Octavia’s fists slammed into the punching bag, as the sound of machine gun fire played in her head.
Should have been easy, she thought, pummeling the bag. He was small. I should have easily been able to take him.
Not to mention that he shouldn’t have gotten the drop on her. She should have been paying more attention—she’d known there were still more goons back in the hallways. She should have been prepared. Even then, she could have taken out the pegasus still.
Wham, wham.
A roundhouse kick could have taken him out of the air.
Wham, wham.
If she’d slung her elbow back, she could have taken him out mid-flight.
Wham, wham, wham.
If she’d kept her grip on her gun, she could have taken him out immediately. Then she could have taken out the unicorn, and Vinyl wouldn’t have gotten stuck here.
BOOM!
The side of the punching bag burst, sand spilling out onto the castle floor. Octavia, without wasting any time, began unhooking it, throwing the punching bag to the side to be repaired.
“Wow,” a deceptively sweet voice said from behind. “You’re so strong. Did it owe you money or something?” the voice added, in a wildly different tone.
“Hello, Sour Sweet, nice to see you too,” Octavia muttered.
Sour Sweet stood, leaning against the edge of the training area, in a violet jacket and deep blue crop top. With her jacket unbuttoned, her small, slender pistol was visible, as well as a numerous knives, of varying sizes.
“I just thought I’d come down and say hi!” she said, putting a hand up to her mouth. Her mechanical eye staticed as she added, “Y’know, before the Inquisitors get you.”
Octavia grunted, hooking up another punching bag. “We’re working on making me look less interesting,” she said simply. “If the Inquisitors don’t find me, they’ll know something’s up. But if they find something completely uninteresting, they’ll just move along.” It was the best way to avoid them, in the long term. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Smart,” Sour Sweet agreed, nodding. “How’d the mission go sour, anyway?”
“Filthy arrived at the same conclusion we did,” Octavia replied easily, pounding on the bag once more. “Went ahead and sent his goons to the Flight of Fancy.”
“Hmm. And the android you, you know...bought with money you didn’t have?” She smirked.
Octavia slammed her fist into the bag, then stopped. Facing Sour Sweet, she said, “Rarity said that Discord would cover that,” she said. “And the android is doing fine right now.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” Sour Sweet muttered. “Sometimes they, well, they die.” She smiled, tossing one hand into the air. “So it’s kind of a big relief when they don’t commit suicide.”
“That only happens rarely,” Octavia muttered.
Sour Sweet let out her obnoxious, city-pony giggle. “Once is enough,” she said, face dropping. She hopped over the rail, sitting on the edge of the training area platform. “And are you doing alright?”
“Well, she had as happy a life as she could possibly have right now,” Octavia said, “but was forced to come here because I failed to take out an unarmed pegasus quickly enough.” She slammed her fist into the punching bag, sending it swinging wildly.
“Well, we can’t all be good at everything,” Sour sweet said, rolling her eye. “Yeah, only Rainbow Dash is allowed.”
Octavia scoffed. “Please, Sour. Not only is she not good at everything, my job is to be good at everything.”
“Well, look at the bright side: you’re still here, and so is she!” Sour Sweet said, gesturing wildly. “Soooo, things could be worse, that’s all I’m saying.”
Octavia allowed herself a grim smile. “I do suppose you’re right,” she admitted, stepping over to her jacket. She threw it on, buttoning it up.
“And...does the android look promising?”
Octavia shook her head. “I doubt it,” she said sincerely. “Vinyl’s toughing this out, but she’ll probably just help stack boxes, if anything.”
“I heard there was some sort of incident.”
Octavia grimaced. “Let me guess: Sky?”
“Sky heard Rarity mention it to Rainbow Dash,” Sour Sweet replied. “Well? Come on! Give me the scoop!”
“No. I am not spreading gossip. You lot need to find better things to do with your time.”
“Spoilsport.”
Octavia walked away, shaking her head. She should have known better than to expect decent conversation out of Sour Sweet—she’d always been slightly loopy in the head, and could be quite savage with her words when she chose.
She was the last person Octavia normally felt like talking to, and this day, it was just one more thing.
Sour Sweet wandered off, leaving Octavia alone with her thoughts. She stepped up to a window, looking out into the forest. The Everfree loomed around her, dark and foreboding. She’d been intimidated by it on her first days in Ponyville. And even moreso on her first trip to the Castle. The path wasn’t easy, and you had to be on guard the entire way, but it hadn’t been as bad as she had thought.
Perhaps the rumors were set up by Sunset? If she’d planned on creating Discord while still a Princess, then it would have been frightfully easy to make the forest seem even scarier than it was—and it was already plenty terrifying to begin with.
It was kind of funny, really. Between the problems Canterlot made up and the ones they caused, there were really obvious ones like Everfree, various large gangs, and even griffon slave traffickers that the Princess seemingly did nothing to stop, and yet, nopony questioned it. They all sat, in blissful ignorance, while ponies that simply wouldn’t be missed were taken from their homes and slaughtered that same night...if they were lucky.
