Stormy was the one that met Twilight at the door when she arrived for her check up, and the resulting commotion attracted Fuyu's attention as she read on her bed. Once she arrived in the living room, she found the thief ducked behind the couch with her head poking out, while Twilight's right hand was lit up with raspberry colored magic.
“I found a burglar!” she said, glancing up at the woman in black as she walked over. “Quick! Tie her up!” The magic enveloped the nearest dangerous object, which was an empty bottle of the sparkling cider Stormy left on the coffee table. “Don't you dare move! I'll break this...” she fell silent as Fuyu sat down on the couch, looking around for the remote so she could watch the morning news. “Um, Fuyu? A little help with the thief, please?”
Her plea was ignored until the woman in black finally plucked the remote from between the couch cushions, turning the TV on. Only then did her blue eyes fall on a confused Twilight. “It's fine, put the bottle down.”
“This chick is nuts!” Stormy whined, suddenly raising her hands. “Look! I don't have a gun! Turn your magic off!”
“What do you mean it's fine?” Twilight asked, her eyes locked onto the thief. She whipped the bottle at her to get her to back up, but didn't launch it – yet. “Stand right there! I'm watching you!”
“I haven't moved a muscle, you lunatic!” she yelled back, hands still up in the air. Fuyu glanced between them and poked at the bottle, which rested in the air about two feet from her right cheek. “Do something before she knocks me out!” she added with a yelp, making an unhappy noise when Twilight threatened her with the bottle again.
“She's the one that warned Applejack. Let her be,” Fuyu said, a touch of grumpiness entering her tone as she watched the weather. It was due to rain again; to confirm that, she peered out the window and looked for the dawn. It hadn't yet come, despite it being a few minutes after seven. “Hmm...” Twilight and Stormy continued to jostle with each other at couch width until Fuyu grabbed the floating bottle and yanked on it, causing Twilight to wince faintly. “You are both getting on my nerves.”
“Okay, fine,” the librarian huffed, setting the bottle with a glassy clank on the wooden table. After a flash of thought, however, she snatched it back up and returned it to its ready position. “Wait, if she's the one that warned Applejack...that means she was the girl working with them! She's dangerous!”
“She isn't dangerous. She knows better than to test me,” Fuyu said lowly, shifting around as she realized she was sitting on the pistol. She drew it from her waistband and set it on the table.
“Why do you have a gun?!” Twilight gasped, stepping back with her hands over her mouth. “I thought the police took them all as evidence!”
“I brought her one!” Stormy's happy chirp turned into a frightened squeak as Twilight magically swung the bottle and tried to smash it over her head. “The fuck?!” she shrieked, diving behind the couch.
“I'm calling the police!” Twilight said as she backed away toward the kitchen, all the while staring at the couch as though it would turn into a raging dragon at any moment. With a sigh, Fuyu rose from her seat and walked past the librarian, beating her easily to the cordless handset and taking it away. “Fuyu, what are you doing?! She's dangerous! She probably has a shotgun under her skirt!”
“Are you stupid? I don't keep a piece there, ever!” Stormy yelled in protest, although she remained out of sight.
“No one calls me stupid,” Twilight growled, stalking back into the living room. Both hands were lit up with magic, and she glanced around for something substantial to beat the thief with that wasn't nailed down or too valuable. Fuyu moved ahead of her and stopped in her path, grabbing her wrists and holding them firmly. “Let me go! She's going to shoot us!” The grip got a little harder, and the magic flames vanished from her palms. “Y-you're hurting me...” she whimpered, trembling just hard enough for Fuyu to detect. She released the librarian and took one step away, folding her arms.
“It's fine. Please stop arguing with each other,” she said flatly, looking over as Stormy peeked above the back of the sofa. “She will behave, and she certainly won't shoot us.”
“Y-yeah, I'm being a good girl,” she said with rapid nods as she stood up all the way and put on her most pleasant face. “I'm on Fuyu's side! I swear!” She gulped at the look Twilight sent her way and clasped her hands pleadingly. “Honest! I'm trying to get out of this whole criminal life thing!”
