Between Needles and Knives

by Dancewithknives

A Wolf Among the Sheep

March 30th

The hour was early, the day was cold, and there was a thick slushy mixture of overnight snow and frozen rain covered the ground. But, for as early, cold, and nasty the precipitation was, none of those arguments were any reason to not accessorize.

While many ponies were making their morning commute to work, Rarity was likewise on her way to do her very first order of business.
Even though the weather was not ideal, Rarity had taken the occasion to wear one of her finest hats, as well as her very favorite violet sweater, and, in the event that it did start to rain again, with her best umbrella

Her trip was almost at its end. With her precious cargo of dresses secured to her back and protected from the elements by a sealed bag, Rarity was only a few paces away from finally returning home.

The slush on the ground had demanded that the tailor pack her banana yellow rain boots. Every roof and every street was covered in an wet white film of the ice and snow. The majority of the snow had begun melting, and so the gutters as well as the rooftops of the village became waterfalls for the runoff.
Flowerboxes and gardens where tiny buds braved to poke out of the ground earlier in the season were smothered beneath the heavily packed, wet, snow.

Rarity used her key to unlock her house and entered. She closed the door behind her and double checked to make sure that the closed sign was currently hanging from the window.

With the bags of garments still securely on her back, Rarity took a step in and-

Fell flat on her face.

Rarity gave a cry of pain, but quickly moved from the shock of going from standing to being sprawled out atop the tile floor. She looked back towards her hooves and saw a familiar white saddlebag with a microphone-shaped buckle on the side.

Like a lion’s roar, Rarity’s naturally pale face began to turn pink as she lay upon the floor like a throw rug and shouted, “Sweetie Belle! Get out here THIS INSTANT!”

A head poked out from around the corner that lead to the kitchen. Sweetie Belle walked out from the hall and approached her sister, who had now turned as red as a ripe tomato.

“Why are you yell-? Oh…” She began to say, but stopped mid-sentence as soon as she noticed the saddlebags that were wrapped against her sister’s hoof.

Rarity, still on the floor, lectured, “How many times must I tell you not to put your bags in front of the door! I keep telling you this but you keep doing it! One of these days you’re going to trip somepony! and what do you know, It’s me! I swear, If you don’t s-”

Rarity, mid rant, stopped herself, closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose with her hoof, and took a deep breath. She uncovered her face, which had returned to its original color.

“Please pick up your bag.” Rarity said in her normal chipper tone.

Sweetie Belle scurried behind Rarity and untangled the strap of her bag from her older sister’s hoof. “Sorry,” she whispered before darting back into the kitchen.

Rarity gave a sigh of relief. Thank Celestia she had brought the weatherproof garment bag with her. She picked herself up and walked into her sewing room. Upon reaching her highly organized vault of mannequins, thread, fabric, needles, and scissors she removed the custom dresses from the bag and placed each one of them onto their own pony-sized cloth dummies.

Rarity placed her sewing glasses on her nose and lit up the first garment with a tiny spotlight and then gave the gown the scrutiny of her full attention. Only running off of her memorized places for all of her tools, Rarity gathered all of her instruments for an adjustment placed them on her nearby table. Fancy clothes like this, if used with care, could last for quite a while. But, her friends and she always had a nasty habit of finding trouble. So Rarity suspected that their evening wear was in dire need of assistance. The little tumble she took with her sister’s bag was the least of her worries.

Rarity, from checking the underside of Twilght’s gown, perked her ears up and looked at the door with her head cocked sideways.

Rarity walked out into the hall and called out, “Sweetie Belle, aren’t you supposed to be at school now?” The tailor entered the kitchen, and found her sister where she normally would find her at night, except for the fact that it was in the middle of the morning. As per usual, the unicorn filly was sitting at the table with an open book lying before her.

She brought her head up from the work that she was doing and said, “The Superintendent decided to delay school for a few hours today because the roads were too slushy for the school carriage.”

“Oh…” Rarity replied, “How pleasant. When will you need to be going?”

“Noon. They said that we need to walk to school today.”

“Hmm,” Rarity mused as she approached the table and took a seat beside her foal sister. “I suppose I’ll walk you there.”

“It’s okay! I can walk myself, it’s not too far away.”

“No, no. It’s alright. I’d rather not have you go alone. I’ll just have to work a little bit faster today. What have you been up to this morning?” She said, moving closer to the filly and looking at her book.

“I can’t think of anything to do, so I may as well study for the quiz today.”

“On what?”

