Two Days Ago
It wasn’t that Lightning Dust hated taxies on a deep and instinctual level and considered any vehicle she personally did not drive to be a waste of steel. Well, it wasn’t just that. She hated this taxi specifically for other reasons in addition to her own prejudices. Grinding her teeth together and biting her fingernails into the office chair armrest, Lightning hissed in frustration – her driver was an absolute pest and, more importantly, unlikely to be somebody she could get away with maiming. That and that damn cat was yowling.
In addition to being a vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert with a poor taste in music and a penchant for doing unspeakable things to cars, Discord also couldn’t follow instructions for shit.
Because Lighting’s own car had been impounded back in Texas and the Canterlot folks don’t rent cars to accused felons, she had to resort to hailing the nearest jackass with a working vehicle and ordering him to drive until they reached the last locale her brother’s phone pinged before the battery died and, with it, the fitness app stopped updating his location. For the last hour, he had been going in the opposite direction and dragging her to a variety of cafés which, although nice, weren’t places Shamrock would be caught dead in.
“Again, Miss Dust, why are we going off the interpretation that Master Shamrock was kidnapped by the mafia?” Discord asked while steering his vehicle along with one gnarled foot that was jammed into a cheese-yellow stiletto a few sizes too small.
“Dude pissed off his weed guy, I reckon,” Lightning muttered as she impatiently drummed her fingers against the tinted window, “and Big Moe dragged him out here to kneecap him in peace. So when I find him, I’m gonna kneecap Biggles until there’s nothing left to kneecap. Nobody messes around with my family and lives, mate. So like, also remind me, once we’re done with this, take me to the cops.”
“A change of heart? How stupendously unpredictable.”
“What?” Lightning glared at him, “No! One of them shot my sister so I’ll find out which one it is and… uh… shoot him back.”
“Is that so? And on the topic of rowdy narcotics salesmen, I’ve always been more inclined to petrify them than simply smash them.”
“Petrify? Like, pull a Medusa and turn them to rock petrify?” Lightning asked.
Discord nodded and flashed a smile that would make even the most veteran of English dentists recoil in horror. “Yes!”
“… Okay, how? I mean, taking a baseball bat to some fat fuck’s legs is simply physics here. But stoning a dude? To literally stone?”
“If I explain the trick, it wouldn’t be funny anymore.”
“You got one heck of a screwed-up sense of humour, dude. I’ve seen baboons with better taste in jokes.”
From within his cage, the cat meowed in agreement. For a mongrel tabby, Mr Tony Mewk prided himself on his patrician tastes – mostly in cat food.
Discord shrugged. One half of his body completed the gesture a good second before the other. “What can I say? I like a good bit of irony every so often. It makes things tremendously chaotic.”
“Eh. Fonder of mayhem myself,” Lightning said before checking again her phone. The trail left off only a few miles down the road, with the nearest structure that could provide suitable cover for a good extortion being a shut-down roadside diner in the far distance.
“Can say I’m one for mayhem. Too mature for my tastes. Wouldn’t fly on daytime television, you know.” Discord replied, detaching the wrench from where it normally sat in place of the steering wheel and proceeding to replace it with a slightly smaller wrench. Having gotten the idea from a children’s story, he wondered how small the tool would have to become before his counterpart in Equestria would notice the change when his biweekly visit came around.
Currently, the steering device was about eight inches long, gold plated, and studded with semiprecious gemstones. After tugging it out of its socket and letting the vehicle swerve dangerously close to driving right off the edge of the nearby cliff, he tossed it to Lightning, who caught it and immediately reached to bludgeon her driver with it.
“What the fuck, shithead? You nearly killed me!” she shouted, as Discord caught her arm in his hand.
“Ah. But I didn’t. Instead, I gave you vital training and secret tool which will help you later. That and clonking me would actually kill us both because, you know, we’d lose control of the car.”
Lightning looked around the so-called car. Most of it seemed to be made in post-Soviet nations which no longer existed. The rear-view mirror, for instance, proudly hailed from the Ruthenian SSR. And, lowering her arm and pocketing the needlessly ostentatious wrench, she looked into that very mirror.
After rubbing the grime generated by overly enthusiastic candyfloss eating off of it, she noticed something rather important in the vaguely rectangular piece of polished glass.
“Stop the car, Dude. There’s a chick out there. She looks hurt.”