“I don't believe a word of it, but fine. If you take even a napkin holder off the kitchen table, you'll answer to my magic and Applejack's fists, understand?” Twilight hissed, pointing a finger at Stormy and glaring as hatefully as she could manage.
“If I wanted to steal something, I'd have done it last night. I'd be fucking gone by now. Damn, why are you such a hardass?” Stormy said, exasperated to her limits as she moved around Twilight to sit on the couch.
“Four years in the Canterlot Academy will do that to you,” Twilight fumed, turning her back on Stormy and grumbling as she looked out the window.
“Boo hoo, poor little rich girl couldn't hack it at her fancy school,” Stormy countered, almost singing the words as she waved her hand around sarcastically. Twilight whirled and nearly lunged at the thief, but Fuyu immobilized her with the first genuinely angry look she'd ever seen on that pale face.
“Did you bring me anything to read?” she asked, her voice low and stern, as the librarian's stance softened.
“Yes, I just picked out a random lot and brought them along,” she replied, taking a seat in the end chair furthest from Stormy and eying her with bitter disdain. “I would have brought them in, but she answered the door and surprised me.”
Stormy shot her a middle finger while rolling her ochre eyes. “Oh, get over it.”
Twilight's hands balled up into fists, but she stilled her anger with a long, drawn out breath before continuing. “I didn't know what else you liked, so I kind of grabbed books off shelves as I was getting ready this morning.”
“That's fine,” Fuyu replied, watching as the story of her exploits yesterday appeared on the news. “Hmm.”
Twilight watched too, blinking with mild surprise. “They're still covering that?” As they looked on, the story turned to Mayor Mare's failure to provide the police with a budget sufficient to help patrol past the town limits. “Wow. Looks like you've gotten her in trouble, Fuyu.”
“I suppose.” Abruptly she rose from the couch and walked toward the door. “I am going to get the books.”
“Hold on, I'll unlock the car.” Twilight got up and daintily moved past Fuyu, leaning out the front door and pointing the fob at her vehicle. It emitted a happy beep, and the doors opened with a faint click. While Fuyu went to retrieve the books, the librarian peered at the pistol on the table, then at Stormy. “I'm still watching you.” She received another middle finger for her effort. “Ugh!”
Obscured by a large stack of books, Fuyu returned to the living room a few moments later, setting them on the table beside the gun and grabbing the one off the top. “Another Daring Do novel?” she asked, blinking as she turned the book over to look at the back cover.
“Oops, I think that one is Rainbow Dash's,” Twilight said, walking up and looking at it herself. “I'd better take it back before she thinks I stole it,” she added, giggling a little. When Stormy also chuckled, however, the librarian fired a nasty gaze at her.
“What?” the thief asked, hands raised a little. “It was funny!”
Twilight set the book down and slammed her hands onto her hips, looking for all the world like an angry schoolteacher. “No it wasn't! Stealing isn't funny!”
“Then why did you laugh?” Stormy countered, a wicked grin on her face as she crossed her arms.
“Ugh!” Twilight stalked away into the kitchen, muttering a series of colorful words under her breath.
Fuyu paid no attention to either of them, instead looking at the selection of text the librarian had brought for her. The next book on the stack was a cookbook, which caused her to frown slightly. She moved that one aside and discovered another Daring Do novel. While Stormy and Twilight fussed back and forth between rooms, she sat down and started reading it. As she turned the pages, she felt her brain being stretched again, but in a different way from when she laid eyes on How To Kill Without Joy. The text here invoked imagery, and there was dialogue to tickle at her mind as she tried to figure out what each character sounded like. Before long, she became acutely aware of how stilted and robotic her own speech seemed at times.
“I will throw this oven at you!”
Twilight's enraged words punched through Fuyu's concentration, and she set the book in her lap. When she turned her head to see what was happening, she saw Stormy pointing the pistol at the librarian, while raspberry flames surrounded Twilight's hands once more. Sighing, Fuyu slapped Stormy in the back of the head, which caused her to drop the gun, and took it away. “Stop it.”
“It's her fault!” Twilight protested, pointing a glowing finger. “Didn't you hear her call me all of those awful things?”
