The stallion got Trixie away from the door, dealing with the attempts she made to struggle out of his grasp by keeping his grip on her muzzle and mane tight, so he could use her head to guide her back into the room.
“You and I are going to have some fun together,” he said with a snicker, taunting the mare, as she fruitlessly fought against him.
Trixie was panicked, flailing around as much as she could, but without avail. Her attacker was an earth pony, who’s physical strength could not be rivaled by a mere unicorn. By seizing control of her head, the stallion effectively gained the leverage he needed to direct her body any which way he wanted. The only thing she could try to do in order to prevent him from pulling her away from the door was to buckle her knees and drop to the floor, but she was far too used to the experience of being dragged across a room by her mane to think that would actually stop him.
Once the masked stallion got the blue mare halfway into the bathroom, spinning their bodies around so that he was the one closer to the exit, he felt he had enough control of the situation to let go of the mare’s mane so he could put that hand to better use.
“Don’t move,” he said, sliding it down to his captive’s throat, grasping it by the front, to give it a tight squeeze that cut off Trixie’s breath, “Or I’ll make you regret it, got it?”
Feeling as if she had no other choice, Trixie returned a nod to the stallion, putting her arms to her sides, while staying as still as possible so not to give the stallion a reason to hurt her, though also realizing that stallions never needed a reason to do so in the past.
“That’s a good bitch,” he said, releasing his hold so Trixie could breathe, gradually moving that hand down her neckline, keeping the tips of his fingers on her fur, passing over the cloth tied around it, “You cunts sure miss your collars, don’t you? The other one had one of these on too. It’s like you’re begging to get put back in your place.”
Trixie remained silent, as while her attacker was incorrect what the neck scarfs stood for, she had no reason to risk his retaliation by denying his belief.
“Or maybe you think it looks cute.” he added, moving his fingers past it, “If that’s the case, then I think you’d look really cute with your lips wrapped around my dick.”
The hand continued downwards, touching the mare's collarbone, tracing its path from left to right, until finally drifting down to the neckline of Trixie’s skirted dress. It casually slipped underneath the clothing, ignoring what should have been a divider for the unicorn’s body from the outside world. Gleefully, the stallion fondled what was discovered underneath, as lumps of chest meats found their way into his palm.
“You’re way too overdressed for going outside,” the stallion said, feeling a bra covering Trixie’s breasts.
Finding the undergarments distasteful, he pulled them up above the breasts they covered so he could get better access, causing Trixie to yelp from how forcefully he had done so. Though she was still fully clothed, she felt extremely exposed at the moment, that she might as well have been naked. It got all the worse when she felt the hand touch against her now bare breasts, gripping, squeezing, rubbing, and pinching. Touching tender spots she didn’t want touched, and sending feelings of sexual stimulation through her that caused so much discomfort that she could no longer keep completely still, as her voice was drawn from her throat into her forced shut mouth.
“Not bad,” commented the stallion, ignoring the quivers and moans of his victim, as he knew she couldn’t control herself from feeling something from his touch, “Round, perky, with some soft, pinch-able nipples.” With those words, the stallion pushed two of his fingernails harshly into one of those nipples, which in turn got him a squeal from the mare as she received the first bit of pain he would cause her. “But they’re a bit small. Bigger titties are nicer to play with, and make you feel better when a male plays with them. Think of what it would be like if they were twice the size, and some guy did this.”
The stallion placed his palm over top one of Trixie’s areola, and clamped his fingers down hard enough that they made indents in her flesh, before moving his hand around in a circular rotation. He was foregoing any form of gentleness, being rough for roughness sake, twisting the mammary around in a way that Trixie couldn’t fathom the stallion seeing as pleasurable for her. If he really thought he was making her feel good through this aggressive handling of her boob, then he might have let go of her mouth by now, but that he persisted to keep her muzzle shut only told Trixie that he knew what he was doing, and was just displaying the sadism that was so openly encouraged during the Fall.
As he got into the act of groping the unicorn, her shirt was being haphazardly jostled about, by both his actions and Trixie’s own uncontrollable movements. This caused the pocket it had to bounce around, and as a consequence of that, a small object fell out of it, and hit the floor. The stallion, being so engrossed in the molestation of the mare, did not hear the sound of something solid hit the tile floor of the bathroom. When it came to Trixie though, she felt her pocket lose the weight it, and when combined with the sound of the object hitting the floor, it reminded her that all this time she had been carrying a switchblade on her person.
