No Escape

Sunset and Starlight were both enjoying an afternoon "out on the town" in Canterlot. If somepony were to look at them in exclusion of context, they would be indistinguishable from any other couple of young, rich, pretty mares indulging themselves in all of the finest in what the royal capital had to offer. In context, however, there was no mistaking the vibe they were giving off as a pair of playful thermonuclear warheads that everypony else in the city, including its most arrogant and self-absorbed snobs, were giving a considerable berth. Even Discord himself didn't inspire such fear with his presence alone as these two, although the staff of whatever business they decided to haunt were loyal enough to their jobs to actually provide service to them.

Consequently, there was absolutely no opportunity for the Royal Assassin to approach them with any degree of subtlety. The very act of doing so of his own volition without readily apparent external motivation was shockingly bizarre enough to warrant attention. Luckily, the only pony within a five mile radius who knew of his occupation was Sunset herself. To anypony else, he was just another forgettable Guard, minus the to-be-expected look of unmitigated terror that should have been hammered into his face at the very idea of having to deal with the two mares.

"Hey there, Princess Shimmer," the stallion began, betraying his uniqueness yet again.

Even though as Celestia's adopted daughter, Sunset Shimmer was more officially a princess than Blueblood was a prince, there was only one pony in the country who ever addressed her as such without the assistance of one of her mother's baleful glares. Despite the smooth, warm, and generally appealing voice of the assassin, Sunset's blood froze upon hearing it. She and Starlight had just been in the midst of laughing at the unfortunate and terrified waitress who'd brought each of them a parfait that probably had the mass of an entire pony. The sound of it reminded her of his frequent complaints of the upper class's abuses of the servants, which she was now taking part in.

"Caaarrd...." Sunset replied with a stapled-on smile. "Heyyyy buddy! Long time no see! How've you been?"

"Oh, hello!" Starlight chimed in, curious about the stallion with the balls to just walk up to the two of them. "It's unusual for Sunset to be informal with the Guard. I'm Starlight Glimmer! Pleased to meet you!"

"I've been alive." Cardiac Strike replied calmly as he hesitantly took her outstretched hoof in his own and immediately felt her attempt to read his mind smash into his defenses against such efforts like a tidal wave slamming against the face of a cliff. "And you won't be for long, Miss Glimmer. In fact, I'm sure you're about to hate me with every fiber of your being. As you have right to."

"O-kay!" Sunset cut in, not sure there was enough Canterlot to survive somepony setting Starlight off. As she spoke, her voice picked up an unstable cadence. "Let's not get any crazy ideas! Card, I know that you're like super tough what with the whole "surviving a train wreck" and all, but please don't piss off the pony who erased Discord's corporeal form!"

With that declaration, the tension that Card had been hiding suddenly intensified to the point of cracking his seemingly impregnable facade, then faded into the resignation of a pony with his hooves plastered to the tracks of an oncoming train.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your playdate, Princess. I know you have precious few enough of those. But this is something between Starlight and myself that demands resolution, and I'd just rather get it over with sooner rather than later."

"Mr. Card, we just met! What could we possibly-" Starlight's voice suddenly cut off as both she and Card simply disappeared as if some divine editor deleted them from existence. Sunset shuddered. No matter how many times she'd seen and even been included in them, Card's lightless, soundless teleports never failed to unnerve her. Especially since whenever he was trying to circumvent another pony's magical defenses, he tended to take a tiny amount of their immediate vicinity, leaving behind a noticeable "hole".

* * *

"-have... to... resolve?" Starlight drifted off as she soon found herself staring at a whole lot of nothing. Or at least, what somepony would call "a whole lot of nothing" if they were trying to describe the Badlands. She was totally perplexed by the instant relocation, since there was no blinding flash of light, no trademark "bamf" sound effect, or even a hint of palpable magic surrounding her. She was absolutely certain that her magical might dwarfed that of the mysterious Guard by a considerable margin, but somehow that wasn't enough to prevent him from forcibly teleporting her. And that was terrifying.

"Sorry about that, Miss Glimmer, but as somepony whose loyalty is to the well-being of Equestria, I find it absolutely necessary to keep potential collateral damage to its capital to a minimum." Card told her as he took off his golden helmet, dispelling the illusion that made him look like any other of the dark grey members of the Royal Assault Force. Instead, he had a pitch-black mane and a caramel coat, and his illusory spear-and-shield Cutie Mark was replaced with a card with a big heart in its center impaled by three daggers. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, mustering the courage to do something he dreaded more with each passing second.