Stormy stuck her tongue out at the woman before countering her assertions. “Excuse me, but where I come from 'bookworm' is a compliment!”
Fuyu smacked the thief in the back of the head once more, but this strike was somewhat lighter. “Stop being ridiculous,” she warned, then looked over at Twilight. “And you, stop being so...” Fuyu frowned when she realized she didn't have a word for what she was doing, so she had to substitute one in. “...you.”
“I need to go anyway, Applejack wants me to find Winona and bring her back to the library,” Twilight grumbled, dismissing her magic and walking toward the front door. “She isn't going to like this.”
“Tell her I'm sorry! Really!” Stormy called. This time, Twilight was the one using the middle finger. “That's not very cool, man.”
“It will be fine,” Fuyu assured her coldly, taking up the novel again.
An uneventful day passed, but as the dim light of the cloud-choked sun began to die over the hills, Fuyu found herself with a problem. She walked down the stairs and into the smoky living room with a completely blank expression, trying to see through the haze. Once she found her way into the kitchen, she saw Stormy knelt down before the open oven, waving her hands and coughing.
“What happened?”
“I tried to bake,” Stormy replied, coughing so forcefully she could barely get the words out. “I failed.”
Wordlessly, Fuyu wandered past and opened the window over the sink. The fog was sucked out by the high wind outside, and she looked up and out at the threatening skies. Rumbles of thunder bounced around above, but no lightning reached the ground while she watched. After a moment she turned back to Stormy, who had shut the oven door in an attempt to quell the rolling tide of smoke. “Sometimes the oven does not work.”
“Coulda used that knowledge about an hour ago,” the thief muttered, shedding the apple decorated oven mitt onto the counter and departing for the living room. Fuyu followed her, and outside when she went through the front door. “You probably weren't even hungry, were you?” A flash of realization darted across her face and she quickly turned to the woman in black. “You're not hungry, are you? Pl-please don't eat me...”
“I am fine,” she replied, her gaze locked on the swirling tree branches. It was faintly brighter on this side of the house, but the broken cloud deck above was being swallowed by a ghastly gray beast of a thunderstorm. The air was still humid and thick, but the approaching tempest was sucking it up via the thrashing wind and cooling things off fast. “It's going to rain.”
“Really?” Stormy replied in perfect deadpan, arms crossed as she watched the gale beat the apples off the trees. “I hadn't noticed.” Just after she fell silent, the world flashed a pinkish white. An ocean of noise rolled in and crashed against the house, so loud that the thief dropped to her knees with her hands slammed over her ears. “Fuck!” she shrieked, hardly loud enough for Fuyu to hear over the retreating rumble.
“Let's go in,” she advised, not having moved a muscle during the entire affair. Stormy scrambled along after her as she went back to the living room, covering half the distance on her knees. Once she got to her feet, the forward momentum caused her to get tangled up in her long skirt. She fell through the doorway with a squeal, prompting Fuyu to go back and literally pick her up off the floor. She was dropped unceremoniously on the sofa while Fuyu went to check the condition of the oven.
“Ow,” she whined, rubbing at her shins. Another lightning strike rattled the house, causing her to squeak loudly and cover her head. “I hate the south! I wanna go home where it just snows!”
Fuyu shut the window and walked back into the living room, taking a detour to shut the waving front door. She then sat on the couch, looking at the evening news on the TV. “Tornadoes?”
“Fuck me running,” the thief wailed, hiding her face. “If the boss doesn't kill me, nature will!” She removed her hands and looked around. “Is there a basement here?” She frowned at Fuyu's shaking head. “And we're in a house on top of a damn hill. Great!”
A dull roar faded in over their heads as the rain began, and the occurrence of lightning grew much more frequent. While Stormy muttered fearfully about being done in by the weather, Fuyu continued to watch the weather coverage without uttering a peep. A particularly close strike rattled the house so hard that Stormy fell off the couch and rolled under the coffee table, screeching a series of obscenities that did not cease for almost ten minutes.
“Calm down,” Fuyu said flatly, leaning just enough to the side to look under the table.