Clop, ka-thunk!
Octavia’s hand shot to her handgun, but when she turned, she saw Sunset standing behind her, hood pulled low over her forehead, wings tucked in close to her back. At her side she held one of Rarity’s Diamond Duster masks.
“Misplaced the Olden Pony mask you normally use?” Octavia asked.
Sunset nodded. “Yeah. I remember when you first saw me making my way through here. You were with...Double Down, right? He jumped when he saw me, but you...you didn’t.”
“I thought you were a fake,” Octavia muttered. “Even hidden as you were, in a big cloak and a cheap Nightmare Night mask, I doubted that Discord’s leader would just walk past a bunch of barely trustworthy new recruits. And I didn’t buy the limp, either.”
Sunset grinned, leaning against the wall beside the window. “To be honest, it made the perfect decoy, you know? Any spies that thought they could simply suicide-kill Discord’s leader would be woefully unsuited for an Alicorn, and, as the former Princess of Inquiries, I don’t think any of them would be able to quickdraw me. Furthermore, if any of them thought I wasn’t the real one, they’d be looking in all the wrong places.”
“Did you really reveal yourself to me and Vinyl just because you got bored?” Octavia asked.
“That’s partly the truth,” Sunset admitted. “But also...” She hesitated, indecision showing on her face.
“What?” Octavia asked.
“I don’t know if I should tell you that,” Sunset said. She put her chin in one hand, looking out the window in thought. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Octavia, but...it’s hard sometimes. I know so many secrets, and so many of them...wouldn’t help you at all, or would only make things worse. If I told you the right ones, it would help our cause greatly, but if I say even one of the wrong ones, it might...end it all.” She blew out a puff of air, waving fingers out the window. “Ashes, scattered in the breeze.” She leaned on both elbows, until her eyes fixated on the strange crystal tree.
“Well,” Octavia said, “I don’t know if I, personally, am going to do that much to help overthrow Celestia. Don’t get me wrong, being ‘the one’ to do all that would be amazing, but please. I’m not that good.”
“Yet,” Sunset replied quietly. “Remember, we have six Alicorns to kill, and we have to be ready to kill all of them before we kill any of them. We’re still a good ways off from that, so...we’re mostly just on damage control. Saving androids like Vinyl.”
“And maybe finally putting an end to Filthy?”
Sunset shrugged. “He’ll just be replaced. Crime will always be there. Until we fix the government, there’ll always be kingpins like Filthy Rich.”
“Boss?” Fluttershy called from slightly behind.
“Be right there!” Sunset called back. “Ahem. Come with, please? I wanted to talk to you about something after this one little thing I had to deal with.”
“Of course,” Octavia said. “Work?”
“Hmm...an experimental weapon design. I think I have the framework for an Alicorn killer, but...it’s a little outside my area of expertise.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Octavia said. “But...you think it’s in mine?”
“I believe so, but we can talk about it after we see what’s wrong with Vinyl.”
Sour Sweet’s jabs returned unbidden to her mind. “What happened?” Octavia asked, pace quickening.
As they began to move, Sunset fitted the mask over her face, and spoke quietly, even though there weren’t any other ponies in the halls. “Well, she seems to have dissed the demon-goddess of nightmares.”
“What?”
“I know, right? She’s been here for three days.”
“What do you mean, she dissed--”
Sunset interrupted. “We’ve always gotten reports of ponies having weird dreams or even nightmares about Nightmare Moon in this place. I just thought it was because we left all her banners up.” She shrugged. “Vinyl, however, came out of her nightmare damaged.”
“How badly?” Octavia asked.
“A small hole, but it goes all the way through her chest,” Sunset said. “Fluttershy told me she didn’t think it hit anything vital, but Vinyl hasn’t calmed down, and Fluttershy didn’t want to boot her off for the surgery just yet.”
Octavia nodded. “I can see that, but...”
“I don’t expect either of us to do much but be reassuring,” Sunset said. Octavia heard her horn tinkling, then watched as the door to the hospital wing swung open on its own.
“—I WILL NOT CALM DOWN! THERE’S A FUCKING HOLE IN MY CHEST! NIGHTMARE FUCKING MOON PUT IT THERE!”
Sunset pulled the mask from her face, saying, “At least fall quiet for a minute, not all of us have auto-adjusting audio receptors.”
Vinyl jerked, looking up from her hospital bed to stare at Sunset, then pointed at her chest. “Hole! Chest! WHY DID YOU BUILD YOUR HOUSE HERE?”
“Well, she never did that to any of us before,” Sunset said. “I didn’t think she was real...as I’ve never actually had any of those dreams.” With, seemingly, barely a thought, a chair scooted over for her to sit in, beside Vinyl, as Octavia walked over to stand by Fluttershy.
Light music was coming from Vinyl. “You’re magic! Couldn’t you have checked to see if it was haunted FIRST?”
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” Sunset asked with a smile. “Here, let me go: from previous reports, I’m assuming the dream starts in your room, everything’s kind of shimmering, and the castle looks different?”