Her eyes drifted to the floor, tuning out for a second the pain being caused by her attacker’s manhandling, and with a cursory scan of the room, she spotted the weapon. It had landed over by the stalls, still closed up, but certainly out of her reach. At least it was out of the reach of her hands… but not for her horn.
Amidst a lull in the unicorn mare’s molestation, as the earth stallion’s hand was retrieved from within her shirt, having apparently gotten his fill of the unicorn’s breasts for a moment, a thought flashed into Trixie’s consciousness. She had been practicing her levitation magic on items the size of that knife for a while, and while she had so far failed to get it more than an inch off of a surface, she had been progressing. She also recalled that in a similar moment of stress, she was able to fire a magic beam capable of knocking out a Canterlot guard.
Recalling back to what Sunset Shimmer said in the self defense courses, she and Starlight were well versed in using their levitation magic in combat, and seeing that Trixie had been a levitation prodigy prior to the Fall, there was no reason she couldn’t do the same, so long as she could get her spell to work. She focused her magic on the blade, her horn lighting up, and her magical aura appearing on the object not too far away. The knife shuddered rapidly, as items always did when she put everything she had into levitating them, but doing little more than getting a millimeter off the ground before the mare was interrupted.
The hand on her muzzle was released, and shot up to strike the horn, causing the magic Trixie was trying to cast to cease. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” The stallion yelled into her ear, startling the mare. He then took the front part of her mane in hand, as well as one of her arms with the other, pulling her back into him so that the unicorn’s back pressed into his front. “Can’t I get through a bit of foreplay before I chop that horn off your head?!”
Trixie was terrified, feeling the earth stallion’s dick, still erect and wet with the fluids from Lyra’s vaginal passage, press into her butt through her skirt. The image of him trying to clip off Lyra’s horn with a set of shears earlier flashed into her vision, reminding the unicorn that the threat he was giving was very much real. He still had the shears on him, and could probably whip them out at any moment to do the deed if he wanted. The way he spoke, he was implying that he was going to remove her horn no matter what, but the question was at what point he would get around to it. Trixie was going to need her horn if she was going to have any chance to get out of this, so she needed to figure out some way to stay his hand.
“C-c-cumming!” she yelped, blurting out the first thing that came to mind that might keep her from being given a worse punishment, a defense she had relied on often when the guard used to have their way with her, “I was about to cum!”
“Shut up!” the stallion yelled in reaction to the mare merely talking, but when he took a moment to process what she had said, he smiled and eased up his grip ever so slightly, “So that’s it… You were enjoying yourself a little, huh? Having yourself a horngasm?”
Trixie, not wanting to anger the stallion by speaking after she was told to shut up, gave a pathetic nod. Though it disgusted her to do so, as the idea that his actions were arousing her couldn’t be further from the truth, giving a false admission to such a thing was all she could think of to stay his hand.
“Well of course you were,” he said, taking a perverse pride in how he could force pleasure onto a mare who had started out struggling against him, “You fuck sluts talk a big game, but a slut is still a slut in the end. Since you’re being honest with yourself though, I’ll give you the reward of one last horngasm before we lop that thing off for good.”
Trixie, glad to avoid an immediate de-horning, found herself briefly relieved, before she felt her skirt lifted up, and a set of fingers slip into the front of her panties. “AH!” she yelped in surprise, the fingers already pressing into her slit, rubbing its lips up and down, sending gross sensations into her crotch.
“Let’s play a little game, and see how long you can keep your horn while I’m using you,” the stallion said, pressing his thumb down on the little flesh nub located at the top of the mare’s sex hole.
As much as she, or any mare who had suffered through the Fall for that matter, might have loathed this sort of treatment, it would have been lying to say that it did nothing to her. One couldn’t deny the feelings, nor the reactions of their body, and since she hadn’t been touched for so long, her sensitive bits were very reactive to the treatment of this male. She felt all the sensations one would expect when having the soft skin of their sex played with, and though it filled her with revulsion instead of elation, her body couldn’t help but secrete fluids of arousal from inside the passage of her most personal space.
Trixie felt gross for the way her body was acting to the touch of this male, but she had to ignore it. At this point, it was merely a distraction, and one she’d have to overcome. She was at least thankful that it aided her alibi for when her horn glowed, as the stallion appeared to not know that a horngasm didn’t look the same as casting a spell.
Ok Trixie, she thought to herself, You got a free pass to cast magic. Now what are you going to do with it?
The unicorn focused herself on the knife, knowing that this was the last attempt she’d get, and she had still not relearned how to levitate after all this time.
