Author's Notes:

Added on 03 Aug 2016

Formerly Vigilance Is Eternal

“Holy crap, is she dead!” cries Colt as Shining Armor gently puts Trixie’s limp body in the back seat.

“We need to move. The guards are coming,” informs L. Roy casually while keeping his eyes locked on the oncoming guard vehicles speeding towards them.

Colt wastes no time in putting the vehicle in full throttle and speeds towards an on-ramp, away from Andromeda’s vehicle. Shining Armor is in the middle of trying to stop Trixie’s bleeding using fabric from his disguise and the interior of the vehicle when he realizes what Colt is doing.

“What are you doing? Go after Andromeda!” orders Shining Armor.

Colt looks over his shoulder for a split second. “Are you crazy! We need to get her to a hospital or she’ll die!”

“If we lose Andromeda then she will die for nothing! Now do it!”

“Look, I-”

Shining Armor awkwardly presses the barrel of his rifle against Colt’s head, and the earth pony swears and momentarily loses control of the vehicle while L. Roy aims his shotgun at Shining Armor.

“Trail her!” barks Shining Armor.

“Put down your weapon!” yells L. Roy.

A police vehicle suddenly comes out from the side and slams into their vehicle. The vehicle spins and everyone in the motorized wagon, save for Trixie, screams, and Shining Armor manages to dive on top of Trixie and tries to hold her in place. He hears her moan and mutter something weakly, and when he looks down he sees her eyes struggling to stay open.

“Trixie, can you- Son of a bitch!” says Shining Armor.

Shining Armor presses himself on top of her protectively when bullets rip through the wooden frame and bounce off the boiler engine. More bullets go through and L. Roy swears in such a way that Shining Armor has never heard before. He looks up and sees L. Roy’s part of the windshield is splattered with blood and he is pressing his hoof against his shoulder. L. Roy clenches his teeth and squeezes tears out of his eyes, and ignores Colt’s frantic babbling and Shining Armor’s attempt to see if he’s okay.

“Put up a shield, Sparkle!” screams L. Roy painfully.

Shining Armor’s horn glows and the whole vehicle is surrounded by a rosy bubble that muffles the outside noise. They can hear the bullets firing and ricocheting off of the shield, with small flashes of light to show where the bullets hit, and they can also hear the guards shouting at them.

With each bullet that bounces off, Shining Armor can see Colt jump slightly, and even L. Roy has a bit of fear showing. Especially when one of the armored police vehicles pulls up next to them and a guard shoots at them with a shotgun.

Shining Armor watches his shield for a couple of seconds, and swears he can see the scowl through the masks of the guards attacking them. Once his short observation period ends, he turns his attention to Trixie. He sees that she has stopped moving, and when he puts his hoof on her neck, he can barely feel a pulse. Shining Armor swears and his mind races as he tries to figure out a way to keep her from expiring on the car seat.

“Hey, Sparkle, we have a problem,” says Colt uneasily.

Shining Armor ignores Colt, figuring that his statement is stupid. Of course they have a problem. Since when is being chased by foreign police with a key witness bleeding to death in the backseat of a rental not a problem?

He hears L. Roy ordering Colt to turn, and when the vehicle jerks to the right, Shining Armor barely keeps Trixie still, and is in too much of a panic to care that her blood is all over him. He presses his hoof on one of her gashes and urges himself to think harder, which proves to be more difficult than he thought with the combination of him trying to keep his shield up, the bouncing vehicle, and trying to ignore the fact that Colt drove through a diner.

Shining Armor is now mentally beating himself up for not thinking of a way to stop Trixie’s bleeding. He can feel his aggravation getting the best of him as he tightens the cheap strips of cloth around her injuries. He uses more magic to harden her blood to make a large, nasty scab in hopes that the improvisation will stop the bleeding. Now his horn is hurting. It feels as though his cracks are splitting and burning, and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to ignore the pain by thinking about something else. Something like seeing the look on Brisk Wind’s face when he drags her away to Singsong after he shows the evidence of her crimes to Celestia.

“Sparkle,” says Colt in a long, drawn out, panicky tone, “I don’t know if you heard me last time, but we have a problem!”

Trixie’s body now looks like a gory, crimson candy with parts of pony poking out, and Shining Armor makes sure the scabs are really hard before glaring at Colt.

“Yes, I know we have a problem!” he says, snarling. “We have a big problem, so shut up and drive!”

“I don’t think you know how big the problem is,” states L. Roy as he cranes his neck towards the sky.

Shining Armor looks out the window and his jaw drops for just a fraction of a moment before he screams furiously and bangs his hoof against the door.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!” exclaims Shining Armor, his throbbing vein close to popping.

Blocking their path to the exit is a flying vehicle with a cylindrical design and two rotators on the top. The back is spewing steam from four different exhaust pipes and it has a Gatling gun on each side being manned by a Bernese guard. It has a thick layer of armor and is painted white with a green band, with the seal of the Bernese Local Guard painted on what appears to be its door. And to make matters worse, Andromeda’s vehicle is nowhere to be seen.

The Gatling guns whir to life, and within a couple of seconds, two streams of bullets impact the shield and create a series of explosive flashes of light that forces everyone to shield their eyes And since no one can see anything, Colt is literally driving blind, and from the sounds of unknown objects bouncing off and the shield’s crackling, it appears that he is hitting everything under the sun. The vehicle jerks and bounces and scrapes against everything, then they hear something that no one wanted to hear. The sound of one of the tires popping.

