Author's Notes:

Added on 03 Aug 2016

Formerly Vigilance Is Eternal

Trixie veers around the corner of the back parking lot of the Bank of Bernese, her stolen bee now covered in dents and thick gashes of scratched paint. She has a few fresh bruises and scratches herself, too. It has taken her a little while to reach the Bank of Bernese since she had to not only give herself quick, and very painful, driving lessons, but she also had to avoid the swarm of guards that were converging on the hotel. Luckily for her, she got out easily since the path out was a clear shot, and the alley she escaped to was basically empty. But now that she reached the bank, she is both relieved and terrified. There are no guards in sight, and as she pulls up Monte is being led out by a dark colored unicorn with golden eyes carrying a metal box.

Trixie parks the vehicle and gallops towards the two, ignoring the burning pain in her bruised legs. When she gets close she draws her stolen weapon and aims it at the unicorn, whom Trixie recognizes as Andromeda, with every intention of blowing her brains out all over the wall.

“Hey, bitch!” yells Trixie.

Monte and Andromeda see Trixie, but the two have very different reactions. Monte gapes at her and the blood from his face drains, all while a pistol shimmers into view next to his head.

“Trixie, what the heck are you doing!” cries Monte.

“Not another step closer!” barks Andromeda.

Trixie stops and Andromeda keeps her weapon aimed at Monte’s skull. Trixie growls and carefully approaches the two.

“So, you must be Dust Swirl,” comments Trixie snidely. “That fake name would work better if you didn’t have your face in the newspapers.”

“And you’re looking pretty good for somepony who should’ve bled to death in the sewers,” remarks Andromeda.

Trixie is about to dish out a snappy comeback, but that notion is replaced with a sudden crawling sensation in her mane when a dozen ponies come out from hiding, all armed with a ballistic weapon of some kind. As Trixie eyes each of them, one word comes to mind: Shit.

Some have mini-gatling guns in their mouths, and others are levitating shotguns and pistols or wearing battle saddles. The more Trixie watches them steadily approach her, using the parked vehicles for cover, the more she curses herself for her stupidity.

Trixie looks back at Monte and can see the fear plainly in his bruised face. He nudges his head to the side,but he is quickly stopped when Andromeda hisses for him to stop. Trixie carefully approaches the group, minding the weapons and hostile eyes trained on her. Especially Andromeda’s freakishly bright, gold eyes.

“Unless you want to die again, I’d suggest you move out of the way,” says Andromeda as she takes a couple of steps back.

Trixie takes a couple of steps forward, and Andromeda tugs Monte closer to her and her small army tightens their aim on Trixie. Trixie stops and aims her weapon at Andromeda, even though she doubts she’ll be able to hit her. In fact, she’s worried she might accidentally shoot Monte.

“Let him go,” orders Trixie, now wondering why there are no guards showing up.

The small army before her snickers, minus Andromeda. The dark colored unicorn aims her pistol at Trixie, and Trixie swears she sees reluctance.

“Trixie, move out of the way. This is not your fight,” says Andromeda.

“This has been my fight ever since the EIB back stabbed me!” says Trixie.

“Yeah, you guys kinda screwed yourselves on both ends when you did that,” chuckles Monte anxiously.

“Shut up!” yell Trixie and Andromeda in unison.

Monte’s ears droop and he tries to shrink down, but he is held fast by Andromeda’s magic.

“I’m still mad at you,” adds Trixie, and when Monte rolls her eyes, she snarls and briefly aims her pistol at him. “Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“Hey, who’s the one being held hostage by government agents? Oh yeah, it’s me!” exclaims Monte.

Andromeda presses the barrel of her pistol against Monte’s head, making him wince, and she glares at Trixie. Trixie, in turn, brings her glare to Andromeda while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the goons. They are all on a hair trigger and Trixie knows that one wrong move and she’ll be dead before she can blink, and she knows that they know this. They are just waiting for her to screw up.

“This is your last chance, Trixie. Move,” orders Andromeda.

Trixie blinks sweat out of her eyes. “If I move, you’ll just kill me and Monte anyway.”

Andromeda shakes her head as she adjusts her pistol’s position. “I have no intention of killing you or Monte.” Andromeda’s goons look at her curiously, and when she realizes what is going on, she quickly adds: “But I will, if you force my hoof!”

Monte chuckles uneasily and looks at Andromeda out of the corner of his eye. “But we haven’t forced your hoof, so... Yeah.”

