//------------------------------// // Sufficient Unto The Day // Story: Through A Glass Darkly // by SpaceCommie //------------------------------// I’m not interested in making enemies. I told this mare I owed her a favor and an introduction to you. She’s getting both, whether you like it or not. That hurt? I’ll do it again if you don’t behave. Spike’s claws dragged along the floor, cutting shallow scratches into it. His face slumped into a sullen scowl. Rarity grimaced momentarily, but soon resumed her practiced smile. “Well, well,” she said, “I’m not disappointed, Miss Sparkle. You have quite the dragon.” Twilight smiled thinly. “Thanks. You wanted to call in a favor?” “As it so happens, I do. But first, would you mind if I took a look at—what is its name?” “Spike,” the dragon rumbled. “My name is Spike.” Rarity inhaled sharply. “Oh! It talks! Well, isn’t that darling?” she said, walking around him slowly, examining the dragon with a professional eye. “Fascinating,” she murmured, and stroked his abdomen. He flinched, but Rarity didn’t seem to notice. She turned to Twilight. “And can he breathe fire?” she asked, a bit breathlessly. Spike smirked, and belched flame at a couch. It erupted in flames. Twilight seemed about ready to do the same thing, but Rarity was entranced. “Oh, my,” she said softly. “Miss Sparkle, how would you feel about allowing me to put Spike on retainer? I can pay quite generously, and let’s just say that my favor would have been more than called in.” Spike looked nervously at Twilight. “No deal," Twilight said. "I have bits. I still need information.” “Information?” Rarity asked, absent-mindedly. “Oh, of course! Yes, I think we can come to some sort of reasonable exchange.” Twilight raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. “Oh, I realize why you might be skeptical. I can assure you that you’ll want to hear this, however. Let’s say you give me one night with Spike—” Spike looked slightly terrified, and backed towards Twilight. Rarity's mouth opened briefly in surprise. “Not like that, although I can imagine that some of my clients with a taste for the exotic—never mind. In any case, one night with access to Spike, and I inform you what I heard. If you want to know anything else—who said it, or why—and I want Spike on retainer.” “Not a chance,” Twilight said. “You want to hear this, Twilight. This is my final offer.” “If I like what I hear, you can have Spike. Otherwise, no.” Rarity sighed theatrically. “Oh, very well.” “Go ahead.” “I could go into all of the little minutiae of how and when and why I know this, but let's just cut to the chase, shall we, darling? She's back. I think we both know who.” Twilight’s mouth opened in surprise. “Who told you that?” “Ah ah ah,” Rarity chided. “All things in good time, my dear. Do I get Spike tonight?” Twilight nodded. Prince Blueblood didn’t know it yet, but he was having a very bad night. He slammed down the last of his applejack and tossed the bottle to the side, where it mingled with various other refuse strewn across the suite. He looked around distrustfully. “Goddamn plebs,” he said to nopony in particular. “They didn’t even clean my—” He looked up at the ceiling, which had some sort of mysterious stain on it, and tried to come up with the right word. Having just finished a bottle of applejack by himself, it wasn’t easy. “Room. Suite. Thing.” At that point, the door to his suite slammed open. Being thoroughly drunk, Blueblood didn’t see anything particularly off about this. “About time!” he yelled, slurring the words. “You goddamned plebs don’t even... things.” Rarity’s nostrils flared as the stench of the room wafted towards her. She grimaced. “Spike, would you be a dear and clean up this room? Do try not to set the hotel on fire, though.” He grinned and sent a flame careening across the floor, consuming the garbage before it and missing the intoxicated unicorn by a few inches. The severity of Blueblood’s position was beginning to seep its way into his sloshed brain. “Oh, hello...” What was her name? “Rarity! Rarity! It’s so nice to see you again!” Rarity eschewed her usual smile. “If I recall correctly, Mister Blueblood, you owe me somewhere around fifty thousand bits. I’d appreciate it if you could pay that now.” “Pay you for what?”         Rarity frowned. “You know perfectly well what you owe me money for, Blueblood. That was a business transaction, not whatever else your addled mind construed it to be, and I am collecting on my debts.” “Oh,” Blueblood slurred. “Don’t even pretend with me, Rary. You know you loved every minute of it.” Rarity pursed her lips. “Spike, would you kindly pick up Mister Blueblood up and bring him over here?”         