“F-f-f-fuck you!” Stormy replied, stuttering badly. She soon realized she was wedged under the heavy table and began to grumble. “Uh...I'm stuck.” Fuyu stood and lifted one end of it, allowing the thief to roll out and bump against the couch with a light grunt. “Thanks. Damn, you're strong.”
“That's what everyone tells me,” she replied blankly, sitting and watching the TV once more. Stormy fell quiet, content to huddle in the opposite corner of the sofa, shaking and hugging her legs. It continued to grow darker outside as the rain poured, and within an hour it was truly night. The house shuddered and creaked with every assault of wind, and Fuyu had to raise the volume of the TV to hear it.
“I'm genuinely scared now,” Stormy squeaked, eyes darting around at every noise she heard. Abruptly, she burst into terrified laughter. “A girl named Stormy afraid of storms! Ha!” Another bolt of lightning came, and she yelled unhappily over the thunder. “I wanna go home!”
Then the lights went out, and the thief screamed again.
“Damn it damn it damn it damn it,” she repeated, spitting out the words. Fuyu could barely hear her fumbling in her clothing for something, and a few seconds later a flame appeared in her hand. She held a silvertone cigarette lighter, and the orange plume cast a weak glow on her face as she moved it closer. “H-hey, use th-this and go f-find a flashlight or a candle, or s-s-something,” she begged, moving it over toward Fuyu. She took it and stood, going upstairs to her room where she'd kept one of the flashlights from the night before. As she pulled it out of the drawer of the nightstand, she glanced at the window and saw a glow that was not lightning. When she reached the window, she found a car pulled up out front, its headlights shining through the deluge onto the barn. Another burst of pinkish light revealed that it was a svelte black sedan. Bristling, Fuyu rapidly moved away from the window and reached under her tank top to draw the gun. She snuffed out Stormy's lighter and left the flashlight behind as she crept down the hall, stopping at the top of the stairs to peer down into the patchy darkness. She saw the front door swing open and four trenchcoat wearing shadows enter, and a moment later Stormy was beginning to shriek with fear. The thief was soon lit up with beams of light. A woman with intensely blue hair and green eyes was the easiest for Fuyu to see; she had Stormy by the collar of her t-shirt, holding her in a half-standing position over the couch with a gun to her forehead.
“H-hey Candy,” the thief greeted weakly, hands high over her head. “H-how's it g-g-going?”
“I've no time for your small talk,” Candy replied, her voice saturated with hate. “I want the bitch that killed Connie!”
“I bet! Aha...ah...hadn't you two just started dati—ow!” she yelped as Candy jammed the gun into her skull. “She's here! She went upstairs!”
The beams swept to the stairway and lit up the woman in black. Braced against a bolt of lightning, she could see Candy drop Stormy, and her three partners all raise their weapons in her direction. Candy still held the thief at gunpoint, but her flashlight was also directed at Fuyu.
“Drop the gun and get your ass down here!” she ordered, wrapping her finger around the trigger, “Or else!”
Fuyu did the first, releasing the pistol and sending it clattering down the steps. She did not do the next. Before Stormy could start begging for her life and Candy could end it, however, she threw herself off the staircase and slammed into the blue-haired criminal, landing on top of her. The force sent them both across the coffee table, and they tumbled to the floor on the other side with Fuyu still on top. Candy's help barely had time to look, much less react, and by the time they turned she was emptying her clip into Fuyu's torso.
“Heh, that's what you get for trying to be a hero,” she snarled, her words shaky with adrenaline. A second went by before she realized the body had not fallen onto her, and she glanced from side to side at the pale arms still holding the woman in black upright. “Wh-what the...”
Her partners opened fire next, and Stormy dove onto the floor as their bullets flew over the sofa. Like a big cat, Fuyu darted around the room, whipping out flexible lengths of the black sludge as she flashed in a curvy path around an end chair and back toward the stairway. When she reached them, they were trying desperately to reload, and she laid into them with living swords of ebony. The other woman in the group had her head lopped off; Fuyu grabbed it with a black tentacle and threw it at the nearest man as he fumbled with his gun. It bounced off his face, and she ducked under it to stab him in the throat after she closed the distance. The last man actually managed to reload his weapon, but Fuyu used his bulky partner as a shield, walking the dying man along in front of her as he screamed and fired uselessly into him. When she heard the hollow clicks, she dropped the corpse and lanced him through the right eye with a spike of black, sending him to the floor shortly after.
