Sunset Flash
Hunted
Friendship is Forever.
—Princess Celestia
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Sunset Shimmer took a moment in the moonlight to rest her head on the soft spongy green lump of moss, which shifted slightly under her chin. “The first pony I find when I come back from the human world is my idiot ex. Oh, stars! I’ve got a splitting headache, I’m naked, and I still feel like I still should have fingers. To top it all off, Flash Sentry, the densest pegasus in Equestria, has joined the Royal Guard just to arrest my flank when I return. Hello, lovercolt. Tell me you have a bottle of aspirin and a shot of bourbon. Please?”
“It always has to be about you, doesn’t it?” The rustling on the other side of the spongy moss was brief but with undertones of pain that she hoped were at least close to the throbbing headache that was trying to split her own skull in half. Still, his next words shocked her to the core.
“Ungrateful bitch.”
“Me?” Sunset got up to her hooves briefly, but sat back down on the moss with a pained thud when the moonlit forest began to fade out. “As I was saying,” she continued once the world had finished spinning, “I’m not the one at fault here. You’re the idiot who tried to gang tackle me.”
“I caught you too.” A branch rose up out of the darkness and was lobbed away as the struggling noises on the other side of the mossy lump increased. “Mostly.”
“Sergeant Flash of the Royal Guard always gets his pony, I suppose,” said Sunset, wiping at a trickle of sticky moisture running down her cheek and getting onto unsteady hooves. “Buck that, I’m leaving. I figure we’ve got about ten minutes before the rest of your armored idiot friends track your armor beacon down. Just tell them I got away and nopony will be the wiser.”
“Screw that. You’re still under arrest, Sunny.” There was a little more rustling and another branch was tossed out of the darkness, sounding as if there were several more waiting their turn.
“You know I hate that nickname, Flash. Or should I start calling you Rodeo, because you only last eight seconds,” snapped Sunset through gritted teeth. There was no response except for a few more small branches thrown out of the darkness, and eventually Sunset asked, “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“I’m fine,” he responded almost instantly, struggling partially out of the darkness in a cascade of broken branches and collapsing onto the moonlit moss. “My wing’s a little numb, but I’ve been worse off—” Flash cut off abruptly, looking at her face with his bottom jaw drooping a little, just like he did back when they were dating and she showed off her magic for the nitwit. “Your horn!”
“What?” she snapped, staggering a little as she reached up to her head with one hoof. “Do I have something stuck on—”
* * *
It was, she decided, an action she had no plans of ever repeating. The cold and clammy surface of the cushioning fungus pressed all over her back as something gently tugged and jolted against her numb forehead. Opening one eye showed an extremely close view of Flash Sentry with a bandage dispenser in his mouth, gently coaxing out a long ribbon of white that he was wrapping around her horn. “Stay down,” he mumbled around the bandage, putting in one last twist before tying the end in a tight knot. “I put a Guard issue magic suppressing donut on your horn before bandaging. You were sparking every time you screamed, and I didn’t want turned into something.”
“You’re already a weasel,” whispered Sunset, opening up both eyes and blinking several times. “Ow.”
“You need to find a more impressive word, Sunny.” Flash tucked the bandage dispenser back into his armor as he talked. “Your horn is split down to about halfway and has a little chip out of the end. The suppression donut should keep it numb and stop you from aggravating it with any casting, but the sooner we get you back to Canterlot and into a hospital the better. I’ve only got four painkillers in my medical kit, so let me know if it gets too bad, and I’ll let you have one.”
“Why in Hades didn’t I feel this before?” muttered Sunset, trying to keep focused enough so that what she could see of the surrounding forest was not doubled.
Flash tapped his armor with one hoof. “You were close enough to me that the armor enchants protected you on impact. Good thing too, or we would have broke a lot more than your horn.”
“Makes sense,” said Sunset Shimmer. “I can’t believe I just agreed with you. Must be drain bramage.”
“How can you tell?” Flash snorted at his own joke, a disgusting habit that both Flash’s possessed, although there were several differences between them that only showed up beneath the sheets. “Anyway, the sooner the Royal Guard notices the hole you put in the Outer Wards, the sooner they’ll be here to pick us both up. My wing is starting to hurt like the…“
Sunset had laid her head back down on the huge spongy fungus in an attempt to calm the pounding headache that beat in time with her pulse, so she could not see whatever had made Flash trail off like that, but she still felt spiteful enough to add, “I blame you, Feathers-For-Brains.”
“S-s-sunny? Can I ask a f-favor?” His voice had gotten much quieter, and there was that little wheedling whine to it that annoyed her to no end. She could tolerate it when she was feeling good, but that was certainly not now. However, it was worth opening one eye to see what was going on, and then both eyes once she caught a glimpse of a pale Flash Sentry, barely managing to remain standing. He had pulled himself out of the dark shadow that surrounded the tree and into the bright moonlight, which gave the silvery trails of blood down his side a glitter like molten metal, and painted the pinkish ends of bone that protruded from the heaviest parts of his wing with a sparkle like shattered glass.