Spike nodded, and stomped towards the prone Blueblood, who was vaguely remembering that you could do something with a bottle to make it into a serviceable weapon. Unfortunately for Blueblood, he really was very drunk, and ended up smashing the bottle and stuffing his handkerchief into it. “Stay back, you monster thing!” “Really?” Spike said, and reached for Blueblood’s hind legs. He held the wriggling Blueblood aloft and upside down. “This good?”         “That’ll do quite nicely, Spike. Bring him over here.”         Blueblood came face to face with Rarity, although considering that was by dint of dangling from Spike’s hand, he was at a distinct disadvantage.         Rarity leaned in towards him. “I want my money.” Blueblood laughed drunkenly in her face. "We all want things."         “Drop him," Rarity said tersely.         Spike did, and Blueblood fell to the floor. He tried to get up, gave up, and decided that groaning would be a better course of action. Rarity sat down on her haunches next to him. “I’ll be leaving now, Mister Blueblood. If I find that fifty thousand bits have been wired to my account within the next four hours, then I will not be coming back, and nor will Spike. If that doesn’t occur—well, let’s just say that a few broken bones will be the least of your worries.” “Come, Spike,” she called. “We’ve quite a few more places to visit tonight.” I’d call it a propaganda coup, but that’d be understating it, if anything. Imagine it, Princess! The sun rising above the horizon for the first time in a thousand years, exposing the depths Nightmare Moon’s brought our country to. The decay, the filth—all out there for everypony to see. That too, yes. It shows Nightmare that you’re still out there, and she hasn’t found you yet. She’ll be infuriated. Infuriated ponies make mistakes. We told her you flew towards the Badlands. We figured that’d keep her away from ponies. Pinkie had felt a doozy coming. She wasn’t sure what it was—not yet, anyways—but the mere fact that it was on its way gave an extra spring to her step. She grinned absentmindedly at random faces in the crowd. She had a feeling—not Pinkie Sense, but something altogether more nebulous—that whatever was coming, it was going to be fun. Pinkie bounced down the avenue. She bounded to a fountain in the middle of the street, and waited patiently. Well, patient by her own standards, which meant that she blinked after fifteen seconds and began bouncing around, looking for fun to be had. Fire was fun, but Pinkie hadn’t been able to reacquire any matches since her last run-in with the police, and she didn’t have any sticks to rub together, assuming that worked. Did it? Pinkie assumed a thoughtful expression, and started in on a nigh-incomprehensible train of thought. She almost didn’t notice as the sun rose above the horizon. The screams tipped her off, though. One could call Pinkie what they liked—arsonist and psychopath were fairly frequent epithets—but she wasn’t afraid of much. She bounded towards the sun. On all sides, ponies stampeded away from it. Some of them were crushing into a subway tunnel. She heard muffled screams from inside there. Pinkie ignored them. She knew an opportunity, and this was one. Pinkie was in a world of her own. She vaguely remembered smashing some windows, starting some fires, and ingesting some questionable substances, and chocolate. It was exciting, this sun business. She darted towards a trash can, knocked it over, and giggled. This is fun! She bounced through the sunshine, casting a long shadow through the empty street. She heard a tired voice, one she recognized. “Don’t hurt the kids. We don’t know anything. Please, don’t hurt them.” It was Mr. Cake. Pinkie ran towards Sugarcube Corner as fast as she could. The name was a bit of a misnomer—just a little shop among many, and it wasn’t even on a corner. Still, it had been home once. She peeked in through a window. There was a Night Guard there, a unicorn, grinning smugly as he pointed his gun towards the Cakes, who were cowering in a corner. Mr Cake stood in front of his family in a futile effort to shield them. I gotta do something, Pinkie thought. An idea came to her, perfect in its simplicity. Of course, that was by Pinkie’s standard. “So, a pegasus and a unicorn?” the Night Guard said. “Looks like somepony likes to have some fun on the—” His taunt was interrupted by a shaky, but determined blow to the throat from Mr. Cake. The Guard knocked him back easily, and held the baker in place with his magic. “That was a bad decision,” he rasped, and raised his gun. “Carrot!” Mrs. Cake squeaked. The door opened. “Happy birthday, Mister Meanie Guard Pony!” Pinkie cried, walking in with