Sunset watched as Snips and Snails ran off to catch a ride with Gilda, a small humorless smile on her face as she held Snail's phone in her hand and looked at the cheap $10 handcuffs. Strong enough to hold her, but they had a little safety release in case you lost the keys. It was almost like a bad joke, like hearing about a pony dying of thirst 2 feet away from water next to a no swimming sign.

Snips had been proud of the fact that Gilda never question what he was doing with a pair of handcuffs and Anon-a-miss never found out about Snips and Silver Spoon or that Silver Spoon enjoyed being spanked. She wouldn't have known if she hadn't caught them in one of her hiding spots and showed them a better hiding spot. What they did together was their business and none of hers.

She finally shook herself out of her thoughts when she heard the car engine pull away and dialed one of the cab companies. It took her a few minutes to get to the front of the building and then pull her boot off while she waited. As she pulled out the twenties she remembered one time Princess Celestia told her of the three options.

"Sunset there may come a day when no matter how smart, clever, or powerful you are that you will find there are no good options." Princess Celestia explained as they walked through the garden. "Or at least what we would consider good option, but what other races consider to be perfectly reasonable option. Take the Diamond Dogs for instance, they have a tradition of each pack having what they call Fenrir's coming. It varies from pack to pack, but the main ideal is a plan that insures the survival of the pack by having the pregnant females, the young who are less than 2 years old, the packs wisest elders, and the packs Alpha Bitch ready to flee with at a moments notice with baskets of food, blankets, and a copy of their pack's holy tomes. While they flee, the rest of the pack will throw themselves at what ever the threat might be and not just the Alpha Male and warriors, but children, elderly, injured, and the crippled in a desperate bid to buy the others time to escape with their very lives."

For a moment Celestia paused as she got a faraway look in her eyes before shaking herself. "To a pony this ideal would be abhorrent as it means using children barely out of diapers as living shields to buy others just enough time to escape, but despite how horrible it may seem the Diamond Dogs have survived near extinction multiple times because of this. it has gotten better over the years, but they still practice this ideal." Celestia explained. "Over the years I have encouraged a variation of this ideal amongst the nobility and what in the past would have been considered 'of the Yeomen stock' like the famous Apple Family Clan. Many of the nobility have taken to keeping up the maintenance on their ancestral homes and plans for escaping Canterlot at a moments notice. Then you have the Apple Family and other farmers having and keeping enough supplies ready to grab and flee with in case of emergencies. The ideal is that a lot of little targets are harder to capture or track than a few large groups bunched up together and maybe, just maybe, enough of my little ponies will escape if worst should happen." Celestia then paused and let it sink in before adding, "I call it the 'Go To Tartarus' plan."

Sunset got into the cab and remembered how her go to Tartarus plan had saved her life when she first came to the human world. Who knew where she would have been if she hadn't had her life savings on her and how valuable the gold in her bits and few dozen gems would be.

As she rode in the cab she considered more of the conversation she had had about the three options.

Celestia had lead her back into the castle itself and stopped in front of a painting of a grinning red minotaur wearing a crown and holding a tankard of some frothy drink high in the air with one hand and holding a very drunk looking Clover the Clever in a headlock with the other. It was the only known painting of King Mighty Mike of Minos.

"The problem with the go to Tartarus plan is it relies heavily on the fact that almost every threat to Equestria makes an instant bee line for Canterlot. In the face of a full on invasion from multiple directions and with an enemy that is willing to take the time to hunt down every single pony trying to flee it is relatively useless." Celestia explained. "For that type of situation I looked to our allies in Minos and their capital of Labyrinth. The entire city was intentionally designed to be a maze built on and inside of a mountain with multiple choke points, dozens of even more confusing levels of the city underground, and the underground is only accessible through doors in very random places. The Minotaurs call it a fighting retreat and their enemies call it a nightmarish chaos that would make Discord proud. When ever they are invaded, the minotaurs retreat to Labyrinth and force their enemies to have to fight block by block of every single level. This has two effects: one, their enemies exhaust themselves trying to take the city and two, it allows the minotaurs time to regroup and counter attack against an exhausted enemy that just wasted days trying to break a city known as the unbreakable city for good reasons. Even trying to surround the city and laying siege is a bad ideal since they minotaurs invented special lights that allow them to grow food underground and I have seen the vast underground farms they have created." Celestia then lead her down the hallway yet again.

"I briefly played with the ideal of doing the same with Canterlot, but we lack the huge underground lake being feed by underground rivers that Labyrinth has. Eventually I realized we had a perfectly good place to use for it that has multiple fortified guard stations and if need be a castle that can easily be restored to perfect order in a matter of days by a half dozen or so ponies. The area has multiple natural dangers and filled with predators that would be a nightmare for anyone dumb enough to try and chase my little ponies into there." Finally they stopped at a framed map of the Everfree Forest. "Haven't you ever wondered why I have left such a dangerous forest alone with only the guard stations to keep an eye on it. Most mayors have a plan for evacuation to the Everfree Forest if we are ever invaded by a smart enemy. Many might not make it but the forest can feed and protect 10 Manehatens easily. Also the Ursa Major knows to leave ponies alone, but will not hesitate to protect it's cub and it's territory from any other invader. If you ever decide to look up the plan in the archives it's under 'Burn It All To Tartarus Plan'. " With that Celestia began leading her towards the throne room.

