At long last, the door fell open and a bleary, red-eyed American stepped through. In a moment, Lisa was on her feet. “David…” she gasped.
“I…found him in the hallway,” Chen said, looking visibly uncomfortable and only too eager to rejoin Akshat at the stove.
For his part, David cracked a small smile as he stepped over the foyer. “Hey Lis—” He managed to get out before her arms locked around him. For the first time since he’d arrived, and probably for longer before, a genuine smile crossed his face, only to sputter out within a few seconds.
“I knew you’d make it,” she whispered, giving him one last squeeze before forcing out a cough. “Though you could’ve showered before coming over, jeez! Remind me to Febreeze the couches when you leave!”
He sighed, slumping out of her grip, whereupon he saw the new plus-one in their midst. “Uhhhh…”
“Yes…hi,” Shining Armor said, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. “Ummm…it has been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah…” David guffawed. “Last time I saw you, you were screamin’ something about...liars, if I’m not mistaken? I tried to look the word up and that’s all I got.”
“That’s pretty accurate, actually…” Shining coughed. “A lot’s happened since then.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Everyone, to the living room?” Lisa insisted, putting the awkward conversation out of its misery. “I swear, this will all make way more sense. You can decide if you wanna stay or leave after you hear us out.”
The group meandered from the kitchen, Akshat taking the time to move his curry off the stove and turn off the burner first. They all gathered in a small living room, which consisted of a couch, a recliner, a Smart TV, and a dying houseplant, along with a few chairs taken from the kitchen just for this occasion.
“Just squeeze in, everybody,” Lisa said. “And sorry about the cramped space, this place wasn’t really meant for parties.”
“It’s the apocalypse, mon chéri,” Andre said, holding up a half-filled shot glass of whiskey. “Any gathering with alcohol is just fine.”
“Right,” she smiled, her gaze sliding over them. Over the people she had come to know and love like brothers over the past few years. Over six people who had started out as coworkers but, through boredom at first, and then through the adrenaline of battle, she felt she had come to know better than most of her own family. They weren’t what they were when they began, and her gaze lingered not only over David but on a blank space along the wall she somehow just knew Anton would have been leaning against. She could actually see it: him leaning there, a big dumb smile on his old features, his flask tucked in the crook of his crossed arms, and the image made her tear up just the slightest bit. But still, they were all there. When she called, they answered, every single one. That was what mattered.
For a moment, an awkward silence reigned, and it finally occurred to Lisa she hadn’t actually prepared a speech to kick things off. Fortunately, there was at least one member of the group used to public speaking, and so, King Shining Armor stepped up: “We all know why we’re here. I’m not going to pretend to even come close to understanding what you’ve all been through.”
“I read your autobiography, love,” Lisa said quietly. “If anyone in the world gets it, it’s you.”
For a moment, Shining’s shoulder flexed, as if he were about to reach up to run his hoof along the scar granted him that one fateful day. David visibly cringed where he stood at the back of the room. The small gap left by one person never seemed larger than in that moment. Eventually, Shining shook his head. “Yes…perhaps I misspoke then.
“We’ve…all lost something fighting against evil,” he continued. “This whole world has, and in trying to keep the pain of that loss at bay, we’ve…made some mistakes.”
“Keeping the princess locked up was a mistake,” Felipe grumbled, his teeth clenching, his body tensing as if squeezing the words out was painful. “But what else could we do, after…”
Shining held a hoof up. “No need to continue that sentence. We’ve all made mistakes these past few days, but we did what that evil bitch never could: we matured. We recognized them and moved on. Problem is, your UN…hasn’t.”
“It’s not our UN anymore, remember?” Akshat said, a big smile splitting his beard. “We’re persona non grata, where they’re concerned.”
“Yes, and that’s our greatest ally right now.” A sinister little smile crossed Shining’s muzzle. “All of us. The UN wants to pretend you don’t exist, which means its eyes are off you right now. And it helps that right now they’re so focused on the evacuation efforts to the new Equestria, as well as…on me.”
He sighed, rolling his eyes.
“You have no idea the headache it took to get here undetected.”
Now Akshat leaned forward, his darkened, calloused hands rubbing together. “You sound like you already have a plan.”
Lisa and Shining exchanged a look. It was now or never. “We have a way to get Celestia…the new one…off the Illustrious.”
Felipe scoffed. “A fully-armed aircraft carrier in the middle of the largest armada ever assembled? Now I know you speak of suicide.”
