//------------------------------// // 6: A New Way Forward // Story: The Bon Supremacy // by CherryRush //------------------------------// Fillydelphia 23 Harvest, 1502 0730 Local Time When Sweetie Drops finally woke up the next morning, Trixie was far more cheery than she had any right to be. "Hello, friend," the unicorn said in her typically grating tone, and Sweetie actually couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not. In truth, Trixie always sounded sarcastic regardless of whether she was actually trying to. Trixie continued, "The friendly and reformed Trixie saved you some stale breakfast cereal... I'm sure the milk has softened it by now. Your friend's hospitality leaves something to be desired." She indicated a bowl sitting on the circular table in the corner of their little concrete room, which otherwise consisted of a metal-framed bunk bed and a couple of rickety chairs. "Ehhh... he's not so bad, I guess. You don't have to come with me on all of this, you know." Sweetie Drops sat down across from her and took a bite of the cereal. It was pretty sub-par, but it's not like she was in a position to complain. "You could stay here, eat Twister's crap cereal, and be completely safe instead of chasing insane cult ponies across Equestria with me." Trixie sighed quietly and looked down at her front hooves. "You saved my life. We can argue all day about whether you did it the right way, but you came jumping out of the rafters for me." She looked away, seeming uncomfortable with being so candid. "And perhaps Equestria is not ready for the Great and Powerful Trixie to make her apology tour just yet. Perhaps I'll learn a few tricks," she said with a smirk. Sweetie Drops laughed. "You always have to ruin the mood, don't you?" She knew the type, though... She'd worked with plenty of agents who acted rude or sarcastic to hide their real emotions. You could get them right up to the point of acting normal, but then they just had to back away from anything resembling sincerity. "You can count your community service hours while I'm in the shower. Just think about what I said, okay? No pony will blame you if you just lay low for a while." ****** She decided to spend longer than normal in the shower that morning. Even aside from taking the time to wash the dye out of her hair, she really just felt the need to enjoy the hot water. As with sleep, a good hot shower was something you had to take advantage of when you could get it, since you never knew when you'd get one next. When Sweetie Drops finally got out, Twister was sitting with Trixie. He had a bag of mail sitting on the table, and a worried expression on your face. "Did you tell anyone where you were going?" he immediately demanded. "What? No." Sweetie glared at him as she sat up at the table. "I can't believe you'd even ask something that ridiculous." "Hey, don't- don't break my other wing or something." He held his front hooves up defensively. "You might have lost your edge or some-" "Lost my edge?!" Sweetie immediately retorted angrily, slamming her hooves down on the table. "Lost my edge?!" Trixie rolled her eyes. "Some pony is a bit defensive. You almost sound like Trixie used to be." When Sweetie turned on her, Trixie just shrugged with an unapologetic expression. "Let him talk. He does have a reason to ask." Sweetie Drops just sighed and gestured at Twister to continue. "I got two pieces of mail here addressed specifically to you. Two pieces of mail, from two different sources. You do understand that you being here is supposed to be a secret, right?" "Just hand them over," Sweetie said with a glare. "I'm going to be out of here soon anyway. I'm tired of letting them lead me around on a little leash." She took the first of two envelopes from him and opened it, smiling at the contents. "At least two of them were still alive when I was done. I'll pay them a visit at the hospital and get what I need." "And just how will-" Twister fell silent as she slid the paper across to him. "A letter of marque with the Royal Sisters' seal? How did you even get this?" Sweetie Drops didn't answer - in fact, she felt like she couldn't speak at all. The other envelope had contained a flat memory crystal implanted with an image of Lyra... but it was Lyra as she'd never seen before. Her colors were sickly grey and her mane hung limply, in fact she looked like she was barely alive... and her cutie mark was gone, replaced with an equal sign just like the others. Sweetie Drops smashed the blue crystal against the table with a choked snarl of rage and turned her attention to the letter that came with it, doing her best to hold back tears as she read it. "We're... we're sorry we missed you at Lyra's unmarking," she read aloud after a moment. "But you still have a chance to join her. Bring us Trixie Lulamoon by the end of the moon and we will let you be with your lover. If you refuse, Lyra..." Sweetie Drops' hooves started shaking. "Lyra will lose more than her cutie mark. Oh... Oh, Celestia..." She started to cry outright now, and distantly felt Twister patting her on the back as Trixie huffed at the letter. "This is obviously a trap." "I... I know," Sweetie sobbed. She took a couple of deep breaths to try and steady herself. "I know it's a trap... but I don't know what options I have. I can surrender for Lyra's sake and give up on the mission Princess Luna gave me personally, or I can keep up with the mission and maybe never see her again." She slammed her hoof on the table. "I'm tired of being led around! I'm tired of feeling so damn helpless!" "We have a third option," Twister said quietly. "If I gave them Trixie, you could fulfill their conditions without showing up to spring the trap. Trixie, I'm sorry, but-" Trixie shook her head. "You're..." She hesitated and finally sighed. "You're right. Maybe it's what Trixie deserves. You risked so much for me, I know, but after what I've-" Sweetie Drops interrupted her with another hit to the table. "No! I'm... I'm not sacrificing anypony else!" She shook her head at Trixie. "I'm not... I'm not going to be that pony anymore. I've got a past, too, Trixie. We don't..." She struggled to put her thoughts into words, remembering Luna. "We don't get better by punishing ourselves. We get better by being better. No more killing, no more torture, and no more ponies left behind. Give me real fucking options, Twister." "You couldn't have said 'no torture' a little earlier?" Twister gave her a half smile, and sighed deeply when Sweetie Drops just glared