

Then the pipsqueak sprang up, and Di was down in the dirt, trying to roll with the pipsqueak's punches, but there were too many to roll with. One hit her nose and blood spattered the clearing. Another smacked the loser's hand away, stopping him from interfering. The psycho's dagger flashed, preparing to pick up where he'd failed.

Before she could, Di slipped out from under the pipsqueak and sent her sprawling with a shoulder check. The pipsqueak stumbled out of the hollow, then kept stumbling, a stumble that quickly turned into a run.

She's abandoning us, Silver realized as her jaw dropped. She flinched as she heard the consequences of the pipsqueak's choice hiss near her ear, then spiral away into the night. They heard a grunt of pain, but then nothing but footsteps and brushed-aside foliage, both growing fainter and fainter.

"Nobody else," the psycho snarled, drawing another dagger. "be an idiot." Before any of them could reply, she darted away in pursuit.

Di stared after her, lost, while the loser stood up and began treating her injuries. Spacey, meanwhile, stared eagerly after her sister, ears pricked for sounds of the hunt.

"Monster-hunting."

On the one hand, Di was right, sometimes you needed a monster to fight a bigger monster. On the other hand, were they sure that the Unmarked were really the bigger monsters? Murdering at least two people and enslaving who-knew how many more was pretty high on the Monster Meter, after all. The Unmarked were, for all their impressive words, just another gang trying to get what they wanted by intimidation, no different than Sunset. (The old Sunset, she hastily corrected herself.) Was any gang, even one that treated people as atrociously as Guilden, really worse than murdering slavers?

One of those slavers returned, alone; looked like the pipsqueak escaped, something Silver wasn't sure if she should be happy about or afraid of.

The psycho stormed back into the hollow, looming over Di. To her friend's credit, after an initial flinch, Di managed to meet her gaze, expression at least somewhat even.

"Thanks to that stunt you pulled," the psycho spat. "your little idiot friend managed to escape. And, judging by the fact that I didn't find the knife I threw, now she's armed. I'm down one hostage and up an armed enemy, and one with more courage than sense by the looks of it. All thanks to you deciding that now was a good time to prove that you can't resist a kid's goading."

Di didn't flinch. Neither did she, thankfully, talk back; she seemed to be recomposing herself, rebuilding her rationality after the pipsqueak tore it down. That was good; everything about the psycho said she was looking for a place to vent, not a response.

"You know," the psycho inhaled. "I'm starting to wonder if Adagio was right, if the capable should rule over the incompetent, unbelievably stupid commons. Not out of entitlement, but because you imbeciles would probably burn yourselves to death without us guiding you."

She exhaled heavily. "We can't risk falling asleep here, shorty knows where it is. We make for Captain Armor, or where he's going to arrive at least. And," she added, reaching into her pack and pulling out a length of rough rope. "since I can apparently only trust you to chase deep-sea sparks and kill each other, I'm going to have to take measures to make sure you follow."

Di flinched at the sight of the rope, and the loser stepped forward. "Sister doesn't like me," he told the psycho. "Hurt me, and it'll only help your-"

Squeaking in surprise, he watched as the psycho lashed a tight knot around his hands, binding them together. Feebly, he tried to free himself, but to no avail; the knot was tight, and the psycho had barely left him enough rough to move his fingers.

Dragging him behind her, the psycho stomped over to Di, roughly grabbed her hands, then tied a similar knot around them. Finally, with one of the rope's ends, she turned on Silver, gripped her with a hand like iron, then lashed a vice-like knot around her hands.

Silently ordering her sister to help, she fixed their packs on their backs and dragged them to their feet, leading them like a line of chained dogs. "The knots only come off when I'm sure you can't do anything extremely stupid," she said. "If they make any of you fall, let that be a reminder not to be stupid in future. Come on," she yanked on their leash. "We've got ground to cover."

---

They were down to five, though not the way she'd expected. Now, with the pace the psycho was setting, she was wondering when they'd get knocked down to four.

