.
Bridlewood was a small forest community of superstitious unicorns near the west coast of what was once known as the Kingdom of Equestria. In today's times, it was a small part of the unicorn's very own kingdom, strictly separated from the other two kingdoms that belonged to the pegasi and to the earth ponies. The earth pony kingdom was by far the biggest of them, reaching from the center of the continent all the way down to the southest tip of it, but Bridlewood was still nothing to sneeze at. What it lacked in size, it made up for in beauty. Soft-glowing, blue crystals and shades of orange and red in the trees shaped the scenery. But every unicorn knew that Bridlewood also had darker aspects, there was never much sunlight finding its way through the thick canopy of this forest and potential intruders were scared away with an appearance of menace and intimidation. A sinister place where scum roams and villainy is common-place, that's how Bridlewood looked like on the outside.
On this day, it was raining in Bridlewood. Drops as big as a filly's hoof came pouring down from the sky, even the ceiling of leaves was helpless against this weather, and water leaked through pretty much everywhere, turning the steep forest paths into muddy creeks. The puddles between the treehouses invited little unicorn foals to jump in and make a mess of themselves and their parents, but nopony wanted to be outside. The air was cold and everything was soggy.
Sunny Starscout didn't mind the rain, nor sitting inside. She had a book placed in front of her on the table, was reading in it and occasionally added notes to the scribbling that already filled the white pages. Her smile was content. Even when she was a young filly, it had never bothered her to spend entire days inside. She loved rollerskating in the sunlight, but also spending an afternoon with a good book or deep research about a subject that fascinated her. And Maretime Bay saw a typhoon at least once a year and there were also plenty of smaller storms in her coastal home, so Sunny was used to this. The mare at the other end of the table wasn't, though.
Izzy Moonbow had her chin planted on the wood of the table and looked ahead of herself into a void that only she seemed to see. Her lips pointed downwards and they looked almost sunken, her face was long and gave off the impression that it would melt down onto the table at any moment. Izzy's eyeballs didn't move, there was always the same, monotonous expression in them. Izzy hated having to stay inside during a rainy day. It numbed her cheerful, exuberant mood and the fact that she was able to sit still showed how serious the situation was for her. They were polar opposites, Sunny and her, and yet, in a lot of ways that only they understood, still the same.
“Sunnyyyyy?” Izzy began to talk after a perceived eternity, a long, drawn-out request for attention filled with endless boredom. “Can't we go out and kill something?”
Sunny took a moment to respond, reading to the end of a line and checking off the thought she just finished in her head. “You know it's raining, Izzy,” she spoke softly, her voice filled with patience, but also instructive.
Izzy didn't seem to hear her. “I know where all the animals hide, we could go and pull some out.”
The suggestion induced a reaction to Izzy's left. Two animals sat there – tall, white dogs – although, there was no way to be sure whether their fur was actually white or if it had been of a different color once. Both dogs were completely still, only one of them trembled ever so slightly, fur sticky with sweat. A grin was on his face, but not the happy kind, it was akin to the grin of a mare at a beauty contest when the price wasn't money or fame, but eternal and everlasting damnation. His eyes shifted abruptly at Izzy, terror growing in them, when the sentence left her lips.
The other dog wore a very similar grin, albeit twisted in a way that seemed impossible by all known anatomical rules, like a spit into mother nature's face. The muscles around his mouth did not twitch, despite the nervous and strained look his eyes were sending. There was a glossy shimmer on him, the light of the lamp in Izzy's house reflected off a transparent, smooth surface that covered his entire body and formed a hardened shell around it.
Sunny looked up. “It's muddy and sticky outside, Izzy. We'll only get cold if we go out and try to find animals and ponies now.” Next to Sunny stood a large paper cup with a lid and a straw on top, a colorful rainbow pattern winding around it in a downward spiral. “Besides, I have brought enough supplies with me.” She gave the cup a nudge with her left hoof. “We don't have to go hunting in the rain.” There was something warm in her voice, something that made Izzy feel wrapped up and cradled, like a mother who speaks to her foal.
“I like muddy and sticky,” Izzy mewled. Her lips turned into a pout and she gave Sunny a frowning look.
Sunny met the look with a smile, one that felt just as warm to Izzy as her voice did.
