"It's not that complicated, no matter what they'll say. I'll never meet another you."
Autoheart, "Stalker's Tango"
Good job, Fluttershy. You are a model of control, a paragon of restraint. People for thousands of years will praise you for how good you are at controlling the absolute basest of instincts.
A few tables down, Sunset Shimmer laughed at something Vinyl said. Rarity put in a comment that Fluttershy couldn't pick up with all the noise at the coffee shop, and Octavia replied.
Good for you, not stalking Sunset Shimmer, Fluttershy told herself with a sigh. What about Sunset's blood had triggered this? This obsession. She needed to stop this. She couldn't hurt Sunset. She wouldn't let herself.
Fluttershy sighed, sipping a coffee drink that she could hardly taste. Not that she particularly liked Starbucks at the best of times, but her hampered taste was more of a shadow of a larger problem.
The fact that she wanted to rip open Sunset's throat and drink her blood...
She forced her thoughts away from that. Sunset and her friends seemed to be getting ready to leave. Fluttershy took a long sip of her coffee. She would stay here and finish her drink. Sunset would go away, and Fluttershy wouldn't leave early. She would let Sunset go about her day while handling her own problems. That was absolutely what would happen.
Totally.
Sunset spared half a glance over her shoulder as they entered the mall. As should have been expected, Fluttershy had stayed in the Starbucks while Sunset and Rarity loaded into the latter's car. Obviously, Fluttershy wouldn't be able to follow them in a car. But, also obviously, Fluttershy was not following her.
You know that she was watching you, Sunset thought to herself. But why? What reason would Fluttershy have for--
"SUNSET!" a familiarly hyper-active voice shouted. Sunset barely braced herself in time for a supersonic hug from Pinkie Pie. "It's so crazy running into you here, right? What are the odds?"
"Uh, pretty high," Sunset said with a smile, "given that you new I was coming here."
Pinkie gasped loudly and theatrically. "Oh, my, gosh, how? AM I PSYCHIC?"
Sunset rolled her eyes, but in doing so saw Rarity give her friend a disapproving look. The other girls normally shrugged off Pinkie's antics, which Sunset had learned to do as well with but a single incident because of it.
But something was obviously making her friends act differently, between this and Fluttershy's odd behavior. What could it be...
"Anyway, here! I got you something!" She pulled out a card covered in glitter. Sunset took it slowly, and Pinkie jumped into her shopping cart, screaming, "ADVENTURE!"
The cart rolled away, crashing into Rainbow Dash's, causing both girls to end up in a heap.
Sunset opened the pink, glittery card. Inside was a picture of a cake and, written in something white and gooey stuck onto the card, "I LOVE YOU". Beneath it, clearly added with a pen afterwards, "In a purely platonic way".
"Well then," Rarity said with an awkward chuckle. "Pinkamena certainly keeps us on our toes, hmm?"
Sunset eyed Rarity with suspicion. "She sure does," she said slowly, closing the card and stowing it in her purse. As she turned around, she caught sight of Fluttershy, perusing a clothing store advertising punk outfits that Fluttershy certainly wasn't actually interested in.
Sunset suppressed a groan. Do you girls have me on a fucking SUICIDE WATCH? She should have expected something like that sooner, probably. Especially with how down she'd been in recent times.
It was endearing that they'd go through all this trouble because they were worried about her, but she had to admit, it was annoying, and thoroughly misguided. "Um, Rarity, you know I'm okay, right?"
"No, you're amazing, darling!" Rarity said, seemingly completely ignoring what Sunset really meant. "Just think about what you've done!"
"...Interdimensional treason?" Sunset said. "I mean, I get that it is impressive that I almost pulled it off, but--"
"No, no, no, no!" Rarity said hurriedly, shaking her head with wild eyes. "What I mean is that after all of that, you changed yourself so completely! How many other people have managed to do that?"
"I mean, quite a few," Sunset pointed out. "Considering it's a major part of how Princess Twilight was crowned."
"But, uh, it-it doesn't make it any less impressive," Rarity stuttering, clearly floundering.
Sunset laughed, then decided to stop messing with her friend. "Yeah, I suppose that's right." She would tease them about this later, but for now, she did still have shopping to do.
Fluttershy sat down that night in her room with a sigh, then opened the shopping bag. It was full of punk-style outfits, several of which were horribly revealing. Some of the vampires chose to go the full 'super sexy undead' theme, but she had never liked it.
Neither had her mentor, and had had several foul words to say about such people.
Fluttershy would have never taken them, except she had to look like she was actually shopping. She threw the bag onto her bed, letting out a growl. She was certain her eyes were quite red right now, but she didn't really care.
Well, there's probably something in that bag I could wear without looking like a whore, she thought.
A minute later, she left out into the town, dressed in a black leather jacket and a tight blue jeans.
She paused to examine her reflection in a shop window. It...didn't look too bad, all things considered.
She shook her head. Whatever. Whatever he'd say is irrelevant, as he's long dead. Permanently dead, and not...whatever vampires were.
Fluttershy sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. She took a few steps to the side, looking up at the nearby wall. Someone had graffiti-ed...expertly done...art...?
She blinked in surprise. It was an exquisite masterpiece, spray painted with tender care onto the wall, right next to the shop advertising a charity event. It smelled fresh, so she knew that it wasn't commissioned at the dead of night, yet she almost felt like even if they'd been caught, the artist wouldn't have had charges pressed. And thinking about it...
Beyond the chemical smell of spray paints, Fluttershy caught Sunset Shimmer's scent. What was Sunset doing out here at night, anyway? And if she was right, then Sunset was heading...
Into the woods?
"You want to hunt her, don't you?" a voice whispered.