Spacey forged their path, a path that the pitch-black and overgrown Midnightwood made rather hard to follow, especially at the almost-flying pace the psycho set. Silver'd lost track of the number of times she, Di, or the loser had fallen before being dragged upright by the psycho or her sister. Any pleas to slow down or rest for the night went unheeded, primarily because they went unvoiced; though she seemed calmer now, nobody wanted to risk angering the psycho.

And yet, Silver actually found that she didn't hate the change of pace; being forced to focus on the terrain, trying to see through the impenetrable night, meant that she wasn't thinking about Guilden's death, the loser's revelations, the psycho's crimes, Di's willingness to work with a monster, the pipsqueak's betrayal, Di's willingness to help a monster, the Unmarked, Di trying to help the psycho kill the Unmarked, Di, Di, Di...

A crow screamed in her face, flying straight at her as their tramping startled it. She ducked, tripped, and then found her wrists burning as she was dragged back to her feet. Shaking her head, she turned from the darkness inside her head to the darkness outside of it, trying to find her way through the dark wood.

Eventually, they tripped one too many times, and the psycho called a halt for the night. There was no fire and no special meal for Di ("If you want that, maybe next time think before doing something stupid") and the psycho didn't let them setup the tents, but at least the knots came off, and after the pace she'd set Silver could've fallen asleep on a rock.

As she was gnawing on the rocks they called food, the psycho stood up, hand white-knuckled around her blade. "I'm going off to think," she said, her voice flat. "Don't follow me, and definitely don't try to mimic me. You'll probably get yourselves hurt. Rest up; we've still got a ways to go." Before any reply could be made, she melted away into the forest's shadows.

"You should listen to her," spacey whispered after she disappeared. "She knows what to do in situations like this; Ari's been telling me what to do ever since the Unmarked took Dagi and we're both fine."

"Are you?" the loser whispered back, throwing a meaningful glance at her bandaged hand.

Spacey winced. "That was my fault," she replied. "I thought that they were all asleep. I should've listened to Ari; 'Don't bite off more than you can chew, Sonata. A song can only affect so many people.' I thought I could sing to all four of them, but I guess the last one was too far away to hear me. Ow!" She clutched her hand to her chest with a grimace. "Yeah, you all should listen to Ari; it hurts a lot less."

"All four of them," the loser murmured. "Four of the Unmarked?"

Spacey nodded with a ghoulish smile. "One of them was one of the ones who took Dagi, too," she purred. "He won't be stealing anymore sisters for a long, long time." Eyes widening, she covered her mouth with a squeak, then mumbled, "Mmmhmmhmmhmmhmm."

"What?" Di raised a brow.

"Mm?" spacey blinked, before looking down at her hand, humming in realization, and uncovering her mouth. "Sorry," she sheepishly smiled. "Forgot that was there. Anyway, please don't tell Ari that I told you about the Unmarked. I don't think she wants you to know."

"Why?" Di asked. "You heard me earlier, I'm all for fighting the Unmarked. What Starlight did to that guy we found, to your sister..." She clenched her fist, before glaring at spacey. "We can't allow her to get away with that. We have to bring her and her minions to justice."

"I know," spacey replied, nervously shifting. "and Ari knows, too. But you heard the orange one, she thinks that fighting the Unmarked like we've been makes us monsters, and, and..." She bit her lip, looked around cautiously, then leaned in closer and whispered, "... I don't think Ari wants to be a monster."

Could've fooled me, Silver bit back a snort.

Di failed to do the same. "You do remember how she threatened us, right?"

"That's trying to be in control," spacey shook her head. "Ari threatened you so that you'd come with us, not because she likes threatening people." (Again, Silver swallowed a snort.)

"Then why not try to talk to us?" the loser asked. "Try to make us understand why we should come with you?"

"She hates you," spacey simply replied. "Dagi and I, we didn't really mind losing at the Battle of the Bands; sure, we lost our heartstones, but that was because you were stronger than us. We should have lost. Ari, though... she wanted to try to get revenge, try to get our heartstones back or at least make you understand how painful losing them was." She sadly twined a lock of hair around her finger. "That's actually how Starlight was able to find us; Dagi didn't want to risk Ari trying to get revenge on you, so she took us out east. It wasn't easy, especially without our magic, but it felt right, in a way. It felt like one of Ari's old hunting trips back in Charybdis, us three against the wild." She clenched her fist. "And then Starlight attacked."

