Twilight stared at the gun as if she had never seen anything like it in her life. Of course, she had – it was a standard-issue sidearm for pegasi, an unromantic lump of steel. Not at all accurate past a few tens of yards, but that wouldn’t matter here.
Fluttershy put it into her hooves. Twilight held onto it, albeit loosely, and didn’t seem to look at the gun at all.
“So,” Fluttershy said, quietly. “I want you to put this to your head and pull the trigger. Can you do that?"
"I'll die.” It was a dull, prosaic fact, almost without any particular relevance to Twilight. But perhaps it hadn’t occurred to the pegasus?
I’m not thinking clearly, Twilight thought, as she raised the gun to her head, her hoof tracing the trigger block. Another irrelevancy. Of course she would die. That was the point.
“Yes, you will,” Fluttershy said.
“I...”
“Do it.”
Twilight’s hoof pressed down just a little bit harder. Just a touch more pressure and it would be over.
“One less monster in the—”
There was an almighty thud from one side of the carriage. Everything tilted—there was a moment of flight, the tiny slot window, now showing nothing but gray pavement, rising up towards Twilight, and then darkness.
Shining Armor didn’t believe in paperwork, although it did have a way of condensing around him while he was in his office, and tended to stay there until Cadence or somepony else actually sorted it out. Administration was for other people. Shining’s job was to have the strategy, the plan, the vision for the future. He tapped the desk absently. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.
“Indeed,” Celestia said, voice level. “I have been lied to, Shining Armor. By you.”
Shining looked nonplussed. “That doesn’t—”
“Spare me. You told me that my sister believed me to be in the Badlands.”
Shining shrugged. “Well, of course that’s no longer the case, but—”
“It was never the case. Canterlot has been torn apart because of you, Shining Armor.”
“Because of the Nightmare!” Shining shouted. “I am not the bad guy here! She killed those ponies. Not me!”
“Those deaths could have been prevented.”
“This is a war! Casualties happen.”
“Of tens of thousands of innocents?”
“Nobody living in Canterlot is innocent.”