//------------------------------// // The third time // Story: The Empath and the Sociopath // by Justice3442 //------------------------------// ‘KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!’ Sunset shot up in her bed from the knocking that was loud enough to wake the dead. “The… the hell?” she uttered to herself as she blearily looked around. The massive rectangular window the foot of her bed was pointed at let her know that it was still clearly night, on account of all the darkness outside punctuated by starlight and street light. The window above the head of her bed told her much the same thing. Blearily, she attempted to read her ‘not-so-gently’ used analog clock, but had trouble on account of the almost no light in the room. Her thoughts went back to her not-so-legal detective work. She had gotten a hold of Twinkle Shine’s autopsy report, but hadn’t had time to piece everything together. A broken neck… high BAC… Maybe some light bruises other than that… She wanted to piece it together but her body had demanded sleep, and she wasn’t going to crack the case drooling out one side of her mouth as she worried if her new roommate would kill her in her sleep. She looked around again, her eyes mostly only able to make out shapes… Christmas lights… she thought. Christmas lights would really bring this place together… Along the bars, maybe down the sides a bit… That'd look cool… ‘Cause, I mean… Fuck lamps in general…”   ‘KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!’ “Ugh… Alright, alright!” Sunset called out as she threw off her nice, warm covers and made her way to the stairs, silently cursing to herself as her bare feet touched cold hardwood floor. She walked forward with her arms outstretched until she found the bar at the edge of her loft. Shimmying to her left until she reached the end, she felt with her left foot for her stairwell, then reaches for the handrail… only to discover there was none. Sunset’s eyes shot open as a number of facts suddenly came into focus. She leaned to her left and placed her shoulder against the wall as she made her way down to her ‘office’ area. Finally, she made her way to her door and opened it. Her new roomy was on the other side, panic written all over her face. “Sunset, oh thank God!” Sunset frowned heavily. “Yes. It’s me… The only person it could be on account of me living here!” Sunset rubbed her eyes. “The hell do you want?” Seemingly momentarily set a back from Sunset’s sarcastic and rude response. Chrysi quickly regained her complete lack of composure. “I need your help!” “Is the toilet overflowing?” “Look, I’m not going to lie, something bad… What?” The panicked look broke once more as Chrysis seemingly couldn’t help but look at Sunset in complete confusion. Sunset leaned against her doorway and flipped a hand upwards. “Because you see… That’s the only reason that you, as my roommate, would have to bug me at—” Chrysi cringed suddenly. “Please don’t use that word.” “… What, ‘roommate?’” “What? No! Why would I have a problem with that?” Sunset shrugged. “I don’t know! I thought maybe you wanted to establish some bullshit sense of distance between us to trick me into thinking you’re some sort of aloof bad-ass!” Chrysi suddenly looked a bit hurt. “You… You don’t think I’m a bad-ass?” Sunset sighed. “What was the word?” “Hmm?” Chrysi hummed in genuine confusion. “The word you didn’t want me to say!” Sunset said, her eyes, and patience, narrowing. “Oh, ‘bug’… I don’t care much for the connotation.” “Okay, fine… So… is it the toilet?” “I wouldn’t bug you this late if it was the damn toilet!” Chrysi hissed out. Sunset raised an eyebrow. Chrysi brought a hand up to her mouth as if she was a child who had just said a naughty word except for she followed this up by whispering the word ‘fuck’ under her breath. “Well, then… What is it?” Chrysi closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, seemingly to center herself. Staring at Sunset with her jade eyes that started out a hazy chartreuse at the edges before turning into a piercing green amongst iris’s that looked not quite human, Chrysi reached behind her back into her leather jacket and produced a black, rectangular item, flipped it in her hand presented what could only be a pistol handle first to Sunset. “I need you to hold onto this for a bit.” Sunset stifled a yawn. “No. Fuck that and fuck you for waking me up with this inanity. Go cold-clock a hobo and rub his mitts all over that if you need a fall-person.” Taking one moment to soak in the priceless look of shock on Chrysi’s face, Sunset slammed the door. And then she waited. 1 2 3 ‘KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!’ Sunset opened the door to see Chrysi absolutely fuming on the other side. “Is that really what you think I wanted?!” She exclaimed as she waved the firearm around, her index finger notably not on the trigger. “To fucking frame you?! Bitch, I barely just MET you!” “Okay, but, I mean… This is clearly a grift.” Chrysi frowned heavily. “A what?” “You know… A con? A scam? Fake? Complete bullshit? You’re trying to get something from me through lies and deception?” Chrysi took a moment to think as she scratched the back of her head with the pistol handle. “ ‘Gerr-ifft…” she said, unnecessarily stretching out the unfamiliar word into two syllables as she seemingly tried it for the first time. She smiled. “I like it…” She turned towards Sunset. “But I’m not trying to frame you! That’s stupid!”   Sunset nodded. “Right. So it’d be pretty risky to frame me for a crime you, yourself could have been involved in! I mean… If you had brain cell 1 in that pretty little head of yours—” Chrysi’s face lit up. “You think I’m pretty?!” “—you’d know that there’s a near certain chance I’d either be so scared of the situation, I’d rat you out in a hot second, or be smart enough to figure out I don’t know you and a turn you in if questioned. So, actually, ‘No!’  