"And Aria decided that she hated Starlight," the loser murmured. "more than she hated us."

"Wait," Di furrowed her brow. "If you don't hate us because of the Battle, why do you hate Starlight for kidnapping Adagio?"

Spacey looked taken back by that question, and fumbled for an answer for several moments. Eventually, she snapped her fingers and replied, "Because at least you didn't take my sister away from me."

Silver prepared to press on the obviously-fake reason, but the loser took her initiative, asking, "Why do you think Aria doesn't want to be a monster? Before she burned Guilden's body, she said that Scootaloo was right about her being one."

"Because she knows that people are scared of monsters," spacey replied. "and because she knows that she is one."

The loser's eyes widened. "And she doesn't want to be," he gasped. "She knows she's a monster, and she doesn't want to be one, and-and..." He fell silent, eyes bulging. Turning them back on spacey, he asked, "Did she ever have any minions?"

"No," spacey shook her head. "She had some criminals work under her sometimes, but she always freed them when they were done. Come to think of it," she put a finger to her lip. "she never really seemed comfortable with Dagi's minions, either. If she wanted something done, she would try to do it herself. Why?"

"Was holding minions common?" the loser asked, animated by... something. "Were you outliers in Charybdis or part of a pattern?"

"Not everyone was rich enough to have a minion," spacey replied hesitantly, looking vaguely unsettled. "but most of the people we swam in the schools of did. I mean, it makes sense; we were the strong in society, why shouldn't the strong command the weak? That's the way it is in nature, it's only natural for us."

"Just like being a monster is," the loser mumbled, a worrying fire in his eyes. "Just like forgiving us for the Battle is. It's natural, but... I need to talk with her."

"Bad idea," spacey shook her head. "Scootaloo and the pink one made her really, really mad. If you don't want to die, you'd better let her cool down before trying to talk to her."

The loser slumped, but nodded. Looked like they wouldn't be knocked down to four tonight, thankfully.

Then Di yawned, and the weariness of the day came crashing back down on them. The loser asked spacey to wake him up when the psycho came back, if she seemed calm, and after she agreed promptly passed out. Di quickly followed him, and Silver slipped away after her, too weary for her worries to keep her up.

---

She was back in Di's office, ushering the CMC in.

Something's wrong.

Di makes her offer; the pipsqueak accepts, the squeaker hesitates, and the hillbilly shakes Di's hand eagerly.

CHS goes up in angry flames.

Something's wrong.

Di whistles. Six, all armed, step forward.

Something's very wrong.

The first knife falls, and then one becomes twelve, the demon bleeding out in the snow.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

She turns to look at Di, but her cry dies in her throat; it's her oldest friend's face, but Adagio's eyes and wicked smile. They hold up Di's coin, one side scratched out, one side a grinning skull, and purr, "Two sides..."

Then she feels the fangs in the corner of her mouth and whispers in horror, "... same coin."

Comments

[Eroraf86]

Well, that ending came out of nowhere. I'm sure Di's Heel Realization won't have any negative repercussions...

[FanOfMostEverything]

For goodness sake, Silver, people other than Diamond Tiara have names. Hopefully part of her nightmare includes recognizing her own tendency to dehumanize everyone but her best friend.

Also, here’s hoping Scootaloo doesn’t ruin everything. Nor anyone else. This plan just keeps getting worse…

[RangerOfRhudaur]

11034715
Yeah, it was a bit sudden, sorry. Also, it wasn't Di's Heel Realization in the dream, it was Silver's, her subconscious forcing her to confront what she's been trying to suppress this chapter; the fear that, underneath her veneer of refinement, Di's really a monster, symbolized by Adagio. And if Di's really a monster, and she and Silver are two sides of the same coin...

[RangerOfRhudaur]

11035113
Oh, don't worry, she's not dehumanizing them, she's just insulting them. She knows they have names, and she knows what those names are, it's just that, in the safety of her own mind, she refuses to hold her acid tongue back.

Yeah, at this point Di's plan is basically the "This is Fine" meme on steroids. Hopefully Sonata's right and Aria can keep three more children alive...