Return to Equestria: The Rise of Roam
Sunset Shimmer
The immediate effect of the sudden panic was to separate them all. Loyal Stride and Script, still locked together, were shunted bodily back into the saloon. Sunset found herself shortly after being dragged along with the crowd, as Sonata disappeared behind a forest of legs and bodies.
Soaking wet from the rain and being pushed from all sides, Sunset felt as though she’d been dropped in the middle of a torrential ocean. Fighting against the stream, she caught a glimpse of the C.H.E.R.R.I. headquarters building close by, and headed for it. Trying for her life not to be knocked down and trampled, she pushed and held firm as ponies stampeded by her, forcing her way towards the glass doors, until finally she pressed out of the torrent and into the entrance hall.
Limping a little into a waiting area just beyond the vestibule, Sunset looked quickly around whilst trying to ignore her bumps and bruises, and found that the place had every sign of being hurriedly deserted. The receptionist’s desk and the floor around it was scattered with papers, whilst the sliding glass door – she now noticed – had been knocked off its track so that it hung diagonally by a few wires.
If there’d been time, Sunset might have felt it necessary to close off that part of her mind trying to pull her down into the bitter abyss of her burgeoning misery. The revelation of Sonata’s betrayal had hit her like a metal bat against thin glass. Something had been unhinged inside of her.
Fortunately perhaps, a tell-tale light and a twinkling magical popping sound preceded the arrival of Script and Loyal Stride. In a blue flash of light, they appeared, soaking wet but apparently unharmed.
“It’s not with you, then?” Script commented brusquely, giving Sunset a brief glance. “Good, or I’d get distracted beating it into the ground.”
Sunset didn’t reply, but simply dripped onto the laminated floor.
“Come on,” Loyal Stride said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, to Sunset. He nudged her a little, as though trying to rouse her. “We have to find the radio transmitter in here.”
“Why?” Sunset asked, glad to have questions to ask.
“Obvious, isn’t it?” Script scoffed. “We need to find out who this insider is. If the changeling did tell Scaly Decepta-pants about some informant we’d be able to contact from the town, we need to find out who it is so we know just how deep this rabbit hole goes.”
“Rabbit hole?” Sunset asked, trailing after them.
“I told you,” Script grunted, pushing through a door into a long corridor and beginning to read the doors. “I pretty much figured out whose behind all of this ages ago. I just needed the proof. But if they’re the one controlling the changelings too, then this goes further than even I guessed at.”
“Controlling the changelings?” Sunset parroted again.
“Look, I get that you’re distraught and everything,” Script said irritably. “But that’s going to get annoying, real fast. But yes, controlling. Or influencing. Paying off. Allied with. Whatever. If that’s the case, then whoever the informant is will be in league with their queen. Loyal Stride knows the camp and the ponies there like the back of his hoof. He’ll be able to tell us whose likely to be in on it.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, actually,” Sunset said, glancing at the door’s name plates as well. “What exactly is this ‘it’ you think is happening?”
“I’ve told you all you need to know,” Script replied firmly. “I’m not telling you any more than what I’ve already done so. Not until it becomes a priority to do so.”
“And Roam invading doesn’t make it a priority?” Sunset asked incredulously. “I think after everything that’s happened in the last few minutes, I deserve to know something.”
“I’m sorry, but no,” Script laughed. “Being sad and having your precious fee-fees hurt doesn’t entitle you to knowledge, I’m afraid.”
He grunted in surprise and pain as Sunset tackled him into the wall.
“I’ve had enough of being lied to!” she snarled. “I’ve had enough with being in the dark, with having to second-guess everything, with your damn attitude!” She stared him straight in the eye, their snouts and horns practically touching. “Tell me what’s happening right this second, or else I—“
“Or else, you what?” Script growled. He shoulder Sunset backwards, his face obscenely close to hers. “How dare you even presume to speak to me like this. If you had even the faintest idea of what I’ve been put through. What I’ve put myself through, just to get at the truth of the matter. And you think that just because you’re here, and because your lying, treasonous, pea-brained, changeling-loving slut-muffin hurt your wittle feewings, that that entitles you to the knowledge that I’ve scrounged, scraped, and bled for?”
The two of them glared at each other, teeth bared and snorting like enraged bulls.