“She's running!”
Stormy's words caused Fuyu to turn, just in time to see Candy disappearing out the front door. Fuyu gave chase, ignoring the sensation of the black and bloody ooze as it ran down her torso and soaked into her jeans. They emerged into the teeth of the storm. She could hardly see through the rain, relying on the frequent lightning to provide glimpses of the blue-haired woman as she clumsily ran down the muddy path. It took her a minute to realize that a small glow was coming from her hand as she went, and a minute more to realize why it seemed so familiar.
It pressed itself to her ear. She was calling for help.
Fuyu needed to move faster than even her powerful legs could carry her. She began to launch black ropes with hooked ends out ahead, anchoring them into the ground and retracting them quickly back into herself. The effect was like a grappling hook, and she began to shoot over the ground until the point when the angle of the ebony lengths was too steep to permit her to keep recalling them without pulling the hook free. Finally, she used both ropes at once and flung herself at Candy, getting just close enough to launch a sludge snake that tripped her and caused her to drop. As Fuyu got to her feet and ran to her while she lay on the ground, she picked up the final line of her conversation.
“Don, help! She's a monster! She's a--”
It was ended with a midnight blade to the neck, which Fuyu slashed across and withdrew, stepping away from the squirts of blood. She watched Candy lie there and gurgle uselessly for a while, then had the notion to pick up her phone. It was still making noise as she held it to her ear.
“We are not far behind you,” said an older man whose words were laced with an accent she had never heard before. “Candy? Can you hear me? We are coming!”
Grumbling, Fuyu flicked the black phone away and began stalking up the path, wincing slightly with every step. She paused and turned back around, looking at Candy's corpse in the muddy path. She went back over to it and picked it up, carrying it over her shoulder. “I had better eat while I can,” she muttered, blinking as the rain became something colder and harder. It was hailing, and the ice drew tiny pricks of pain as it slammed into her bare arms and face. She ran up the path, grimacing at the dull thud of pain in her abdomen as she went. She finally reached the safety of the front porch, dumped Candy's body on the wooden boards and started stripping her of her clothing. She had just bitten into the skull when Stormy came outside.
“Fuck!” she yelped, slamming into the door frame as she tried to turn and go back in. Helpless, she sank to her knees and began to cry. “I thought you weren't hungry?”
“I will not pass up a free meal,” she replied with a mouthful of brain, swallowing it so the sludge could use it as precious fuel. It was already hard at work, pulsing through her veins and causing her torso to throb as it surrounded the wounds and began to rebuild the damaged tissues. As she ate, a bullet popped out of her stomach and got trapped against the fabric of her tank top, causing her to itch. She reached under it and pulled it free, tossing it away as she hacked off Candy's left arm. Stormy was too horrified to return indoors, but her weeping was only background noise for the raging, flashing symphony that engulfed the orchard. By the time she was done, only the bloody clothes of the thief remained. Fuyu sat back on her calves and belched loudly, expelling a long cloud of red mist. “The bullets are heavier than I am used to,” she admitted out loud, picking up the one that she had secreted and tumbling it in her fingers. She threw it aside again and looked at the clothes; upon realizing she still had Stormy's lighter, she went about burning them, walking out into the intermittent hail and retrieving a metal bucket from the barn she could use to hold them. When they were ash, she dumped the bucket off the porch and let the storm do the rest.
“What have I gotten myself into,” Stormy cried as Fuyu walked past her into the dark house. Not knowing what else to do, she rose and followed the woman, sniffling and rubbing her nose as she went. “Seriously, what the fuck are you?!”
“I am something else,” she replied, harkening back to the words Applejack had left just before she departed with Twilight yesterday. She placed a hand over her aching stomach and smiled faintly, enjoying the sensation of the black goo at work. That smile disappeared when she remembered that their problem was not yet over. “More are coming. I heard an older man with a strange accent on Candy's phone say so.”