Fluttershy jumped. Her reflection had been joined by a man with gray skin and night black hair. A red cloak fluttered to the ground, trimmed with white fur, and he wore armor that looked more aesthetic than practical. And to finish it all, two red eyes stared at her from pools of green.
"And now I'm hallucinating my dead mentor," she groaned aloud. "Just what I need."
"Yes, quite right. I am exactly what you need," the figment said. It was eerie--he spoke just like she remembered him. "Just as you need to food, Fluttershy."
Fluttershy extended her wings, two massive, leathery bat wings, eyes flaring bright red as she stared down Sombra. "You listen here," she snarled. "I will not attack her. You will not bait me into going after her."
The hallucination laughed. "You'll do it yourself. Control for one night is good. Any vampire should be able to do that. But what about five? Or more? How long will a starving vampire last?"
Sunset ignored the piercing jab, then flew up into the air. She followed Sunset's trail, going deep into the woods.
Please be alright... Fluttershy descended as she neared where Sunset Shimmer was, then crept through the trees. Worst come to worst, she knew how high the cliff Sunset was at was. She could catch her before she hit the ground.
Fluttershy pulled to an abrupt stop. Sunset was setting up a picnic blanket, pulling some of the food she'd bought just earlier today at the store. Fluttershy blinked, seeing her set up a candle before sitting down. Sunset pulled out a small photo frame, and thanks to her vampire sight, Fluttershy caught the photo of two unicorns, both yellow. The clearly younger one had a yellow and red mane that was much like Sunset's current hairstyle, and the older one had a red mane in a different style. Both were...smiling? Horses in her world couldn't do facial expressions like that.
"Hey, Mom," Sunset said quietly. "The years go by quickly, huh?"
Fluttershy stilled, feeling a pang in her heart. You poor thing...
"It's just great that this time, I can say I really got what I wanted. Well, not what I wanted last year, but...what I didn't know I wanted. It's...slow going, I know. But I'm making friends. You'd be happy with that, right? You always said I should focus on making friends as well as studies, and...I was kinda dumb back then, huh? For someone so smart, especially. I wonder if Princess Celestia ever thought of me like you probably did. Someone with great potential inside her, but...so unwilling to ever try and tap into it. Dismissing what you both saw as great as unimportant. Not worth my time." She gave a sad chuckle. "I have so may friends now. Or, rather, a lot compared to the big fat 'zero' I used to. Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack...Fluttershy." A slight pause, then a smile over her shoulder. She slid her sandwich behind her, discreetly out of her sight.
She...saw me? When? Did she see me flying? Probably not, right?
"They've all been a little worried about me the past day or so. I suppose...I was feeling blue because of us talking tonight, but I think they got the wrong idea in their heads." She laughed quietly.
Fluttershy accepted the sandwich, then snuck back into the woods. She flew through the air, leaving Sunset what privacy she had left.
Fluttershy found a nice spot by a river, sitting down on a fallen tree. She looked down at the sandwich.
"You must feel so proud of yourself," Sombra hissed from her side.
She shoved her hand through the hunger-induced hallucination, watching as it dissipated. Then she took a bite of the sandwich.
I guess I'll tell them that Sunset's okay tomorrow, she thought. Doing so tonight would be impractical. Instead, she stared out over the river, listening to the sounds of the water running past, and thought of her parents.
Sunset strode up the steps into the school, feeling a certain lightness in her heart. Perhaps it was the weather.
Perhaps it was being done with her yearly conversation with her mother. All these years and there was still that dull ache in her heart whenever that date rolled around. She wondered if it would go on like that forever. Maybe she could ask someone? No, none of her friends were that old, anyway.
Her friends were all chatting quietly, and only Fluttershy noticed her coming closer. This called for fun.
"Hey, guys," she said, having stepped really close.
A series of shrieks and cries echoed that hurt her head and almost made her regret her choice. But not quite.
"Hey, sugarcube," Applejack said, recovering first. "Um, ah'd like to apologize. We might have--well, I might have jumped to a conclusion and the rest of 'em followed me."
"Don't worry about it. Once I got over the slight annoyance of it, I found it rather endearing," Sunset said. "Besides, it was almost funny to see you all in the mall trying to be sneaky. Everyone but Applejack, anyway."
"For the last time, I was just doing shopping!' Rainbow Dash said. "Rarity said she was going to keep an eye on you, so I just went to shop. I forgot when and where you guys were gonna be."
"I wasn't mad at you, darling," Rarity said, "But Pinkamena's antics were entirely out of place."
"Actually, I didn't even question Pinkie," Sunset commented. "But I saw you get mad at her for it, then she ran into Rainbow Dash, and I saw that Fluttershy had followed us from the Starbucks..."
There was a stunned silence. "Fluttershy? Starbucks?" Rainbow Dash guffawed. "I don't get it."
"She wasn't in the Starbucks..." Rarity said, pausing slowly. "I would have seen her."
"She's gotten pretty sneaky as of late," Applejack said with a chuckle. "Made Sunset jump twice the other day. Woulda made me jump if I hadn't known Pinkie Pie as long as I have."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Pinkie demanded.
"It means you're as jumpy as a junebug, and often just suddenly appear next to someone," Applejack said, still smiling at her friend who hadn't been next to her a second ago.
Fluttershy herself said nothing, simply watching her friends with a deadpan poker face staring out at them. Or rather, all of them but Sunset.
You're just being paranoid, Sunset told herself. Fluttershy's not watching me or anything, she was just concerned. Like the rest of them were.
You couldn't survive suddenly moving to the human world if you couldn't pick up on little details. A large part of her brain was screaming at her like it had been almost the entirety of yesterday. Something was wrong.
She needed to find out what. I need to talk to someone who knows her really well, to see if she's not acting normally.
Luckily, I have the perfect idea already.