//------------------------------// // Unicorn Drama // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// Valey and Starlight had barely cleared the door out of the control tower base when a wall or arctic wind billowed out behind them, throwing the batpony off her hooves and forcing her to roll to catch Starlight and prevent her from suffering a worse crash. She grunted from the impact, the filly landing on top of her, and quickly started to struggle back upright. "Woah!" The two guards, who apparently hadn't left, jumped in alarm as the temperature in the room dropped noticeably, cold air laden with snowflakes drifting down the open shaft. "What the...?" One stuck his head in to look up. "Wouldn't do that if I were you," Valey croaked. "That's gotta be a hole to the outside. I knew those clueless unicorns were about to blow..." Flash! With a gigantic burst of sapphire, a crowd of nearly a dozen ponies haphazardly appeared, Shinespark at the center. Her horn was smoking, her eyes glassed over... and her legs gave out beneath her, and she hit the floor. All of the ponies with her were heavily armed, though one in particular stood out: he was a short, lithe unicorn, and had somehow gotten inside the helmetless shell of Braen's armor. A different stallion was instantly at Shinespark's side, propping her up as she tried to steady her heavy breathing. "See, Veralt?" He jabbed a hoof at the armored stallion. "She just teleported us all to safety! After we put ourselves in danger doing something she told us not to do! We should listen to her and go home! If anyone has the reputation to give everyone in Ironridge justice, it's her!" Valey blinked in alarm. More unicorn drama? Wonderful. She sank out of sight. "You forget yourself, soldier," Veralt rebuked, shaking his head. "It's not possible to be an ally to all of Ironridge when the city is at war with itself. Everyone is either for us or against us, and we can't take risks! Sosa is gone, and this is our one chance to show the upper districts what we've been feeling for the past ten years! I'm grateful that she saved us, but if she would do the same for our enemies..." "She also demanded that you give back Braen's armor, just like Grenada," a mare at his side added. She stomped a hoof. "Shinespark is a good mare, but this armor belongs to whoever is going to use it to fight to the end for Braen's cause! And Shinespark could never fill Braen's horseshoes." "Grenada...!" Gasping, Shinespark pushed away from the group of ponies, swaying unsteadily as she ran for the entrance to the decapitated control tower. "Where is she!? She made it out, right?" The two stallions who had been left behind to stand guard blinked at her, shivering. "Only ponies that came out this way were that bat and a filly," one offered with a shrug. The other bristled, suddenly searching the teleported group with a building panic. "Wait, we lost someone? We lost Grenada?" "Grrrrr..." Snarling, Shinespark tried to force her way up the stairwell, being pushed back down by the weight of the winds. "If we lost her, we can go on," Veralt consoled. "I'm prepared to fight on until I die, breaking this skyport with my bare hooves if I have to, and she should be honored that she died a similar death instead of retreating like I was afraid she would! As should you all! Leave Shinespark unless she tries to fight us; during peacetime she would be a paragonal mare and we should bear her no ill will! Let us find our next target and waste no more time here!" He turned to go, but Shinespark blocked the way, horn glowing and forelegs locked in a battle stance. "No!" she growled, teeth bared. "Braen was about inspiring ponies, not running them to their deaths in the name of destruction! That armor doesn't belong to you! Give it to me!" "Ba-da-boooom!" A chunky, double-chinned stallion to Veralt's side responded with the roar of a missile launcher, exactly the same make as Valey had borrowed in the Flame District. A rocket ignited, spewing a trail of magical flames as it streaked toward Shinespark. Her horn glowed brighter, catching the projectile in an envelope of telekinesis that also spread around her and hardened into a shield... but there was no stopping the missile's propulsion. It shoved against her and sent her sliding, shield and all, in an ever-accelerating arc toward a distant wall, where a fiery explosion removed her from sight. "Hey!" The mare who had spoken up in defense of Veralt earlier rounded on him, her own horn glowing and an energy weapon drawn. "You just killed Shinespark!" The missile stallion belched, but before he could answer Veralt stepped in front of him, extinguishing the mare's aura with a wisp of his own. "For us, or for our enemies. Right now, there's no such thing as both. If you've any moral reservations you haven't dealt with before following us this far, I suggest-" He was interrupted by a punch from a stallion carrying what looked to be a portable battering ram, Braen's armor protecting him but sending his staggering back. "You take that back!" the challenger roared. "Shinespark was the best thing to happen to any of the districts in the last twenty years!" The ponies didn't even have the chance to form lines. An open brawl devolved, the temperature in the room plunging even more as Valey swam furiously away toward the missile impact site, Starlight clutched tightly to her chest. There, from the edge of a slowly-clearing screen of smoke, Shinespark watched, the wall behind her dented from where her shield had impacted it, holding just long enough to protect her from the explosion that ensued. All around her, the glass walls and ceiling were cracked from the blast, leaking swirls of cold air that traced through the room and ruffled her mane as she shook, sobbing. "They're fighting over me," she choked as Valey surfaced in front of her. The air was clear enough that she could be seen from the brawl, but nobody cared. "For the past seven years, they've been my friends... the ponies I did the most to give hope... the ponies who needed it the most. And now they don't even recognize me..." "Ya think?" Valey looked sideways at her. "Maybe that has just a little to do with you telling them to their faces that the upper districts were ridiculously irredeemably bad and getting them to be all militant in the first place? Robbing convoys and stuff? You wanted a goon squad that thinks with their blasters, there it is." Shinespark buried her head in her hooves. "I told them what I had to to give them hope! We... We needed someone to take the weapons so we could keep the contract cycle going! I never