//------------------------------//
// What the Inside of a Serpent's Stomach Looks Like 
// Story: Return to Equestria: The Rise of Roam 
// by Daniel-Gleebits 
//------------------------------//

Return to Equestria: The Rise of Roam

Sunset Shimmer


Sonata was gone. So why was anything else allowed to still exist?
Sunset felt transported into some cosmic realm where such trivial things as changelings, Roamans, or aerial bombardments couldn’t touch her, let alone harm her, but where the pains in her own heart could rend her flesh asunder. Her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the spot where Sonata had been swallowed by the waves, she was barely aware of her mouth still moving, her throat still straining as she screamed her lover’s name.
“Surrender!” Loyal Stride snarled, edging forward. 
“Come on, Strider,” Script said jeeringly. “Let an old friend go. There’s work to be done.”
“Whatever work you think you need to do, you could have done at the camp!”
“Even you don’t believe that,” Script spat. “Seriously. After that whole incident at the palace, you honestly think that any research I tried to—“
“Shut your mouth!” Loyal Stride lurched forward suddenly, brandishing his shield. “You’re coming back with me, and owning up to your sister before your court martial.”
“Oh, please,” Script laughed derisively. “Some farce court proceeding followed by the oh-so dignified death of deserters and traitors. The Republic’s adherence to outdated and barbaric traditions is almost admirable.”
Sunset was almost entirely insensible to this confrontation going on just behind her, and even to the fiery destruction edging their way. That is, until she heard:
“Your resistance has already killed one of your new friends,” Loyal Stride said warningly. “Don’t let it kill another. Just get on the—“
He didn’t get any further than that. Utterly focused on Script’s glowing horn, Loyal Stride hadn’t been paying any attention to Sunset. That was until he heard her guttural cry of rage before she slammed into him. Under normal circumstances Sunset would have considered the attack to be a foolhardy move borne of desperation and a pent up state of furious emotions, but for all that she cared now she might have been repeatedly bucking a brick wall and not give a single damn. Up on his hind legs, Loyal Stride fell heavily backwards, his segmented plate armour weighing him down as he collapsed with a clattering of metal.
“Huh,” Script said in great surprise. “Well done. I frankly didn’t expect—“ he got now further either. No sooner had Loyal Stride been sent crashing to the floor then Sunset turned on Script. A well-aimed hoof connected sharply with Script’s diaphragm, making him reel backwards as Sunset tried to shove him roughly with her shoulder. “What are you—Stop it! We don’t have—Ow!” 
“Damn Equestrian!” Loyal Stride growled, getting back to his feet. Sheathing his sword he dropped back to all fours and knocked Sunset away as she tried to bite at Script’s face. She glared back at him, feeling her face twisted into the blackest expression. Whatever the look in her eye was, she didn’t know, but Script and Loyal Stride both seemed to be ever so slightly perturbed by it. An awkward three-way stand-off kept all three of them glancing between each-other, uncertain whether to make the next move or not. Sunset was only kept back by a rapidly deteriorating indecision as to whom she should be most furious with, an indecision not at all hampered or helped by the arrival of the dark red chopper dropping low  beside them.
“Sir!” cried a voice over the rotors and loud explosions coming ever nearer. “Sir, we need to go, now! The bombardment is almost upon us!”
Sunset’s muscles tensed to make her move. She was half-way through the motion when something successfully managed to distract her. 
Few things might have managed to make Sunset pause at that moment, but what erupted out of the canyon might well have been enough to make the rain stop falling. With a sound both louder and more terrible than anything else going on around them, an enormous shadow, sharply defined on the grass turning gold in the feeble rays of the morning sunrise, consumed all three of them like a last remnant of the night determined to drag them away from the dawn. Sunset could only stare; her brain so recently filled with nothing but blind rage and hatred, suddenly drained of thought. Loyal Stride and Script seemed possessed of a similar frame of mind, as they too gazed disbelievingly upwards.
An enormous serpent, its scales glittering purple in the morning sunlight, rose to curve its great frilled head over them. Its sharp, reptilian eyes rolled madly for a moment before fixing downward upon them, narrowing to slits as the ridges and frills on its elongated face flexed and spread experimentally. With a ponderous intake of breath, its upper body expanding alarmingly, it opened its mouth wide to display long rows of sword-like teeth. Sunset’s hooves rose automatically to press over her ears as it roared, a deafening, screechy ululation not unlike that of a dragon, although even through her plugged ears Sunset could hear an oddly melodic tone mingling with the roar.