“Last chance. Give me Monte and the box, or else you’ll be sorry,” warns Trixie.

Monte glares at Trixie. “Did you just seriously say that?”

Trixie returns the glare. “Hey, I’m working here!”

“You’ll be sorry? Who says that?”

“I do!”

“Enough!” snaps Andromeda. “Holy sun, I swear, you two bicker like a married couple!”

Monte forces himself to laugh. “Ha! Joke’s on you, missy! We aren’t married. We just like to argue.”

He immediately gets a pistol whip to the side of the head that leaves him on the ground with a gash. He swears not very colorful words as he presses his hoof against his injury, and while Trixie thinks he deserves it for pushing his luck, she still takes another threatening step forward and her heart starts racing when she hears numerous clicks and a few taunts, begging her to shoot.

“Do you want to die?” shouts Andromeda viciously. She uses her magic to hoist Monte off the ground, ignoring his whimpers and presses her pistol against his gash, glaring at Trixie. “Do you want him to die? Because I will kill him, right here, right now, in front of your face if you do not move!”

Trixie is about counter Andromeda, but her train of thought is interrupted when she hears tires squealing against the asphalt, and out of her peripheral vision, she sees a mini-train speeding through the parking lot straight for her. Trixie’s eyes widen and even Andromeda gets a look of confusion as the vehicle carelessly plows through the parking lot, nearly running over some of the goons in the process.

“What are they doing!” yells Andromeda to nobody in particular after she pulls Monte into cover with her

The mini-train swerves towards Trixie, and she is barely able jump out of the way in time as the vehicle carelessly smashes through more parked vehicles. She rolls for cover behind a motorized wagon, but gets knocked to the ground as the vehicle is pushed aside by the massive vehicle, showering her with shards of broken glass, and leaving a bruise on her side with no air in her lungs.

Pushing aside the pain and better judgment, Trixie pokes her head from her cover and sees the mini-train has stopped, and a familiar pegasus mare wielding a mini-gatling gun in her mouth is looking right at her.

Trixie ducks down and covers her head with her hooves when said pony starts shooting at her with the high powered weapon. Trixie swears and scrunches up tighter as more shards of glass and splinters rain down around her. Then everybody else starts shooting at her with a complete lack of care for ammo conservation.

Trixie can hear Andromeda shouting something, but with all the bullets whizzing by and destroying everything in their path, she can barely understand a word said.

Trixie raises her pistol with her magic and blindly fires at the mini-train, which prompts Monte’s captives to fire at a seemingly quicker rate, and for them to adjust their positions. Andromeda shouts again, too, but again, Trixie barely hears the words and has a hard time figuring out what she is saying.

During the whole ordeal, Trixie barely sees one of Andromeda’s partners round the vehicle she is hiding behind with her weapon raised. Trixie brings her pistol to bear and shoots the attacker in the chest a couple of times, making her stumble into a vehicle and slide to the ground with a trail of blood on the door. Another hired gun, a unicorn carrying a shotgun, comes by and Trixie tries to shoot her, too, but her weapon clicks and the clip falls out.

The pony fires off a shot, which blows a gaping hole in the door next to Trixie’s head, and in response, Trixie shrieks and throws the weapon at the shotgun pony’s face as she scrambles for cover. The weapon hits her target in the nose, and the unicorn yelps and stumbles while accidentally dropping her weapon. Once the shotgun hits the ground, it fires off a round, barely missing Trixie.

Trixie high tails it out of the kill zone, swearing and trying not to whimper as the hired guns mercilessly fill the air around her with lead. Miraculously, Trixie can still hear Andromeda shouting over the innumerable pop and cracks of gunfire, and this time she is guessing that it is an order to leave since the kidnappers jumping in vehicles and driving off. The shooter in the mini-train, on the other hand, is still shooting at Trixie, only this time she is actually aiming.

Trixie curls up in a small ball and covers her head with her hooves, thus poorly shielding herself from the rain of glass shards and splinters. When the firing comes to a sudden stop, Trixie does not dare poke her head out directly, so she crawls on the ground and peeks at the situation from under a motorized wagon, wincing as the glass shards and splinters cut into her skin. She barely sees Monte getting shoved into a motorized wagon with Andromeda, and another pony shouting for the mini-train to hurry it up.

