No Hiding Place
Sunset Flash
No Hiding Place
Adventure is out there!
--Starswirl the Bearded
“Buckit, buckit, buckit!” There had been a chapter in Dangerous Beasts and Fauna of the Everfree that Sunset Shimmer had read once that detailed a defense against hydras, but all she could remember was the postscript in the book that had dedicated it to the graduate students who had nearly given their lives proving that the three most effective ways to survive meeting a hydra were to run, run fast, and run far, far away.
“Options, I need options,” she gasped, feeling the forest floor tremble as the hydra grew nearer.
Stuff the rest of the painkillers into Flash and run. When it eats him, it should fall asleep.
“Only have four pills. Three, now. Need another option. Come on, brain. Think or you’re dead, Sunset!”
The inky darkness beneath a huge fallen tree caught her eye, a impenetrable ebon veil that could conceal anything from grizzly bear to a manticore, but right now the one thing she could be certain of was that it did not conceal a hydra, which made it the perfect place to conceal a terrified Sunset Shimmer. Her heart hammered in her chest as she mentally weighed the unconscious pegasus against the rapidly approaching thunderous footsteps, making only one thing she could possibly say before leaving.
“Well, Flash. It’s been good to know you, but I need to get going. Have fun at dinner.”
She patted him gently on the cheek and turned for her bolthole, but came to a sudden stop as the idiotic guard stirred in his sleep and muttered, “Love you…”
Every single second was critical if she was to get hidden before the hydra followed its sensitive noses here and ate Flash, but she paused, glancing back and forth between her ex-coltfriend and safety. She had always been able to make the right decisions, and this was an easy one, but…
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She grabbed one armored hoof and heaved, trying to keep her numb horn from touching any part of his body as she struggled to get the heavy stallion with his heavy armor and his most certainly fat flank onto her back while ignoring the way the ground trembled and thumped underhoof. He dangled down on both sides, sticky blood matting into her own coat and certainly providing the oncoming hydra a delicious seasoning for her tender flesh. The world faded in and out as she staggered forward, cursing the donut-loving dolt and every tasty pastry he had ever shoved into his big mouth and collapsing to her knees once they both were inside the inky darkness.
Without being able to see, and barely able to hear through the throbbing hammer chorus in her head, Sunset could only imagine the scene outside in the overgrown clearing. The thunder of approaching steps slowed to a halt, replaced by the sound of four noses sniffing around the area. To her horror, she could also hear the faint crackle and crunch of dry bones under her own hooves from some huge forest creature trapped when the tree they were hiding under had originally fallen. She froze in place, feeling the warm breath of Flash on her neck as he twisted during sleep, gently nibbling up her neck to her sensitive ear with a constant stream of whispered, “Love you, love you, love you…” Despite the sledgehammer in her head and the certainty of death and consumption outside, she could still feel her aching knees get weak and her tail struggle to rise. Biting on her bottom lip did little good when he finally reached her ear and bit down gently with one final whispered word. “Princess.”
“What?!” The faint snorting noises outside cut off abruptly even though Flash continued his drowsy mutterings, unaware of his soon to be role as midnight snack. Sunset twisted out from underneath him, gaining painful scratches in her own coat from the jagged dry bones still trapped under the fallen tree. In a fit of desperation, she grabbed one of the broken bones in her teeth and darted to one side of their impromptu cave’s entrance just as the light from outside was cut off by a gigantic head. She flung herself forward in a blind panic with a muffled battlecry of mixed pain and terror as she jabbed down with the raw end of the jagged dry bone and felt it strike home in the monster’s eye.
Things got more than a little indistinct at that point, but when the fuzzy blur finally cleared and she could think clearly again, there was no sign of the hydra at the mouth of their shelter other than a blotch of blood at the entrance and some distant bellowing noises that seemed to promise future retribution. After taking a number of deep breaths and suppressing a pressing urge to throw up, she took a peek out the cave entrance to look at the devastated clearing. Grass and bushes had been thrown in all directions by the rampaging monster, making the peaceful moonlit area she had just left into a maze of torn up turf and ripped bark that could be concealing any number of impatient scavengers hanging around for leftovers.