The serpent continued to eye them balefully as its head swayed slightly from side to side, its neck and upper body rising still further from the canyon. To Sunset’s utter astonishment, it raised some kind of arm above the canyon line and slammed it down into the ground behind them, as though to cut off their escape. They were trapped, three small ponies laid out before a very hungry looking sea monster.
With a ‘Thuk!’, a thin, black spike struck the ground in front of Sunset, not a foot or so from her face. She leapt instinctively back as more impact sounds all around her told her that more spikes were landing nearby, impaling themselves inches into the hard soil. The serpent shuddered spasmodically, several of the spikes protruding from the side of its head and its extended arm.
“What!?” Loyal Stride exclaimed, staring disbelievingly at the ventnavis. “What are those idiots doing!?” 
“Sir!” cried the voice again. “Please! We have to go!” The helicopter was still hovering in place, although by the looks of it the pilot was only just barely maintaining the gumption to remain in place with the serpent hanging over them.
Whilst Loyal Stride was hesitating, Sunset looked automatically behind her. The ventnavis was almost upon them, firing not just the streaks of fiery doom, but also clusters of the long black spikes, all in their direction. They impacted into the ground harmlessly around them all, missing them all by the merest chance. Except for the helicopter. Four black spikes hit the chopper one after the other, three of them lodging themselves into the fuselage, whilst the fourth jammed itself into the roof. The propellers clanged loudly against it, the motor inside screeching loudly as the blades slowed dangerously with the interruption of the spike, sending the severed end of the projectile whizzing lethally passed Script and into the gorge.
“Hard Hat!” Loyal Stride bellowed, as the helicopter lurched sideways. 
All three of them watched in a kind of fascinated horror as the chopper zoomed out of control, skimming the edge of the gorge, it curved down into the canyon, and struck the side of the canyon wall. 
“Spirits preserve me...” Script whispered hoarsely, staring at the spot where the chopper had impacted.
“No!” Loyal Stride roared. “No! Spirits, no! Hard Hat! Greenlight! Sky Dasher!” 
Sunset didn’t know what to feel. Her internal storm at Sonata’s death swirled with something else, a sense of unfamiliar panic.
“Well, we’re dead,” Script shouted, apparently choosing to take imminent violent death as he took everything else: an inconvenience intentionally trying to ruin his day.
The serpent took matters differently. Shrieking loudly at the ventnavis as though trying to scare it away, it turned its head back to the prospective meals it had below it. Before Sunset could recover effectively from the sight of the helicopter’s destruction, a dark shadow descended upon her, and she disappeared in a snapping of teeth.
Loyal Stride stumbled with the impact as his armour made him lilt, and in a second flash of sabre-like fangs, he vanished too. 
Alerted to the danger by the other two being taken unaware, Script dived to one side as the serpent’s mouth crashed into the earth. It snarled in annoyance, spitting soil as its reptilian eye flicked in his direction. Unfortunately for Script he’d dived in the wrong direction; the ongoing bombardment was only metres away, the flaming debris of destroyed trees raining down around him. As he made to scramble out of the way, a concussion sent him flying, tumbling across the grass and disorientated. Hungry jaws descended to claim him.





If Sunset had been asked later on to give a description of her experience from the moment that she’d been eaten, she’d have been quite unable to give a full and coherent account of it. She remembered only that she’d been compressed from all-sides since being squeezed down the monster’s throat. She’d instinctively held her breath as she went down, having fully expected to be torn in half by the fangs she tensed every muscle in anticipation. Instead, she slid like a wet ball through a thick rubber tube, until she’d been deposited into some kind of muscular sack. She had dared not open her eyes, but felt the walls of her prison, little fibrous tendrils moving on all sides prodding and sliding against her. Then she exhaled, and immediately breathed in a quantity of dank, malodorous air. It made her choke and gag; she tried to reach up to her nose to shut out the smell, but her limbs were firmly clamped in place. It was when the sense of claustrophobia set in that she really began to lose track of things however, and her panicking brain seemed to cast off her senses as it tried frantically to make sense of what was going on. Fears flooded it: 
She’d been eaten! But she was still alive...
Was she going to be slowly, painfully, lengthily digested here? Constricted and kept barely alive whilst she was slowly broken down to feed this great beast?
Or perhaps she hadn’t been properly devoured so that she could be taken to be eaten later. Perhaps the creature had a nest, babies of some sort to feed. She imagined herself being dangled over a clutch of smaller serpents in some underwater cave, her body being nipped at from all sides as she drowned.