Sunset paid the cab driver and gave him an extra forty dollars to forget he had ever seen her. She watched the cab drive away before turning and crossing the street. Three houses further down she finally walked up to a plain white house and went in. For the first time she was glad she had never got around to letting anyone besides snips and snails know where she lived. As far as everyone else was concerned she either lived in an apartment near the school or somewhere downtown.

Flim and Flam had found just what she needed and knew all the tricks for exchanging some of her bits to pay for it. In reality the brothers had helped her out with a lot of things for the right price including getting her a sort of legal identity. One ruby the size of her fist later and she was Sunset Glittering Shimmer, a girl born in Slab City, California to a pair of anti government eccentrics who then dragged her all over the country from commune to commune of like minded people who wanted to live off the grid. At some point she ran away from her parents during the Burning Man festival and ended up in Canterlot.

The brothers had even tracked down what happened to this world's Sunset Shimmer. In Equestria the fire at the orphanage had brought her to Princess Celestia's attention. In the human world Sunset Shimmer, two other children, and volunteer fire fighter died in the fire at the orphanage. She had even visited her grave and the Three Little Angels park and had seen the renamed Bright Mac fire house once in passing. Bright Mac's body had been found shielding the three children with the ceiling collapsed on top of them less than eight feet from the front door. At least she had had someone with her when she died, that was more than Gilda had planned for her. Thinking of that she, thought of the Third Option, the one that Celestia had used only once and had earned her the title the Tyrant Sun.

Half way to the throne room Celestia had paused before saying, "There is one other option, but it is the most drastic and extreme response possible to a situation. It has many names and it is rightly feared for a reason. The Dragons call it the Terrible Flame and the Griffons call it *Der Brennende Tod. The Yaks call it **Süüliin gerel, but the Goats and Sheep named it and me the best Sunê Xerîdar, the Tyrant Sun."

Taking a deep breath, Celestia continued, "700 years ago the Ram Empire was in decline and as it declined many of it's territories were taken by it's neighbors, us included. Eventually all that was left was their capitol, Tambelon, and the surrounding country side. They were desperate to revitalize their empire and their king allowed a scholar access to their their most heavily restricted archives. In his search he found a spell to allow him to speak with an ancient sorcerer who had conquered most of their empire for them, but there was no mention of his name or how he did it. If he had known the truth he would have never casted the spell and became the sorcerer's new body."

"Within days the Necromancer Grogar conquered Tambelon, but a fluffy pony, half pony half sheep, escaped the carnage and got word to me." Celestia said with a haunted look in her eye. "By the time I got there with the army the city had been turned into a necropolis and Grogar was preparing to march his ghoulish army upon Equestria. My little ponies fought bravely, but against an army of the dead they had no chance. In the end I had them retreat and entered the city myself and called down the Sun's Fury upon the land." She then gave a shiver. "A stream of flame and plasma stretched from the Sun and I guided it as I burned not just the city, but every last trace of it, all the way down to the deepest archives and vaults. I only stopped when I saw Grogar burned from existence between the Sun's plasma and magma bubbling up through a hole I had punch in the mantle itself." With a shake she lead Sunset towards the throne room. "I have heard some scholars call it by another name, in honor of the nuclear fire at the heart of the sun. They call it the Nuclear Option and I hope I never have to use that third option ever again because I doubt the world can take me making another Lonesome Mountain."

Sunset looked at herself in the bathroom mirror after washing her face, only it wasn't her looking back at her. "Don't looked so shocked to see me." the She-demon said with a frown, "You did take a few blows to the head."

Author's Notes:

This story came about because I kept thinking of the fact that Sunset Shimmer was suppose to be this master manipulator with plenty of dirt on a lot of people before the fall formal. Even turning good she would have kept certain information just in case she ever needed it and would have kept the really bad stuff under lock and key without multiple copies. As for why she never used the really bad stuff is simple, she wanted to rule Canterlot High not destroy it. The name of this story says it all and the kid gloves are going to be coming off.

10 points to anyone who can spot the John Ringo reference.

Originally the part about the Minotaurs was more humorous, but parts were cut since it didn't fit the story and is now free to a good home:

Celestia had lead her back into the castle itself and stopped in front of a painting of a grinning red minotaur wearing a crown and holding a tankard of some frothy drink high in the air with one hand and holding a very drunk looking Clover the Clever in a headlock with the other. It was the only known painting of King Mighty Mike of Mino's. The king had called off the war with Equestria after being introduced to hard apple cider and made Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie honorary minotaurs because of it. To date it was the only war Equestria ever won before they ever realized the were at war with anyone and it was still a mystery how Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie's fishing trip ended up in the middle of the minotaur fleet, but it was strongly suspected that the 5 and a half barrels of hard cider had something to do with it.

*Der Brennende Tod- The Burning Death
**Süüliin gerel- The Last Light