“Don’t talk like you don’t have a hoof in all of this!” Sunset yelled. “As if you’re utterly innocent in what’s happened to Sonata.”
“I saved her life!” Script bellowed. “Then she goes messing around with things she can’t possibly understand, and that’s somehow my fault!? I should kill you where you stand!”
Sunset could almost see her vision turning red. Unable to articulate a response, her horn flared. Almost immediately it sputtered and went out, an indignant stab of pain lancing across her brain as the succendum field from the ventnavi flying overhead cancelled it out. Further hostility was rendered moot by Loyal Stride’s intervention. Stamping a metal-clad hoof between them, he forced his bulk between the two, and knocked Script back as the latter tried to retaliate.
“Stop it, the pair of you,” he barked. “You got problems, keep them to yourselves and deal with them on your own time. Right now, we’ve got work to do. Script, how far is this conspiracy, or whatever it is, along?”
Script made a dismissive nose through his nose, giving Sunset one last death-glare. “Nice to see you’re beginning to actually listen. This is only the beginning. He can’t do anything for right now. All the pieces need to be in the right place before he can act. And I know for a fact that at least one individual isn’t where she ought to be for that to happen. But he has begun to move. And quite ingeniously too, by the looks of things.”
“So is there anything about it that you can—“
Loyal Stride sighed as Script started down the hall again.
“—tell us about it,” he finished under his breath.
Sunset pushed passed Loyal Stride to stand directly in Script’s path.
“Script, I’ve had enough of being led about!” she raged, her turquoise eyes fixing squarely into his emerald ones. “You claim this to be a threat to all Equestria, even your own country. Tell me what it is, right now, or I swear—“
Script smacked a hoof to her mouth.
“Shut up for a second. Did you read through the instructions I gave you?”
She shoved his hoof aside. “What has that got to do with—“
“Did. You read. The instructions. I gave you?” Script asked, dragging out the vowels.
“Wha—? Oh, yes, I did, but what has that—“
“Then listen to me carefully,” Script said, taking her head in his hooves and glaring at her steadily. “I will tell you what is happening. Later. I swear that I will explain it, and to you too, Strider. At least so much that you’ll explain what is happening. But not now. Not here. Agreed?”
All three of them looked up. The glass roof above was smeared with rain, and the blackness beyond was almost complete. But with every flash of lightning, the silhouettes of the ventnavi flying overhead came into sharp relief.
“A-Alright,” Sunset muttered, mollified. “So, where’s this radio? We can’t hang around if the army is invading.”
“It’s not, but we still need to hurry. It should be...” Script said quietly, pressing on down into a wide alcove, where another door was set back. Chairs lined the sides of the little space, with portraits hanging on the walls, one of a pale yellow mare with a dark red mane. As they approached the door, Sunset noticed the word “Founder” printed in neat italics on the border. Turning back to the door, she read the brass name plaque.
Rocky Cherry Pie – Board Chairpony
“Why aren’t the ventnavi attacking?” Sunset asked, looking up again through the skylight above.
“Why would they?” Script said dismissively. “The frontier towns evidently aren’t their target. Standard Roaman battle practise is to strike hard and deep, knock out the central leadership so that the enemy can’t mount an effective defence. If that’s not possible, hit some other important aspect of the country and cripple their ability to wage the inevitable war.”
“So they’re heading for Canterlot!?” Sunset exclaimed.
“That’s my guess,” he replied, pulling open cupboards and looking inside of desk drawers. “Don’t worry though. Canterlot is hardly defenceless. It’ll take about... oh, I don’t know. A few weeks to breach the walls?” he said, looking at Strider.
“This is insanity,” Loyal Stride said, apparently not listening. “Trotus can’t have ordered this. It makes no sense to strike so early.”
“Or at all,” Sunset said scathingly.
“Where’s the radio transmitter?” Script grumbled. “It has to be in here. Can you two try helping me search rather than standing around like gormless vegetables?”
“Wouldn’t it be connected to a spire?” Sunset suggested, making the effort. “Surely it’d be somewhere noticeable.”
Script looked up. “There’s the spire,” he said thoughtfully, seeing a tall, thin pole with many little metal extensions branching off of it. Looking down, he followed the point in the wall where it should be to a large, wooden panel.