Sonata... she thought. Had she been devoured as well? Perhaps she had been what had attracted the monster to them, the smell of a fresh meal readily available. If so, then Sunset would rejoin her soon. Soon...
It was almost with relief that the meagre amount of oxygen she was able to snatch wasn’t enough to maintain consciousness, and she sank gratefully into darkness.





With thoughts as morose as these to comfort her, it was frankly –  and perhaps understandably – astonishing to Sunset to be woken from her oxygen-deprived unconsciousness by what felt like being hit by a truck. 
Once her vision had obligingly stopped blurring over, she found that she was lying in what she instantly realised was a pool of saliva and stomach juices. A violent tremor ran through her entire body, and her eyes suddenly shot wide open. She felt so violated...
Before she had any time to really get to grips with the facts of her surroundings, an intolerably loud sound from above drew her attention momentarily from her disgusting predicament. A horrendous choking sound, like a Godzilla-sized cat hacking up a hairball, interspersed by a revolting gurgling sound drew her eyes up to the slender form of the serpent, hanging over her and spasming with its mouth wide open. It dropped its mouth close to the ground – Sunset backing off sharpish from her position on the ground – and with a great flexing of muscles that sent its many frills and ridges flaring, coughed up something that clanked as it hit the ground.
Sunset stared through her sopping mane at Loyal Stride’s unmoving form, and then at Script’s as the monster vomited him up as well.
“W-W-What... is...” Sunset tried to speak, but she simply didn’t have words for the scope of her feelings at that moment. She simply stared up at the serpent, unable to comprehend what the hell was going on. Was the serpent going to devour them now? Had it merely wanted to eat at its leisure, and so had taken its meal to a quieter place? Sunset backed up slowly, hoping to not be noticed.
It could only have been a few minutes at most since they’d been ingested; the sun was still on just rising above the horizon, but in the slightly stronger light it was casting on the scene, she got a clearer picture of the beast that had devoured her, and in that light, she thought it looked oddly... familiar.
She squinted up, wiping the red and gold strands clinging to her face, noticing immediately several recognisable features: the bright blue colour of the scales, the enormous membranous frill running down its back, the arms which – now that Sunset got a better look at them – had hooves on the end of them. And then the large, glowing red gem in the middle of its chest.
Sunset swallowed as the creature pulled itself laboriously up out of the river and onto solid ground. It was hard; Sunset’s mouth was dry at the thought that had just occurred to her. It couldn’t be... it just couldn’t... the idea was simply insane.
Then the creature did away with all of Sunset’s doubts. With a wide, toothy yawn, it reared its head, and let out a long, melodic sigh, like a musical note deprived of energy and substance. And then it began to shrink. Its fishy tail retreated, its longer-than-Sunset-remembered neck pulling its head back towards its body, which itself began to shed off its serpent’s look, and take on an altogether more pony-like form. Within moments, the once terrifying sea monster had shrank to an average-sized pony with a dusky blue body, and a dark striped azure mane and tail. It stood perfectly still for six long seconds, and then it shook as though suddenly panicked. It lurched forward suddenly, pawing desperately at its neck, gagging and choking, until eventually it managed to take in a deep, dragging breath like somepony bursting out of water. After a few deep breaths, it blinked, and turned its head to look at Sunset.
“Gills,” it said, smiling weakly and pointing at its throat. Then Sonata’s legs gave entirely way, and she fell face-first into the grass.





It took a good minute or so for Sunset to build up enough sense of herself to pick herself up and move around. Moving gingerly, the goop all over her having dried out into a foul sort of slime not unlike a snail trail, she trotted awkwardly over to Loyal Stride and Parchment Script, shedding grass stuck to her body as she went. Once she’d made sure that they were breathing and not in immediate harm, she moved more quickly over to Sonata.
Sunset looked over her marefriend with a strange sense of deep uncertainty; she had no idea what to think or feel except relief for her still being alive. For both of them still being alive. And revulsion for having been eaten, that too. After a few moments, Sonata stirred.
“Hey gorgeous,” she said weakly. “Love what you’ve done with your mane.”
“Smarty pants,” Sunset chided, poking Sonata in the cheek with a hoof. A blob of slime stuck there, perking Sonata up at once as she leapt up and furiously wiped it away.
“Ew!” she whined. “That’s so gross!”
“You’re telling me!” Sunset complained, trying to control the tremor in her voice. “I’m covered in the stuff!”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sonata said, tilting her head to one side and biting her lip. Perhaps she noticed the tremulousness in Sunset’s overly hearty voice. “It was the only thing I could think of at the time.”