thought it would come to this, where they'd get the chance to put it all into practice! I never meant for this to happen..." "Wow, famous last words, right there." Valey rolled her shoulders. "You know, the Spirit are... what, fifty ponies at best? Before the big bang at the dam? Out of the entire Earth District, which is like in the hundreds of thousands, or something? You could totally have just left these ones alone, settled for your ninety-nine-point-million percent success rate, kept the whole city just a little saner..." She lifted an eyebrow. "You kinda messed up, here." "Don't remind me..." Shinespark sniffled. "I was in charge of everything. Maybe I couldn't have stopped what happened at the dam, but everything else... this... Grenada..." Starlight coughed. "I can still hear them fighting, and it's cold here. Can we leave? Please?" Valey straightened up and glanced around. The missile had left them not far from a tunnel marked 'Atrium,' which ostensibly would have a way back to the Stone District. "Yeah..." Adjusting Starlight on her back, she took a step toward it. "I've said I'm done with this place so many times it's probably meaningless, but seriously, I want out of here. Sparky? You coming?" "What?" Shinespark blinked at her. "What's in it for...?" She swallowed. "Valey, why are you even here? You keep coming after me. You're fine leaving them behind, but not me..." She glanced back at the fight, which seemed to be gearing up as the remaining ponies took cover and dug in. "Why? You should hate me. I had the entire world given to me for free just because of when, where and to whom I was born. We've been on opposite sides of the city all our lives, and I've done nothing but make your life hard by making the Spirit and demanding scientific favors of you. And now I messed up with all the power I was given and made this..." She clenched her eyes. "I wish I had an easy route, or someone I could blame, or some way to just quit and leave... so why are you here for me?" Valey blinked. "You mean why am I trying to drag your rear out of this skyport in one piece instead of just saving myself?" She shrugged. "Hey, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf as anything other than the bad guy because the world says so. Maybe that means hanging out with ponies who are actually decent, but it definitely doesn't mean turning into some giant superhero and saving all of Ironridge. That's your job, hero." She jabbed Shinespark in the chest for emphasis. "Still, Ironridge kinda needs it, and I figure running away right now and being selfish... Well, I'm already gonna have to do a ton of thinking to live with myself after all this quiets down, and I don't need any more. If you want to think of it in less flattering terms, I'm saving you so you can save Ironridge for me and I can both be lazy and feel good about myself. Make sense?" "Being a hero was just what was expected of me," Shinespark sighed. "Like with you and being a menace, apparently. It doesn't mean I'm destined to live up to it. And when I think I am, I just forget about the consequences of failing, like... like this..." She glanced again at the fighting Spirit. "Okay. Not good enough?" Valey's tail flicked, and she grinned. "I'm sticking around and trying to drag you out of here 'cuz I like cute mares. How's that?" Shinespark's cheeks lit up in embarrassment. "Y-You're flirting with me? Really? Now?" Valey shrugged. "Hey, it's better than saying I only came up here before I knew the storm would get this bad because I thought it would be the best place to track down my friends, with a side helping of finding the Chancellor and getting him to yell at those clowns at the Blueleaf border, and since both of those are bust I'm trying to save you as a consolation prize." "Seriously, can we go!?" Starlight growled. "I feel terrible and really want to get back to Maple!" "You feel bad too?" Shinespark looked curiously at her, straightening up and starting toward the atrium tunnel. "Physically? I've been feeling aches and bruises I don't remember getting, but assumed it was just stress. Then again, you've probably been even more stressed than me..." "Enough stressing, more bailing!" Valey charged ahead, Shinespark hot on her heels, down the tunnel and away from the boarding room. Grenada felt the ground rise under her as the wind seized the severed tower, lifting it clean off its shaft and hefting it into the sky. She stumbled again, trying and failing to keep her balance as the realization of what was happening sunk in. They had blown up the airship hangar. The airship hangar had just sentenced them to death in return. A bright blue flash gleamed from up the staircase. That was Braen's aura! Braen had been up there, along with the rest of the Spirit... Braen... Shinespark... She gasped, a strange lucidity flooding through her head, as if time itself had slowed down. Thoughts she should have had in the minutes preceding surfaced: what was that Valey had said about their airship? Braen wanted her to fight. Shinespark wanted her to live. But they were two halves of the same pony... and neither was Veralt, the stallion who had been first to teleport inside Braen's armor once they realized at Blueleaf that it was empty. She had tried to take it for herself. That armor didn't deserve to be worn by anyone who didn't know its true purpose. But it was, and she hadn't even apologized to Shinespark for not protecting it herself. Was Shinespark up at the top of the tower? No, that flash had been teleportation. It had to have been! Grenada needed to get out... Her own horn lit with the same ruby as her eyes, thinking for her, readying a teleport to the boarding room that had to still be somewhere below... The tower flipped over, then again, throwing her into the air. Her horn cracked against something, causing her to lose the spell with a burst of stars in her vision. "Gyaaaaaaaaah!" She tumbled, slamming against walls, the floor, the ceiling, head splitting from the blow, incapable of doing anything more than wishing for survival. A titanic crash rang out while she was mid-bounce; the tower had struck something hard. It bounced again, blew... and came to a rest, lodged firm and unmoving. "No..." Grenada croaked, too dizzy to register if her bones were intact, whether she was right-side-up, or even if there was light around her. "Shinespark... I don't want to die..." The wind was muted. The air was cold. Over and over, she repeated that last phrase with a hair of a breath... until she slipped into unconsciousness. Save for the slow, shallow rise and fall of her sides, all was still.