“Yes. I know that. I thought you said this mission of yours was ‘urgent’ and ‘bloody important’ and ‘any fart-arsing around would mean no tip, jackass’ and I live off tips you know, being a jackass and all,” Discord replied, pulling from his glovebox an inflated surgical glove with which to do his air quotes.
“Yeah. I know. But she’s also kinda passed out in the freeway so I’d like, rather not let her get ran over.”
“You know, for an antagonist, you’re remarkably kind-hearted. I’d almost root for you if you didn’t also beat people up over traffic offenses,” Discord said.
“Listen here, you clown-arse punk,” Lightning growled, balling a hand into a fist and slapping it against her other hand’s open palm, “only dude whose gonna get beat up today is gonna be you unless you turn around this abomination of a motor vehicle and show some compassion for your fellow human being.”
“Firstly, I’m an old god of chaos. Second, I prefer the term ‘Frankenstein’s Hearse’ when referring to my car, please,” Discord replied, crossing his mismatched arms.
Lightning produced a switchblade.
“But if you insist, we’ll further the plot in the direction you want it to go and interrupt a perfectly serviceable Mad Max crossover just when things were getting good [link],” he said, jerking the vehicle around with the tell-tale scream of a gearbox whose only wish was death.
Two minutes later and Lightning had disembarked from the vehicle and was standing over the lost girl’s prone and barely conscious form and was deeply embroiled in the process of peeling the seat cover off from her jacket. Beneath her, Sugarcoat made a noise that was roughly between a cough and a groan.
Discord climbed out the window in a reference that would’ve made more sense if his car’s roof had a Confederate Battle Flag on it – it didn’t; it had an Equestrian flag on it. Brushing the iron filings and flakes of pastry from his outfit; today that was janitorial fatigues beneath a Manchester United soccer jersey and a tuxedo jacket; he ambled over to the two women with a perturbed grimace on his face. Mayhem always put him in a bad mood.
“Shit. Somebody fucking cut her face open,” Lightning said, pointing to the mess of blood running down from the downed girl’s forehead.
“That doesn’t look like a cut from a blade. It looks more like she dinged her skull against a car bumper,” Discord observed.
“And you would know that how?”
“I am punk rock,” he replied cryptically.
“I mean, you’re not and that answers bugger all but I’m gonna try that now. Gonna give whoever screwed with Shamrock one of those, once I track down his ass. After I kneecap him, that is.”
“Or her. Might be a her,” Discord added.
“Yeah. Maybe. What would you call one of those, anyway? Uh… like a, curbstomp- wait no, that’s a thing,” Lightning mumbled, scratching the back of her neck as she tried to think harder than she had done in the past four weeks combined.
“A bumperthump.”
“That’s a damn fuck of a stupid name, Discord.”
“Don’t blame me,” said Discord, “blame the guy whose writing this fanfiction for making me say it.”
Lightning Dust stared at him. It hurt somewhat to do so and, the more she did so, the more she got the impression that her driver was only taking human form as a courtesy – not a physical obligation. Discord, after picking his nose for a second or two, stared back. Away the hardened criminal looked, back down at where Sugarcoat was lying, deeply confused and relatively hurt and pretty dehydrated, on the sand beside the road.
“Moving on,” the racer muttered.
“Yes. Moving on. I diagnose her with injuries,” said Discord, pulling a cane from who-fucking-knows-where and scratching his five-o-clock shadow as he limped around.
“No shit, Sherlock. She looks pretty totalled to me.”
“Happens to be the best of us, Wilson. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, she needs treatment. As per her prescription.”
“Yeah. True that,” Lightning replied, “Gotta drag her ass to hospital probably. Say, why don’t you do that and I pay you for how far I got. I’ll, like, track down Shamrock myself and get a different ride home.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Discord then clicked his fingers and produced another cane. Slipping off his jacket, he laid the fabric between the two walking sticks and glared at the contraption until it became a stretcher. Then, halfway through assembling the unneeded device through force of will alone, he stopped and shot out a manicured hand, clicking it at Sugarcoat.
She promptly cleared her throat. Given the amount of dust in it and combining that with the fact that she hadn’t had a real drink in a good few days, it was not a comfortable process. The single planned cough turned into a flurry of lung-searing retches as she managed to ease herself upright.
“Huh. Okay,” said Lighting, “you’re awake.”
“I would rather not be,” Sugarcoat blinking what she thought was sleep from her eyes.