The vehicles start leaving, and Trixie shrinks as far as she can go while keeping her mental cross hairs locked on to Andromeda’s vehicle. When the convoy of seven vehicles speed out of the parking lot, Trixie dares to poke her head out and freezes at the sight of the carnage. As expected, the asphalt is covered with a layer of bullet casings and water from the punctured engines, and the vehicles in the parking lot are riddled with bullet holes as well as the wall to the bank. And the bank wall also has blood splatter and four dead bank guards lying near the door. The only good she can see from the situation is that her stolen bee remains relatively unscathed, minus the scratches and dents from her quick, self-taught bee lessons.

Trixie’s blood boils and her vision turns red as she marches towards her bee. She mutters threatening nonsense to herself along the way and fantasizes about how she will just blow through the convoy, save Monte, and then set some things straight between them. When she woke up and saw. and felt, the extremely unpleasant surprise, she knew that they had leaped clean over the line, and probably a fence or two. And now she has to set the record straight and convince Monte that what happened should not have happened and they are not a couple, no matter what kind of “fun” they had last night. And she still wants him to apologize for how rude he was to her during their argument.

There’s also the box, too.

Trixie hops on the bee and speeds away from the carnage, barely catching sight of the convoy. When the bee tips dangerously close to falling over as she swerves around the corner, into passing traffic, she mutters a series of prayers to Celestia, begging her to keep her steady,. She whimpers and and braces herself for the worst when she feels her coat brushing against the asphalt, but lo and behold, Celestia answered a prayer for once. Trixie is able to straighten the bee and she cheers with relief, and feels as though she can catch up, break some skulls, and save Monte. And that box, too. However, her flash of giddiness coming from her near death experience comes to an end when through the mirror she spots a guard vehicle speeding towards her, siren blaring and light flashing.

Trixie increases her speed, and weaves through the traffic in a less than graceful manner, occasionally coming close to hitting someone or their vehicle, and sometimes driving on the sidewalk or road barriers. Each of her small screw ups makes her yelp and fear for her life, and when she dares to peek in her mirror to see where the guard is, she finds four. And another vehicle slides into view from behind each of the four.

Trixie curses under her breath and swears loudly when she drives through a line of garbage cans blocking off an alley. She spits and shakes her head to get the garbage out of her face and mane, and shrieks and pulls her vehicle to a stop when she almost hits a grungy brick wall head on. The vehicle lurches to a stop and Trixie is almost flung off, but the steering sleeves keep her in at the price of leaving horrible bruises. When the bee thumps back to the ground, Trixie gulps and is about to take a breather to sooth her panicking heart, but alas she doesn’t get the chance for the same guard vehicle from earlier rounds the corner and speeds towards Trixie.

Trixie groans and quickly puts the bee in gear and drives down the alley. She hears the guard shouting at her with his megaphone in his native tongue, but she has no intention of surrendering. Not when Monte and her only chance of exposing the EIB is in the possession of a bunch of Brisk Wind’s troops.
She looks in the mirror again and sees that the lone guard wagon has reinforcements. The only good she sees from the situation is that they are having trouble maneuvering through the alleys. All except for the lead one. The leading guard is matching each of her moves with far more grace than she has, and guards inside also have the advantage of not having garbage flying in their faces.

In desperation, Trixie charges her horn and sets off a bright shower of fireworks, causing a few of her chasers to slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into each other. Trixie laughs as she turns into a main road, ignoring the urge to cringe when she hears quite a bit of the guard vehicles crash. However, she does look over her shoulder for a moment and sees a couple of the guard vehicles have piled up onto each other.

She turns her head back to the road and finds a moment of peace as she weaves through the traffic, and is filled with relief when she sees a sign pointing towards the zepplin-port. She takes a deep breath and follows the sign, which leads into a tunnel. She thinks nothing of it since the signs are pretty straight forward and she is following traffic, but as she drives, she hears faint sirens that are steadily getting louder. Curious, she peeks at her mirror and her eyes widen as she gets an unusual mix of anger, confusion, and fear. The same guard vehicle that has been chasing her since the bank is heading straight towards her. Granted the vehicle is covered in scratches, dents, and is now missing the windshield, but it is still going strong. And picking up speed.

“This guy just doesn’t know when to quit!” says Trixie.

Trixie picks up her speed and concentrates on not getting killed from her increasingly dangerous driving. She weaves in and out through the traffic, occasionally looking through the mirror to see where the guard is, and tries to pull fast ones to lose him. None of her tricks work, though, and they really were not tricks since all she really did was do more sporadic driving. Very soon the guard vehicle lines up and the passenger leans out and fired on her with a mini Gatling gun.

