The fire in the center of the room was sweltering, and provided the only source of illumination. The walls were stacked with torture equipment and mysterious jars of pickled body parts that glinted in the flickering light. This was the back room at Sir Win’s place.
The demon himself hummed cheerfully as Guinness and I stood near the door, sweating. Rainbow Catcher lay in a baby basket on the floor. She looked around at the fire and the things Sir Win was preparing. Her evil, slitted pupils turned to Guinness and her deep voice demanded, “Father, what is going on here?”
“Just, um, a little checkup,” said Guinness.
The filly looked at Sir Win and then back to her dad. “He doesn’t look like a doctor.”
“He’s a specialist,” I put in.
Sir Win winked. “I’m special, all right.” He bent down to the basket, smiling cheerfully. “Hello there, dear. How are you feeling today?”
“Bloodlust is what I’m feeling,” Rainbow Catcher told him.
Sir Win nodded. “That’s perfectly normal for a young evil being like yourself.”
“I am older than the heavens and the soil of this miserable planet! This is not the first form that I have taken nor the first population of innocents that I have come to live among. And just like the hundreds of civilizations I have crushed before, you all will die begging for your lives under my reign!” She shook her tiny hoof at us.
“Well, that’s nice,” said Sir Win. “It’s good to have goals. In fact, I have a short term one for you. Don’t die.”
He picked up the basket and chucked it into the fire. The wicker and blanket burned away, leaving the little foal lying on the coals and giving us an unkind expression.
Guinness had started forward reflexively. Sir Win reached into the fire and picked the foal up, brushing the ashes off her. He gave her back to her father, who settled the filly on his back.
“Well Mr. Guinness, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the exorcism didn’t work.”
“Is that what you were doing?” Guinness asked.
Sir Win nodded. “It’s pretty simple. If she doesn’t burn, she’s not exorcised.”
Before Guinness could properly process that, Sir Win went on. “The reason it didn’t work is because there’s no soul in there. I take this to mean that our little abomination filled that vacancy while the foal’s body was still developing in the womb. If the evil being didn’t invade and hold the body hostage, then we can’t remove it because the body belongs to it.”
“So no soul? Exorcisms won’t work, ever?” I asked.
Sir Win nodded.
“What’s the good news?” Guinness mumbled.
Sir Win put on a huge grin. “Your baby’s fireproof.”
Guinness and I walked back through town. The sun was just coming up. I don’t know why Sir Win wanted to work so early in the morning. He was a busy demon, I guess.
Rainbow Catcher rode on her father’s back. She stood with her forelegs on his neck, lifting her head up high to look around. She pointed at Sugarcube Corner, which was just opening for the day. “Father! Buy me cupcakes!”
“Please don’t shout in my ear,” Guinness muttered. “Also, I guess I’m not really your father, am I?”
“Regardless, you are stuck with me!” Rainbow Catcher cackled evilly.
Guinness shot me a pleading look. I shrugged. I told him not to knock up a pony. Granted, nobody could have expected that the baby would be born with ancient evil where the soul was supposed to go.
“So when are you, Trixie, and I getting together for another band practice?” Guinness asked, attempting to distract himself. “Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. I know one of your exes taught you to play the guitar, but why have you been practicing so much since coming back from space?”
“I need to get better,” I said.
“Well okay, but what’s the need?”
I looked at him. “At some point in the future, you’ll be damn glad that I’m a rockstar.”
Guinness let the subject drop. We parted ways, him going to his pub, The Half Pint, and me going to the library.
I walked into the building. Sunset was there on the couch. She was laid out on her back and was absolutely stark naked.
I didn’t give her a second glance. I mean, ponies are usually naked and stuff.
She jerked awake as I closed the door. I raised an eyebrow. “Did I wake you up or something?”
She nodded.
“What are you doing on my couch?”
Sunset quickly scrambled off it. “I, um…just a nap,” she mumbled.
“This early in the morning?” I questioned.
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“I told you that tequila will fix that problem.” Although it might leave a bigger one the morning after.
“Maybe,” she said.
I walked by her to where my stuff was. I went back to working on the extendo boxing glove. If figured if it was going to be ridiculous and cartoony, it might as well have the whole package. I was getting it tuned so it would make a nice spring noise when used.