What was it that Sunset tried to tell me before? Trixie remembered the yellow unicorn giving her a suggestion in the past, but she was too set on working out her magical problems her way. I think she said… I was putting too much magic into my spell. That can’t really be the issue, can it?
Not seeing any other options in her current situation, with the stallion making good progress in rubbing an orgasm out of her pussy, she decided it was time to listen to somepony else’s advice, and hold back a bit. It was the only approach Trixie hadn’t attempted yet, so instead of just trying to force things to work the way she thought they should, she would start from the beginning, and work herself up.
Trixie begun by putting what she thought was the bare minimum of her magic into the spell, lightly projecting it on the switchblade, tuning out what was happening to her as much as she could , in order to focus only on her task. To her own amazement, this gentle use of magic, while not enough to lift the blade any higher than she had already gotten it, or any other object she had been practicing on, had given similar results to the times she tried going full force. She wouldn’t have expected it to lift from the floor at all if the magic was too weak, and so it encouraged her to try putting just a little more magic into the spell, and after a few seconds of experimentation while being molested, the knife floated up a good half foot off the floor.
Trixie’s eyes went wide, as she could immediately recognize the correct balance of magic she needed to use levitation properly. The feeling of being able to control an object through the use of magic was far too familiar for her to not know it when she did it right, and now it was as if she’d regained the use of a hand after recovering from an injury. To test the magic further, she made the knife move up more, then down, then left, then right, discovering that a good portion of her aptitude had come back just by leveling out her magic appropriately. It wasn’t perfect, there was still a bit of a stuttering in the motion, assumedly caused by the circumstances Trixie was currently undergoing, but for the most part it all came back to her. She was a prodigy of levitation, after all.
“Pretty good so far,” the rapist stallion said, remarking on how Trixie had been able to hold for so long, not knowing that her attention was elsewhere, “But I know what can send even the most resilient bitch over the edge.”
The earth stallion wrenched Trixie’s body around so she faced the bathroom sinks, before pushing her upper body forward to bend over one of the fixtures. He then proceeded to hike up the back of her skirt, exposing the flank hidden underneath, before then grabbing her panties, pulling them down to her knees.
“What you need is a good dicking,” he said, taking his shaft in hand, tapping it a few times against now uncovered ass, landing it squarely between her cheeks so that his head hit her hole each time, “Ready to trade that useless horn for a cheap climax?”
As the stallion positioned himself behind her, Trixie was caught in between an emotion of stress and relief, as contradictory as that seemed. She was well aware that the stallion was about to push his dick into her ass, and fuck her against her will, but despite the way he had shoved her body around, she had managed to maintain her magical grip on the knife. Had she broken off the spell, odds were she wouldn’t have found the object again. So long as the spell was active though, she could feel the distance it was away from her, as well as what position it was in.
Focused on the knife, and not the large sex organ being positioned for penetration, the mare lifted it off the ground, up to where she believed the stallion’s back was. Then, turned the weapon so the blade, once released from the handle, would be pointed at the target. She took deep breaths, the excitement of the moment weighing down on her, from both the impending rape she could be forced to endure, as well as the awareness that she was about to stab somepony in order to stop it. The whole thing made her spell waver ever so slightly, as deep down inside, she didn’t want it to come down to hurting another pony, even after all that had been done to her.
“Sounds like you’re ready for the main event,” the stallion said, picking up on the change in the pattern of the unicorn’s breath, “Then let’s get down to it.”
The stallion slapped his hands down on the unicorn’s flank, gripping as harshly as he had her breast earlier, as he pressed the tip of his flared dick at the target of his lust. The only thing he could concentrate on was how he was about to take this mare like he had done the other. He didn’t even care if she felt good throughout all this, though in many ways the assumption that she would was a foregone conclusion. In his mind, all females of any species wanted to be treated this way by a male, and males were rewarded for doing so by the pleasure they got from the act. It was an ever present thought in the mind of this stallion, that validated the despicable acts he was committing.
Seeing no further reason to delay, the stallion started to push against the hole, and Trixie, seeing that she had no more time left to contemplate the moral aspects of harming another pony, came to the understanding that it was do or die time. With her fear of being raped yet again overriding her desire to not cause harm, she shot the knife forward, while using her levitation aura to press down on the handle’s button, and release the blade.
“Almost… in… you…” The stallion said slowly, the force behind his hips about to push his cock through the barrier Trixie’s clenching ass made. He could feel the flesh ring parting, and his dick entering the tunnel it was protecting. A little more, and he would have achieved his goal, but just before pushing through, a painful sensation struck him in the lower back part of his shoulder, as something sharp plunged into nothing but meat. “FUCKING CUNT!”