She sat down in the entrance, or to be more accurate, both her hind legs suddenly made up their minds to collapse at the same time, triggering a wave of trembling that swept from shaking tail to chattering teeth. It was a surreal feeling to taste dry bones in her dry mouth, and she spit out the second splintered bone she had grabbed instinctively when the hydra had yanked its head out of the entrance and carried the first bone with it. Wherever her splitting headache had gone when the hydra first appeared, it was now returning in excruciating throbs that made her eyes twitch with the rhythm of her rapid heartbeat.
Thirty minutes in Equestria. It could only have been about thirty minutes so far. Forty, tops. Four years of high school as a human, and nothing had tried to kill her in that time. Well, other than the PE teacher trying to convince her to climb that stupid rope. She could feel slivers of bark still jammed under her coat, the humid motionless air wrapping her in sweat, and the cloying scent of dung from some other creature who had used this fallen tree as a den or—
It took a few moments to kick the smelly evidence of her fear out the doorway and regard the sounds of the sleeping simpleton snoring softly in the darkness. From sacrificial goat to salvation in just a few minutes. His fellow guards were going to be so proud of him after catching the prisoner and surviving their landing in the Everfree Forest. He might even get a promotion. Certainly Celestia would reward him in some fashion, and it might even spill over a little onto her errant student, the Prodigal Pony, as it were. Cover him with praise, lay the butter on as thick as it would go about how he saved her from the fall despite her failed spell, and stood guard through the night against the monsters of the forest.
Yeah, that might work. It sure as hell can’t make things worse. I better at least play the part.
The darkness in their little hidey-hole had just enough soft shimmers of reflected moonlight for Sunset to find Flash’s sleeping body, made easier by his gurgling snore. One of the many, many things a student of the princess learns is the habits and equipment of the constantly watching guards, particularly when trying to avoid them or borrow things from them. Under the right side of the standard Royal Guard paldron, hidden by a little pressure clasp, was a ‘pocket’ of sorts. In addition to their standard kit, a guard might store a picture or two, or even some bits in the cramped space, but what she was looking for was a little more useful.
“Ah, ha. Here we go. All we need is music and we can have a rave. Flash is already coked out of his gourd.”
The glow rods popped into a soft illuminating light when bent, one pale blue and one pale pink, which she hung by their strings on twigs sticking out of the tree overhead before turning to the task she had not wanted to face. Flash’s wing had swelled up somewhat since she had dragged him under the tree, and Sunset swallowed hard as she got a good close look at what she was up against in order to properly set and splint the broken limb. After an hour or two of rest, the injured flight muscles could easily start spasming, which would force the jagged edges of the break against delicate blood vessels and tendons. Contrary to her previous protestations, Sunset did have a little medical experience as a pony before traveling to the human world and suffering through dissecting frogs in Biology and surviving the ‘Your Female Bodies, Your Selves’ class. Somewhere at her old home here, she had a whole sash full of Filly Scout badges for dumb filly stuff, but she could still hear her old scout mistress talking about open fractures as if they were the greatest thing in the world. The old biddy had even seemed to wish that one of her little Filly Scouts would manage to break a bone in that exact fashion during their jamboree so they could be used as a teaching aid, although it never had happened.
With a pained sigh of remembrance for younger and simpler times, Sunset examined the rest of the guard’s standard supplies. The bandage applicator was nearly depleted, the weak yellow blinking gem in the side indicating the enchantment that powered it needed to be recharged by a unicorn who preferably was not stuck in the middle of the Everfree Forest with a split horn. The empty circular depression where the magic-suppressing horn ring was normally located she skipped, as the ring was still on her horn, of course, stuck just inside her visual range and making her cross-eyed whenever she tried to take a look where Flash had bandaged the annoying object in place. The two alchem light spots were empty now too, as well as…
She removed the empty condom wrapper and tossed it into the corner of the cave with a scowl before turning back to her inventory of available useful tools to use on Flash’s broken wing. A compact wad of cords turned out to be a pegasus wing restraint, which she sat to one side for later, but other than a tube of antiseptic cream, the rest of the kit was useless.
