The Nightmare's Just Begun
We stopped in the rally point after a mane raising escape that I'd rather not talk about. I looked around, puffing and panting for air. Even if Sunny was in good physical health, running would eventually do a number on you. What in the world had happened, though? I don't remember there being any fake crowns in the film!
Izzy's words pulled me out of my thoughts. "I think we lost them!"
The next voice completely shattered those hopes. "No you didn't." Hitch stepped forward, the first time I'd seen him in full since Maretime Bay, which felt like millions of years ago now.
"Hitch?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Taking you back to Maretime Bay. You'd best come quietly too, Izzy."
And charge us with what, exactly? Running around a town isn't a crime last I checked. And if he tried to pull the resisting arrest nonsense I could always point out he didn't have a warrant to arrest me. At least as far as I knew. I'm pretty certain you can't arrest a pony without a warrant.
"What happens if I come loudly?" Izzy asked, breaking the tension with a joke. Smooth, Izzy. Smooth.
Hitch certainly didn't find it funny. "You know what I mean. We're stuck in the middle of a city which seems to be at war and actively hates us. We're in a right mess."
I turned to Hitch to attempt some diplomacy. "Please, you have to let us go. What we have is vitally important to the future of the world!"
I suspected he would just think me insane, but before I had any chance to clarify anythin Misty suddenly appeared atop a dumpster. "I've... got... the... crown!"
"Where's Zipp?" Izzy asked.
"She stayed back to stop the guards from capturing me," Misty replied. "The army's hunting the princesses."
And right on cue, who should appear but Pipp Petals. Her appearance was ragged. Her mane was a mess. Her coat was absolutely covered in grime and dirt. Her coronet was scuffed. And she was shooting me a death glare.
She stopped in front of us and produced the fake crown that Izzy had made, not noticing (or possibly not caring). "Which one of you is going to explain to me why that damn piece of metal is so important you had to ruin my whole show over it!?" I tried to extend a hoof to her, but she slapped my foreleg away and turned her phone around, which was playing news footage of the aftermath of the fiasco. "The army's arrested her! I saw them beating her before I ran!"
This was concerning. Had our plan not quite worked? "Wait, Zipp didn't tell Pipp the plan?"
"Was she meant to?" Misty asked.
Izzy nodded. "Yes. And that means we're one princess down. But at least we have one! Her mom's the queen. The one they arrested."
Given that Pipp was purple in the face after saying that (quite an impressive achievement given her coat colour), Izzy's remark probably wasn't all that helpful.
"If Pipp's mom is the queen, that makes her a princess," Hitch said, his eyes agape in surprise as if this was somehow a big surprise and not blidingly obvious.
"No shit Sherlock!" Pipp snapped back. Wait. That use of that phrase. Is Sherlock Holmes a concept here? I had briefly chatted with Pipp about her reading tastes and had discovered she mostly read fantasy novels (I'm currently on Book Two of the Chronicles of Chevalia series, which they've recently started publishing in the UEPS. Well worth a read in my opinion, even if some of the stereotypes are bit outdated).
Our discussion was interrupted by Pipp's phone switching to the news channel. I'll give you the short version; the army had overthrown the monarch and imposed a dictatorship on the city. The Queen was made to 'confess' to 'crimes' (no doubt a pony had a gun trained on her the entire time), but not before leaving us a cryptic message. "Pipp! Run! Save yourself!"
I had learned about coups in the previous world, but had never imagined I'd actually be walking through one myself. Pipp, understandably, wanted to go back. "We have to go back! We can't just leave mom and Zipp with those pigs! Who knows what they'll do to them!"
"We can't!" I said.
"And why is that?" Pipp snapped, getting uncomfortably close to my face.
I calmly pushed her back and continued speaking. "We can bring back magic, but we need the crystal. We get magic back, we save your folks. Deal?"
"Uh, guys?" Misty said. "Soldiers over there! We can't go back!"
She was right. The army had set up another roadblock, and one of their number was barking orders at civilians. No way we could go that way. Unless we fancied being dead or in prison. As you can probably guess, we didn't go that way, or else how would I be telling you the story?
"Fine! I know a way out. Follow me."
We began to follow Pipp out of the city, and I'll admit this always confused me. If she rarely left the palace and enjoyed the lifestyle her position gave her, how did she know of a route out from a dark, poorly lit alley in the middle of nowhere?
At least we weren't sleeping in a dumpster tonight. I looked behind me at the chaos of lights and shouting, with some gunfire.
What had I done?
I suddenly woke up in a grassy field, the perimeter of which was aflame. The flames were drawing closer, and I looked around in confusion. "Huh? What's going on?"
"The fires burn too hot for you?" said a voice. "Well, too bad. Get used to it. After all, you brought this upon yourself."
I began to stumble forward, away from the flames, when the fire seemed to shift and move. I shook my head. Was it forming a... shape?
Wait. It was... dad? "You foalish child. You really think this is what I wanted? The destruction of the world? A thief of a filly?" Before I could reply he faded into nothingness.
I stumbled on, confused and disoriented. Explosions ravaged a city in the distance as flames continued to dance across the sky.
Suddenly, the shapes coalesced into a new form. The flames now formed Zipp. "You left me out to dry, Sunny!" she yelled. "How could you? HOW COULD YOU?!"
There was suddenly a gunshot, and her form vanished once more. This was getting seriously creepy.