“It’s another one of those creepy fairytales.” The hairs on Rarity’s neck stood up at the mere mention of the subject. “I gotta know all this stuff so Ms. C will give me a good grade.”

Rarity swallowed, “well… If you have been reading it, I am sure that you can summarize it for me if you know it so well.”

“Are you sure?” Sweetie Belle asked, pulling the book close and covering the pages of the story. “I don’t want you to pass out like last time, remember?”

Rarity smiled, and for as much as she wanted to back away from the threat, she would brave the challenge of whatever horrifying folklore hid within the pages of Sweetie Belle’s book. “It’s alright.” She scooted over and hugged her little sister, “If I start having nightmares, I’ll have you check under my bed.”

Sweetie Belle giggled, but then closed the book. She took a breath, and then began to narrate the story.

“Okay, so… This story takes place in some place full of only earth ponies….oh, wait, there is one family of unicorns who live in a castle and are like the land owners, but they’re not really important. But anyway, the majority of the ponies are just poor earth pony farmers and stuff. So, there is a guy who is the last son of a family of five colts. He’s the biggest and strongest, but he isn’t going to get any inheritance from his father’s farm. So all he does is plow all day and –I don’t know why, but I kinda imagined him to be Big Macintosh for some reason- but one day there is a carriage that gets pulled through their village. It’s really big and fancy and stuff, and being pulled by oxs instead of other ponies. The door opens up, and the farmer’s son sees a unicorn step out that is supposed to be the most prettiest pony ever –I kept picturing you for her, funny, huh?-. So, the pretty unicorn and –I don’t really get this,- her… governor-ess see the farmer colt and they start to date. Why would a governor be in charge of who a pony dates, Rarity?”

Rarity Chuckled as she tried to digest all of the information, but only understood the last sentence. “Sweetie, I believe you are talking about a governess. They aren’t politicians like Mayor Mare. In the past, a governess would go around with an unwed filly and make sure that she was…” Rarity contemplated explaining the concept of virginity to her little sister, “taking good care of herself.”

“Okay!” Sweetie Belle chirped. “So as it turns out, the unicorn is a baroness who is looking to wed, and wants to marry a strong earth pony so that she can take him to her kingdom and he can teach her earth ponies that live on her land how to farm right. He agrees to the marriage since he isn’t going to get any inheritance, but his family says it’s not okay to marry out of his species. But he does it anyway.”

“You seem to know this pretty well,” Rarity said, “I am sure you will do fine.”

“Wait, the story isn’t over! They are gonna get married, but it is customary for the groom to pay the bride’s father, so the poor villagers scrape together all of their money and makes a teeth-”

“Tithe.” Rarity corrected.

“Okay, so they make a tight for him to take to the bride’s dad who is living in a whole other kingdom. But when they leave the village, they go towards where this other kingdom is and reach a cliff. As it turns out, the unicorn lady isn’t actually a baroness –sorry Rarity- and that she and her Mayor-ess are thieves.”

“Oh, my.” Rarity said, somewhat startled, but not nearly as shocked as the first time her sister had to read a morbid fairytale for school.

“So they kick the farmer colt out of the carriage and then line him up next to the cliff. They take the village’s money, and tell him to take off his marriage robes because they are going to sell them,or something; Oh, and the farmer thinks they are going to kill him. Anyway, the farmer is sad, but he tells them to turn around because he was taught by his mom that he should never let a filly see him change. So they turn around while he undresses. But instead of taking off his clothes, he picks up the unicorn and her governor and throw them off the cliff. He takes the carriage full of money from her other husbands back to the town and shares the wealth with all of the villagers.”

Rarity blinked a few times, “My… that was… quite a read.”

“Yeah, weird, huh?”

“I think you will do just fine.” She said. “And I feel that I may be paying Ms. Cheerilee a visit. ” Rarity stood up from the table. “I’m going back to my sewing room. Watch the clock and call when it is time to go to school.”

Sweetie gave an “uh huh” in response.

The tailor returned to her dresses and went back to work. To any outsider, it may have just looked like she was eying the clothes and seeing if there was any damage to the piece. But that was not the case. Rarity was not simply a dressmaker at this point. There is no specific name for what she was doing while checking each one of her works, but the only thing that could be comparable to what she was doing would be a Crime Scene Investigator.

