"Attention, everyone," Gerardo Guillaume's magically-amplified voice boomed, projecting down as the Immortal Dream's hull broke the clouds. "Please cease all hostilities at once! My talon has been forced to move, and this ship is now a peacekeeping force. Anyone who attacks anyone else is an enemy of ours until order can be restored!"
Grenada glared upward at the descending ship, its imposing hull cutting a slice out of the sky. "Stay out of Sosan affairs!" she cried, voice cracking as she bared her teeth. "You're not helping and you're not heroes!"
As her attention was distracted upward, Valey slipped the knife back out of a crook in her wing and sawed through another rope in the net. Some of Grenada's companions, though, had the presence of mind to keep watching the net, and one frowned down at her. "We really do have a boulder!" an earth pony atop the cliff warned. "And we will drop it! Don't test us!"
"So... Boss?" A mustached stallion raised an eyebrow at Grenada. "That's an airship. Probably the one we just signaled. Looks to me like they are trying to help."
Grenada looked ready to panic as the ship lowered further and Shinespark stuck her head over the railing, surveying the situation. She frowned in disapproval.
"Go away!" Grenada yelled, staring straight up at her estranged sister. "You have no right to be here!"
"And you do?" Shinespark called down. "What are you even doing here? This is over a week from the Empire!"
Grenada gave her a scathing look, fully clad in the alpha prototype Braen armor. "I am speaking with actions instead of words and trying to let Braen live on even though the real her is dead! After you left, I sailed north in search of a cause who needed a real hero instead of one who would stand there for weeks pretending there were no responsibilities and nothing to be done. I found these ponies shipwrecked and struggling to survive in a hostile and undeveloped world and became the leader they needed! Under Braen's symbol they have gone from struggling to find shelter and safety to the beginnings of civilization in mere weeks! We are winning the war for a place in this land! It is rich with trees and unexplored mountains that could be ripe with ore, and near the trading route between Varsidel and Wilderwind. We will establish a new Sosa in memory of the one that is gone... that you died with. Now leave us be."
The mustache stallion glanced hesitantly at her, then up at Shinespark on the ship. "Hey, you up there!" he called, cupping his forehooves around his muzzle. "I have a wife and two daughters back in Varsidel! We do everything we need to to survive in this place, and Braen here's a great leader, but none of us want to stay. Maybe you could make your peace by helping us get-"
"Do not undermine me!" Grenada hissed, shoving him with terrified eyes. "This is a threat, not an opportunity. Go get the trebuchet staff and tell them to scare that ship off or shoot it down!"
The stallion's eyes widened, and his mustache ruffled. "...No."
"Ahh, you all?" The earth pony mare who had warned Valey off cutting the net stomped a hoof for attention. "Maybe when we have nine sarosians trapped is the worst possible time to have a leadership dispute? Show a little solidarity and figure out who's the boss later, take care of the ponies trying to kill us now?"
"Yo! Sparky!" Valey bellowed upward, trying to reach Shinespark above the din. "Have they got a boulder up on that cliff? Too much chaos for me to tell if their threats are serious!"
Shinespark leaned outward, craning her neck to see and hear. "There are trees, but not that I can see!"
Valey grinned, and the mare watching her paled. "W-We do! We really do!"
Two more ropes were cut. Valey started to feel the net holding her weaken.
"Stay put!" Grenada threatened, stepping up to the cliff edge and looking on the verge of a breakdown. Her horn crackled menacingly, pulsing with an unstable light. "Or I will shoot! New Sosa cannot end like this!"
"Oh yeah?" Valey snapped another rope, feeling the net almost ready to give. "Look, lady, I'm sorry about how things have gone for you but right now your mental state looks worse than Herman's armpit! Now chill out and stop trying to be in control!"
"Grenada, stop!" Shinespark called down from the deck. "I'm sorry I was a bad sister and friend and not the perfect mare I let you think I was! But I can't make it up to you if you're threatening my friends!"
Grenada glanced up and down, deciding on a dime what to do with the bolt of bolt of energy building in her horn... and at the sound of another breaking rope, she fired down.
Valey felt the sticky ropes bite at her fur as she tore herself free, leaving a sizable hole behind. Her gaze instantly filled with violet light, and she set her teeth as the batponies clamored below her. With her cutie mark slowing time in protest, she threw herself in the way of the spell, knowing the situation would dissolve instantly if that hit any one of the locals...
FLASH!
A burst of sapphire teleportation sparked inches in front of her, and then Shinespark was there, horn crackling and frontal fur blackened and curled as she absorbed the brunt of the attack. She was thrown back into Valey, and Valey caught her, flipping gently enough to the ground that neither of them would be hurt by the landing. "Sparky!"
"Don't let this escalate further," Shinespark coughed, smoking. "And don't hurt anyone too badly..."
"Yeah, I'm on it." Valey glared upward, then launched herself off the stones.
Grenada's posse was smart enough to scatter back from the edge, but the leader herself stayed put. Leveling her steaming horn, she winced, trying to formulate another blast... and Valey exploded into her chest with a ferocious uppercut, carrying so much momentum that Grenada was knocked into the air, armor and everything.
"I'm all for second chances!" Valey yelled, flipping over her opponent and slamming both hind legs into Grenada's armored stomach, pumping her wings and carrying them higher. "And third, and fourth, and millionth! But that involves actually sitting down and trying to do better!"
Grenada wheezed as her arc came to its peak, Valey punching her backward into a tree before she could begin to fall again. "And you," Valey panted, hitting Grenada so that her back slammed against the bark and her limbs splayed against the sides, "are sticking your head in the ground and committing so hard to something that's not working that you're attacking your sister and ignoring your friends when they say they disagree with you! Do you know how bad Shinespark felt about how things went with you in Stormhoof? How much she wanted to hang out with you because you were alive? Do you!?"
She punched her against the tree again, and it shuddered, a branch snapping off and falling near the ponies below. All of Grenada's posse were watching with wide eyes, stuck in various states of 'we should do something' and 'there's nothing we can do'. "She's definitely not with the locals," the mustache stallion whispered to his friends. "You getting the sinking feeling we're on the wrong side?"
Suddenly, the forest rustled, and along a barely-cleared trail, new hoofsteps sounded. At least ten mares and stallions hurried along, eyes eager and not looking up or noticing Valey and Grenada in the trees. "There's an airship!" the leader eagerly gasped, beaming at the ponies who were already there. "Miss Harshwater said they're here to help us against the sarosians!"
None of Grenada's posse had words for them, and the eagerness slowly melted to befuddlement and then concern. "Help me..." Grenada wheezed, pinned high up against the tree.
"Oh bananas," Valey whispered under her breath as every gaze turned upward, the newcomers spotting her for the first time.
"Sarosians!" a new stallion gasped, his hat falling off in shock. "They've got the boss!"
Valey's eyes widened. "No! No no, this isn't what it looks-"
A chaotic screeching interrupted her as the batponies on the beach finished what she had started, breaking the net and launching themselves desperately up the cliff at the unaware crowd.