“Why did you absorb so much from her, you idiot?!” Uni yelled at Bill.
The dream demon flinched a bit from the rage his pawn displayed. He felt frightened by those words. Uni was already stronger even without his help so it felt like he was talking to an old foe from his past. He couldn’t have controlled how much magic he siphoned off Fluttershy. It just happens. And if he didn’t, Sunset would’ve surely finished them by now.
Uni helped Fluttershy before she was able to stand on her own. She nodded, assuring him that she was alright now. He then checked her bracelet to see it was just fine as well. He then took a deep breath before he calmed down.
“I’m sorry for yelling” he apologized to the demon. “I was…I was just upset about how much you absorbed from her. I know you did what you had to do just for us to avoid getting caught by Sunset”
Bill flew over to Uni to check on him. He put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. Uni appreciated the gesture. Bill was not one to be very caring about his pawns or hosts, but he valued Uni as a friend rather than a pawn.
“I’ll try to absorb a little less from her next time if that helps”
The boy nodded. “That would be nice”
The demon noticed that the boy wasn’t being himself at the moment. “Hey, are you messed up about the orange girl back there?”
Uni nodded. “I deceived her, Bill. She and I were very close, even before I met you. I lied to her about what happened and now she’s also upset about how I’m the reason she got banished here in the first place. I don’t really blame her, but that is just…You trust someone so much until you realize all they said was a lie and you’ll…you’ll…”
Bill nodded as he gently pat his back. “Well, I was rooting for you two”
Uni smiled softly before going back to the main idea at hand. “We better get ready. But don’t take so much at once. We need her alive”
“I know. It’s too bad though she’ll only follow what you say. If I give her a command, she won’t listen”
“I was the one who made the deal with her so, therefore, it’s my word she’ll follow”
Bill groaned slightly. “Oh well”
Uni then got Fluttershy to come to him. “We better find Sunset and the others before they find any help to stop us”
Bill laughed. “You’re not actually worried, are you?”
“I kinda am! And with good reason” he eyes the entranced Fluttershy cautiously. “She has so much magic stored up in her just from contact with an object of Equestria alone. How much more magic if the others team up and use their own magic against us? It’s two against five!”
Bill only laughed. “Oh, Uni, you really don’t get it, do you? Sunset’s strong with the magic she has from just being a born citizen from the source, but she hasn’t controlled it fully yet. The others only have half of what our little pawn has! Even that will not be enough to stop them!”
“You sure stay positive in the face of danger”
“Ah, yes” Bill put a hand on Fluttershy’s head and took some of her magic. “Besides, they don’t know how to really defeat me. Even with how powerful their magic is, they won’t have the right resources to beat me. They’ll all just end up as our little friend here”
Fluttershy stumbled slightly, but caught herself. Uni got a bit worried.
“Let’s go get that bacon-haired girl” Bill laughed as he and Uni prepared to leave the house with Fluttershy.
Bill was getting excited to be out for once, and not just viewing from within Uni’s mind. It had been so long since he moved about on his own. But just as they were about to approach the door and leave, three voices rang out. They sounded like they were singing. Before he or the boy with him could figure out what was happening, an aura with a mix of orange, purple, and blue surrounded them all.
“What?! What’s going on?!” the demon yelled.
“You’re not doing this?!”
“No, are you?”
“No!”
They closed their eyes as a white light enveloped their sight. Once it died down, they opened their eyes to see what was going on. They suddenly found themselves in the track field of Canterlot High, a huge forcefield right above them. Uni tried using his own magic to break it, but he couldn’t. They were trapped in.
Bill groaned. “Okay, who else is here?”
“I still find it hard to believe” Twilight spoke after Sunset and the girls filled her in the details of what had happened. She arrived shortly after they got to Canterlot High, and Spike came along with her. She was still pretty surprised to see Bill in the barrier area that the Sirens had set up.
“Believe me, it’s hard for some of us too” Sunset assured.
“You mean to tell me that some demon that the Sirens knew is currently using your friend and also has control over Fluttershy and plans to use her Equestrian magic to destroy the world?”
“Yep” Pinkie spoke.
“And Fluttershy gained more magic just because my crown hit her literally in the head?”
“Couldn’t understand how” Rainbow shrugged.
“And this demon…”
“Bill Cipher” Rarity pointed out.
“…Bill Cipher is now trapped in the track field of Canterlot High while we’re out here in the main entrance?”
“Eeyup” Applejack mimicked her brother.
“Um, guys, no offense but, how do we beat this guy? Without Fluttershy, the Elements of Harmony are useless!” Spike pointed out.