“Same, Sister. I have had one motherfucker of a week. Did you see in the news that I got arrested? Then my sister gets shot and my brother goes missing. Wild, honestly. Anyway, how’d you get here?”
Sugarcoat blinked some more. Her head felt like a circus carnival parade had marched through it and, open reached that painful spot right behind her eyes, it had been nuked. The jangling clash of cymbals remained though. She put a hand to her forehead.
“Climbed out of a police car,” she muttered, “I think the other person in there might be dead.”
Going out on a limb – ideally his own since they were detachable – Discord asked, “And, pray tell Sugarcoat, what was that particular person wearing?”
Sugarcoat looked at him. Without her glasses on, the taxi driver managed only to look vaguely humanoid. She decided, for once, against squinting. “Wraparound shades. And a parka, I think? It was green… mostly green,” she answered, turning somewhat green herself.
Lightning’s eyes went wide beneath her aviators. “Wait a minute… Shit on toast. He’s dead?”
“Don’t mind if I don’t but yes. The penny drops and the chaos begins. I’ll be keeping his cat, by the way. He amuses me,” Discord smiled, as he helped Sugarcoat onto the stretcher and then into the backseats of his alleged car.
Sugarcoat didn’t resist. After withdrawing her hand from her face and finding it coated in dried blood, she passed out. Being fairly concussed, somewhat starved, and more than a just a little bit out of it to begin with, she decided that, perhaps, a coma might just be a good idea. For plot reasons, Discord seconded it.
They drove off a minute later, leaving Lightning to walk to the nearest landmark in sight in search of her brother and find him in the now-open trunk of Shining Armor’s stolen car a few seconds later. The scream, primal and volcanically enraged, echoed throughout the desert and roused sleeping critters from their noonday slumber.
But nobody of consequence was around to hear her scream.
Microchips and Dip Electronics Warehouse was the kind of business that made its begrudging part-time employee Lemon Zest, self-proclaimed party rocker extraordinaire, deeply relieved that she’d be on the other side of the planet from it come next month, performing in Italy to crowds of screaming people – hopefully they’d be screaming because the music was just that good this time and not because sirens were involved or anything.
After all, metalheads were surprisingly astute. If only the same could be said for people who tried to build their own computers off of semi-punctuated guides they’d found on internet message boards. Those people tended to be hirsute instead – especially around the neck. Lemon thusly tried to do as little work as possible.
Head currently banging in the Court of the Crimson King as she stacked a collection of boxed keyboards into something that vaguely resembled a pyramid, she didn’t notice the woman barge into the store. The clerk on duty didn’t either – having gone out for a smoke when his shift began, Lemon suspected Micro Chips would return just as it ended to whine at her over some inane annoyance and or try, and fail, to flirt with her. So, with nothing better to do, she kept stacking keyboards with all the enthusiasm and vigour of a particularly depressed sloth.
She was quitting next month anyway.
Then the music stopped in her right ear as the headphone was tugged away from it. Just as she was about to start wondering if the appliance had grown a malfunction, Lightning Dust released it and let it smack back into Lemon’s skull in a crash of 5/39 time drums and guttural poetry discussing the banality of being cheated on.
“Not cool dude!” Lemon spun around, rubbing her ear.
“Yeah. You got me there. Should’ve answered the first time I called then, Pinkie.”
“My name’s not Pinkie,” she said, pointing at her nametag.
“And I don’t care. Just tell me, like, where I get a camera and I’ll let you go back to making modern art of computer junk.”
Lemon pointed in the direction of the store’s cameras. “Over there,” she said, “Aisle 2 – Cameras.”
Lightning walked off. Lemon returned to pretending to do actual work. This wasn’t even supposed to be her shift until the boss’s son called her and begged her to come in. No wonder Sugarcoat was such a grouch if all the jackass customers came in on her shift.
She had just gotten her body into a solid working rhythm of one mechanical keyboard a minute and had just gotten her mind into the stupid idea of trying to build a leaning tower instead of a pyramid.
And then the music shut off. Reflexively, Lemon stuck a hand between the headphone and her ear. Lightning promptly picked up the other one and zapped her with that.
“Like, Dude! Can you not, please,” Lemon said, turning back to face the older woman.
“I mean, I guess I could, like, not. But you could also tell what kind of camera I’m supposed be buying here. I’m sort of new to this whole tech bullshit and want this to be a relatively quick and painless procedure.”