“U-uh....yeah,” Vinyl stammered.
“And you left your room...”
“...into the halls,” Vinyl muttered. “I...uh...knew I was supposed to stay in my room, but it was a dream, so...like...I didn’t think you’d be mad...”
“I’m not,” Sunset said smoothly and calmly. “You began wandering the halls...”
“I noticed all the banners with Celestia were gone,” Vinyl said.
Despite how calm Vinyl became, Octavia felt a shiver down her spine. She was the Princess of Inquisition, after all, she thought. This kind of thing can’t be new for her.
“And...there was...a weird shadow pony. She came in, and said she had to change the tapestries again. In...uh, Rarity’s voice.”
A flicker of surprise crossed Sunset’s face, but was gone in an instant. “And from there, you went...”
“To the next room,” Vinyl continued. “It was confusing, because it was the throne room, but I know that the throne room was not over there, and I...uh...hmm.” She paused, the music stopped, as she turned to Sunset. “You were the Princess of Inquiries, right?”
Sunset chuckled. “I told you you were good at talking to people, right? Well, I, for one, am very good at listening.” She leaned back, wings rustling. “Finish telling, then we’ll see about patching that hole, right?”
“Right. So, uh...”
“You were--”
“Confused about the position of the throne room,” Vinyl interrupted.
Sunset cracked a smile. “Well, the throne room isn’t used as such anymore. Back in the day, the guest rooms would have been closer to it, as a symbol of status, most likely.”
“Mm,” Vinyl hummed. “Well, uh, that’s what Nightmare Moon said. Almost exactly, too. And then I called her out on the castle being fake...”
“Hold up,” Sunset held up a hand. “Did you know she was Nightmare Moon at this point?”
“Uh, no. I thought the whole thing was a product of my imagination, obviously,” Vinyl said with a scoff. “I’m not that stupid.”
“Why did you think the castle was fake, though?” Sunset asked.
“Because the tiles didn’t budge, the vines didn’t move, yada yada,” Vinyl mimed talking with one hand. “Nightmare Moon said it was...uh, ‘total area stasis petrification’?”
Sunset frowned. “Did she explain what that means?”
“She said it locks everything in place, so you could keep using the castle even though it was old,” Vinyl said.
Sunset blew out a long, slow breath. “Okay, that’s...that’s exactly what I did.” She clasped her hands in front of her, grimacing. “You’ve gotta be shitting me. This is the last thing I need to deal with right now.”
“Yeah, see? I told you this was ba—ow.” She winced, hand going to the tear in her chest as she collapsed back onto the bed.
“Stay still,” Fluttershy warned.
“Geez, alright,” Vinyl muttered. “But, uh, yeah. We had a nice long talk about how history is really subjective--”
Octavia snorted. “No. It isn’t.”
“See, that’s where I was, but she made some good points,” Vinyl acknowledged. “But, uh, after that she revealed who she was, and I got scared. I backed away, and she took offense, and she knifed me.”
“Alright,” Sunset said slowly. “If you enter that dream again, just...try not to provoke her. This shouldn’t have been possible, Princess of Dreams or no.” She shook her head. “Fluttershy, can you get started on repairs?”
“Okay,” Fluttershy said. “Vinyl, if you’re not going to let me boot you off, you need to stay very still.”
“I was on yesterday while you were fishing bullets out of me,” Vinyl said, waving it off. “I’ll be fine.”
Fluttershy nodded to Octavia, who moved to stand just behind her. Fluttershy pulled out a small drill with a ruby glowing in the handle, and began to remove Vinyl’s plating.
“I’ll start working on figuring out why this hasn’t come up before,” Sunset said, rising. She put Rarity’s mask back on, over her face, then beckoned to Octavia. “Miss Melody, if you’d please?”
Octavia paused, looking to Fluttershy.
“It’s a simple repair, I can do this on my own,” Fluttershy said.
Octavia nodded, following Sunset out the door.
Sunset had fixed the mask over her face, and hobbled with her fake limp to the window they’d been talking beside a minute ago.
“Well?” Octavia asked.
“This reeks of foul play,” Sunset muttered. “Did they add some sort of new software? No, that doesn’t make any sense. And I’d have noticed if somepony was here that shouldn’t have been, and this doesn’t make any sense as some sort of subterfuge.” She put her head in her hands, leaning her elbows on the windowsil. “But we haven’t seen anything like this before...” Beneath the mask, Octavia saw Sunset’s eyes flick over to look at her. “Hmm.”
“What?” Octavia asked slowly.
“Theories I doubt you’d ever understand,” Sunset said simply.
Octavia scoffed. “Really. I’m no foal, Sunset.”
“I know that. But I barely understand them myself, and I—pardon the ego—am a bloody genius. There’s only a couple other ponies alive I’d feel would be able to discuss this with me. I’ll handle that on my own.”
“Alright, I can accept that,” Octavia said. “And the other thing you wanted my help with? Are you going to come back later, or do you want to do it now?”
“Oh, right. I want you to help me build a bass cannon.”
“A what?”