There were a few photographs of a young colt looking much like Flash, a pair of older pegasi who she vaguely remembered as his parents, and one well-worn picture of…
Oh, you blithering numbskull. Princess Twilight Sparkle? Really?
She was posed next to five other young mares, all seeming odd and hoofy compared to the human counterparts Sunset was familiar with. Even as ponies, there was no mistaking their identity, from Pinkie’s flyaway mane to Dash’s prismatic display, and a little purple dragon who could only be Spike. She sat the photo to one side with a pang of regret at having left her human friends all behind and turned to her unwelcome task.
~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~
Morning sunlight sifted down through the thick canopy of the Everfree Forest, illuminating the drifting motes of pollen and early-rising insects, splashing off the emerald green leaves, rebounding around the small forest clearing and reflecting into the small cavity under a fallen tree in which two groggy ponies were waking. A fitful night of sleep had done nothing for Sunset’s cheery demeanor, nor was the missing cup of coffee and absent breakfast pastry helping. Flash groaned while shifting positions, letting out one abbreviated yelp of pain when he tried to move his wings and shifting around so he could glare at his counterpart.
“Yer still here, Sunny?” He blinked and yawned with a stupefyingly bad case of morning breath. And mane. And tail. Sunset could not complain very much, being fairly certain that her own matted mane was going to have to be sheared off like some red and yellow sheep before they stuck her in the jail cell, but she could not help but snark in reply.
“How could I ever leave my handsome Shining Armor? Kiss me, you handsome thing,” she murmured, raising one eyebrow painfully at his blank expression. Sunset Shimmer rolled her eyes and stood up, or at least staggered into as much of an erect position as the low ceiling of their shelter would allow. “Stay put, nitwit. I want to see how my little crafting project looks in the sunlight.”
Flash looked away as Sunset cautiously examined the splinting she had done last night, but due to his natural inability to keep his big mouth shut, he eventually swallowed and asked, “You don’t really think I’m Shining Armor, do you? Because you hit your head—”
“No, I don’t think you’re Sammy,” shot back Sunset. “I mean Shiny. I was being facetious. That means sarcastic,” she added. “Since you were so brilliant as to hit my horn in the middle of a teleport spell, we wound up in the middle of the Everfree Forest. Now shut up. My head is about to split open, I itch everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and I would have thought your idiot guard friends would have picked us up hours ago. I’m starting to look forward to a cold, hard cell with no bugs!” She stomped down on an insect and twisted her hoof with a certain malevolent degree of satisfaction.
“Well, it might take some—” Flash had gained some courage from somewhere and turned around to take a tentative peek at his bandaged wing, and remained looking with his jaw hanging open like some sort of armored flycatcher.
“What? Look, your stupid kit didn’t have anything in it for stitches, so I had to improvise.”
“Are those… Unable to twist a hoof around to his back, he craned his neck a little closer to his wing and squinted. There had been a ragged bloody split at least two hooves long torn in his thin hide where the thick wingbone had punched through, which was now ever so neatly stitched up by a neat line of—
“Ants?” he asked, looking at the line of beheaded ants, or more properly, bebodied ant heads, each one with sharp mandibles buried into his skin in a meandering line that tracked the edges of severed skin underneath the tight web of the wing restraint.
“I read about it once,” said Sunset with a small smile. “Once these bad boys get their jaws into you, they won’t let go even after you pull their bodies off.”
“Ants,” he repeated weakly. “I’m being eaten by ants. And this is supposed to be a good thing?”
“Chillax,” she said, stomping another bug. “They’re dead, and they’re saving your life. You want to bleed to death before your lazy friends get here? It’s taking them forever to follow your stupid beacon.”