“For you, maybe,” the clerk replied, trying to fish a treble clef out of her ear.
“Well, I’m… yeah. Don’t actually have a response to that one. So, like, I’m thinking sort of a Go-Pro kind of deal. You got one those?”
“Do we have one of those on the shelves?” Lemon asked.
“Didn’t see one. Could you check in the back?”
Lemon raised her eyebrows. Her bangs ruined the effect somewhat but, then again, her bangs were toxic waste green so they all the right in the world to do so. She crossed her arms. “You do know, like, how the backroom works right?”
“Yeah. I ask you for the thing. You don’t have the thing on the shelves and then I tell you to check in the back and you do that and the thing’s there.”
“That is literally not how it works, my dude. All we’ve got in the back is a coffee maker and a box of explosive tracking devices the precinct gave us.”
“Fuck, the cops give you explosive tracking devices for?”
Lemon shrugged. “They had this contest a while back. The boss’s kid won but it turned out the design was faulty, and they kept exploding so, like, now we have grenades. Tis fate, you know.”
“Nice,” Lightning grinned.
“If you like grenades, yeah. Anyway, what do you want the camera for exactly?”
Lightning narrowed her eyes at the girl. Lemon considered narrowing her eyes back but, again, bangs and also Lightning had a good two feet and hundred pounds on her. Sure, she was a drummer but the kind of muscle you get from drumming isn’t the kind of muscle you get from winning barfights. And Lightning had a lot of that kind of muscle and Lemon found it very intimidating.
“Weren’t you arrested?” Lemon asked nervously, “It was on the news and everything.”
“Yeah. Bail exists, kid. Why do you want to know?”
“Because, like, specifications exist and I can’t help you unless I know what you want the camera to do. Is this a bird-watching thing or is this a slow-motion thing or is wedding-photo thing?”
“It’s a ‘some punk jacked a car and… well, let’s just say he dinged up my brother real bad he and stashed the thing, the car, in the desert and a I want a camera to hide close where he stashed it so I can see his face when he comes to get the car so I track him down and stick my foot up his ass’ kind of thing. Maybe give him a bumperthump too for good measure.”
Lemon blinked. She reached a shaking hand up to her headphones and pressed the pause button. Then she took the headphones off and hung them around her neck. And then she blinked again. “Okay. Okay. Okay then. That’s, like, a thing that happens. Apparently.”
“I’ve been having a shit week, alright? My sister was shot. This afternoon I scrape some chick off the freeway and figure that my brother is… ah… kidnapped, yeah Kidnapped. Before that, I had to gotta go and deal with animal people. Who suck and smell like bears and lions and tigers and shit. I have been having a very bad week and you know damn well I ain’t exactly a model citizen. So, camera.” Lightning clicked her fingers, “Stat!”
“You got it!” Lemon gulped, running off to Aisle 2 – Cameras, and selecting from it an appropriate model before hurrying back to where her customer awaited, growing more disgruntled by the second.
She handed it to Lightning, who juggled its box in her hands and nearly managed to drop it. It was a simple model, advertising a long battery life, ample storage, and weather resistance conditions in addition to a compact size. It was the sort of thing you’d find in a seedy Korean motel, hidden behind the clock face, recording your every move. Lightning liked it immediately and started out the store.
“Ah. Dude? Miss Lightning? You gotta pay for that, you know?” Lemon said, before intensely regretting doing so.
“Gah. Fine,” she said, returning to slap a handful of crumpled bills on the counter. “Keep the change.”
Lemon sprung over the counter, registered the transaction, and handed the vigilante a few receipts. Those Lightning stuffed in a pocket of tracksuit pants, before turning on her heels and starting off again. She made it nearly to the door before Lemon piped up.
“What?” Lightning yelled. “Can you not fucking see I am a busy lady?”
“Yeah, just… you said you found a girl on the road, right? She’d been hit by a car or something?”
“Climbed out of a car actually.”
“Okay.” Lemon blinked again and reconsidered coming to work high, briefly, before realizing that this would be even more weird if she wasn’t as mellow as she currently was. “Dude, do you, like, know what her name was?”
“Why are you bothering me about this bullshit, kid? I have vigilance crap to do. People to ki-uh… redeem. And stuff.”
“Because my friend Sugarcoat went missing a few days ago and, like, I was wondering if you’d seen her.”
“Yeah. I saw her.”