“Fine.....” Izzy rolled her eyes as a sign of her defeat and lifted her chin off the table. She reached into her curly, voluminous mane and pulled out a small stiletto knife with a short cross-section and a wooden handle that had black leather wrapped around it. With a frustrated, but skilled, move of her right hoof, Izzy flung her stiletto to the left and hit the trembling and sweating dog right in the forehead. His eyes broke as the blade got thrust deeply into his skull. Small trickles of blood emerged from the edges of the wound and charted thin lines into his fur. The eyes of the dog next to him bulged in their sockets and began to tremble as they witnessed the fate of his friend. Tears welled up in his eyes and ran down the plastic shell his face was sealed with. A low, fearful whimper was emitted by his mouth.
Izzy turned away from the corpse and the terrified dog, not bothering to retrieve her weapon, and eyed Sunny, who had gone back to her work, now. “What are you working on?” Izzy asked, eager to find something to pass the time until the rain stopped. She reached for her own rainbow cup and took a sip from the straw, while craning her neck to try and see what Sunny was writing.
“I'm planning a game,” Sunny responded, deeply concentrated, her lips curling up in anticipation.
“Uuuuuuuh!” Izzy's curiosity was piqued and she scooted closer. “What game are you planning? Let me look, let me look!” She pressed herself against Sunny, eyes drawn to the paper and trying to read what game it was that Sunny worked on.
Sunny gently pushed her away. “I can't write like this, Izzy.” She did not sound offended or annoyed.
“What game are you working on?” Izzy brought her face close to Sunny's, like she wanted to take a look into her soul, ignoring the soft rejection.
“It's a video game,” Sunny explained, scribbling some more. Then she put the pen away. “And I think I am done with my plans for it.”
“Can I look now?” Izzy pleaded. “Can I?” She kept staring at Sunny, avoiding to look at her notes and waiting for permission.
“Of course you can read them, Izzy!” Sunny's voice chimed. “I will even need your help playing the game.”
The impatience vanished from Izzy's face and her eyes started sparkling. A grin formed on her mouth. She was needed, that meant there was finally something to do. Not wasting another second, Izzy snatched Sunny's notebook and let her eyes fly over the elegant, narrow lines of Sunny's hoofwriting.
“Oh, we are going back to Maretime Bay!” Izzy rolled the R on her tongue for a bit when speaking the name of the town. “I haven't been there in weeks!”
“I haven't, either,” Sunny stated the obvious, Izzy's blissfully ignorant sentence making her feel she had to. She was not angry at her friend, though.
“Oh and we are also going to visit Zephyr Heights!” Izzy rejoiced. “We will see Phyllis, Pipp, Zipp and Queen Haven again! And somepony called Storm, I like that name, it sounds cooooool!” Izzy reached into her mane and put on green shutter glasses.
“Storm is the captain of the guards in Zephyr Heights. They are one of the reasons why I need your help for this game.” Sunny gently pulled her notebook back over. “Phyllis, Pipp, Zipp, Queen Haven, Storm and Alphabittle, they are all on my list.”
“It sounds like a fun game!” Izzy agreed. “But why do you want to kill them?”
“It's because their blood tastes especially good,” Sunny explained. “Better than the blood of any other ponies I ever took a sample from.”
Sunny had been twelve years old when she killed her first pony. It was at that time that her dad decided she was ready and that she had come far enough in her lessons. Three years and a few dozen victims later, blood of a murdered pony accidentally spilled onto Sunny's tongue and what she learned from that opened yet another whole new world for her. Now she was twenty years old and she knew that each pony tasted differently. But these six..... they were special.
For five years now, Sunny sampled the blood of ponies before she killed them and chose her next victims that way. She had started to fill up their blood and store it and to use it as an ingredient in her smoothies. A dash of blood and the smoothies she made became rich with flavours she could have never dreamt of before. It earned her mixes the reputation to be the best smoothies in Maretime Bay, but with the blood of these six ponies, she could reach new heights.
“Olive oil, gorgonzola, meringue, lotus seed paste, cumin, cinnamon.....” Sunny continued. There was a tinge of madness in her voice now. “Their blood will be my prize. If I can add it to my smoothies, I'll be known as the best smoothie mixer in my kingdom, maybe even in all of Equestria, and dad will be proud of me.” Her voice broke a little, but Sunny picked herself up again quickly. “This is a game, Izzy, and there are six bosses to kill. We'll have to fight ourselves through many levels to get to them and some of them will have minions, I could need a partner who can fry pony brains with a single horn zap. So, are you in?”