Trixie screams and lays as low as she can on her vehicle, whimpering and trying not to lose control as the bullets ricochet off of the plating. Trixie’s heart thumps violently in her chest and adrenaline rushes through her veins as she tries to avoid getting killed by the persistent guard. When Trixie tries to use the passing vehicles as a cover the guard narrowly avoids crashing as he drives between two passing vehicles to get to her, and he is quick to regain his sights on her.

With Trixie now back in his sights, the passenger pokes out again with his weapon at the ready, Trixie sharply cuts through the lanes to get to an exit she just now noticed, swearing up a storm as she narrowly avoids a constant stream of rapidly advancing commuters. The guard vehicle also turns, but with all the friction it comes to an unwanted stop and the vehicle's side is smashed by a civilian trying to stop. Trixie watches from the in the mirror as the guard vehicle spirals into the tunnel wall, leaving parts of itself in its wake. She momentarily feels sorry for the driver of the vehicle, but thoughts of sympathy are replaced fear and frantic begs of Celestia keeping her alive in an instant when she accidentally goes off of a ramp made up of an unfinished sidewalk that leads to another open intersection.

Trixie shrieks when her stolen bee gets some air, and as soon as she lands, she skips quite a few heartbeats due to the deadly bounces, almost falling over and nearly getting hit by oncoming traffic.

She rapidly flicks her hooves to whichever side will spare her of death, and the bee jerks painfully with every turn. She swears and swerves to the side again, almost falling over in the process, when one of her turns leads her into a lane being dominated by a mini-train dragging a cargo trailer. She barely has enough room and time to turn, and in doing so, she almost hits the guardrail. The driver of the large vehicle honks their horn, ruining Trixie’s hearing for just a moment. After a couple of seconds of terrifying attempts to straighten herself out and not get killed in the process, Trixie manages to get a clear path down the maintenance lane of the road.

Trixie whoops at her narrow escapes, and laughs like a filly from the rush she’s getting from the wind pushing against her face and rippling through her mane.

Then a bug flies in her mouth.

Trixie coughs and sputters, and tries desperately to get the bug out, but it was swallowed whole and is now facing the wrath of pony stomach acid. The incident makes Trixie lose control for a few seconds, and she once again almost swerves into traffic. She manages to do a sharp turn, which, luckily for her, leads to an off ramp and, unluckily, brings her towards regular two lane roads. But she is going too fast to stop, so she weaves in and out of traffic, too terrified of crashing and burning to care about the angry honks, and eventually pulls to a stop in an alley by a dumpster. After coming to a stop, she puts her hoof over her racing heart and her head slams on her dashboard on its own accord, trying to get her to rest. But she can’t rest, she has too much adrenaline in her body to rest. Her whole body is shaking, and she feels like she’s going to puke.

Trixie pulls her hooves out of the bee’s steering sleeves and rests one on the dashboard while the other one brushes her mane back, which would be sweaty if it wasn’t air dried by her little adventure.

As Trixie sits by the dumpster, a thought crosses her mind. She had lost Andromeda and Monte. She had been too busy trying not to get captured by the guards or get squashed that she completely lost the pony she was supposed to protect!

“No,” groans Trixie as she squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “No, no, no, no, no!”

She slams her hooves on the dashboard, creating a small electric shock wave that and leaves a burnt ring on the bee. She closes her eyes and cries angrily into the dashboard.

“Goddess-damn it!” sobs Trixie.

“Oh, don’t cry, darlin’,” coos Sunshine, now standing next to her and putting his once wing over her, making her shiver and lift up her head so she can look at him. “Once he’s dead, you won’t have to worry about him anymore. You can move on to Brisk Wind and Roar Shock, and even that Shining Armor fellow.”

Trixie sniffles and wipes her nose, and is about to say something to Sunshine, but she catches something very important out of the corner of her eye. She barely sees it passing, but she sees the mini-train from the bank drive by, and following it is the rest of the convoy. Trixie’s eyes narrow like a predator spotting its prey, and she slips one of her hooves in the sleeve while keeping the other one out to start the ignition.

“What are you doing?” asks Sunshine, frowning.

“Getting Monte back,” replies Trixie determinedly, then a couple of seconds later she adds: “And his box, too.”