“Swallowing us?” Sunset asked, trying to laugh. “I didn’t even know it was you!”
“Oh, wow!” Sonata exclaimed in wonder. “Sorry. That must have been really scary. There’s a waterfall over there that you can wash up in, though. It was a little hard to think straight when I was in full siren mode, so I just thought ‘Get to the end of the river! Get to the end of the river!’, and so here we are.”
Looking around properly, Sunset found that Sonata was quite correct. They were at the top of a steep incline of grassland with trees dotted all around. Below them she could see the river and gorge, and where the river had over many hundreds of years carved a great cleft in the side of the mountain. At the top of this cleft was the waterfall that Sonata spoke of, a moderately sized pillar of ever-falling crystalline water falling a good fifty feet or so into the ravine below. 
“What do we do about them?” Sonata asked after Sunset had allowed herself to be drenched in the rapidly rushing icy shower. She was looking at Loyal Stride and Script not far away, both of whom still hadn’t regained consciousness. 
“Leave them,” Sunset suggested, wringing out her mane. “One of them tried to capture us, and the other one,” she eyed Script. “I’m pretty sure I hate him.”
Sonata’s lips pursed. “We did promise we’d take him to see Twilight or Princess Luna,” she reminded Sunset quietly.
“I know,” Sunset sighed. “And, since he’s the only one who supposedly knows where to find her, I guess we can’t exactly go without him.”
“You don’t really hate him do you?” Sonata asked, sounding a little upset.
“I’m surprised you don’t,” Sunset replied huffily. “He tried to kill you at least once.”
“Yeah,” Sonata admitted. “I don’t like him. Like, if it was a choice between him and mean-Aria, I’m pretty sure I’d pick mean-Aria, but still...” she paused, apparently looking for the right words. “He kind of reminds me of Aria a little to be honest. He’s lonely but won’t admit it. I don’t even think he knows it himself.”
Sunset blinked at her marefriend, slightly taken aback. “That’s kind of deep, Sonata.” She’d been going to say “Kind of deep for you,” but caught herself at the last moment.
Somehow Sonata seemed to sense the unspoken part of this statement anyway. “I know kind of how he felt, all those years I had this.” She nudged the pendant around her neck, exhaling deeply. “We were lonely all of those years, me Aria and Adagio. We didn’t really know it since we were always together, and always had some plan for what to do, but after we lost our powers... well, to me at least it became really, really obvious.”
Sunset listened without speaking. She knew what Sonata meant. Whilst under most usual circumstances Sonata’s bubbly and almost Pinkie Pie-esque personality made her capacity for introspection and reflection almost nonexistent, by the time Sunset had found her on her apartment roof, that lightness and carefree attitude had been worn down to a suicidal level of self-awareness and inferiority. 
Sunset didn’t like to think of the Sonata from those days, the days when she’d been so broken and in pain. Sunset even preferred to think of Sonata when she’d been a siren and plotting world domination with her sisters; at least then she’d been happy. 
Perhaps it wasn’t so difficult to imagine Sonata empathising with somepony else on the same thing. And now that she thought about it, she herself found that she could sympathise with Script on the same thing. Had she herself not also once been lonely, afraid of making friends?
“Oh for Celestia’s sake,” she groaned. “Now you’re making me feel bad for him too.”
Sonata smiled fondly, and then chuckled a little. “Silly Shimmy.” 
Sunset felt her mouth curve, and suddenly she was laughing too. Once they had stopped, Sunset felt a great rush of affection for Sonata, and staring into her deep magenta eyes, matched Sonata’s movement, and leaned in. 
Their noses bumped each other, and they both jerked back.
“Huh,” Sonata said, feeling her snout.
“A little different, isn’t it?” Sunset agreed. “Being a pony.”
“I’m up for trying again though,” Sonata said cheekily. 
“Practise makes perfect, or so I’m told,” Sunset replied, leaning back in.
The kiss was unusual, but not unwelcome. Sunset could tell that Sonata as well was a little perturbed by the difference in facial structure between a human and a pony, and so at first they both tried to ease into the sensation, trying to find a comfortable means to relax into.
“Sorry,” Sonata said as they pulled apart.
“What for?”
“Because that was kind of terrible.”
Sunset narrowed one eye. “You thought I kissed you badly?”
“What? No, I—“
“Oh, well,” Sunset said, her nose in the air. “If it was that bad for you, maybe we shouldn’t do it anymore.”
“Sun-Set!” Sonata whined. “You’re so mean!”