“You won’t need the Elements” Adagio spoke up as she appeared on the scene. “Sorry it took so long. Sonata power feeds and she really loves those tacos. Anyway, let’s go. She and Aria are currently at the track field as we speak”
The girls stood up and followed Adagio as she led them to the place. They were quite surprised with how Adagio was acting towards them. She and her Sisters were helping them, after what they had done? They literally just destroyed their only main source of power and yet they are helping them?
“Why are you guys doing this?” Rainbow asked suddenly.
“Hmm?” Adagio looked back.
“Not that we’re ungrateful or anything, but why are you helping us after our last encounter? We literally destroyed your pendants!”
The Siren just smiled. “We don’t hold grudges for long, especially with Sonata around. Those pendants were pain in the necks and they corrupted our thinking anyway. And if we let Bill get his way, we’re all doomed”
Rainbow nodded while the others also understood. They soon reached the track field area. As said, Bill was inside with Uni, trying to find a way to get out. Beside the boy was a hypnotized Fluttershy, who began to look rather tired. Bill was glaring at Sonata, who was singing to keep the barrier in place. Aria stood beside her, with two other people. They were Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna. She held some sort of compass in her hands.
“How did you get them to come over?” Adagio asked Aria upon approaching.
“I just told them it was urgent over the phone” she then turned to the others. “Yes, we had their phone numbers”
“How’s Sonata?”
“She was hard to get in letting her eat her tacos, but she sprung to work almost immediately after her last bite. Right now, she’s giving the field everything she has”
“I’m gonna make you proud, Dagi!” the baby blue Siren called as she kept the field up via singing.
“Oh, Sonata” she chuckled at her youngest sister’s antics before she turned her attention back to the middle one. “Do you have it?”
Aria nodded, handing her a spray can with black paint.
“Ready, girls?” the eldest Siren called to her sisters.
Sonata and Aria nodded. Aria got in a sprinting position infront of where Fluttershy was. When Adagio counted to three, Sonata shut her mouth for a second and Arai sprinted to where Fluttershy was. She quickly picked up the caretaker and ran out of the track before Uni or Bill could stop her. The baby blue Siren then reclosed up the barrier as the purple one set Fluttershy down. She then had to try and calm her down as the yellow one tried to get to Sonata.
“Okay, first things first, snap her out of whatever mind control that one-eyed freak and his pawn have over her” the middle sister commanded as she tried to hold the girl from the back with her arms. “She really has a lot of magic. I wonder how she was able to hide it”
“Let me go!” the yellow girl yelled as she tried to free herself from the Siren’s hold. “I must free Master!”
“Huh, different eyes with a bracelet and calling the controller Master” Adagio mused. “Now that is complete brainwashing”
“Snap her out of it!” Aria yelled as she tried to dodge the hands the yellow girl threw at her.
Sunset and the others then approached the angry caretaker. Her eyes once shone with kindness and timidity, but now they only reflected anger and control. She even tried kicking Aria from behind, but the Siren was just trying her best to swallow the pain.
“Fluttershy, darling, please calm down, and do stop being a mind controlled puppet to Uni and Bill” Rarity tried.
“Let me go!”
Aria wasn’t amused. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
“Hey! Fluttershy! It’s me, Rainbow Dash!” the blue girl yelled at the girl, causing her to focus her attention to her. “Why don’t you cut the hypnosis act and go back to normal?”
Fluttershy glared at her at first, before she closed her eyes. At first, they thought she was going back to herself. But when she opened them, her eyes widened with an angry stare. She directed it entirely at Rainbow. The blue girl flinched and seemingly turned paler than a ghost when she saw it. She then walked away like a zombie with eyes widened and pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks.
“Ah yes, the Stare” Pinkie mused. “The one thing other than her magic that is very powerful. She mostly only uses it on her animals if they ever go mean”
“You don’t wanna know what I saw back there” Rainbow shivered in fear as she hid behind Applejack.
Bill laughed so hard he was back flipping in the air. “This is how you actually treat her? No wonder she didn’t hesitate so much when Uni offered her the deal”
“What do ya’ll mean?” Applejack asked while she tried to calm Rainbow down.
“Ah, this is rich” Bill wiped a single tear from his eye. “Don’t you get it? Uni here managed to cement his control by being an actual friend to her. He supported her, helped her with her fears, even defended her from a punk. Heck, he was even there when she was so scared. Look at how you treat her. With yelling and getting angry like that, as well as not minding how she acted like a maid, I question why she still cares about you. Well, cared, since she doesn’t anymore!”