“Really?” Lemon’s face lit up like a slice of watermelon in front of a spotlight – pink, sweet, but only bright because other people arranged her to seem so – “Where? Is she okay?”
“Kid. Pinkie. Who the shit you think the roadkill was?”
“She dead?!”
Lightning shrugged – this conversation had rapidly passed the point of relevance for her. “Like, I hope not? Anyway, if you’ve got any more dumbass asking to do, do it at my manager because I am out of here. Have fun, like, doing what you do.”
With that, Lightning left the store, slamming the door behind her and jingling the little bell on the doorframe, and leaving Lemon to her own devices. Considering they comprised a stack of keyboards waiting to be arranged in what, in her mind, was now going to be the greatest storefront leaning tower of electronics in the history of ever, she got to work. Music back on and without the threat of it being snapped off now, she got back to the task with a newfound haste while pinging around the idea of what to do about Sugarcoat in her mind.
Eventually it got the point where her phone’s alarm ringed, signalling that it was five minutes before the end of the shift she was covering. Immediately she dropped the latest keyboard back into its box, spun on her heels, and marched out the store before Micro Chips, son of Guacamole Dip, returned to harass her about something that mattered only if your dick was shorter than your patience – the ill-tempered nerd tended to fly off at a moment’s notice.
Lemon, not possessing a dick of any length, decided to see if Lightning was telling the truth and went off to visit Sugarcoat in hospital. Even if her dour friend wasn’t there, her mother would certainly appreciate the surprise visit.
Micro Chips returned about fifteen minutes to an empty store. Not only was it now empty of customers – just the way he liked it – it was now also a great deal emptier of cool gadgets and overpriced electronics than he would have liked and there was a pile of mechanical keyboards scattered about the floorspace. Forgetting to lock the door on her way out, Lemon had inadvertently invited a few less than reputable folks inside – Big Moe and his crew had paid the place a visit.
Noticing the row of flat screen TVs on the wall was no longer showing the highlights from the last football match, a scream started to build in Micro Chips’ throat. Noticing that they weren’t doing that because they were no longer there at all and were now a good fifty miles down the road never to be seen again, the noise erupted from his chest in a bellow of unrestrained fury, sexual frustration, and general dissatisfaction with his life as a five-foot-six acne-splattered teenager with a vape habit and a high ranking in League of Legends.
But nobody of consequence was around to hear him scream.
Today
It had come to Rarity Belle’s attention that stabbing a pony through the eye with a knitting needle until she was dead and then kicking her a little for good measure, while immensely satisfying and deeply cathartic, was probably not worth the trouble of having to clean up afterwards. However, this had come to her attention only after committing the act, kidnapping the witness, burying the body in the woods, disinfecting the crime scene and torching the knitting needles in question – that, in her mind, was the real tragedy. Genuine Timberwolf pine was so hard to come by this time of year.
Needless to say, the unicorn was not having the greatest of days. Yes, this sort of thing happened before – it happened about once a month – but today she had been particularly sloppy. Come to think of it, there probably was still a drop or two of blood splattered about her classroom and no doubt somebody would, eventually, start asking where Diamond Tiara had wandered off to.
Rarity reclined in her living room, alternating between sips of wine and spoonfuls of ice cream. Doing so straight from the bottle and the tub respectively, she realized that wasn’t the classiest of things to spend her afternoon doing but she excused it under the pretences of having a tremendously stressful morning. Really, that blood had gotten everywhere and it was such a pain to get out of her coat, especially when she couldn’t go to the spa for aid in doing so.
“What a day,” she complained to nobody in particular, “What a terrible day. Honestly, who does that little bitch she is sneaking up on me like that? Why, with her coat the same colour as that last little villain’s, was it wonder I reacted so… brusquely? No. No, I think not. That all is perfectly excusable given the circumstances. Still,” she thought, sitting up, “I simply cannot keep Silver Spoon tied up in my basement for ever.”
Another sip of Pinotage. Another spoon of rocky road. A breathy sigh and she collapsed back on her couch, hoof to her forehead in a mock faint. Downstairs, Silver Spoon struggled against the chains, wondering faintly why Miss Rarity had chains in her basement to begin with.
She, after all, considered herself to be too cultured for such dismal conditions. Having been kidnapped before, she desperately hoped that, just once, her captors would have the courtesy to recognize her good breeding at hold her somewhere other than a basement. A five-star hotel room would be ideal but, at this rate, an attic would suffice. Or maybe a shed. A rustic one though – like a hermitage, almost.