“Not with a diplomatic envoy en route,” Shining pointed out, a knowing sparkle in his eye. “My helicopter could land on the deck if I so wanted.”
“Yeah, great,” Felipe rolled his eyes. “We’ll get to be within a few decks of her before onboard security annihilates us.”
“Not if we have a man on the inside,” Lisa interrupted, and with that, she produced a cell phone: the small, disposable kind mostly kept in business by drug dealers and cartels worldwide. It glowed as Shining took it up in his magic’s grip, the speaker amplified as it began to ring. Finally, looking over the group, he pressed the button to pick up.
“You blokes all there, then?” A familiar British tone drolled.
Shining Armor sighed as the reaction swept the room, Francis actually falling out of his chair as the men pressed to the walls of the room backed up against them, as if they were trying to hide from the speaker. “Admiral Peters!?” Felipe shouted.
The room fell silent as the Admiral’s voice crackled out. “Good to hear from you lot, too,” he chuckled. “The apocalypse treating you well?”
Felipe’s eyes darted from the phone to the door and back again, fully expecting a SWAT team to bust in and haul them all off.
“Right, a bit tongue-tied, I see.” He chuckled dryly. “No problem, lady and gents, s’pose I’d be a wee bit flabbergasted myself.”
Stepping forward with the phone, Shining surveyed the room. “The Admiral is going to make sure security is light and busy with other duties while we make our way aboard.” He announced. “We’ll be able to head down to the Princess and get her loose with ease.”
“If he’s had such a change of heart, how come he doesn’t just let her out himself!?” Felipe spat, his anger finally overriding his fear.
“Because I can’t get to her,” the Admiral replied. “Nobody can, except for the UN stoolie out here. Things have been modified around yon Princess’s cell since you all parted ways with my ship, there are now a dozen biometric and encoded locks between me and her, all specially keyed to Mr. M’s telemetry and vocal patterns, all of it totally automated.”
“UN’s not taking any chances this time,” Lisa sighed. “It’s as simple as that. The Admiral can get us aboard without being blown to smithereens, but everything after that is up to us.”
“But how do we know we can trust him!?” Felipe advanced on the phone, glaring right into it as if his seething anger could broadcast through the line. “How do we know you won’t just blast us out of the sky and take credit for disrupting a terrorist plot!?”
For a few minutes, the only response was the Admiral’s rolling laughter, but he regained himself just as the group started to grow uncomfortable. “My dear boy, our literal doom is heading this way at several times the speed of sound. Do you really think any of us can afford trust at this point? At least this way there’s a chance it can all be avoided.” He chuckled again. “Besides, either you fail and the world dies in fire, or you succeed and take the blame for disobeying orders while my career emerges intact. Win-win.”
“We get to be your scapegoats,” David rasped, a little semi-smile showing a corner of his yellowed grin. “This all goes tits-up, you can just blame us.”
“Very on-brand for you, Admiral,” Andre hissed.
“You’ll find that’s one thing consistent with me,” the Admiral continued, his voice growing as cold and hard as granite, the mirth fleeing. “And that, that, is why you should trust me. Because I, for one, have no plans to spend the rest of my days with my people as a group of refugees occupying another land. If the UN even plans to evacuate me before the meteor hits, which I doubt. And because I have no intention of sitting around and waiting for death alongside billions of others, I can firmly say I am willing to try any alternative, up to and including aiding you in the liberation of our next best hope. Now, what say you?”
After a moment of silence, Felipe chuckled. “Okay, let’s say we get past the largest flotilla ever assembled on whatever credibility Armor has left, then we land and make it below decks. What then? The Admiral just told us it’s impossible for anyone to get past the added security below decks. Do we ask M nicely?”
Lisa and Shining exchanged looks. With a final nod, Shining bent to open the briefcase. “We’ve established with the initial escape of the princess and my sister that there is a way through even Tachyon containment, but that way requires two magic users.”
“A single unicorn could never get through it,” she said, her eyes sharing an apology as finally, she unlocked the small suitcase cuffed to his fetlock and withdrew a small flask. A clear liquid bubbled inside that seemed to shimmer with its own iridescence, as if it glowed faintly. Lisa had half a mind to turn off the lights and draw the curtains to see if it did. “…but two could.”