Sunset couldn’t hold it in anymore; she could never resist the pouty face. Snickering a little, she pulled Sonata close and grinned into her hair. “Oh, you are so much fun to tease.”
“I’ll get you back for it,” Sonata grumbled, nuzzling into the crook of Sunset’s neck.
“I think swallowing me and holding me in your stomach for however long I was there counts as getting me back, don’t you?”
“I have seven stomachs when giant like that,” Sonata corrected her. “You were in number four. That’s my favourite number, you know.”
Sunset did know, although she’d never understood why. Nonetheless, she felt the appropriate level of honour at being stored in her marefriend’s favourite digestive organ. “Yeah, a couple of things about that,” she said, pulling away and giving Sonata a serious look. “Since when could you do that?”
Sonata shrugged. “I don’t know, I just sort of... did it. You were in trouble.”
“I was in trouble?” Sunset asked incredulously. “You’re the one who got blown off the edge of a canyon.”
“Yeah, but I was fine. Drowning, but fine,” Sonata replied in her usual sense of absent vagueness. 
“How come you were so... big?” Sunset asked, unsure of how else to put it. “Your siren forms in the battle of the bands weren’t nearly that big.”
“We were always that big,” Sonata explained. “When we were like that, anyway. We turned into ponies to travel on land though.”
“Really?” Sunset asked, genuinely surprised. 
“Well duh!” Sonata laughed. “We’d kind of stick out if we went around as fish-pony-things, wouldn’t we? No matter what size we were.”
“I guess,” Sunset admitted, nodding. “That makes sense. So you can change whenever you like?”
Sonata frowned, shifting her mouth around as she always did when thinking deeply. “I dunno. Maybe. I don’t think I want to try though. When I first got this back,” she touched the pendant at her throat, “it didn’t feel like last time. I couldn’t see the negative energy around, even though you and Script must have been giving off loads.”
“That’s the truth,” Sunset agreed, rolling her eyes.
“But when I was all big and everything, I could... I could see it. Everywhere. Coming off you three, out of the helicopter. It was pouring out of the cloud ship, like a big green storm cloud.”
Sunset stared at Sonata intently, drinking all of this in. “And, can you see any now?” Her eyes flicked downwards to the pendant. It sat lifeless and dull, almost like an innocent piece of jewellery. 
“No,” she said, looking around as though to check. “But then, we’re hardly giving off any negative energy,” she said, rubbing her cheek into Sunset’s. “Are we?”
“I suppose that you have a point there,” Sunset muttered, feeling her face warming.
A sudden explosion of coughing and retching broke up their tender moment. Looking down the hill, they found that Script had regained consciousness, and was getting to his feet. Sunset said nothing, but tried to hold in a laugh, waiting for the moment that he noticed the state he was in. Sure enough, no sooner had he stood up and attempted to rub sleep from his eyes, he let out a disgusted sound, and then screamed loudly. Sunset snorted loudly, unable to contain herself.
“Eaten!” he cried, several octaves higher than usual. “Eaten, swallowed. Bleh!” 
“Waterfall,” Sunset said in high good humour. “Shower. Clean.”
“Hate you,” Script groaned, staring in a kind of vacant horror. “Hate you both.”
“Ugh,” Loyal Stride groaned. “Quiet, you lot, it’s not time yet.”
“Kind of is,” Sonata said, bouncing over to him. “Time to get up, time to get clean.”
“Huh...?” Loyal Stride opened his eyes. 
“Don’t get too near him!” Sunset scolded, backing Sonata away from him. 
“Why?” Sonata asked. “What’s he going to do? He’s on his own.”
“He’s a well-trained Roaman centurion,” Script called back as he made his way, awkwardly and stiff-legged, to the waterfall. “He could kill you with his chin if need be. That’s actually a thing.”
Seemingly in response to Script’s voice, Loyal Stride leapt to his feet, suddenly all alertness. “Who?” he asked frantically. “What? Where am I? What’s going—“ he spotted Sunset and Sonata staring at him. “You two,” he said slowly, looking around. “And him!” 
“Whoa, whoa,” Sonata said hastily. “Hey now, let’s just slow down a little.”
“Out of my way, Equestrian,” Loyal Stride snarled.
“Oh at least let me have a shower before you arrest me,” Script shouted sardonically over his shoulder. “You could use one as well. You’d fail inspection with that uniform.”
Loyal Stride’s scowl softened ever so slightly as he looked down at himself. He cringed a little, and then grumbled almost inaudibly “I do the inspections... fail myself...” He clanked gingerly towards the waterfall. “Don’t think any of you are off the hook,” he said with a swift return to his former volume. “I’m still arresting all of you in the name of Roam.”