Uni nodded. “All I did was show her I was her friend and she could trust me and she just pledges loyalty to me. I bet if I let her out of that state right now, she’d still side me and Bill. Come to think of you, you barely even cared about her. She told me on one occasion that she was suffering from massive headaches and would sometimes be called in sick. The Equestrian magic in her was eating at her due to how much there was. I asked her why she didn’t tell anyone about this and you wanna know what she told me?”
Bill then held Uni’s hand before another memory was shown. This had Uni and Fluttershy in it. They were sitting on a bench in the mall with Uni putting an icepack on her head.
“I don’t want them to be worried” Fluttershy spoke softly as the coolness of the ice calmed her head. “They are busy anyway. I don’t want to be a bother”
The memory then went away as Bill and Uni parted hands. “See that? She told me she didn’t want to be a bother! You made her feel she was a burden! I don’t know how she put up with all that for so long, but I can tell that she did it alone! Some friends you guys are”
Everyone just stared at each other in disbelief. Rainbow spoke up. “Fluttershy, is this really how you felt?”
Uni nodded to the yellow girl. “Go ahead; tell them how you feel as honest as you could”
She growled at Rainbow before spatting venom. “You don’t even know the half of it! I never said anything because I know you would just brush me off anyway so I stopped even trying. On really bad days at home, I felt like the pain was going to kill me! Why do you think my parents moved in when I was absent on that Monday?”
They all stared at each other after she spoke. They each in their own way had taken Fluttershy for granted. She was sweet and kind, but also vulnerable. She never came to tell them about what she going through or how she was feeling because she feared it would disturb them. They never thought they were letting her suffer extreme pain all alone.
Rainbow stood back in disbelief. “Fluttershy…I had no idea”
“You had no idea? Have you ever wondered why I wasn’t around on our usual outings anymore? It’s because I was at home, trying to make the headaches go away. At one point, it was so severe I actually threw up blood. The animals were worried of course, and so was my mother. They didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t either. There was no end to stop it. You ever even asked, let alone noticed”
They noticed her voice sounded like it was cracking. There was a redness in her eyes apart from the scarlet pupils. She was crying. This was not a brainwashed Fluttershy compelled to lie about how she truly felt. This was their Fluttershy telling the truth about what went on. She was hurt.
“The only one who I could talk to other than Master was Sunset” the yellow girl tried to hide the hurt. “They listen. They care. But you don’t. I highly doubt you would even if I jumped off a ten story building to make it all end”
They couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They had let this poor girl suffer in silence. She never told them what went on with her because she feared she would be a burden. They left her to suffer all alone.
“Oh Fluttershy” Rainbow bent down to meet the caretaker’s gaze. “I should’ve just listened. Hehe, I’m supposed to be leader of this group while Twilight’s away, but I can’t even keep an eye on all my friends. I was so caught up in my own fame that I didn’t realize one of my friends were suffering”
Fluttershy glared at her, ready to use the Stare again when the others came up.
“I’m a terrible best friend, aren’t I?” Rarity spoke up. “I should’ve known something was wrong when you started to act more hospitable than normal, but I was just too caught up with a love life”
“I can’t believe I actually yelled at you like that, and threw your sandwiches away like they were garbage” Pinkie laughed weakly. “I’m the real meanie, aren’t I?”
“Ah should’ve been the more observing one, but even I got too caught up with the competition” Applejack took her hat off and put it to her chest to express her apologies.
Fluttershy started to listen to them as they spoke to her. Bill and Uni were just unimpressed. They had full confidence that she wouldn’t listen to them.
Rainbow then made the caretaker face her. “But I’m the absolute worse. I’m supposed to be like a role model and big sister to those kids at the track team. But I can’t even do that to the one I actually considered as my sister. All that time I was bragging and showing off you were in the dark. I can’t imagine what you went through. But I can tell it wasn’t pretty”
Fluttershy bit back tears when those words settled in. She thought of her as a sister? She always thought she was viewed as only a friend and lyricist. Uni’s hold on her was weakening from the words. She looked away to avoid letting them see her tears.
“Now you act as if you actually care! They only ever do once it’s too late! You never cared back then, who’s to say you care right now? You’ll just leave me again when this is over anyway! Just stop…go away…please…”
Rainbow leapt forward and held Fluttershy in a tight embrace. Aria saw she could let go now and she did to provide some space. The yellow girl flinched and did not move as her eyes widened from shock. Rainbow never hugged her, even for assurance.
