Princess Regent Celestia, Sol Invicta, the Unbroken Sun of Equestria had come to Earth.

The words kept repeating in my mind. And yet despite the evidence to the contrary, I could not bring myself to accept it. I could not believe my eyes.

The why was easy. She had come to finish what she had started a thousand years earlier.

But how?

How?

How?!

"Luna?"

I winced as she had said the word so calmly, yet so directly that there was no mistaking that she had saw me. I hadn't hidden at all, and she was facing towards me.

I felt the time I had left to exist drastically decrease.

The soldier suddenly realized he was out of his depth, although to his credit he remained stalwart in trying to threaten the older Alicorn.

"Not one muscle!" he cried. Celestia however could not be dissuaded.

"Luna please..." she begged.

"No." I started to back up. "No no no no no no!"

"Luna wait!"

I turned and ran.

What else could I do?

"Luna please don't!"

"I said don't move!"

And suddenly gunshots rang out once more.

Nothing flew by me, so I ignored it and continued to run.

"Please stop!" I heard Celestia cry. I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or the soldier, and I didn't care. I kept running as fast as my legs could go.

The gunfire suddenly stopped. But I kept running.

Somehow Celestia did not stop me from turning around the far corner I had come from. I didn't know if she was chasing me, but I got an idea as I passed an air vent.

Regardless if she was following me, I had certainly broke her line of sight.

For the moment.

I turned into a shadow and pushed myself against the flow of air into the vent.

"Luna please talk to me!" The white Alicorn ran outside the vent, totally ignorant of my exact location. An M16 floated behind her, enveloped in sunlight.

I caught a flash of red on her wing.

She rushed by none the wiser.

Very soon after the soldier she had stolen the gun from ran by, chasing after.

"We've got potentially two entities loose on base!" he called to no one in particular, his hand pressed to his throat.

The two faded away into the distance.

I took a moment for my currently nonexistent heart to calm a bit.

This was bad.

This was very bad.

It was bad enough having pissed off the U.S. government. But now Celestia herself had somehow gotten involved?

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.

I still didn't quite know what I was going to do, but whatever it was just kept getting harder.

Was it too much to ask to not be with an abusive family or not be vivisected? And it wasn't like I could just go back to being Lucas. "Hey mom! Don't mind me! I'm just a horse now!"

Would I even want to if I could go back? Lucas was a nobody who no one loved or listened to... Not that being Luna was any better in that department.

I knew I had been forgetting something.

Is that all I am to you? Entertainment?

The Other seemed to be in a mood, so I ignored it and flowed further into the vent. Earlier I may have been forcing myself to look at what I had done, but with Celestia running around it was far too dangerous to walk in the hallways proper.

The time for fucking around and finding out was over.

I needed to leave now.

I glanced down the vent, feeling the air blow against my collected cloud. Air conditioning units cycled air from the outside right? I pushed myself against the flow of air.

I flowed through the air vents, occasionally spotting soldiers running by outside. And from little I could see, it looked like they were already partway done clearing the bodies from the floor, if the freshly red stained floor and the lack of bodies was anything to go by.

How many soldiers did this base have?!

Or had it been long enough for reinforcements to arrive from neighboring facilities?

Apparently I had found safety enough in the vents to start realizing I had no idea how much time had passed since I had been taken. That was kinda comforting... In a "I now have a moment to breathe" kind of way.

But I couldn't let the façade of safety lull me into a false sense of security.

I tried to ignore the light from the vents, letting them slide by like streetlights during a late night drive. But the familiar sound of Celestia's voice rose loudly from one.

"-Do not know what has happened here." she was speaking.

I stopped in the vent, curiosity singing its siren song.

"Throw down your arms and surrender alien. You are on restricted property and will be fired upon if you do not cooperate." called the voice of an older man in a strangely loud manner.

"I will slide my spear towards you, but I will not surrender myself to your custody." Celestia called out in reply.

The view out of this vent was surprising to say the least.

Celestia stood before what must've been at least fifty armed soldiers in something akin to a courtyard, a giant room set at an intersection. Although I couldn't think of why someone would build an open courtyard underground in a military bunker. She had at some point thrown away the M16 she had taken, as she no longer had it. Although now that I had stopped and was watching, a soldier, who looked somewhat similar to the one who was chasing the white Alicorn from before, circled around said Alicorn to join his fellows, a rifle once again in his hands and trained on the Princess.

Celestia calmly set her golden spear on the ground and gently pushed it away, out of her immediate reach, towards one of the soldiers, whom I noticed was talking into a megaphone. Celestia's move seemed to confuse the negotiator as he started whispering to a few soldiers nearby. Eventually he stood up strait and spoke into the megaphone again.

"May I ask why you won't surrender?" he called out.

"I wish none of you any harm. But I do have a purpose here." she called out in reply. "I'm looking for somepony. Somepony like me. I know she's here and I would like to take her from this place peacefully."

"I'm sorry, some-'pony'?" the negotiator called.

"Apologies, it's my dialect." Celestia responded. That set off another round of discussion around the megaphone.

"Is this... 'Pony' a sort of criminal?" the negotiator asked.

"It's... It's a complicated story..." Celestia admitted. "Has she done anything wrong?"

"She butchered almost half of our present forces!"

Celestia winced. "I'm... I'm sorry to hear that..." She diplomatically continued.

A soldier with an old land line phone whispered something into the negotiator's ear. The negotiator asked a few words I couldn't make out, to which the phone operator nodded.

"I've been told by my superiors to propose an offer to you." he called out through the megaphone again. "If you can answer our questions, we'll offer to assist you in apprehending this 'pony' with the understanding you stop any repeats of this tragedy in the future."

"I find this offer agreeable, although I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer all of your questions." Celestia answered. "If you could give me a moment to tell my forces outside to stand down I'll be happy to get started."

"You have military forces outside?"

"A precautionary measure I assure you, I will do my best to explain myself to your superiors."

Yep. Shit rolls downhill, and there's nothing more downhill than plummeting towards rock bottom.

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