“Um. About that…” Flash looked back outside into the empty sunlit clearing. “Maybe we should go out and start a fire. Something with smoke or something so they have something to follow. Or something.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you, Flash? One thing I got from the books I read on the Everfree Forest is how blinking dangerous it is. We go out into that clearing to start a fire and Blam! A manticore will come swooping down on us or that stupid hydra from last night will come back.”
Flash squirmed in that entirely obvious way that showed he was hiding something. It must have been a doozy, because he folded his ears back and looked out into the clearing again. “Really. Once they find where you punched a hole in the Outer Wards, they’ll put out a search team. We’re a long ways away from the breach, so maybe a smokey bonfire would help. I mean if we really are in the Everfree Forest, maybe its magic is affecting my beacon, or it could even be malfunctioning somehow.”
“Malfunctioning?” Sunset blinked. “Flash, that beacon is about as fail-safe as Canterlot’s support spells. The only reason a guard would even turn theirs off is to sneak up on somepony—”
A series of completely unconnected items connected in Sunset’s mind and she could not help but snort with derision. “You turned your beacon off so you could watch Princess Twilight Sparkle without her knowing, didn’t you?”
“No!” A brief pause. “Of course not.” A somewhat longer pause. “That would be against regulations.” He grumbled as Sunset pulled his helmet off and looked inside. “Besides, it’s a dumb regulation.”
“You shorted it out?” Sunset Shimmer rotated the helmet towards the rays of sunlight beaming into their shelter and scowled down at the little charred rune inside. “How in the stars did you short it out without blowing your stupid head off?”
“It was an accident,” muttered Flash. “I was just trying to figure out how to turn it off a few weeks ago when it made a popping noise. I thought I could turn it back on, but I can’t, so let’s just get a bonfire built, and we can worry about pointing hooves of blame when the search parties pick us up.”
“Flash, you idiot! There won’t be search parties.” Sunset sat down and tossed the helmet aside. “I used a stealth slidealong spell when I punched a hole in the Outer Wards. I thought it was one of Shining Armor’s barriers, and I thought that slipping out of it without being detected was a good idea, but you know what they’re going to think now since we seem to have vanished without a trace? You know what they’ll think about Sunset Shimmer and Flash Sentry, who had been romantically involved before I got kicked out of the castle by Princess Celestia? They’ll think we did this together! They’ll think we planned on escaping Canterlot, and if they search at all, they’re going to be looking in every train station and steamship line across Equestria, NOT in the bucking Everfree Forest!”
“Um, Sunny?” Flash Sentry touched her gently on one flank.
“Not now, you idiot! I’m on a roll! And you know what’s worse? I’m stuck here with you of all ponies! My friends asked if they could come with me, but no, I had to turn them down. I told them there’s a balance to interdimensional mirror portals, and the more parallel versions of a pony who exist on one side, the more unstable they get. I mean, can you imagine two Pinkie Pies in the same place?”
“Look at the ants,” whispered Flash, in a somewhat hypnotized tone.
“I don’t care about the bucking ants!” screamed Sunset regardless of the excruciating pain from her head. “The ants are perfectly fine! Primitive tribes all over the Amazon basin used them for stitches for centuries! Leave the bucking ants on your back alone!”
Two powerful forehooves grasped her by the cheeks and rotated Sunset’s head to look out into the sunlit clearing. At first, she did not see what it was that had disturbed Flash Sentry, but after a few moments to run down the list of things it was not, a horrible realization began to grow.
“Ants,” she murmured. “So many bucking ants.”
The clearing floor seemed fuzzy from the uncounted multitude of ants that covered it in a lumpy thick coat, but the trees and grass were rapidly turning from green to a striped brown under their relentless jaws. Ants hung from branches, clumped on boulders, and generally existed everywhere within sight, and from the low hiss that she had originally put off as a breeze through the trees, the endless carpet of ants continued a long distance farther than she could see. There were even chains of ants draped from the trees as they linked their tiny bodies to form ant highways to reach the leafy foliage.
“They react to smell more than sight,” whispered Flash Sentry. “My little brother knows a colt who can’t stop talking about bugs. They can smell predators who kill ants and swarm them under.”