“I think there’s a hinge here,” Loyal Stride pointed out, trying to push the side of the panel.
“Don’t worry, I have a key,” Script said.
The panel fizzed with blue light, before abruptly bursting from the wall and flying across the room.
“What?” Script asked at the look on Loyal Stride’s face. “Now, lets see. The frequency should already be in here... yes!”
Sunset peered around him to find, what she knew by human standards, was an outdated radio. It reminded her forcefully of a military computer that she’d seen in an old propaganda film about the Cold War. As Script turned it on, the tuning panel shone with a dull yellow light, and a low, fuzzy hum permeated the room.
Script cleared his throat a little, and then put his mouth to a speaker mounted on a thin stalk.
“Calling on official channels, Legio Fulminata, please respond. I repeat. Legio Fulminata, please respond.”
After a few moments of static and occasional interference, Script tried again. Still nothing.
“Let me try,” Loyal Stride said, budging Script aside. “This is First Centurion Loyal Stride. Verification code Alpha Epsilon dash One Two Two One, Esse Quam Videri. Legio Fulminata, please respond.”
A few moments passed once again, but then a sharp, cringing squeak cut the relative silence like a knife. Then Sunset heard what was unmistakably a voice through the garble of static.
“Let me just get the...” Script muttered. “Ah! Got it.”
“—ond. First Centurion, if you are there, please respond.”
“I’m here,” Loyal Stride said immediately. “To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Captain Standard Bearer, of the ventnavis Ex Amino. Sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, it’s rather a surprise to be hearing from you. The legion has been given to understood that you were deceased.”
“News of my death has been greatly exaggerated,” Loyal Stride replied, a little wryly.
“Ugh,” Script groaned. “You enjoyed that.”
“First Centurion!” said a new voice. Sunset pulled back a little at the initial sound. The unctuous falseness of it made her skin crawl. “How nice to hear from you.”
“Servillus,” Loyal Stride said without thinking.
“I’ll take this in my quarters, captain” said the voice.
“Somepony you know?” Sunset asked.
“Senator Servillus,” Script said distastefully. “I think we mentioned him already. Think low-down, opportunistic toady.”
“Oh, yes, I think you mentioned,” Sunset muttered. “Didn’t you say you had some bad history with him?”
“Oh, he only tried to pin the crimes of a horrific magical experiment going on in the imperial palace onto me, and then try to get Loyal Stride implicated too when he tried to defend me. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said at the look on Loyal Stride’s face. “I promised to tell her what is going on, and it all starts there.”
“My dear boy,” the voice started up again. “If you’d had any brains, you’d have kept yourself hidden away and married some nice Equestrian mare.”
“Is this your doing?” Loyal Stride demanded. “This invasion? The legion is not equipped to fight a war with Equestria. Just what in the world are you—“
“You need not concern yourself with the logistics of the coming war, my boy,” Servillus continued, still in that annoyingly buoyant, easy tone of voice. Listening close through the static, Sunset judged it to be an older voice, possibly late middle-age. She remembered from history class that the Roman senators of the human world were renowned as the quintessential old boys club, a parcel of dry, dusty elderly men directing the laws of a growing super power from their seat of luxury in the Eternal City. From the sound of it at least, this guy easily fit the bill.
“Be assured that Roam will be victorious. Victorious in all, and for all time. We shall become a vast and indomitable empire the likes of which the world has never seen. All ponies under the same rule. You should have accepted my hospitality when you had the chance. You’d have been part of the new age.”
“New age?” Script asked, smirking. “That sounds nifty.”
“I see you’ve made some friends during your jaunt amongst the Equestrians,” Servillus said. “Picture it; an age without magic, my dear Loyal Stride. An age where Roam’s power is unrivalled. Is this not the vision of every loyal Roaman?”
“And how exactly will you bring about such an achievement?” Script asked.
“You could still join us, Loyal Stride,” Servillus murmured, ignoring Script’s part of the discussion. “You’re a loyal pony, an excellent soldier. You’re an example of what Roam should be. Of what it could be, when he arises to reshape the Republic.”
“He?” Loyal Stride asked.
“Is that a yes?” Servillus asked. “Be smart about this, my boy. The Princeps will soon no longer be in charge. You don’t want to be on the losing side, I can tell you that right now.”