“Good grief,” Rarity continued, “I suppose she’d starve eventually. That’d probably do her good though. At her age, that most certainly is no longer puppy fat. Besides- oh, wait, no. She’d starve to death eventually. And then she shall decompose and start to stink up the place. Can’t bury her in kitty litter either like I did the last one. No, ponies would look at me funny buying the stuff after Opal tried Sweetie’s cooking last week and needed to be put down. Good grief indeed, whatever am I to do?”
For a while, she continued to mope. Eventually, there was a knock at her door. Panicking, she thought it was the Royal Guard come to do her in at last – ever since Princess Twilight had taken power, they had become disturbingly competent and ready to lay down the very-literal truncheon of justice at the slightest provocation.
She eased the tub of ice cream back onto the coffee table. For a second, she listened out for a further knock – perhaps they might go away if she pretended not to be home? No such luck. Somepony kept thumping on the door and they were a relatively tough and no-nonsense sort of somebody judging by how the knock echoed throughout the ground floor of her store and home.
“Pardon my Prench,” Rarity began, hoisting the wine bottle with her magic, “but bucking Tartarus this is not ideal.”
The knock persisted. They started calling her name. The voice didn’t match the sound, being oddly high and breaking occasionally, but it could just be a different guard. After all, there had been an awful lot of conscripts lately…
Conscripts, however, tended not to be the most apt and observant of soldiers, Rarity recalled – her brief foray into Saddle Arabia had taught her that much. The horses there were generally smarter than they looked; admittedly they looked smart but what they lacked in dowdiness they more than made up for in dumbassery. After decanting the rest of the bottle down her gullet, Rarity wrapped the bottle in the couch’s shawl and smashed it against the edge of the coffee table, leaving her holding in her magic a dagger-sharp glass shaft.
Then, slipping on a coat and slipping the shiv into it, she trotted downstairs and answered the door.
Her first thought upon doing so was that she was in some serious trouble. Her second thought was a brief worry that broken glass was unlikely to penetrate dragon scales. Her third was, quite simply, that she should stop messing around with glass shards and knitting needles and pizza cutters and just buy a damn sword already.
Her fourth through was that dragons hug really bucking hard, pardon the Prench.
“Rarity!” cheered Spike, “I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“You’ve… grown,” the crushed pony mumbled, face turning a deeply unfashionable shade of blueberry blue.
Spike the Dragon promptly released her and promptly started blushing a raspberry red. Rarity winced, landing on the shiv at a deeply uncomfortable angle.
“So… Darling, Spikey-Wikey, whatever brings you to Ponyville?” Rarity said while trying to subtly levitate the chunk of glass out of her flank.
The teenage dragon rubbed the back of his neck with a clawed hand the size of a soup plate. “Well… Twilight actually. She teleported me here. Did I mention its nice to see you again?”
“Yes, Darling. Rather… well, let’s just I didn’t require my vertebrae realigned this afternoon and I certainly do not appreciate the acupuncture either. Anyhow, why did she not simply send a letter?”
“Well,” Spike cringed, “You never read them.”
“Darling, as sweet as your poetry is, there is something as too sweet. Saccharine, perhaps. Sickly sweet. Roses and rainbows are terribly nice, but I only have so much time each day to devote to administrative duties and, well, I’m afraid that our romance simply isn’t meant to be.”
“Oh. Yeah. You didn’t read the one about the noodles, did you?”
“I read the one about the noodles. Then I threw it in the fire.”
“Probably for the best, that one. Never drinking fire-arak with Smoulder again. I’m really sorry actually. And to answer your question, Twilight said there was some kind of friendship emergency you had to deal with,” Spike explained.
Rarity raised an eyebrow, plucked and purple – amethyst to be specific. “An emergency, you say? I’m terribly afraid that I am currently dealing with one of my own.”
Said emergency was still bound and gagged in the basement and feeling very bored about the whole affair. At least when Flim and Flam kidnapped her, they had the courtesy to throw a magazine or two in the basement with her. That and feed her. Why, Silver Spoon was going to miss tea at this rate!
Spike blinked. “Oh. Didn’t know about that. Can I help with anything, Rarity? I mean, being seven feet tall does have its advantages,” he said, voice cracking multiple times. But such was the life of the teenage dragon – an unfortunate and gangly life to say the least.
“I doubt so, Darling. It’s a rather… personal matter.”