“Oh… crap,” whispered Sunset, looking outside the shelter opening at the growing pool of moving jaws and twitching feelers where she had thrown the other half of her ‘stitches.’
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Ants are so cute
Well, that dumb, Sunset. Apparently the options are death by bleeding out or death by killer ants. *cue indiana jones music*
It seems like Flash is more interested in the Princess, so TwilightxFlash seems more likely than SunsetxFlash, but whatever.
Did someone call for ants?
Skip to 6:13
It's said that if you and a friend are running from a hydra, you have but one chance: trip your friend. Of course, that doesn't help much when the next hydra comes along...
I'd forgotten about how the heads of some ants could be used as stitches. Very clever of Sunset. A shame she didn't consider what the ants would think.
Looking forward to more, especially since these two have no incoming backup. I wonder how Sunset will feel if she ends up abandoning her human friends for thirty moons...
Some very clever stuff going on there.
So did Flash get lucky recently? With Twilight?
I came for the romance, but it's hard to stay for when Flash Sentry is such a monumental tool.
Instead, I think I'll be staying for another inoculation of Sunset Holmes.
Sweet chapter. Go sunset Shimmer for pointing out that they are so screwed. Good luck with the next chapter. This is going to be fun.
The Amazon is fucking terrifying.
And now for a moment of fridge horror!
The lack of respect for regulations, the lack of respect for his equipment, the lack of any apparent skills, the completely flat and irritating personality...
Sunset Shimmer is trapped in the middle of the Everfree with an incompetent Wesley Crusher!
So Flash Sentry is going to get a bit "streamlined"?
5178060
I am pretty sure that is a tautology.
5179327
Not really; it was established in canon that Crusher himself was only mostly useless. Here, Flash Sentry has been established as all useless.
Crusher would have been able to fix his beacon. It would have required some unobtainium and a few bits of Macguffin, the finding of which would take up most of the episode, but he could do it.
Sentry shorted out his beacon while trying to find a way to turn it off so he could watch Princess Twilight Sparkle without her knowing, and was carrying an empty condom wrapper with him. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what he could do with some unobtainium and a few bits of Macguffin (hint: nothing useful, unless you're into that sort of thing).
On one hand, suturing up Flash's laceration was probably important. On the other, death by ants is probably going hurt far worse and take quite a bit longer than death by hydra.
Also, I'm really curious about what Flash has been up to with his free time, and with whom.
Being in Equestria, they suddenly burst into song!
Finding ourselves in the Everfree Forest,
An angry hydra--heads roaring in chorus,
Cranial trauma, with all that it brings,
These are by no means our favorite things!
Flesh-eating insects that swarm in great numbers,
Lack of supplies, and a wound that encumbers,
No chance of searchers soon discovering...
These are by no means our favorite things!
Not quite slain ...still,
Taking pain pills,
Things look good, through fuzz,
Then I wake up to these horrible things--
And that really kills my buzz!!!
Oh please, please have a perspective shift where we get to see what conclusions the Royal Guard actually came to! Sunset's idea sounds quite reasonable; plus I want to see Twilight's reaction if she's told her
stalker with a crushloyal guard has eloped with the fugitive criminal Sunset Shimmer!Oh, I've read that short story. Very nasty. It'll give you nightmares.
And I see that both Flash Sentries have crushes on Pony Twilight Sparkle (even though only one of them knows she's a Pony). Poor Sunset Shimmer. Though she did consider abandoning Pony Flash to the Hydra.
What he doesn't mention is that adventure is deadly.
5177264 And likely to cannibalize you, but that's beside the point.
Given the fact of what was stomping around outside trying to eat her, I feel Sunset had every right to s**t herself.
I can't imagine I'd be doing any better.
5177264
They make me think of this scene:
No they aren't. Ants are horrible creatures.
I remember reading in "Roots" that Kunta Kinte's mother used ants to stitch up a gash in his head. I had to read "Leiningen Versus the Ants" when I was in 10th grade. It was one of the only stories in the basal readers I liked.