a cupcake. It held a single candle. “I made a cupcake for you!” She looked curiously around the room. “Oh, I guess you’re busy right now. I’ll just have to blow out your candle for you!” Pinkie puckered her lips, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. A jet of flame erupted from the candle, reaching out to lick the Night Guard. He caught on fire easily enough, and screamed and screamed. He tried to turn around, fell, and rolled on the hard concrete floor until he finally went still. His body smoked quietly. The acrid stench of burnt fur and flesh filled the room. Mrs. Cake muttered “Oh, Luna,” over and over again, holding her foals. Mr. Cake stared blankly at the corpse smoking in his shop. “Pinkie, “ he said, not looking up, “what the hell did you just do?” “That Guard pony was being a mean meanie-pants, so I stopped him!” Pinkie cheerfully explained, a wide smile on her face. Mr. Cake turned his blank stare on Pinkie. “T-t-hank you. For saving my family.” “You’re welcome! So does that mean I get to come back?” His eyes focused a little, and he smiled weakly at her. “I’m so sorry, Pinkie.” “I don’t, do I?” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “Why not?” Mr. Cake sighed. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I think you can work it out from there. How’d you do that?” “Kerosene in my cheeks! I have stashes of it all around Ponyville in case of... fire-related... emergencies...” “Kerosene in your cheeks.” Mr. Cake sighed. “Mrs. Cake and I care about you, Pinkie. You know that. But you’re scaring the hell out of us, because you just don’t stop. There’s nothing you won’t do if you think it sounds fun. And we just can’t...” “Bye,” she said, and turned to the door. “Please, Pinkie. Don’t hurt anypony.” There was no response but a sad chuckle, and she vanished into the sunlight. Thou expected this? Damnation, Shining. WE WERE NOT EVEN TOLD THIS WAS A POSSIBILITY! It certainly sent a message. It sent a message that we are dangerous, that we are not to be trusted, and that she is all that stands between them and utter madness and destruction. We are unconvinced. The sun will stay down, Shining, until we have had the opportunity to assure my little ponies that it shall not harm them. “I have three questions,” Shining Armor said. “First, why are you on my ceiling? Second, why shouldn’t I shoot you? Third, who are you?” Pinkie giggled. “Well, first of all, I’m on your ceiling because rooms look super-duper cool like this. And you shouldn’t shoot me because I want to help her. I’m Pinkie Pie,” she said, dropping off the ceiling with a series of pops and landing gracefully on the floor with an improbable midair flip. Shining looked wary, but holstered his gun. “Help who?” “The mare that raised the sun, silly! I know she’s somewhere around here.” Shining’s eyes narrowed. This mare was dangerous, plungers on her hooves notwithstanding. “You’re going to have to get very specific about how you know what you know, very soon.”         Pinkie smiled. “So she is here! Wow, even I didn’t expect that to work.”         Shining facehoofed. “So you—I—”         Pinkie grinned even more widely. “You said you wanted to help her?” “Yupperdoodles! Well, not me, really. I want you to help me help somepony—or would that be somebody—help her. Ooh, that sunrise was fun fun fun!”         Shining smiled. “We’ll talk about this. Pinkie.”         Rainbow Dash was unconvinced. "Shining, she's crazy. This isn't even your ordinary crazy. This is 'burn everything and giggle through the ashes' crazy. This is not somepony you can use, which is, by the way, a subject I'm way too familiar with." Shining sighed. "Dash, we need you to help out with this." "We don't. You do. Just because you screwed up with the sunrise—and I could have told you ponies were going to go crazy, if you asked. That's on you, Shining, not me! Solve your own problems!" Dash stared at Shining, daring him silently to contradict her. "You'll do it," he said. “I can’t. You’re not thinking straight, Shining. I have to stay here with Sparkle.” “Sparkle.” Shining said the name as if it were a curse. “How do you like your promotion, Dashie?” He chuckled humorlessly. “It’s funny,” Dash intoned. “I’m going to kill her eventually, and I still like her better than I like you.” “Really?” Shining asked. “I’ll do my job, Shining. You want uniforms to get into Canterlot? Fine. But I’m not blowing my op so you can get back onto Sunbutt’s good side. I stay here. You send Fluttershy. She’s quiet and obedient. I bet you like that.” “Fine,” he spat. “Wonderful,” Dash said sardonically. “Now, who the hell are you breaking out of Canterlot?” “Somepony named Discord, apparently.”