“Still trying to be who you ain't is more like it.”

Trixie zooms off without reply and does a large turn into the road that nearly makes her drive onto the sidewalk, thus making passing civilians shriek and dive for cover. As soon as her bee is straightened out she speeds towards the convoy with predatory focus. The closer she gets, the more her horn sparks and the harder she grinds her teeth. She feels a surge of energy go through her, starting from her horn and slithering through her veins and spreading all over her body. Her fur and mane and tail stand from the power surging through her, and she doesn’t even feel the wind rushing past her or hear the ambient noises of city life. It is just her and the convoy. And she wants nothing more than to send the convoy to Tartarus in a mouth basket.

“Hang on, Monte, I’m coming,” says Trixie.

She increases the throttle and weaves her way through the traffic as a storm cloud appears above her head. The lightning pillars come soon after and form a protective barrier around her, and when she sees the back vehicle rounding a corner, she does another sharp turn without caring that she almost fell over or hit a wall for that matter. The civilians on the sidewalk dive for cover and she continues her pursuit with unquenchable determination. When she is a nearly a hundred feet or so away from the rear vehicle, an earth pony pokes her head out with a pistol in her mouth and shoots at Trixie.

Once the bullet whizzes past her, a ball of electricity forms at the tip of Trixie’s horn, and she launches a devastating beam directly at the vehicle. The electric beam rips apart the asphalt and scorches the sides of vehicles unfortunate enough to be next to it, and when the beam hits the boiler engine of the target it rips through the engine and a fireball rolls out of all the windows of the vehicle, sending burning debris flying in every direction. The burning skeleton of the motorized wagon swerves to the side, flips, and rolls down the road, leaving a trail of flaming wreckage and sparks in its wake, coming to a stop when it is bounces into a playground.

Trixie speeds past the carnage and keeps her focus on the convoy. They are picking up speed, and an evil smile crosses Trixie’s lips and she puts more pressure on the throttle, easily catching up to Monte’s kidnappers. When she is close to the next vehicle, she is forced to slam on the breaks to put some distance between her and vehicle since the unicorn Trixie bruised with an empty pistol had poked her head out with a shotgun levitating next to her head. The unicorn tries to shoots at Trixie, but she wrestles for control of the shotgun through a telekinetic duel. The shotgun fires a couple of times, one shot tearing apart the road and the other firing off into the sky. Trixie gets closer, and finally yanks the shotgun out of the unicorn’s magical grip and turns the weapon to the occupants. Everyone inside the motorized wagon eyes widen, and Trixie unloads the shotgun. First to the unicorn that tried to shoot her, and then the driver. The inside of the vehicle is now splattered with gore, and Trixie pulls away, carelessly tossing the shotgun away in the process, and she zooms off towards her next target as the motorized wagon crashes into a bridge pillar head on, turning it into a nasty pancake of bodies, wood and metal.

The next vehicle has its passengers lean out and unload a stream of gunfire that pings off of Trixie's vehicle and rips into the asphalt, and in turn Trixie shoots bolts of lightning at them. The civilians caught in the exchange swerve out of the way, causing horrible crashes for many, and Trixie can barely hear the sirens over the sounds of screams and colliding vehicles.

But she doesn’t care.

She is putting all of her focus on getting Monte back and making Andromeda pay for what she has done, and she does not care what it takes! She speeds through the thick, burning smoke caused from her blasting obstacles into burning shrapnel with complete disregard to everyone’s safety, even her own.

Trixie can practically taste the fear from everyone around her, and when she is close to the third vehicle, she can feel the fatigue trickling through her body as her damaged horn nears its limit. Trixie growls because of this and speeds next to the vehicle. The passengers inside pale, and Trixie launches an azure shockwave from her horn that sends the motorized wagon flying and flipping in the air, crashing to a stop when it impacts the fourth floor of the office building. The vehicle doesn’t go all the way through, though, and falls to the concrete below, splattering on impact while glass cascades around it.

The fourth vehicle has its passengers poke their heads out and shoot at Trixie with a mixed armament. The bullets whiz by her, and some bounce off of the bee or leave burning, bloody scratches on her, which only fuels her anger. And when a slug tears into her shoulder, Trixie howls in rage and pain and grits her teeth as blood seeps down from the wound. Within seconds, the wound becomes cauterized from the intense heat that the lightning is surrounding her with, and her horn glows and a ball of crackling, chaotic energy appears at the tip.