Every rip, every smudge, every stressed stitch along the interior of the gown was a detail. Each of these details added together to create the story of what happened to these dresses from the day they left her store to now. A loose button here or there meant that the wearer had either a hard time putting it on, keeping it on, or wanted to take it off quickly. Tension and ripping along the gown may have meant that somepony tripped on it or may have been dancing with two left hooves. Crumbs and stains around the brazier may have meant that the owner was a messy eater… and judging by the stains that looked to be frosting that had been poorly washed out of a certain pink dress, Rarity did not have to wonder who needed to refine their table manners among her friends.

Speaking of refinement, Rarity realized that she was missing one dress. Rainbow Dash must not have kept her dress with Fluttershy like Twilight, Pinkie, and Applejack did.

Rarity wondered about how she was ever going to get to Rainbow Dash. Chances were that she kept it in her cloud home, and Rarity would definitely need help in getting to i-

SLAM!

Rarity cried out in fright as the contents of her sewing room became an avalanche and buried her alive.

“Hey Rarity. Sorry I’m so late. I had a hard time finding my stuff! Everything’s cool, right? Rarity?”

Rainbow Dash looked around the place that she remembered to be Rarity’s sewing room. All of the shelves were empty, and anything that had been placed on a horizontal surface was either misarranged in a careless fashion or on the ground in a gigantic heap.

“Rarity, you in here?” she asked again.

No response.

Rainbow Dash tentatively stepped into the room, watching to avoid stepping on a fallen needle or to unintentionally move some importantly arrangement of things-that-she-had-no-idea-what-to-call-them out from where her host had placed it.

Still with her package on her back, Rainbow Dash stopped in the center of the room before a pile of stuff that was about her height. Rainbow Dash scoffed, “wow, I gotta remember this for the next time that neatfreak calls me messy.”

As if it were kindling from a fire, smoke began to rise up from the massive pile of Rarity’s belongings. A white head emerged from the top of the mound and was accompanied by the sound of grinding teeth.

“Rainbow Dash! For the last time. Don’t. Slam. The. Door.”
Rainbow Dash, preparing to dive out the window and rally the fire department, hid behind her dress and said something along the lines of , “I’m-sorry-I-called-you-messy-and-slammed-the-door-so-hard-that-I-knocked-over-all-of-your-stuff.I-think-your-beautiful-and smart-and-talented-and-please-don’t-turn-me-into-a-scarf-cuz-all-I-came-here-for-is-to-return-your-dress!” But came out sounding more like”gejpvaginawoghtrigablowjobhaerioghfuckweirograpehefjhbadfgornvnioragefnigrvnotittiesrghcuntbnpoagrbsndkrgdickhbvrehfgiaer-Dress!”

Like a switch was hit somewhere in the sub consciousness of her mind, Rarity switched from a barrel of rage ready to explode to her normal tranquil and professional self “Oh, please place your dress on that open mannequin over there.”

Immediately, Rainbow complied as Rarity emerged from her burial mound.

Rarity, acting almost oblivious to the disharmony to the Zen of her workplace, immediately went to work on the latest addition. She checked every seam, inspected every layer, and studied every hemming. Apart from a rip in the back, the dress was in remarkably good shape.
Rarity reached up and felt around her spot designated to her sewing needles, but, like the rest of her supplies, found them lying somewhere on the floor.

“I must say, you have taken very good care of your gift.”

“Uhh… Yeah, thanks.” Rainbow replied, backing up and standing in a spot on the floor that was devoid of sewing supplies. “I think I made that rip when I was dancing with Soarin. He has two front-left hooves. I was kinda worried I ruined it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” replied Rarity, about halfway done mending the laceration in the fabric. “Nothing I can’t fix.”

“That’s good,” Rainbow said. “I was gonna try to fix it myself, but thought that I should just leave it to you.”

Rarity stopped mid stitch. Upon hearing Rainbow Dash mention the possibility that she would have tried her own hoof at fixing the tailor’s work of art, Rarity imagined her dress being strapped to a table with duct tape while Rainbow Dash prepared a blowtorch, hedge trimmer, jackhammer, nail gun, and a bottle of glue to fix the problem.

“Uh…Rarity?”

The unicorn snapped out of her trance to see Sweetie Belle standing at the doorway with her schoolbags on and her boots on all four hooves.

Rarity shook her head to reorganize her thoughts and rid her of the daydream, “Oh my! Time to get you to school!” She turned to Rainbow Dash, “You may wait here if you would like. I won’t be long.”

“Nah, it’s alright.” Rainbow Dash said, hovering off the floor and out of the door. “Stay here, I’ll take ‘Sweets to school for ya.”

Rarity, who was in the middle of saying, “That is awfully nice of you.” Was cut off by the resulting rush of air leaving her sewing room after Rainbow Dash called out, “Race ya there!”