“Oh no, not good! Not good!” cries Colt.

“Keep it steady!” orders L. Roy.

Shining Armor’s eyes snap to the front window and pales when he sees a blockade of guard vehicles with a whole line of guards aiming their battle saddles at them. And right behind the blockade is the wide open road, free from the guards, and a strong chance for them to escape and catch up to Andromeda.

“Hang on to something!” orders Shining Armor.

Colt looks at Shining Armor worryingly while L. Roy wraps his hoof around his seat belt, grunting painfully from his wound in the process. Shining Armor hears Colt ask him what he plans on doing, but he ignores him and orders L. Roy to keep Trixie as still as possible and for Colt to keep driving straight.

“Do you want us to die!?” exclaims Colt.

“Do you want me to point a gun at you again?” counters Shining Armor.

Colt’s mouth clamps shut and drives straight towards the blockade while increasing the speed. Shining Armor takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and thinks about everything that has happened to him over the past few months. It all plays like a movie stuck on fast forward, from him watching his soldiers getting slaughtered at Ponyville to allowing Trixie to get tortured for information. And how Brisk Wind gave him bad files, made him look bad in the press, tricked Celestia into creating a police state and turning her against him, and framing him for murder. Now he can just picture Brisk Wind laughing in her office at her victory with her endless supply of fancy liquor, a giant picture of her looking smug, and her face replacing the sun on the Equestrian flag.

Shining Armor’s jaw and shut eyes tightens as he feels the cracks in his horn reopen with burning results. Then his eyes snap open, and they glow bright, rosy hue that looks menacing with the fiery cloud of the same color wrapped around his horn, with his cracks being the brightest part. Small sparks slither around the cloud and move towards the shield, which is now retracting rather quickly. When their vehicle is almost at the blockade, the shield is at the edge of the vehicle and is sparking violently. The crackles of electricity are painful to the ears, and the sparks are searing everything they touch. Shining Armor takes another deep breath as time seems to slow down around him, and right as they are about to hit a guard vehicle, he stomps his hoof and the shield explodes outwards with a sonic boom that shatters all the glass within a few hundred feet.

The shock wave blows away all the vehicles and guards next to them, and the vehicles land around them in a tangle of burning wood and twisted metal, and they crumble and explode upon impact. The guards land at awkward angles, and those who are not carried away dive for cover, using whatever they could to do so. And Shining Armor doesn’t see what happens next because he collapses on top of Trixie, eyes squeezed shut from pain, and dripping with sweat and panting heavily from the amount of energy he spent. Aside from his horn feeling like it is breaking apart, it also feels empty, and his muscles are so weak he can barely lift his head. He manages to smile, though, when he hears Colt cheer and L. Roy say something proudly. His eyes drift shut and he welcomes the coming darkness of nap time.

But his peace does not last.

What seems like only a few seconds of precious rest ends when he is jolted awake. The vehicle is rammed and now Colt is struggling to keep it in control as a damaged guard wagon speeds past them.

Shining Armor blacks out again.

When he wakes up again for the briefest of seconds, he sees L. Roy reloading his weapon and a guard vehicle with blood splatter on the windshield careening off of the side of the road and crashing into concrete ravine. The same air vehicle he saw from earlier also makes an appearance and Shining Armor tries to put up a shield, but his horn feels empty, and he immediately passes out when a small shield form around his head.

When he wakes up again, his world is dark and blurry, and there is a loud ringing in his ears. He groggily crawls his way out of the vehicle, which is now upside down and easy to leave since the door is gone. As soon as Shining Armor steps outside, though, the light from the flying vehicle shines down on him. He holds up his hoof to shield his eyes from it, but his legs give out a couple of seconds later and he collapses to the ground, grunting.

After a great, agonizing struggle, Shining Armor is able to push himself to his feet, panting with blood and sweat dripping off of him. Everything is a haze; his vision is shifting from blurry to clear, and the ringing noise in his ears mixes with his breathing and heartbeats and the muffled shouts of the guards rushing him.

He sluggishly looks to the side and sees Colt slumped over in his seat, the window covered in cracks, holes and blood, with more covering the dashboard and seat and dripping from his limp hoof. Shining Armor's throat tightens and he wobbles towards Colt, shaking his head with tears flowing down his face.

“No,” gasps Shining Armor. He collapses next to Colt, shoulders buckling and his eyes being blinded by burning tears. “No, please no.”

He puts his hoof on Colt's shoulder, but he feels nothing from him, and he bows his head and sobs, shaking his head and hugging Colt.

“It can't be. Why! Why!” screams Shining Armor. He looks up, trembling and face soaked in tears and blood, and sees L. Roy next to Colt, eyes closed and chest ripped apart. Blood has drenched his mangled body and the wrecked window and dashboard, and Shining Armor puts his hoof to his mouth, closes his eyes and falls to the ground. He can feel Colt's blood on his back and when he opens his red, puffy eyes to the half circle of guards aiming their weapons at him, he looks to where Trixie is laying. “I'm sorry.”

A black bag is then put over his head and everything goes dark.