The reaction was instant. Akshat backed up a step. Chen actually jumped up onto the counter. Francis grabbed Andre and the pair held eachother, backing into the living room. “Do not tell me that’s what I think it is!” Akshat screamed, clinging to the cupboards as if he could phase through them and put more space between himself and the flask.
“C’mon gang, I heard you all were veterans,” Shining chuckled. “I thought you would’ve seen the Conversion Serum before.”
“Seen once, when it was being combined with industrial-grade acids to neutralize it and seal it off in a concrete bunker!” Chen spat. “That shit was all supposed to be destroyed!”
“You really think one of the most advanced chemical weapons ever devised, a weapon so powerful it had the entire planet shitting itself in fear, would’ve just been destroyed?” Shining chuckled. “C’mon, you know the powers-that-be have always had their own agenda. Even if this stuff wasn’t the most powerful piece of psychological warfare ever created, reverse-engineering it was the best bet at a cure.”
“Wait…you’re not seriously suggesting…”
“We are, Chen,” Lisa sighed, stepping forward. “Even with Shining, it isn’t enough. We need two unicorns for them to make it through the barriers and free the princess.”
“Then what the fuck!?” Felipe hammered a fist against a wall. “There’s a million of the little bastards out there! Let’s just grab one of them! Or hell, what about Shining’s retinue!? You’re telling me there’s not a single unicorn in his Equestria we can trust!?”
“My retinue approaching UN space has only ever consisted of human guards,” Shining cut in. “Any other ponies stepping off the chopper would be arrested immediately. We need someone who can step onto the Illustrious a human, and head down a pony.”
Felipe’s mouth gaped open and shut like a fish out of water, his mind racing, his eyes wide. He reached desperately for a reason, any reason to shut this all down. None came.
Shining nodded, looking over the group. “For this to work, for the rest of humanity to be saved…one of you will have to lose their humanity.”
“You’re insane!” Felipe shouted, stabbing a finger towards the King.
“You have a better way?”
“This is insane!” He threw his hands in the air, glaring at the others. “You all see that, right!? It was crazy enough to think we could free the princess ourselves, but this…this is madness!”
“I know,” Lisa sighed, standing. Her stature wasn’t defiant or angry, just…resigned. Her sad eyes met with his. “But it’s all we’ve got. We need every advantage we can get, the princess is our only shot at saving the world and you know it. She’s the only one powerful enough to stop that crazy bitch and divert Ceres.”
“But giving up our humanity!?” Felipe shrieked. “After we fought so hard to retain it!? After everything she took from us!?”
“It’s not giving up our humanity.” David finally spoke. All eyes locked on him as he hobbled closer to Shining and sank to one knee, a hand wrapping around the bottle. His dull eyes ran over the fluid inside, his rasping breaths filling the silence in the room. “Don’t you get it? Whoever does this is making the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. They’re giving themselves up for a shot at saving the Earth.”
Shining gazed into those dull eyes as David rose again, plucking the bottle from his hooves. He held it to his chest, cradled like a baby.
“Whoever does this isn’t giving up their humanity. They’re saving it.” He rasped, walking over to his spot, leaning against the wall.
After a moment, Lisa stepped forward. “I know we can’t ask you to take this risk, but we’re out of options here. I know it’s unfair, but we’re operators. One of the things you figure out from boot camp is that life isn’t ever fair. That sometimes, it’s just the way the dice land. Well, we’re about to roll the dice here, only this time we’re playing for the whole bastard thing.”
Silence filled the tiny apartment. All eyes glanced side to side. Eventually, Lisa left, and after some rummaging around in the kitchen, returned with a pack of party straws, probably bought from a dollar store for a party that never happened years before. Looking around, she whipped one out, then pulled out a pair of scissors, sliced a little off the end, and stuck it in her closed fist.
“Really?” Akshat chuckled. “Drawing straws?”
“You’d rather use a random number generator?” She shrugged.
After a moment, he sighed, then stepped forward, plucking another straw out of the bag and sticking it in her fist. Turning back to the others, he shrugged. “We either die here, or die fighting. What difference does it make? At least here, it’s a roll of the dice.”
After a moment, Chen stepped forward, also placing a straw in Lisa’s fist. “Would be the first time risking my life felt fair anyway.” he mumbled, walking back to his seat.
Andre and Francis were next, though at first the pair seemed to be restraining each other, they wound up looking into one another’s eyes, and understanding passed between them. They made their way up, together plucking a straw out of the pile, and together adding theirs to Lisa’s fist.
