“Rodan, those things are monsters! You saw it for yourself and it goes double for their leaders! Especially for her!”

Princess Sunset Shimmer roared, hot tears stinging at her eyes even as she glared at Rodan. She was already in emotional freefall and shock after seeing Mircalla again, as well as stress from the last twelve hours not helping, but having her companion vouch for the vampiress in any regard was risking setting her off to combustion again. Steeling his breath, Rodan put his forepaws up and kept his tone low as he put them on Sunset’s shoulders.

“Princess, we couldn’t even scratch her. And given her strength, she’s probably that magic source you talked about earlier that’s holding that big dome on top of us up. If she’s that powerful, we couldn’t have gotten away even if we tried. She stopped when you recognized her, and I haven’t seen her come running after your fire display. You need to calm… down.”

He muttered, trying to keep them away from any flashpoint. Sunset Shimmer quivered and trembled, her mind still a firestorm of stress and fears.

“With so much at risk and so much loose in the word, who are you to say anything?! Why would someone like you know anything?!”

Rodan’s eyes twitched and his pupils dilated. After a few moments of shaking he sucked in a deep breath and avoided a possible issue. Instead he burst into a fit of laughter….one devoid of smile and joy.

“Aahahhhaaa! Laaady, you have. No. I-. -Dea!...”

He squawked, throwing his wings up into the air like they were his arms. For a moment he shot Sunset a ferocious glare that gave the princess pause. Rodan rolled his eyes off her and looked over in a way that hid his expression behind a wing he folded in front of himself.

“I was created as a one-of-a-kind creature in a time that’s long dead by now because an angry god decided it didn’t like the idea of living things. I close my eyes and wake up only to find dozens of thousands of years have gone by and I'm head-deep in a whole new conflict! And there still is the pressing matter of a rampaging deity stuck under an island going to be unstuck someday, which will be my problem eventually because I and others were literally born to stop an omnicidal god who’s going to rise again and put a cease to everything, and it’s up to idiots like me to stop it and that’s-!...”

Rodan shrugged, letting his limbs fall down and go slack, his demeanor drooping down into a sag. For the first time his typical optimism and confidence wavered.

“-terrifying actually. So go right on ahead Princess, insult me, berate me, call me any slur under your Ma's sun. Because Tanaka knows, I don't know what pressure feels like!....”

The gryphon snapped, his body briefly lighting up with sparks under his huffing breath that gradually wound down. Sunset Shimmer sniffled her nose, raising her hoof and gently brushing Rodan’s wing aside some to try and get a look at him. Rodan gripped her hoof and waited a moment, letting his breathing settle and growl-like clicking to die down. When the moment was up, the gryphon shrugged his shoulders and shook off his sag to pick himself up. He pulled his wing away and looked Princess Sunset Shimmer head-on.

“But... if you let yourself lose your head over such things; you’re gonna be chasing your own gales until you crash.”

Sunset Shimmer chewed her lip and tightened her chest. Her mind was still racing, but the usual veil of haughtiness had been fractured; both by recent events and some realizations about her new cohort.

-Okay… Maybe you’re not a total imbecile.-

Standing herself up, she wiped at her face to clear it and flicked her bangs back into place. Now looking like she had some level of proper appearance returned, she felt like she could sacrifice some pride.

“I, apologize for how I’ve acted… But, I will have my revenge, that much doesn’t change. There is still an army of monsters marching to who knows where about to put my world through what yours dealt with. Someone has to try and stop them.”

Rodan shrugged, nodding slowly while patting Sunset on the shoulder. On one claw he was glad to finally get some decency out of her, on the other claw they were back to this grim situation.

“I’m not letting this world go through what Terra did, or repeat its own past. I’ll do it.”

Rodan muttered, an air of determination and seriousness that had previously been foreign in his speech patterns had now covered it. Sunset Shimmer perked up her ears, raising an eyebrow. She looked at the tooth marks Rodan still bore on his collar, wounds from the Shadowbolt he’d fought.

“You hesitated to end one of them. What makes you think you can end an army?”

She muttered. Rodan snorted through his nostrils.

“Well, both so you don’t need to worry about it...and because I’d make it quick.”

“Don’t trust me, gryphon?”

“Even if you could hurt Mircalla, you tell me if I should trust you with that or not right now with your your mental state is.”

Sunset Shimmer ground her teeth some, taking in a deep breath to avoid going right back into shouting.

“And how... would you plan to be able to do it?”