“And how’s that, exactly?” Sunset asked, frowning at him. 
“She has a point,” Script said, emerging from the waterfall levitating the length of cloth from around his neck in front of him and squeezing the water from it. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the patrol tried to kill you.”
“You lie,” Loyal Stride snapped after a short pause. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” Script said, laying over the branch of a nearby tree to dry out. “Given the distance between the ventnavis and us at the time, the velocity of ballistae projectiles, and precisely when the first wave struck, I’m fairly confident that the ventnavis opened fire on us before Nessy the Little Sea Serpent over here made her appearance.”
Sunset barely had time to wonder where Script knew that particular cultural reference from, or how he’d guessed that Sonata had been the serpent since he hadn’t been awake for her transformation back to pony form, before Loyal Stride burst out with a retort.
“How could you possibly know that?” he spat derisively.
“For Spirit’s sake, Strider,” Script said impatiently. “You’re smarter than that. Even you figured it out when it happened. You ordered the bombardment to stop, and it didn’t.”
Loyal Stride looked uncomfortable. “Don’t call me that. We’re not friends.”
Script sighed long and hard. “Look, I’m sorry I left—“
“You committed treason!” Loyal Stride struck the ground. “You deserted the legion! What excuse do you have for that? What vague news of impending unknown catastrophe do you have to justify leaving?”
“I get the feeling there’s some history here,” Sunset muttered to Sonata.
“The Abomination!” Script roared back.
A silence fell, so heavy with tension that even Sunset and Sonata sat quiet, uncertain. Their eyes moved between the two stallions, wondering which one would speak again. After what seemed to all of them to be a long time, Loyal Stride cleared his throat. His face was stony, impassive.
“Everypony who was involved in that was instructed to be silent,” he said with an air of finality.
“Convenient, don’t you think?” Script said waspishly.
“What happened was wrong, and the pony responsible was caught,” Loyal Stride said, his voice rising.
“Oh will you stop being the good soldier colt for two seconds?” Script demanded exasperatedly, stomping a hoof in irritation. “You and I both know that it was never resolved. That’s why everypony involved was shipped here, far away where we couldn’t—“
“Shut up!” Loyal Stride snapped, his voice echoing down the slope. “The past is the past. Now as I said, you’re all under arrest. You will tell me where the princess is, and I shall take her into custody as well.” He looked around at them all, frowning at their puzzled expressions.
“Princess?” Sunset asked, just in case she hadn’t heard correctly.
“Whichever one was with you,” Loyal Stride continued, his brow furrowing deeper.
“There’s no princess here,” Sonata added slowly.
“Don’t lie to me,” Loyal Stride barked. “Our instruments detected a strong magical presence that—“
“Ahh!” Script suddenly cried, holding a hoof to his eyes. “Of course. Well that explains a lot.”
“Explains what?” Sunset asked, a little disconcerted. 
“Well, for instance,” Script began, apparently unable to prevent himself smiling. “How about how the patrol forces found us so quickly when we were being cornered by the changelings?”
Sunset blinked. She supposed he had a point there; it might have just been a coincidence, but that would have been one hell of a coincidence, given how far away from their starting point they were. But who could they have—
“That may have been me,” Sonata said, her face turning pink.
“You?” Loyal Stride said, scowling at Sonata. “Who are you?”
“Sonata Dusk, pleased to meet ya,” Sonata said, quailing a little under his austere gaze.
Script snorted suddenly. “Strider, allow me to introduce you to,” he paused and took the time to stare right into Loyal Stride’s eye, a cruel smile playing around his mouth. “The mare who saved your life.”
For a moment or two, Sunset frowned at Script, wondering why he looked so maliciously amused. But then she spotted the little colour in Loyal Stride’s white face leaving it.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, trying to sound derisive.
“You remember getting eaten by the giant sea serpent?” Script asked, sneering. Loyal Stride didn’t reply, but stared at Script as though internally begging him not to go on. “Say hello to Nessy!” Script cackled, pulling Sonata into a one-legged hug. He laughed loudly as Loyal Stride stared, wide-eyed. “Oh!” he cried, his laughter winding down. “I am so glad that I didn’t kill you,” he said felicitously to Sonata. “This is worth a thousand cursed mares following me around.”
“What are you babbling about?” Sunset asked him, pulling Sonata out of his embrace.
