Darting around Ponyville at night reminded Rarity of when the ration riots broke out.
The night it all went down, Rarity was in Chicoltgo doing a photoshoot. She nearly fell off the top of the monolith’s head when one of her camerapegasi noted how the fires were messing with the exposure. Canterlot was burning, twinkling above the city lights like a star falling through the atmosphere.
She tried contacting Twilight, then her family. Only the latter replied. She spent a few hours knitting with her mother and chatting with Sweetie Belle about her grades. As she left, she slipped her mother a photo album full of ration cards. When she was alone in her hotel penthouse again, she wrote a letter to her father. In the space between her walk from the room to the post office she decided now would be a great time to rob the nearest government building and steal all their ration cards. Standing on the street across from the municipal building, she couldn’t even see the fires.
Six ponies died in the riots. Applejack took her first and only vacation of the war. Twilight cut hers short. Rarity got enough ration cards from the one municipal building to keep her family fed for the rest of the war, all the way down to the second cousin. Rainbow Dash wrote a letter home inquiring about Applejack. Rarity saw the Borderlands for the first time the next day on a chariot ride back to Ponyville. The whole mountain range looked like the spine of an ancient predator breaking free from the earth. She made Applejack some new boots and tried not to think about her father.
There was no fire this time. No moonlight, either. Rarity dropped the see-me-not illusion and let her hooves glide noiselessly over the cobblestone. Outside was where the real danger was. Once she made it inside she could relax a bit.
The streetlights across from Barcleigh’s made her nervous. The sun was gone but the light was not. The audience had packed up and gone home. The glint in her eyes came from across the street.
Amateur percussion, the clap of hooves on cobblestone, floated easy on the moonlight.
On occasion, Rarity would baffle herself with a new dress. She would be sitting down, reading the morning paper and drinking tea, when out of nowhere sixteen hours would slap her across the face. When she recovered, a new dress would stand before her, and her hooves would be pricked and bloody. She would tell her friends the next day, “I just don’t know what came over me.”
Time would fly by at such an alarming rate she wouldn’t have time to comprehend her genius until it was gone. It meant nothing to her. It was a gap in her memory, a piece of her past cut out and sewn together. Art! Her muse! A part of her time but not herself. Time set apart. A piece of herself. Was time art? The concept had to be. The indescribable momentum time represented was not. It kept growing and ticking until it became infinite. Then again, if you really truly tried you could find meaning in any brushstroke, any insignificant modifier, any wrong note. Up and down. Insignificant. Flat seventh!
The past was wide but short. It tore up the road behind ponies like her and laid it down before them. They could walk forever on a few worn-out feet of pavement.
The percussion crescendoed as Rarity approached the door. She hated it. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to steal it from the air and flatten the sound waves with her hooves into something sharp and stick them into whoever else was out this late.
The inside would provide quiet. Quiet and escape.
She slipped around the corner, opened the door, and slid inside.
Rarity knew the owner from having mended a small tear in his dress blues a few years ago. Of course the door would be unlocked. What did he have to fear with an arsenal like his? He owned a dozen rifles and Celestia-knows how many blades stashed all around his living quarters. Half of them were griffon guns with triggers and bolts he couldn’t operate.
Mainly he carried an ankle-revolver, one he liked to display at parties and open houses. Quite the feat of engineering, he was fond of noting. Instead of having to load bullets one by one, you snapped a clip of five bullets into the side. Easy to use. User friendly. Big bullets! Kills griffons at fifty yards no problem. Real war-hero talk.
He scared Rarity a little. Every time she pledged her allegiance to Equestria and nodded with a crowd celebrating Victory Day, he was there. Now she was in his place of business, his home, violating his privacy and stealing his shit.
Without pausing to peek up the stairs leading to the second floor, she went to the safe room door and nudged it open. The safe stood in the middle of the room, guarded by file cabinets, its door wide open and unlocked.
She touched the safe door once, then again, harder this time. It swung on well-oiled hinges. The gems gleamed from inside their plastic cases. She shrugged and took them all.
Next stop was the work room, where the jeweler kept his works in progress. Those wouldn’t be worth as much as the ones from the safe room, but they would be much easier to take than the finished ones from the display cases. Plus, she wouldn’t have to cut her hooves up punching through the glass to get to the prizes inside. Real-life robbery wasn’t all smashing and grabbing. A true artist had enough finesse to circumvent brutality.
The haul was as good as she could have expected. Several completed gems sat stacked next to a pavilion cutting tool on one desk, where she also found an immaculately-finished green diamond, a byproduct of the irradiated wastelands separating Equestria from the Changeling Empire, still stuck to the dopstick. On the other table she found a second cutting tool, along with a small envelope full of rough purple amethyst. They wouldn’t fetch as much. She took them all.
From somewhere outside came another beat of amateur percussion. Awkward. Heavy on the downbeat. Opening the front door.
Rarity took a running step and dove behind the nearest display case. She threw her hooves up and curled her body into a ball to dampen the light of her horn as she shut the saferoom door behind her. The gems refracted sound like light. Her heartbeat drummed on above the sound of hoofsteps filling the room. Rarity flinched at the noise. It was all too loud. They moved like a pair of shitty tap dancers. She stretched and fit herself into the shadows. A fine evening gown of curvaceous darkness. A blanket over a terrified filly during an air raid. The same. The enemy.
“What do we do now?” one asked. “This is why we need a plan.”