“Told you before, this isn’t my normal body. My true form is hundreds of feet tall and probably that many times more powerful. I can change back, give them a standard kaiju treatment, and wipe them out.”

“You can’t destroy her like she is now by stepping on her! She was wearing Nightmare Moon’s armor and her magic felt the same, so she’s probably taken on Nightmare Moon’s traits.”

Sunset Shimmer scoffed. Rodan leaned in closer with a deadpan expression, seeing the Sunset Shimmer he’d known longer creeping back.

“Which meeeeans?”

“She can only be hurt by certain magic. Period.”

“Well unless you can say the same for her army or that said army somehow gets stronger by a hurricane walking over them, plan will still work at flattening a good number of the threat. Plus I can’t imagine it’d be too pleasant for her if she is still kicking after the heat rays and gale forces. Take out the threat, then Mircalla. If the dome comes down after all the mayhem, we can get to your mother and have her sort this out…. Deal?”

Sunset Shimmer puzzled before quietly closing her eyes and nodding her head.

“Okay. How do we do it?”

Rodan looked like he was about to say something, but both his thought and any sense of seriousness he’d had in his tone prior went out like the passing breeze.

“... Uuuuuuuh uuuuuuum.”

Sunset Shimmer’s brow lowered and her jaw flattened.

“Well?”

“Hang on, I’m trying to remember this. Not exactly done this before.”

Rodan mumbled, waving a paw as he put his other on his chin. Sunset Shimmer was more than a little exasperated.

“You’ve never done this before?!”

“Hey it’s only happened in my Equestria three times so far, give me a break!”

Rodan groaned. Sunset Shimmer’s twitched and she growled, about to charge up her magic when the proverbial lightbulb went off in Rodan’s head.

“Oh yeah, Princess Twilight and Lea went over it. Magic. You gotta hit me with a lot of magic, enough it’ll overclock the form I’m in now and allow it to go back to its true form. According to them, a lot of alicorn or unicorn magic can do it as well as an Element of Harmony. You got both and all you gotta do is hit me with magic!”

Sunset Shimmer narrowed her eyes, sparks of fire beginning to appear on her horn.

“With pleasure…”

She muttered lowly, causing Rodan to jolt up and honk her snout with his paw as he grasped it.

“No no no! Not like before or else I would have transformed! It’s gotta be good magic, happy magic. Like friendship, love, your element, and stuff like that!”

He barked. Sunset Shimmer sighed, canceling out the charging fire blast.

“So, spells born from positive emotions and thoughts?”

“Uh, yeah. Sounds about right.”

“... Fine. I’ll try, not exactly in the best mood right now.”

Sunset shrugged as her posture drooped from the plague upon her mind, earning a pat on the shoulder by Rodan. He flashed her a small smile, tilting her chin up with his wing.

“Hey, it’ll be okay. Just let me back up some.”

With that, Rodan turned and flapped his wings multiple times to try and clear enough space between himself and Sunset; lest his growing size and his true form slam into her. He saw Sunset collecting herself and her magic, steeling himself for what was to come. In truth he was still unwilling to try and kill Mircalla because he sensed something amiss with her. The other nightmare forces had attacked on sight and seemed almost non-sentient in terms of their homicidal natures. He saw how powerful she was and yet she let them go, which was more conscious choice than the Shadowbolts could say; those entities definitely did seem too dangerous to be left alive. His actual plan he hadn’t told Sunset of was to fly over and rain some beams and gale forces onto the army. Those who were crazy enough to attack him would be destroyed and those who had two braincells to rub together would probably be rooted at the sight of the over twenty five story flying death swooping down onto them.

As for Mircalla, he’d try to just disable her and have Celestia sort this thing out. The alicorn he’d known had influenced him more than he thought she may realize. Not in a million years would he have given Xenilla or Destroyah a chance when they arrived in Equestria, but she forced them to be given time. And time had surprised him in ways he couldn’t have dreamed. Rodan called himself an optimist, he was willing to give a chance for change and follow Princess Celestia’s example if he could.

Reason he didn’t feel like greeting Princess Sunset Shimmer with this information was simple. She was on way too much of a hair trigger to agree to this if she knew. Now backed up a good fifty meters away, he gave Sunset the nod to signal her that he was ready.

