//------------------------------// // 6. Anti-Villain // Story: Sunny, Moonie, Twily // by Jetto //------------------------------// Sunset Shimmer yawned. She was trying to find a comfortable sitting position on an uncomfortable chair next to a hard wooden desk in a small, dark, empty room, illuminated only by a small desk lamp in the middle and the glassy window of the door letting in some of the light from the outside. Hoofcuffs on her hooves didn't help. Neither did the magic-dampening ring on her horn. "Hello? Anypony?" She groaned at the giant mirror at her right. "Don't you have better things to do than this?" Her questions went unanswered. She groaned and faceplanted the desk. "I swear, if someone walks in and starts threatening me because I'm a southerner, again, I'll give you a legitimate reason to keep me he--..." She didn't get to finish her sentence, as the door opened, blinding her with sudden flash of light and another pony entered the room. Once her eyes recovered, she recognized the fiery red royal guard, even if he didn't put his helmet on the table to expose his long, orange mane with red highlights, not that different from hers. In fact, a lot of ponies mention the uncanny resemblence between them, but she didn't see it. "Hi Fire Strike." She casually welcomed a familiar guard. "Hope you don't mind I won't shake hooves." She lifted her hoofcuffed hooves, shrugging. "It's Officer Strike to you, miss Shimmer. And no, that won't be necessery." He sat at the chair next to her, levitating a file of some sort. "You've truly outdone yourself this time." "You won't prove anything!" She protested, angry that she couldn't properly cross her hooves. "We have at least two dozen eye witnesses. Including your... ehem, "victims", who are more than happy to testify against you in court." "Testify? They had it coming!" "What was that?" "...nothing." Fire Strike sighed and shook his head. "Either way, I would like you to describe the entire event." "Oh? And whatever happened to your two dozen eye witnesses, huh?" "I would like to hear your version before making a final judgement." Sunset blinked. That was not something she heard too often, but it was a nice change. "It started this afternoon, after classes ended. I went for some shopping..." Leaving the Coffee Shop with a few bags of new, aromatic beans, Sunset Shimmer gladly checked off "Something to keep me alive during all-nighters" from her checklist, along with "Don't let Twilight buy coffee" and "Like, ever!" checked as well. Whatever mud she was buying was strong and kept her on her hooves better than anything she had, but at the same time the aftertaste was making her insane and disturbed her concentration. She blamed her latest 98% test on those beans alone and decided to never again let a pony from a Sparkle family line meddle with her fate ever again. With that out of her way, all that was left on the list was a "New set of pencils from 'Pencils and Beds"", which was probably the stupidest name for a shop she ever heard (along with the weirdest business plan in history of universe), but at least they had high quality products, so... "Look, as fascinating as analyzing the psyche of a teenaged mare is," Fire Strike interrupted her overly long narration "could you get to the point already?" Sunset snorted and rolled her eyes. "I was getting there, Officer Hasty! Sheesh, won't even let the girl finish! No wonder you can't keep a marefriend." His eye twitched, as his face covered itself in blush. Sunset could swear she heard some muffled laughter coming from behind the giant mirror. He growled until the noises stopped entirely. Sunset Shimmer smiled innocently, high-fiving herself in her mind (if she was in trouble, this was as good a silver lining as she could hope for). "Continue, Miss Shimmer... if you don't mind, that is." "Not at all, Officer." But as Sunset was about to enter the the shop, the door slammed right open, her face only narrowly avoiding collission. She didn't have time to blink, let alone say anything, as two big, burly stallions zipped passed her, then suddenly a third stallion, this one a gray earth pony, stopped by her and grabbed her saddlebags. "Gimme that, babe!" "So he robbed you?" "Pfft, no!" "How about," Sunset immediately enveloped her belongings with her aura and pulled it backwards, easily tripping the stallion her direction "nah!" As he struggled to keep his balance, she let go of her levitation and instead charged her horn with different