“Right then. Well, Twilight would really appreciate you maybe hurrying with it because she did ask for you specifically.”
“Why, pray tell? I cannot exactly see what kind of friendship mission I alone am perfectly suited for. Unless, I suppose, it involves the high society. I don’t suppose it does, does it? I wouldn’t exactly mind an excuse to come by Manehattan again.”
“Uh… actually it involves you. The Other You. The one from that magic portal thingy Twilight used to go through. You know, the mirror in her old castle,” Spike said, pointing to where the crystalline eyesore dominated the otherwise rustic horizon.
“Ah,” said Rarity, having an idea. “A vacation? Correct me if I’m wrong but are those odd baboon fellows on the other side of said portal not perpetually clothed?”
“Yeah. They are. Kinda weird really. I didn’t get to wear clothes. I had fur though. Like, how do you deal with the shedding?”
“Ladies simply don’t shed, Darling,” Rarity lied. “Anyhow, now that you have explained yourself, I do believe that I would quite like to pay a visit to my… alternate self. I’d imagine that I’d look rather fetching as a primate, if dear Lyra’s artwork is anything to go by.”
“They’re called humans by the way. If you call them monkeys they get really mad for some reason,” said Spike.
“I shall keep that in mind. Now, if you excuse me, I must pack. Do be a dear though and find me a sword. A gallant one if possible, like the ones that pirate crew had. Yes, a cutlass. I shall require one if I am to deal with apes, human or otherwise,” Rarity asked.
“You know, I can do you one better,” Spike said, jamming his foot in the door, and pointing a claw at his chest, “I can bring me. Like, last time I spaniel sized but I was just a kid back then. Imagine how huge I’d be now. I’d basically be a Timberwolf, Rarity. That’s way better than a sword.”
Rarity adapted her idea. On the one hand, Spike would make an excellent bodyguard in case her humanoid self proved feisty regarding being murdered and having her life stolen but, on the other hand, Spike was, well, himself. And as endearing as he was to people who didn’t consider themselves the embodiment of beauty in this world, beauty was a Rarity and she didn’t much like him. There could only be one of her though and a dire wolf-dragon hybrid would certainly tip the proverbial scales in her favour...
“Of course, Darling. I would love it if you were to accompany me. But are you positive that Princess Twilight dear would allow you to take oh, I haven’t a clue, a whole month off?” Rarity asked.
“Awesome! I’m sure she’ll be fine with it. And it is Supreme Friendmaker Midnight Sparkle these days,” Spike added, “Well, to creatures who aren’t me, anyway.”
“Yes!” Rarity cheered, “A vacation is most indubitably in order! I’ll meet you at the old castle come dawn tomorrow Darling. Do not be tardy and dress warmly,” Rarity said, levitating Spike’s foot out the door and then slamming it.
Once the clomp of his footsteps had faded, Rarity slumped down against the door, exhaling a heavy sigh. She could do this, she assured herself. After all, apes are gullible, excrement-flinging creatures with hairtrigger tempers and poor hygiene. Not too different from your average Royal Guardsman, come to think of it. If she escaped the dimension with a suitcase or nine loaded with her more valuable jewellery, the Silver Spoon issue would have no choice but to solve itself sooner or later. And, once that was done, a whole new world of excitement would await.
“Yes indeed,” she said, standing, “I believe a celebratory cognac is in order. Or perhaps two. I deserve it, after all. Nobody but myself, Rarity Belle, fashionista extraordinaire, could devise such a cunning plan at a moment’s notice and thus I deserve an award. Yes, a cognac. And possibly a slice of red velvet to top off the night. Lovely. I’ll almost miss this place.”
With that, Rarity left the Carousel Boutique and headed to a nearby café, her mind more abuzz than a beehive with the intricacies of her plot – how to export a stipend of her businesses income across the portal, how to ensure her counterpart would never be found, how to keep Spike from humping her leg presuming he became that sort of dog; all murderously important matters. Most important of all though was the question that echoed in her skull through the night: Which outfits was she going to pack?
Meanwhile, Silver Spoon had stopped being bored and started being scared again. She had realized that Rarity wasn’t going to come back at all, let alone with a tabloid and a cup of Earl Grey. The filly hadn’t been left here to be dealt with later – she had been left here to die.
Against the gag, she screamed. Loudly. Repeatedly. Desperately.
But nobody of consequence was around to hear her scream.