The flames only continued to build the more progress I made. "But this is what you get for messing with things you do not understand," the mysterious voice said again. "The magic was not yours to give, and this is the consequence.
The flames were reshaped, this time into Izzy. She looked terrified. "SUNNY! HELP ME!" Suddenly, her chest exploded in light and sparks before her form vanished.
"There's one you failed to save. One who was just following orders."
I kept on going, trying to make sense of what I was seeing around me. The light was gradually becoming more and more intense.
The flames once again formed into a shape, this time forming a screen of sorts. A battle raged on it, unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies butchering each other in systematic militarised slaughter.
"None of this would have happened if you just stopped," the voice said again, now mocking me. "But you were so desperate to be something you're not... a hero. You leave chaos and destruction wherever you go. Ponies suffer because of your actions."
A voice behind me caught my attention, and I wheeled around to see a fiery Hitch. "You couldn't leave the past alone, could you?" he shouted.
Pipp appeared next to him. "I HATE YOU, SUNNY! YOU CAN BURN IN TARTARUS FOR ALL I CARE!"
I stepped back in shock, before the scene now behind me changed. The flames now showed heavy bombing, of an entire city being pounded into the dust.
"You wanted to unify them?" said the strange voice. "How ironic. You only achieved the opposite. There were 20 million ponies in Equestria before you came here. Thanks to you, there'll all gone."
I suddenly saw Maretime Bay in the distance, and a huge explosion tore the city apart, with the distinctive mushroom cloud of a nuclear weapon forming.
I tried to back away, before turning and screaming. An enormous alicorn made of fire had appeared behind me, and it looked down, its white eyes shifting and glowing as I looked at it. "I once thought I only had to protect Equestria from Opaline," it said, the voice distorted and cold. "Now I can see I only have to protect it from you." Its horn charged up and started to glow. "This is for all your victims!"
I screamed once again. "GET AWAY FROM ME!"
I swung my hoof in a futile attempt to protect myself, and was suddenly jolted back awake. I looked around and saw Izzy clutching her muzzle in pain. My heart sank. "Wha- Izzy, I'm so sorry!"
"I'll be fine," she said. "Just a little nosebleed. But what's going on?"
I shuddered as I recalled the imagery. "It's the nightmares again. They're getting worse! And-"
Izzy hugged me as best I could. "Sunny, this is serious. I won't take no for an answer, because-"
"Please don't leave me."
Well, the heist is over, and the city is in chaos. Already we have our protagonist beginning to witness the consequences of their actions and the effects they have on others.
The nightmare sequence draws heavily on a number of different sources. The major source and tone was the video game Spec Ops: the Line, which focuses on a soldier whose experiences progressively drive him insane. The game is well-remembered for its intense and bizarre nightmare sequences, and if you haven't played it I highly recommend you do.
This image was also a key source of inspiration.
For context, this dates from the very early days of the fandom, when a popular theory was that the magic had been broken up to defeat Twilight Sparkle, who had been driven insane by the deaths of her friends. In fact, some early theories for the Shadowy Alicorn (who was later revealed to be Opaline) speculated whether she was Twilight.
Other media drawn upon include the story Lead us Not, which formed the basis for a previous chapter, a YouTube horror video themed around nightmares, and one of my own nightmares. (Yeah, I have some pretty weird dreams sometimes.) The only question is- are these the shadows of what will be, or what might be?
Who, or what, is causing her to dream this way? And will Sunny survive this journey with her sanity intact?
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A new chapter has just arrived.
great chapter mate keep it up can't wait for the next chapter
anything*
Maybe she goes outside of ZH on occasion. But probably not as much like Zipp.
Doesn't she mean die!?!?
consequence."*
Another really well-done chapter concerning the dialogue, characterizations and future chapter set-up. Again, good recap of the stuff from phase three of "Zipp" and "Izzy's" stories, from "Sunny's" point of view (such as the reaction to "Pipp's" condition and some of the things "she" said in frustration) as well as greater detail on "Sunny's" nightmare concerning not only "her" late father, but also the friends that are in danger right now. And to be fair, in some MLP stories, there IS a ponified version of Sherlock Holmes existing as either a fictional character or a character that actually exists (though the names vary).
VERY MUCH looking forward to more of this.
11773250
Glad you enjoyed.
11773280
1. Oops.
2. Probable.
3. 'Left me out to dry' is a British colloquial expression which is roughly equivalent in meaning to 'thrown under the bus'.
4. Fixed.
11773282
I can only imagine the psychological strain Sunny is under, given the circumstances. And a Sherlock character in canon? This is news to me!
11773256
Cheers for the read!
11773326
Well, I was thinking more fan fiction, but "Mystery on the Friendship Express" (I'm not going to do the extra "Ms", but you get the idea), the detective hats WERE based on Holmes and Watson and the IDW Comics did have a one-shot homage to Sherlock Holmes, so it's not impossible.
I admit, it's come up so often in fan fiction that I was confused.
11773324
Ah thx
Man, I remember when I was part of that whole ordeal and I kept swearing up and down that it was Twilight Sparkle after becoming corrupted.
Boy was I ultimately wrong by the time Chapter 2 of MYM was released and of course I stopped believing that altogether. :/
11773329
Ah, now I understand. There's was also Rarity Investigates, which was an affectionate sendup of film noir.
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Np.
11773447
Another very early theory that did the rounds was the idea that Opaline was Twilight's daughter.
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Wow.
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This would have explained Twilight not killing her.