Sunset Shimmer sighed, praying she was making the right decision. This Rodan character had been more than an annoyance thus far, but he was competent. And if there was a chance to end this conflict now with the wrath of a giant, she was taking it. She embraced the happiest memories she had. The day she was adopted by her mother, the day Spike hatched, and her adventures in ponyville. But as if hit by a stray shot, her mind wandered to Rodan’s plan. While Sunset hoped dearly he could go through with the destruction of the monsters, somewhere in the back of her mind was the thought of Rodan killing Mircalla. Unbeknownst to either of them, she and Rodan wanted the same thing and Sunset didn’t want Mircalla to die at Rodan’s claws. Unlike the Guardian Beast however, Sunset Shimmer was dwelling on the thought with less than pleasant motives.

For years she’d had a plague upon her mind. The visage of a monster that haunted her nightmares and was the genesis of the fears she fought so hard to hide. Mircalla had caused her to break down, to humiliate herself in front of an ally, and she’d killed a mother Sunset never got to know. No, Sunset Shimmer didn’t want Rodan to kill her. She wanted to do it herself, to end the fears and move on.

Unfortunately for Sunset Shimmer, dark thoughts were viral. The moment she’d focused on Mircalla was the moment she flung into a downward spiral. Her mind was shrouded in darkness, filled with nothing but anger at the trial she’d found herself in, hatred for the nightmare army and all those represented, fear for the calamity such a group could cause in a populated area. Any good memories were bastardized or shoved aside. The growing magic bolt on her horn changed from fiery red to a macabre, sparking mass of black and green. Sunset Shimmer quivered and shook as the sphere of hateful, dark magic swelled and seemed to push back against her. Gales of sickening cold wind shot out in every direction from her and parts of Sunset Shimmer’s blood magic runes began to light up with the coloration of lights taking on dark magic tones.

Sunset Shimmer felt like she was being suffocated by the nightmare.

-No. No, it’s not real. I… I need to stop. I will stop. I just need to burn that witch and make it stop. She deserves it, but I have to think of something happy first… Her boiling carcass would do. No, stop being an idiot Shimmer. This is a nightmare. Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP YOU BUCKING MORON OR THE SCALY CHICKEN’S GOING TO HAVE TO SAVE YOUR ASS! How are you going to live with yourself with that on your mind?... That’s not helping. Okay, think of butterflies… wait, I hate butterflies… Think of Spike… Okay, I really have to stop throwing him out of windows. DARN IT! WHY IS THIS SO HARD!-

Coherent thought started to become more and more muddled as her mind was consumed by hate and fire. Each second brought on more suffocation, drowning out any sort of resistance she might have had.

Rodan was wise to the fact something was very wrong, kicking off the ground and rushing to Sunset Shimmer while privy to the fact he was probably going to need to dodge any oncoming magic bolts as what he was seeing sure as Daiei didn’t look like good kinds of magic. Sunset Shimmer yelped before gritting her teeth and clenching up. After a time the dark magic’s wrath began to simmer down. In a monumental effort of self control, she constricted the sphere of hateful, negative magic and compressed it until there seemed to be nothing left. Her runes died down and her body sparked with energy, arcs of green and black jumping across her form before gradually dying down.

Rodan was almost to Sunset Shimmer when he saw her lifting her head up and stare, not at him but through him and into empty space. She was staring but she wasn’t looking at anything. Her eyes twitched and her jaw fidgeted into a curl, frustration, fear, and rage drowning her features as she fought hard against herself to not show any of it. The more she fought, the more the negative visions assaulted her and the more embarrassed she was at having a near breakdown in front of somepony.

“I- c-n’t!”

She croaked, gritting her teeth as salt stung her eyes. The sparks of dark magic crisscrossed her body once again, causing her to halfway gag on her own breath and convulse slightly from the shocks. Rodan’s eyes widened and though his first instinct was to get clear and away from the pony who was rapidly losing control, for reasons beyond him he found himself sprinting in the opposite direction of a retreat. Sunset Shimmer was still frozen in place, fighting tears as her body seemed to lock up against her will.

“C-n’t move!”

She gagged, wincing in pain from her own out of control powers as visions of Mircalla surrounded her. Rodan had gotten within ten meters of her when a sideways glint in the forest caught his hawk eyes. It was the same eerie black, green, and purple Sunset bore but the sphere of magic rocketing towards him wasn’t coming from the paralyzed mare. Time seemed to slow down around him as his perception sharpened. He saw several more magic blasts shooting towards him now, a good dozen in the first volley.