The stallion twisted around, turning completely away from Trixie, expecting to see the other unicorn he had bound in the stall, even though he had believed he had tied her down good enough to prevent her escaping. While he was correct about the latter, he was dumbfounded when he didn’t see anyone there. Confused, he took a moment to reach around his back, feeling for the thing that was causing him so much pain, but as he felt his fingers touch a handle, he felt someone else’s fingers grip his hair from behind.
Trixie, now having stabbed the rapist, had gone on the attack herself, screaming in a mix of hysterics, anger, and fear for what might happen if the stallion recovered, as she did something she never expected herself to do. With hands clasping to the stallion’s scalp, she tried to use his tactics against him, pulling him off balance by using his mane as a handle.
The unicorn could have tried to run, but she knew that wasn’t an option. If she couldn’t make it to the door the first time, then she wasn’t going to make it now that her body had been so brutishly handled, or with her panties down far enough that they had become an effective hobble. The only chance to get out of this now was to commit, and try to bring down the attacker while he was in a state of shock, and for a unicorn mare to do that against an earth pony stallion, she needed some leverage.
With her hands dug deep into his mane, she pulled down with the entirety of her weight, causing the rapist stallion to bend backwards a bit. Seeing that she had gained some substantial leverage, Trixie did a small hop before curling up into a sitting position midair, to give her just a bit of momentum for what she was trying to do. Her frantic, and admittedly improvised, attempt succeeded, and with the stallion so disoriented, he lost his balance completely, falling backwards as the mare fell straight down, putting her on the bathroom floor as the back of his skull impacted with the porcelain sink he had intended to fuck Trixie over.
The blow made the stallion go unconscious on contact, and with no control over his body, he simply fell the rest of the way down, landing on top of the mare who had rendered him that way. For a second, Trixie had thought that this was a counter attack from the stallion, but after feeling his body go limp, she figured out that what she had done in panic had worked in spectacular fashion.
Not so confident that she had won the confrontation yet, Trixie carefully rolled the unconscious body off her, the stallion ending up face down on the floor. When he didn’t wake up, the blue unicorn scooted herself away from him, placing her back against a wall as she stayed seated, in a state of shock after all that had happened.
Trixie had almost been raped again, but she managed to fend off her attacker. It might not have been the most elegant of wins, but any victory you could walk away from was a good one. She kept an eye on the stallion, wondering if he was dead, if she had killed him, and thanked her lucky stars when she spotted his body moving up and down, caused by his lungs expanding and deflating in his chest. Hurting somepony who was attacking you was one thing, but Trixie didn’t want to bare the burden of having killed someone, not after she learned that the caribou she thought she killed prior had lived. She would rather keep her hands clean and her conscience clear, as silly as that might sound when both that and this event were purely in self defense.
More than a minute passed after the attack, and finally Trixie was able to collect herself. The stallion, while breathing, was otherwise not moving. He still had her knife in his back, which he had avoided landing on by landing on her instead. Her own breathing was starting to slow itself, the excitement of the encounter dying down. The unicorn could hardly believe any of what had taken place, from the fact that a stallion had sexually assaulted her post Fall, to her managing to take him down by herself, using nothing but her own strength and freshly rediscovered levitation spell.
As she continued to watch the stallion, unable to break her glare from him for a good while, Trixie eventually became aware of the sound of some mumbling coming from the stalls. Even when she took notice of it, it took a little longer for the unicorn to pull her eyes away from the stallion, still worried he’d get back up when she wasn’t looking, but when she did she got a reminder that she wasn’t the only one who had been attack when she spotted the still bound Lyra.
“Oh my…” she said, finally finding a reason to pick herself up off the floor, “I’m sorry! I completely forgot you were here too!”
Trixie made a short dash over to Lyra, mind racing as she tried to figure out how to undo the bindings the stallion had placed on her. Choosing convenience over practicality, Trixie started with the harness on Lyra’s head. The straps keeping it attached were in plain sight, and wouldn’t take but a second to undo. Unfortunately, this also led to Trixie getting a good look at Lyra’s horn, and the damage done to it. The stallion, while being interrupted during his attempt to remove the horn, had cut into it pretty deep.
It was unlikely she could cast magic as it was, which made sense, since if she had been able to do that, she could have released herself by now. Damaged as it was though, this was hardly the same level of problem as it would have been when the caribou ruled the kingdom, as even if it had been severed, all it would take is a zebra potion or a mending spell to reverse the damage.