“Holy horseapples, Flash! Why didn’t you say something?” She staggered to her hooves, suppressing an almost instinctive attempt to put power into her magic to hold back the thin stream of blood that oozed from his side. The resulting wave of nausea was only amplified as she got a better look at the carnage their impact had made to his wing, with at least two different sections that had bones twisting in a direction they were not intended to twist, not counting the open fracture of his humerus that laid his skin open in a way that did not help her nausea one bit. Flash was no help, having turned his head away the moment she stood up and was maintaining a rather sincere inspection of a nearby weed with a fierce intensity that indicated that perhaps if he could not pay any attention to the broken wing, it would just go away. Idiot.
“How bad is it?” he whispered.
“You’ll never play the piano again. What do you mean, how bad is it? I was Celestia’s student, not a nurse. You need a doctor, or somebody who knows how to put together a mean jigsaw puzzle at least.” She swallowed as a terrified twitch ran down his shapely flanks. Flash had always been protective of his wings, and it had taken forever before he trusted her enough to help preen them. But this was not helping.
“Flash,” she started. “Take one of your painkillers. Right now, before I even touch anything.”
At least the big lug is obedient. Oh, for the love of—
“You’re not supposed to chew it, moron.” She helped the sputtering stallion drink from his canteen and got him situated on the spongy chunk of fungus before taking a better look at his broken wing. If anything, it appeared worse than it probably was. It would only take an hour or two with a medical unicorn before Flash could spend a few weeks recuperating, surrounded by pretty young nurses and lounging around in the hospital whirlpool. She, on the other hoof, was going to be surrounded by glum armored guards in the prison wing of the hospital until she recovered enough for whatever other punishment Celestia had planned.
Screw it. I’m out of here.
It took longer than she expected for Flash to settle down into a relatively relaxed state, considering the quantity of time-released opiates that must have been galloping through his bloodstream. After he began to snooze, she gently tucked his wing up into a more-or-less comfortable position and used the bandage applicator to tie it relatively immobile against the various clever little concealed latches in his Royal Guard armor.
Time was not her friend. It would only be an hour at worst until the Royal Guard followed the tracking enchantment in Flash’s armor and showed up in full force. The forest under Canterlot was relatively unoccupied, because nopony preferred to live where the possibility of huge rocks crashing down on top of your head was a daily risk. All she really needed to do was to figure out which direction Mount Canter was and head the other way. Once far enough away from the mountain, there were a huge number of nature trails and paths that she could vanish into, turning her tail on her former teacher and all of Canterlot. Maybe she could head to the Griffon lands, or even north to see how the Elk lived. A little bit of mane dye, a hat to hide her injured horn until it healed on its own, and she could travel anywhere in the world.
Why does my chest hurt so much? Did I break some ribs?
There was only one pony in all of Equestria who knew just exactly when she was returning through the mirror, but Sunset could not imagine Princess Twilight Sparkle having betrayed her. She was a friend, and even though the concept of friendship had always been something Sunset had considered to be a weakness, she had not only seen what friendship could do, but been slugged in the face by a whole rainbow full of it. Even if Twilight had betrayed… well, told Celestia that Sunset was returning through the mirror, that did not mean she meant for anything bad to happen to her.
We all make mistakes, I suppose. Some bigger than others.
She toyed with the idea of traveling to Twilight Sparkle, but discarded it almost at once. Celestia would not have put that many Royal Guards at her return location if she had not been expecting trouble, nor ordered them to detain and arrest her on sight unless she was planning on punishing her. To drag a friend into that kind of swamp and pit her against the Princess of the Sun and Moon would have been a betrayal of their friendship. No, it was better for everypony if Sunset Shimmer were to vanish away into the darkness, never to be seen again.
“There you go, Flash,” she whispered, patting him gently on the shoulder. He looked so cute with the moonlight reflecting across his face and glinting off his scratched helmet. Those muscles really did fill out the armor well, although it still seemed a little weird to see him without pants. Outside of the bedroom, that is. Once he closed his baby blue eyes and drew his legs up for a nap, she stood as quietly as she could. “Don’t worry, numbskull. The rest of your armored friends will be along any minute now.”
The world swayed a little as Sunset Shimmer looked up into the sky, making her take an extra moment to breathe and stabilize her stance before looking around. “Thank God for four solid hooves,” she murmured, scanning across what little of the sky she could see through the trees. Even with the thick foliage blocking her sight, there should at least have been a section of the sky without stars visible indicating Mount Canter. And these trees looked different than she expected too. The forests around the base of the mountain were all pine and aspen, where these huge trees had broad leaves that rustled in the nighttime breeze, making eerie shadows dance through the thick underbrush.
“Where’s the blinking mountain?” she murmured, trying to look through the cracks in the treetops and seeing only stars. “The Guard is going to be here any minute.” There was a distant thumping on the ground, as if some huge and monstrous drum was being played, or perhaps the granite of the mountain was conducting one of DJPony3’s latest hits to her, and Sunset tried to make sense of her surroundings.
If all else is eliminated, then the impossible, no matter how weird, is probably reality.
“Deciduous forest, oddly huge fungi, a damp smell of nearby swamp—“ Sunset swung her tail at an insect, which was one pony bodily function she was pleased to still be proficient with. The resulting dead iridescent bug glittered in the moonlight, a hostile mix of claws and shimmering wings that could have only been found in one place.
“The Everfree Forest?”
If there was any doubt, it vanished when a nearby hydra gave a stentorian bellow, most likely due to having scented wounded prey.