“Who the hell are you? There’s nothing to steal here!”
By her side, Pinkie Pie sat up abruptly, and the sudden sound of a match resounded. Soon, the weak light of a candle illuminated the room. Far from being unnerved, the curly pink-haired young woman stared at the scene under her nose, blinking. The face in front of her looked a bit familiar…
“I’m not here to steal anything. My rifle’s only loaded with tranquilizers.”
That confession contradicted her earlier statement a little. If the bullets of her rifle was only filled with sedative drugs, it meant she wanted to lull someone to sleep. And kidnappings already were a kind of theft.
“Then, why are you darting you gun at my forehead?”
“Because you’re darting yours at my forehead.”
“You broke into my house!”
“I only want to talk with you.”
“Lower your gun and we’ll see about that.”
Nothing could tell Rainbow Dash the person in front of her was the kind to be trusted. A stranger, breaking into her house in the middle of the night in order to abduct one of them, if not all of them, wasn’t exactly fitting her definition of a reliable person.
Distrust at its highest, she shifted her position of a few centimeters, getting her legs out of her blanket, to sat up, never lowering her crossbow. They were in her territory. She wasn’t the one who had to take the first step, but that girl, whoever she was.
And she probably guessed the situation wouldn’t change one bit if she stuck to this tactic, since she lowered her rifle, after her eyes had wandered around her, as if looking for something.
“Now, we can talk,” said Rainbow Dash, with her own weapon still directed straight at her forehead. “Who are you?”
“Sunset Shimmer…”
The sound of a door, soon followed by Windy Whistles’ worried voice, stopped their premise of a discussion, and immediately, Pinkie Pie left the room in order to dash to the other room, to reassure her friend’s mother. And something told her she would better let those two talking in private.
Rainbow Dash shifted her position a little more, sitting right in front of Sunset Shimmer whose stiffness showed a hint of suspicions which could hardly leave her body.
“There’s no use waking up Mrs. Windy…”
The young woman’s magenta eyes opened wide, and she tensed even more, raising her crossbow against her shoulders.
“How do you know my mother’s name?”
“Twilight often talked about her.”
“Twilight? Like… my cousin, Twilight Sparkle?”
Sunset Shimmer nodded. Now she was sure she had all the young woman’s intention. She never meant to say the name that early in the conversation, but her plans had changed by necessity.
She wasn’t expecting, however, that the mention would trigger such a reaction of animosity. An arrow was ejected of the bow before she could do a single move in order to avoid it, and the tip of it brushed her cheek, while whistling in the air. A thin trickle of blood appeared on her face.
“Liar! Twilight has been reported missing at the end of the Uncivilized War! She’s probably dead right now. How on Earth could you know her?”
“I know her because we’ve been writing to each other for years.”
“Twilight was just like my sister, she used to tell me everything. Absolutely everything. And she never told me about you.”
“Everyone got an inner sanctum… I have proofs of what I’m saying.”
Slowly, Sunset Shimmer moved her hand to the bag she wore over her shoulder and over her leather suit and sand-sheltering cloak. Just like expected, Rainbow Dash raised her crossbow again, promising she would receive another arrow between her eyes if she tried anything suspicious.
From inside her bag, she took out some of the few letters she had been able to save and keep with her, although this was one of her most precious belongings, and she threw them on the blanket.
Her opponent lowered her eyes, confusion clear on her pale face. For the first time, Sunset Shimmer noticed the scar along her left eye, a vertical line, of a tired pinkish, as large as a match.
Rainbow Dash’s hand groped around the blanket, while with her other hand she tried to keep the threat that was her weapon effective, until she caught one of the letters, that she had to get out of the envelope with an imprecise ability.
It took a few seconds only for her to determine this wasn’t sheer bluff, a gamble to buy time or to fool her watchfulness. She could recognize Twilight’s handwriting, round, neat. It was the sign of a balanced personality.
As soon as she had finished to read, however, she immediately regained absolute control over her weapon. The fact she was a friend of her cousin didn’t explain why she was in her house, in the middle of the night, with a rifle loaded with tranquilizers.
Windy Whistles, along with Pinkie Pie, appeared on the doorstep, and asked her daughter whether everything was alright. Her friend probably had done her best in order to reassure her, but she was her mother, she couldn’t just wait in another room while she was defending their safety against a stranger.
“Everything’s fine, Mommy. Sunset Shimmer was precisely about to tell us why the hell she was here. Let’s be crystal clear… You might have written as many letters with my cousin as you want, it doesn’t mean I’m going to trust you based on the faith of your face.”
Especially as her own plan seemed to have been to lull everyone to sleep, to abduct Rainbow Dash and not to let her having a choice about her intervention in her “business”.
But now Sunset Shimmer could see how limited was her plan. It had worked with Soarin, since Soarin had nowhere else to go, while Rainbow Dash benefitted from a house and the semblance of a family. Nowadays, it was luxurious conditions for a former Military.