“Oh shit, that's him! That's the boss,” Stormy said, pacing around the coffee table and trying to ignore the bodies piled behind the sofa. “He hardly ever handles business himself. Then again, you did kill his son...”
“Do they all have guns like this?” Fuyu interrupted her, pulling another bullet from under her tank top. She handed it to the thief, who held it for only a second.
“.45 cailber? Probably. He's got a bunch of guys and girls he uses as a bodyguard. They all get bigger guns than the rest of us.” Stormy's voice grew more even as she spoke, and after she went silent she fell on the sofa again and let out a long sigh. The thief had finally run out of fear. “Did that actually hurt? Getting shot, I mean.”
“It does, and doesn't,” Fuyu replied, rubbing her belly slightly. “It's dull. It probably doesn't hurt me the same way it would you.”
“No fucking kidding,” Stormy laughed, squeaking reflexively as more thunder rolled past. They became quiet and listened to the storm while Fuyu healed and Stormy contemplated the encroaching end of her existence. After an immeasurable while, Fuyu stood and went behind the couch, snatching a flashlight off the floor to shine up at the apple-shaped wall clock. It was just after eleven. After she turned the beam off, she realized it was less noisy than it had been just a few moments before, and walked back to look out the nearest window. The lightning was still frequent, but the rain had almost ceased. The wind, too, was still, and an uneasy feeling hung in the air.
“Is it over?” she asked, turning back to Stormy.
“I dunno,” she shrugged, rising from the couch and also walking over. “I heard from Ruby one time that if it just stops raining, a tornado is coming.” She gulped hard after those words, peering outside and straining her eyes. “It's not even windy anymore! Something's wrong...”
They walked out onto the porch, where the only noise left to greet them was the gentle rustling of branches. The bolts of lightning were becoming fewer and farther between, and with the longer periods of darkness, Fuyu could look toward where the dull glow of Ponyville's lights would be. She saw nothing; they too were in the dark.
“Why is it so cold now?” Stormy whined, hugging herself and rubbing her forearms. Drizzle occasionally blew in, sprinkling them with chilly mist. The air was crisp and fresh, nothing like the humid soup that had swamped the orchard earlier. As they glanced around, even the gentle breeze died. “Uh...I don't think I like this,” she added, backing toward the doorway.
Before Fuyu could reply, her eyes detected light that should not have been there, weaving and dancing through the battered limbs of far away trees. The first one she saw was followed by another, then another, until ten dusky yellow glows seemed to be weaving their way through the hills. They grew brighter, and it didn't take long for Stormy to point out the obvious.
“That must be him,” she said wearily, her tone implying that she was almost happy for the fact. “It was nice knowing you, believe or not. Thanks for sparing me and all that, even if I'm about to get bullet-fucked by half of the Manehattan Mob.”
“Get the shotgun from the mantle and go upstairs,” Fuyu ordered her, walking to the top of the front steps. Just as she arrived, a fierce gust whipped the trees into a swaying frenzy.
“What are you gonna do?” Stormy asked, knowing full well the answer but still unable to believe it. “Are you serious? You're just gonna...”
“Do what I told you to do!” Fuyu yelled, and not entirely because another round of thunder swept over the countryside. Stormy squeaked her obedience and turned, unsteadily wobbling through the doorway. “And thank you for the food.”
The thief heard those extra words and stopped, looking back and staring for a long while at her. “Y-yeah. I...uh...good luck, Fuyu. You really are something else.” With those words she was gone, and Fuyu heard her retrieving the shotgun and running up the stairs through the open door.
“Something else,” she repeated lowly, opening her hands. Black blades slid out from her flesh, edged on both sides and as long as daggers. By now, the glows had become clearly defined headlights, wandering through the trees in a convoy of vehicles as they peeked out at intervals from behind the hills. Fuyu walked down the steps and onto the slippery grass.
The wind began to howl again as the woman in black trudged down the muddy path, moving to meet the enemy.