“Almost got it,” Trixie said, announcing her progress, “And… there!”
The harness came off, and Lyra gave no hesitation in spitting out the saliva soaked piece of cloth that had been shoved into her mouth, spitting a few more times in a fruitless attempt to get the flavor of it off her tongue.
“What happened?” she asked after her spittle sprays, “I heard a yell, then a loud crack, then it went quiet, and then I saw you huddle up in the corner for a while. What happened to that stallion?”
“I… Think I got him?” Trixie answered, now working on Lyra’s leg bindings
“Got him?” Lyra replied back, questioning the meaning, “Did you ki-”
“I knocked him out,” Trixie said, quickly dismissing any notion that she had caused the stallion’s death, “But he looks out for the count.”
“Then hurry up and get me out of these,” Lyra said, struggling a little, not wanting to be in this room or position any longer, not when the earth stallion could wake up at any moment.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Trixie said in mild frustration, already working on one of the straps on Lyra’s ankles, “Where is your knife? I could use it to cut this off.”
“I… don’t carry it around,” Lyra replied, admitting that she had been defenseless when the stallion attacked her, “I never thought I would need it…”
“Well you thought wrong,” Trixie scolded. Had she not brought her own blade, she would undoubtedly be railed and de-horned by now, and both she and Lyra have succumbed to whatever depraved acts the stallion wished to do the them.
“I get it, trust me,” said Lyra, conceding to her mistake, “What about your knife?”
“It’s a little preoccupied,” said Trixie, not wanting to take the knife out of the stallion, as she didn’t want to risk causing him to bleed out, and this seemed like a ‘leave it in’ moment, “Besides,” she said, undoing the buckle keeping the strap tight, “I think I got this.”
Trixie spent the next five minutes getting Lyra out of the rest of the bindings, but after that all it took was a few seconds for Lyra to slip on her shorts, and the two to leave. Neither of them wanted to stay in or around the building after that ordeal, but they knew they couldn’t just leave the stallion be, not when he could just as easily try this again with other mares when he recovered.
So they did the one thing that came to mind, and ran into the streets of the city, screaming at the top of their lungs that they had been assaulted by a rapist. As expected, this got the attention of every pony in earshot, which included some police ponies who happened to be in the area. After that, all it took was for Trixie and Lyra to lead them back to the park bathroom, where the officers found the still unconscious stallion.
The scene after that became very lively, with police ponies being called in, as well as an ambulance, since the stallion was in no condition to be moved without treatment. Despite everything happening in the small restroom building, a good portion of the park was cordoned off, which was needed to keep a mob of curious civilians at bay. The only ponies allowed on the crime scene were the police, the paramedics, and the two victims of the attack, in order to question them about everything they knew.
After giving what little statements they could, Trixie and Lyra found themselves sitting on the same bench they had eaten lunch on, given blankets and hot coffee to keep them warm, as afternoon turned to dusk. Both remained mostly silent, as the mares contemplated everything that had happened. Now that they had time to reflect, the reality of what they went through crashed down on them hard. Not that they weren’t aware before, but the adrenaline they both had in their systems was starting to thin.
“I can’t believe it,” Lyra said quietly, looking at her wrist, which bore strap marks from her struggling against her bonds, before touching her horn, which had already been attended to and healed by the paramedics, “I really got raped again… And it happened so fast.”
Trixie was just as stunned as Lyra, as while she managed to overcome her attacker, she was starting to believe that it was more due to dumb luck than her own ability. There was no reason why she shouldn’t have ended up in a stall right next to Lyra, while the masked stallion took turns with the both of them. At least, that’s what her doubt was telling her.
As if to defy those thoughts though, she used her horn to levitate her mug of coffee to her lips, still retaining the ability she had regained in that struggle. No longer was she incapable of performing the most basic of pony magic, as it came to her just as easily as it ever had.
“Okay you two,” said a police mare as she approached their park bench, “The suspect is being prepped for transport, and will be placed under arrest as soon as they are able to be removed from the hospital. Whichever one of you that fought him sure did a number on him, which isn’t exactly a bad thing, all things considered.”
“Does that mean we can leave?” Trixie asked, wanting to be released so she could go home and try to forget what happened. Not to mention that she didn’t exactly have the best opinion on law enforcement after being detained at the Canterlot riot.
“We’d like you two to stay a little longer,” said the officer, “So we can get some more facts straight before we let you go.”