Script shushed her as though Loyal Stride was a small animal she was going to scare away. After a brief pause, during which Loyal Stride had looked between them all desperately, Sunset guessing that he was hoping for one of them to announce that Script was joking, Loyal Stride lurched forward and seized Sonata by the shoulders. 
“Tell me it’s not true!” he cried. “Tell me he’s lying!”
“U-Um...!” Sonata stammered, looking alarmed.
Sunset snarled as Script held her back. “Get off!”
“Just watch,” Script said, employing several bands of magical power to keep her tied to the spot. “Trust me, this is going to be great.”
“You’re a sadistic weirdo, aren’t you?” Sunset commented, shaking her head.
“Prove it!” Loyal Stride boomed, beaming suddenly like a man who’s just come to an unassailable point in reasoned argument. “There’s no way you’re a sea serpent. You’re just a pony! You can’t possibly have been the one to swallow me. In fact,” he added with a slightly hysterical laugh. “I bet that didn’t even happen. How would we even be alive otherwise?”
“I coughed you up,” Sonata piped up, just to be helpful.
“And how do you otherwise explain being covered in monster stomach juice?” Script asked, barely able to contain Sunset, or his laughter.
Loyal Stride’s smile dimmed. Then he rallied just as fast. “Fine, I concede that I was eaten by some giant monster. But it can’t possibly have been you.” 
“Of course it can,” Script said smoothly. “She’s a siren. Which, incidentally, is what the patrol’s instruments detected. When she absorbed the energy from that changeling crystal, it must have given off a strong magical pulse that the succendum field picked up on.”
Loyal Stride snorted loudly. “Okay, now I know that you’re lying. The sirens disappeared over a thousand years ago.”
“That is true,” Sunset agreed, remembering the story of Starswirl the Bearded banishing them to the human world. “But she really is a siren. My friends and I broke her curse ages ago, but she somehow got it back when she touched some crystal-thing Script was keeping.”
“Which you broke,” Script muttered, his mood souring instantly.
Loyal Stride glanced at Script with an amused eye. “If you think the testimony of some Equestrian is going to convince me,” he said with a superior chuckle, “you’re not as smart as you think.”
Script smiled back in opposition to Loyal Stride’s smile. The two of them practically duelled in smiles. “Oh no, not at all,” he said, in the manner of a snake-oil salesman enticing a prospective sucker closer to his crate of mystery bottles. “Sonata herself is going to prove it to you.”
“Err...” Sonata said uneasily. “I don’t think I can, like, turn all snakey right now,” she admitted. “I’m kinda tired, you know?”
Loyal Stride chortled, but Script’s smile didn’t falter. 
“Just sing,” Script said, waving a hoof vaguely.
Sunset’s heart gave a little leap in her chest. She looked quickly to Sonata, who looked a little surprised, and a little scared. She watched as her marefriend cleared her throat, apparently trying to think of something to say.
“I... I would, um...”
“She doesn’t want to sing,” Sunset said for her. “That’s not who she is anymore.”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” Script said, tapping the pendant around Sonata’s neck. “By definition.” He looked between Sunset and Sonata, and suddenly sighed a little impatiently. “Fine, look at it this way: He is going to be a royal pain in our butts unless you prove that you saved his life. Well, he might be a pain in the butt after that as well, but no pony is perfect.”
“How will me saving his life change that?” Sonata asked, eying Loyal Stride’s tall, well-built, armoured – albeit slime-covered – body with judicious concern.
Script prefaced his answer with a small laugh-like exhalation. “Please, please just prove that you’re a siren. Trust me, it’ll be so, so worth it.”
Sonata hesitated still, looking to Sunset for guidance. Sunset didn’t know what to say. It was true that Loyal Stride seemed to be a real obstacle to them unless they could make him go away, or otherwise submit. Script hadn’t been able to best him, and Sunset doubted whether she could, even with her magic. And Sonata... to be honest, Sunset didn’t want Sonata to use her powers. She didn’t know what harm it could cause, but she didn’t want to see Sonata like that. That wasn’t who she was...
“Look, she just turned into a giant serpent,” Script said with a groan. “One little iddy-biddy tune isn’t going to hurt.” He paused. “Her. It won’t hurt her. It might hurt us,” he admitted. “But he’s going to hurt us anyway, so either way...” He shrugged and retreated a few paces, as though to give Sonata some space to think.
Again, Sonata looked to Sunset. Her face was tense and full of uncertainty, and Sunset honestly hated to see her that way. With a sigh, and a heartfelt sense of knowing that she was going to regret it, she nodded.