“I have an offer to make you. Or let’s rather say a proposition. A proposition which could probably change Equestria’s fate forever.”
“Maybe your friend and you could have a more civilized way to talk about it,” Windy Whistles suggested, walking towards her daughter. “I’m going to make tea. Oh, and don’t worry. Fluttershy hasn’t woken up.”
----------------------------------
From the depth of the antinuclear shelter, no window could indicate how late it was. And the truth was that there weren’t exactly clocks here. Austerity argued with a sticky sensation. Like chocking.
Each time he woke up from a restless sleep, Soarin could hardly go back to sleep. Though he had been told he could come and go as he wished inside the bunker, as well as among Canterlot’s rubbles, he felt as if prisoner of invisible chains.
He had been taken out of a place to be brought somewhere else. Thrown from hands to hands by others deciding of his own destiny. Because he had nothing left, because he was fed by the hope of seeing her again, he had accepted this forced fate. But did fate really give a chance to make your own choices?
If he thought too hard, his brain would be obstructed by so many worries his head would spin. And if he stayed lying in the bed of narrow dark room, the turn of things would be what he dreaded the most.
His feet got in touch with the cold of the concrete floor. The heat was scorching during days but when the sun went down, temperatures went down with it, so low it felt like living on another planet, where everything would be layered with ice.
Soarin suppressed a chill, however, he didn’t go back. A few seconds later, he was leaving his room in order to wander along the barely illuminated corridors leading to the many other rooms. Except Sunset Shimmer and himself, most of the other persons were sleeping into collective bedrooms. Piled up on mattress as thin as rice paper, with nothing but an emergency blanket to warm them up, they were sleeping surrounded by gas masks and supplies. The rest of the bunker had a room for the Angel powering it, the command post, that Soarin had never seen. The kitchen was at the upper floor, which was also used at as a break room, which was the place where he had woken up.
Little by little, he had learned what the inhabitants’ routine was – no male seemed to have survived the Butterflies’ attack. Applejack had been able to provide a field where most of them were working. It wasn’t as wide and fruitful as had been her family’s former geoplant farm but it was enough to give what was necessary to live. Its one and only apple tree offered a disturbing contrast with the ruins covered by red sand.
A semblance of society had been built, bit by bit, but they all knew if Butterflies attacked them again, all that would remain of the little they had constructed would be nothing but new rubbles.
A sound like sobs drew his attention. It couldn’t come from many places since it was clear the place wasn’t wide.
To be honest, in his opinion, it was rather understandable that someone would hide in order to cry, concealed from eyes. Canterlot’s inhabitants had always been proud people, praising emotional and physical strength. Waking up every day to confront with the scars of a long-lost past was an ordeal.
He would never have tried to intervene nor to dare looking. But even before he realized what he had witnessed through the small glassy frame of the command post’s door, he knew it was too late.
Nobody was crying.
Applejack was sitting in front of the machines, her head against the seat’s back, her both arms above her head. Rarity had leaned over, and they seemed to be cheek to cheek. Just by the look on their faces and the voluptuous sound from out of their lips it was easy to guess what was going on here.
Frozen, no longer daring to go nor stay, scared he would be noticed, Soarin could feel his cheeks heating up. And suddenly, these sighs brought him back to other sighs, hoarser.
“You’re too serious, Soar’… Try to chill out a little sometimes…”
Her slightly thick laugh was like resounding in his ears again, and he opened his eyes wide, filled with the mirage of her figure materializing in front of him.
He shook his head, overwhelmed by the illusion, and took a step back. His shoulder blades got in touch with the wall behind, which immediately distracted the two girls of the command post.
“Shit! He saw us!”
His first reaction was a desire to escape, but Rarity had already opened the door and called him. Acting as if he hadn’t heard, running away, would have been the easiest solution. And, in his mind, the definition of impoliteness. The least he could do was to apologize for playing peeping toms, although it had never been his attention.
“I… I… Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“Let’s talk ‘bout it upstairs”, Applejack decided, while tucking the tips of her pajama shirt inside her shorts.
In the first floor’s kitchen, Rarity prepared cups of herbal tea while the young blond woman was busy clearing the table, still overloaded. This all was done in the most religious of silence.
Soarin was still feeling very embarrassed by the quick images he had seen. They quickly have been replaced by illusions that were true to life but it didn’t matter. In all likelihood, he had been at the outpost of a secret.
“Ya have to understand”, Applejack started. “Canterlot no longer has male inhabitants and we’re only human. There’s nothing wrong ‘bout natural desires.”
“For lack of another alternative, we make do with who we have in hand, as they say. It’s not really a choice. Because we don’t have any choice.”