I don’t think you were trying to frame me. I think you were trying to give me a gun, unloaded because you’re not a moron, and then I slowly let the fear and paranoia of your ‘secret life of crime’ get to me, and then, if I haven’t gone to the cops with the gun that’s presumably… I dunno… just fresh from the local pawn shop or whatever—” Chrysi’s eyelids dropped slightly. “You wound me. The local pawn shop is a dive.” “— you come back in a few days and ask me ‘if I still have that gun!’ and, like, start some increasingly elaborate game where I’m pulled into your web of crime or maybe just a bunch of normal stuff where I’m freaking out because I’m carrying a gun and you think it’s hilarious to fuck with me!” Sunset frowned heavily. “Or am I not allowed to say ‘web’ either?” “‘Web’ is fine… Preferable, even.” “Anyhow, you then tell me you need me for something really important, and I don’t know there’s money involved and excitement away from my doldrum existence as a high schooler…  Maybe you think you’ll have me figured out by then to appeal to either a need for funds or a sense of boredom and some excitement in my life. Hell, maybe you’ll try both.” “…” “So? Did I guess right…?” “…” “Yeah, so…  Look. I don’t need money and I don’t need any more excitement in my life. I’m already eyeball deep in unwanted adventures, no need for that particular level of crazy to be over my head entirely.  You can keep your stupid gun and keep your stupid criminal activities to yourself and we’ll go on our merry way as roommates who barely talk to each other.” Sunset shook her head. “I mean… That’s just common courtesy.” Chrysi’s body language suddenly shifted. She was still silent but it was as if Sunset had suddenly struck a chord. Hopefully, it wasn’t the ‘murder’ chord Sunset had just plucked. “So, yeah…” Sunset said nonchalantly. “See you tomorrow, or maybe not. I don’t give a fuck.” And that’s where Sunset Shimmer would have slammed the door in Chrysi’s face again had there not been a black platform boot in the way. As the door slowly opened back up Sunset met Chrysi’s irate glare with one of her own. “Kindly get your Hot-Topic brand boot out of my door.” Surprisingly, Chrysi’s expression suddenly changed to an icepick smile. “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to what happened to your room’s former occupant?” “No, because I know that already.” Chrysi’s smile suddenly dropped into a disappointed frown. “You do?” Sunset nodded and glanced behind her. “He fell off the stairs and broke his neck in the fall. His toxicology report showed he must have been quite drunk at the time.” Sunset turned back to Chrysi. “I mean, I’ll buy that having you for a roommate might have driven him to drink, but… considering this whole ‘mysterious and dangerous World of Darkness’ masquerade you have going, I’d figure if you wanted Twinkle Shine dead, they’d never find his body.” Chrysi was silent once more, but there were the barest hints of a joyous smile on her face. Sunset began to close her door. “Okay, if that’s it, good—” Sunset was cut off as an ashen hand grabbed the edge of her doorway. Snarling, she opened the door once more. “Look, I’m tired as balls here, so either let me get some sleep or shoot me! Just stop wasting my ti—” “Would you like a Turkish coffee?” It was Sunset’s turn to be surprised. “Okay… Just… What…?” Her expression finally settling on something besides ‘up to no good’, panicked, surprised, or pissed, Chrysi nodded towards the hallway stairs. “Yeah look… I’m sorry about the whole… gun thing… Just… I’ve had a lot of coke—” Chrysi’s eyes shot open wide “—a-colta!” “Huh…” Sunset uttered to herself. “Pinkie might have had a point earlier…” Chrysi continued, “And uh… I’m kinda wired… And… It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I just want to unwind… Watch a movie, maybe?” Chrysi ended this question with an oddly hopeful smile. Sunset examined Chrysi’s face closely. She was tempted to blurt out ‘you’re joking’, but something about Chrysi’s face suggested that she was being more sincere with Sunset then anytime she had been since she first met Sunset. “I don’t… I don’t know what Turkish coffee is…” “Er… It’s like western coffee but prepared differently, see… You boil water in a cezva… Uh… It’s like…” Chrysi glanced upwards, her eyes darting one way or the other as if searching for a word as if she mimed holding something in a handle in her right hand kinda motioned in a curved/oblong fashion with her other hand. “No, like… Are their drugs in it?” Chrysi flashed Sunset a befuddled look. “Why would I boil drugs?!” “I don’t know! Why would you drink coffee to unwind?!” Chrysi’s face tightened. “Do you want to have some stupid roommate bonding time or do you want me to think you’re putting up an aloof front so I think you’re a fake bad-ass?” “Touché,” Sunset replied. “Look… What time is it?” “Uh…” Chrysi moved back her leather sleeve from her left wrist. “3:42” Sunset nodded. “100 dollars.” “Ex-excuse me?!” “I will hang out with you for 100 dollars,” Sunset answered. “And no, that’s not a sex thing. That’s for waking me up in the middle of the night! Or rather 50 was going to be enough to cover it, but then I saw your watch and just… what is that? Is that a Rolex?” Chrysi gave Sunset a look as if she was legitimately offended. “This so happens to be a Titanic DNA Tourbillon!” Sunset rolled her eyes. “So… What? It’s worth more than the duplex we’re in right now?” “…” “Holy shit, it is, isn’t it?!” Chrysi responded by reaching into her coat, pulling out a massive wad of bills held neatly in a clip, peeled one off, and handed Sunset a nice, crisp $100 bill. Sunset frowned down as looked at the bill, unsure if she was more upset that Chrysi called her bluff or that she hadn’t asked for more. “Do you like baba ganoush?” Chrysi asked. Sunset looked up from her quasi-ill-gotten gains with a deeper frown. “I don’t know what that is…” Chrysi turned and practically skipped down the hallway. “You’ll find out~!” she warbled happily. “See you downstairs, roomy!” Sunset sighed and shook her head. “Am… am I a magnet for this shit? Or do I somehow run headlong into it without even trying?!”