Applejack couldn’t help but think that Sunset Shimmer looked pretty pathetic bound and gagged and hanging upside down from the ceiling like she was. Honestly, considering the performance the demon put into her fight with Applejack, maybe she was better off like this.

Applejack wanted to feel smug about it, but she wasn’t really responsible for it at all; Autumn knocked Sunset out and Coloratura tied her up, so Applejack didn’t exactly have room to gloat.

Lucky she wasn’t here to gloat, she was here to talk.

Applejack knelt and took the cloth off of Sunset’s mouth, the demon spitting the wad in her mouth onto the ground in disgust.

“You come for the soul, Applejack?” Sunset said with a smirk. She was awful smug for a woman tied up and hanging upside down. “You better be careful, I can still bite.”

“No need, yer tongue’s sharp enough,” Applejack snarked, and Sunset let out a single cackle. “Anyway, I’m just here to talk abou—”

“Then untie me,” Sunset said.

“I obviously can’t do that,” Applejack said flatly. Did Sunset think she was stupid or something?

“Then I don’t have anything to say,” Sunset attempted to shrug, but the ropes kept her shoulders in place and she just groaned instead.

“Fine then,” Applejack scoffed and stood above Sunset, looking down at her literally and figuratively, “you can just listen th—”

Sunset interrupted Applejack’s words with very loud obviously fake snoring noises, and Applejack dug her claws into her own arm. She took a deep breath and let it go; she’d be damned if she let a woman like this genuinely get under her skin.

“I’m tryin’ to help you, y’know,” Applejack growled, tapping her foot.

“HA! No you’re not!” Sunset cackled. “Oh, sorry. No you ain’t. If you wanted to help, you would untie me.”

“And you’d just try and escape.”

“And?” Sunset said flippantly. “If you want to negotiate, I’m game. But this isn’t a negotiation, this thing you’re trying to do here. You just wanna flex the power you have over me right now, and I tell you what, I’m not interested in participating in that bullshit.”

“Interested to know how yer little purple friend will feel about this kinda stubbornness,” Applejack sniped. She let her guard down after Twilight had been so agreeable, she wasn’t expecting Sunset Shimmer to be so damn obnoxious.

“Please,” Sunset laughed, “you haven’t seen stubborn until you’ve talked to her.”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m gettin’ at here,” Applejack knelt and grabbed Sunset’s hair and pulled it back, the demon wincing for a sec and frowning disinterestedly but otherwise not responding. “If you don’t wanna co-operate, somethin’ bad might happen to her.”

“You and I both know you can’t risk harming a hair on her little purple head,” Sunset said smugly.

“We can still torture her.”

Frankly, Applejack was starting to get pissed off enough that even she wasn’t sure if that was a bluff. It probably was.

“See, there’s a big difference between you and her though,” Sunset hummed.

“And what’s that?”

“She can’t be killed,” Sunset looked Applejack right in the eye and grinned, “you can be.”

“Are you serious?” Applejack grinned ear to ear. It was the first time Sunset had said something that didn’t annoy her, cuz it was so dang funny. “You actually tryin’ to make threats?” Applejack gave Sunset’s hanging legs a push and watched her sway helplessly side to side, bemused grimace on her face. “Like this?”

“Whatever,” Sunset rolled her eyes and it was adorable, Applejack taking her opportunity to grin smugly this time. “Anyway, I’m done talking to you now so, if you have anything else to say, say it to someone who cares.”

“If you think you can defeat Rari—”

Sunset made loud obnoxious snoring noises, but Applejack elected to ignore them.

“You couldn’t even beat m—”

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

“Y—”

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Applejack groaned in frustration and picked the damp wad of cloth off the ground, shoving it back into the demon’s mouth before tying the cloth gag back around Sunset’s mouth as tight as she could, and all Applejack could think was that she wished Sunset had been the one who had been muzzled with the painful tape gag instead of Twilight.

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Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!