“We already told you everything we know,” Lyra said in protest, wanting to leave herself now that there was seemingly nothing more that the two mares could do.
“It’s just procedure, ma’am.” the officer said, walking away before either unicorn could make more complaints.
Trixie let out a groan, leaning her head backwards across the top of the bench’s back. It never seemed to be an easy process when she got dragged into these situations. She really wished that Sunset would come in and save her like last time, but with her off doing something else, it looked like Trixie and Lyra were just stuck there.
As she impatiently waited, she looked up at the sky, which had turned to night during the time that they had waited, which in pre-Fall Equestria would have taken a matter of seconds, but now that the sun and moon were no longer regulated by the alicorns, meant that it had been close to an hour. With nothing better to do, Trixie randomly looked around the changing sky, looking for nothing in particular, until her eyes landed on some movement within it. At first she thought it was just a flock of birds, but as it came closer to her, she saw that it was a bunch of bat ponies flying in formation. Ones wearing the armor of the Canterlot Royal Night Guard, and escorting a dark blue mare leading the formation. A mare who had a sizable horn atop her head.
“Oh noooo…” Trixie groaned aloud, identifying Princess Luna, as well as what her presence meant for how much longer it would take for Lyra and her to be released. If this event required the attention of a princess, then they were probably being detained to be interviewed by her directly.
Lyra, noticing Trixie’s discontent, traced where the other unicorn’s eyes were pointed, and saw what troubled her friend, becoming a little perturbed herself. The two could only sit and watch as the alicorn made her landing in the park, and proceeded to talk to the officers in charge. After what must have been them giving her a briefing of the current state of things, the princess of the night was pointed over to the two waiting mares, which was exactly what Trixie feared.
Still, neither unicorn made a move as she made her way over to them, with her guard following right behind her. “You two,” she said as she got in earshot, which for the princess was a few feet further than it should have been, “I want to speak to you both about-”
“Girls!” A voice yelled in the direction of the two seated unicorns, cutting off Luna before she could finish her thought. Knowing the voice, the two mares turned their heads to see Sunset Shimmer, breaching the cordoned off area, having to use her magic to do small teleports past a couple of officers that tried to intercept her, as she rushed to Trixie and Lyra’s location in order to get to them before Luna did. “I came as soon as I heard what had happened,” she said, breathing heavily as though she had done a solid sprint from wherever she had been, “And I got here just in time.”
“Sunset Shimmer,” Luna said, not bothering to hide her annoyance at the mare’s presence, “What makes you think you have the authority to barge into this crime scene?”
“Princess Luna,” Sunset said, showing the alicorn some small level of respect by using her title, “These two mares are two of the many ponies I consider my wards, as you can see by the black cloths around their necks, and I’m not about to let a member of the Committee of Ponies hassle them after what they’ve been through today.”
“Hassle?” said Luna, not pleased with the assumptions the yellow unicorn was making, “We just wish to get information about what happened here.”
“Yes, and I’m very familiar with how you tend to go about doing that,” Sunset replied, “By being loud and demanding, as you throw around your ‘authority’, while having no ability to conduct yourself in a way that shows an ounce of delicacy to other ponies.”
Luna was taken aback by Sunset’s appraisal of her methods, “We also know how you operate, Sunset Shimmer. How you act as if you know more than every other pony, and try to take control of every interaction you are apart of.”
As Lyra and Trixie listened to the princess’ description of Sunset, they found it to not match up to their own image of the mare. She was their group’s leader, yes, but she had never used that to put herself over anypony else in their ranks, at least as far as they were aware.
“These two mares may be part of your charity group,” Luna continued, “But that doesn’t give you the right to interfere in this investigation.”
“And what are you investigating?” Sunset said with antagonistic intent, “What could have happened here that would require your direct attention.”
“We believe you already know…” Luna replied, well aware that the news of what had happened had already spread far.
“Of course I do,” Sunset said with a bit of arrogance, “You are looking into the first attempted rape in Equestria since the end of the Fall.”
“Can you say that without sounding so satisfied with yourself?” Luna asked, irritated with Sunset’s tone.
“You have to excuse me, princess.” said Sunset, “It’s just so hard to do when this is exactly what I tried to warn the Committee about when I was part of it.”
“All you tried to do was cast suspicion on stallions, and make them adhere to unjust rules that-”
“Would have prevented this event altogether.” Sunset bluntly interjected, “While you exaggerate how much blame I place on stallions, the truth of the matter is that if my plans were followed, the stallion who attacked these two would have never been in the position they were today.”