kind of energy and poked his head with it. Not stabbed or impaled, mind you. She was no brute! BZZZT! She had style! The thief found out the hard way, falling unconscious on the ground loaded with Celestia knows how many gigawatts, twitching like a dying bug shortly before its demise. Except he wasn't dead. "He's not dead, right?" She asked, just in case. "No. Just a little twitchy." "Oh. Good." She nodded to herself. Last thing she needed was lose control over her own power. That would be rather awkward. As soon as the would-be criminal fell face flat at the concrete street (ouch!), she heard the owner of the shop yelling. "GUARDS, GUARDS! THIEVES ARE GETTING AWAY!" One glance at the inside of the shop said it all- broken beds, pencils thrown around and the good store owner yelling from behind his counter, kneeling, with one hoof covering his black eye, other hoof waving at the escaping trio; one of which was already down for the count, while the others paused to wait for their friend, but just shrugged and rushed away without him. Trying to rob her, then demolishing her favourite pencil store? (She had no comments about their beds, she lived in dorm) That was about all she could take, before her eyes narrowed and horn burned up... "And then you shot about, lemme see..." he inspected his file "...around a dozen or so fireballs in their general direction." "Only nine!" she pouted. "And they had it coming." "So you assaulted them, on bright day, with eyewitnesses, with fireballs?" "It's cold flame, actually." "Called what?" "Not 'called'," her eyes rolled "Cold, as in freezing, though it's more lukewarm then cold if you ask me. It's a rare type of magical fire that doesn't burn living organic matter, but instead applies a kinetic force upon contact." "That would explain why only their clothes, bags and some fur was burned; but they were still beaten up, despite having no hoofmarks on their bodies." "It's a specialty of my family," she waved her both hooves, again irritated by the hoofcuffs "they made one thing right, I guess." He hummed and spared her a comment. "Also explains why only the buidings around caught on fire." She hesitated, before smiling sheepishly and answering. "...collateral damage?" "Yes, I'm pretty sure that's the case." He rolled his eyes at her. "Hey, Gustav's Outdoor Delights is my favourite cafe! I didn't burn its entrance on purpose! Besides, insurance should cover any fire incidents. Including the cold ones, I think." Fire Strike blinked, then nodded and looked at the file once again. "Is that all of the story?" "Pretty much. Once they were down, some guards appeared, I was arrested and voila, here I am! Some random losers rob a store, I stop them and suddenly I'm the one who's evil! Story of my entire freakin life!" She ended it with headslamming the desk with a loud thud. "Miss Shimmer... Sunset," Fire Strike closed the file and put it on the table, now instead focusing on her, as she raised her head just to get an eye contact. "why do you think we brought you here in the first place?" She hummed, then shrugged. "Because everypony does that? Because I'm the daughter of a head of an anti-Celestia party, so I must be up to no good? Because everytime something bad happens I'm around, even if I'm only half times guilty? Or because I actively study chaos magic and necromancy and it freaks ponies out, so they blame me for literally everything bad that ever happens?" "I'm sorry, what?" Sunset rolled her eyes. "I'm officially allowed to study and research these topics, strictly under the Princess's direct supervision, but not allowed to use or spread the knowledge without her consent." She then quietly muttered. "Not anymore. I have a written permission from Princess Celestia herself in my saddlebags in case you don't believe me. " "Uhh..." "Cold flame is NOT chaos magic!" "R-right. I see." He coughed and lit his horn with magic. Suddenly, Sunset felt her horn being free once again, with the magic dampening ring flying away, shortly after followed by both sets of hoofcuffs. "You're free to go, Miss Shimmer." Sunset raised an eyebrow. "Wait, what? That's it?" "Yes, your testimony matches that of the other witnesses and nopony wants to press any charges for the damage you accidentally caused. We see no reason to hold you in any longer." "...so I'm not in trouble?" "Not quite as much as those three robbers you stopped. Your actions didn't bring them any lasting harm, physical or mental (except trauma from being beaten