“You’re plotting to overthrow the Princeps?” Script asked, interestedly. “And who, by chance, would be taking his place?”
“Loyal Stride, I need your answer,” Servillus said, sounding jaded. “Your loyalty should be to the state. Not to that pretender. The future of the Republic is with us, and him.”
“Tell me the objective of this attack,” Loyal Stride said, his tone of voice flat. Sunset looked at him quickly, wondering if he was being persuaded. She couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice, but the look in his eye...
“To begin the war,” Servillus replied. “I shalln’t tell you the specifics until I know your allegiance. But significant damage to the legion, whatever the cause, will propel the Princeps into action. He will have no choice. And with an unprovoked attack on the Equestrian heartland, the Crystal Empress shall have no choice but to retaliate as well. War shall begin, and Roam shall emerge victorious, with him as our glorious and eternal leader!”
“And that’s all I needed to know,” Script muttered, smirking.
“Your answer, boy,” Servillus said sharply.
“With Equestria added to the Republic’s territories, Roam would become the largest pony nation in the world,” Loyal Stride said thoughtfully.
“And there would be none left to challenge its power,” Servillus agreed, sounding pleased. “And under his rule, this state itself would be eternal. His shall ensure that no other could even muster the power to challenge our rule.”
“Including ourselves,” Loyal Stride said.
Sunset, who’d been watching him somewhat nervously, suddenly noticed the hardness in Loyal Stride’s tone. Whatever emotions he was feeling, Sunset got the feeling they weren’t positive.
The radio remained quiet.
“And does the general know about this?” Loyal Stride asked. “Did he order this attack as your compatriot?”
A short, wet chuckle followed this.
“Dear Trotus’ will is relatively weak, if you know where to poke it. A word or two in his ear was enough to convince him that this as the best choice—“
“You damn filthy LIAR! “ Loyal Stride roared into the receiver.
A short pause followed this outburst. Sunset almost took a step back at the sight of the fire blazing in Loyal Stride’s eyes.
“Shall I take that as a no?” Servillus said coldly.
“You can take your offer and shove it into the darkest crevice of your mouldering backside!” Loyal Stride hissed. “You kill those under my command, you try to have me murdered, you plot treason against the Princeps and the Republic, and what’s more, you plan to toss away the blood and lives of loyal Roamans to do it!” He gave a loud snort and slammed a hoof through the desk, cracking it irregularly down the centre. “If I get within five feet of you, I’ll wring the life out of your fat neck! I swear on the blood of my ancestors that I’ll watch the life leave your eyes as you gasp, and beg for—”
“A shame,” Servillus said, cutting across Loyal Stride’s tirade. “Good bye, Loyal Stride. Should somepony take the time to bury you, let your headstone say how your name led you foolishly astray.”
The radio whirred, and the light behind the tuning panel went out.
For a moment, the only sounds were that of the downpour on the glass above, and Loyal Stride’s deep, forceful breathing.
“That was friggin’ awesome,” Script said in a voice of hushed awe. Then he threw his forelegs around Loyal Stride’s neck. “Spirits alive, I would kiss you! But then my sister would get mad, and you know that I can’t keep quiet about anything like that.”
“True,” Loyal Stride said, pushing him off without undue force. “Makes sense that filth is involved. But this probably means that the conspiracy goes high up in the government.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Script said out the corner of his mouth. “Come on. As much as I hate to say it, we have to go and get Sunset’s bed-mate. Now that Servillus is onto us, they’ll be after her.”
“Sonata?” Sunset asked, feeling a sudden heaviness return to his stomach. “Why would they—“
“I told you that I’d explain. And I will. But Servillus is probably—“ He stopped and looked suddenly up. “Yep, yeah, he is.”
Sunset looked up as well, and saw that one of the ventnavi was hovering over the town. From either side of its long, black carapace, came a swarm of tiny black figures, like bees from a disturbed hive. From outside, Sunset and the other two could hear the renewed screams of the frightened townsfolk.
“We have to get out of here,” Loyal Stride said hastily. “The pegasi are only the first wave. Once the centuries land, there’ll be no guarantee that we’ll be able to escape alive.”
“Cheerful,” Sunset said, her heart racing.
