A Search For Something More

Chapter 58: A Fight for Love

3rd person P.O.V.

"Ugh."

Vinyl groans in pain as she slowly regains consciousness. Her eyes begin to open as she slowly sits up and rubs her head.

"Dang it, Rough Draft, you didn't have to hit me that hard," she mumbles as she remembers the last thing that happened before she was knocked out. She carefully gets herself up, picks up her shades and bass cannon, and checks her surroundings. She's still in the library, and Flash Sentry and his band are still lying on the floor, unconscious after getting hit by her bass cannon.

Suddenly, at the thought of knocking out Flash Sentry, she begins to remember everything that she's done before Rough Draft knocked her out. She remembers her mind flowing with anger and hate when she heard that Sunset Shimmer punched Octavia. She remembers the Rainbooms Loyalists and the E.M.R arguing at each other, and she had already turned on her bass cannon, ready to fire. When the fighting started, she was already blowing Loyalists away with her cannon, blinded by her desire to fight magic and desperate for redemption for breaking Rough Draft and Octavia up. She couldn't stop herself from fighting or rid herself of all the rage that was filling her thoughts as she fired her weapon rapidly.

And then Rough Draft and Sonata tried to tell her that what she's doing isn't her. For a moment, the thoughts began to disappear as she heard them out, but then they started up again, and Vinyl only had enough control to warn them before she fired her cannon at them.

"Aw man," she mutters to herself. "So that's what being brainwashed feels like."

Then she hears groaning from the other side of the library. Cautiously, she turns on her cannon and carefully walks over to Flash Sentry and his band, who are slowly getting up. Flash Sentry adjusts his eyes before he sees Vinyl with her bass cannon aimed at him and jumps.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, easy, Vinyl," he says, panicking as he and his bandmates raise their hands up high. "We surrender."

"How do I know you aren't still brainwashed, and you're just saying what I want to hear you say before you attack me?" Vinyl asks suspiciously.

"Because we don't want to fight each other anymore!" Flash shouts in fear. "We realized that we're being brainwashed again!"

Flash's bandmates nod in agreement, but Vinyl doesn't buy it.

"Do better!" She orders.

"Uh, the Jonas Brothers insult was funny, and your music is better than ours?" Flash says with a nervous smile.

Vinyl keeps her cannon aimed at them for a few seconds before she smirks and puts her weapon away.

"And don't you forget it," she says.

Flash and his bandmates sigh in relief and get up.

"Okay, now that we're back to our senses, we can agree that we just made a horrible mistake by starting this fight against ourselves, right?" she asks.

"Yes," Flash says seriously, and his bandmates nod to back him up. "But does this mean that the unknown person with dark magic is behind this?"

"Looks like it," Vinyl says as she scratches her chin. "And the only people who weren't affected are Rough Draft and Sonata. Everyone else is probably still fighting endlessly for Tavi and Sunset Shimmer."

"Okay, so that means we need to knock everyone out to free them from this spell?" Flash Sentry asks.

"Not necessarily," Vinyl says. "Something tells me that we need everyone accounted for if we have a chance to take down whoever is behind this."