“I'm in!” Izzy shouted her answer immediately, not taking a split-second to think about the request.
“Perfect! Once the rain stops, we pack up and head back to Maretime Bay. That's where the game starts and we'll have to play through Stage 1 then. There won't be any more time to discuss the plan once we arrive, so we need to go over it now.”
Izzy nodded, once, and turned her full attention at the plan in Sunny's notebook.
Sunny put her hoof at the first name on her list. “First we go after Phyllis. She'll be in her office inside the Canterlogic Factory during most of the day. They stopped producing all that rascist junk, but the factory is still in business and Phyllis will be there to oversee the production of their new goods and to do the paperwork. She isn't a fighter, that's why I chose to begin with her, but I reckon that the weapons and defenses against pegasi and unicorns are still in the factory until she has found a purpose for them. Phyllis is in control of the entire factory, we don't know what she can unleash on us, so we have to sneak to her office and find a way inside before she notices us.” Sunny brought her hoof a little lower, to a bullet point below Phyllis' name. “Once I'm there, it will be easy. I have trained for the past three years to be fast and quiet enough to take her out before she can activate any secret mechanisms. The only challenge will be to get there without being seen or heard, but Phyllis is still the easiest of the bosses.”
“What about Alphabittle?” Izzy asked. She had brought her cup over at Sunny's side and took a sip from her smoothie now.
Sunny pointed at his name. “I don't know much about Alphabittle or how he might fight. But you know him, he will probably beg for his life and challenge me to a game.”
“That's Alphabittle,” Izzy confirmed, taking the straw out of her mouth. Her boredom had become blown away, she was fully immersed in the plan.
“I don't know what game he will choose and I hope it won't be a dancing game,” – Sunny grimaced – “but I'll try to strike a deadly blow when he is distracted.” She moved further down the list. “After that, we'll travel to Zephyr Heights. The unicorns live secluded, it we travel fast, the pegasi won't know what happened in Bridlewood before we get to their city.”
“That or we just kill the messenger on the way!” Izzy provided another solution, face full of cheer. “Maybe they even have a pet!” Her voice rose in expectation of this possibility.
Sunny nodded. “In any case, they won't suspect us when we get there. In Zephyr Heights, we will search for Pipp, Zipp and Queen Haven. They are royals, so they will be heavily guarded. The guards know us enough to let us in to them, but they will stay around and do their duty, once we got one of them, the palace will be on high alert and it will be much more difficult to kill the other two. Your horn zaps will be the most useful there.”
Izzy tapped her horn and some sparks flew from it.
“In the best case, I can kill Pipp first, she'll be the easiest, and then her older sister. Queen Haven will have the most guards around her, so it would be best to take her on as the last. At some point when the guards go after us, we should meet Storm, but I can't predict when that will be. And there is no way to know if everything will happen in that ideal order, so we need to be ready to improvise if it becomes necessary. We are going on a dangerous mission, Izzy, but together we have a good chance to win this game.” Sunny closed her notebook.
“You can always count on me!” Izzy assured her. She let more sparks fly from her horn. And then, as if her words were a cue for the weather gods, the rain stopped. It happened abruptly, in one second Sunny and Izzy still heard the torrential downpour hitting the roof, in the next there was an eerie silence.
They both turned around and Sunny looked in astonishment out of the window. “Look at this, Izzy! This could be a sign for us!” the earth pony mare triumphed like they had already won the game. And in some part of Sunny's mind, they maybe did.
“Time to play,” Izzy spoke with a smirk in her face that looked like it was located somewhere between heaven and hell. She trotted to the dead dog, who had now collapsed to the floor, and pulled her stiletto out of his head. A small fountain of blood came splurting from it and hit her hoof, to which Izzy did not react.
“Are you ready, Izzy?” Sunny joined her, a pair of bulging saddlebags draped over her back and straped around her middle.
Izzy's answer was a playful giggle as she wiped her stiletto off on the dog and hid it back inside her mane. The game was about to start.
.