“OOooohh fuuu-”

Rodan kicked off the ground and flapped his wings in a manner to perform an airborne roll, weaving between the blasts. Time returned back to the norm, Rodan hitting the ground and rolling up to his feet, dragging his claws across the ground to anchor and turn himself around to face the attackers. They came out of the forest in a mob. A dozen revenant corpses brought to life by Apostle’s magic and enhanced by the duplicate Alicorn Amulets they each bore on their necks. The three species present all had been empowered in exaggerations of their normal racial prowess. Some were unicorns with overflowing amounts of magic that showed itself as light seeping out through their grayed skin and fur like cracks in a glass. Others were pegasi who managed to stay airborne on wings of dark magic that crackled like storm clouds, the air around them bustling with weather effects ranging from searing heat waves to killing frost. And the last group in their party were a quartet of earth ponies, some with unnatural muscle that seemed to burst from their frame and others causing the plant life beneath their hooves to twist, shrivel, or grow out of control with each step.

The one in the front, whom was an earth pony mare from the last group with a dead white mane and sickly gray bodycoat, pointed and shrieked at Rodan and Sunset Shimmer. Apparently the leader, she barked the orders.

“Take the unicorn hybrid, kill the gryphon! For the True Goddess!”

Rodan felt his face drain some, shooting up into the air. Like a plane flying through a warzone, he was quickly having to weave, roll, change direction, anything to dodge the unholy barrage of magic blasts shooting up past or exploding all around him. The unicorns who had died in the north mountains may or may not have been magically trained in life, but their bodies were possessed by the likes of rigorously drilled cultists and mages; amplified beyond normal measure by the alicorn amulets. Just one of them might have been a match for Sunset Shimmer herself in terms of raw power and Rodan was doing everything he could just to not get blasted out of the air as the explosions caused his ears to ring. It was the pegasi joining the fray that caused him to falter. Revived and controlled by fallen Shadowbolts, their enhancements completely removed the need for clouds to exude weather magic. One shot up behind Rodan and bucked him with his back hooves, impacting with a literal thunderbolt that caused the gryphon to yelp in pain. Knocked silly by the shocking impact, Rodan was unable to dodge the galeforce divebombs, an ice-covered tackle, or ripping howl of a blizzard that rendered his wings numb. Every time he threw or blasted one attacker off, another would rush in and hit him from another angle.

Rodan grabbed hold of one pegasus about to body slam him, grabbing at his jaws and firing a hasty plasma beam down their throat. The dark magic and high energy combusted upon each other when the beam struck his alicorn amulet, light shooting out of the walking corpses’ eyes and wounds before they violently exploded right in Rodan’s face. The world was sent spiraling, the kaiju having been knocked dizzy enough he couldn’t dodge a growth of vines spurred by the earth pony leader from snaring his leg and tail. At the moment he felt himself grabbed, all four of the unicorns fired upon him at once. The spheres of dark magic detonated against his hide, Rodan cried out in pain while being engulfed in smoke. The vines yanked the battered, smoking gryphon to the ground and soon they were all upon him at once.

Sunset Shimmer watched on helplessly as her ally was swarmed. She tried to move, she tried to fire some magic, she tried to call out; but she could do nothing. Reality and memory kept interfering with each other. The visage of Rodan trying to fight and then being turned into a pinball by the mob of monstrosities kept mixing with the outline of a vampiress’ face cloaked in moonlight, a fallen mare lying on the ground behind her. As a youngling, Mircalla looked like a giant when she killed Sunset’s mother. As an adult, seeing that same face wearing the armor and having the stature of a literal nightmare that had caused this world so much dread and horror brought back all that terror and multiplied it. She was both terrified and felt more murderous than she ever had before about the vampire, set on stopping her and her army. And that was all she could think of whether she wanted to or not.

It was the sound of Rodan screaming that cut through the fog that had choked her mind. Her eyes dilated and finally saw in full what was happening in front of her. He was still fighting all he could, but each time he slew one of the monsters they exploded in his face and left him wide open for the others. Shot out of the air, pummeled into the ground, bashed through a tree; he was taking a beating.

-They’re killing him….-

The thought echoed through Sunset Shimmer’s mind like a ripple of water in a still pool.

-They’re killing him a-and it’ll be my fault. He tried to help me and.. He’ll die because of it.-

She tried to force her legs to move to no avail. The crushing weight of dark magic had collapsed in on her body, its chains tying her down with the arcing sparks that crisscrossed her form. A heat beam shot out of the crowd, swinging around wildly. Several of the ponies shrieked muffled screams Sunset couldn’t hear in her diluted mental state, before hungrily diving back in to try and trample their prey to death. Princess Sunset Shimmer tried to lurch herself forward, this time managing to make a shaking step.