at him in response. "Fine. We've got a few days. I'll kick some clouds and see what comes out, alright? Just... just don't do anything reckless." "Fine by me." Sweetie Drops kept staring at him for a moment before turning to Trixie. "Let's get you a makeover, shall we?" Trixie sighed at her, but it was clear from Sweetie's tone that even she wouldn't escape from this one. Unknown Location 23 Harvest, 1502 Once Lyra got to know Rose Quartz, she really wasn't that bad. Her soup was actually pretty good, and afterwards they'd stayed up long into the night. Rose had a deck of cards and sat playing with Lyra while practically demanding that she share stories about Ponyville. The memories were hard to recover, and even when Lyra recalled them, they were shrouded by the gray haze that seemed to press in on her every thought... but talking about them actually made her feel a little better. More than anything, Rose wanted to hear about Pinkie Pie. She wanted to hear all about Pinkie's relationships with other ponies, about her baking, about her parties. The parties especially drew her interest, and there were times when she'd even briefly smile- it was only for a few moments at a time, but when she did she seemed like a pony transformed. Despite her dour nature and body modifications, she smiled the same infectious grin as Pinkie, lighting up her face to the point that she almost seemed to turn a brighter shade of pink. The similarity between them actually shook Lyra a little bit, and even after Rose had put out the fire and declared that it was time for bed, she'd stayed up in her cot thinking about it. What happened to her, really? Pinkie Pie was a pony who'd never quite grown out of being a filly... and her duplicates had had all of the childlike joy with none of the inhibitions. Lyra had always felt a little jealous of Pinkie Pie for that. No pony ever really judged her for how she acted; at worst, they'd roll their eyes and simply declare "Pinkie is being Pinkie again". Lyra had always wished she could have the same joyful abandon to live her life without fear of judgement. She could always practically feel ponies staring at her disapprovingly when she was reading her comics or buying toys for her collection, and she knew full well that to every pony in Ponyville she was "the weirdo with the human dolls". There was no telling what horrors Rose Quartz had faced in the Everfree Forest, of course - it had grown less dangerous in the last couple of years (with the exception of one notable incident that Lyra didn't like to think about), but it was still the Everfree Forest. Horrible thoughts of what might have happened to her plagued Lyra through the night, even after she fell asleep, and she didn't end up waking until late in the morning. When Lyra woke, it seemed that Rose had already left and returned with a new possession. She was sitting up at a small table assembling a bizarre device unlike anything Lyra had ever seen, and at her hooves laid a thin, rugged-looking metal case with the words WHITE BLAZE FIREARMS stamped in big, bold letters, followed by smaller lettering that read a subsidiary of RICH CORP. "What is that?" Lyra asked groggily. "Insurance," Rose said curtly. "This is a weapon from the human world that will put me on even ground if the 'Master' betrays me." "The..." Lyra trailed off. Somewhere in her mind she knew that she should be thrilled at the mention of the human world, the idea that all of the theories that ponies laughed at her for were true. There really was a human world, and the princesses really were covering it up. But she couldn't muster the energy to be happy. She almost felt the sense of vindication rising in her and then it quickly fizzled out with a sensation of cold pressure gripping her chest. "Do you really think that will happen?" She asked instead in a dull tone. "Anything is possible," Rose replied, setting the device aside to start sliding tiny brass cylinders- no, bullets. Lyra suddenly remembered a graphic novel she'd read about a human warrior who used strange weapons called 'guns' to fight the undead. Rose was feeding bullets into a long, thin magazine - a lot of them. "I've learned not to trust anypony but myself. Even back to the beginning, every time I thought I could trust somepony, I turned out to be wrong." She slid the magazine into her machine pistol with a hard chunk. "Even Pinkie Pie... I trusted her when she said her friends would be my friends. We... we all did." Rose set the weapon down with a sigh. "Pinkie didn't have any malice towards us. She was just... wrong. A pony doesn't have to have anything against you to hurt you. Remember that when you're putting all your faith in Sweetie Drops." Lyra stepped forward, putting a hoof on Rose's foreleg. "You're wrong. I know you feel like the whole world is against you, but what if it's not? Maybe... maybe Twilight didn't know what she was really doing. She would never kill any pony intentionally." She sighed. It sounded hollow even to her. "When... when Bon-Bon told me who she really was, I was devastated. I wasn't sure if I could ever really trust her again." "Then why are you so sure she'll save you?" Rose asked. "Because..." Lyra stopped to think about it. As she thought about Bon-Bon, she felt like happiness and love were coming out of her heart only to be contested by black pain and dread coming from her new cutie mark, like it was trying to suppress everything good about her. "Ugh..." It made her feel like she wanted to throw up, but she persisted. "Because even if I can't be certain about her ever again, I can be certain about... about us. She's the pony I love, the one I want to spend my whole life with. And even before that, we were best friends. I don't really know anything else about her, but I know in my heart she feels the same way." Rose looked away with a conflicted expression. "That sounds... nice," she said in a shaky voice. "I can't even be friends with myself. I look in the mirror and I see a stranger. I'm a lie, just a cheap rip-off. No pony will ever see me as anything else, let alone be my friend. That's why I have to-" She was interrupted by Lyra throwing her forelegs around her in a hug. "Then I'll be your first friend." Rose hesitated. "Even... even though I'm holding you prisoner?" Lyra sighed. "You're just as much a prisoner right now as I am. You do see that, don't you?" "I..." Rose looked away. "We'll get our chance." Lyra put a hoof on Rose's chest. "Together." "Together." Rose hugged her back.