“But true,” Script said. “Lets grab your dearly beloved and get out of here.”
Exiting the room at a gallop, they didn’t get far before they were stopped by the sound of clanking.
“Sir!” cried a voice from behind them. Looking back, they found the mare officer from before, followed closely by her two escorts, pelting up the hallway. “Sir, an evacuation order has been given. You have to leave, now!”
Loyal Stride hesitated. “Yes,” he said, in a convincingly commanding tone. “Servillus explained on the radio.”
The officer nodded. “Come on, we can head to the evac point together. Corporal, bring the prisoner.”
Before Script or anypony else could protest, one of the two soldiers cracked Script across the back of the head, sending him crashing to the floor. Sunset bit her lip as the two picked up Script’s limp body, and dashed away with Loyal Stride and the officer.
“I’d get some place safe, if I were you,” the mare called over her shoulder to Sunset.
Sunset watched them leave, stunned and now utterly unsure of what to do. This scenario had not occurred to her at all; what was she supposed to do? Script and Loyal Stride gone, the Flim Flam Brothers somewhere in the city, Roamans paratrooping from above, and Sonata lost amongst the chaos.
Sonata...
Without anything to immediately distract her, the ache in her gut began to reassert itself, and she was forced to attend to what Sonata had done. For a brief moment all of the doubt, the hurt, the indignation, and the anger thrummed through her. How could Sonata have done it? What had possessed her to think that any of this had been a good idea? Sunset could well understand something done of desperation, but this? This had been beyond grasping at straws. This folly had been grasping at ghosts, delusional hopes held out to her by the least trustworthy of sources.
And to hold on to this foolish dream, Sonata had felt it necessary to betray her trust, to reach into Sunset’s mind and twist it to her whims. The truly painful part wasn’t the reason for it having been done, or even what had been done, or at least that wasn’t the whole of it.
It was that Sunset had borne an idea of Sonata as an essentially good person, with a naiveté about her that, amongst her virtues, rendered her incapable of such a thing as betrayal or intentional deceit. Nothing so large a lie as this one. It just seemed to contradict everything Sunset was sure of in her marefriend.
This, she comprehended in mere moments, before an irregularity in her surroundings distracted her enough to look up again. It took her a few seconds, but then she realised what it was. The rain.
The rain was falling, she could see it high above, but it wasn’t hitting the roof of the building, when it plainly should have been. And then came the sound most fit to reduce Sunset’s insides to a cauldron of bilious sludge. Every nerve ending was set on end so that it felt as if she’d been hit by an electric charge. Her legs moved almost of their own volition, sending her scrabbling at first up the hallway, crashing through the doors to the back of the foyer and pounding haphazardly towards the sliding doors.
The air stung her eyes as she burst outside, blinking hard and trying to stare around her.
“Sonata!” she cried, not seeing her anywhere. Then she froze, as she noticed for the first time, the true strangeness of her surroundings. Ponies all around were simply standing, unmoving, darkened as though to solid shadows in the darkness cast by the blotted sky. Tall, angular ponies in armour over plain blue tunics, western-looking towns-ponies all standing around, and Sunset suddenly noticed, staring upwards.
She looked up too.
Sonata drew in a long, calming breath, inflating her lungs with the rich, green energy flowing around her like a whirlpool. She opened her mouth, and breathed out change.
“If this world isn’t what Sunset wants,” she reasoned. “Then I’ll change it. I’ll change it all, until she is happy.”
Her wings spread wide, casting dewy glints across the sky, and her eyes glowed with an otherworldly power. She raised her hooves slowly, as a child taking its first steps, but with a grace and ease born of instinct. Her chest inflated yet again, the pendant resting against it pulsing with a sinister light as the green mist all around rose up, spiralling into its facetted surface.
“I’ll make you happy, Sunset,” she sang into the cold air. “I’ll make you happy. I’ll make you love me again. You’ll rise, rise into the sky.” A long, resonating note of sadness, of regret, and heartfelt love broke out over the dismal surroundings, echoing or so it seemed, with the power of the siren’s call.
“This world isn’t the one you knew, it’s not the one you love. I’ll make it what it was.” Her mouth curved upwards, and her eyes sparkled red. “Even if it first has to die.”
- To be Continued