-No.-

She managed another step towards the crowd, the swirling visions that catapulted her fear and wrath constantly threatened to overwhelm her but she kept fighting them back with every force of will she had.

-No. No. No. NO. NO! BUCK NO!-

Sunset Shimmer loosed a primal roar, the blood magic runes across her body igniting with jets of dark flame. She charged forward, the ground beneath her hooves combusting and melting into trails of magma. She cast a single spell, teleporting herself directly on top of Rodan to shield him before she let it all out and opened the floodgates.

The resulting explosion of fire and dark magic was loud enough to shake the forest. A curtain of sparking magic, black energy, and flames of red and ebony expanded out in a condensed bubble with a preceding shockwave. The alicorn amulets on each of the bearers cracked, their magic beginning to fly free and flood their system like the first one Rodan had re-killed. With no actual lifeforce there was only a limited amount of magic for the amulet to draw in and amplify. The very same magic that was holding the corpses together, conscious, and keeping them mobile. They would have ground themselves to dust eventually, having a total lifespan of over twelve hours when they had put the amulets on. Mizu intended it that way, twelve hours to remove some mistakes.

Sunset Shimmer, in both her mass discharge of magic point blank as well as aggravating the strain Rodan had brought upon them, ended those mistakes in twelve seconds. The horde of revenants roared and shrieked into the evening sky, light erupting and engulfing their forms amongst the firestorm. Sunset Shimmer grabbed hold of Rodan and teleported them as far as she could take them, a quick glance in a random direction into the forest, and disappeared with him in a flash of light as both her own power and the eruptions of the amulet’s detonated.

Rodan’s consciousness was muddied, so he didn’t know how much time had passed from the point he saw that flash of light and now. Every time he opened a bruised eye the world kept spinning and he’d catch a glimpse of yellow and red.

Sunset Shimmer felt her chest crush in on itself when she saw how badly mangled the former kaiju had been. His enhanced durability was probably the one reason he wasn't killed outright yet, but that wasn't to say he wasn't on his way. She lifted up his bent forearm to check for a pulse and nearly recoiled when she saw a stain of red with the dull glow of mana cross her hooves. Swallowing the rock in her throat, she went back in and checked, spouting out angry demands for assurance as she tried to find consciousness.

He thought he heard a voice, but between his ringing ears and dizzied mind, he couldn’t tell what it was saying. It sounded like they were crying.

“D-n’t you bucking dare die -n me! I couldn’t move I-! I’m sorry I’m me, pl-e-ease get up!”

Rodan couldn’t hear her anymore, his eyes were beginning to close.

“No-no no no! Lo-ok at me! Look at me!”

Sunset Shimmer, eyes drowning with tears as she held his face up. She focused herself the best she could in this emotional rollercoaster. She formed a ball of light on her horn, praying she’d be quicker than his closing eyes.

He saw a spark of light through his half closed eyelid.

And then he was set on fire.

Sunset Shimmer cut the jet of flames off after a good five minutes of hosing the gryphon down. She’d swore, she’d cursed, she’d begged and prayed it work. When Rodan’s form was revealed beneath the flames, his body was lined with the same runes he’d become cloaked in during the fight he had with the unicorn princess. They gradually modulated their glow, steady like a heartbeat’s pulse. His wounds began to close and seal, the flesh growing back like paper burning away in reverse while the limbs snapped back into place. After a moment the glow died and Rodan’s eyes shot open. He lurched up, gasping for breath while Sunset Shimmer stood back. The two looked at each other.

Rodan still looked very fouled up, riddled with dry, black crusts of coagulated blood. Sunset Shimmer wasn’t much better. Her horn’s spiral was glowing like hot metal, even seemingly smoking in some spaces, she was panting hard and covered in sweat. Any air of regality, pride, or smugness she had before was gone, squashed under a sobbing face and quivering eyes. Rodan’s face curled slightly into an aching smile, chuckling lowly.

“Hehe, quite some magic. You sure you’re a normal pony?”

In response she lunged forward, burying her face into Rodan’s collar and clinging to his front. Through her muffled cries he could hear her saying “I’m sorry”, or something close to that, over and over again. Still sore all over and aching to move, Rodan took several moments to process what just happened and was happening, before gently wrapping his free arm and wings around her and resting his head atop of her’s.

“It’s okay Sunset.”