I heard a bell ringing. Opening a window, I saw Pinkie exit Sugarcube Corner.
“It’s the Sweet Apple Acres alert bell!” she exclaimed. “Come on!”
I shrugged and left the library, following her towards the orchard. As we went, I observed her mane doing unusual things. It seemed sort of prehensile. It looked like she had learned something from the Mane-iac, too.
On the way out of town, we passed by a group of six ponies. They were all mares; two unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth ponies. They looked kind of familiar, but I didn’t pay them much attention. Pinkie didn’t react like they were new in town, so I figured I had probably seen them before.
Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash were there when we showed up. Applejack let go of the bell pull cord. “Attention! This is a Sweet Apple Acres code red! Vampire fruit bats are attackin’ the trees!”
Vampire bats pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. It sucked.
Then, someone made the mistake of asking me what I thought.
I looked at all of them. “Why should I be the one to make the decision on what to do about the bats?”
“Because Twilight ain’t here,” Applejack said. “And you seem like somepony who would be good at pest control.”
I pictured myself driving a van with Valiant’s Bug Vanquishers on the side. I shook my head. “While I’m against animal cruelty, I think the bats need to go and stop destroying your apples. Unfortunately, we have a bit of an impasse, because in this case it’s hard to have one without the other. Jeeze, when did such a moral dilemma like this come up? Usually things around here are so black and white.”
“Why don’t we just get Twilight from Canterlot and let her make the tough choices for us?” said Pinkie.
There was a general chorus of agreement. Serves her right for being a Princess.
When Twilight showed up, it was pretty much the middle of the night. The rest of us had been chasing around the bats all day and just wanted things to be done with.
Twilight said, “All right, I’ve got a spell here that will get the bats to stop eating apples. We just need them to stay in one place.”
After a little cajoling, we got Fluttershy to use The Stare on the bats. Twilight finished the spell, the bats stopped eating apples, and we all went home for the night.
In the morning, I woke up on the couch like usual. Not like usual, Sunset was draped over me on the couch.
I dumped her on the floor. “What the hell?”
She moaned and rubbed her forehead. “Ugh…what happened?”
“I think you’re hungover. Why did you pass out on top of me?”
“I don’t remember.” Her eyes had opened a crack, squinting in the morning sunlight.
I shook my head. “Well, I remember going to sleep all alone. Lucky for both of us, nothing questionable happened.”
Her eyes widened, but then scrunched again as the light hurt. “I’m sorry.”
“If you drank all my tequila, you will be.” I headed to the kitchen to check. Sure enough, the bottle was empty. I would have to go get more agave and make up another batch.
A patch of blue agave plants had been planted near Fluttershy’s house during my space absence. I headed there to gather some.
On my way out of town, I passed by the same group of six mares I had noticed the other day. There was the pink pegasus with the yellow mane, the pink-on-pink earth pony, the double purple unicorn, the yellow earth pony with an orange mane covered by a top hat, the multicolored pegasus with a blue mane, and the indigo unicorn with a white mane.
Once again, I thought they looked familiar. Hmm.
There was an unusual noise coming from inside Fluttershy’s house when I passed by. I paused to listen. Whatever it was, it sounded feral. That was kind of unusual, considering Fluttershy usually took good care of her animals. Speaking of, where was she? It’s not like Fluttershy had anywhere to go.
I walked up to the door and opened it. Fluttershy was in the center of the living room, standing among a pile of debris from things she had wrecked. Her wings were skin instead of feathers and had gained pointy edges. Her ears were big, her eyes were red, and her teeth were long.
Also, she burst into flames as soon as the sunlight from the open door struck her.
“Well shit,” I said.
I stepped in and closed the door, locking myself in a house with some sort of strange animalistic amalgamation of a pony. As soon as Fluttershy stopped burning, she leaped at me, flakes of black skin and hair scattering.
I turned around and slapped her in the face with my tail. It didn’t really hurt her, but certainly put her off her game. Tail whip lowers defense, you know.
As she was shaking her head and trying to regain her bearings, I calmly put her in a headlock. Her crispy skin seemed to cause pain, and I eased off the pressure to just enough to hold her. Fluttershy hissed.
