Author's Note: The chapter preceding this one has been comprehensively rewritten in response to negative feedback, so go back and re-read it or this chapter won't make much sense to you
Caged
When Sunset came to she was in darkness.
She groaned as she sat up. Her head still hurt, there was a drum-beat throbbing going on inside it for all that her aura should have started repairing any damage. Perhaps the repairs were what was giving her such a headache.
Sunset shivered. It was cold in here, wherever she was. Cold and dark. The only light was some moonlight shining in through small windows set high up in the ceiling. Not enough light to see more than bare and barren floor. Where was she?
Where was her team? Where was Weiss?
"Ruby?" Sunset called. "Pyrrha, Jaune? Weiss?"
There was no answer. There was not even an echo of a reply.
Sunset crawled forward along the floor, calling out the names of her friends, until she struck something. Cold, metal...bars. Metal bars, was she in a cage? Had the White Fang - Sunset had no doubt that it was them - caged her? Like some kind of animal? Anger roared through Sunset's veins, clearing her mind and sharpening her thoughts with certain purpose. First she was going to get out of this cage, and then she was going to rescue her team, and then she was going to find whoever had thought that they could put Sunset Shimmer in a cage and get away with it and she was going to wring their neck until it snapped because no one treated Sunset Shimmer that way! Not even the Atlesians had treated her that way!
A door opened. Sunset couldn't see it, but she heard it creek just as she heard footsteps light upon the floor.
"I see you're awake."
The voice was male, calm but harsh nevertheless. Sunset couldn't see the speaker - actually, she could; she could see his feet anyway. The moonlight illuminated his black boots even as the rest of him remained in shadows.
Sunset decided that it wouldn't be in her interests to teleport out of the cage until she could see whom she would have to fight once she got out. "A gentleman would turn on the lights."
"We are all born in darkness," the man said. "It is our natural state. We are born into darkness, and the darkness claims us when our fight is ended."
"I was born in a well lit hospital," said Sunset, omitting to mention that this had been in Canterlot, and nowhere in Remnant.
"It is the darkness of subjugation of which I speak!" the man - the male faunus, unless Sunset missed her guess - declared. "We are born into the shadows of oppression even as humanity frolics under the sunlight of liberty. But soon we will rise up from the shadows and claim our rightful place in the sun!"
"You're White Fang."
He stepped into the moonlight: tall and broad-shouldered, with hair of burnished red and an innately stylised mask. "My name is Adam Taurus." He smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sunset Glimmer."
Sunset rolled her eyes. "It's Sunset Shimmer actually. The news got it wrong."
Adam snorted. "Of course they did, you're a faunus."
"I suppose I am," Sunset replied.
"And because you are one of us you will never be worthy of so much as the common courtesy of your own name."
"Whereas you putting me in a cage is what?" Sunset demanded with sulphuric acid on her tongue. "The height of politeness?"
Adam reached out, and ran one black-gloved hand down one metal bar. "This cage comes from a circus. Animals were kept in here. But not so very long ago cages just like these were used to hold those thought no better than beasts." It was hard to tell his expression due to the mask he wore, but in the moment of pause Sunset thought that he seemed pensive. "My grandmother was born in a cage just like this one."
Sunset said nothing. These were not her people, this was not her history; the Great War and Faunus Rights were nought but words in a book to her, but to her captor they were memory and blood, they resonated with him in ways that she did not and could never understand.
Yet she didn't dare to let him know that. If she hadn't let her friends know that she certainly dared not tell it to her enemy.
So she stayed silent, and like a serpent waited for her moment to strike.
"She used to tell me stories," Adam went on. "About the cages and the work gangs, about the mines; about how she lived when she was young, before the Valish King set her free. But the truth is that she was never free at all. The cage was still there...the bars were just wrought of something other than steel."
"Your grandmother might disagree," Sunset observed plaintively.
Adam chuckled. "Perhaps. She was such a trusting old lady. Right to the end...you realise that you're on the wrong side of this fight."
"I like to think that I'm on my own side."
"You're defending the edifice of human power, of their supremacy over us."
"I lead humans into battle," Sunset said. "Famous names and lineages old in honour but they follow at my heels and leap up in obedience to my commands: mine. Where are they, anyway? Where are my team, where are my friends?"
"Friends," Adam spat the word scornfully. "Do you think any of them give a damn about you? If I put my blade to your throat and offered them the choice to save you or a random old man dragged in off the street who do you think they'd choose?"
"Try putting a blade to my throat and you'll have to worry about yourself."
Adam laughed. "They would choose their fellow human every time. Like calls to like."
"I daresay it does," Sunset said. "But as it happens me and Pyrrha are a lot alike. Where is she?"
"Somewhere else."
"Nearby?"
"Why should I tell you that?"
"Why should I listen to a word that comes out of your mouth?"
Adam was silent for a moment. "You know that I'm right. You've been betrayed before, haven't you? You've been abandoned; you've known those that you thought that you could trust turn against you. You know the pain that comes from being of our race. Don't deny it; I see it in your eyes."
Sunset thought of Flash, she thought of Celestia, she thought of the destiny that she had lived for, worked for, only to find out that it was nothing but a lie this entire time. She thought of all that and she shivered.
She shivered, and decided that she was done talking.
In a flash of light she had teleported out of the cage and reappeared behind Adam, her hands around his neck.
"That heat you can feel," Sunset said, as her palms began to glow with magic held in readiness to strike. "That's going to get a lot hotter and a lot more painful if you don't tell me where my friends are, now!"
"Impressive," Adam murmured. "I can see why she's interested in you. I'm pretty interested myself."
"Where are they?" Sunset snarled.
Adam elbowed her in the stomach. Sunset gasped as her grip on his throat weakened. His hand snapped up to hit her in the face as he twisted out of her grip and hit her again, following up with a spinning kick to the side of her head. Sunset reeled backwards, her hands up in front of her both as a defence and for her magic.
Adam didn't pursue her, nor did he draw his sword. "What else can you do besides teleport? I've heard stories from the brothers we rescued, but I always prefer to believe my own eyes."
"Rescued?"
Adam smirked. "Didn't you know? We hit the convoy escorting our brothers to the courthouse and rescued them. And we bombed the courthouse to show that human law, fashioned for the oppression of our race, will no longer hold away over a free people."
"You've had a busy day."
"The revolution never sleeps," Adam replied. He put one hand on the hilt of his sword. "Now then, Sunset Shimmer, why don't you show me what you're got?"
"Adam, no!" cried Blake Belladonna, as she leapt out the darkness with her sword drawn (And her habitual hair bow missing, with in their place...cat ears? She was a faunus? She'd been a faunus this entire time?), to stand between Sunset and Adam.
Adam was silent for a few moments. His mouth was agape, he seemed for the first time genuinely lost for words. "Blake," he whispered, as if afraid that if he raised his voice the illusion of her presence would shatter. "My darling?"
"Let her go, Adam," Blake said. "Let them all go. I'm the one you want."