================
A Few Hours Later
================

Sunset Shimmer, no longer caring that Rodan dropped the “Princess” title, and Rodan were both beyond exhausted after the encounter with the revenants. While their time was limited, they both needed the rest, and electing to try and hide from any other patrols or forces whom may come after them, they’d climbed their way up into a heavily covered tree with wide limbs. Sunset didn’t even complain when, unable to levitate or teleport, she had to hang onto the gryphon as the latter clawed their way up the tree trunk. Half curled up in a hollowed out part and half across the neighboring thick tree branch, it didn’t take long for them to drift off.

After some rest however, something caused the sharper senses of Rodan to wake him up. Sometimes being made out of avian and pterosaur genes had its perks. He slowly raised his head and neck up, scanning the landscape around him. They were surrounded by a lot of foliage so he couldn’t see anything too well, but hearing and smell instantly put him on edge. He could just barely smell something, but its scent was incredibly faint and clashed with the heaviness of what he thought was something moving through the foliage below. It was slowly getting closer, circling the tree. Rodan felt his wings begin to raise up, his claws at the ready. He wasn’t back at one hundred percent, but he was making ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. That moment might have been fast approaching as he took notice of a dissonance in the sensory information. Not only was whatever it was too big to have such a tiny scent, but there was a slight echo to its sound; almost it had been suppressed for several seconds by the time he heard it.

Whatever it was out there, it was closer than he thought it was. Just as his eyes opened in realization, Rodan heard something directly beneath him and caught a faint; dead odor. He looked down at what had snuck up on them, finding himself looking back into a pair of eye shine. Heavily shrouded by an unnatural darkness, he could only see the outline of the figure past it’s reflective red, slitted pupil eyes; the jagged horn and hints of wings reminding him of Mothra’s equestrian form, a royal changeling if memory served right. And he saw what it had been in the process of doing before it was surprised by him noticing it. It had a hoof on Sunset Shimmer’s back leg and was going to pull her out of the tree. The changeling had frozen upon Rodan locking eyes with it, possibly even more so when the Guardian Beast of Air refused to be cowed and snarled at it. He puffed his chest up, dug one of his taloned hands into the tree while clutching the other around the still sleeping unicorn; and spread his wings to increase his apparent size. While he was fearful of making any noises for risk of attracting any nightmare forces whom may be in the area, and while this creature had a striking eeriness to it, his low hiss and glow emanating from his maw was a primal signal to the intruder.

Back off.

The changeling blinked her eyes a few times but didn’t take them off the pair otherwise. She then let go of Sunset’s leg, backing up into the shroud of the Everfree. With one last look at the pair, her eyes reflecting in the moonlight, the warden of the Everfree once called Fluttershy slipped off into her forest. Rodan stayed at attention for several long moments before relaxing, pulling Sunset Shimmer’s leg off the edge for good measure. He didn’t know what that thing was or why it was trying to pull Sunset out of the tree, but something told him he didn’t want to know.

-So much for the cute ponyland being all cutesy…-

He shifted, now not wanting to take any chances of getting snuck up on. Moving slowly and quietly as not to wake Sunset Shimmer up, he scooted them both inside the hollowed portion of the tree. It was a good deal more cramped and now they were right up against each other, but it would do.

Sunset Shimmer shifted in her sleep, and at first Rodan expected her to wake up and nag at him about their current positioning. True, she dropped the princess pompousness earlier but he was half wondering how long it’d stay that way. But if she did briefly become conscious again, she didn’t complain. Quite the contrary. Though Rodan couldn’t see it because of how they were oriented inside the hollow, Sunset Shimmer peaked out one of her eyes and saw their diminished space. Normally she’d rant about the dankness of the rotting wood, someone daring get right up next to her; or get stressed out over the nightmare crisis. Instead, the princess who normally hated getting touched pushed up against Rodan’s flank and torso, snuggling her head up against him while putting one of her forelimbs across his middle. Unorthodox yes, but the scales and heat reminded her of Spike and Celestia; and right now she just wanted the comfort. He was still a dolt, but he was a comfortable one.

Rodan tilted his head a bit in surprise, questioning if this was intentional or a case of accidental tossing and turning while sleeping. Eventually, he just shrugged and resigned himself to not caring. Putting his wings around the both of them as bit of extra protection, he let himself slump down and rest his neck and chin across her middle. For a world class priss, she had saved his life and seemed a lot nicer to him afterwards. Maybe he’d get to know the real Princess Sunset Shimmer after a night of using her as a soft pillow?

Author's Notes:

Proofreading by Faith-Wolff and LanceOmikron
Additional writing and Shimmer'verse by Evowizard