The storm cloud around her releases a rumble, and it and the lightning swirl around at the ball, like matter getting sucked into a black hole. Trixie focuses on the vehicle in front of and lets it loose. The widening, electric beam emits a shriek that shatters all the glass near it, and it rips apart the asphalt and anything else unfortunate enough to be caught in its destructive path. As the burning remains of kicked up asphalt and vehicles rain down, the EIB vehicles try to evade it, but they are too slow. The beam impacts the boiler engine of the targeted vehicle, and it is vaporized in a flash of electric fire and burning debris that is lifted from the ground by the force of the impact. The earth shaking explosion creates a small mushroom cloud and another shock wave that pushes just about everything that isn’t nailed down away from it into buildings or more vehicles and lamp posts.

Trixie turns to the side while all this is happening to avoid the jagged gash and small crater left by her attack. But now she is panting and coated in sweat that makes the dust and ash cling on to her all the easier.

She ignores the terrified and agonizing cries of the victims and the choking stench of burning death from her assault, and jerks her motions to dodge the burning chunks of rubble falling around or bouncing past her. Even the EIB vehicle that was in front of her target lands next to her in a mess of twisted metal and shattered wood, and she has to make a large curve lest she wants its burning tire to hit her.

Trixie drives through the suffocating, burning smoke and is greeted by a different scenery. There is no destruction, just a city full of fleeing civilians. The fire and smoke of her destructive path is behind her, and now she can clearly see the mini-train and Andromeda’s getaway vehicle speeding off in the setting sun in desperation to escape.

“Oh no you don’t!” growls Trixie.

She lays down as low as she can go and increases the throttle. She is forced to squint her eyes as the rushing wind dries them out and blows against her at incredible speeds. However, in spite of the discomfort, she is too focused on getting Monte back to care about such frivolous things.

Trixie’s eyes focus on the mini-train as her mind races on trying to figure out how to destroy it. The passenger seemed to have an endless supply of weapons, given the fact that she keeps poking her head out with a different weapon in her mouth every time. First, it is a pistol, then she switches to a shotgun, after that it is a mini gatling gun. Trixie is able to sort of gracefully dodge the shots; some managed to hit her bee or graze her body, but they are not enough to do any real damage, only leave small scratches. However, Trixie had spent quite a bit of her energy when she annihilated the other escorts, and she can feel heavy fatigue drowning her, and the pain from the tiny scratches all over her body is building up. The storm cloud around her also starts thinning out and the lightning around her becomes noticeably weaker.

The closer Trixie gets to the mini-train, the more she figures that the walking armory ran out of ammunition. But her hopes of the pony having no ammunition is tossed into a river when she sees the same pony poke her head out with something in her hooves. It is a black ball with a series of grooves all over it and a pony skull painted on. Then the said pony kisses it and then tosses it towards Trixie, not even caring about the half a dozen civilian vehicles between her and her target.

Trixie’s eyes widen and time seems to slow to a crawl when the black ball bounces towards her and cracks open to let small, sparkling dynamite sticks roll all over the road. One of which rolls right in front of her. She pulls back on the throttle and veers to the side in an attempt to slow down, but it is not enough to save her. The sparkling stick detonates when she is mid turn, and the last thing she sees before squeezing her eyes shut is a fireball kicking up asphalt and ripping apart the front of her stolen vehicle. She can barely hear herself screaming over the explosion, breaking road and wood, and twisting metal, and when she opens her eyes for just the briefest of seconds she sees the pieces of her vehicle burning and twirling in the air. Next, she feels her bones crack and skin shred against the road, as well as pieces of debris landing or bouncing off of her. She blacks out.

Trixie manages to opens her eyes again, and this time she is surrounded by twisted metal, burning debris, and parts of the bee, and she can barely make out the remaining vehicles in the convoy driving off. She extends her hoof and screams for Monte, but she can’t hear or feel anything. Not her scream, not the crackling fire, not even her heartbeats or the multitude of injuries all over her body. All she can really hear is a ringing noise in her bloodied ears.

Trixie’s hoof falls to the ground and her eyes close for what seems like a second, but when she gasps awake and cries agonizingly when the full force of pain surges through her body. She can feel every breach in her skin, every crack in her bone, and the wet layer of her blood coating her. She coughs blood and crawls across the asphalt, trying without success to get to her feet.

