//------------------------------// // Take Me To The River // Story: Flash Sunset // by Georg //------------------------------// Sunset Flash Take Me To The River Please keep your hooves inside the ride at all times. —Anonymous Guide at Disneyhind’s Riverboat Ride The inside of their primitive shelter was dead silent for a moment until a distant flash of lightning made Sunset Shimmer twitch in reaction and bump her horn against one of the many roots trailing down from the tumbled trees that made up their roof. The resulting virulent outburst almost drowned out Flash Sentry’s whoops of joy. “Princess Celestia sent her pet bird to track us down! We’re saved. Come on, Sunset!” His progress out of the scant shelter and into the rain was slowed as Sunset Shimmer bit down on his tail and pulled, and stopped cold as a brilliant flash of lightning lit up the immediate area. “Get back in here, Lightning Rod. Celestia isn’t out there. Ow!” During the scuffle, Philomena had decided that her perch on Flash’s mobile rear was inferior to a comfortable place in the middle of Sunset Shimmer’s ratty mane, right between her ears where she could give the unicorn the benefit of a sharp beak to the top of the skull whenever the bird felt it was needed. “But… Philomena!” Flash had the ‘beaten puppy’ look down cold as he looked back over his shoulder at his ‘prisoner,’ which was only slightly spoiled by the way he twitched as another nearby flash of lightning illuminated the area. “Get back in here before you attract a lightning bolt, Flash.” Sunset winced as Philomena gave her a sharp peck to the top of the head again. “Princess Celestia didn’t order Philomena to chase us. Nopony can tell this stupid bird anything.” Philomena took that moment to deliver two sharp pecks to the top of Sunset’s head. With a sigh of resignation, Sunset settled down on the floor of their shelter and nosed the dim alchemical light onto a protruding root to better illuminate the cramped surroundings. “Philomena hates me.” With considerable maneuvering, Flash managed to get turned around so his tail was out of Sunset’s face. “Princess Celestia’s pet flew all the way out into the Everfree Forest just to peck you on top of the head?” Trying to ignore the sharp peck that followed, Sunset glowered upwards at the bird. “She liked me before, but she’s hated me ever since I disobeyed Princess Celestia and broke into the restricted section of the library. After your father and the other guard escorted me out, she came swooping down and started pecking me in the head.” There was a shrill chirp followed by a sharp impact and Sunset looked up. “Like that.” “Dad didn’t say anything about her pet,” said Flash. “I… um… had stunned him by then.” Sunset tried to rest her chin on the irregular floor of their shelter but knocked her horn against a root with a sharp spasm of pain. “It was a stupid idea, but I thought it was my last chance. I knocked out the guards escorting me out of the castle, broke into the room where Celestia was storing the mirror, and… jumped.” She glared upwards at Philomena’s raspy chirp and added, “I was desperate. I wanted power so much and to have it snatched away from me at the last second just… I should have resisted. I should have at least considered that the immortal Celestia, my teacher for years and the ruler of Equestria since the era of Starswirl, might possibly have been right and I was…” “Wrong?” said Flash after a few moments of relative silence broken only by the flash and rumble of lightning outside their shelter. “You never were wrong when we were dating. Insufferably right at all times, yes. ‘scuse me.” While Flash nosed open the side panel on his armor and dug out a pain pill, Sunset glowered at the loose gravel that made up the floor of their makeshift shelter. She nudged one damp pebble at a time to the side, finally muttering something incomprehensible. “Beg pardon?” said Flash, contemplating the pain pill on his muddy hoof and working up the spit to be able to swallow it dry. “I said I was wrong.” A brilliant flash of lightning lit up the sky outside and Flash almost bobbled his pill into the gravel when the booming crash of thunder followed, although Sunset’s protests quickly drowned out the rumble of weather. “Ow! Stop pecking me, you stupid bird! I said I was wrong! I should have listened to Celestia, alright! I wasn’t ready, I was too wrapped up in my own greed to recognize my mistake, and I’ve never been willing to admit it before. That’s why I came here! I wanted to apologize to Princess Celestia! I couldn’t stay in that crazy world with her mirror image, knowing that I would never be able to really look her in the face and apologize for betraying her trust and causing her pain! That’s all I wanted! Is that too much to ask?” With a delicate touch of his lips, Flash nibbled the pill off his hoof and gave a shuddering swallow. “You could have just said that when you came through the portal, Sunny. I was wondering why there was a cake.” “A cake.” Sunset Shimmer’s voice could have frozen an erupting volcano solid. “Yeah. Something that Pinkie Pie brought. It was stashed in the castle while we waited. We were hanging around for hours, Sunny. I thought there was going to be some sort of party, but—” “Flash,” snapped Sunset Shimmer. “Shut up.” She reached up and nipped several longer roots off of the tree that formed the makeshift roof of their shelter and laid them down on the gravel. “Now listen closely, numbskull. The portal between Equestria and the other world originally only opened up every thirty moons.” She straightened up one root and placed one end at her hoof. “This root represents the Equestrian timeline. Now I’ll drape this other root over it so they touch about every hooflength.” “You’ve got a lot more root on some of those loops than others,” noted Flash with a skeptical glance between the roots and the very serious unicorn. “And some of them loop around.” “Very astute, for you. Just because the portal opened up every thirty moons here, doesn’t mean it opened every thirty moons there. Starswirl the Bearded used the portal to dump some defeated monsters into the other world a little over a thousand years ago, Equestrian time, but a few months ago, their time.” “Oh,” said Flash. “In order to beat them, Twilight recently made a… device of some sort to hold the portal between our worlds