“Well, that’s not very ladylike.” I pulled her across the room to a conveniently large cage and stuffed her inside. I pulled a sheet from her bed to cover the cage and then took it outside.
It was kind of heavy carrying Fluttershy and the cage, but I managed. I grumbled to myself as I made my way back to town and bought a train ticket. I saw five of the six sort-of-familiar mares again. The pink and yellow pegasus wasn’t with them now.
“What’s in the cage?” asked the train pony as I was getting my ticket.
“None of your business.”
“Sorry, but if you don’t tell me what it is, I can’t let it aboard.”
“It’s both a fire hazard and a big-sharp-teeth hazard.”
He nodded. “Oh, put it with the animals in the baggage car then.”
That seemed fair to me. I left Fluttershy there and went to go sit in the passenger car.
Have I complained before that the trains had gotten worse in my absence? Yes, I have.
We eventually arrived in Canterlot and I carried Fluttershy, still in the covered cage, up to the palace. The guards didn’t give me any trouble. A few of them whispered as I walked by. Good. Putting a little fear in people means you have to deal with them less.
I went to the library, put the cage down in front of Twilight, and pulled the cover off. Fluttershy was still mutated and still crispy. She hissed.
“What, you don’t even knock on the door before showing me this?” Twilight shrieked. “You don’t even stop to say hello or explain what you’re doing here?”
I looked at Twilight and pointed at Fluttershy. “Fix this. You broke it.”
Twilight calmed slightly and leaned forward, but not close to the cage. “Well…it looks like she turned into a vampire bat pony.”
“Obviously not a vampire,” I said. “Not even vampires burn in sunlight like this.”
“No, not a vampire pony, a vampire bat pony,” Twilight repeated. “Hmm, I guess this must have been caused while I was using my spell last night and Fluttershy was using her Stare. Well, let’s get this put right.”
She did some magic and Fluttershy reverted. However, she was still badly burned.
I opened the cage door and lifted her out. “This isn’t good.”
“I can’t figure out why she burned!” Twilight said. “The bats don’t burn in sunlight.”
“I’m going to chalk it up to your magic,” I said. “Alicorns do the sun thing, right?”
“I’m not the Princess of the Sun.”
“Neither is Luna, but she can move it. Could you move the sun if you had to?”
“Well…maybe, I guess.”
“Good enough for me.” I glanced at Fluttershy. “Hey, she looks back to normal except she's still got sharp teeth.”
“Oh really? I'll fix that, too. This clearly is a complicated problem and while she recovers I'll have time do everything I can to return her to normal.”
“Speaking of recovering,” I said, “we should get her some medical attention.”
“Oh, um, right.” Twilight picked up Fluttershy with her magic and whisked her away to the palace infirmary. Since I was in Canterlot, I had a different destination in mind.
I went up to Luna’s office and sat down in the chair across from her.
“What, you just come into my office and sit down without even knocking on the door first?” she grumped.
I shrugged. “So this little group you’re setting up and that you want me to be a part of. When is everything getting rolling?”
“Well, we’ve already begun a few operations,” she said.
“Really? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Compartmentalization,” she said. “Just because you’re in doesn’t mean I can or will tell you everything.”
I wanted to get indignant, but could see the value. I appreciate plausible deniability as much as the next government agent. “All right, when am I going to get to do something?”
“I actually have an assignment for you,” said Luna. She pushed a file across the desk to me.
I picked it up and read it. “Assassination, huh? In Manehattan? How do you pick these targets?”
“Intelligence is gathered from many sources,” she said.
“Do you get it from dreams?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is that legal? Are you running some kind of dream-NSA? Spying on ponies?”
Luna quickly changed the subject. “This job I want you to do, it would be best if it appeared to be an accident.”
I nodded. “I can handle that.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked curiously.
“I think maybe I’ll get in touch with an ancient underwater race that everyone thinks is dead and convince them to take their revenge on the ponies of the land for no particular reason by violently rising up and making a very public amphibious assault on Equestria’s biggest city.”
Luna stared at me. “Are you serious?”
“Do you think I can pull it off?”
She paused. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
I tried to convince her, attempting to wear down her logical defenses, but not even tail whip helped.