“And… Maybe it’s stupid but emotions like these help ya to feel yar still alive, if ya know what Ah mean…”
He knew. Now that shame was starting to fade away, the logic of this all, irrefutable, was even truer. Human beings couldn’t change, neither could their own nature, just because the atmosphere was different. They were adapting themselves and that was all.
“No one would dare talking about it, but most of the girls here do it too. It’s some sort of open secret.”
“Eeyup. Once Ah caught Lyra and Bon Bon in a way more embarrasin’ situation than ours.”
“But…”
Rarity’s false lighthearted tone suddenly darkened, such as a ghostly shadow passing by a blinding light. Her head low, she was staring at the table, or maybe at the brown liquid in her hands, her fingers clenched around her cup.
“If things remain this way, Canterlot will soon be lost forever. A balance has been broken when we lost the last men of our small community. Getting comfort into each other’s arms won’t help us much. If we can’t procreate anymore, we’re going to die and the sand will wipe out our Ghetto forever.”
“Except if we have the chance to get new Angels, and so the migrating population would settle there to help us buildin’ everythin’ again. This is another one of Sunset Shimmer’s reason to try to fight the Hive’s Butterflies.”
In all honesty, his own opinion about Sunset Shimmer had never been really good until then. He saw her as a paradoxical person, a mix of benevolence and brutality, fighting for praiseworthy yet a bit blurry motivations. He always suspected she actually had something to hide and that she had another plan in mind, a plan she kept to herself.
With this new explanation, Soarin could see things from a different perspective. The future of the Ghetto once called Canterlot was her prime purpose. Saving the other Ghettoes and human gender from a great evil was nothing but a significant bonus, the short-term aim to make sure another goal would eventually be reached.
-----------------------------
The situation was dire. The other Ghettoes had no idea what the Hive’s Leader was up to, and had chosen not to care, anyway. Through her speech, Sunset Shimmer hoped she sounded desperate enough to get help from Rainbow Dash.
The latter had remained impassive through her whole summing up. Except hints of distrust, nothing had gone through her staring magenta eyes.
It appeared that her initial plan, breaking into her house in order to abduct her, hadn’t been her best idea, and now she realized it fully. However, she was confident that what she just had set forth was highly important, a hallmark of absolute necessity.
She had to be convincing when asking her to join their improvised army. She didn’t have the choice.
“No.”
Rainbow Dash had just hammered her answer without the least wavering and an unequivocal coldness. She was so definite it seemed like even her mother and her friend Pinkie Pie had been surprised.
Sunset Shimmer was feeling as knocked out as after a fall.
Without Rainbow Dash, they were lost. Each and every of them. She was the only one who knew how vehicles and guns created by Twilight were working. After the end of the war, and the destruction of the Ghetto’s fortifications, no Master of Elements had accepted to stay in Canterlot. Those who weren’t dead had either been abducted or had taken refuge in the Underworld. The others were living at a hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away, in other Ghettoes.
She had to find a way to change her mind. If no one did anything, another war would take place and this one would be easily won.
It was out of question they would ask help from the Underworld's leader. The other Ghettoes didn’t know it existed and their main goal precisely was to live in secrecy.
Already, Rainbow Dash was standing up, ready to go back to bed, although her mother was trying to convince her to think things through.
But, as solid as a rock, she didn’t seem to want to reconsider her answer.
“When we came here, I promised to myself to stay away from this kind of madness, and that I shall never again fight for anyone else than my family or myself. I won’t go back on my words. There’s no Angel here, and nothing to claim ownership of. What you say has nothing to do with us. You can sleep here, if you want to, there are mats upstairs, but you’ll have to be gone in the morning.”
Though with the Uncivilized War, her exchange of letters with Twilight had turned more sporadic, Sunset Shimmer knew Rainbow Dash had been in the firing line on the front, witnessing the death of many of her friends and acquaintances. And if she didn’t know what had become of her once the battles were over, she realized she might have been through terrible things afterward.
It took her months and months of investigation before she was able to find where she had gone at the end of the conflict.
It was no accident if she had chosen to take refuge in this wild part of the continent, concealed from the rest of the world. In a way, Sunset Shimmer could understand why she was so stubborn. It might feel like plunging her hands into dark waters and fish out corpses.
And yet… Yet, she was aware of the fact that they all were doomed now. Chrysalis wouldn’t hesitate not to get rid of them if she ever was able to access to Equestria’s supreme power. They would all be treated like traitors and hung high.
Rainbow Dash was at the threshold of the door – though there actually was no door – which was leading to the stairs, when one of her sentence struck Sunset Shimmer’s mind. Something she had just said. Her family and herself. Her family. Like a cousin, for example.
She sat up immediately, determined, and slammed her hands against the wood of the table in order to be sure she would get the young woman’s full attention. The latter turned around, raising an eyebrow.
“What if I told you Twilight Sparkle was still alive?”