Felipe was right behind them. He glared hatefully down at the straws, then up at Lisa. “Promise me something right now.” He hissed.
She blinked. “What’s that?”
“If it’s me, that when it’s all said and done and we’ve saved the world, you’ll put a bullet in my head.” He swallowed then, and beneath the glare, Lisa could see the trembling lip, the tears standing in his eyes. “That bitch took something precious from me back during the Contact War, and I’d rather die than be one of those little cunt-worshippers for a second longer than absolutely necessary.”
“I second that…” Chen whispered, Akshat nodding.
Despite everything, Lisa grasped his hand, tears standing in her own eyes. “Of course, love,” she whispered. “Of course.”
Nodding stoically, Felipe turned, heading back to his own seat. Lisa let out a shaky breath, gazing down at the straws in her grip. Never before had a few drinking straws weighed so much. “Well,” she sighed. “That just leaves…”
The toilet flushed. All eyes turned to the bathroom as David stepped out, switching off the sink as he went. He gazed up, blinking in confusion. “What?”
“Oh hell, don’t make me explain this again…” Lisa sighed.
At that, Dave let out a wry chuckle. “Don’t worry, I heardja through the door,” he said, casually dropping the vial in Shining’s hooves as he strolled over to Lisa, grabbing up a straw. “Of course I’m in.”
As he shoved his straw into her fist, he gave pause, his hand closing over hers. “After all this ended, I was gonna ask you on a proper date."
She smiled at that. “Chin up, Yank, there’s still time. Though I must say, you’re gonna need a shave and shower before I go anywhere with you.”
He let out a wry chuckle at that, one which had a wet little quiver at the end. Figuring it was merely the shame he felt from having spent their time since the Illustrious inside a bottle, she gave his hand a final squeeze before parting, leaving him to stumble over to a bare patch of wall.
“Well, everyone,” she whispered. “This is it.”
A darkened hand wrapped around hers, and she looked over to see Akshat’s smile peering through his heavy beard. “This is it."
Chen’s hand joined his. “Together.” He whispered.
“Together,” Felipe added, his hand joining theirs.
David’s joined them. Francis and Andre’s hands were last, by mere virtue of them being entangled on the couch just moments before. “Together.” They all said in unison.
Shining Armor stepped back, letting out a quivering breath. How his old Princess could have deemed this species worthy of extermination, he would never know.
Then they all took a step back, each holding a straw. With a final bite of her lip, Lisa turned her hand up. The others did the same. Her eyes swirled. Drank in every straw. Compared them to her own. Her head swam with a moment of panic. Finally, finally, the butterflies that had been boiling up in her stomach settled back down again. It wasn’t her. She would get to hang onto her humanity; hopefully for as long as she may live. But then, who…
“Well…fuck…”
She blinked, looking up at the short, little excuse of a straw clenched between two of Felipe’s fingers. He sighed, gazing down at it, trying to look nonchalant but failing to disguise the little tremor in his grip.
“No,” Chen said. “No, that’s not fair, we should…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felipe quivered, the straw dropping to the threadbare carpet. “Remember what Akshat said? It’s the most fair thing we’ve ever done.”
“But…you? You shouldn’t…”
Felipe held up a hand. “Not fair would be me backing out now,” he said, looking each of his fellow diplomats…no…his friends in the eye.
“We’ll…we’ll tell the world,” Francis said, his straw dropping to the filthy carpet, his gaze avoiding Felipe’s. “When it’s done, we’ll tell the whole world what you did here. You volunteered knowing what it meant. You’ll be a hero.”
Felipe forced a smile. “Maybe they’ll even put up a statue in Rio, eh?” He chuckled. “With a fountain, so people can throw coins at me and make wishes.”
He took the bottle from Shining, gazing at its contents. It seemed duller now, as if it knew it contained his doom. He held it to the light, glared up at it, but as he stared into its depths, his breath came as a quiver. His gaze ran around the room, like a little boy being told his dog had been killed by a car while he was away at school. He felt a grip on his arm, and found Lisa there.
“I know,” he said with a thin smile as he returned the potion to Shining Armor. “I’m saving it.”
“The world will know your name.” She whispered.
“Yes,” he chuckled. “Just make sure it’s Felipe Alonso Diaz, not…Sprinkleshine, or whatever I become.”
The whole room shared in a chuckle at that. All but one: David tucking back, his arms crossed, a shiver racing through his spine.