“Covering your ears won’t help,” Script said, just in case anypony was thinking it. “The only counter to a siren song is another song.”
“Thank you, oh magical master genius,” Loyal Stride said sardonically. “Here’s hoping you have a nice singing voice. It makes the gaoler’s jobs easier when the prisoners can carry a tune.”
Sunset was pleased to see the look of defiance flickering in Sonata’s magenta eyes. With one last look at Sunset, Sonata took a deep breath. And then another. And then a third. On the fourth, Sunset just noticed a dim red glow from under Sonata’s chin. The pendant was coming to life. She saw Loyal Stride’s brow furrow slightly, and Script hold his breath and close his eyes. And then Sonata opened her mouth.
The sound that emanated from her mouth was... puzzling. That wasn’t the word that came to Sunset’s mind, but it did somewhat describe her feelings. The melodic notes Sonata was singing were eerily familiar, but also oddly different. She sang the same spine-tingling, faintly sinister vocalisation as before, but it was tinted with something else, something altogether more lively and... happy. The sound was a happy one; a carefree tune going in no particular direction, but which seemed to just fall together into an endearing and delightful pattern, like falling snow.
It took Sunset a moment or two to realise it, but it was Sonata’s own song. It described her. It was her. It was no longer the composite desire of her and her sisters, but simply a reflection of Sonata’s own soul, given life and allowed to fly from her on wings of vocal harmony.
The song was not long, but it seemed to have a lingering effect on those around. The first thing that Sunset noticed once she’d blinked her way out of her vacant staring, was that the song didn’t seem to have affected her in the way that siren songs did. Nor had it done so to Script. Sunset was just wondering if this was because Sonata hadn’t tried to pull any siren trickery, when she noticed Loyal Stride’s eyes. They glowed a faint green, the same as those at Canterlot High when they’d been possessed. The glow dissipated quickly, and Loyal Stride gave a little start.
“What did—“ he began, but seemed unable to say more.
“Well,” Script said, coming out of his own preoccupation. “Convinced, then?”
“I...” Loyal Stride’s lips tightened. He looked Sonata full in the face, a very serious expression coming over him. “Did you honestly save my life? You did what you did with the express purpose of saving me from death?”
Sonata, who’d seemed a little lost in her own song as well, put on as attentive an expression as Sunset had ever seen upon it. She had to suppress a little smile at how adorable Sonata’s little pony face looked whilst it was all noble and melancholy like that.
“I did,” she said firmly. “I mean,” she went on, losing her cool a little. “You were going to get hit by the bombs. I couldn’t just leave you there.”
Loyal Stride stared her straight in the eyes for a few moments. Sonata didn’t waver from his gaze, but stared determinately back. Sunset noticed Script looking between the two just as intently, evidently waiting for an expected outcome.
Eventually, Loyal Stride sighed heavily. With a clanking of his armour, he bent his forward left knee.
“Very well,” he said solemnly. “Then I, Loyal Stride, Centurion of the Third Cohort to the Fifteenth Legion Ferreta, do pledge my life to you until such a time as my debt to you is repaid. Before all of the spirits I do make this vow, and swear that I shall defend you with my own life.”
He remained kneeling in front of Sonata, his head bowed. Sunset regarded him with the utmost surprise. In his steel armour, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Loyal Stride as some chivalrous knight pledging to some lady in a tower. It was almost ludicrous to behold.
Script meanwhile, had burst out laughing. “I told you!” he said, collapsing onto his side and rolling around on the floor. “I told you it would be worth it! Ha-ha-ha!”
Loyal Stride didn’t move at Script’s outburst, but Sunset did notice his rising colour. Sonata too looked rather uncomfortable, whether from Loyal Stride’s declaration, Script’s laughter, or both, Sunset didn’t know, but she was determined to stop it if she could.
“Pipe down,” Sunset said derisively, putting her foot down. “You’re making a scene.”
“But it, it’s so—“ Script laughed, and then spluttered loudly as the cloth around his neck tightened. Sunset remained standing on the end of it whilst he pulled at the strangling material.
“So does that mean you’re coming with us?” Sunset asked Loyal Stride, who was standing up properly.
“Yes,” he said heavily. “I’m honour bound to protect Sonata until my debt is repaid, as I said.” He drew in a breath and expanded his chest, his chin in the air. “That’s important to someponies.” He glared pointedly at Script, who had managed to tug his cloth from under Sunset’s hoof and was standing up, choking a little.
“Oh, cry me a river,” he rasped, rolling his eyes and massaging his throat.


- To be Continued