Rarity groaned again as what was left of her organized supplies flew about the room and landed on the floor. But, all she did was shake her head and return to the task before her.

Like she had said, Rarity was done fixing the blemish in her masterpiece in a few seconds and returned to one of her earlier projects. She was not far into her next task when she heard the door to her home open again and Rainbow Dash came running in.

Rarity looked at the clock, it had hardly been two minutes. “What are you doing back here?”

“Bah, don’t worry about it.” Rainbow answered, “She thinks I’m so far ahead that she’ll never guess I doubled back.”

A lecture about the difference between ‘racing’ somewhere and ‘walking’ somepony there began to brew inside Rarity’s head, but she ignored the voice telling her to berate the pegasus.

“So, what brings you back, Dear? I managed to finish fixing your dress, would you like to take it home?”

“Nah, not yet.” Rainbow said, walking around the mess on the floor, “Sheesh, you should really clean up in here.”

Rarity clenched her eyes shut and covered her forehead with her hoof as a tumor began to develop in her head. “Is there anything else I could get for you?” she asked in a ‘you’ve just overstayed your visit’ tone.

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash said, looking up at the ceiling, “When are we planning to get the theatre for the concert?”

Rarity suppressed a laugh, “Have you forgotten again!”

“No!” Rainbow shouted, but then trembled underneath Rarity’s gaze and admitted, “…well, yeah. ”

“We are to leave for Canterlot tomorrow morning and the concert begins at Eight o’clock.”

“Phew!” Rainbow wiped her brow with a hoof, “I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get good seats!”

“Rainbow, we are sitting in the V.I.P. booth with Princess Celestia and Luna.”

Rainbow Dash’s red eyes shrunk to the size of peas as she tried to make sure she heard that last piece of information correctly.

“This is going to be... SO AWESOME!” she shot into the air like a firecracker and then dove down and tackled Rarity. “I mean… VIP seats… Sapphire Shores… Canterlot…. AH!” She put her head face to face with Rarity and then whispered in her normal screechy voice, “So awesome!”

Rarity, after being assaulted by her friend, tried to push her off, but she was gone within the second.

The unicorn’s head began to pound, her place of work being a mess, Rainbow Dash’s shouting, being tackled, it was starting to look today was adding up to be an emergency trip to the spa.

---

The dresses had all been fixed and in the possession of their respective owners. All of Rarity’s bags –literally, ALL- had been packed and were waiting to be taken to the station and loaded onto the train. Invoices for client accounts receivable as well as payments to her suppliers had been sent out in the mail, and her store sign had been updated to explain her semi- vacation.

Ever since she had learned that Sapphire Shores was going to end her world tour in Canterlot and that the Princesses had reserved tickets for her and the rest of her friends, Rarity had been doing extra work to try to get as far ahead as she could to compensate for the days of freedom. Like the calm before a storm, Rarity was done with everything and could do nothing but count the seconds until it was time to leave.

All alone in her home, Rarity sat at her kitchen table and looked out at the cold, wet, Spring day outside. She grasped her record player with her magic and placed it beside her on the tempered piece of circular glass that was her kitchen table.

With as much care as she took when using her needles and thread, she delicately placed the tip of the plastic point onto the vinyl record, filing the vacant air with the sounds of Rarity’s favorite album, Prancing in Prance.

Rarity began to relax, sitting back in her chair, and breathing in nice and slowly, and imagining what fun and excitement the following days would entail.

To Rarity’s relief, Sweetie Belle had grabbed the morning newspaper before she went to school. The unicorn grabbed the bundle and brought it over to see what exactly was happening in the world.

Rarity read the headliner on the front page, and the sweet sounds from her record player faded into obscurity.

Terror Strikes in Fellik City, Japone’

Rarity did not read the article, but she already knew what she was going to do next.

She stuffed the paper into her chest like a school-filly who did not know how to share and looked around the room, making sure that she was not being watched.

She rounded up the daily periodicals and ran as fast as she could out of her kitchen and up into her room, ignoring the sounds from her favorite musician as the machine on the table kept playing.

Once in her room, she locked the door behind her and wedged a chair into the nob to prevent anypony from wandering in. She closed her windows and pulled all of the drapes shut. By the end of the ordeal, the room was so secure that not even sunlight could enter.

Rarity lit a candle and placed it in a small dish before jumping onto her bed.

There, with the newspaper in question, tape, scissors, her working glasses, and her little scrapbook on the customer known as “Esproc”, she dug into the mystery.