Her ears are ringing, her world is warped and faded, and she can hear her heartbeats thumping like thunder in her chest. When she extends her hoof to grab on to what’s left of her bee, she sees the shredded skin and thick streams of blood trickle down and splatter on the road. Trixie keels over, puking blood and sobbing as a sharp pain pierces her side, and is barely able to look up to watch the mini-train spin around to face her.

Trixie grits her teeth and pushes herself away from her destroyed vehicle, swearing and choking back tears when she falls to the ground. Once the mini-train’s engine starts revving, Trixie uses all of her strength to stand up and take a couple of defiant steps towards the vehicle. Each step nearly makes her collapse from how wobbly her legs are, but after a pace, she spits another glob of blood on the ground while her horn sparks weakly.

“Come on!” screams Trixie at the top of her lungs. Trixie holds back her body’s attempt to shut down her horn since the charge is causing a massive, head splitting pain to erupt from it and go all over her skull and brain.

The vehicle’s tires grind against the road, creating a nasty cloud of white and adding burnt rubber to the stench of destruction around her. Then the vehicle launches towards her like a missile and Trixie’s horn sputters pathetic sparks as she aims it at the oncoming menace. But her legs give out and all concentration is lost. She collapses on the ground and her vision quickly fades as she helplessly watches the mammoth sized vehicle charge her. As much as she wants to close her eyes so she can think of something peaceful before being crushed under the mini-train, her tear soaked and bloodshot eyes remain open.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Trixie weakly.

The vehicle comes closer and closer, and Trixie can picture the driver smiling viciously as the vehicle’s speed increases. Then everything gets an unexpected rosy tint, and the mini-train jerks upwards at a crooked angel and flies out of her line of sight. Moment’s later, the muffled sounds of wood shattering and metal scraping against the pavement fill the air.

Trixie shifts in her spot, grunting painfully in the process, and sees a trail of parts leading up to the mini-train, mangled beyond repair. The metal is twisted, the wood is shattered, and one of it’s boiler engines had fallen loose and is now covering the road with scorching water and hot coal. The other engine is also loose, but it hasn’t fallen off. Rather it is hanging from a few bolts and is spilling the boiling water and hot coal all over the passengers.

Trixie jolts in her spot when she feels a hoof on her shoulder, but when she hears a familiar voice telling her to hold still, she relaxes just enough not to zap him.

“Captain... what are you doing here?” asks Trixie, her voice now barely audible.

“Saving Equestria and you,” replies Shining Armor sternly as he levitates Trixie on his back while keeping his shield up and levitating a rifle.

“We have to... we have to save Monte.”

Trixie’s eyes close for a second, but they snap open when a gunshot goes off practically next to her ear. She’s hoping that no one was shot. Or at least not her or Shining Armor. But when she sees Shining Armor’s rifle smoking and him ejecting a spent shell she breathes a weak sigh of relief. The rocking, wave like motions of Shining Armor’s body and the mixing of his clops as he walks is a soothing experience to her, despite bleeding to death and in the middle of a warzone on a highway in a foreign country. However, in spite of everything working against her, she still manages to keep her eyes open, albeit heavy and half lidded.

Trixie watches Shining Armor approach a unicorn mare, coughing and bleeding from a smoking hole in her chest. When her horn glows and the revolver next to her shimmers, Shining Armor fires another round that makes her head jerk back and splatter the wreckage with her blood and brain matter. After popping in a fresh clip, Shining Armor cautiously approaches the driver’s side of the vehicle with his weapon trained towards the driver’s seat. Trixie watches carefully, fighting more than ever to keep her eyes focused on her faded world, and her eyes widen when she sees a pegasus mare without a cutie mark crawl out of the wreckage. Her wings flap weakly and she cries are painful as blood gushes out of her stomach. When she crawled a good ten feet or so from the wreckage, leaving a thick trail of blood in her wake, she leans against the highway railing and looks at the two, her face covered in blood and tears. The pegasus moves her head down and she whimpers, and that is when Trixie realizes that there is a jagged piece of wood impaled in her abdomen.

“Scarlet?” whispers Trixie in disbelief.

Scarlet looks at Trixie and opens her mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a pained whimper and more tears roll down her cheek, cleaning a small trail of bloody grime from her. Then she she bows her head and her wings droop down as her blood seeps out from under her in a gory pool. Her eyes close and her chest stops moving seconds later. Soon after, Trixie’s vision fades to darkness with the last thing she sees being the sun setting over Scarlet’s corpse.