"Okay... this is a lot to take in at once, Mr. Card! This uh... this wouldn't happen to be about something I did to you, or somepony you cared about, would it?" Starlight asked nervously, a thousand sins bearing down on her and making her wonder if she should let him kill her. Maybe she could find redemption in death that she couldn't in her actions, no matter how hard Twilight tried.

"No..." he replied sadly, and when he opened his golden eyes, she could see guilt in them comparable to hers. "This is about what I did to you and the ponies you care about."

Starlight was floored. Since when did the demons of her past come back to tell her that they were not of her own making? Thanks to Sunset, she was capable of at least accepting the idea of somepony other than herself doing something awful that they'd regretted once they were forced to see how awful it was, but she was still certain that her ideas of being a victim were just the products of an irrational filly blowing a minor difficulty wildly out of proportion.

"What..." Starlight felt her heart trying to crawl into her throat and swallowed it. "What did you do?"

"I sabotaged your relationship with Sunburst. I destroyed every letter either of you tried to send the other, and I misdirected you whenever you tried to meet in-pony."

Starlight screamed and unleashed a fair amount of the raw power she'd been struggling to contain ever since being "reformed". There was a blinding flash of light, forcing Card to close his over-sensitive eyes rather than focus on magical defense, not that it would have done him much good. When he opened them again, his ears were ringing with the promise of impending deafness, and he was staring at the sky from the bottom of a very deep crater. His entire body felt numb, which he was grateful for because he didn't want to imagine the pain he'd be in if it didn't. In moments, the mare's tear-streaked face was over his. He could feel her hate pouring down on him like the heat of the sun in this forsaken desert.

(The sky looks so far away...) He thought, seriously worried about his unsteady heartbeat and the fact that he couldn't hear himself breathing.

"Oh goody! You are alive. Now I don't have to resurrect you before I atomize you!" She shouted and stomped on his chest, forcing out a breath that he didn't know was trapped inside. He coughed and she levitated him out of the loose sand he'd been partially buried in. "But first! First you're going to tell me why!"

"I made a promise..." he replied, his voice no more than a loud whisper. "Sunburst's father, made me promise..."

"Why?" Starlight demanded again, not liking where this was going. Sunspot, like Starlight's mother Starlit Gleam, had both died in a train- Oh no. Sunset's words about Card's legendary durability echoed in Starlight's mind.

"Your mother..." Card struggled out, and was rewarded for it by being slammed into the ground by Starlight's telekinesis, eliciting another loud cough. Oddly, this seemed to extricate more clarity from the assassin. "Your mother is the one who wrecked the train fifteen years ago. She killed dozens of ponies, permanently disabled a pegasus filly, and nearly killed me in an effort to gain the power of an alicorn through blood sacrifice. I... I had to kill her to stop her. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

"You... you're lying!" Starlight shouted, slamming Card against the ground a few more times. "My mother may not have the best personality in the world, but there's no way she'd do something so evil!"

"Are you sure about that?" Card asked as he shook off her starfield and forced himself to his feet. "Is it really that strange to think that maybe some of your... unpleasant behavior might have been inherited?"

"HOW THE BUCK ARE YOU STILL ALIVE, LET ALONE STANDING?"

"I'm much stronger now than I was when your mother, who was more powerful than you, tried to kill me. But that's beside the point. I didn't do what I did to you and Sunburst in pursuit of revenge. I really hoped that cutting you off from one another might have stifled your toxic obsession." Card was glad that she was talking now and no longer attacking him, which gave him time to regenerate the numerous and extensive internal and external injuries her battering had given him. He just hoped that he'd not have his durability tested further.

"I LOVED HIM! MY WHOLE WORLD FELL APART WITHOUT HIM! EVERYTHING I DID WAS BECAUSE OF YOU! It's... it's all your fault..." she sobbed from more, then started focusing her magic again. Card was bracing himself for another battering, so he was unprepared for her sudden invasion of his mind.

"Wait, no! Don't! Please!" he thought-shouted, his words echoing around Starlight's astral form and being summarily ignored. "Wasn't being told bad enough? You don't want to see what happened, trust me!"