//------------------------------// // Chapter 7- The Suspicious Enemy // Story: The Rainbow in The Grime // by Glitternight //------------------------------// Jerry simply stood at the door as Steve barged in, wondering just how bad his luck could get. Just standing by while Steve messed things up seemed to be a pastime that he just couldn’t get out of. It seemed almost second nature to do nothing, to be pushed around, to watch whenever things were burning down. But he couldn’t just stand by this time. Rainbow was counting on him. And he couldn’t let her down. Not again. At this point, he regarded Rainbow as his friend. Actually, his only friend. It wasn’t like he got out much, he had a sister to watch, not to mention a mom he had to babysit. Growing up, Steve was his only brother, them being only 3 years apart. But those three years seemed to make a big difference, at times. Maybe it was Jerry’s naivety (or as Steve called it, his “pussiness”), but he never got the point of the way Steve just enjoyed hurting people. If standing around was Jerry’s pastime, making Jerry cry like a baby was Steve’s. Jerry chased Steve up to his room, and took a deep breath as Steve swung the door open. “Hey, J! It’s that thing we saw in the alley!” Jerry’s knees started to wobble and his heart almost stopped. Oh no, he thought. She isn’t in the closet! He stormed in ahead of Steve, pushing him aside as he rushed in to protect his rainbow-haired friend with the instinct of a mother bear striking to save her cubs. It wasn’t until he was in the middle of the empty room, breathing heavily, that he noticed what Steve was pointing at. Rainbow Dash was on the screen of his laptop that the pony had left on the floor, her imaged paused on in the video. “Umm, yeah. It is.” Jerry looked to his feet awkwardly, his cheeks burning scarlet, while Steve laughed at his cousin. “You still watch that crap?!” Steve sat on the bed shaking his head. “What else do you watch? Winnie the Pooh? Dora?!” Jerry started to mutter the same things that he always said whenever someone attacked his inward love of ponies. “Well, the show is actually pretty good… if you just watch it…” “Dude.” Steve stood up and looked Jerry in the eye. “Shut up. I don’t have ‘Fag’ scribbled on my forehead, do I? No. No one in the world cares about ponies. Okay?” “Well, I—” “EXCEPT for you. And the rest of those pony-porno watching idiots.” “Steve, let it go, okay!” Rainbow fidgeted in the cramped closet, trapped in the confines of smelly clothes and crumpled cardboard boxes. She struggled not to yelp in pain as her flank fumbled against a thumbtack. She didn’t like hearing Steve talking about her and her friends like that, even if in this world it was just a show. Even worse, she didn’t like hearing Jerry’s lame-o attempt to defend it. Come on, she thought, grow a spine, Jerry! She thought of Jerry just standing around while Steve hurt her. A surge of anger ran through her, down to the bottom of her hooves. She didn’t know which one of the two men she was angrier at. Jerry sat on the bed next to his cousin, staring at the closed closet door, shoulders hunched with shame. Not shame at being a brony, or at caring about Rainbow, but of not being able to defend it, to defend himself, to defend her. “What do you want, Steve?” “What? A guy can’t just visit his cousin?” “Not when it’s you.” “Well, have you seen the news lately?” Jerry’s heart stopped mid-beat and he felt his throat go dry. “Umm, no. Why?” Steve grinned at his cousin. “That thing we saw in the alley. I don’t think we were tripping out! It was on the news, man. And those freaks who watch that Pony shit are all looking for it. I say we go back to that alley. It shouldn’t be too far. I mean, I fucked it up pretty bad.” Jerry wanted nothing more than to punch that smug grin off Steve’s face. “Yeah… yeah you did,” he muttered quietly towards his shoes. “So let’s go.” “Go where?” “To the alley, dumbass! Where we found her. Let’s turn her in. The website says there’s a reward.” “Reward?” Jerry looked up from his feet to Steve’s smiling face. “Yeah, J. I don’t know. It was actually just added on this morning. But they’re giving like $1,000 to anyone who calls it in.” “Are you freaking serious?” “Yes! So, come on!” Jerry was speechless. $1,000 would be a godsend right now. It could pay the bills, get them a full fridge…. Get his mom the help she needed…. He looked to the closet once more. Rainbow Dash was in there. THE Rainbow Dash. His hero. His idol. His friend. And she needed him. He shook his head and looked at the floor again. “Not right now, Steve. I still have some job applications to fill out.” “You won’t need a job if you get this money!” Jerry took a deep breath. “Steve, I’m busy. Now go home.” “Stop playin’, Dude. Come on. Let’s just go and—” “I SAID NO!” Jerry was just as shocked at his own outburst as Steve was. He had never, as far as he could remember, spoken to his cousin like that. I guess Rainbow Dash is rubbing off on me, he thought with an inward grin. He had to admit, he was pretty proud of himself for yelling at Steve. But at the same time, he knew that he was in trouble. Steve was not the type of man you could just say “no” to. At least not without consequences. It was as though he ran on respect. Respect and fear. Jerry flinched slightly, waiting for a punch in the face, but Steve just sat there, confused and in shock, as though this was a situation completely unheard of. “Okay.” Steve muttered something under his breath, following Jerry’s eyes to the opposite wall, to the closet door. Steve stayed quiet for a moment before pushing himself off the bed and looking at the closet for a second, eyes narrowed. “Okay, Jerry. Fine. Whatever you say.” He glanced at Jerry with a malevolent grin, the likes of which his cousin had never seen. He kicked the laptop aside towards the closet as he lurked out of the bedroom door and into the hallway, shaking his head in confusion. Steven stopped at the sight of his aunt on the couch, chuckled a bit to himself and muttered something about “the strung out bitch”. He was about to walk out the front door when he noticed his cousin Sabrina scrawling a picture on a coffee-stained paper and singing to herself. “My little pony, my little pony, la la la la la la la la….” She went on in an off key, yet adorable fashion, mashing the blue crayon against the paper, her baby blue eyes dancing with excitement. “Hey, Sabrina.” Steve smiled as he approached her. “Whadya got there?” She looked at him wide eyed and giggled to herself, moving her hand across her lips like she was fastening a zipper. He shrugged and picked up the paper, recognizing a stick-legged drawing of the blue pony with a rainbow tail he had seen just a few days before. The tail and mane were simply multicolored lines jutting out of the head and oval shaped body’s flank, and the eyes were two rose-colored circles. It was as hard to decipher as a Picasso. He looked up at his cousin’s room, shaking his head, unable to stop thinking about the way Jerry had looked at that closet. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he muttered to himself, as Sabrina giggled and grabbed another paper, restarting a drawing with a blue oval, “but I’m going to find out what it is.” He crumbled the picture in his balled fist and walked outside, slamming the screen door behind him with a booming echo.