The picture was of a large grandiose government building of some sort, not romantic or castle-looking like some of the older official buildings in Canterlot or in other places in Equestria, but still very formal, stoic, and business-like. Smoke was rising out of some of the windows and crowds of ponies, firefighters, workers, and pedestrians, were gathered outside.

She read the article. Earlier in the week in the capital of Japone’, a Government building called “The National Offices of Archives and Securities” had been attacked by a terrorist. While several security personnel on duty were harmed, there were no fatalities. The thief, disguised as an Equestrian Official, had entered the offices under the false pretense of being there on behalf of the Princesses of Equestria to negotiate a visit. In reality, the Princesses had to renege on the offer due to prior commitments and had sent a letter of apology which arrived shortly after the terrorist had gained entry.

The authorities had not yet been able to determine the goal of the mission other that the target may have been in the archive vault. Efforts to find missing documents have been difficult given the fact that a fire had burned much of the vault’s contents.

The authorities had brought in many leads on who may have been responsible for the attack, and several individuals had been detained for questioning, but no clear culprit had been identified by the time the newspaper had been printed.

The foreign police may not have had an idea for who did the deed, but Rarity had one.

Rarity, still on her bed, donned her special sewing glasses, and began to inspect the pictures that accompanied the tale. By some sort of egotistical problem or plain dumb luck, Rarity had a strange talent for finding the custom suits that she made for Mr. Esproc in photos like this.

It could be just a chance, like a set of coincidences that she happened to find her suit in on one of the ponies somewhere in the picture. But she had a feeling that it was too good to leave it to chance. It was like a game, for as much as the authorities could not find their culprit, he -or she, if the suit happened to be worn by a mare- was always somewhere just out of sight, but right under their nose. Almost as if it was waving its hooves out and shouting “Bet’cha can’t find me!”

Like the hours she had spent in grade school trying to find Carmane San Francisco, Rarity studied every aspect of the page. Looked at every face, inspect every shape, and stared at every article of clothing, until she found…Nothing.

Mr. Esproc, or more importantly, his suit, was nowhere to be found.

Rarity sighed and rolled onto her back. How disappointing.

Disappointing?

Rarity sat up and slapped herself across the muzzle. Why was she not happy that her customer was not in the picture? This wasn’t a game. She was playing hide-and-go-seek with a potentially dangerous international criminal. The scrap book that she had been compiling held potentially incriminating evidence that could put, not just her, but her mother, father, and sister at risk.

Rarity flopped back onto the bed and bounced back one time on the springs. What was she doing? Why was she pursuing this so hard? Her customer had done nothing wrong to her, why was she trying to find ways to fear him so much? Why was she trying to put herself at risk like this?

Pit Vipers only rattle their tails when they don’t want to bite something. So even if her Mr. Esproc was the sharply dressed psycho that she was trying to make him, why would she want to try his patience?

Rarity rolled off the bed and opened up her window once more, allowing the sun’s light to greet her face.

Maybe it was time to put this to rest, to act more like an adult. If this ‘Esproc’ had plans for her, he would have done so by now. She just needed to let go of her imagination and move on with her life.

Rarity bowed her head to the window and sighed as she sat on a square of light that lit up the floor in the largely dark room. Why was she committing so much of her time to this wild goose hunt instead of using her energy to promote her business, or spend with her family, or just have fun? Why was she focusing on her fear of a meek stallion rather than her once in a lifetime opportunity to see her favorite musician live from seats that she could only dream of? Why was she so obsessed with something so farfetched that it sounded like a corny horror novel?

She kept telling herself that her more rational half was probably right, that her fear was a choice, and her customer was probably not of any danger to her. But at the same time, the tale that Sweetie Belle had told her kept nagging at the back of her head.

It made her wonder, if the time came, would she be able to throw her false savior off the cliff like the character from the fairytale? Or would she become just another one of his victims?

Comments

[Fillyphil]

Are you aware that the first few paragraphs are clumped together?

[Dancewithknives]

4054630 ... Fuck.

[Fillyphil]

4054733 My very first story for some reason or another had all the spaces between the paragraphs removed when I published it and no one hardly mentioned it. I had to find it out for myself almost a week afterwards.

[Dancewithknives]

4054837 yeah, the unsung doublespace rule.

Anyway, i added the beginning in about an hour before posting.

[Darksonickiller]

Rarity being my second favorite pony I can say this was a very interesting take on her personality the story line was good. You painted a vivid picture of what was going and a I didn't spot very grammar errors. Overall this was a very enjoyable read. Have an upvote.