“Hey--afterwards,” the other whispered. “There’s a big safe behind that door. Crack it and thin out the merchandise.”
Rarity glanced through the glass. Two distorted figures, a caramel stallion and a coltish mare with orange fur and a purple mane, crept through the room.
“What does that mean?”
“Just take some of the stuff. Not too much, not too little. I’ll be in the work room over there. Holler if you need me.”
The two split up. One melted into the shadows while the other made for the saferoom. It took her nearly a minute to creep past the door.
As soon as the orange mare was in the saferoom, Rarity crawled towards the work room. The gems she already had weren’t enough. She needed more.
As she reached the door, the figure lit a match and ripped his mask off. His face was all worries and wrinkles, all pressed together. The color of his fur, that awful shade of yellow. Piss yellow. Like a griffon’s beak.
He looked right. Then left. Then towards the table. The matchlight caught in his eyes. They burned the lacquer on the table. Doubt. There was the old fire. Anger! She knew the look. The same look that compelled her to steal ration-cards so the citizens of Ponyville wouldn’t starve during the shortages. The same look the protesters from out of town had on when they picketed the Equestrian office in Ponyville. Unfair treatment, they said. Why should the hometown of the Elements get more food than the rest of them? Was Applejack corrupting the system to feed her friends? Launch an investigation! Investigate! Riot!
He stared like that until the match ran out. Darkness, the old facade.
“Caramel--” the orange mare hissed.
Rarity flinched and hugged the other display case as the mare emerged emptyhoofed.
“Caramel--” she whispered as she opened the work room door, “There’s a problem--”
Rarity flicked open her switchblade.
“Caramel?” the mare whimpered.
“Sunset, I said holler, not sneak up on me.” He chuckled a little and relaxed.
“Sorry, Sunrise. I have a problem. Well, I found a problem.”
“What is it?” he asked. Rarity could hear his impatience.
“There isn’t anything in the safe. It was wide open when I got in the room.”
“That’s pretty strange,” he said. Hoofsteps plodded their way towards Rarity until she was certain they would trample her. The stallion struck a match and illuminated the room in a soft, foreign glow. Rarity couldn’t help but smile as the mare’s face creased up.
“Put out that match,” she stuttered, “there’s a fire alarm in the main room.”
Rarity looked up and fell forward. Her hoof caught the edge of the door. The sound of its hinges squealing roared through the room.
“Caramel,” the mare whispered, “I think I saw somepony.”
Rarity slid silently towards the front door on her side. She dared not displace her weight. The floorboards squealed, the dirty informants.
“Nah, the jeweler would’ve made much more noise coming down the stairs,” the other one said. “He’s pretty fat, remember? We’re okay.”
Using the display case, Rarity lifted herself up. There she stood, still as stone, trapped in rock, superheated until it crystallized. Her eyes were prismatic stones, catching the faint light and tearing it into the rainbow. Her mouth hung open in concentration as she inched open the front door.
“Next time,” the mare murmured as she moved around the nearest display case, “we are going to have a plan.” Her horn lit up. “We are going to make a plan and stick to it.”
The stallion peered out from behind her. “Yeah, okay.”
He lifted his hoof, hesitated, then touched her shoulder. Rarity bolted.
The mare reeled. A sick, trickling stream of magic stretched from her horn and engulfed an ornamental mirror sitting on the display case. The mirror glowed purple, then green. Then the whole thing lurched and melted, buckling under the magical heat.
Feet from freedom, Rarity dove against the display case closest to the door and covered her mouth. The orange mare stumbled away in horror and knocked into the carousel behind her. It caught the ambient light and threw it across the room. Rarity’s ears were charred and ringing. She couldn’t even hear the noise.
The stallion took a step towards the steaming, still-glowing husk, his eyes glowing like emeralds.
“I’m sorry--” she gasped. “I’m sorry. I saw something move--”
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
“Look, it’s a reflex--”
“Where’d you learn to do a thing like that?”
The lights snapped on. The shop glittered like one giant diamond. Then the room tore itself apart with a tremendous, stabbing shriek.
Above the noise came a thump from the second floor. Then another. The mare looked up. Her mouth opened. Inhale. Exhale. “We should go.”
Absently, he raised his hoof and smashed through the display case. Rarity grit her teeth and waited for an opening.
“What are you doing?” the mare shouted.
As he shoveled up a handful of rubies, displays and all, he replied, “Stealing.” A ceiling sprinkler blossomed to life just above her head and drenched her with freezing water before she could reply. Another thump came from above them. He failed to stifle a laugh. “Admit it, this is kinda--”
A round of buckshot tore through the ceiling.
The mare launched herself towards the door. The stallion grit his teeth and hugged the smashed up display case. Little bits of insulation drifted into the shower of brownish water and settled on the floor. The house recoiled.
He smashed another display case, but another round came through the ceiling before he could grab anything. He howled with rage and bolted out the door.
Rarity watched the two until they disappeared around the corner, then took off in the opposite direction. She ran past the row of streetlights, past the garbage cans, past the noise and into the scenic quiet of Ponyville late at night.
She paused to rest a few blocks away. She put her head between her legs and panted. This was no ration riot. Canterlot had not burned. Applejack was still safe. Twilight was still safe. Rainbow Dash still had a face. She still had it.
More gunshots pinged off the alley walls, one after the other. The first got her attention. The next got her moving. At first she thought they were just more bolts of magic.
A siren sounded in the distance, headed her way.
She glanced up and realized they were not the same.