by a girl), you acted in self-defense, insurance will cover all the collateral damage and you didn't resist the arrest or cause any sort of problems once detained... though that last part would be stretching it, but I can safely say I've seen worse. We'll just leave you with a warning." Sunset's eyes widened considerably. She only ever knew Fire Strike because they sometimes bumped into each other when Moondancer went hanging out with their gay best friend, Silver Sword. Hanging out as in, yes, just being friends and actually not banging or doing anything indecent, aside from assisting each other in finding new partners. They insisted on taking Fire Strike and Sunset along with them on some occassions, but they refused everytime. Having Moondancer be a matchmaker for her all the time was bad enough, but pairing her up with him was just too much for either of them. She had nothing but disdain towards him or any other law enforcer out there, but at the very least she had to admit, he was a lot more level headed than any other guard she knew. If anypony else had been here with her, things wouldn't have gone as smoothly.. "Before you go, Sunset," he interrupted her as she was about to leave the room "I don't know why everypony thinks ill of you, though I'm pretty sure you gave them reasons, but... you're not a foal anymore. Don't let others decide who you are and what you should be." Sunset snorted. "Did you read that in a fortune cookie?" She asked, giggling, until he looked her in the eyes. "I'm serious!" All laughing stopped. "You're too accepting of being treated like some evil witch. What you did today was something very few ponies ever gather the courage to do. And while it was reckless, dangerous and illegal, you still helped that poor shopkeeper. You had no personal gain in stopping them, but you took the risk. Do you know what that makes you?" She swallowed, afraid to say the first thing that popped to her mind. "A... h-hero?" "A little girl trying to be one and being lucky she didn't get herself or others hurt! And if you don't care about yourself, at least think about your friends next time. They're worried sick about you!" It took a moment, but soon enough something clicked in her head. "You didn't call them here, did you?" He nodded. "They're waiting for you in the hallway." Sunset's ears dropped. "We're also obligated to contact Princess Celestia, as a headmistress of your school." And dropped even lower. He sighed and put a hoof on her shoulder. "Word of advice- she'll be sent a letter by tommorow morning. I reccommend confronting her about it before she gets it." After a brief moment of silence, she nodded and shook his hoof out of her shoulder. "Fine. Oh well then," she shrugged, a sly smile appearing on her face "I learned my lesson. Next time I wanna go vigilante on some punks, I'll get a costume." "Sunset..." "A dark one, black or purple, I guess? Full body of course." "Sunset..." "With a hat, to cover my horn! Oh, and a cape! They're stylish, plus nopony will know if I have wings or not! "SUNSET!" "Nah, just kidding! I'm no mare-do-well!" She blew a raspberry, before opening the door. She turned one last time. "I'm more of an anti-villain! Bye officer!" "Ohmygosh Sunny!" As expected, first thing after recovering her belongings and entering the public hallwa, was being tackle-hugged by a white maned cuddle monster. "Are you alright? You're not hurt? Hungry? Tired? They didn't probe you too hard, did they?" "Moondancer, they don't probe witnesses." Twilight explained. "I'm fine, now let go!" She tried to pry away her friend, to no avail. It took one minute to get Moondancer away from Sunset, another two to explain there was no probing in the station (despite what the latest hit sci-fi cop movie taught her) and she was free of any charges. She still had no pencils, but that was the least of her worries. "I'm getting hungry," Twilight said, as they walked by the streets "wanna grab something at Gustav's?" Sunset's eye twitched. "Eeerm, better not, I mean... I heard they're... fixing the front!" "Really?" Twilight hummed. "Weird. I swear this morning they were just fine." "Yeah, some fire incident." She explained, trying to hide her sweating with a sheepish smile. "The insurance will cover it." Her two friends looked at her, then shrugged, realizing it was probably nothing important. "So, do we go to Joe's place, or..." "Actually," Sunset interrupted them "I'll go back home. I need to talk to Princess Celestia..."