“You can’t say that with certainty,” Luna rebutted, “You’re just basing your position on an assumption that stallions have some predisposition to wanting to treat mares as inferiors and sex objects. This idea is verifiably false.”
“How?” Sunset questioned in retort, “With your little test? I’ve seen who you’ve let pass that. Remember Chancellor Neighsay?”
“Neighsay has proven himself to be loyal to Equestria,” Luna insisted.
“All he has proven is that he’s more xenophobic than misogynistic,” Sunset stated, “I’m sure he had no issues treating the zebra, gryphon, and other species of slaves he had like dirt, even after the removal of his supposed ‘mind control’.”
“You can’t just throw accusations around like that,” Luna continued to dispute, having her own reasons to believe that Neighsay would do nothing to harm Equestria, through methods she found to be very credible.
“I can and I will,” Sunset shot back, not willing to back down from her stance.
As Lyra and Trixie sat there, silently listening in as the two mares talked around them, intrigued by what they were saying, but lacking some important context from both sides. Neither had the nerve to try and interrupt to have some of those missing details clarified though. Somepony did have the nerve to get between the two, however, as an officer walked right up to the alicorn to get her attention.
“Princess Luna,” he said, “The suspect is about to be wheeled out of the bathroom and into the ambulance.”
“Is he awake?” Luna asked, wanting the chance to question him personally.
“He was for a moment,” said the police pony, “But even in cuffs and wounded, he was trying to get violent. The paramedics gave him anesthetic to put him under, at least till we can cuff him down to a hospital bed.” the officer turned his head to the two unicorns sitting in the bench, “Though, we were hoping that the victims could come and look at his unmasked face, to see if they knew their attacker. Maybe find some connection between them to see if that’s why they were targeted.”
“Do we have to?” said Trixie in open complaint. It was getting late, and neither mare really wanted to get close to their attacker again.
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” said Luna, “But we would really appreciate your help in this matter. The more we can figure out about this stallion, the more we have to work with in trying to figure out why he did this.”
“The ‘why’ is pretty obvious,” Sunset interjected. Luna was about to tell her off, but Sunset put up a finger to hold her off for a second, “But if you promise these two can leave the moment they look at this stallion to confirm if they know him, then I will happily encourage them to listen to your request.”
Luna sighed, “Very well. We believe they’ve already given their statements, so there is little reason to hold them after this.”
Sunset smiled, and turned to the other two unicorns. “Come on girls. I’ll go with you to make sure nothing happens.”
Trixie and Lyra still had reservations, but with Sunset approving things, they couldn’t find a reason to object. They both got up from their seats, and with Sunset Shimmer, Luna, and Luna’s personal guard, walked themselves back over to the place where they were attacked, neither of them really thinking that they’d be able to identify their attacker, but both in for a surprise they didn’t expect.
It took several minutes longer for the rapist stallion to be brought out of the public bathroom in a stretcher, but when he was, the two mares finally got to see his face, and what they saw made them gasp.
“I definitely know him.” Trixie said, wide eyed as she stared at the stallion.
“It’s that…” Lyra said, trying to place a name to the face she was seeing.
“You two do recognize him?” Luna asked, “From where?”
“I know where,” Sunset said grimly, watching the stallion roll by, “They know him from our group.”
The stallion in the stretcher was the same stallion who often complained during group meetings, and had left the group altogether not long ago when he didn’t want to be a part of the mare defense lessons. The two mares had come to believe that they’d never see him again, but never believed that he would become the sort to sexually assault a mare.
“This stallion is part of your group, Sunset?” Luna questioned.
“Was,” Sunset said with a sudden seriousness, “He had a dispute with our methods, and left of his own accord. To think that a stallion like him had infiltrated our organization.”
“I suppose this shows that your ways are not as foolproof as you believed.” Luna said, hoping to get some humility out of the yellow unicorn.
“On the contrary,” Sunset said, “This merely reinforces my beliefs further. As I said, this pony was a member of my group, but he also dropped out when we started teaching mares how to fight. Clearly, he didn’t like the idea of mares being able to protect themselves. Think of what would have happened here if I hadn’t prepared these two to take fight back against stallions.”
Luna was visibly annoyed by Sunset’s refusal to budge even a little from her position, as the unicorn seemed adamant on an ideology that, at best, seemed heavy handed. Trixie, on the other hand, couldn’t help but agree wholeheartedly with what Sunset was saying, because she knew what would have happened if she hadn’t been shown how to defend herself, and given the tool she needed to do so.