open—” Sunset Shimmer lined up the end strands of root “—but there’s still some temporal slippage between the two interfaces.” “Ah!” said Flash. “Temporal means something about time. So while you’ve been gone from Equestria for ten years—” “Only four years passed in the other world,” completed Sunset. “And although I told Twilight when I was coming through the portal—” There was a particular squirm about both Flashes when they did not know the answer to a question and this Flash managed the motion even with a crippled wing and wrapped in armor. She intentionally let him dangle there with Philomena pecking away at her head until the the pegasus finally said, “You had to reset your watch?” “Dear Noble Sentry,” muttered Sunset. “I killed your son and left his body to rot in the Everfree Forest because he was too stupid to live. No, Flash. It means Twilight could not have known exactly when I was coming through the portal.” “Oh,” said Flash. “Well, you shouldn’t have run then. If you hadn’t teleported away, I wouldn’t have chased you.” “And if you hadn’t chased me,” growled Sunset through clenched teeth that caused her injured horn to throb in agony, “then I would have realized what was going on before teleporting over the shield wall. That still doesn’t make up for the fact that I was wrong to have run away, no matter how stupid you were for chasing me. I’m sorry.” “Apology accepted,” said Flash with a somewhat bleary blink. “I’m sorry too. Wow. Either that pill took effect awfully fast or the air pressure just changed in here.” Sunset Shimmer yawned deliberately and let her ears pop. “Air pressure. It’s obviously reacting with the vacuum inside your skull. Must be from the storm that’s blowing past.” Something bothered her about that statement, and she cocked an ear at the rumbling hiss of falling rain outside, only to wince as Philomena gave her a series of sharp pecks on the head. “What?” “At least we have shelter,” said Flash. “On maneuvers, we would normally just make a quick field shelter out of some clouds.” The hiss of falling rain and nearby rumble of thunder made him raise his voice. “Aren’t you glad to be out of the rain?” Philomena took that opportunity to rain a whole series of pecks on Sunset Shimmer’s head intermixed with raucous chirps and flaps of her wings that warmed up the cramped area under the slab of rock to an uncomfortable degree. Little hanging roots kept getting into Sunset’s eyes as she tried to fend off the frantic bird, but eventually the phoenix seemed to become frustrated with her assault and swooped out the narrow shelter entrance into the pouring rain outside. “Do you think she’s gone to get Princess Celestia?” asked Flash Sentry in entirely too optimistic a voice for their situation. “No, Flash. There’s something wrong about her. She hates water. Hm… Water. What’s that noise?” A low rumbling could be more felt than heard through the loose gravel and litter covering the bottom of their shelter and Sunset turned for the exit with wide eyes. “She’s warning us! We’re camped in a riverbed, Flash! Move! Move!” Both ponies had barely managed to stagger out the narrow doorway of their shelter when a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated a churning wall of brown water hurtling down the formerly dry riverbed and headed in their direction. Sunset glanced at the far bank of the river and promptly clamped her teeth down onto Flash Sentry’s tail. “Grab that tree,” she shouted as best she could through the mass of dirty hair. Then the wall of water hit. The world seemed to dissolve into heaving masses of brown water and occasional bursts of damp air. Rocks and branches clawed past her face as she scrambled up the rough bark of the fallen tree that had just recently been part of their shelter and now shifted underhoof as the roaring water began to undermine the riverbed. The tree gave a lurch as another massive chunk of waterborne timber smashed into it, knocking both ponies to their knees. “This whole bucking forest wants to kill me!” screamed Sunset into the darkness. “It must know you!” shouted Flash, clutching onto the other side of the tree. “What did you do?” “All I want to do is apologize to Celestia!” shouted Sunset. The tree shuddered and began to shift, but Sunset Shimmer tottered to her hooves and stood on the uneven footing in order to better face into the spray of muddy water that was roaring past. “I’m not stopping because of some stupid forest! You think a little water is going to even slow me down? I’ve seen worse!” The tree shook as it broke free from the rest of the snag in the now raging river and began to float downstream, causing both Flash and Sunset to jump as the massive tree trunk rotated. “You think that’s going to make me quit!” she howled while scrabbling up the bobbing tree, ducking wet branches as they took swipes at her. “Stupid forest! You missed! I’m still here and I’m going to make it to Celestia if it’s the last thing I do!” “You’re crazy!” shouted Flash Sentry as a bolt of lightning stabbed down from the sky and burst a tree on the far bank into blazing shards. “What do you think you’re doing?” “I’m not crazy anymore!” screamed Sunset. “I’m angry! I was crazy to run away from Princess Celestia twice!” The entire tree they were clutching to plunged underwater as it surged down the raging river, making Sunset splutter as they burst back onto the surface. “I’m not making that mistake again!” she screeched as soon as she had a moment to breathe. “Sunny!” screamed Flash, pointing downriver. “Shut up!” she screamed back. “I’m on a roll! I’m going to beat this stupid forest! I’m going to make it back to Princess Celestia to apologize! And nothing is going to stop me! Not you! Not this stupid river! Not every starving monster in Equestria! Nothing! Do you hear me, you stupid forest!” The only answer she received was a blinding flash of lightning that coiled across the sky and illuminated the entire river in stark-white light. Or at least as much of the river as she could see until it came to an abrupt halt downstream. “Waterfall,” she said in a stunned monotone, holding loosely to a branch. “Looks like it,” said Flash, clutching to the branch next to her. “Steep plunge to certain death with sharp rocks at the bottom?” she asked. “Probably,” said Flash, closing his eyes and grabbing the branch tightly. “Bring it.”