“If I actually listened and knew what was going on, I would’ve never let this happen! I took you for granted. This is all on me. But I don’t want you to hurt anymore. I’m so sorry, Fluttershy. We all are. Please forgive us. I’ll never let you feel like a burden or shadow again. I promise”
Fluttershy felt her tears stream down. She could feel Rainbow was crying too. She knew they were no crocodile tears. She really meant it. She returned the embrace as she sobbed into her shoulder. As the tears streamed down, Uni’s hold on her went with them. The bracelet stopped glowing, lost its grip on her wrist, and dropped to the ground as her eyes returned to their normal cerulean. The others looked on, tearily.
“You gotta be kidding me!” Bill and Uni yelled at once.
Fluttershy soon calmed down. She and Rainbow then faced each other again. The blue girl smiled at her, which was returned.
“I’ll never leave you again”
They soon returned their attention to Adagio. The eldest Siren then took the spray can and bent down onto the ground infront of Bill. She then turned to Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna. “We’ll clean up afterwards”
They nodded their approval.
The oldest Siren then shook the can before she started to spray with it on the ground. Everyone watched to see what she was doing. It was also at that moment did Bill stop yelling at Sonata for her to stop. He looked over at where her eldest sister was. Uni looked over as well, clearly mirroring how scared the demon was. Adagio soon finished what she was spraying and stood back before letting the others see what it was.
It was a giant circle that had two layers. The second and inner layer was larger and had a picture of Bill in the center. There were ten symbols in the thinner, outer layer. From clockwise, they were a question mark, a bag of ice, a crescent moon, a pine tree, a star with an eye in the center, a hand with six fingers, a lama, a shooting star, a stitched heart, and a pair of glasses.
“Umm, Adagio, what is that?” Twilight asked.
“You don’t need the Elements to defeat Bill, you just need each other” the eldest Siren explained. “Aria, start determining the bearers”
The middle sister nodded as she pulled out the compass. It had the same ten symbols on its sides, but one arrow stayed on one symbol while the other kept moving until she found its match.
Aria then went around and pointed to each of the ten people with them to tell which area they had to go to. They were, as follows: Spike was the question mark, Rainbow the ice bag, Applejack bore the crescent moon, Rarity had the pine tree, Twilight took on the star with the eye, Pinkie had the hand with six fingers, Fluttershy took on the lama, Celestia had the shooting star, Luna was the stitched heart, and Sunset held the pair of glasses.
“Good, now hold hands together. When the circle is powered up, Sonata will let go of the forcefield and therefore the circle’s power will defeat Bill” Adagio commanded as she and Aria neared their youngest sister.
They all nodded before they all held hands while standing in their respective slices of the circle. A blue glow began to envelop them as the circle powered up from their presence. Bill and Uni were getting more and more anxious by the minute. They were both trying to break the forcefield down with the combined magic, but it was all in vain. Uni even tried to call to Fluttershy in a last ditch effort, but she didn’t budge as Rainbow kept giving her an assuring look. Soon enough, the circle powered up completely as they were engulfed in blue flames, before their power energized the symbols.
“NOW, Sonata!” Adagio called to her sister.
The youngest Siren then stopped her singing as the forcefield was brought down. Bill and Uni tried to escape, but they were both put into the circle as it held them down. Bill screamed as he began to weaken and Uni felt his own magic from the demon began to fade. The blue flames then trapped Bill down and put him forcefully into Uni’s mind. The boy fell unconscious as the flames died down.
Sunset got worried. “What happened? I thought you said it would banish Bill!”
“It will. There’s just one last step” Aria then took out a small gun-like object. She set it to ‘Complete Blank’ before pointing it at the unconscious Uni.
“What is that?”
“It’s a Memory Gun. We have to erase Uni’s mind with Bill in it to ensure the demon’s never coming back”
“Wait, what will happen to Uni?”
Aria gave her a look that said, I thought you know. Sunset closed her mouth with her hands at that. If this Memory Gun takes down Uni’s mind with Bill in it, then Uni will forget everything. She hated for that to happen. But under the circumstance, it looked like there was no other alternative. Closing her eyes tightly, she nodded her approval with a heavy heart.
Aria nodded before she shot it at Uni. A blue ray of light came from the gun and it was aimed at the boy’s head. Sunset couldn’t bear to watch, but had to.
Inside his mind, the demon was panicking as he knew what awaited him now. Uni himself had just been freed from his influence and punched the weakened Bill into nonexistence. He found a photo of him, Sunset, and her parents on a table nearby. He held it closely as the flames engulfed him.
“Thank you, Sunset”