Lyra had gone in without the knife that she was supposed to take around everywhere, and she ended up strapped down to a toilet with a foot of cock shoved unwillingly inside of her. Without Sunset, there was no question if she’d had suffered the same fate.
“Opinions aside,” Sunset said, “These two have identified that they did know the stallion somehow. So if you don’t mind, we will be taking our leave.”
“But…” said Luna, not satisfied yet.
“Princess,” Sunset replied, “I assure you that these mares know nothing more about that stallion. He was very much a loner in the group to begin with, and only participated when it benefited him. You’re not going to learn anything more helpful than you already have.”
Luna did want to know more about the stallion, but even if any of the three unicorns knew anything, it didn’t look like Sunset was going to allow them to say it. She had always been difficult, and Luna just had to accept this as her nature.
“Very well.” Luna relented, “We made a promise, and we shall keep it.”
“Thank you,” Sunset said, heading to the closest exit to the crime scene, “Come along, girls.”
Lyra and Trixie both followed after Sunset, happy to finally be given the go ahead to leave. Luna watched as the trio walked away, and managed to catch Sunset look back for a moment with a smirk on her face. The alicorn didn’t know exactly why, but when seeing that smirk, she couldn’t help to feel as if the yellow unicorn had somehow got the upper-hand on her in this exchange, one where the two mares really shouldn’t have been in competition.
“So,” Sunset said to the two other unicorns as they crossed the police tape, “Who wants to let me know how you two beat that stallion?”
The two mares gave Sunset a quick summary of what had happened, leaving out most of the more graphic details, but giving a general explanation of what happened to the both of them. Sunset allowed them to tell the whole story uninterrupted, and only when they finished, did she say anything about the whole ordeal.
The first thing out of Sunset’s mouth was, “Lyra, I am so sorry that this happened to you. It shames me that I wasn’t around to make sure you both were safe.”
“It’s… ok” Lyra said, making an attempt to stay in high spirits, “You couldn’t have predicted this would happen. Besides, it’s not like I’m not used to it, and Trixie was there to save me before anything serious happened. I’m just dreading that I’m gonna have to tell my marefriend about this…”
“See, that’s part of the problem.” said Sunset, “You shouldn’t feel ‘used’ to this kind of treatment. You should be angry that somepony did this to you. If mares keep letting stallions see them as victims, then they are going to keep treating us like victims.”
“I suppose you’re right about that,” Lyra agreed, “I’ll make sure to keep my knife on me from now on. That’s at least a start.”
“Good,” said Sunset, “Because despite us knowing the rapist in question, I don’t think this was a planned attack.”
“You don’t?” Trixie asked, “What makes you think that?”
“There is no way that earth pony knew you two would be going to the park today, or that you’d use the restroom when you did.” Sunset reasoned, “And I think we all know the park isn’t really used a lot these days. My guess is that he was lying in wait, and would have tried to rape any mare that entered.”
“So I was just the unlucky one to go in first, huh.” Lyra said, seeing no fault in Sunset’s logic.
“For all we know, he might have been doing this for days,” Sunset added, “So long as no one was there to see what he was doing, there was nothing to stop him until he finally got some mare to fall into his trap.”
“That… sounds terrifying.” Trixie said, not wanting to think about the kind of stallion it took to do something like that.
“It is,” Sunset replied, “And we can’t assume that he’s the only stallion who will ever try that. Now, more than ever, we need to be diligent on how we carry ourselves in public.”
The other two mares agreed, as it was only through Sunset’s methods that the two got out of that as best as they did.
“But I got to say,” Sunset added, “Trixie, you were very impressive today.”
“It really wasn’t anything,” Trixie said in modesty, knowing how cowardly she had been at the start of it all.
“No, really,” Sunset reinforced, “You were a hero today. If not for you, who knows what would have happened to Lyra. If you hadn’t decided to check in on her, and just left to go back home, then she would have been at that bastard’s mercy for as long as he pleased.”
“She’s right,” said Lyra, who very much appreciated that Trixie had came to her rescue, “You’re a hero, and you shouldn’t think of yourself any other way.”
With the two mares boosting her ego, Trixie did start to feel a bit heroic about what she had done. She might have been forced into it, but many brave ponies were tossed into situations that challenged them in similar ways. Once again, the blue mare found the praise she got from her fellow members to be motivating for her self esteem, to the point that she felt like her old self again.
This was a feeling that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not since that one night during the Fall, when she and Merryweather went to stop that caribou caravan…